it's not a nipple, it's a butthole

And now I'm home again. I went out for dinner and to write. My first choice was Mandola's Italian in the Triangle not far from here. The food is good, but what I really like is the atmosphere; well-lit outdoor tables and good people watching. But the line was out the door and I was starving so I drove over to Magnolia Cafe on Lake Austin Blvd, which is what Sixth Street turns into at MOPAC. There was a wait there as well, but I pulled out my big cumbersome novel, removed the writing tablet from the inside pocket of the three-ring binder, found out what I needed to work on next, and dove into it.

This isn't writing, this is rewriting, revising or whatever. Whatever you call it, I haven't been doing much of it lately, so it felt good to get to it. For some reason, this part of the process feels less satisfying. The fuller versions, I would write a chapter at a time, for the most part; it was easier to get into the groove than it is when I'm just reworking a paragraph or two, or adding dialogue to a scene, which seems to be more often than taking dialogue out. I guess when things are cut down, whole chunks are usually pulled out, dialogue, narrative and all.

My first few attempts at rewriting were frustrating. I didn't think I was saying what I wanted to say, or felt like a lot more needed to be written, or that I didn't know how to get to the end of what I was writing and reconnect it with the existing manuscript. I read a couple of these to S, just to point out my frustration and illustrate my failure, and he liked what I had written. In the case that I couldn't find the end, he suggested I leave off the last partial sentence and leave it at that. He was right; it worked!

We joke that I'm writing this book for him. But he is my audience. He's a super-smart person, and knows me and my work better than anybody ever could, since we've had such a long acquaintance and because we've worked together creatively for a big chunk of those years. He's my first editor; these are his changes, for the most part, that I'm making before I consider the novel done and start the even more thankless job of looking for an agent or a publisher.

A few other people have also read the first draft. My mother is one of them. But I think she might have abandoned the project. She read the first chapter online, requested more (which meant I just had to tell her what buttons to push to get to the other chapters), and then asked if I minded if she printed it out, so she wouldn't have to sit in front of the computer the whole time. I gave her a copy. I visited there a month or so ago. It was an interesting visit. Not too traumatizing. But anyway, things get a lot more graphic by chapter four.

Another person who read (or is reading - she hasn't reported on her progress lately) is my old improv teacher. She had my favorite thing to say about the novel: It's not a nipple, it's a butthole! Perfect. She was referring to the graphic nature of my writing. My friend P1's then-boyfriend read it and sent me an amazing, descriptive, well thought out and useful critique by email. Ultimately, I didn't take his overriding suggestion - which was to change the more intimate details - but I did take a pause, as I have more than once over this, before proceeding. S was a big part of the decision not to change the content. A childhood friend of his, who is now a long-time friend of mine, is an editor and and she read it and had a similar reaction as P1's boyfriend did. She said up front that she has a hard time with graphic sexual content; I think the description of semen was particularly noted.

A lot of my writing of the novel took place at a time in my life when I was watching a lot of movies. Sometimes I would start writing late in the evening after watching a movie that inspired me. The inspiration totally fed into the august chagrin storyline; not that I stole anything from the movie, just that the inspiration that created the movie charged the inspiration that was creating the novel.

I have the hardest time explaining the channeling thing. P1 seemed to think I wasn't giving myself enough credit. But that's not what it's about. This is what I love about writing, tapping into a part of my brain that works on this completely different plane; it's there but isn't always reachable. It comes in its own time. Of course, putting myself in the proper situation to let that part of my brain work - a well-lit outdoor table at a nearby Italian restaurant perhaps - has a lot to do with it too.

I think I would have spent more time at Mandola's writing; I felt a little rushed and distracted at Magnolia. But I am happy with what I got written. It's still longhand, but I think it's going in the right direction. I just have to type it up.

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.

social obligations

The date with (C) was a bust for the most part. He's very cute, very sweet, and not very interested in me. Have I already written about this? I feel like I have. Maybe I haven't blogged about it. I hope not. That would seem obsessive, and I'm really not obsessive, or don't like to see myself that way. That was last Wednesday. I had a little cry over it; nothing big, just a little flushing, and I felt better, and feel better.

Wednesday was kind of a weird double-whammy on the emotions. Wednesday evening was my second improv class at the new place. It's a level one class. I've taken a couple of each level up to level three, but I wanted to get a different perspective, expand my improv knowledge. I mentioned it to T and she approved wholeheartedly. (It's weird, it felt like a confession. I had mentioned it to a few people in the community randomly and hadn't mentioned it to her, so I felt like I had to make a point of telling her, which I guess is why it felt like a confession. But anyway...)

The teacher is a nice guy, if a little clueless. Or at least it feels that way to me. I don't want to make a deal about it, but there were a couple of things that got under my skin. Which makes me thankful that I'm back in therapy - twice a month. The first class, he made a completely innocent comment about the fact that we plan what we're going to do before we go on stage based on fear, wanting to be accepted, cool, funny, "attractive to the opposite sex so we can procreate." Maybe it sounds a little biblical, now that I write it out. I just had a feeling of "he doesn't mean me, he doesn't 'accept' me." I'm really not all that political about identity, but my religious and suppressive upbringing kind of makes it similar to a political feeling. Now that I write it out.

Anyway, so I had therapy the next day, and I was able to get over it, whatever that means. Truly, I'm only bringing it up because I'm writing about it. It's been so long ago now, the fact that I haven't written about it yet should point to the fact that it's not all that important to me. Same as with the date. I'm a little buzzed so I'm feeling eloquent, in the movingly expressive sense of the word.

In the more recent class, the second class of the six-week session, the class that followed soon after the date, the teacher told everyone to find the person they felt had the most in common with them. I went to the big dyke with the piercings and black rock T-shirt on. We were instructed to find three things we had in common. We both had spacers in our ears (mine a "2," hers an "0," which is bigger, natch), so I pointed that out. Then I said, "And we're both gay." It seemed to take her by surprise. Maybe I'm projecting. She said, "What?" I said, "You're gay, right?" She said, "Oh-- yeah," which sounded like she hadn't heard me the first time. Maybe I slurred it out nervously. I have a tendency to do that. The dreaded G word. But I'm facing it, I'm getting closer to an understanding, I think, slowly but surely, one day at a time, sweet Jesus...

We then had to choose the most interesting thing and write that on a strip of paper the teacher had passed out while we were all rumbling in our two-person teams. He said, "Not the most obvious thing; something that would make everybody in the room go, 'Ooh!'"

My partner said, "What do I write, 'We're both gay?'" I said, "Put 'We're both homos.'" Which she did after a smirk.

The strips of paper were put away and forgot about for the rest of class - almost forgotten completely. As we were about to leave, the teacher stopped us and said he had to read them. Everyone froze. They were probably all wondering if what they had written was good enough, I know I was. Had I tricked this poor 20-something into doing something she wasn't comfortable with? Or did the notion that we needed to point it out seem unnecessary to her? That could be the case, I guess, if she believed there was no need for distinction other than a way of dressing, if the need to define yourself publicly was/is passé.

What am I even writing? Did I say I was buzzed. Have you seen those billboards that say Buzzed Driving Is Drunk Driving? Well, Buzzed Writing Is Drunk Writing, Too, then. But I'm not so much drunk as I'm high. Not drunk at all, actually. I didn't have enough money for a beer tonight. I was at a film party at the Art Alliance or Art Authority or The Place Next to Spiderhouse - whatever they're calling it these days. I digress.

The improv teacher read through all of the strips of paper, some interesting, some funny, some just fine. "We're both homos." was the very last one. When he read it, he stopped on the word "homo" and read it carefully, then said coyly, "Well, okay, that may be true-- And that would be okay..."

It doesn't seem like much. It didn't seem like much when it happened. I felt a weirdness in my center. My partner didn't seem to react, and everybody else just kind of laughed or ignored it, as with the others. When I mentioned it to S and others, though, I started feeling a little more isolated by the experience. It drives me crazy that I can't see these things in the moment, can't work with them. I know, I know, recognizing it at all is a step in that direction (Thank you, Pëma).

I had therapy the next morning, and when I told the story to L, he stopped me a ways down the path and said, "I'm sorry. As a straight man, I didn't even realize that was what you were saying." I love L, he's a wonderful therapist. What he said made me realize what I suspected: A doesn't even realize it; he is speaking only from his own experience. That's good to know, but it may make me judge his teaching efforts differently. I hope this isn't truly the case.

Thursday, I took S to the airport and he flew off to NYC for forever (not really, he's back on September 20th, driving back from Indiana in the car his parents are giving him). I'm going to NYC on the 9th and his rock opera (I guess that's what it's called) Lizzie Borden opens on the 10th, and I'm gonna get to see it!

I didn't do a lot else on Thursday or Friday. I had a barometric pressure headache (I don't know if that's a clinical term or my own); I get them sometimes when rain is coming. It feels like a hangover and/or a minor migraine. Sometimes the migraines get full-blown, but this one didn't. I felt feverish. And then I realized that my window unit was frozen over and blowing outside air in, and it was in the triple-digits! The rain came at some point in the afternoon, and amazingly, the headache all but disappeared.

I was thinking about going to see a movie on Thursday evening, but the a/c episode butted into my schedule. The foam over the cooling intake part of the a/c had frozen to the iced over ribs, and in trying to remove it, I pulled a hole shaped like Africa about 2 x 3" big. So I was thinking I needed to get a new one of those. I also needed to go to the store for candies, and it was almost time for the stores to close. I carried the foam thing to Home Depot, and they didn't have anything like it! Then I went to Target (because I had to go there for the candies anyway) and carried the muddy foam thing in with me in case they had one. They did not.

I needed the candies - mini Snickers, Twix, 3 Musketeers, etc. - for a Christmas Tree I was making for T's surprise birthday party (with a Christmas theme!) on Friday evening. I popped popcorn on Wednesday and it sat in my room getting stale, which I eventually told myself I intended. Friday morning I strung two strands (12 feet maybe) of popcorn and mini candies. It was quite lovely. The tree I got last weekend at a garage sale; it's a 4-foot tall fiber optic tree, so it didn't need lights. S&E put up other Christmassy decorations and the three of us made collage cards for T. I wish I had taken a picture of mine.

C had no real plan for getting T to the theater after their show at the Hideout. They were heading to East Side Pies, she thought, then somebody in the car said, "Let's go to the theater and drop off these fliers." T is easygoing, she said, "Sure." She was the one with the key at the door; I stood peeking out of the door curtain after we got the text. I saw her arriving, shushed everyone. The door was unlocked, so when she turned her key in the door, she thought it had finally happened, they had gotten broken into. She had a quick succession of dreadful thoughts - We don't have insurance; they took all our shit! - and she turned to run away, not wanting to go inside in case the bad guys were still in there. C grabbed her and pushed her into the room; she stumbled onto the stage and fell laughing. It was the best party she's had in years.

Last night I saw my friend M at Cafe Caffeine doing a monologue (with several other good storytellers) on the theme of "Clerks." M's bit was very funny, as was another guy, who read a story about a fat kid (him) trying to slide a 64-ounce Coke across a movie theater countertop Western movie style, only to hurl it onto its side sending sticky liquid flying on everyone in the lobby except him. I had tears flowing!

After that, I went to S's regular hangout, the Chain Drive. I've gone there a few times, but I'm not much of a bar person, and the times I've gone haven't been with S, and I've had some social anxiety issues there. But I got a notion to text S's friend G and see if he would be there. That was where S met G, I'm pretty sure. He indeed was going and we met up after the show. It was nice getting to know him a little better, as well as D, his ex-boyfriend best friend, who showed up. A weird thing happened, though. There was an attractive guy possibly looking at me, "cruising me," as it were. (He could have been cruising G, but I'm pretty sure we were making eye contact.) G was content to just sit there and chat with me, and I was trying to decide if it was rude to excuse myself to talk to a stranger. I'm pretty sure I know the answer to that. I don't think he would have considered it rude. D did that very thing when he showed up and the three of us were talking.

The young man went inside and back out a few times, and when G, D and I were talking, I was thinking to myself that that would be a good time to excuse myself and make my feeble attempts. But I couldn't figure out the wording for it. So I just became anxious and eventually had to leave. I did do one "Fruit Loop" as D called it (a walk around the square bar with the seating lining the walls opposite it). It was during my Fruit Loop that I realized my potential suitor had left, so when I returned to G and D, I told them that I had decided to do a "Fruity Pebbles" and "rock out!" (Weird, I know.)

Today was Sunday. I started working on some minor revisions to my manuscript - woo-hoo! At 5 I had book club at BookPeople, this month discussing J. M. Coetzee's Nobel Prize winning novel, Disgrace (Wow.), but I left the house at 2 and stopped by P.Terry's for a #5 and a double-chocolate shake. That was good, of course, the book club was good. After that I met up with M at Spiderhouse to hang out before HomoScope, the film party that was going on at the place next to there. There were a lot of really weird but pretty interesting films. I saw a number of people I knew and so felt socially relaxed. I snuck out in the middle of the after party right after telling someone I wasn't going home, that I was just going to my truck, which was the truth, because I was thinking I would roll a cigarette and go back to the party and join them where they were all smoking cigarettes, but I'm not much of a social smoker, I have realized. I like to smoke alone. That's a good thing and a bad thing. Good because if I'm busy I smoke less. (I guess that's what I'm supposed to say; I actually like smoking.) But if I'm lonely I smoke more. (Oh, that's not really true. I've smoked three or four a day for the past couple of days - two or three more than my usual daily intake - and I'm feeling indulgent.) When I got to my truck, I decided I did want to come home. It feels good to be home, particularly when I left a party feeling good and brought that feeling with me as opposed to the opposite.

monkey mind

I meditated today. First time since Paris. What was that, March? Thoughts of C came up - the reason for quitting (or one of the reasons) - but it was a short sit, 15 minutes, and I think I need it.

Since I finished the novel, I've been wandering around feeling like a newly retired old man. And yesterday I felt kind of down. I don't know if that's the depression a couple of people have asked me if I've been experiencing because of the completion of the book.

I don't really feel complete. I guess I'm a little anxious about the next part. There's a lot of rejection to ready myself for. I had this idea yesterday that I should just self-publish the book and not worry about working so hard to get a publisher interested in the work. But I told S and he seemed to think it an odd choice. He said I would have to do the "business" side of it (the part I told him I wanted to avoid) if I self-published in order to get people to know about the book. My point was I didn't care. I spent four years writing the book, not thinking about publishing deals, not thinking about the what-ifs of fame and fortune. And I don't really feel like getting into that world now.

But I guess I really don't want to just put it in the closet and forget about it. I don't guess. Part of me does. Another part of me really just wants people to read it. That was the reason for the idea of self-publishing. Spend my own money, set my own price; give it to people to read, just to get them to read it. If something happens with it in some big way (the odds are against it), so be it, it'll be there anyway.

There's also the idea of some publisher coming along and saying they like it and then telling me I have to change this, that and everything else. I guess if it came with a big check (or even a medium one) and I didn't have to do my regular job for a while, and I could just go off to some cabin somewhere, or a studio apartment in a big city somewhere, it wouldn't be so bad. But I've opened myself up to S and M (no pun intended), two good friends who are the first readers with a critical eye. And no money involved. So here goes.

I've been uploading chapters onto my august chagrin blog, which feels good. And I've been putzing with the blog page (adding books that I read while writing the novel and/or books that are mentioned in the chapters; adding a section of links to songs, sort of a soundtrack to the story, if you will). That's what feels a lot like being retired, all this putzing.

I haven't been sleeping well. Or I should say I sleep okay, but I have a hard time getting to sleep nights. I've been staying up until 2:3o, 3:00, even later some nights. I'm exhausted, but then I lie down and all the thoughts kick in. It's only been a week. I guess I need some time to enjoy the achievement. S is in his last week of school, so I feel like I'm all alone waiting for him to have his achievement so we can celebrate together.

I rearranged my bedroom a little bit. That seemed like a good thing to do. I moved the desk from right beside the bed to the opposite wall, and pulled the meditation cushion out of the closet and put it there so I could stumble to it first thing in the morning and/or perhaps last thing of the day. I did that Tuesday morning, and this morning, I finally sat on the cushion and did a little meditation.

oh, good lord!

oh, shit! I wrote a book! I've been stumbling around all day in a stupor. I was up until 3:00 AM and got up around 11. I went to the blue star for the best pancakes in town and to do a second draft of the epilogue.

I also had "cheese grits." they used to be really good, really cheesy, kind of down home cheesy, and today they tasted like garlic and salt. not altogether bad, but it's 8:00 PM and I'm still thirsty.

I didn't work on the epilogue. I read through the versions I have (so I guess that's considered work), but the people around me were more interesting, and I was too interesting to them, sitting there looking the way I do (somewhat shabby compared to the others), so I ate and listened, and looked.

maybe I'm just being paranoid, maybe they weren't looking at me at all. I guess I feel like they should be looking at me, 'cause I wrote a fucking novel!

I threfted {sic}, found a cool cap and another pair of khakis which were supposed to be short-makin's for S, but they didn't fit him, so I traded him for a pair of cutoffs I've been meaning to sew the inseam on, but he didn't seem to mind them the way they are. In fact, his words: "They're perfect."

After that I picked up the produce, and I'm now stuck on remembering if I went anywhere directly after that or if I came home after that. --well, more recently, I got high and masturbated, so I'm in a special way with myself right now. that and the fact that I printed out my 113,363 words today, then copied them four times. It cost me $100. It felt like money well-spent.

I smoked a cigarette in the truck with the windows open. the air was dry but the 100°+ sun was beaming down strong on me. my b.o. smells different, rare, strong; skunky. I like it. I think it's the chemistry with the pheromones in it that makes it smell that way and/or makes me react that way to it. sexy...

oh, I smell different in different situations, don't you? (And aren't I a witty writer!)

I also went to the grocery store to return some antifungal lotion I inadvertently bought. I picked up a video of a popular standup who I won't name because it would date this entry (and I haven't watched it so I don't know if it's good yet), stopped for half a dozen plain glazed donuts from the nice Indian man at Mrs. Johnson's (who was Mrs. Johnson?). He told me the plain glazed weren't hot, suggested a variety of cake donuts they have - which were hot - and I hemmed and hawed and said okay, and he gave me four plain glazed in the box with the half dozen cake, "for the microwave."

S made breakfast tacos for dinner, I had a beer with mine. He had schoolwork so I got high, got inspired to write down "Holy Shit! I wrote a book!" or something like that (before the shower and video), and I'm sure it all sounded a lot better in my head.

And here I am.

ghostest with the mostest

I should be working, transcribing, paying the bills. But I'm too excited. I couldn't sleep last night, and I think I was visited by a ghost. That's not the reason for the excitement - just another of the "side effects" of it, I guess, so I'll write about it first.

Just as I was falling asleep, I was dreaming of two necklaces, beads - like prayer beads - hanging from under a staircase. I was reaching and at the same time a woman was coming up from the other side of the stairs reaching for the necklaces. Our hands reached them at the same time; they fell to the ground. I was awakened by the distinct sound of something falling in the far corner of my room, maybe my earbuds, I thought. I had been trying to go to sleep for awhile, but had lots of thoughts in my head, thoughts about my performance earlier that evening, thoughts about chapter 29, which I'm slowly but surely piecing together; I turned on the bedside lamp several times to write things down; I thought perhaps the earbuds plugged into my laptop might have been bumped.

I'm not often spooked (although that picture gave me a chill when I first found it!). I didn't turn on the light to check or anything. I just continued my journey toward sleep. It wasn't coming easy, but the time before when I had fallen asleep (before the falling beads woke me), I was going through the six sections of chapter 29 in my head:

1. The Black Man rises from the ashes.
2. August & Lorax on a plane to Houston.
3. Paul meets the Black Man.
4. August & Lorax decide to drive directly to his boyhood home.
5. Dar arrives home late from work; dinner is burned; Paul says the Black Man is upstairs with the children; she ignores him because he is drunk as always.
6. August & Lorax arrive at the smoldering remains of the house.

And then there was the tapping of the cat door in the window on the other side of my bed. I'm gonna fix that right now... (Done.) The cat door is unused now, since Timmy's passing. I have a curtain pulled in front of it, but it has a little tab to keep unwanted guests from entering. When the wind blows, it taps. I didn't think it was a ghost, actually, but it woke me up. But now it's fixed, I think - I stuck an eraser between the door and the tab - if it taps when I go to bed tonight, I will think it's a ghost!

I started working on going back to sleep again, then there was a distinct, single knock on my bedroom door. That's when I decided a ghost was in the house. I didn't feel afraid. I was just a tad annoyed that I was being kept awake, as much by the ghost as by the pot I'd smoked when I got home from the performance, and by chapter 29, which seemed to be unfolding because of the pot.

But anyway, I was excited and unable to sleep mostly because of the improv performance I did. C+T are out of town on tour, as are several of the students who were invited to perform, and it ended up being just me, L and K. It was at the Hideout, the scene of the crime, as it were, the place where I did my first, dismal improv show, that 2 a.m. embarrassment a month or so ago.

Well, I don't have words to describe the show without a boring play-by-play (as best as I can recall) description of it. But we were well connected. It was impressive. S and P1 were there, and they loved it. It was really great fun. And I keep thinking back on the few moments when P1, S and I were leaving, walking down the sidewalk toward her car behind a foursome, one of whom (a cute young man who was obviously in the audience) kept looking back at me and grinning real big. I guess that's what it's really all about!

The other bit of excitement is that, except for chapter 29 and a little bit of tidying up, I am done with august chagrin! I have begun posting the chapters on the august chagrin blog in order. I had previously been posting them in chronological order, but took everything off and put chapter one up. Chapter two will appear on Friday, and chapter three the following Monday. That's the plan. I've already got several of them scheduled to appear on the upcoming Mondays and Fridays. There's a link to the novel blog on the upper righthand corner of this blog.

Okay, I really should do some work now.

news flash

There is movement outside my window. A couple of days ago, a teal Pontiac pulled up the driveway. The driver was H, a Mexican guy who's been working at the bar that J built. He cleans the entire bar every morning, and used to be the barback, but the bartender/manager said he really needs somebody who speaks English, so they found somebody and J put H to work on the container house - our house! Yay. He met with J that first day, and then yesterday he was back, trimming trees and moving a beam from near the current house (M&J's house where S and I currently reside) to the top of the two containers - essentially S's room and mine - that have been sitting over there since early this year, when the work was halted shortly after beginning because of a drying up of resources. S and I weren't too upset about it because we've had some financial woes of our own of late and aren't paying rent as long as we're in the house.

That's the big thing. After a while of waiting, and being able to see that nothing was happening outside my window on that side of the yard, I wasn't sure it was ever gonna happen. Well, that's not true, I knew it would happen eventually, but I didn't know when "eventually" would be, months or years...

Another thing is that I've been really doing a lot of writing on august chagrin. I feel really focused, and haven't been socializing much at all (which has its disadvantages and disappointments), but the more I spend focused time on the book, the more it comes, and that seems like the right thing to be doing. I've got a lot more chapters completed than are on the august chagrin blog, but I'm trying to put up a chapter a week at least.

But that's been a little more difficult lately because work has been picking up. Because of the financial crisis on Wall Street, I'm not allowed to work more than 40 hours a week (used to be we could work as much as we could), but there hadn't been enough work to do 40 hours until a couple of months ago, and now it's pretty steadily coming. I also got an email from the boss yesterday telling me where the company stands financially and that he can't give us back the 25% cut we got when the crisis hit hard, but I feel confident that he will do it as soon as possible - it's pretty impressive to me that he has become so open about the finances of the company; that feels honest. I figured out early on that I would have to work 40 hours to make the same amount of money as I was making in 30 hours a week - which had become my comfort zone. I'm hoping now that I've figured out a way to get to 40 on a regular basis, I'll be able to continue it after our 25% is reinstated, and therefore get out of debt sooner than later.

That's going well, the debt thing. It has a lot to do with having no social life, just spending my time working and writing. I've let down a couple of friends, but after what happened while I was Paris long distance with C here in Austin - the friendship that crumbled - I took stock of my friendships and of Friendship in general, and there just isn't enough of me to go around right now. That sounds harsh, but I feel like my primary friendships have to offer me something, not just take from me. And not to say that the friends who've recently gone by the wayside were taking from me physically - a little bit but not so much the actual physical time required to maintain the relationship - but I mean more on the emotional plane.

Besides work and writing, there is improv. Which is more like therapy than a social life. And it's been difficult of late. Last Friday night, I was in my first group show, but was on a strange stage with quite a number of people I had never met, we hadn't had one rehearsal as a group, there wasn't a strong leader in our group, and the performance was at TWO A.M.!!! I freaked out. It was something like stage fright, I guess. I spent the hour onstage standing and sitting on the sidelines hoping nobody would call me out onstage with them, and when they did (they did!) I felt like I had nothing to offer. It was awful. I felt like shit on my way home (at 3:15 a.m.); I didn't say anything to anybody, just left. The next day I cried a little. I think my biggest fear is that I'll have to come to terms with the fact that I'm not able to be onstage in front of people again, and since I really want that, it would be something I would have to let go of.

It's like aging.

But there were so many problem factors in that show so I'm cutting myself a lot of slack and gearing up for the next group show, which will be this coming Tuesday. We have one, maybe two rehearsals planned, T&C will be part of the show, and all the other people will be folks I've been taking classes with for quite a while.

the good kind

P1 says I'm crazy. She means it in a good way. I've been cranking out a couple of chapters a week for the past few weeks. It's not like I'm writing them from scratch, not most of them, but the work is real and it feels good.

Whenever I have a new chapter done, I read it to P1. It is important to me to hear what I've written, to make sure it sounds the way I want it to sound. P1 says she loves hearing it. It works out for both of us.

Other than writing, working, and improv, I haven't been doing much of anything. I spend a little bit of time with S around the house - having a meal, watching 30Rock (we're obsessed - it's very good; we're about halfway through the first season) or a Netflix offering - but he's busy with school and studying most of the time, so we don't really spend all that much time together.

A emails me occasionally, trying to get me to make plans with her; LR texts me once in a while telling me it's been too long, that she needs to see me. I feel like I should respond to them - and have, but my excuses sound pretty lame anymore. There are people in my life who are good about ignoring people. I wish I could be more like them, less guilt-ridden over my desire to keep doing what I'm doing right now and not get caught up in the other stuff. It's working for me, I don't want to change it.

I'm being very productive; it seems more and more likely that I will be able to finish this novel by my birthday this year. I'm usually so easily distracted because of my gregarious nature; I want to be around people, want to hang. But if I go off and do this and do that, I'm not writing. I like hanging out with the people in improv because they are from wildly diverse backgrounds and because they and the improv work itself is helping to keep the creative juices in me flowing.

It's also therapeutic. I've said that before; I'll say it again. Improv is therapeutic.

I'm anxious to start work on chapter 16 (having just read chapters 2 & 9 to P1 last night). I looked over 16 the other day, and as with others that came before it, I see a clear path; I recognize what needs to happen in the chapter, what can go away. It's thrilling.

But I also don't want to start up on it and get interrupted with work - which, until I hit the 40-hour mark in the week, is priority - so I'm adding entries from my 2004 diary, scheduled to appear every three days (so that I can get caught up in writing and not feel bad about not updating my blog for a while), as well as adding chapters to the august chagrin blog.

The good new is, I'm at the 33.5 mark with work this week (which runs Thursday-Wednesday), so it's likely I'll be able to take most of Wednesday off, like I did last week, and will possibly have another chapter to read to P1 by the end of the weekend. Crazy!

sincerely, me

I've been getting lots of emails in my spam box from me. Right now, there are 14 spam messages, and six of them are from me.

The subject lines:

• Reply right after reading
• When did you come?
• Interested in freelance?
• Know any places for dinner?
• Mike caught with weed
• Once more to all

Which leads me to the conclusion that I don't know myself very well at all.

I do know this: I've been writing like a motherfucker; it has been exciting. I've cranked out three chapters in the last week - S has been out of town; rewrites, but major rewrites for the most part.

I've added a section to this blog connecting to my chapters as I've finished them and gotten around to uploading them (I've actually completed seven but only have three up on the page so far).

Nobody has looked at them though. One friend in a foreign country asked what the name of my novel was (she didn't know I was writing one) and I told her, and sent her a link to the novel blog page, and she wrote back: "Great title. But I'll wait till it's done." I guess everybody feels that way. S has been reading in, and listening to me read it from the beginning, because he is kind of my first editor. I've also been reading it to P1, and she seems to enjoys the process. Could be because she just wants to support me.

I guess it doesn't really matter if anybody reads it now or not - or if they ever read it. I would like to think that people will read it, that people might actually get excited about it. But that's not my reason for writing it. It's a process of purging my past, and being creative. It's my therapy.

coke adds life or something other than that

I'm trying to get my mind around chapter 04. I've finished reading my research book (Edmund White's States of Desire) and I know where I want to go with this chapter, but the inspiration isn't coming. It'll come, I know it will, but there's always a feeling of frustration waiting for it.

In this chapter, "Hell's Kitchen," Randy is thinking back over his relationship with Charles Hatch, the first person he met when he arrived in New York City. Charles dies of an brain aneurysm while coked up having sex with a man much younger than him (he is 63 at death).

At death, Randy is upset with Charles because Charles has become a financial supporter of Randy's friend August Collins (who becomes the performance artist "august chagrin" for whom the novel is named). Randy met August on New Year's Eve 1989, they had a brief relationship, during which time, Randy asked for Charles' assistance with August's career - getting him a director, rehearsal space and performance opportunities. After August's career is underway, Randy and August have a falling out, and Randy wants Charles to stop funding August's career, but Charles refuses. That is the source of Randy's unhappiness.

Randy believes Charles changed, but realizes, after death, that he was the one who changed. He thinks back on his arrival in New York City in a rental car, his one night in a hostel and the ad for a job he found on the hostel bulletin board (a weekly newspaper focused on the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood where Charles lives called The Kitchen Sink). Charles takes Randy under his wing, first as a "personal assistant," and at the end of the summer, when the newspaper begins publishing, as its listings editor; Charles also provides Randy with an apartment in an old tenement building his family owns (the Hatch fortune is from real estate).

Randy flashes back on what precipitated his arrival in New York: a year at the University of Florida, in which his best friend Christian betrays him. The two of them had plans to move to New York to become famous playwright (Randy) and actor (Christian). Randy rents a car because he is afraid of flying, after his round trip to Las Vegas the summer after high school with his neighbor friend Diamond White, which was fraught with turbulence, literally and figuratively.

Chapter 04 is written after Charles' death in 1990, but the bulk of it takes place in 1982. It is difficult figuring out how to make that work.

Randy and Charles had sex shortly after he arrived and moved out of the hostel and into Charles' loft, but the sex is more for Randy's "education;" Charles readily and constantly tells Randy that he isn't his type. Unlike Charles' other numerous sex partners (muscle men in their mid-twenties) though, Randy and Charles maintain their friendship. Randy recognizes that Charles is like a father to him, though he is three times older than Randy when they meet.

The night Randy moved into his apartment, a stray cat splattered with tar comes to his fifth floor window. He spends most of his first summer in New York at home watching TV and hanging out with the cat whom he named Ahoy, not even realizing that he missed Gay Pride Weekend (Charles is on Fire Island) until he sees coverage of it on the local news.

That seems like a kind of lame place to end the story, but I haven't even figured out how to get to this point dramatically. Charles is a difficult character to write. I have several versions of him, all very different. Mostly I see him as a very tall, thin, healthy but insecure man who believes sex won't kill him because he is a top. He is referring to AIDS, which is a bigger and bigger issue in New York City from 1982 when Randy arrives.

In the end, sex does kill Charles, in a sense, because all of the cocaine he snorts is in order to keep up with the young men he is fucking.

hotne$$

I believe I am having an identity crisis. I feel slightly afloat, unmoored. It is not a completely bad feeling, just awkward. I'm used to that. I haven't gone to yoga in over two weeks. I was supposed to have a therapy session tomorrow (I've been going once a month), but I canceled it. All to do with money. I kind of miss the yoga, but I really miss the therapy, even though I won't have missed a session until tomorrow. I feel the need to tell someone in The Profession that I'm having an identity crisis. Well, not someone, him, my Therapist. He's good. I like him. I was afraid that if I quit going to yoga and therapy, it would be hard to make it back. But I long for both of them.

Financially, I feel okay. Things are tight, but for once in my life I'm handling things pretty well. Except for the $28 I spent on two groovy 1950s chairs from Goodwill on Friday, I think it was. Retail therapy. They're in very good shape. I put them on the front porch.

Today I moved the logs to the side and the trunk to the front of the porch next to the (for now) unused chimenea. We now have seating for six out there. I don't know if there are six people I would want to be around at the same time. Not right now. I have been feeling very anti-social lately. I enjoy my friendship with S, and my other housemates are easy enough to get along with, though I don't spend a lot of time with them - I don't think I've ever sat on the front porch with them. P1 is a good friend; I feel close to her. She makes time to come over and sit on the front porch with me.

Last night, I had a performance with M, her one-woman show in the Ladies Are Funny Festival (LAFF). It's the same show I did with M several months ago as part of the FuseBox Festival. I screwed up the last line of my song (and therefore the grand finale of the show) that time and had a lot of anxiety about it happening again, even though I never missed the last line while rehearsing the past couple of weeks at home.

Plus I just didn't feel like doing it. But I did. And I didn't screw up the last line, but nobody noticed anyway because they were clapping for M through the song. I was just glad to be done, glad the stress was over. As soon as the applause ended, I unplugged my keyboard, walked offstage and out the backstage exit, to my truck and home.

Nobody was here. It was 8:45 pm on a Saturday night and I had nothing to do. Oh well. I read.

I'm reading Edmund White's States of Desire, the whole thing. It's a good read, published in 1980, and so written right before the AIDS pandemic. It is research, inspiration really, for my novel. I'm trying to get a handle on a character who speaks more eloquently than I, who is more educated, more sophisticated, more wealthy, more gay. Sitting on the front porch last night, I wrote this:

Charles talked incessantly using words I didn't know the meanings of, but which he used so convincingly that whenever he asked if I knew what he meant, I invariably said, "Yes," and was able to respond in some (albeit brief) way that kept the conversation going. The cocaine helped.

I didn't become addicted to coke because I couldn't afford it, but whenever it was offered I partook. Somehow our talk found us in bed together, having sex, not because Charles was attracted to me - as he said numerous times during the act - but rather to "catch me up," as he put it, on all I had missed in my eighteen years. My boyhood crush on Rich White, who fucked me without regard, and my "adult" experience with the famous drag queen in Las Vegas were inconsequential, according to Charles, who was three times older than me, and admittedly a very good lover.

His tastes were more toward buff Chelsea Boys, whom Charles met at the gym (where he regularly went to keep himself physically and mentally youthful), and it was almost a relief when I was set free to pursue my own sexual interests after living in his guest room for a month-and-a-half.

I myself feel inadequate much of the time. When I read Edmund White - who is an intellectual elitist - I have waves of embarrassment thinking of people reading my writing, because, like Randy Reardon, I've always felt that if I surrounded myself with people who were smarter than me I would naturally soak up some of their intelligence. But most of the time I just feel inadequate.

One place where I don't feel inadequate (most of the time) is in my improv troupe HOTNE$$ IN A PO$E, which is CG and me. We had our first rehearsal with T today. I've already learned so much in just an hour-and-a-half (besides all the other hours of class I take every week, because they're free for the most part). Here's a rundown of the scenes we did/characters I played (mostly for my own edification):

• silent scene; me eating, elaborate process of opening basket, taking out food/drink; CG arrives, offers me a flower; I pack up basket, set it down, take flower, say thanks, drop it to the ground, pick up basket, repeat elaborate process. This happens three times; third time, I eat the flower. It went on from there, but T said that should have been the edit.
• I'm father in mother's dress; daughter arrives... The scene went awry because I showed shame for being in the dress instead of it being normal or fun... (T's note: MAKE THE PLAYFUL CHOICE).
• I'm a happy bride (absurd) who wants a wedding dress made of clovers, want to be married in a barn by a crow; CG is the wedding store worker who tries to play it straight but falters a little.
• I'm crying against the wall. CG arrives, says "Mr. Smith, you have to come down; we have to do your taxes." This scene went on too long (T: need to recognize natural edit) but there were some fun things happening. I had spent all of the company money turning my office into a castle; I was up in a tower with a Rapunzel wig and dress; I had long curly fingernails and couldn't sign the company over to CG's character...
• Quails. I had pet quails in the house; CG said we had to eat them. The scene turned into a Yes-I-am/No-I'm-not scene, got stuck.
• Two characters folding laundry. CG: Your brother's coming home today. Me: He was denied parole; what happened? CG: He's coming home; you have to move out of his bedroom. Me: But he killed all those people... The scene turned dark and (worse) mundane. (T: MAKE THE MORE PLAYFUL CHOICE.)
• I played a gay man (ha) feeding a girlfriend odd foods he's prepared in hopes of luring a mate: Quail that I caught in the park with a butterfly net (but couldn't figure out how to get the "claws" off so I tucked them under), grated sponge that "acts (and looks) like rice" (!), gravy made from mold, biscuits made from powdered cow hooves, alcoholic beverage made from fermented olive juice. (Pretty good scene with me doing most of the talking, CG responding physically.)
• Housewife on speed (me) after husband's death, rearranging petunias, drinking champagne, in love with her doctor. CG played the daughter who couldn't get a word in edgewise. Tiring scene for me, but funny.
• Transaction Scene (T: Sweet!) - I'm the moving man, ask for payment. CG: Checkbook is in one of the boxes. The scene was, according to Tami, well-paced at keeping the transaction from being completed, which you don't want to happen in a transaction scene.
  

no, really, i'm okay

I found an hour's worth of work to do this morning. Not much coming in these days. It's the annual slow period for satellite workers while the New York City home office prints out graphs, binds them, and sends them to clients. Not many phone calls being made, not many interviews, not much call for transcribing.

The fact that I got a 25% pay cut a month or so ago makes it worse; the fact that, along with that, my cushy minimum 20 hours a week also disappeared makes it horrible.

Fortunately, I'm not paying rent right now.

I canceled therapy. I stopped going to yoga. I canceled my monthly massage club membership (which admittedly was a weird thing to have anyway). I'm down to the bare bones. Watching my lap top for incoming transcription work while working on my novel on the desktop Apple behind it. It could be a lot worse.

Things are going well with august chagrin. I finished chapter 31, "Christian Wall" and am now working on chapter 4, "Hell's Kitchen" (which chronologically comes after chapter 31). Christian Wall was a brand new write; Hell's Kitchen is just a rewrite, but it's really being rewritten; the structure of the story remains, but the characters are being changed.

S checked out a book from the library for me that he read 25 years ago, Edmund White's States of Desire. He thought the section on Houston would be useful, and it may well be when I get to the section in my novel that deals with Houston. Right now my main character has just moved from Florida to New York City. The chapter in Mr. White's book on New York is amazing, perfect, basically a blueprint for the character I had already started writing, the Manhattanite Charles Hatch, a wealthy homosexual who (sort of) befriends Randy almost from the moment he arrives, gives him a job, an apartment, fucks him, all the things Randy really needs after what precipitated his hasty departure from Florida (chapter 31).

Right now, my longhand notebook is a mess of beginnings, endings and middles, and even reminder notes for the next two chapters in this section, chapter 11, "Anita Cox," and chapter 18, "August Collins." This is the most exciting part of the work to me.

just shoot me

Wednesday nights are the improv jam, or the "shootaround," as it's called sometimes. I don't know where that term comes from, but people talk about it like it's famously familiar, so I go along with it.

I went first to see Neal Medlyn at the Blue Theater in the Fusebox 2009 Festival doing a show based on Beyonce's live album from 2007 (I believe it was). I wouldn't have gone (not a Beyonce fan, believe it or not), except M bought me a ticket. I took her with me last year when Neal did a show based on Lionel Richie's most famous album; M had seen the concert that accompanied that album, so it was great fun for her, and even though I was never that big a fan of LR's (bigger than Beyonce, though, of course), it was a much better show because there was so much more to it; there was a storyline woven into the songs and great stage props - I will never forget him giving head to a unicorn until it ejaculated! There was nothing like that last night, just lots of spandex outfits and a couple of backup dancers (who were pretty phenomenal, by the way). The first time I saw Neal Medlyn was the year before last. He's a performance artist, and I went to get inspiration for the title character in my novel, august chagrin (himself a performance artist).

ANYway... I walked into the improv theater and was pushed onto the stage in the middle of a scene that was already happening. This is a funny idea/rule #1 of 2 they have at the jams, if you show up late, you have to go onstage immediately (rule #2 is if you have to leave early, you have exit via some sort of action onstage). Three of the guys from my level one class at one of the other improv theaters in town - the one which fired C&T who run this one - were at the jam; one of them ushered me onstage, yelling, "Push him! Push him!" Apparently, I was a girl, because when I finally got around to pushing the other character onstage, other characters laughed and said, "Beat up by a girl!"

That was okay, but the jam seemed to devolve into discomfort for me, and that's what I'm trying to figure out here. Two characters were about to hug - they were being played by two men, but I'm not sure they were playing men - when an older guy (older than me) jumped onstage and said, in some weird character choice, "We're banning all homosexual content from the rest of the night." It was a really odd choice, breaking many of the "rules of regular improv play." I know that many of my friends, upon hearing this complaint, would assume that my problem was with the anti-gayness of the moment, and that might have been a part of it, but more so it was a feeling of ABSOLUTELY NO CHEMISTRY with these people. I was onstage with C a couple of times, and the scenes felt difficult; I took my first level one class from him and didn't think he was a very good teacher (for me) and the lack of connection I have for him seems to continue onstage. I also feel a bit clunky when I'm onstage with T, but I think that is a feeling of intimidation because I have so much respect for her as a teacher and a performer. (C is a very good performer, too, and when C&T play together, it is awe-inspiring.)

So I had to force myself onstage every time I went. Once in a while, I got a laugh. But mostly I felt like spiderwebby wheels were slowly turning in my head. I think that had something to do with the fact that there were five or six people whom I'd never met sitting in the room (players are "supposed" to remain standing) who would jump in with odd choices, like the homosexual ban idea.

In moments like that I think to myself I could never actually do this in front of an audience, this improv thing. Sometimes the laughs I caused (or helped cause) made me feel like the eighth grader who got laughed at and called names. When I'm playing with CG (HOTNE$$ IN A PO$E), on the other hand, it is joyful for everyone. But she wasn't there last night. I'm not saying I quit, I'm just saying this is an interesting feeling that I want to note; this awkwardness is a big reason I'm doing improv. Getting over it is the goal.

shit or get off the pot

Two nights ago, I had a big cup of Smooth Move tea in the late evening as I was working on the novel. I wasn't particularly constipated, but had been feeling a bit bloated for a few days, hadn't felt like I was completely evacuating, and felt hungry all the time, hungry for junk food, cookies, potato chips, etc. I figured I would have a nice big BM the next morning and feel all better. But I didn't. I had soft stools all day long, but nothing that felt complete.

Last night, I made my way to the nearby coffee shop to work on chapter 31, having just read the first seven pages of it to S and having gotten some things to work on. I really wanted a cookie, but they only had two oatmeal cookies left, so I had a beer instead. Oh, and I had a cigarette. I had a cigarette there last Saturday when I went to work on the novel, and for some reason my creative mind responds well to that drug, so I did it again. Again, I was rewarded.

I was there for a couple of hours, churning away at the chapter, feeling good about what was happening with it. Then the woman at the table next to me had a piece of pecan pie. It looked so good... And, I knew that she had the last piece from the previous pie and there was now a whole, fresher pie on the baked goods shelf. So I went for it.

And I couldn't have a piece of pecan pie without coffee. So I got a small cup and pumped it full of decaf.

It was getting close to closing time, the students were shutting their laptops and leaving me in a bigger and bigger space. I was right at the end of the section I was working on, the last paragraph in fact, and really wanted to get it down while I was flowing from the caffeine, nicotine and sugar. But then there was a rumble in my stomach. Like a hunger rumble, but quite the opposite. I hated to take a shit in the bathroom at the end of the night, fearing that the nice woman behind the counter would need to get in there as part of her closing process. And shitting in public carries a certain amount of embarrassment with it.

I gathered up my notebooks, my water bottle and my dirty dishes, deposited the dishes in the bus tub up front then passed the restroom, twisted the knob, but it was locked, so I headed out the front door, to the truck to roll another cigarette. The rumbling had subsided; I decided I could hold it until I got home, until I finished that paragraph with the aid of one more cigarette.

No sooner had I lit the cigarette, opened the notebook and clicked the pen than the rumbling came again, and this time it was accompanied by a dropping feeling, as if my clenched intestines had just relaxed, top to bottom, and everything was at the bottom of my torso. I broke a slight sweat as I worked my sphincter muscle to keep myself from shitting in my pants. I gathered up my stuff and walked to the truck, humming a pained song to myself, telling myself that I wouldn't shit my pants, people don't really shit their pants, adults don't shit there pants.

But then I remembered this from Margaret Cho's "Revolution" concert:



But I didn't shit my pants. I was able to keep my ass clenched until I got home, though I did strengthen my stomach muscles. Fortunately no one was awake when I got home so I didn't have to make nice or even say anything; I went right to the bathroom and was there for a good 15 minutes shitting and shitting and shitting.

And then, for the rest of the night, my stomach made weird sounds, like distant thunder. I slept in two- and three-hour increments, and every time I woke up - to pee - the sounds were still going on. And I never got that last paragraph written, but I'm gonna work on it now.

near miss

Last night was the improv jam. It's not a class; every Wednesday anybody and everybody from whatever level of improv they've reached (some haven't even taken one class) get together and "play." I'm starting to feel a little more comfortable in the big group without certain people like CG, the woman with whom I took level one and am taking level two (but she's been absent with health and family problems for several weeks, and I was out of town a couple of classes before that).

I took my nine ideas with me that I wrote down in my improv notebook - Romantic / Despair / Fight / Joy / Horse / Madness etc. - and that was useful; I didn't get through all of them, but it was a good springboard for getting me onstage. I still felt clunky some of the time, but I'm starting to find my improv stage legs.

After the jam most of us stood outside, some smoking cigarettes or drinking beers. T - the Indian dude I took level one with but who stayed on at the other theater after the split - asked what I've been up to. I told him I've been writing and doing improv mostly. A, another guy from our level one class who I don't think is all that good a performer and/but who thinks pretty highly of himself (it seems) - and, more importantly, doesn't seem too interested in me! - was standing next to T when we starting talking. T asked what I write and I told him I'm working on novel. He moved closer; A moved away.

There was a moment, as there often is in my life when talking with relative strangers, where sexuality comes up. I don't know why I'm not comfortable with it. (Well, I do know why, but I don't know why I haven't gotten over the discomfort in my life - but I'm working on it, and improv is helping.) T asked what the novel is about. I could see my mind working around Randy Reardon, the main character, his sickness - AIDS, the tell-all - and stumbled at that point of the revelation and then just went for it, just let it out, spilled the beans. And T didn't freak out or anything! Not that I really thought he would, but that's what goes through my head.

He told me he's taking a creative writing class this semester, we talked about his writing some and he said that most of the other kids don't like what he writes. I said, "Fuck them! It's not about them!" He described a story he recently wrote. It sounded a bit all over the place; he admitted that was the case, said he has a hard time sticking with one storyline. It's a bit like improv, I think, and I told him so; just going with what comes and not editing. I told him about Natalie Goldberg's book, Writing Down the Bones, which I recommended to him, and might even purchase for him when I'm feeling a little more flush (and, sadly, when looking for the link to her book, I discovered that I just missed a rare visit by Natalie Goldberg to my town).

Also, besides the fear of sexuality talk is my fear of intellectuality talk. T is a computer geek, inventor, scientist, etc. In other words, he's an intellectual. He's a very funny, instinctive performer, but a lot less absurd in his choices that am I. Well, he does a lot of weird things, but they seem a lot more intellectualized to me. Anyway, when I was describing the novel, talking about the seven different storylines that run through it, I was describing specifically the letters that Amitodana writes to August - one of the storylines - and T asked, "Is the whole novel epistolary?" My mind went blank for a moment.

I don't think I'm a stupid person; I know I am clever and smart enough to write a novel and plays and songs, and can usually come up with the word that means what I intend for it to mean, even if I don't know the exact definition. I use words in sentences that sound right, and often are right, but I sometimes misuse words. S has said that my vocabulary is the weakest part of my talent. (He didn't say it in those words, but that's the gist.)

And so, when T asked me if the whole novel is epistolary, I had to consider what he meant. I probably should have just asked him what it meant, but I was afraid of looking stupid. The word apostle came to me, which brought to mind preachers, storytellers, particularly Bible storytellers. Epistle seemed a similar word (there's a "pistl" in the middle of both of them!), so I made the leap to think that he was referring to the letter-writing storyline, and said, "Oh, no, there's prose and script and other things, as well." I think there was possibly a look of panic on my face (or at least I felt a look of panic directly behind my eyes and did my best to hide it!), but T didn't comment on it. And why would he?

That's the thing, I guess. I'm smarat enought to be writing a novel but fear people will think I'm not. I struggle with words like "epistolary" and other even less intellectual words than that. I would never use the word epistolary in my writing, I don't think, and I definitely wouldn't easily use it in a conversation (though I use words in my writing and in ways that I would never say aloud all the time). So I keep looking for the comfort in the idea that there exist many novelists who aren't (or weren't) as word-smart as even I am, and there are plenty of novels out there that are full of big words that are crap. It's really not something I need to worry about.

But I do. That and the Gay Thing.

system overload

I've been feeling a bit down lately. No doubt the effects of my lost friendship with C. I started thinking a lot about friendship, about the friends I have, and what they mean to me. But with a kind of dark view, because I've been feeling a bit down. I guess it's the depression thing. I didn't make it to yoga on Sunday, and then on Monday, I felt like I hadn't done yoga for ages; I was tight and hurt when I tried to get into certain positions. It was very frustrating.

So yesterday, I tried to talk myself out of going. But I was feeling pretty bummed about things and decided the meanest thing I could do to myself was go and deal with the frustration. (I knew it was also the nicest thing I could do for myself.) Actually, I let work decide for me. If there is no work to keep me at home, then I'll leave at 3 in time to get to the 3:30 class. That's what I told myself. And I even almost talked myself out of it when 3 rolled around and there wasn't a transcript to do. But I had already worked 37.5 hours in the preceding six days (12.5 of them on Sunday), and my eyes were bothering me.

When I got to M's apartment (the yoga studio), he was cleaning windows. He asked how I was; I said, "I'm here." He said, "Oh, it's like that, is it?!" He's a cheerful sort. Good-looking, strong, patient, funny, intelligent, a great teacher. I told him I couldn't think of any reason not to come, and he said, "You could've cleaned windows!" I said, "Yeah, if I had thought of that..." He said, "Call me next time and I'll give you some suggestions!"

Inside, I told him I deal with depression. He said he does too; he told me if he wasn't on anti-depressants nobody would be there. Interesting. He pushed me a little harder than I thought I wanted to be pushed yesterday - I thought maybe he would take it easy on me since I was feeling down (I wanted him to take it easy on me) - but he pushed me to do a jump-back. I struggled with it a while, complained some, got more instruction, then viola! I saw the light. I even said that. He said, "I wouldn't have told you to do it if I didn't know you could...for future reference."

And so, he gave me the ability to accomplish something difficult. I didn't do the jump-back very good, mind you - and boy were my arms tired after - but it felt good to have succeeded at something, to have done it that well.

I have a friend that I needed to take a break from. I realized after the loss of my friendship with C that it is a friendship that takes (a lot) more from me than it gives. And I think I need to surround myself with people who lift me up, people I want to be like. At least my close friends. There are some people in the improv community who annoy me (their sense of humor), but I don't feel close to them. I feel my friends should be willing and able to listen to me, that I should feel that they're listening.

With this one particular friend, I don't feel like that is the case. I never have. It has felt more like I am a caretaker all along. I came to this realization when I thought about telling this person about what had happened with C. I couldn't imagine saying anything because this person doesn't deal well with that kind of information. I don't need that in my life.

So, I ignored this person for a while, and kept getting phone calls that I didn't respond to, which caused the person to call another friend of mine and ask if she knew what was up with me. I didn't want to be rude, so I sent an email to this person saying that email was a much better way to correspond with me, that I was lying low and not answering the phone. The person responded to the email by calling me! I ignored that call, and then started getting emails and texts, asking me to do this or that. When I responded in the negative for whatever reason, I got a follow-up request for a different date and time and event. So, I sent an email saying I was not going to be socializing for a while, that I was concentrating on working and writing and doing much of anything with anybody.

The response was "Okay. I understand. Unless it's something I've done." Followed by another two paragraphs about how we could deal with it if it was in fact something that this person had done to upset me or push me away.

Too much work, that's what I say.

So that's where I am. I'm still feeling a bit blue, but I feel like I'm getting through it. And I'm very happy about the writing I've been doing.

chapter thirty-one: christian wall

I finished chapter 24 and read it and chapter 17 to P a couple of nights ago. The novel starts in chapter 3, then skips seven chapters to pick up the next part.

Chapter 31 is the last part of this section before the chronological storyline goes back to chapter 4 and picks up there in seven chapter intervals. The section to follow that is chapter 2, then chapter 1, chapter 6, chapter 5, and finally chapter 7, each storyline moving through the novel seven chapters apart.

It may sound confusing, but it all makes sense in my head.

P made dinner for us and before I started to read, I asked if she wanted to hear chapter 17 or only chapter 24, the one I had just completed. She hadn't heard chapter 17 before, but I wasn't sure how much time we could spend together, since it was getting late in the evening. I looked to see how long each chapter was and discovered that chapter 17 is seventeen pages long and chapter 24 is twenty-four pages long. P said, "Is that another clever little thing you're doing in your novel?!" I have all kinds of things going on in the way this novel is constructed (like the non-chronological order) but I don't think this is one of them; I couldn't possibly condense chapter 1 to one page! (Though that sounds like a fun way to write a future novel...)

I decided after I finished the first draft that august chagrin felt a bit rougher than I wanted, so I'm going back through the whole thing and "rewriting" it chronologically, to make sure the story flows. It seems like it was a good idea. Chapter 24 was already written, as are most chapters, but had to be changed somewhat - as had the chapters in this storyline before it because I inadvertently changed the date of chapter 10 from 1973 to 1977, changing the ages of the main and secondary characters. That turned out to be a good change (since a sexual awakening is better at age 14 than 10), so I altered the chapters that followed to go along with this change.

Chapter 31 hadn't been written when I finished the first draft - there are a couple of chapters that need to be created so that each of the seven storylines has exactly five parts - and looking at the thing overall, at first I felt a bit overwhelmed by the idea of having to write more story. Not that I don't know what is supposed to happen in chapter 31 or the other chapters that have to be added. But then, after reading chapters 17 and 24 to P, it seemed simple how I would get into the next part.

I'm often surprised how the story comes to me. I find myself walking around in silence, making breakfast, washing dishes, doing laundry, or sometimes working, typing transcriptions (my job), my mind busily toying with the story, slowly coming into focus. That's how it was this morning. Chapter 24 ends the summer before Randy Reardon goes to college. There's a brief connection wrapping up chapter 24 at the beginning of chapter 31 (as there was a a connection from chapter 17 to 24, from 10 to 17, and from 3 to 10), and then it just flows from there.

I haven't been drinking coffee regularly since the beginning of February. I've been drinking black or green tea, mostly. But a couple of times I've had coffee, just because I need the extra kick. Last weekend, I went to a coffeehouse to work on chapter 24 and had coffee and a cinnamon roll and my work poured out of me easily. This morning, I woke up at 5:30, finished a transcription that was left over from last night, and then there was no work to be done - thankfully - so I poured myself a cup of coffee after breakfast and started in on chapter 31:

The first plane that tried to take Diamond and me home from Las Vegas faltered soon after it got into the air. The pilot told us in a steady voice that there was nothing to worry about - "a little engine mishap!" - but turned around and took us back to the airport to get a different plane. Diamond pretended to be asleep, even as we deboarded the broken plane and boarded a new one, wouldn't speak to me, so I made a silent promise to myself that if we got home alive, I would never get on a plane again.

Randy doesn't see Diamond again that summer until she's heading off to Denton, Texas, to go to music school, and shortly thereafter, he's on his way to Gainesville, Florida - only twenty-five miles but far enough to be a world away - to study theater at the University of Florida. He arrives at his dorm a week before his roommate and spends his third and fourth days alone at his desk writing his very first story, "Diana's Tallywacker," based on his first adult sexual experience which took place in Sin City, which is the name (and subject) of chapter 24.

I'm enjoying this.

simplification.

I'm not writing. Today, it doesn't look like I'll get around to it. Maybe this evening, after yoga and the performance I'm taking part in (reading from a numbered list of instructions, guided by audience members calling out random numbers).

I'm trying to simplify my life, but it doesn't seem to be simple right now. Since I no longer have a relationship with C, which was so challenging and simultaneously enriching, I feel like I need to spend more time with the other challenging/enriching element of my life, my book. I left it behind when I went to Paris. Or I should say that was my intent. I had struggled with a chapter rewrite, and then, in a wash of inspiration, completed it a week or so before the trip, and the chapter that followed started coming to me almost immediately, so I felt like I should pay attention, but I had already set the intent to not work on it in Paris. I found a space in the bottom of my carry-on big enough to slip the slim three-ring binder into, just in case.

A couple of times, I packed it in my bag and carried it with me to the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, thinking I would find a place to sit and be inspired and write. But it was too cold in Paris for sitting outside, or inspiration. I didn't write anything in Paris other than random notes in a journal.

Now I'm back from the trip, happy to be back, but more broke than I thought I would be, and feeling the need to really simplify my life. Again.

I've been enjoying improv classes, and I've found a way to take more of them for no money (repeating the current or previous levels). There's a new level two starting up next Thursday evening, which I think I'll join, and I'm already in the Saturday afternoon class and sitting in on the Tuesday evening class. Last week, for the first time, I joined in on the Wednesday improv "jam," which isn't a class but a free-for-all performance for people of all levels (no audience except each other). It doesn't feel as "safe" as the classes that I've been taking, but I feel the need to get out of my safety zone.

I'm also doing more yoga. Monday through Thursday at 3:30, and now Sundays at 1:30. That leaves Friday through Monday evenings to fill up, if necessary. I would like to fill up some of that time with writing. But I also feel a strong urge to work as much as I can, since the recent pay cut, so that takes precedent. If there is work to do on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, I'll do that first, and then fill in whatever leftover time I have with writing. Or at least that's the plan; there hasn't been any leftover time so far.

I just finished the work available this weekend. I've worked 16.5 hours since Thursday - which is pretty good, because I didn't work at all on Thursday and not much on Friday. I went to therapy, got a massage, took some Me time. I needed some time off - even though I just got back from "vacation." It didn't feel much like a vacation. It felt like a challenge. It made novel writing seem like the easier option. So I'd better get to that and prove myself right.

Oh, but I've got to head out for a rehearsal right now, and then yoga, and then the performance. Jeez...