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.

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.

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.

more more more

Last night was the decider. After my experience a couple of Friday nights ago in the improv festival that had no clear leadership, no real focus, and lots of people I didn't know playing around me, I was starting to think that maybe I'm not cut out for improv, or performance of any type. I know, I know, I performed for 10 years and was almost always nervous but I never felt like I couldn't go on because of it. Something happened after we split up. I forgot a line in a play I was doing at a community theater and that scared the hell out of me. A while back when I performed as the musical accompaniment to M's one-woman show, I had stage fright feelings, and I've felt that when I've performed with G and with other people. Though never with S.

My new goal is to get S to take some improv classes with me, because he and I have chemistry and stage presence like nobody's business, and when we're sitting around smoking weed (or not), we make each other laugh. He tends to fear the stage as a starting point (not the same as when we were making music together, for some reason), so it'll take some work, but that's my goal and my dream. But that's not what I'm writing about right now.

Last night was the first official performance by TNM improv theater's house troupe - "the standout students," as they call us, and them, the two teachers (who were both absent from the horror show a couple of Fridays ago). It went very well. The format was a little weird, unfamiliar (guests told a story and were asked questions by the other half of our troupe and we had to improvise off of what was said) but my goal for the night was merely to get on the stage and not freeze up or end up in a corner, on the verge of vomiting or crying.

None of those things happened!

TNM has another show on Friday evening, and more in the coming months; I didn't commit to any of them, and said I wouldn't, until I found out how last night was gonna go. At the end of the night, I said to T, "Okay, I'm on for Friday." She said, "Oh! That makes me so happy; that's the thing I was most interested in happening tonight."

It wasn't a brilliant show - and in fact I was only onstage a handful of times (something I discovered: with six people on a team, there aren't a lot of opportunities to be in a scene; you really have to work to get out there before somebody else does) - but it went smoothly. I played a muppet, a stripper (as S pointed out, "a Bob Fosse-style stripper"), a karaoke machine, among other things. It was fun.

Phew!

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!

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.
  

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.

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.