t.r.u.t.h.

(That's not an acronym, I just wanted to connect it to the previous entry.)

The kind of thing that I want to write about with regards to movies I see is what things they bring up for me, the conversations they ignite between me and whomever I see the with, which is why I like going to movies mostly with S; he and I understand each other, know each other better than anybody else knows us -- even better than ourselves in some instances.

L.I.E. brought up a conversation about pedophiles. S and I have had this conversation before. I don't know if it's because of our upbringings or what, but he seems to have a much healthier relationship to sex and sexuality than I do. He has a fairly active sex life, says he's not willing to give up that part of him, whereas I feel my sexual life waning, and I'm not even forty-five!

For me, I think a lot of it has to do with who I'm attracted to. I'm not generally attracted to men my age or older. Men my age, even men a couple of years younger than me, seem so much older than me, out of shape, over the hill, not sexy, and so I find myself not generally attracted to them. I have met a couple of men in their thirties whom I've been attracted to, but nothing has come of it. I also have met a few twenty-somethings whom I am very attracted to, and they seem attracted to me, but not necessarily in a sexual way (it seems), more in just a kind of I'm a cool older guy giving them a lot of attention and they like that, so they like me. I guess.

I wouldn't force myself on anyone. I struggle a lot with my attraction to younger men. But I don't think I could ever have a bona fide relationship with anyone younger than thirty, mostly because of societal views on it, I suppose. (An interesting aside: When I was twenty-three, I was in a relationship with a woman seventeen years older than me, so that's kind of my cut-off age; I guess because it wasn't looked on as so freakish by my family or by society at large.)

S thinks it's not so black-and-white. I agree with him, but I don't think I could deal with the responses of people, regardless of the situation. Sometimes I get the feeling that people are whispering "pedophile" when I'm just hanging out with a young guy. It must be some kind of fucked up Assembly of God religious guilt. Still, it's different for straight people, and I suppose I could work on changing my views (of myself, of It), but I don't think society's views will change.

l.i.e.

S and I are compulsive movie-aholics. We feed each other's compulsion, see probably five movies a week or more. Last night we walked over to the IMAX theater to see The Dark Knight but it was sold out. There was a long line. We decided to wait for the craze to die down a little before we attempt it again. We came home and watched L.I.E., directed by Michael Cuesta and starring Paul Dano. This was Paul's second film, his first leading role. (Most people first noticed him in Little Miss Sunshine.) He is a very good actor; this was a very good movie. I had some problems with the story in a couple of places, S had a problem with the ending, but I think he liked it overall.

I see so many movies that I want to keep a record of them, but it always seems too late to mark them down -- like the number of movies I've seen this year (with the SXSW Film Festival, the number is probably close to 100).

S and I recently joined Netflix. This was our first arrival, so I thought this was as good an incentive as any to start marking down the films I've seen. I guess I could say more about this particular film, but I feel a little rushed (which is another reason I don't often get around to it, because I don't feel like I have anything worthwhile to say). And also, I hate reviews that just tell you the plot of the movie (sometimes giving stuff away). Here's imdb's description:

A 15-year-old Long Island boy loses everything and everyone he knows, soon becoming involved in a relationship with a much older man.

I would definitely recommend it, if you care about my opinion. Maybe I'll write more about it later, but right now, S and I are getting ready to go see Mamma Mia!

four holes

You'd never imagine a group of people so excited about four holes. They're eighteen inches across and about four feet deep. S and my mom, sister and nephew and I went over to J&M's this morning after breakfast to see the bobcat with its auger attachment drill down. S did a bit of video taping. The ground breaking! This is it! It's on its way.

Last night, we had a bit of a kickoff party for the container house that will soon be mine and S's. We kind of planned it around the fact that my mom was coming to town. S made all the food for twelve or thirteen of us; his feast included (happy) chicken satay, black bean salad, potato salad, cucumber salad, plus grilled asparagus and yellow squash. And there was beer and wine and whatever else -- my mom had a couple of Crowns with a splash of Sprite before we even got there and she was in her usual "rare" form.

It was a fun party. Besides those already mentioned, J's dad was there, plus their friends S&L and their daughter (little P's friend) I, and my good friends A and P. Little P's teacher Miss B was there, as was a friend of J's who seemed to hit it off with P, which I was glad about. She's hot, he's hot; if things were a little bit different for one or both of them, I'd be with whichever (or would want to be, anyway!).

P brought brownies and fruit and whipped cream; S&L brought some kind of a fruity pecan crumble. I'm sure there are many humorous moments I could recall, but I took most of the day off of work yesterday (to entertain family) and part of today, so I need to work.

We had breakfast at Hoover's this morning, which I wouldn't recommend. Their lunches and dinners are great, portions are ridiculously over-sized, but the pancakes were cold and dry, the waitress wasn't very good, and we ordered regular grits but were told they only had garlic grits in the morning (seems an odd choice) after they were delivered.

It was good having my family here.

photo of the day

I'm totally blown away by this. You might look at this picture and say, "Eh! What's the big deal?" It's not a big deal, except that this is the first picture, taken on March 31, 1979, by a guy named Hugh Crawford. He decided on that day to take a Polaroid picture a day, and called the project something like Photo of the Day. He was 22 when he took this picture, and he took pictures almost every day without fail for a little more than eighteen years, until his untimely death shortly after his forty-first birthday. The website is indexed by month, and a click on the month brings up all of that month's photographs. I find myself just scanning through them, putting together an imaginary life story as I go. What strikes me most is that it looks like Hugh and I share the same birthday. He was born seven years before me, but right around October 28, or so it seems (because of several birthday cakes and party scenes in the photos). It is also very moving to see his illness and death captured in the Polaroids, the last one -- as with others in the serious -- obviously taken of him by someone else. I just thought it should be shared.

a queer spectacle

My friend G turned 45 yesterday. She had an all-day party, which started at 4:00 and went on until after I left at 10:30. G had this great idea that everyone (or those who wanted) would perform for her. I was inspired by her email invite to write a song. Of course I recorded it on GarageBand, and if I can ever figure out how to incorporate songs onto the JDJB page will include it with the nine others I've recorded over the last few months. G said my song was her favorite -- not that the others who performed weren't good (they were), but mine was the only one written specifically for her, so it had that going for it. A few moments before I headed to the party, I decided I couldn't just stand there in her living room and sing without moving, so I came up with some hand motions and dance steps to go along with the lyrics; I was surprised by the number of comments I got specifically on the dancing portion of my performance!

My latest song (after the one for G) was inspired by J calling a few days ago to tell me that they had put the down payment on the shipping containers which will soon make up a good portion of our new home. The song is called "Train Car" and it's kind of bluegrass (or at least that's how I envisioned it).

Well, we're moving into a train car
On the far side of this town;
She's tall and thin and sexy
And the purtiest shade of rusty brown.
Gonna sleep like old hound dogs,
Sleep like ain't nobody else around,
When we move into our train car
Out here on the far side of this town.

Well, we're moving into a train car
On the far side of this town;
Livin' higher on the hog
Than any poor soul for miles around.
Folks are bound to be jealous,
But we'll just keep on smilin' while they frown,
'Cause we're livin' in a train car
Out here on the far side of this town.

Train car, sweet train car,
Tell me, can you hear that whistle blow?
Train car, sweet train car,
Suits me mighty fine from head to toe.

Well, our train car is a mansion,
Nearly forty feet in length;
We got chickens, a goat and a garden,
We even got us a kitchen sink.
We don't lack for nothin',
'Cause everything we needed we have found
In our happy handsome train car
Out here on the far side of this town.

Our train car is so fancy,
Makes us proud to call it home,
With a door as wide as Texas,
In case we get the urge to roam;
Just slide that big door open
And take a little trip right down the track
In our fancy little train car,
Clickety-clack, clickety-clack, clickety-clack.

Train car, sweet train car,
Tell me, can you hear that whistle blow?
Train car, sweet train car,
Suits me mighty fine from head to toe.

I videotaped the arrival of the first couple of containers, then went out to Bastrop, Texas, with J to film the driver picking up the next load. There are eight in all, but we're only using three for our house. "Only." Two of them will serve as S's and my rooms, the third will go on top, straddling the back of those two; it'll be like a screened in porch for watching sunrises and having cocktail parties, and for sleeping when the weather is nice. The space between our rooms will be enclosed with a pitched roof (V-shape to catch the rain) and front and back walls. The plans are still kind of solidifying, but there will be a kitchen, a shower/laundry room (which will hopefully/eventually use 100% captured rainwater) and a composting toilet on the other side.

I spent several days last week with M1's saws-all clearing brush and getting the area ready as much as I could before there was anything to do with regards to construction. Now that the containers are all on site, the first thing to do is to have the concrete piers poured; these are the support columns which will lift the two main containers up off of the ground. After that, the containers will be placed on them, and then the real fun begins. Or the real torture. J is a pro at building things; I'm eager to learn; S is terrified. I think we'll all learn a thing or two in the months to come.

But back to G's party. After the performances (which had intermissions between each of them), G set up her sound system in the back yard for her improv disco band, which includes her and her friend S1. I have been one of the dancers for all three performances. I wore a pair of pajama bottoms and a matching red t-shirt and old Crocs because it was too hot for any of my polyester dance clothes. But G's girlfriend A mentioned that she might have something I could wear (she's tall and has a "pretty wide rib cage, too"). So I ended up in a beautiful vintage polyester black bikini with bright red tulips and a wrap-around skirt and short "jacket" (perhaps it would be called a jackette in fashion lingo, or should be). I put the very skimpy bikini top on my head, wore the jackette as a kind of tied-in-the-front Carmen Miranda look, slid on the skimpy bottoms and wrapped the skirt around my bottom half. The music was pumping and I was doing my best moves, doing a slow strip tease and eventual reveal of the crazy-sexy bottom. But with all that gyrating, I suddenly felt my junk on the outside of the bikini bottom. I reached in to fix them and danced a little more, revealed a little more. And then suddenly realized that the bottom had come untied on one side and had fallen down around one thigh. I did my best to wrangle the wrap-around skirt back around my pride and kicked off the bottoms with a little reveal of ass cheeks -- not on purpose, it just happened that way.

Soon thereafter, I retreated to the "dressing room" and put on my boxer briefs and a blue mesh underskirt which would normally be used for some kind of a petticoat action. My fellow dancer -- whose name escapes me -- was at the party but was not dancing, so I was on my own. I was happy to see that A had donned a rather Elizabeth Taylor Egyptian number and blond wig and was out there to lend me support. Eventually some of the other party-goers joined in on the dancing. It was really a good time.

I must work my stomach muscles quite a bit in improv disco performance -- or maybe I hold my breath a lot -- because all three times I've done this gig, I've had a bit of a stomachache afterwards. That's why I left shortly after the disco ended at 10:00. G wanted to sit and chat with everybody, but I was already chatted out. She seemed disappointed that I left "early," but I'm sure she got over it because there were a lot of other people there to keep her company.

The original announcement had said it was a potluck, so I made an egg salad (because she said she would be having a "sandwich bar," and because I had the ingredients in the house), but when I arrived, M (a somewhat androgynous lesbian I have always had a crush on) had just delivered thirty burritos -- large ones, cut in half, so it was really like sixty meals -- and the sandwich bar idea had been ditched. I put my egg salad in the fridge, and left with it. M brought the burritos as part of her performance for G. She's a professor at Community College and had difficulty buying thirty tacos as a reward for good work by her students, and after a bit of back and forth email writing to Chipotle corporate headquarters was offered the thirty burritos for G's party (because school is out of session).

I had a veggie burrito, and it was very good. But I was really looking forward to an egg salad sandwich with some of the arugula I'd picked from the garden for G. So today, I had my sandwich with some fresh cut leaves of arugula and a slice of swiss cheese. Yum! The egg salad had mayo, mustard, red onion, calamata olives, fresh basil, salt and pepper.

This evening, I went with A1 and E -- some friends from the Dance Group -- to see the new movie Brick Lane, about an Pakistani woman in an arranged marriage living in London. It's a gorgeous movie, very touching, one of those movies I wanted to just have a good cry after, but I couldn't since I was with A1 and E. Well, not that I couldn't, but I didn't.

I came home and sat on the porch to a lot of distressing insect activity, which I'm hyper-aware of because I'm rereading Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek right now. There were four wasps congregating around the porch light. I couldn't tell if they were building a nest or if there was one already built up in the cup around the light, or if they were just pretending to be moths. Then a brilliant green dragonfly appeared and was flying clumsily around the light and around the wasps. I was certain a murder was about to happen before my eyes, so I decided to come inside, turn off the porch light and hope for the best for all. But not before I was dive-bombed by a waterbug (what I grew up calling tree roaches). Whew! And then I started writing this blog only to discover that the queen wasp (it must've been the queen, she was bigger than the rest, and agitated) had gotten inside and was spinning around my desk lamp and around my head. I got the trusty small-necked bottle I've used before and once again did a catch and release somewhere around the second or third paragraph of this entry.

So now, of course, I'm totally exhausted!

Oh, and one more thing to report. I got an invitation to be M's friend on Facebook! She said she was enamored by my song and dance at G's party. Swoon!

the N word

There's this friend of a friend who's a pretty damn funny guy. He was born and raised in New Orleans and cracks me up with his ability to affect the accent of his elders and of his community, saying words like "ferl" for "foil" and "frewnarul" for "funeral." But he also liberally sprinkles his performances with the N word, which causes me a lot of discomfort.

I was at my friend's (the friend of this friend, none of whom I'm going to name) house when the silly guy was going on in the voice of his grandmother talking about "colored boy" this and "nigger" that. My friend was laughing as she said, "Okay, don't say that word in this house again!" But it didn't really stop. He said, "Oh, JDJB knows what I'm talking about 'cause he's from Bigtown."

And it's true. I remember visiting from New York with my Jewish boyfriend -- the first boyfriend I took home -- and we were driving around Bigtown (I was driving us through the neighborhoods of my childhood, I guess) and my mom all of a sudden said, "Now you've taken us all the way to Niggertown." I protested, but my boyfriend told me to relax (perhaps he was afraid that the J word would come up if I made too much of a stink about it).

Back to now: This N-spewing funny guy seems to be making social commentary with his words and accent, so I kind of understand where he's coming from, but at the same time, there wasn't really any need in the particular context of the occasion that we were visiting for there to be this kind of social commentary; I mean, he was preaching to the choir, and though we weren't a black gospel choir, we were all quite familiar with the hymns being sung.

I don't know, maybe this has something to do with Barack Obama running for president; maybe it has something to do with the racist-seeming New Yorker magazine cover. Perhaps these kinds of conversations are going on all over the country. I wish it wasn't necessary.

And I'm afraid to think of what's being said around the table of my very Republican family.

I like to think that I at least have gotten beyond my racist past. I know I haven't completely rinsed my bones of their racist attitudes and actions, but I'm aware of my deeds and do my best to not offend people with the things that come up for me. I would also like to believe that not everybody from Bigtown is a racist.

Like this junior high and high school buddy I just got back in touch with (after twenty-five years or so). The thing that made me look for him over the years was that he was a friend to me when it felt like nobody else was. He seemed to like hanging around me; he offered to accept me if I wanted to tell him I was gay (which I was not ready to do at seventeen, but still, that stuck with me).

I did various searches over the years and only recently found him by doing a Google Image search; there he was, older, heavier (looking a lot like I remember my father, strangely) standing at the machine shop table where he has worked for thirteen years. Still in Bigtown. That was a shock to me; I always thought of him as someone with a lot of potential. I mean, his family wasn't well off -- they were a large Catholic family who lived in the part of town my mother had a disagreeable name for -- and yet he had a job and saved up and bought himself a brand new car. (That, besides his acceptance of what I might or might not be, was the other thing that impressed me about him.)

I felt giddy when I got in touch with him; we had a bit of back-and-forth emailing activity. In my first full-length message to him, I confessed my homosexuality and told him I remembered our conversation of long ago. He wrote back and said he remembered that conversation, too, and that he still didn't care, and said that anybody who cared about that was "fucked in the head." He was a little rough around the edges, as always, but had a twisted sense of humor -- as always -- and it felt good to be in touch with him. I sent him a copy of the documentary about mine and S's performance and polyamorous life and downfall, as well as a couple of old CDs from the band and a burned CD of some silly songs I've been recording recently on GarageBand.

And then I got this email from him:

you didn't ask any questions, so we can start new. i am about to give you title of a video on utube, that is of me walking like a nigger on crack, that me and my bud saw walking down the street. i swear this is how he was walking. i told them at work my acting was only a 1, and that you could do it as a 10. you will laugh you ass off. "X" (trainwreck) is suppose to put it on there tonight. she is little shit. she was talking about putting my name on it, but she was only kidding- i hope. like i say- she is a shit. she is just young, dum(misspelled on purpose), and full of cum. im just the latter of the three. im not old though either. i just need to get off my lazy ass, and do a bunch of shit around the house.

i have two dogs that are the terror of the neighborhood, and my backyard. there is litterally a3' hole that the mother dug. they are both tied up at the moment, and im not far from making nooses out of their chains. they are mother and son labs, one nigger and one yellow named "A" (nigger) and "B." "B" used to be a good dog until "A" got him hooked on crack. now he is in the same boat as her. here's a good one -she got ran over and lived through it. she was scraped up everywhere, blood coming out of her mouth, and dislocated her left front leg. i really felt sorry for her at first, but eventually came to the conclusion that she brought this on herself, and i would try to nurse her back, but if she didn't make it back- it was her bad, and she had to live with it, or die. the first night was bad. the second was scary, but she eventually improvised and overcame. my mom did a good job of teaching me to nurse. she was in my lap bleeding lap most of the first night, but i got all of the bleeding stopped, and time would only tell. i like her better on 3 legs. she is just as fast, she just doesn't have the endurance to run like she used to. she uses the one leg as a crutch.

enough about two stupid dogs. here's something better-- 2 fridays ago i hit 2 girls @ once. almost the craziest shit that ever happened to me. i went and got my hair cut, and it was about 8:30, and they had about 6 people (i thing that were made up people because they weren't there), as i think they were ready to leave. anyhow the chick that was in charge said that i would have to come back tomorrow, and the black chick said that she would take me. boy- is that an understatement. she cut my hair, bla bla bla, and when she was done handed me a card with her# on it and said--call @ 9:30. well i got directions to her place and i walked in and she had a petite mexican girlfriend. i hit them both at the same time. i think the mex girl is really a lez, and she only did it to turn on her girlfriend..it worked.... the only thing hotter than 2 girls together, was me between them....

I don't know how to respond to this. I have a feeling he is trying to impress me, not with his antics as much as with his story-telling ability. (After my first long email to him he wrote back and said "you can tell you're a writer.") But I was sick to my stomach after I read his email. It was kind of a "there but for the grace of god go I," though I'm not a believer in that kind of a god, so I don't know, it was just upsetting. I feel like the best (and maybe only) thing to do is just leave it be, not respond, walk away from this train wreck before I find myself in the middle of it.

I have a tattoo that says COMPASSION on my left forearm -- and REFLECTION in reverse on my right. I put Compassion on my left arm so I would be the one to see it most, that it would be a message for me, to start with myself, have compassion for myself first and foremost, and then I can have compassion for others; that once I learn to have compassion for myself, compassion for others will naturally follow. Reflection is backwards (mirror image) because I see it as kind of the outgoing message -- COMPASSION incoming/REFLECTION outgoing.

So, how do I respond to these recent racist messages that have taken me uncomfortably back to my past? For now, I guess I'll just focus on the compassion-for-myself part.

some random thoughts at bedtime

P and I went to see Monsieur Verdoux at the Alamo tonight. It's a later Chaplin film; very good, very ahead of its time in some ways. Martha Raye plays one of his many wives (one of the ones he doesn't murder, though he does try!), and she was my favorite character in the movie, though he was quite good as well, as always.

At one point in the evening, P turned to me and said, "Did you really do a shot in the dark and say you were a woman?" I had no idea what she was talking about. The last time I remembered doing a shot, it wasn't in the dark, and I didn't remember saying anything so clever. She repeated the question a couple of times, then said, "In your blog!" I forget that she's one of my regular readers!

My right eye is bothering me tonight. I went over to M&J's today and cleared a bunch of brush from a patch where the shipping containers will soon go -- the shipping containers which will be S's and my new home before (apparently) too long. On Sunday, J and I marked the ground with orange paint where they will likely sit. But then today, while I was out there working, J called M and told her to look something up on Craigslist. Some men had big plans for a container house (using eight 20-foot "high cubes" -- which means 9.5-feet tall -- we've been talking about two containers) but had abandoned the project and are selling the containers for a quarter of what they normally cost. M said, "We want all of them!" So who knows what our home is gonna end up looking like, but it just keeps getting better and better. They're gonna be up off of the ground on "piers" (concrete columns) four or more feet high; I'm thinking of putting a chicken coop under one of them!

I'm going to Paris in March. M is now thinking of going as well -- which is great. She has friends in Paris and London, and is thinking about going to both of those places and overlapping her stay with the time I'm there. We were looking on Google Earth today at the bed & breakfast I'm staying in. She said she was trying to find her friend's house on Google Earth after having heard from her recently. She had lost touch with this friend and found her by doing an Image search on Google.

I had a friend named D in high school whom I've looked for on People Searches and other kinds of general online searches over the years, and could never find him. But then I tried an Image search the other day and there he was, a picture of him at his place of work. He's still in Bigtown, which was surprising (and a little sad), but he seems well adjusted. I emailed the company -- the Sales Department came up on the email contact; I wrote a simple email saying I was trying to get in touch with him. He wrote me back that night! We've written a couple of times back and forth now. I felt all giddy and in a good mood today. (P said I was "spicy" tonight, and I think that had something to do with it.)

I won't say I had a crush on D in high school. I was really always kind of surprised that he wanted to be my friend back then since I didn't really have many friends. He worked at the Community Center as a Night Watchman and I used to go visit him there late at night. He volunteered us to work on set for a school play and we spent all night painting and building. That's a good memory. But the thing I remember most about D, the thing that has stuck with me over the years, was once when we were driving around, he said, "If you want to tell me your gay, I would be okay with that."

Over the years, I wondered what he meant by that, if it meant he was gay as well, or if he wanted to betray me and justify the rumor about me around school. But more often than not, I just figured it was his attempt to let me know that he accepted me for whatever I was, which was something I didn't often feel in high school. When he asked, I said, "No, I'm not." I didn't come to terms with my sexuality until I was 24, and even then I was never so sure about that choice. I mean, I know I'm attracted to men, but labeling myself as gay was (and still is) a little unnerving (which likely has a lot to do with my very religious upbringing).

Over the years, straight men have been attracted to me. Of course, for the most part it never boils down to them wanting to be physical with me (though there was that one time a couple of summers ago, but anyway...). I believe now that these are "crushes" that straight men have on me, whatever that means. I looked back on my relationship with D and have been thinking over the past couple of days that he was the first straight man to have a "crush" on me. In his email he said I lead such an interesting life and that's why he always liked hanging around with me. I never thought of my life as being interesting when I was in high school; I know that it has been pretty interesting and unusual since then, but I just hated my life back then. P says she thinks it's probably my outlook on life that he liked. Perhaps. I do often consider the fact that my life has always been so very different than other family members' lives; I'm always curious about how I turned out the way I did. Not the gay part -- there are a number of homosexual stories in my family -- but the fact that I'm so much less connected to my upbringing than even my sisters are. I feel like I escaped in some ways. I was happy when my father died; I felt then (and I still feel) that it allowed me to survive.

Still I have my depression sometimes, so I don't know what that's about. Maybe that's the fallout from going against my upbringing.

S is still in Indiana. He comes home by Amtrak on the 24th. I think he's looking forward to being home. I'm certainly looking forward to him being back. He has been helping his dad do some repairs or some kind of physical labor around the house the last couple of days. He emailed to tell me that he had a panic about our new home, about what will be expected of him as far as "building" goes. I tried to calm him; I think I did. I told him that nothing is really expected of him, certainly nothing he doesn't feel comfortable doing. Perhaps he can cook for us workers, he loves doing that.

But really, with these containers, they're pretty much negating the need for much building at all. I'm interested and excited about doing this stuff that I never have done before -- or that I had to do with my father as a youth and therefore despised. I'm all scratched up tonight and have something in my eye and I feel exhilarated by what I accomplished.

Part of that exhilaration, I fear, comes from the feeling of insecurity about my novel that I've been having lately. I'm on the verge of giving up on it. I don't know if I'm smart enough to get this incredible story that's in my head onto paper in a way that I feel will be right. I'm very hard on myself. I asked S to help me. I need him to read what I've got -- the first 15 chapters -- and to encourage me and/or point out where I've gone wrong. I fear I've over-edited some of it, that perhaps the writing group wasn't so good for me. I mean, I got some good suggestions from the people in the group, but also some not very good suggestions. And I think maybe I didn't always know when to trust myself and ignore some of the advice. S said to just relax and he'll read it when he gets home. That's probably good advice; my instinct is to just pitch it all (not literally) and start over. But that seems like a daunting task (and silly thing to do to boot).

C in Florida asked me to send her another copy of S's documentary about our life on the road so she could share it with a friend she recently met in yoga. She's a Bikram teacher; I'm not sure if he's a teacher or just a student. It came up because he's been in a polyamorous relationship. She called today to tell me that her friend reported that he knows R (S's and my third partner), who obviously appears in the movie. The news made me a little nauseous. I have felt the need since my last flirtation with R (earlier this year), which didn't go so well, to stop paying any attention to him. I took him off of my Myspace friends list because every time I saw his picture I went to his page and got a kind of sick feeling. (I noticed that shortly after I took him off of my friends list, he did the same -- or maybe that's a Myspace thing, I don't know.)

But I guess I'll forever be connected to R. I didn't understand where he was coming from when I saw him; it was a weird visit, to say the least. And then just today I got an email from him (a group email) about a blog he and his boyfriend are doing around their sustainable life together. When I saw him, he and K were on the outs, and I thought they were done for good, and that I had a chance (telling myself that that was really what I wanted). And now they're back together, and fortunately I didn't move to Florida to "be with him," and I'm about to move into an amazing, very sustainable situation with S, with whom I have a much more healthy relationship. It's still very difficult to explain my relationship with S -- or with R -- but things are as they should be, I do believe. And the fact that I'll be living so close to M&J (not to mention their little P), it's just a dream come true.

I was over there last night watching Teeth with M (another good movie; my second time seeing it) while J went to pick up little P from camp for the night, and when I left it was raining lightly. I looked out over the humid grounds and listened to the peaceful sounds of the birds and atmosphere, and then came home to my apartment and sat on the porch awhile. I don't mind the interstate two blocks away, I never have (besides, there are so many fans blowing in this house, who can hear it?!), but I had this sense that I'd just returned from the country, and that was a very nice feeling indeed. It isn't far out of town or anything -- 5.0 miles exactly from the capitol, according to Google Maps -- but it feels like another world, and it's gonna be my world, our world. Wow.

And to cap it off, Timmy just sneaked into the apartment with something in his mouth. He often brings in katydids or grasshoppers, which annoys me. I usually take them from them and toss them back into the yard (which annoys him). He went to the middle room and did his little playing with it and chewing at it thing. I turned on the light and he was playing with what looked like a sprig of cilantro! He dropped it and it moved a little, so I thought maybe there was a bug under it or attached to it in some way, but it was just the fans blowing through the house. In Monsieur Verdoux, Chaplin says, "Dear, do I smell meat cooking?" His crippled wife says, "Yes, dear, so-and-so is coming over for dinner." Their little boy says, "Why don't we ever eat meat, daddy?" Chaplin says, "Because, my boy, we are vegetarians." Ah.