monday, september 20th, 7:39 a.m. (2004)

I go through these periods where I don't know what I'm doing here. I feel like I need to get out to save myself, but I feel like I can't because I have a certain responsibility to R. He is non-communicative, emotionally unavailable and sexually disinterested 100%.

10:30 p.m.
I'm a lost boy. I'm unhappy. I don't know what it is. My life is not becoming what I wanted it to be; it isn't anywhere close to where I hoped it could be. I have no energy, no inspiration. I felt like I was gonna fall asleep at work today. Or cry.

Sophie has the ottoman against the front window with a blue tones Indian blanket on it to keep her from ruining it. She likes to lie there and look for something to bark at. We've already gotten into a ritual, and it's only been two days. I walk over in the morning, take her home until I go to work, then pick her up after work with Bayne and Jesse on board, and we go to the dog park. Then it's back to our house for the evening, and then back home for Sophie.

R&B have such a well-appointed house. They have a happy little life here. I'm not saying it's what I want, but I can certainly appreciate the appeal. Of course, I'd have to have a filthy rich boyfriend to live like this because I am 40 years old and haven't made the choices in life that would allow me such luxuries.

Handsome S who works for Sony was at the dog park tonight. The last time I saw him there, I put a note on his car door: Call me if you're heading to the park, I'll meet you there, or something like that. He never called. That's been about three months or so.

He's disgruntled with his corporate life. I think he is fascinated and slightly appalled by my life. I take his fascination as flirtation and I'm right there, even tonight, despite myself.

J said from the stage Saturday night, "Weve got a local celebrity in the house tonight. He's part of the Hey, Y'all Group." Oh, brother.

I imagined saying to him in our fantasy life together somewhere down the road, "I can't believe you said that! I hated you for saying that! But really, that was the only thing I could find to not like about you that night, and now look at us..."

Oh, brother!

R left me a note tonight: Where have you gone? I seem to have lost contact with you again. Or something like that. I hate that note. The last time he left something like that, I poured out my heart in a multiple-page letter to him and he barely responded to it, if at all. I don't recall anything. Why would I want to keep opening myself up like that for no return? I just simply can't. I love R, but I'm not getting what I need, and if I don't just tune him out sometimes, medicate myself more than I normally would, I'm afraid I would begin to hate him for his inabilities. And the fact that they are inabilities - deeply ingrained inabilities - makes me feel so much sadness for him and for us.

toxins

When I first moved into this house, I was worried about the comfort and safety of my cat. He died a month after I got here; obviously, he wasn't safe. Before he died, an old shingles scar that I had since I was six or seven years old, started to flare up. I showed it to C - an acupuncturist and Chinese herbologist - and he gave me an ointment for it, which worked pretty well, but didn't clear it up for good. He asked if there was any stress in my life that I recalled around the time that it flared up. Moving.

Soon after C and I started having our very intense relationship, I started getting blemishes on my back, and very itchy ringworms. As our talks intensified, I started having rashy flareups on the front of my torso as well. heat bumps eminating from my sternum or the place of my heart. By that point, C had told me he wouldn't treat me anymore (he doesn't treat "friends"). He referred me to a cheap acupuncture clinic here, and said he didn't want to give me any herbs either because he didn't want his prognosis to interfere with what I got from another acupuncturist.

I also visited a third acupuncturist/herbologist, a friend of C's but whom I met through my other close straight male friend, G. I went to see L after a conversation about getting herbs to help me with my fear of having a panic attack on the plane on my trip to Paris. She looked at the ringworms, shingles scar flareup and other spots on my back and, just like the previous two acupuncturists, told me a lot of toxins were coming out of my body. She gave me herbs and tinctures for different things, including for panic attacks, and the breakouts. She asked me if anything major had happened in my life when they outbreaks began. My relationship with C.

I started to think I would forever have the blemishes on my body. It was interesting to think that a scar from my childhood would suddenly flare up, and that all of the embarrasing blemishes I had all over my back during my teenage years were back. I started thinking about how that might relate to what I was going through. I was dealing with a lot of childhood issues with C, and dealing with a lot of new issues within my relationship with C.

In the last couple of days, the shingles scar has practically cleared up completely, and there is only one itchy bump left on my back. I haven't been taking herbs for any of this stuff since Paris. The only real change is that my (difficult) relationship with C has ended. And now I'm thinking about how some people say that relationships can be toxic.

door-to-door ding-a-ling

A man dropped by the house this morning offering to show me his meat. Seriously. I saw the small pickup with the refrigerated camper coming up the drive and Bones started going crazy before I could beat him to the door, standing on his hind legs dirtying the back door glass with his front paws and coughs of slobber.

I won't say outright that the man wasn't trustworthy -- how could I know from our brief interaction? -- but he had a weird kind of energy, like a salesman who does a lot more talking than listening, who seems to think that if he keeps talking you'll relent and buy whatever he has to sell.

He had a cigarette propped between a couple of stained fingers and teeth that looked like they've chomped into a steak or two and haven't seen much floss. He told me the such-and-such cut I would easily pay $60 more for if I got it online than if he brought it to me personally. When I told him I don't eat meat, that he could leave a card for the others in the household, he headed for his truck, turning back halfway, exclaiming, "I wanna show you my meat." I smiled a sort of resigned smile and said, "Since I don't eat meat I wouldn't really be interested in seeing it."

"Seafood?"
"Nope." To be honest with you, I do eat fish now and again, but I'm trying to cut it out of my diet, and this guy didn't strike me as the kind of person I wanted to buy anything from.

Maybe Bones was right.

death and rebirth

C called me from his car, on his way to Sunday morning dance. I had plans for lunch with G after dance, but I wasn't planning on going to the dance, but since C was going, and since he called me, I decided I would go. And I'm glad I did. I didn't dance with C for more than a few seconds, but I got a big hug and that was ample. I did dance with a lot of other people, people I haven't seen in a long time. It's nice to leave it behind for a while sometimes; it makes it more special.

G and I ate a macrobiotic lunch at Casa de Luz, after each buying a box of Girl Scout cookies from three persistent girls and their stage mother out in front of the yoga center where the dance happens. We scarfed down a few Thin Mints and Samoas (the two most popular GS cookies, according to Wikipedia) on the way and had a nice high fructose corn syrup buzz going before we ate the deadly nightshades, ginger sweet potato tahini soup, etc. All good. Intense conversation.

I've decided to just be who I am around the men I love. These are the soft, straight men who are as attracted to me as I am to them. Naturally, the attraction is different for each of us, but it is strong and it is nice, and I'm not going to shy away from in. I'm diving in. Clench your fists! Hold your horses!

Life's too short. I had a realization today at the dance while L and I were locked in an embrace on the floor sobbing, her likely for her recently passed father, me for my recently passed cat, both of us for the other's broken heart. (I had an image of her heart, a cartoonish vision of it, broken in two by a jagged line, coming back together and the line disappearing as my left ear then right lay in the middle of her big bosom.)

C saw us embracing. He later commented that he saw us, but he wasn't aware of the tears, just the embrace. He was at the same moment that he saw us locked in a metaphorical futuristic embrace with a thin woman he had met at this very dance. He told me about it; he shares deeply with me, and I with him. Recently we had a very deep conversation and I fell in love with him, right there in his pecan shell colored eyes. I told him so. He smiled. I don't want to get into his pants, but I love him. We have become very close in the last couple of months. Since Christmas, I guess, when he came over for our Orphans' Xmas Brunch.

Maybe I shouldn't post this online for the world to see. I've been bruised by my candidness before. (I've gone back and "changed the names to protect the innocent.") But I also have been having a hard time blogging. Since Timmy. I haven't been completely warped by sorrow, but I have had my moments. I'm in mourning. I noticed in the midst of this that this feeling feels very specific; it is not similar to the feeling I get when I am depressed. It is pure sadness. It isn't attached to any deep hole that depression is. Timmy is very real; and now he's gone.

I've been distracting myself a bit. Or trying to. During these exercises I did a bit of writing again. I've been stuck on chapter 10. But it seems to be cranking up again. This is a very good feeling. The summer before I turned fourteen a great calamity pulled me from my gritty sheets to the door across the hall from my bedroom. The summer before, my half sister, newly pregnant, and Marco, the Cuban who had done the deed -- the man who supposedly belonged to our mother's best friend -- left Black Lake in the RV named Lady Liberty. She sailed out quietly like a houseboat under the full moon, left lot number ten empty except for the succulent weeds and a rusty barrel barbeque pit. Now the sun was in place of the moon, just as full but many times hotter, and another boat-like creation was floating into Black Lake, much bigger, like a brown and white ship, pulled behind a noisy truck on big wheels belching blue smoke. I stood in my underwear and watched the commotion until mama stirred coughing on the sofabed, still asleep, a hand reaching for a cigarette. The TV was on, playing music to accompany the cartoons I normally would find myself sitting in front of.

S says he likes it -- I read a bit to him last night. Maybe he's being gentle so as not to discourage me, but I think not. I don't think he would lie to me. Definitely not about this.

I wrote what I wrote at home, on the front porch. I had tried -- and may try again -- going to a nearby coffeeshop (20 minutes by bike) to write. I have been trying to create a schedule for myself. I carried my entire novel, all 35 chapters and some notes in the big European bicycle basket to the coffeeshop. But I was distracted. I had gone hungry, and then overate. It wasn't even four o'clock and I wanted a cigarette. And J called to ask if I could pick P up from school. I couldn't. --I could've, but he didn't want to pull me away from what I was doing.

I wasn't doing anything.

The day before, Inauguration Day, the first day I didn't feel like crying since Timmy's death, I took my truck to the mechanic, and thought I would find a coffeeshop and sit while it was being worked on. I carried my entire novel in its bulky three-ring binder, plus other necessary items, with me. But I needed to stop by C's work for some Chinese herbs. C is an herbologist. He recently gave me a salve that markedly reduced the spider veins on my right ankle (caused mostly by my 11 years as a transcriptionist, relentlessly pressing a foot pedal), so when my shingles scars -- I had shingles when I was six years old -- started flaring up, I thought to ask him his opinion. He rattled off a list of Chinese words that sounded like a song. Pills and another salve. I told him I was taking my truck to the mechanic a few blocks from his office, and he told me the hours he was free, so I carried my entire novel the many blocks (more than I thought), and I've had a crick in my neck since then.

I got the meds and headed on to a coffeeshop and ended up at a cafe next door to his office. We wound up spending the afternoon together enjoying inaugural events, visiting a shop where he bought herbs and I bought white sage, which I used to sage my bedroom, the house and yard, and cried even though I didn't think I was going to that day.

At the cafe, I did what I'd been trying to make myself do for a while: I put the chapters of my novel in chronological order

3, 10, 17, 24, 31, 4, 11, 18, 25, 32, 2, 9, 16, 23, 30, 1, 8, 15, 22, 29, 6, 13, 20, 27, 34

which is the story of Randy Reardon, then the story of the title character's parents

5, 12, 19, 26, 33

then the performance art pieces that the title character writes (supposedly)

7, 14, 21, 28, 35

S finds all of this numerological stuff boring. Or at least my fascination with it. I think he understands that it's important -- and necessary -- for me to play with the order of the chapters (which directly affects the story itself), but when I start talking excitedly about it, his eyes glaze over like I'm talking in depth about the latest features of a Texas Instruments calculator.

But now I only have to carry around five chapters at a time with me.

I dressed, made my way to the kitchen and carried a box of Fruity Pebbles out the front door with me to watch the new home being backed into lot number ten. Several men, darker and skinnier than Marco but with the same oil black hair spoke their foreign language over the noises of the truck and the complaining parts of the trailerhome all morning until I reached the bottom of the cereal box and was sticking tongue-moistened fingers down in to the bottom for the last bits of multi-colored sugary dust.

A day or two after Timmy died, P came home with the head of a gray felt cat she was working on at school. I don't know if the project started before Timmy died or if the opportunity to memorialize him came about suddenly, but I was definitely touched by the final product, and particularly by the fact that she insisted on naming him Timmy.

The top picture is the headstone for Timmy's grave. I liked the quote by Anatole France so much that I used it on his stone (though I didn't give credit to the person who said it).

ugly little gift

I hate that I am so neurotic about my neurotic cat, Timmy, but that's just the way it is. I can't help it; I am totally in love with this cat. I read a story in the current issue of Sun Magazine the other day called "Baggage: A Love Story," by a woman who was dating a man who had a cat that had some health issues. She was a little worried about loving a man who was so in love with his cat. I can relate.

This morning, I woke up to find Timmy not at the foot of the bed as per usual. He likes to go out at night, and being the neurotic Timmy lover that I am, I often have to wear earplugs because the cat door is kind of squeaky, and it's above the air conditioner in the window next to my bed. It's not totally annoying, but I sleep light, particularly when I'm thinking about Timmy and hear his coming ins and going outs.

I peeked out of the curtain and didn't see him on top of the a/c outside, but it was kind of foggy. I started making up the bed, getting ready for my day. Like a mother, I could've sworn I heard Timmy meowing somewhere in the distance. I checked the doors at the end of the hall past S's room, which were closed. I opened them, but Timmy wasn't in the other part of the house. I came back to my bedroom and looked out of the window again and saw only fog again, but heard his distinct little voice outside, sort of a quiet meow, not a real sound of distress.

I went outside and he was sitting on the ground beneath the a/c. I picked him up and noticed that he was a little bit floppy, but he's always kind of floppy in my arms; he gives himself over to me fully. That's part of the reason I love him so much. Who else gives everything over to me so fully? Nobody these days. So I brought him in, lay him on the bed, examined him a little bit. He seemed fine. --No, wait, he seemed to be kind of not using his back legs. He started to get up and then lay back down. He wasn't crying as if in pain or anything; he was just sort of being his usual mellow self.

Then I found a wound, sort of a gash on his back left leg, the ankle area, and another smaller wound on the side of his foot. I picked him up and noticed the floppiness, noticed that this wasn't the floppiness of giving himself over to me, it was more sort of the fact that he wasn't using those legs. I called my vet. The doctor wasn't in -- it was 7:25 a.m. -- but the assistant told me to take him to the emergency clinic, which is open 24 hours, and is actually closer to our new address than the vet.

Timmy usually hates riding in the truck, but he was pretty calm -- maybe lethargic is a better word -- and only meowed a couple of times. As long as I kept a hand on him, he was calm, purring even. My guess was that he had been hit by a car, but I also thought that he might've been attacked by a wild animal or a feral cat. I wasn't sure which was a worse scenario to think about, except that his not having front claws would make me feel pretty bad if he had been attacked, and having not updated his rabies shots (which were due early December) could fuck with me, too.

In my defense, Timmy wouldn't have put up with being trapped in the house, even though he has no front claws. He is neurotic, poops on the bed, pees on furniture when he's upset. I would rather something tragic happen to him than have him for 20 relatively unhappy years.

The doctor's best guess was the same as mine: hit by a car. He did the tapping thing on the more limp of the two legs and didn't get much of a response. This was likely the cause of spinal injury. But of course he wanted to take x-rays, do blood work. They wouldn't know anything definitive until all of that was done, $260.60 later. The worst case estimate was something like $1,550.00, but they only require the best case estimate as a down payment.

They gave him a shot for pain, took him away, sent me home, called back in less than an hour. The worst case estimate was shy of what they found. He had a cracked pelvis, a dislocated hip bone, et cetera, et cetera, more things that I can't (and don't want to) recall right now. He was also dehydrated. The doctor said he definitely needed surgery to put the hip bone back into place. There was also a broken tip of some bone that was pushing into his intestines or somehow obstructing him organs, which could cause problems with defecating.

He said that sometimes with cats having cracked pelvises they can be caged for six to eight weeks until it heals. But I knew would be the end of Timmy. I don't think I'm being selfish saying that; I just know my cat.

Surgery isn't something they do at the emergency clinic. He said they could refer me to somebody. I told him I would call back shortly. He said okay. I hung up and sobbed. I knew what had to be done. Considering the many thousands of dollars it would take to right the problems -- money I don't have -- with possibilities all along the way of things not going right, or not going well, and knowing how difficult it would be for him to deal with healing, and how difficult it would be for me emotionally, financially, et cetera, while he heals, I called the doctor back and told him the most difficult I could possibly have had to say.

S offered to go with me, which I so greatly appreciated. It isn't an easy thing to do with your closest friend at your side, particularly having been at each other's side in more than a couple of similar situations previously, but doing it alone would have been unthinkable. They asked if I wasnted to be present when they euthanized him; I did.

I told M&J on the way out of the house what was going on and asked if they would dig a hole for us in the pet cemetery (next to our future shipping container house); Jeff was just finishing up when we returned.

Timmy didn't seem to be in pain. They brought him into the Exam Room #3 with a bulky bandage and catheter on his front leg. He was still a bit in shock, I think, and trembling a bit, because of that, or maybe because he was also feeling pain. So I didn't wait long before I pushed the little doorbell the assistant had put on the exam table and said to use when we were ready for the doctor.

He came in, said some comforting words. Timmy was pretty alert, head up, looking around -- pupils very dilated. The doctor injected the pink solution into the catheter and Timmy's head drooped down to the towel he was lying on, his eyes stayed open and he was looking at me as he drifted away. Then the doctor injected the clearish solution, checked him with the stethoscope and said, "He's gone."

It was a gift that Timmy made his way from whatever road he was on, whatever car he'd gotten in the way of, dragged himself home with a broken pelvis, dislocated hip bone, et cetera, et cetera, cuts on his better leg, to let me know where he was. I can only imagine the emotional agony we all would have gone through had he just disappeared, or worse, had I found him dead on the street. So, thank you, Timmy, for that little gift.

I know he loved me as much as I loved him; our neuroses were quite compatible.

We put the blanket that he usually slept on at the foot of my bed (the same one he would knead and suckle if I had it opened and pulled up to the top of the bed) in the bottom of the grave; I lay his still warm body, eyes still slightly open, facing our future house, my bedroom; then we put the top of the blanket fold over him and covered him over with dirt.

And now, it's very, very quiet.

here comes the fudge!

Night before last I got restarted on the chapter I was working on before the holidays, before the move, before the out of town guest came and went. I feel good about it. I don't feel like blogging much. I'm still trying to get routine in my life, but at least I'm doing all the things I want to do, just not with any consistency.

Today and last night I've been cleaning house and depooping the yard. I also raked a little bit around the big tree out front, because it looks nice and because it's easier to see the pig poop that way. Our housemates/future landlords are coming home tonight. I think I'm gonna have a lot of extra time on my hands because I won't have all the chores that I've had while they've been out of the country, particularly the feeding of the animals and depooping of the yard.

But now, I'm showered and should work a bit while there's work to be done and I have the energy. S and I have plans to go see a movie tonight -- a documentary-in-progress called DIG, about a band, I think. But I'm feeling an urge to work longer, and maybe do some grocery shopping, although I'm flat broke. I accidentally paid a credit card bill twice and a bunch more shit bounced in my bank account, costing me $140 in fees. This is a repeat of what happened a week ago or so, but not because of double paying a bill. I feel like I've lost control of my finances! Ugh! Fortunately, in my current living/working situation, I should be able to recover relatively quickly, but still, I hate the idea of just giving $300 to Bank of America. They don't need it! Well, these days, I guess they do, but not from me...

sitting with desire

S left for Indiana Sunday morning and I've been feeling a bit depressed. I hate to put those two things in one sentence because I don't like to be defined by my relationship with S. Or I should say I don't like other people to see how I'm defined by that relationship. We are not a couple. But we are closer than I think I can expect to be with another person in my life. We are not lovers, but we share more about ourselves and know more about each other than anybody else does. Our relationship is hard to define. It's not enough to say he's my housemate or my best friend. Both of those things are true, but sound limited. I've used both of those words when talking about him to new people because I don't want to have to explain our relationship, because the explanation always confuses the truth.

So why am I feeling depressed? It could have to do with S being gone and now I'm all alone (except for a cat, a dog, a pig and a turtle). It is easy to plan my day around something we might do together, like eating meals, watching movies, or just getting high and sitting on the porch rambling or in silence. I got more work done yesterday in his absence than I've been able to do in a while, since we moved to this new address.

But I don't think it all is about S. I feel like my relationship with someone on whom I have a crush (likely straight) has met its end. It's an odd, somewhat icky feeling. I was talking about my attraction to this man to another (straight) man, a friend on whom I once upon a time had a crush. That crush evolved into a good friendship; it feels stronger now than ever. But the other one, the new one, seems to have met with some sort of barrier. He knows I'm gay, but he doesn't know I have a crush on him. At least I don't think so. But maybe he feels uncomfortable with the attention I pay him. Or perhaps his ex-girlfriend with whom he works (and who I know almost as well) has pushed him into a corner about his attraction to me and so he has decided to leave that corner.

I do believe there was some sort of attraction to me on his part. A crush, perhaps. Straight guys seem to do that a lot in my life. It's a weird thing; it's been going on since high school, I would say, long before I even could admit I was gay. I think it might have something to do with the way I was raised, the religious anti-homosexual stuff that is a big part of who I am. I'm a non-threatening homosexual, I guess in part because I was raised to believe that being gay is just about the worst thing one can be (it leads to child molestation, drug use and other illegal activities).

So, back to this straight guy. I have very recently being trying to come to terms with my attraction to straight men, to accept what it is I get from them, what they get from me. Ninety-nine percent of the time it doesn't become a sexual thing. The desire is certainly there on my part, and sometimes I get the sense that it is there in a small and perhaps confused way on their part, but only rarely has it turned into anything, and not because of my pushing. I had a brief fling with a straight guy a couple of summers ago, a man about half my age. He told me up front that he was straight, "always have been," but that there was "something about me." We hung out a few times, eventually gave each other blow-job,s but it ended in the middle of that. I kidded myself that I was just going along with this as experimentally as he was. But the moment he said, "Okay, that's as far as I can go," I realized that I had already gone a lot farther; it broke my heart. I blubbered like so many girls whose hearts he had likely broken. In retrospect I imagined he thought less of me because I was just like all the others.

There have been several instances -- most of them in the last three years, since I've been living in Austin -- in which I have developed very nice relationships with straight men on whom I have originally had an attraction. They transmuted into something better. I've tried to imagine how these men must feel around the women they've been attracted to but with whom they cannot have sex because the women are in a relationship or gay. I have conversations with these men about that, about the difficulty of maintaining a relationship that is different than the initial attraction, and they seem to think their struggle is very similar to mine. Perhaps. But I think there are additional factors that make my struggle more difficult. Particularly the fact that homosexuality is not accepted as normal across the board. And beyond that the fact that I was raised being taught that not only is it an aberration, but one of the worst sins a person can commit. Bring on the drugs, alcohol and minors...

S and I watched a movie called Cat Dancers, a completely surprising film about a three-way relationship. (The link has a schedule of when it is showing on HBO through the early part of January 2009.) The narrator of the film is Ron Holiday, a very beguiling character, very egocentric and odd looking. He wears wigs (different ones for different outfits, curly or straight) and seems to have poorly painted-on eyebrows. He is almost 70 years old and now teaches young people about working with exotic animals. I'm not fond of the idea of people exploiting wild animals, and that is one part of the effectiveness of this film for me; there are so many things about it that I had issues with and alternately with which I could relate.

One of the things I could relate to was how Mr. Holiday sees himself in his late 60s. He was an attractive man when he was a young dancer. He met Joy and they married and seemed to be a perfect couple; their life and their career were intertwined. They were the top adagio dancers in the country, performed at Carnegie Hall in their heyday. But when Ron felt he was too old to do the moves impressively, their performance changed from being just about Joy, and then, when they got their first black panther cub as a gift from a famous person friend, it became about their exotic cat show. They were doing stuff long before Siegfried & Roy (and apparently, if Siegfried had had his way, his show might've been called Siegfried & Ron, but Ron Holiday says Siegfried was not his type at all; "Too fem!").

Ron & Joy Holiday's show grew and expanded with more and more exotic animals, and eventually they needed help and hired a young man who eventually became their lover. The three of them were together 14 years, until tragedy struck. It's pretty jarring. But now all these years later (nine, I believe) Ron is living with the loss of both of his lovers, and he seems pretty content with not having a lover; I got the impression that he felt like he'd already had the best relationship of his life and that he didn't need another. Though he still seems to see himself as attractive.

I have to admit that I didn't see him as attractive at all. And that was the thought that stuck with me most. I see myself getting older, see my desire for younger, unattainable people, and I wonder why I keep doing this to myself. I've been asking myself for the last couple of days why I keep trying. I feel sexy, but no one else seems to. And that's not sour grapes. I feel like I long for (sometimes desperately) a relationship that is not available. As each day goes by, it becomes less likely that I will have another relationship. And I wish I could just give up on the desire. Where is that cord so I can snip it in two? It seems that I have a lot to offer people, that they are attracted to me, but then my sexual desire gets in the way and that confuses things. I hate that.

I want to find a way to release myself from this suffering, this desire that has no positive outcome. I won't make that my New Year's Resolution because I don't do those, and because, lordy, could you imagine what a set-up that would be?! But I continue to question this part of myself that plagues me. I would like to channel my desire into something more productive, something creative like my book. I planned on sitting down with paper and pencil as soon as S left town and creating a schedule for myself -- work, creativity, exercise, entertainment, socializing -- but I spent yesterday feeling sorry for myself, and finally got outside and raked half of the yard. It's a huge yard. I did this because I've heard that exercise is good for depression, and I can't seem to get myself to yoga class. Besides, I can't really afford yoga right now. I ignored my checking account for a few days and something horrible happened with my finances and I ended up spending something like $175 in overdraft fees. Fuck!

Oh, and that's something I meant to write about with regards to the latest crush that feels like it's coming to an end and isn't really turning into the friendship that it pretended it was going to be. This guy has opened an art gallery with his best friend and his ex-girlfriend. I think, because a friend of mine took me to the restaurant where two of them work, an expensive restaurant, he got the idea that I had a lot of money, that I might be a supporter of his cause. He gave us a flier for his gallery the night we were at the restaurant and then S and I went to the opening. I had some money saved up and liked some of the art and decided I would invest in a couple of pieces. Nothing extravagant, but a lot of money for me.

This guy was very attentive and sweet and really seemed to like me. He invited me to meet the three of them at another gallery opening; I dropped by their gallery with beer a couple of Sunday afternoons. I told him I wanted to hang around him (and them) more because I was inspired by them. He seemed to get it. I went to see a weird movie last night called Wonderwall (released in 1968 with a soundtrack by George Harrison); it was part of the Alamo's "High for the Holidays" series. I don't know that I would recommend it-- maybe if you're really high. I was a little high, and I enjoyed it enough. But while I was sitting with my bad service and my pizza and over-priced beer, I realized that my attraction to this straight guy has a lot to do with the fact that he reminds me of my novel, makes me feel inspired about it. He is similar to a couple of characters in different ways (one in a physical way, another in an artistic way). I thought I should write him a letter and tell him about this, but then realized almost as quickly that I was stoned and there was probably no way to make it come out not just sounding weird!

But speaking of letters, I think I need to write a letter to the Alamo. I'm working on a show with my friend M . Over the years she has written lots of letters to businesses (airlines to landlords to restaurant chain corporate headquarters) about dissatisfaction with service she has received. She is doing a performance of several letters in FronteraFest next month, and she asked me to write a song (which I did a couple of days ago -- depression is often creatively productive for me... hm, maybe that has something to do with why I keep leaning in that direction) and to perform with her in the show. Whee!

But anyway, yesterday when I was deciding on going to see Wonderwall at the Alamo, I read this on their website:

Music Monday Specials: Free large popcorn with purchase of a bucket of beer at all Music Mondays! Free large soda or $2 Alamo Ale w/ purchase of a pizza!

So I was thinking, Mm, a pizza and a beer, how nice?!

I ordered the "Wild at Artichoke Hearts" pizza and an Alamo Ale, and when the waiter came, I checked to make sure that the beer would be $2, instead of the $4.50 on the menu. She said she had never heard about that offer. I told her it was on the website. She said she would check with her manager, but obviously if it was on the website she would honor it. I told her I wanted the beer either way, but appreciated her checking.

She came back and told me that the manager said no. He told her that since that offer is outdated and they haven't offered it in so long that they wouldn't honor it for me. However, he was willing to give me a complimentary soda with my pizza! I think I need to harness my emotions and write the letter right now.

cat door turtling squirrel

At the old address, I had bird feeders on the side of the house, one right out the window by my desk, another in what functioned as the living room -- but what we called the middle room -- and we would see lots of birds at the feeders, cardinals, titmice, sparrows. I placed a sign that I pulled out of the trash against the house after moving it around the inside of the apartment awhile and deciding it didn't work, and it made a good hiding place for the neighbor cat Clyde to wait for unsuspecting birds. He killed two -- one killing leaving a lot of blood and feathers on the porch and side yard -- before I figured it out and moved the sign. The messier one was a young cardinal (the other was a turtle dove) and I felt really bad, but grew to love the daily visits from the dead one's sister, whom I watched grow up. She always had one feather sticking straight up from her body, just above the left wing. I don't know if that was because of a near escape from Clyde, but I always called her "The One That Got Away," or Totga, for short. I miss Totga.

We didn't have squirrels at that address; most of the pesky critters were possums, and they didn't (or couldn't) bother with bird feeders. When we moved to this address, I put one feeder outside my temporary bedroom window and the other outside the bathroom window. The birds (mockingbirds, mostly) light on the fence but haven't come to the feeder as far as I can tell. Maybe they're smarter here, or more timid. A squirrel made his way over the roof to the feeder outside my bedroom window and when I spotted him, he was hanging over the eave, lifting the lid of the feeder like a rude party guest, snacking by the pawful. I added a length of wire to the feeder, and that stopped him for the time being. He moved to the one outside the bathroom window, a slender feeder without a removable lid, but with lots of little feeding stations and perching poles next to each. It's a bit more difficult for him to get to those seeds, but he does it, falling into the red berry bushes below (the red berries which the mockingbirds love, by the way) once in awhile; but he makes his way back to the roof, back to the feeder. I don't mind the squirrels; I'm not going to war to keep them out of the feeders, but I'd much rather see birds out my windows than a squirrel.

When I was trying to get Timmy used to the cat door -- which is on the same side of the room as the bird feeder but out other window, the one with the air conditioner unit in it -- I kept it propped open to show him the way. When I started seeing the squirrel turtling his head through the cat door, I stopped leaving it open. I have a friend who had a squirrel sneak into her house while she was out of town for a weekend, and boy, what a mess he made; the chew marks on the window sills have been painted over, but they're still there.

I figured out that Timmy won't use the cat door on his own because he doesn't have enough of a ledge on the inside, so he has to dive through from below with me holding it open. Last night, exhausted, I lay in bed dozing but being constantly awakened by him tapping the door with his paw, trying to get it to the open position (I assume). I found a couple of boxes that I stacked up on my bedside table; they give him a surface big enough to hang out on and casually, comfortably make his way out and in, which he did all night long.

life on the ranch

So, we live with a potbelly pig named Tinkerbell who spends most of her time sleeping in her human parent's (my friends) closet; my friend saw her at the feed store, I think, in a little cage, and felt sorry for her and brought her home. She was cute and squiggly back then; it's been six months, I guess, and they had to enlarge the dog door to the outside because she was having a hard time squeezing out and in, and they're out of the country for a month and they figured she might grow too big for the opening by the time they get back.

There's also a boxer named Bones living here which my friend found in a field near her work. He was literally skin and bones -- they've got some pretty disturbing pictures of when they found him -- and the vet, whom my friend took him to thinking they would have to put him down, originally thought he was seven or eight years old. But the vet said it wasn't necessary to put him down, and now he's a very healthy three or four year old.

And then my extraordinary house cat, Timmy, who has made himself quite at home here. He likes this address so much more than the last place we lived, where I adopted him because his roommates picked on him and he peed on his human parent's things and they put him in an ill-devised screened-in room on the front porch in very cold weather (I can't remember now if it was last winter or the winter before that). Here, Timmy has a cat door to go in and out of, and once he gets out there, 3.5 acres of wandering room. I was a little nervous about him getting lost or wandering into the road at first, but I followed him around and watched his patterns, and I'm pretty confident his habits are healthy.

I put up a dog gate at the end of the hall so that Bones could see Timmy and so that Timmy could explore the rest of the house, which he has done the past couple of days in Bones' absence because a family friend has taken Bones to his friend's house to play with her dog. Yesterday he brought Bones and the other dog, Sam, back here to play in the fenced-in yard, which wore Bones out pretty good. He was in bed before we humans were.

There's also a rescued turtle named Chewy in an aquarium in the kitchen, but they're not warm and snuggly animals, so I don't think much about him. I would love to get a goat or two, for the milk, and their freaky cuteness. I have this idea to get two baby girls and name them after my grandmothers, Nana and Mamaw. It would be nice if there was some situation where I could rescue them instead of buying goats from a breeder, but I don't wish that there are goats out there in need of rescuing, and getting them from a breeder is kind of rescuing them (though buying from a breeder keeps that practice alive, and I'm not sure how good I feel about that) -- I guess it remains to be seen if and when I meet the breeder). S & I were talking about goats last night around the chiminea. I said, "I'm pretty sure they would be outdoor animals," to which S said, "I certainly hope so!" Not that he has any problem with a boxer and a potbelly pig at his feet in the kitchen while he's cooking, but it could get a little crazy if we had goats and chickens, etc., running around indoors!

I bought a chiminea and put it on the front porch, and last night S & I christened it with some wood from the oak trees here, a piece of cedar from the stack I bought for $4 when I bought the chiminea, and a piece of root from the big pecan tree which fell in the yard during a storm last year at the old address. It was semi-ritualistic, burning the old and the new wood, the old memories and the new ones to come. We had a chiminea on that porch which broke, but while we had it, we used it a lot, and turned the porch ceiling a sooty black color. So to avoid that, I got some galvanized aluminum pipe from the hardware store and the friend of the family who's staying in the Airstream on the property (and who took Bones on a playdate again this morning) helped me wire it up, so the smoke goes out past the roof ledge, mostly; some of it comes out of the front of the chiminea, but it only makes us smell all toasty-roasty like we've been sitting around a campfire and doesn't soot up the porch. The pecan wood burned nice and slow, and I remembered a stack of little logs I stacked there at the old address that I think I better go get for the front porch.

Ah! Life is good.

I am having a little bit of trouble getting on a schedule. I haven't touched the novel since before my out of town guest came and went, and then the move. But I'm confident the time will come. First I have to get my work schedule going. (I only worked 20 hours over the past two weeks!) Regardless, I am feeling quite comfy here, even though this living situation is temporary. The next move will only be across the property to our shipping containers house, when it is complete, which our friends say they will be focusing on once they get back in the country at the beginning of next year.

tuned in and turned on

Time is strange lately. There's excitement in the air, but anxiety, too. Anxiousness. It feels hopeful, still I'm having a hard time getting any work done. I've getting a fair amount of writing done, that feels good, but I'm having a hard time getting my forty hours in. It's closer to thirty-five, which is a constant struggle to reach. Thirty-five is a good amount of hours, but most of the rest of my time is spent on the upcoming election, reading blogs, watching Jon Stewart at his website and other stuff like that. You know, the real news. It's a very exciting time in the world. Tonight I'm spending two hours at a stranger's house with ten other people making "Calls for Change" at an Obama Phone-a-thon. I love bing alive in this historic time!

I'm going to Nashville this coming weekend. I'm taking four or five days off from work. That's what gives me a sense of urgency, a need to work more now, to make up for lost time before the fact. That's the great thing about my job, the flexibility. It's not just about the money I need to make; it's about the time security, the something to do, part of my ritual. I get sort of antsy when my schedule is interrupted. And I'm totally neurotic about my cat. There better be a good reason for dragging me away from my cat and my life and my work and my regular checkups on the media elite coverage of the '08 Election.

Well, there is. It's a boy with a capital B. If I could stand living in Nashville again, I would for him, or if I could talk him into moving here for me, I would. But I can't.

I'm sure B has a TV -- who doesn't, right? I hope I don't get sucked into that, into all the shows he invariable has to watch, like everybody. The Amazing Race, Lost, shows I've never even seen. The other day S said we oughta look for a crappy little TV so we can watch debates and stuff. But I know how I am. I'd like to say I wouldn't get stuck in front of a TV ever again, but it's bound to happen. TVs are evil; they suck you in and destroy your brain!

So I'm going to assume there will be some TV watching, which I'm powerless to resist. --Well, that's not completely true; it takes a lot of work to resist it, and I have the ability to do so, but I wouldn't want to be rude by going out to the patio or yard to smoke and write while B watches his shows. Though I will take my writing implements and keep that option available.

That's another thing: the smoking. Another thing to keep in mind, the probability that I will smoke more while I'm in Nashville. B smokes, so it just seems to reason that I will. I'm not smoking right now -- I quit for a while, a few days or a couple weeks, between pouches (not packs) that I buy, just to take a break. I'm not going to set a goal to resist or to smoke out, I'm simply going to try to be myself. And will take my favorite brand and my little rolling machine.

It may be an unrealized fantasy I'm walking into here. B and I had sex twice. There's definitely an attraction there, or there was three years ago. But maybe his interest in allowing me to visit him now is more platonic in his mind. I don't want to set myself up for disappointment; I've done that before and don't much like it.

I'm not blaming R (on the contrary), but my relationship with R caused some dis-ease in me, some mental illness, I have to be careful about relapses. I recognize that it's there -- so that's a good step, but god-damn it, why does it have to exist at all? "Have to." That's funny. It doesn't "have to."

But still.

I've lost my place. I wanted to come here and write something completely different, something humorous about my cat, or about my neuroses related to leaving my cat behind while I go out of town. Maybe later. But instead, this.

I'm having a hard time keeping my eyes open any longer.

in the wind and rain

Hurricane Ike has finally brought a little relief from the humidity and high temperatures in Central Texas. It's early yet, we haven't seen any of the major storm activity here. In fact, out my window I see the sun shining and butterflies dancing around the flowering fruit tree in the neighbor's yard. There's a nice breeze through the house without all the fans on high, so there's relief. But you never know what the wind's gonna blow into town.

Yesterday, I got a call from my eldest sister, R, saying that she and her boyfriend and son and an undisclosed number of "dogs" were on the road having been evacuated from their home on the coast near where Galveston Bay meets the Houston Ship Channel. They had been on the road for hours already looking for a large town with hotel availability when B, the boyfriend, said, "Where does your brother live?" I was fine with having them pop in, but our apartment is small and I didn't think we could host (or even greet) all those people and all those dogs, so I called M and asked if I could meet them at their house.

As it turned out, M&J had J's sister K's ex-boyfriend T's Airstream in the driveway waiting for friends from down near Corpus Christi, but when Ike decided to head more northerly, they chose not to make the trip. J is a tinkerer and was proud that he had been able to get the a/c working in the Airstream, so I think he was quite happy to have people staying in it.

I went to H.E.B., got a case of beer and headed to M&J's to have one before my family arrived. Little P had a friend (whose name I missed) over, and then L&S -- M&J's friends they met because their daughters are in school together -- showed up with I (their daughter), who has been calling me "uncle jaybird" like Little P always has (which I love), and they had more beer, and so it turned out to be a regular old beer-drinking Friday night at M&J's.

The dogs numbered three, "all angels," R assured me on the phone, and they were fine. Bones, M&J's dog was ecstatic to have in specie guests, and didn't care that all three of the dogs had their hair raised and teeth bared for the first half hour, he just wanted to play! Eventually, the two younger dogs allowed Bones to kiss and sniff on them and even wagged their tails a little bit.

My sister was so grateful to have a place to be and turned in rather early; the rest of us sat in front of the big screen TV watching the silly CNN weathermen in their L.L. Bean jackets standing on the coast of Galveston Bay alternately over-dramatizing the wind and rain and "complaining" that the winds weren't really all that strong. I could only take a little bit of that and found myself in a jump roping competition with I and her mother (those girls are very competitive) which made my head throb, partly from the beer and partly from the weather.

M talked to her mother every couple of hours. Her mother kept saying, "I don't think we're gonna get any rain from this," and after several hours and several beers, M changed her tune to sound a little more like her mother's, which I chided her for.

My mother had called me earlier in the day to say she wasn't leaving her home, which is less than 10 miles from where my sister was mandatorily evacuated, and just 7.5 miles from the Houston Ship Channel. "After I sat on the highway for 12 hours that last time, I said, 'Never again!'" My stepdad took off the day before for the country house, but she is stubborn, by hers and everyone's admission.

B and D talked to her on the phone a couple of times last night and she was still there, still fine, though her 93-year-old father -- who was supposed to be picked up from his house closer to the bay and delivered to her house -- hadn't shown up yet. But he's pretty stubborn, too. (There is plenty of 8mm footage my grandfather and grandmother took from the Galveston Wall back in the day when they heard of a hurricane brewing and would drive to the water's edge to film it!)

I tried to call my mom at 7:30 this morning, but the telephone was out of order, not surprisingly. At 8:15, the radar showed a big red color-enhanced dot of wind and rain right over my mom's neighborhood. I guess we'll just have to see. I'm expecting to get a call any minute now from M or J, or even B to say they're up and ready for breakfast. I sure am. I don't know what the day holds. I certainly hope it won't require me to sit with family and friends while storms rage around us.

It's a little disheartening being around my nephew, who just recently returned from a Christian finishing school in California. But what bums me out the most is something that I struggled with growing up, and it is sad to see that it still exists in this family, and that is the idea that animals are disposable. They have three dogs, "angels all," though my sister and her boyfriend, D's guardians for now, have said that he can get a pit bull when he gets rid of one of the other dogs. So he's always trying to get somebody to take one of the dogs, while at the same times saying this one has Down's Syndrome or that one is worthless or whatever. I guess, in essence, they aren't cool enough for the image he obviously would like to project.

I can't say much more on this subject except to say that I know where this is coming from, and there is nothing I can do about it. I feel for the dogs, I feel for my sister's kids, I feel for my sister.

P.S. I wrote this entry for the most part before I met M&J and my family for breakfast, and now I'm back and it's 2:15 and we've gotten some breezes and have overcast skies, but still no rain. WTF?

P.P.S. My stepdad didn't actually leave my mother to fend for herself, I found out over lunch. Silly me, I called their land line and not her cell phone. Oh, well; reports are that they're fine except for a couple of leaks in the roof. They got rain, so where's ours?

evil eye ball

I went to the Evil Eye Ball with A last night; it was a fundraiser for Rude Mechs Theater Company. There was free Real Ale and good food (though we'd eaten at Blue Dahlia right before and I could only stuff down a few tiny tarts). People were encouraged to dress up in their luckiest outfits, or to wear some sort of evil eye; all of this because this is Rude Mechs' 13th year. S painted eyes on the back of my head -- which turned out pretty cool. I had matching dark underlines on the front side because I'd read that young Nepali girls are never allowed to leave the house without darkened eyes (evil eyes) to ward off bad spirits.

I bought a beer glass with the Evil Eye logo on it and had a couple of beers, then wandered around the space perusing the silent auction items, and ended up with "Pckg #24," which contained a $25 gift certificate to Farm to Market grocery store; a Farm to Market T-shirt; a subscription to Edible Austin magazine (plus the two old issues and one current one that were on display); a pound of coffee from Progress Coffee as well as a $10 gift certificate to Progress Coffee. Value: $93. Cost: $45.

I ran into lesbian artist M (on whom I have a crush) and she told me about her recent trip to Cuba; I chatted with all of A's many acquaintances in the Austin art and performance world, the UT community and the Dance Group she's heavily involved in (me not so much anymore, but that's where I met her), including J, whom I like, and her Welsh husband C, whom I've never really talked to before, but he was drunk, as was I, and the two of us were cracking each other up while the hired hypnotist went on and on and on and on...zzz... We were cracking other people up too (and probably annoying the hypnotist) because we were talking a little too loud.

Hypnotist: When I snap my fingers, you'll go twice as deep. (Snap.) Twice as deep. (Snap) Twice as deep.
C: So they're, what, four times as deep now?
Me: Twice as deep? Call me when you're twice as long, then we'll talk!

Oh, well, you're bound to get at least a couple of ne'er-do-wells when you're giving out free liquor.

I bought another beer glass on the way out (thankful that I hadn't won the silent auction item of "Pies for a Year in the form of one Pie a Month," which I bid $120 on -- undeniably a good deal, and I'm sure S would have been happy had I won, but still!) and was home by 11:00. S wasn't home -- most likely out at the Chain Drive with his buddies -- so I smoked a cigarette on the porch, then hit the one-hitter and went to bed, too drunk to do anything productive, including, as it turned out, brushing my teeth or doing any of my ritualistic nighttime duties, which I attributed as the cause of my bad dream karma.

After my 7:30 a.m. pee, I had two disturbing dreams, which probably won't sound as disturbing in writing, but you know how it is. They were terrifying.

1. I found an armadillo. He became my pet. We loved each other. He rode around on my shoulders and on the top of my little pickup truck. He was like a little fat plushy toy, soft-shelled.

Then something went wrong. He climbed out of back window while I was driving around and couldn't hold onto the roof like he had before. He fell onto a busy street. I pulled over and chased him on foot. When I caught him, he was smaller, no armor, more ratlike, with fangs that he kept trying to bite me with.

2. I was at a house with a big yard. I don't know if it was my house, but an old man who reminded me of my mother's father lived there. My middle sister was there, as were my two nephews -- one of whom belonged to her, the other to my older sister. I was going away and we were trying to figure out what to do with the pet rabbit and the stray dog puppy. We had cages for them, but they were small and I was worried that the animals, particularly the stray dog puppy, would go crazy in the time that I was gone, no free time to run around. I guess the old man was going to feed them, but I didn't trust him to do it right.

I was attaching plastic to the inside flap of the mailbox to keep the mail from blowing away or getting wet while I was gone. It was a very tedious process I was employing, using little lengths of wire to attach the plastic to the metal box. My sister said she had already taken care of that, but I pointed out that she had only done a side-to-side flap with duct tape and I was fortifying that with the top-to-bottom flap of plastic and wire.

The nephews saw something at the fence line, a dead animal or a dirty diaper or something. They were going on about it, but I couldn't be bothered; I was busily making preparations for my departure and for the animals. I decided that maybe I could afford to board the dog at least, and got in the old man's truck to drive across town for something; I didn't ask his permission. My sister was going too but in a different vehicle with the boys, I guess.

There was a dog dragging its butt along the side of the road, and then the stray dog puppy was suddenly running to catch up with me, running in the busy street. The dog dragging its butt got up under a car, but the driver avoided running over it; I was afraid I was going to hit and kill the stray dog puppy, and I was having a hard time driving the old man's truck, which was standard transmission with a hand clutch instead of a foot pedal. Suddenly I was in unknown territory, on a street I didn't recognize in an unfamiliar town.

There were sirens and flashing lights. I saw two police motorcycles on a parallel street. I pulled over with the other cars and people. The motorcycles were escorting scary-looking prisoners to jail. A black man standing in the street next to me made an unfortunate move and a prison guard stepped out of the line of prisoners and shot him in the gut. I fell to the ground like everyone else did until the prisoner procession had passed.

When I stood again I had a sporty motorcycle (which I didn't know how to work) and had a pistol in two parts (which I had a hard time putting together and keeping it that way). I pushed the motorcycle forward but I was suddenly in a hallway, in a doorway. I turned around and was headed off by a security guard who hadn't been there seconds before. He was demanding to see my prison ID. I told him I didn't have one but he didn't believe me. He pointed to a sign on the wide open door (which I had missed) that said not to go through that door without the proper ID. I was scared, frantic, pulled out my Texas driver's license and in all of my confused explaining mentioned that I had lived in Tennessee before. He asked me suspiciously, "Oh, yeah? In what district?" I told him I didn't know, that I'd never heard of such a term. He told me not to go anywhere and left with my driver's license. I considered running, but there were too many things stacked against me (and I thought of the black man who got shot for less).

Then I woke up.

desperate living

There's something wrong with John Waters. I appreciate his irreverence in some ways, but I also have to question his morals. It's difficult to watch his early movies because of what I consider to be animal cruelty; the chicken getting fucked in Pink Flamingos of course isn't really getting fucked, but the actor is roughing the chicken up while pretending to do so. I always chalked that up to John Waters being young and it being the 70s.

S and I watched Desperate Living last night. It was our second Netflix arrival; S's pick. I don't know what inspired him to put it in the queue. I'm not saying it was horrible or totally offensive. There were a lot of really great things about it. I guess what kind of bummed me out was the second (partial) watch-through with the commentary by John Waters turned on. He's a funny man, his observations about life and art always make me laugh. But his matter-of-fact attitude about the dead rats, skinned possum and slightly thawed dog acquired from the University of Maryland animal experimentation department kind of bummed me out.

It was also very exhausting watching a film in which every line is delivered at a 9 or above; lots of screaming, lots of bad acting, lots of lewdness. The human disgust amuses me, though putting a toddler in a refrigerator (even for just a second to get it on film) was unsettling.

Still, it was great to see Edith Massey again, playing the queen of Mortville with her overly gap-toothed smile, her hideous manner. Back in the day when S and I were first writing songs and performing together, I wrote a song for Edith Massey after seeing Pink Flamingos. In case you don't know the "storyline," Edith spends most of that movie in a baby pen, waiting for the Egg Man to come and bring much desired eggs.

Where is the Egg Man?
Don't he know I'm hungry?
Don't he know this trailerpark is big enough for us three?
Oh, I love him,
And I love eggs,
I love to blow them, suck them,
throw them, chuck them,
running down my legs.

It goes on, but I don't remember it right now. John Waters said that Desperate Living was the first movie he made that wasn't written high on pot. Likewise, when S and I first met and started writing music together, we were stoned around the clock (except when we were onstage). Songs like "The Egg Man" as well as "My Man, Our Horses, and Me" (our most popular song) were created while we were pretty stoned.

S and I made a video on an upstate NY chicken farm for "The Egg Man" and entered it in MTV's Most Unusual Band contest and won! That was back in '94, I guess. Those were the days; we appeared at some event with Beavis & Butthead's life-size puppets, got on The Jon Stewart Show, got flown out to California to sing "The Egg Man" on a standup show on Comedy Central, which replayed every year for several years. We pretty much gave up smoking pot and drinking around that time so we could be clear-headed and focus on our upcoming fame and natural fortune to follow.

I sent John Waters a copy of "The Egg Man" video back then and he sent a return postcard saying thanks and "Edith is probably looking down(?) and smiling."

Last night, we got high to watch Desperate Living. (As much as things change, they say the same.)

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.