wednesday, january 28th (2004)

3:09 a.m.

I'm up. Finally I didn't sleep for nine or 10 hours. C came over last night and brought food from Calypso and we watched Welcome to the Dollhouse (with a 30-minute break in the middle to watch the Sundance Festival Dailies show). She went home just before 9, and I was in bed by 9:05.

We've got Sophie for the night, and she kept whining - which kept waking me up even though I had earplugs in - so I came downstairs and slept in the front bedroom and she seemed a little more relaxed. But she's up with me now, kind of pacing. I think she really prefers to be at home in her own bed, even if she's alone.

R crawled into bed about an hour ago, smelling of gin. He fell asleep quickly and his loud, deep breathing turned into snores and I was awake at 2:45, wondering if I'd slept long enough to be getting up. I took my Cymbalta yesterday at 5 instead of 6, and I think that's why I was so zonked at 9. It was that druggy kind of zonked feeling.

I think I'll finish my coffee, have some oatmeal, and go to the gym at 5. I might even go in to work after that. I can't really do anything around the house while R is sleeping (especially downstairs) except sit in front of the computer, and I don't want to do that for too long because I'll just end up playing Bejeweled, which is my on-again/off-again guilty pleasure.

sunday, january 23rd (2004)

7:26 a.m.
comic bit on 10 Commandments
dress like preacher; Bible
(songs? "the B-I-B-L-E...")
10 C.s are "top 10"
adultery worse than sodomy
etc.

Characters I believe I am:

• Mrs. JDJB (woman, not drag queen) - talk about domestic lief as if it were my reality...ironic.
• Rev. JDJB
• Babbling Brooke
• Phyllis Diller (am, or can be)
• Nannybird (effeminate) "They fired me when they found out I was gay"

8:13 a.m.
Went to "sexuality straightener" and was thrown into a room with 100 others to have sex and get it out of our systems...

9:08 a.m.
You could tell how happy a family was by how tall their squirrel-pile was (hillbilly).
Daddy made Russ chase squirrels around the tree...

10:39 p.m.
I'm gonna sleep in tomorrow, have challah french toast when I get up, work at Co. in the afternoon and clean up this mess of a house tomorrow evening. I am drunk on the mulled wine, and I can feel the sulfites doing their nasty little dance inside of me.

We hosted bridge tonight. I made creamy hubbard squash bisque, kabocha corn muffins, mulled wine, and an incredible cheesecake (New York style) with Grand Marnier chocolate sauce and toasted pecans (my new favorite thing... toasted pecans, that is). The pecans went on the bisque as well. Yum.

--Hm, Turnip Truck didn't call today.

--Hm, also, I almost got myself worked up over the C&D recording (or lack thereof), but it's out of my control. Su called with an update tonight but I was playing bridge host, so I didn't answer. I thought I should call her, but I'm drunk (and a little high, too) and I didn't want to call and ramble, which I would probably do - especially since I'm inebriated. So I'll call her tomorrow. If I need to worry about it, I'll worry about it then. I probably should call F before I call her, so we're updated all the way around.

thursday, january 20th (2004)

6:18 p.m.
I'm got gonna do much tonight. (What else is new?!) I'm watching The Daily show and checking my email right now.

9:43 p.m.
I'm sitting on the front porch. Stoned, buzzed. I got to thinking that I'm getting that way every day now. I've given up my sexual addiction and replaced it with three others.

s.e.x.

I'm not sure where it came from, but lately I feel sexy and desirable. I've been putting myself out there more lately, kind of as an experiment, and it seems to be "working." I went to a gay bar that I've never been to before on Friday night and met a handsome black man (not "boy," as my friend P pointed out, and it's true, he was easily my age or older). We talked a lot, flirted a little; he bought me a beer. I guess there was the potential to go home with him, but I didn't feel it. I mean, I felt the vibe, but I didn't feel like it, so I said I was going home; it was 1:15 a.m. He became a little whiny - not too annoyingly so - and walked me to my car, where we kissed lightly (I realized we were in the street and there were straight people around, but for some reason didn't feel in danger). He said, "I wish I could see you again." I asked if he wanted my number. He said yes, and we exchanged numbers. By the time I got home, I had a text from him, saying he enjoyed meeting me and hoped to see me again. I wrote back: Ditto. Have a good night. I wasn't truly sure I wanted to see him again, but didn't want to rule it out. I figured it would have to do somewhat with how he "acted" toward me. I assumed he would be calling me the next day, or soon. It's Monday, and he hasn't called yet, which I'm fine with. If and when he calls, I'll see how I feel then.

Saturday, I did some manscaping, with the planned intent of going to the gay bathhouse that night. I don't know why; it was another part of my attempt to get myself out there some more, just to see what vibes I'm giving and receiving. I've been reading a book on improvisation and theater (Impro, by Keith Johnstone), which I'm finding very helpful in my improv, but also in my life. I recently finished reading a section on "status," and decided to utilize it in my visit to the bathhouse. For instance, Mr. Johnstone writes about how looking at someone that you pass in the street determines status right away. If you and the other person stare each other down, you are having a struggle over high status/low status. The person who looks away first is low status. If the person looks at you, looks away, then looks back very briefly, that is also low status. If you are high status, you don't look at the person at all, or hold the stare until they look away, or look briefly then away, but don't look back. There is also a section about how one passes another in the street (on which side of the sidewalk, etc.) and other instances of status. I decided to do some "homework" at the baths, and it was quite effective! I won't go into exactly what I did, or whom I did (or who did me!)...

I've been dealing a lot with my desire to kiss-and-tell, my impulse to write graphic sex scenes. I'm speaking here specifically of august chagrin. A friend of a friend read the manuscript and I got an email from him last night with some of his thoughts. He likes my writing, likes my ability to draw the reader in and keep the interest; he made a few comments about specific things that made him laugh out loud, commented that the balance between sadness and humor works well. What he had the most criticism about was the graphic nature of the sex described in the book. He said it felt like it went into the realm of "pornography," and he felt it was a distraction and was happy when it "got back to the novel." He's straight, but he said he thinks his feelings would be the same if the sex were heterosexual.

I've had a lot of thoughts about this. Just before I finished the current draft, I wondered if my work could be taken as serious literature with all of the graphic sex, and specifically gay sex in it. S says there are lots of instances of graphic sex in literature, however this other person who recently commented on it said that he wouldn't, for instance, have wanted to read about the characteristics of Anna Karenina's privates, or Vronksy's, or the positions they may have enjoyed, even though their affair was what led to her downfall. Very interesting fodder, indeed.

22 little boxes

Last Saturday, S and I had a meeting over august chagrin. He had read through the manuscript before he went to NYC to open his Lizzie Borden rock musical, and he marked it up quite a bit - but not so much as to be overwhelming. He told me then that he feels like the novel is "almost there." He also said it is "eccentric" and "sometimes disorienting," all things which I loved to hear. A couple of other people I know have also read the manuscript. I don't know them as well as I know S, but I have heard from other people I know that the sex in the novel made them uncomfortable. I'm okay with that. For a while just before I finished, I worried about that a little bit; being that I'm not an avid reader, I was worried if I was writing literature or pornography, but S calmed my fears.

I really wish I was a better reader, a more avid reader. I thought of something interesting the other day: It's okay for people to love to read but hate to write, but it's not okay for people to love to write but hate to read. Writers are expected to be avid writers, and I'm not. I don't hate to read - not really - but I don't love it either. I'm a slow reader so it's such an investment of time, and it sometimes takes me a while to really get into a book. Oftentimes, in those cases, I'll put the book down and never get back to it.

I've been going to a book club on and off for the past several months. I've read two books I love (one, Wise Blood, by Flannery O'Connor, I'd already read several times previously, it was the reason I joined the group; the other was a new discovery, J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace, a delightful find), and I've read two books in the group that I didn't like too much, one of them I couldn't read more than 100 pages of and therefore didn't go to the book club that month. I found out at the more recent book club that only one person in the group (the woman who picked the book) loved it. Anyway, it's good for me to be in this book club because it kind of forces me to continue to the end of a book that I otherwise might have put down - well, one out of two. The one I did get to the end of, Adichie's Purple Hibiscus, I didn't like the first 175 pages of, but liked the last 125 a lot, so there you go...

So, anyway, after my meeting with S, I corrected the little things in the manuscript that I could do so easily - things like deleting sentences or sections of text or moving parts of the text to other parts of the page or chapter, correcting typos, etc. - but the other, bigger edits, I flagged with purple post-it notes and made notes in a separate notebook with the chapter number, page number and so forth, and a little box to be checked off when the task is completed. My goal a while back was to finish the novel by my birthday (at the end of October). I thought I had finished early (on August 7th I finished writing the last chapter of the novel), but then S read through the manuscript and made his marks.

From our meeting I have 22 things in the novel that need to be worked on, 22 little boxes to check off in the next 29 days. As I get through with them, I am adding them to the august chagrin blog as "revised." But I'm still having to work and going to two improv classes a week and trying to keep up with my new and old blogging. It's a lot. I may drop out of sight for a while to finish the novel, in case you're wondering.