i'm so azure

My mom gave S and me a stupid clock with an indoor/outdoor thermometer reading, which I moved to over my desk when S went out of town for the summer with the intention of keeping myself from overheating. I don't mind the heat so much, but sometimes it's a little hotter than it should be in here, and I think it's making me ill. I decided that when the indoor temperature hits 90, I would turn on the a/c. It usually stays about five to ten degrees "cooler" (relative term) in the house than outside. A couple of days ago it got up to 104 (outside), and I turned the a/c on, but it kept flipping the breaker switch, which meant I had to keep going outside to the back corner of the house to flip it back on again. It was 88 in the house when I gave up. 88 isn't so bad.

Yesterday, I was going to go to Dance, but got involved with work, and then with jumping into internet rabbit holes and before I knew it, it was nine o'clock (the Dance ends at 9:45). And it was 92 degrees inside. I was going stir crazy, and I was hungry, and because I didn't want to heat anything up, and because I didn't want to eat cold cereal, I decided to head over to the Dance space and see if anybody was going over to Bouldin Creek Cafe after. There was some drama at the Dance -- which is part of the reason I don't go as much anymore; it has to do with the current president of the board and his decisions and his way of communicating and the struggles he and the other board members and many of the Dancers are having, being that they're a bunch of hippies.

LR, for one, who is like the Mama of the Dance, and has been setting up and breaking down the space for thirteen years, was asked to provide a job description, which she took as being a little too corporate for her soul, and so she quit. So the president immediately hired a new person to do her job. LR showed up to Dance last night, early, in time to set up, and found out that she had been replaced. I arrived at the end of the closing circle, saw her lying on the floor, asked how she was, and got an earful.

A asked if I wanted to go get a bite to eat. I did. I suggested Bouldin; A counter-suggested Polvos, because LR likes it. I didn't see any reason to contradict. Seven of us ended up at Polvos, including three Bs (one of whom now goes by F, the other two I'll refer to as B1 and B2), LR, A, and a woman I met recently named P, a beautiful woman, gentle, hippie-like, with a generous smile.

The gossip continued around the issues with the Dance -- which was a bit tedious to me. I asked B1 who the woman was, he told me we'd been introduced a week ago. I didn't remember. When she went to the restroom, B2 went as well, and B1 said, "He just slapped her on the butt!" He seemed a little offended. When P returned, B1 said something about it. She said, "I know; I hope he got from the disgruntled sound I made that that wasn't acceptable behavior." (I always liked B2. Right before I met P1, she was dating him. She says now that she shudders -- I think that's the word she used -- every time she thinks about the episode of dating B2. I didn't understand. But later, when he was the first to leave, he pulled P over the table to him and kissed her on the cheek, which wasn't completely unacceptable behavior, but did seem a little odd, so maybe it really was, to P.)

Anyway, I asked B1 if he and P were dating. He said, "We're hanging out," which I took to mean that's the precursor to dating. Shortly after that, when she was back at the table, A said, "So when are you performing again, JDJB?" And P turned to me and said, "Did you do CampCamp?" She saw both of my performances there -- the Blood of the Lamb Beet Juice thing and the May Day Human Maypole thing. But what was most interesting was when she said: "I'm queer too!" I could see a drop in B1's face, could feel his energy change severely. He didn't admit it right away, but later, it came up when we were in the parking lot. I told him that's exactly the way I feel over and over when I find out that guys I'm attracted to are straight. His response: "Well, I think she's everything..." I wanted to say, "Yeah, and I sometimes think you're 'everything,'" but I didn't. I just smiled and let him have his little fantasy. It was useful to me to see how he struggled with that, struggled against that very obvious information: "I'm queer!" How he kind of told himself it wasn't exactly what it sounded like.

I had a coconut margarita, which was tasty and strong and loosened my tongue and wit -- though around some people (B1 being one of them) I'm known for being funny, there's some sort of incentive, or some sort of energy. The food was okay at Polvos; the service was horrible. A said she's had that experience there before (except she thinks the food is great).

After we said our goodbyes in the parking lot, I drove toward home but stopped at Chain Drive, because it was Wednesday night and that's the night they have bands play, and I remembered in the back of my mind that Chainbow (a band that played at CampCamp on May Day) was playing. Indeed they were.

A week earlier, I had performed as a dancer in G's improv disco unit, and there were maybe ten people there. Last night the place was packed. I rolled a cigarette in the truck so I could go stand on the Chain Drive patio and enjoy it (so I would have something to do), and I saw S1 and J and R and S2, queers that I've met through G. I walked up to S1 and said hey, had a brief conversation with him. He was polite, but there just wasn't any real connection there. J was standing close by; a real cute little homo studying to be a nurse. He was at R's pancake breakfast birthday party and I felt like there was some sort of connection there, but last night he didn't seem to even recognize me. S2 looked really fucked up, kind of squinty-eyed and swaying, and she was standing across from R, who I went up to, hugged, and we had a conversation, which was a little warmer than the one I'd had with S1, but I felt like I had nothing interesting to say. I feel like I have a totally uninteresting life. There's only so many times you can say to somebody that you're writing a novel before they start saying, "So, what are you up to, just writing?" Yeah, just writing. (And not even that for the last week or so, this goddamn chapter sixteen...)

So then the band was starting. I went inside. They really aren't my cup of tea. They're loud and not real melodic, and I'm just an old fart because all the mostly-lesbian audience members were bopping and laughing, spewing their drunkenness right back at the drunk foursome onstage, banging away, keeping a relative beat, stopping occasionally to start over because somebody fucked up a song...

I looked around the crowd, the crowd looked through me. A fat girl looked past me and smiled as she did so; I took that as the one most real connection. The cute boys all seemed too young for me. There was a short-haired man in tight jean shorts and motorcycle boots playing pool; he was nice to watch, but he looked at me sideways and made me feel like I was being perhaps inappropriate.

Then I saw a tall man with long blond hair. He sized me up as he passed by. Then he followed some people out to the patio. I bought a beer (forgetting I'd had a margarita already, and I don't like to mix alcohols), and it was just a Corona, which isn't the kind of beer that I would normally drink, but, believe me, it was the best choice...and it cost $4.25 (which makes it really not the best choice)! I went outside to where the tall blond man had gone. He was standing in a cluster of five guys by the fence, all but him smoking. I'd already had my one cigarette and didn't really want to go roll another. Next to me were two guys involved in a cynical conversation. Close by, a group of six or so were sitting at the built-in pond; over there was a picnic table of four bears most likely making snide remarks about the other groups; at another spot, a group of three; and at the back corner, a couple tables of mixed gender queers.

The tall blond man was across from the pool player, but next to a rough looking guy. Then suddenly, they were kissing. I couldn't hear their conversation, so it looked completely out of the blue. One moment, they're standing around with three other guys, and the next they're sucking face. That doesn't happen to me. In one way I want it to, and in another, I'm completely opposed to that kind of non-genuine connection. Not to say these guys didn't have a genuine connection, but it seemed pretty random. Fifteen minutes later, they were at it again, and then after a brief pause, headed out of the bar together most assuredly to go have sex. The rough guy sized me up as he passed, and then stumbled off of the sidewalk. I thought to myself perhaps if I hung around this place long enough, got drunk enough, somebody would come along and suck on my face and let me take them home. It's a conundrum because I have this desire for an intimate connection, but I want it to be genuine, and a bar doesn't seem like the right place to find that.

Though the Dance isn't really the right place either since I'm the only homo there.

I came home feeling despondent. I have been thinking about celibacy a lot lately. If I could take that desire out of my life, I think I would be a lot better off. It's like getting out of debt to relieve a certain amount of mental stress; celibacy would possibly go a long way to relieve me, too. Other than masturbation, I am celibate. I haven't had sex in over a year. I haven't masturbated that much recently, either. But I got home last night and felt like it was the only thing that would make me feel better. It didn't. I shouldn't have mixed tequila and beer.

I had a dream last night that I was in a big city -- probably New York, but it felt like Paris (though I've never been there) -- I was with my immediate family; it was time to leave, to catch a plane back home. But there was news of a great tragedy outside. When I got outside, police and firemen were everywhere, searching for the perpetrator of this great tragedy. There was controlled mayhem in the streets, everybody walking briskly on the sidewalks, darting behind buildings, in and out of alleyways.

It turned out the perpetrator was a little boy wearing an over-sized policeman's jacket and hat and carrying a huge bag that looked like a two-dimensional jack-o-lantern. They caught him walking down a rickety staircase. They took him away. The staircase separated an upper sidewalk and a lower sidewalk. I was on the lower sidewalk; I started climbing the rickety staircase to get up to where the police with the boy had been, and the stairs started falling apart, coming loose in my hands, splintering and falling away under my feet.

I've had diarrhea since the week after S left town, and for the last five days or so, a cough when I take deep breaths . P1 said maybe I should go to a doctor. I don't want to go to adoctor. I don't want to take medicine; I don't want to fight for life; sometimes I'm okay with it coming to an end.