The date with (C) was a bust for the most part. He's very cute, very sweet, and not very interested in me. Have I already written about this? I feel like I have. Maybe I haven't blogged about it. I hope not. That would seem obsessive, and I'm really not obsessive, or don't like to see myself that way. That was last Wednesday. I had a little cry over it; nothing big, just a little flushing, and I felt better, and feel better.
Wednesday was kind of a weird double-whammy on the emotions. Wednesday evening was my second improv class at the new place. It's a level one class. I've taken a couple of each level up to level three, but I wanted to get a different perspective, expand my improv knowledge. I mentioned it to T and she approved wholeheartedly. (It's weird, it felt like a confession. I had mentioned it to a few people in the community randomly and hadn't mentioned it to her, so I felt like I had to make a point of telling her, which I guess is why it felt like a confession. But anyway...)
The teacher is a nice guy, if a little clueless. Or at least it feels that way to me. I don't want to make a deal about it, but there were a couple of things that got under my skin. Which makes me thankful that I'm back in therapy - twice a month. The first class, he made a completely innocent comment about the fact that we plan what we're going to do before we go on stage based on fear, wanting to be accepted, cool, funny, "attractive to the opposite sex so we can procreate." Maybe it sounds a little biblical, now that I write it out. I just had a feeling of "he doesn't mean me, he doesn't 'accept' me." I'm really not all that political about identity, but my religious and suppressive upbringing kind of makes it similar to a political feeling. Now that I write it out.
Anyway, so I had therapy the next day, and I was able to get over it, whatever that means. Truly, I'm only bringing it up because I'm writing about it. It's been so long ago now, the fact that I haven't written about it yet should point to the fact that it's not all that important to me. Same as with the date. I'm a little buzzed so I'm feeling eloquent, in the movingly expressive sense of the word.
In the more recent class, the second class of the six-week session, the class that followed soon after the date, the teacher told everyone to find the person they felt had the most in common with them. I went to the big dyke with the piercings and black rock T-shirt on. We were instructed to find three things we had in common. We both had spacers in our ears (mine a "2," hers an "0," which is bigger, natch), so I pointed that out. Then I said, "And we're both gay." It seemed to take her by surprise. Maybe I'm projecting. She said, "What?" I said, "You're gay, right?" She said, "Oh-- yeah," which sounded like she hadn't heard me the first time. Maybe I slurred it out nervously. I have a tendency to do that. The dreaded G word. But I'm facing it, I'm getting closer to an understanding, I think, slowly but surely, one day at a time, sweet Jesus...
We then had to choose the most interesting thing and write that on a strip of paper the teacher had passed out while we were all rumbling in our two-person teams. He said, "Not the most obvious thing; something that would make everybody in the room go, 'Ooh!'"
My partner said, "What do I write, 'We're both gay?'" I said, "Put 'We're both homos.'" Which she did after a smirk.
The strips of paper were put away and forgot about for the rest of class - almost forgotten completely. As we were about to leave, the teacher stopped us and said he had to read them. Everyone froze. They were probably all wondering if what they had written was good enough, I know I was. Had I tricked this poor 20-something into doing something she wasn't comfortable with? Or did the notion that we needed to point it out seem unnecessary to her? That could be the case, I guess, if she believed there was no need for distinction other than a way of dressing, if the need to define yourself publicly was/is passé.
What am I even writing? Did I say I was buzzed. Have you seen those billboards that say Buzzed Driving Is Drunk Driving? Well, Buzzed Writing Is Drunk Writing, Too, then. But I'm not so much drunk as I'm high. Not drunk at all, actually. I didn't have enough money for a beer tonight. I was at a film party at the Art Alliance or Art Authority or The Place Next to Spiderhouse - whatever they're calling it these days. I digress.
The improv teacher read through all of the strips of paper, some interesting, some funny, some just fine. "We're both homos." was the very last one. When he read it, he stopped on the word "homo" and read it carefully, then said coyly, "Well, okay, that may be true-- And that would be okay..."
It doesn't seem like much. It didn't seem like much when it happened. I felt a weirdness in my center. My partner didn't seem to react, and everybody else just kind of laughed or ignored it, as with the others. When I mentioned it to S and others, though, I started feeling a little more isolated by the experience. It drives me crazy that I can't see these things in the moment, can't work with them. I know, I know, recognizing it at all is a step in that direction (Thank you, Pëma).
I had therapy the next morning, and when I told the story to L, he stopped me a ways down the path and said, "I'm sorry. As a straight man, I didn't even realize that was what you were saying." I love L, he's a wonderful therapist. What he said made me realize what I suspected: A doesn't even realize it; he is speaking only from his own experience. That's good to know, but it may make me judge his teaching efforts differently. I hope this isn't truly the case.
Thursday, I took S to the airport and he flew off to NYC for forever (not really, he's back on September 20th, driving back from Indiana in the car his parents are giving him). I'm going to NYC on the 9th and his rock opera (I guess that's what it's called) Lizzie Borden opens on the 10th, and I'm gonna get to see it!
I didn't do a lot else on Thursday or Friday. I had a barometric pressure headache (I don't know if that's a clinical term or my own); I get them sometimes when rain is coming. It feels like a hangover and/or a minor migraine. Sometimes the migraines get full-blown, but this one didn't. I felt feverish. And then I realized that my window unit was frozen over and blowing outside air in, and it was in the triple-digits! The rain came at some point in the afternoon, and amazingly, the headache all but disappeared.
I was thinking about going to see a movie on Thursday evening, but the a/c episode butted into my schedule. The foam over the cooling intake part of the a/c had frozen to the iced over ribs, and in trying to remove it, I pulled a hole shaped like Africa about 2 x 3" big. So I was thinking I needed to get a new one of those. I also needed to go to the store for candies, and it was almost time for the stores to close. I carried the foam thing to Home Depot, and they didn't have anything like it! Then I went to Target (because I had to go there for the candies anyway) and carried the muddy foam thing in with me in case they had one. They did not.
I needed the candies - mini Snickers, Twix, 3 Musketeers, etc. - for a Christmas Tree I was making for T's surprise birthday party (with a Christmas theme!) on Friday evening. I popped popcorn on Wednesday and it sat in my room getting stale, which I eventually told myself I intended. Friday morning I strung two strands (12 feet maybe) of popcorn and mini candies. It was quite lovely. The tree I got last weekend at a garage sale; it's a 4-foot tall fiber optic tree, so it didn't need lights. S&E put up other Christmassy decorations and the three of us made collage cards for T. I wish I had taken a picture of mine.
C had no real plan for getting T to the theater after their show at the Hideout. They were heading to East Side Pies, she thought, then somebody in the car said, "Let's go to the theater and drop off these fliers." T is easygoing, she said, "Sure." She was the one with the key at the door; I stood peeking out of the door curtain after we got the text. I saw her arriving, shushed everyone. The door was unlocked, so when she turned her key in the door, she thought it had finally happened, they had gotten broken into. She had a quick succession of dreadful thoughts - We don't have insurance; they took all our shit! - and she turned to run away, not wanting to go inside in case the bad guys were still in there. C grabbed her and pushed her into the room; she stumbled onto the stage and fell laughing. It was the best party she's had in years.
Last night I saw my friend M at Cafe Caffeine doing a monologue (with several other good storytellers) on the theme of "Clerks." M's bit was very funny, as was another guy, who read a story about a fat kid (him) trying to slide a 64-ounce Coke across a movie theater countertop Western movie style, only to hurl it onto its side sending sticky liquid flying on everyone in the lobby except him. I had tears flowing!
After that, I went to S's regular hangout, the Chain Drive. I've gone there a few times, but I'm not much of a bar person, and the times I've gone haven't been with S, and I've had some social anxiety issues there. But I got a notion to text S's friend G and see if he would be there. That was where S met G, I'm pretty sure. He indeed was going and we met up after the show. It was nice getting to know him a little better, as well as D, his ex-boyfriend best friend, who showed up. A weird thing happened, though. There was an attractive guy possibly looking at me, "cruising me," as it were. (He could have been cruising G, but I'm pretty sure we were making eye contact.) G was content to just sit there and chat with me, and I was trying to decide if it was rude to excuse myself to talk to a stranger. I'm pretty sure I know the answer to that. I don't think he would have considered it rude. D did that very thing when he showed up and the three of us were talking.
The young man went inside and back out a few times, and when G, D and I were talking, I was thinking to myself that that would be a good time to excuse myself and make my feeble attempts. But I couldn't figure out the wording for it. So I just became anxious and eventually had to leave. I did do one "Fruit Loop" as D called it (a walk around the square bar with the seating lining the walls opposite it). It was during my Fruit Loop that I realized my potential suitor had left, so when I returned to G and D, I told them that I had decided to do a "Fruity Pebbles" and "rock out!" (Weird, I know.)
Today was Sunday. I started working on some minor revisions to my manuscript - woo-hoo! At 5 I had book club at BookPeople, this month discussing J. M. Coetzee's Nobel Prize winning novel, Disgrace (Wow.), but I left the house at 2 and stopped by P.Terry's for a #5 and a double-chocolate shake. That was good, of course, the book club was good. After that I met up with M at Spiderhouse to hang out before HomoScope, the film party that was going on at the place next to there. There were a lot of really weird but pretty interesting films. I saw a number of people I knew and so felt socially relaxed. I snuck out in the middle of the after party right after telling someone I wasn't going home, that I was just going to my truck, which was the truth, because I was thinking I would roll a cigarette and go back to the party and join them where they were all smoking cigarettes, but I'm not much of a social smoker, I have realized. I like to smoke alone. That's a good thing and a bad thing. Good because if I'm busy I smoke less. (I guess that's what I'm supposed to say; I actually like smoking.) But if I'm lonely I smoke more. (Oh, that's not really true. I've smoked three or four a day for the past couple of days - two or three more than my usual daily intake - and I'm feeling indulgent.) When I got to my truck, I decided I did want to come home. It feels good to be home, particularly when I left a party feeling good and brought that feeling with me as opposed to the opposite.
Wednesday was kind of a weird double-whammy on the emotions. Wednesday evening was my second improv class at the new place. It's a level one class. I've taken a couple of each level up to level three, but I wanted to get a different perspective, expand my improv knowledge. I mentioned it to T and she approved wholeheartedly. (It's weird, it felt like a confession. I had mentioned it to a few people in the community randomly and hadn't mentioned it to her, so I felt like I had to make a point of telling her, which I guess is why it felt like a confession. But anyway...)
The teacher is a nice guy, if a little clueless. Or at least it feels that way to me. I don't want to make a deal about it, but there were a couple of things that got under my skin. Which makes me thankful that I'm back in therapy - twice a month. The first class, he made a completely innocent comment about the fact that we plan what we're going to do before we go on stage based on fear, wanting to be accepted, cool, funny, "attractive to the opposite sex so we can procreate." Maybe it sounds a little biblical, now that I write it out. I just had a feeling of "he doesn't mean me, he doesn't 'accept' me." I'm really not all that political about identity, but my religious and suppressive upbringing kind of makes it similar to a political feeling. Now that I write it out.
Anyway, so I had therapy the next day, and I was able to get over it, whatever that means. Truly, I'm only bringing it up because I'm writing about it. It's been so long ago now, the fact that I haven't written about it yet should point to the fact that it's not all that important to me. Same as with the date. I'm a little buzzed so I'm feeling eloquent, in the movingly expressive sense of the word.
In the more recent class, the second class of the six-week session, the class that followed soon after the date, the teacher told everyone to find the person they felt had the most in common with them. I went to the big dyke with the piercings and black rock T-shirt on. We were instructed to find three things we had in common. We both had spacers in our ears (mine a "2," hers an "0," which is bigger, natch), so I pointed that out. Then I said, "And we're both gay." It seemed to take her by surprise. Maybe I'm projecting. She said, "What?" I said, "You're gay, right?" She said, "Oh-- yeah," which sounded like she hadn't heard me the first time. Maybe I slurred it out nervously. I have a tendency to do that. The dreaded G word. But I'm facing it, I'm getting closer to an understanding, I think, slowly but surely, one day at a time, sweet Jesus...
We then had to choose the most interesting thing and write that on a strip of paper the teacher had passed out while we were all rumbling in our two-person teams. He said, "Not the most obvious thing; something that would make everybody in the room go, 'Ooh!'"
My partner said, "What do I write, 'We're both gay?'" I said, "Put 'We're both homos.'" Which she did after a smirk.
The strips of paper were put away and forgot about for the rest of class - almost forgotten completely. As we were about to leave, the teacher stopped us and said he had to read them. Everyone froze. They were probably all wondering if what they had written was good enough, I know I was. Had I tricked this poor 20-something into doing something she wasn't comfortable with? Or did the notion that we needed to point it out seem unnecessary to her? That could be the case, I guess, if she believed there was no need for distinction other than a way of dressing, if the need to define yourself publicly was/is passé.
What am I even writing? Did I say I was buzzed. Have you seen those billboards that say Buzzed Driving Is Drunk Driving? Well, Buzzed Writing Is Drunk Writing, Too, then. But I'm not so much drunk as I'm high. Not drunk at all, actually. I didn't have enough money for a beer tonight. I was at a film party at the Art Alliance or Art Authority or The Place Next to Spiderhouse - whatever they're calling it these days. I digress.
The improv teacher read through all of the strips of paper, some interesting, some funny, some just fine. "We're both homos." was the very last one. When he read it, he stopped on the word "homo" and read it carefully, then said coyly, "Well, okay, that may be true-- And that would be okay..."
It doesn't seem like much. It didn't seem like much when it happened. I felt a weirdness in my center. My partner didn't seem to react, and everybody else just kind of laughed or ignored it, as with the others. When I mentioned it to S and others, though, I started feeling a little more isolated by the experience. It drives me crazy that I can't see these things in the moment, can't work with them. I know, I know, recognizing it at all is a step in that direction (Thank you, Pëma).
I had therapy the next morning, and when I told the story to L, he stopped me a ways down the path and said, "I'm sorry. As a straight man, I didn't even realize that was what you were saying." I love L, he's a wonderful therapist. What he said made me realize what I suspected: A doesn't even realize it; he is speaking only from his own experience. That's good to know, but it may make me judge his teaching efforts differently. I hope this isn't truly the case.
Thursday, I took S to the airport and he flew off to NYC for forever (not really, he's back on September 20th, driving back from Indiana in the car his parents are giving him). I'm going to NYC on the 9th and his rock opera (I guess that's what it's called) Lizzie Borden opens on the 10th, and I'm gonna get to see it!
I didn't do a lot else on Thursday or Friday. I had a barometric pressure headache (I don't know if that's a clinical term or my own); I get them sometimes when rain is coming. It feels like a hangover and/or a minor migraine. Sometimes the migraines get full-blown, but this one didn't. I felt feverish. And then I realized that my window unit was frozen over and blowing outside air in, and it was in the triple-digits! The rain came at some point in the afternoon, and amazingly, the headache all but disappeared.
I was thinking about going to see a movie on Thursday evening, but the a/c episode butted into my schedule. The foam over the cooling intake part of the a/c had frozen to the iced over ribs, and in trying to remove it, I pulled a hole shaped like Africa about 2 x 3" big. So I was thinking I needed to get a new one of those. I also needed to go to the store for candies, and it was almost time for the stores to close. I carried the foam thing to Home Depot, and they didn't have anything like it! Then I went to Target (because I had to go there for the candies anyway) and carried the muddy foam thing in with me in case they had one. They did not.
I needed the candies - mini Snickers, Twix, 3 Musketeers, etc. - for a Christmas Tree I was making for T's surprise birthday party (with a Christmas theme!) on Friday evening. I popped popcorn on Wednesday and it sat in my room getting stale, which I eventually told myself I intended. Friday morning I strung two strands (12 feet maybe) of popcorn and mini candies. It was quite lovely. The tree I got last weekend at a garage sale; it's a 4-foot tall fiber optic tree, so it didn't need lights. S&E put up other Christmassy decorations and the three of us made collage cards for T. I wish I had taken a picture of mine.
C had no real plan for getting T to the theater after their show at the Hideout. They were heading to East Side Pies, she thought, then somebody in the car said, "Let's go to the theater and drop off these fliers." T is easygoing, she said, "Sure." She was the one with the key at the door; I stood peeking out of the door curtain after we got the text. I saw her arriving, shushed everyone. The door was unlocked, so when she turned her key in the door, she thought it had finally happened, they had gotten broken into. She had a quick succession of dreadful thoughts - We don't have insurance; they took all our shit! - and she turned to run away, not wanting to go inside in case the bad guys were still in there. C grabbed her and pushed her into the room; she stumbled onto the stage and fell laughing. It was the best party she's had in years.
Last night I saw my friend M at Cafe Caffeine doing a monologue (with several other good storytellers) on the theme of "Clerks." M's bit was very funny, as was another guy, who read a story about a fat kid (him) trying to slide a 64-ounce Coke across a movie theater countertop Western movie style, only to hurl it onto its side sending sticky liquid flying on everyone in the lobby except him. I had tears flowing!
After that, I went to S's regular hangout, the Chain Drive. I've gone there a few times, but I'm not much of a bar person, and the times I've gone haven't been with S, and I've had some social anxiety issues there. But I got a notion to text S's friend G and see if he would be there. That was where S met G, I'm pretty sure. He indeed was going and we met up after the show. It was nice getting to know him a little better, as well as D, his ex-boyfriend best friend, who showed up. A weird thing happened, though. There was an attractive guy possibly looking at me, "cruising me," as it were. (He could have been cruising G, but I'm pretty sure we were making eye contact.) G was content to just sit there and chat with me, and I was trying to decide if it was rude to excuse myself to talk to a stranger. I'm pretty sure I know the answer to that. I don't think he would have considered it rude. D did that very thing when he showed up and the three of us were talking.
The young man went inside and back out a few times, and when G, D and I were talking, I was thinking to myself that that would be a good time to excuse myself and make my feeble attempts. But I couldn't figure out the wording for it. So I just became anxious and eventually had to leave. I did do one "Fruit Loop" as D called it (a walk around the square bar with the seating lining the walls opposite it). It was during my Fruit Loop that I realized my potential suitor had left, so when I returned to G and D, I told them that I had decided to do a "Fruity Pebbles" and "rock out!" (Weird, I know.)
Today was Sunday. I started working on some minor revisions to my manuscript - woo-hoo! At 5 I had book club at BookPeople, this month discussing J. M. Coetzee's Nobel Prize winning novel, Disgrace (Wow.), but I left the house at 2 and stopped by P.Terry's for a #5 and a double-chocolate shake. That was good, of course, the book club was good. After that I met up with M at Spiderhouse to hang out before HomoScope, the film party that was going on at the place next to there. There were a lot of really weird but pretty interesting films. I saw a number of people I knew and so felt socially relaxed. I snuck out in the middle of the after party right after telling someone I wasn't going home, that I was just going to my truck, which was the truth, because I was thinking I would roll a cigarette and go back to the party and join them where they were all smoking cigarettes, but I'm not much of a social smoker, I have realized. I like to smoke alone. That's a good thing and a bad thing. Good because if I'm busy I smoke less. (I guess that's what I'm supposed to say; I actually like smoking.) But if I'm lonely I smoke more. (Oh, that's not really true. I've smoked three or four a day for the past couple of days - two or three more than my usual daily intake - and I'm feeling indulgent.) When I got to my truck, I decided I did want to come home. It feels good to be home, particularly when I left a party feeling good and brought that feeling with me as opposed to the opposite.
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