A dream

There must be some way to describe everything that’s going through my head, my head in his bed, without describing everything because everything is too much to describe. Crisis, mostly that’s what it is. Not a new crisis, just this crisis that is my health, not getting anywhere except I guess here, awake again in this cycle of hopelessness.

Right now I’m thinking about eggs, because I tried that thyroid hormone, one pill of the lowest dose dissolved in water and then just five drops of the liquid, which probably translates to about 1/200th of a pill, and immediately it made me wired and angry, my tongue doing that weird thing in my mouth like with speed and my stomach clenched tight. The next day I tried two drops, but it was still too much -- obviously it’s not the right thing.

I already told myself that if the thyroid hormone didn’t help, then I would try eggs, so then here I am in bed thinking about whether there’s any way to live ethically, and obviously the answer is no, there is no way to live ethically in the culture that exists now, in the US, in San Francisco -- but it is possible to try to live ethically.

I try to find organic, free-range eggs from a farm that doesn’t also slaughter the chickens, but I don’t think there is such a farm. I try to figure out whether free-range means anything, and it doesn’t. I get depressed just looking at all the details, and then I end up buying free-range eggs anyway -- they can’t be worse than the regular ones, right?

I’m starting to think of veganism as an ideology -- ideology is something I’ve always tried to avoid. In some ways I think it makes the most sense for me to talk about my ethical dilemmas with other vegans, right? But then the other day I could sense this person was implying that I’m some kind of dupe of the system, maybe a brainwashed bimbo believing the lies of the medical industrial complex, and I realized that I used to think the same thing about vegans who decided to try eggs or fish or whatever. Like, when someone would say oh I was vegan for two years but I just couldn’t get enough protein, or something like that, and I would maybe listen but inside I would think they just weren’t trying hard enough.

People always used to ask me: oh, how do you feel, do you feel better? I mean the ones who weren’t telling me to eat meat. And the truth is that no, for 17 years I’ve felt all different kinds of terrible, but of course before that I felt worse but that was before I escaped what I was supposed to be. I’ve always thought that I must feel better than I would otherwise, but, after 17 years, I’m just not sure anymore. Of course, there’s so much violence from childhood that I’m still trying to survive. Still, I feel like I need to try this experiment, this experiment of eating eggs or fish, just to see if it helps, because I’ve tried everything else. Absolutely everything, I mean if another person says to me: have you tried yoga? Or: have you tried therapy? Or: have you tried -- whatever -- fill-in-the-blank -- I’m just going to scream. I’m just going to scream, and never stop screaming, and then my throat will get so sore that I’ll never be able to eat anything again. Or speak. Sometimes that’s how I feel -- I look at people doing the simplest things and I think: I can’t believe she’s reading like that, on the bus. Or: I can’t believe that person is walking down the street with all those bags. I mean without pain.

A few months ago, I thought of writing a list of everything I’ve tried, but just starting this list made me so completely exhausted and overwhelmed.

I would say that, in its simplest form, there are two core parts to veganism. The first is that you don’t consume any animal products at all; that’s what I’ve done for 17 years. Everyone interprets this slightly differently, but the basic belief is the same. The other core belief is that you try to exist in a way that doesn’t participate in the slaughter or exploitation of animals. “Cruelty free” is a catchphrase that has emerged -- often, at least in San Francisco or places like it, this mostly means some form of “responsible consumerism,” which, of course, is still responsible for the mass degradation of the entire planet. Sometimes I feel like I’m abandoning myself if I let go of a dream I’ve struggled so hard to hold onto, and so I need to look at that dream.

I’m talking about veganism as an intrinsic part of a radical, anti-authoritarian, queer worldview, and it’s a beautiful dream, a dream I certainly don’t want to abandon. Maybe it’s the ideology that I need to discard, the part that makes me think I’m a horrible person for eating an egg.

And here I am, eating that egg, hard-boiled from a recipe I found online, since I can’t even remember how to hard-boil an egg. It’s hard to chew it -- I’m not exactly nauseous, but I’m kind of gagging. I feel this lift in my head, like everything in the room opens up for a minute and I’m kind of floating -- usually this indicates an allergy, soon my jaw will feel locked or I won’t be able to think. But it doesn’t go further: maybe it’s just a lift. I eat about half the egg, along with some collard greens, and then I already feel kind of full. My stomach doesn’t clench, there’s a little rumbling when I come back to the second half, and the whole time it’s like I’m chewing something alien, but my body doesn’t seem to reject it.

My grandmother, on the difference between gay and queer

"I used to think gay was just gay, but I guess not."

Color in the neighborhood, yay for color!

When we are looking

But here’s what it is about these photos from 1988: I look tiny, my face all hollowed out whereas somehow in 1987 my face looks fuller, my expression more convincing. But let’s go back to 1983, this time I’m wearing the blue and red striped Alligator t-shirt, you see we didn’t call it Izod, and some kind of navy denim-type pants, I remember those from sixth grade and that bathroom at recess where I could hear people playing outside, the smell of institutional piss surrounding me -- this was a building my school rented, just for the sixth grade, so we were almost on our own. Behind the sports fields stood the Psychiatric Institute -- that’s where girls got sent for anorexia, came back tougher and sadder and more worldly. Sometimes I felt jealous.

Anyway, of course my belt is pulled around my waist as tightly as possible and somehow there’s a duffel bag suspended from my shoulder, behind me there’s a view. I don’t know where this is, so much green it’s hard to say. This time I’m squinting because of the sun and my lips are turned to one side like I’m crying without crying, maybe that’s what it felt like. But another picture with the same outfit, this time I’m on the New York subway, it’s one of the trips when my father and I went to New York with Don and Steve Daniels. The subway was one of my favorite places, here Don is looking pensive into the distance, Steve looks vaguely into the camera and I looked skittishly past my father, my head on my body like I’m some kind of doll, the kind you don’t give your kids because they might learn something.

But what was I learning? I loved the buildings, the taller the better -- it didn’t matter if my ears popped, as long as I could look down at everything: this is where I will eventually escape to. I loved walking out onto the street in front of the hotel and going into a corner store with all the hot food laid out on tables, sometimes this is what I would do with Steve when our fathers went drinking. We took the subway everywhere and I studied the neighborhoods: this one is run-down but filled with excitement, that one looks scary, this one has so many trees it’s not even like New York -- the end of the line was my favorite place, just because that meant we got to ride all the way back. Even better would be an empty subway car from Coney Island when Steve and I would flow between the poles in the center, trying to stand up. In New York, everything was an adventure. Even the zoo was bigger. But the only time in these pictures when my face softens is when I’m feeding animals -- here a goat eats out of my hand and I’m studying it so closely it’s like there’s no one else there and that means maybe me.

But wait -- here’s 1986, and I’m feeding the pigeons in some square, where did I get this tiny cup for them to eat directly from, squatting on the sidewalk in shorts and that same red and blue striped shirt I’m leaning towards my new friend while trying to stay balanced on my shoes, I didn’t want my knees to get dirty. I’m confused about this picture, because I look the same as 1985 but in my memory by the time of my bar mitzvah I’d already rejected the bowl cut in favor of my hair swept back. Wasn’t my bar mitzvah in 1986? I guess it seems silly for such a ritual to mark any actual transition, but somehow I think it did land in that place. Maybe this photo was developed later than its actual date: where is history when we are looking?

Lostmissing #36

Lostmissing is a public art project -- I’d love it if you’d participate.

And here's what lostmissing #36 says:

Sometimes I think I’m done thinking about you, but then I end up thinking about you again, so I’m not done. Maybe it’s because I still haven’t run into you -- 10 months now, is that really true? Everyone says this is such a small town, I guess I should be grateful that it’s not as small as they say, not grateful that I haven’t run into you because I need to run into you at some point.

I guess the city is smaller if you believe. I still think about my hair, it’s longer now and I wait as much time as possible before washing it -- otherwise it gets too dry. It gets too dry anyway, but at least it looks healthy. By day three or four it starts to get a bit greasy, but it mostly just looks like a styling product although it’s not the styling product I would use -- day one or two might be a better time to run into you. Although that’s also when the wind blows my hair all over the place. Sometimes I wish I could use hairspray, but then that would dry it out more.

The other day, one of the days when I thought I might run into you because I went somewhere where I knew I would run into a lot of people but it was kind of fun, it wouldn’t have been fun if I saw you so I guess I’m glad I didn’t. Someone I haven’t seen for almost as long as I haven’t seen you came up to me and said: you look amazing. I’m pretty sure he meant my hair, that was day two or no maybe day one because I remember leaving the conditioner in for a half-hour. Today I left the conditioner in for over an hour, but still my hair was too dry when I rinsed it out, so I put on more conditioner, a second kind. I wonder how I’d feel if I ran into you and you said: you look amazing.

Sometimes I think about your therapist, when he kept giving you all those meds even though they made things worse he would just say try this one now and one time I said if you need someone to tell him not to give you those fucking meds I’d be glad to come in and talk to him and of course you told him that, and took the prescription anyway, and later your therapist said he was afraid of me. I don’t know how that came up but of course you told me and I thought it was funny but you didn’t tell me what he thought about that.

I wanted to blame your therapist. Sometimes I hate you, I really do but then today I thought about calling you to tell you where to get something you were always looking for, something mundane but now I can’t even remember what it was. I thought about what it would feel like to call you and give you this tip, maybe it would seem like I was okay with losing you and I’m not. I don’t want to be okay, I mean I want to be okay but I don’t want to be okay with losing you.

That same nausea

Actually the furniture at your therapist’s office might have been birch, and it was chunkier than your father’s furniture, a different kind of Scandinavian design. Maybe it wasn’t Scandinavian at all, but it was arranged in the same way as your father’s office. But when did I learn to carry a hairbrush like a weapon -- no longer the bowl cut, now I hold it up with mousse and spray. Fourteen and I almost look tough, an act I’m trying on. My hair glistens with the peroxide I comb into it, soon enough I’ll learn to look like I’m distant on purpose, but there’s only so much you can learn from a few pictures each year: 1988 looks rough, all these layers hiding my body kind of like a bird maybe an ostrich with my head poking out. My mother said I was vain, boys were not supposed to be vain. Hairbrush in my pocket I’m wondering about that hairbrush, first the skinny curler brush from Giant Foods with the fake wooden handle but later I traded up for the green wooden recycled handle molded so that your fingers fit one and then the next, a bigger curler brush with black bristles from the Body Shop. I always carried it around with me: this was high school, when people would say are you gay I would just say everyone’s bisexual. That would shut them up for the most part, although after so many years of harassing me you’d think they’d learn to shut up by themselves. At least now it was a question.

I needed that hairbrush so I could rush into the bathroom between periods, make sure that no hair was out of place. Here’s the thing about pictures: I’m staring at this one, 1988, and I just don’t get it. I mean I recognize the kid with the bowl cut and glasses, and I recognize later, with an attempt at a disengaged sexiness in my eyes, but 1988 just doesn’t enter into the way I remember myself then. First of all: khakis! Or something like khakis, baggy with the times and then I guess that is a black mock turtleneck -- those I remember well -- but what is that weird vest on top? But mostly it’s my face, the way my chin gets pointy and my ears stick out, I’m trying to look like I’m okay but I just look like I’m trying to look like I’m trying to look like I’m okay.

But we’re getting ahead again. That first time I drank and it was so hard to get it down -- I didn’t know yet that gin is pretty much the most awful of all types of liquor, innocently clear but when it hits your stomach everything pounds. Before it even hit my stomach I thought it would hit the floor. Still, I can’t remember if this was before or after clove cigarettes, I would transfer the cloves into a bowl like they were pot and then go to the end of the driveway and smoke until my head just needed to lean back -- yes -- but then that same nausea.

Somewhere, space

But let’s rewind to that photo of me on my grandmother’s wall, enlarged and framed almost like a painting. This was the grandmother who wasn’t an artist, she’d just had the room redone with leopard print carpet and lacquered emerald green walls, before her husband gambled away all their money, we never knew what that meant except that nothing in their house would change for 20 years. Anyway, when my father told me most fat babies grow up to be fat adults, he was smiling. Or, if he wasn’t smiling, you could hear laughter in his voice and that’s how you knew he knew what he was doing: aiming to kill. So no one else would notice. They all could stand there and say what a funny joke, or what an interesting observation, but you would know. You took it all inside: more pain.

When you stopped eating, you were fighting back, or at least you thought you were fighting back and they thought so too, with or without one of Barbara Kruger’s most famous posters, when did she make that poster? 1989 -- no way, that was so much later: your body. So there’s no way you could have seen it yet, but you knew: every dinner another battle, the most famous ones you remember because you’ve already written them down. That time when your mother put a whole chicken on your plate: oh, eat what you want. If they fought with heat, you needed to use cold, but if they feigned that casual tone then the only thing you could do was break it: you threw the whole chicken into the trash, rushing into your room while your father rushed after you, pounding on your door he was always pounding on your door. Maybe this was Tracy Chapman -- I’ve got a fast car -- crying crying crying looking out those vertical blinds and hoping one of these days you’ll drive drive drive away.

One of these days you do drive away, but then you drive back. We all drive back. But that’s much later too, maybe we haven’t even gotten to Tracy Chapman yet. No way -- that’s 1988? But then you would drive so soon. Sometimes so soon is not soon enough: let’s back up again. That time when the whole family was over the house, it couldn’t be the same time when my father said Karla, let’s fuck, but somehow you picture the black sofa in their bedroom, teak armrests. But this was at the dinner table, teak, this was when everyone in the family was obsessed with your eating. Maybe this was even after you got back from Europe and your grandmother said: you look like a concentration camp victim. You’d just seen glass cases filled with human hair, but your grandmother’s scorn made you realize one thing: maybe I’m succeeding.

You wanted to beat your father at his own game -- when he became enraged, you would stare through him like there was something fascinating on the wall right behind his head: Bill, is there something wrong? There was always something wrong, except at the dinner table when your father smiled and started laughing even before he spoke: is that all you’re going to eat? Then everyone else joined in: is that all, is that all you’re going to eat? You threw your plate onto the floor -- really the floor? This must have been Tracy Chapman time -- I knew that once I got upset than I could never win: drive drive drive drive away. Here I’m describing the way he pulled his rage into a joke that was really worse, even worse than his rage and he was always screaming, always screaming about everything and nothing that mattered it’s not possible even to remember what he was screaming about because he was always screaming and you learned to stand there like a wall, you were a wall and there was that wall behind him and somewhere, space.

Howard Zinn, on the legacy of Vietnam War architect Robert McNamara, and the possibilities for reform from inside the halls of power

On Democracy Now today, Howard Zinn offers this brilliant and far-reaching analysis, upon the death of Robert McNamara:

Well, assessing the legacy … It seems to me one of the things which we should be thinking about, is that McNamara represented all of those superficial qualities of brightness and intelligence and education that are so revered in our culture. This whole idea that you judge young kids today on the basis of what their test scores are, how smart they are, how much information they can digest, how much they can give back to you and remember. That’s what McNamara was good at. He was bright and he was smart, but he had no moral intelligence. What strikes me as one of the many things we can learn from this McNamara experience is that we’ve got to stop revering these superficial qualities of brightness and smartness, and bring up a generation which thinks in moral terms, which has moral intelligence, and which asks questions not, “Do we win or do we lose?” Asks questions, “Is this right? Is it wrong?” And McNamara never asked that question. Even when he was leaving, even when he decided he had to leave the post of Secretary of Defense, even when he left, his leaving was not based on the fact that the war was wrong. His leaving was based on the fact, well, we weren’t going to win.

Unfortunately, you know, the present administration is still stuck in that kind of thinking. You know, I hear them talking in the White House and around the White House, Obama and the others, about winning in Afghanistan, and not asking, “Is it right that we are in Afghanistan?” To me, that’s one of the important things to think about when we try to learn something from the life of this figure McNamara.

Another thing I suppose I’d think about is that after he decided that we should get out of the Vietnam, after he decided that, he remained silent. He leaves in silence. He doesn’t speak out and tell the rest of the country, “We need to get out.” He doesn’t criticize the ongoing war whether it was under Johnson, or later under Nixon. No, he sits by silently while the war goes on. This is the kind of unpardonable thing that we should be, I think, very much concerned with.

And, even more sweeping:

Once you enter the machinery of government, once you enter the House of Empire, you are lost. You are going to be silenced. You may feel anguish and you may be torn and you may weep and so on, but you are not going to speak out. What lesson I think that is for us, for young people who may be thinking, as many young people do: “You know, I think I’ll enter the government and I’ll get in there and I’ll make a difference.” No. The people who made a difference are not the people inside the Pentagon. The people who made the difference are the people outside the Pentagon, the people who demonstrated against the Pentagon, the people in the streets, the movement. If people are going to devote their energy to making this a better world, they better not think of getting into that machine that destroyed people like McNamara and that silence them.

Thank you, Howard Zinn!

Oh, wait -- did I show you this note from Bechtel?

Dear Mattilda - I read with interest your article “Pink Saturday: Party Or Police State?,” recounting your experience with the level of security on Pink Saturday.

I understand the point you were making about the level of security; however, Bechtel does not offer or provide security services, it is an engineering, construction and project management company.

Again, I found the article very interesting and certainly understand your frustration with those responsible for security, but wanted to correct the mistaken impression that Bechtel is in the security business.

Thank you for listening.

Sincerely,

Francis Canavan

Media & Public Affairs Manager
Bechtel Corporation

Turn the other way

Oh, no -- here I am, wired in bed again, reminding myself that when I was on tour I didn’t wake up in the middle of the night unable to breathe, I mean still able to breathe but always with one nostril closed. I did wake up in the middle of the night, but not with the breathing trouble, except for one or two places. So it’s something about my apartment -- at the moment I’m thinking it’s the mold, I need to remind myself to get out of this apartment at some point but then I remember my last apartment was worse -- the back of the kitchen cabinets decaying, the counter covered in roaches every time I turned on the light, mice and rats and dying pigeons in the walls, the outside of the bathroom air shaft coated in a thick gray mold. So that was much worse.

I wonder if there are any apartments in San Francisco without a mold problem, or if I’ve ever lived in an apartment where I didn’t have allergy problems. Provincetown? Yes, there was mold I could smell in the bathroom, although I don’t remember having terrible problems. Of course, that’s where the glamour of my fibromyalgia started, in the acute sense of not being able to hold the handlebars of my bike, not being able to chop vegetables or open doors because of the pain oh maybe something’s wrong. Before that, in New York, I lived above a lamp shade factory -- there were no rats or roaches, probably everything was killed by the fumes, the fumes I didn’t smell but that’s where my sinus troubles became unbearable and I’m guessing that was from the chemicals. And the 12-story electrical power station across the street probably didn’t help. Before that was Seattle, I can’t imagine there’s anywhere in Seattle without mold. And before that? Oh, I don’t know.

I’m supposed to be sleeping, but here I am going back through every apartment I’ve lived in and I don’t remember as many problems on Fillmore, or in East Boston, or Dorchester, or Providence, or my first two apartments in San Francisco. But all that time I was drinking and doing drugs -- so most of my problems I would’ve associated with all that.

I’m still not asleep. Now I’m wondering if it’s the dust from all my books that’s irritating me -- I wish I could hire someone to build shelves into the walls with glass doors to keep the dust away, if I ever own my own place that’s the first thing I’ll do. How deep would I want the shelves -- deep enough for books, but what about magazines? The glass doors would need to be designed so that they didn’t let any dust in our out, that would be the point. Then I start thinking about what else I might be able to do in that place that doesn’t exist, might never exist and I definitely know it’s not in this bed and then I start getting angry, angry that I’m still awake, angry that I may have to get up and when I start to think about getting up suddenly there’s nothing but sadness, let me turn the other way, anger, let me turn the other way, sadness, let me turn the other way.

Oh, no -- patriotism struck my tiny table like lightning, poor table!

But how did my arm get in this picture? How did this picture get in my arm?

Wait-- is it my imagination, or is Saks Fifth Avenue satirizing the gay marriage agenda?

Left display window: mannequins in Diesel underwear (and one with a hat, one wearing bow tie, and the other sporting a bandana), and the slogan -- EQUALITY IS THE BOTTOM LINE



Middle windows: a (fisting?) glove hanging from the ceiling prepares to dial numbers for various male names on post-its -- Jon? Chad? Carter? Dick? The slogan: CALLING FOR EQUALITY





The final window: mannequins in designer underwear (not only Diesel now, I think I spot some Calvin Klein!), wearing tie, bandana and hat (and those cute socks!), and yes, the slogan -- EQUALITY IS THE BOTTOM LINE

Somebody give that window designer my number!

That sounds good

When I was 12, my father called me down into his office and told me about the accounts he created to save for my sister and I to go to college: $100,000 already in the one for me, maybe $60,000 in the one for my sister because she would need it later. He showed me where he kept the bank statements, don’t tell your mother because then she’ll want to spend it. Who was the wife, and who was the child? There were differences: my mother could leave, but chose not to.

You know when I stopped eating, right? When my father looked at a photo of me when I was two, framed in my grandmother’s apartment, and said: most fat babies grow up to be fat adults. My mother was always on a diet, and my father was always taunting her. But let me stop here, before the transition, to focus on this office visit: I can remember the sound of my father opening the desk drawer where he kept his bank statements, that loud sound of metal rolling, why is it that desk drawers are louder when they’re wooden -- teak in this case, of course -- something about metal against metal must be smoother. Anyway, I want to frame this moment, a moment when my father trusted me and did that mean I trusted him?

Twelve was when they sent us to sleep-away camp. This meant I was stuck in a cabin with 12 other boys who each taunted me in a different way. I wrote a letter to my parents every night: please let me come home. Please. For three whole pages. I don’t know exactly what they say; I asked my mother to make copies of the whole shoebox full of letters, and then the shoebox disappeared. Was I there one month, or two? At least 30 letters and sometimes, when I couldn’t stop crying, the camp administrator let me call my parents but all they did was send more candy. Sour balls. Salt water taffy. Lemon drops. Firecrackers. Bazooka chewing gum. Bubblicious. Chiclets. All this candy in my mouth -- that’s how you know this is before, before I stopped eating. Before I’d do anything not to go back to their house, because here I was trying to do anything to get back. Maybe I wanted both: never, and always.

Maybe a few years earlier they’d dropped me off for my first soccer practice and I remember standing on this hill, in my mind now that hill is the size of an entire city, an empty city of green grass and I’m just a little dot in the center with tears of clarity. They would never rescue me, but I still hoped for it. So if sleep-away camp was before I stopped eating, before I threw away my glasses, before I started drinking, before I went to therapy, how does this relate to all the kids from Florida at this camp in West Virginia, running outside in crazy joy at a summer hailstorm, thinking it was the first time they had seen snow?

I always hated summer, and loved the snow, unless I was at the beach. Sometime after sleep-away camp, after my father told me most fat babies grow up to be fat adults, maybe even after I threw away my glasses but before I started drinking or smoking because that one time in the fallout shelter would not be the last, maybe I was in therapy or maybe this was before, do you see how there is no one time and I keep trying to find it? There was one time in the car, I was telling my father about school I liked telling him about my day but he wasn’t listening he never listened he just said mm hmm, that sounds good. So I said: I’m just going to get off right here and lie down in the middle of traffic, and he said mm hmm that sounds good.

A monocle

Part of this transition is about eyeglasses. I decided I couldn’t wear them anymore, I wanted contacts but remember what my mother said about vanity? I wasn’t allowed. I would break my glasses on purpose, drop them off escalators; for a while in seventh grade, I would hold them up in front of my eyes to see the bulletin board like a monocle because one of the lenses had fallen out, the teacher said isn’t it more important to see?

I’d always liked teachers, except for the ones who didn’t like me. But sometimes they said the stupidest things. Eventually I got contact lenses, then I lost one but they were expensive and I didn’t want to tell my parents because then we would have to argue more, for maybe a year I closed my right eye a lot.. This is when my parents decided that I needed therapy. I wasn’t telling them anything. Most of my friends were girls. I refused the clothes they picked out for me.

My parents wanted me to see a therapist so then the therapist would tell them what was going on. Since my parents were therapists, I knew this was unethical, but kids aren’t part of ethics unless they do something wrong. I didn’t want to be part of kids.

The first time I tried smoking was in the basement of the building where my psychiatrist had an office, the same building as the pediatrician but you got to go through the front entrance like you were living in an apartment. I liked that part. I also liked the basement -- it was a fallout shelter, which I never really understood. In the case of a nuclear war, could you really go into a random basement with a cigarette machine and a sofa to escape? I decided to try Benson & Hedges Menthol because the package looked the most sophisticated. I put the cigarette in my mouth, it tasted bitter not minty like I’d expected but I lit it anyway and then inhaled through my nose.

Of course I started coughing: if this was smoking, I didn’t want any. I liked going into the laundry room too, just because it was the laundry room in an apartment building. Sometimes I would walk back and forth, but what was I doing in the basement? My psychiatrist had a waiting room, but usually I arrived early and all he had in the waiting room was the New Yorker, which I thought was the most boring magazine ever created, and public radio that mostly just played classical music. At least my father had Time and Newsweek. Maybe that’s also what I didn’t like about the waiting room -- it was kind of like waiting for my father. The therapist even had a beard, do all psychiatrists have beards? And the same furniture in his office -- teak wood, brown hues -- but his mother wasn’t an artist because there must have been something on his walls, but I can’t remember it.

At first I was angry about therapy, another attempt by my parents to control my life so I made up dreams. I talked a lot about the beach and the way the water was always coming over the cliff that I was holding onto. I know I haven’t even told you about the beach yet, but maybe that comes later. These were dreams: maybe I was a lobster, hopefully not the one my parents were going to cook for dinner. This was when we would have battles at the table, I didn’t want dinner.

Maybe I was 13 when I started drinking, Gilbey’s gin from the basement liquor cabinet, it was useful that my parents had so much liquor but they only drank beer. Gin really burned -- everything -- my throat, my stomach, my eyes. But oh that feeling in my head, oh.

I remember I brought that bottle of gin one time with me to Baltimore, after I discovered that Steve and I both liked to drink I mean before that we didn’t have that much to talk about, we were both our father’s sons and that was supposed to be enough. He liked baseball and looking for lizards in the alley and anything relating to science and I didn’t even understand Baltimore, not surrounded by the striving of the international bureaucratic class it felt almost empty. The Daniels parents were both schoolteachers and the kids each had their own room and a sandbox and swingset in the back but they went to public school and each parent drove a beat-up Volkswagen bug that was always breaking down and all their pillows were flat; my father said they were middle class, and we were middle class, so I knew he was lying.

Floating

1984 might be a better year because sometimes I smile in the pictures, although this one’s with my aunt and the other one’s with her boyfriend, people I didn’t know. 1986 doesn’t exist, it doesn’t exist in these pictures and that’s when I had my bar mitzvah, at the service someone said I should be a preacher and I didn’t think Jews had preachers. Sara Kaplan said: now that you’re a man, and I blushed. People I invited who weren’t really my friends drank at the party afterwards, but I didn’t really understand what was going on.

But wait -- here I am with Robyn on our sixth grade camping trip, shortly before she broke up with me; she said she wanted more, I knew what more was supposed to mean. I liked talking to her, and hugging her soft sweatshirts, but more seemed like suddenly I would never breathe again. Except sometimes that’s how I felt anyway.

We were one of the first couples in our class, or at least in my head. The other couples were the one who everyone thought was a slut, with two different guys, and then the four others people said were the most popular. Much later, the one who everyone thought was a slut said to me: no one could understand it, because they knew you were a faggot. Wait: did she really say that to me? Later, I mean after the end of everything that we could imagine, for me at least, I would become a slut, and then we would be even, but she would never know that.

In the background of this photo is one of the guys who all the girls liked, or soon they would like him. One of the guys who used to call me faggot, but that was all of the guys who the girls liked, I mean the girls who didn’t like faggots. I fantasized that all those guys would drag me into the woods somewhere and then make me suck their cocks one by one. I look distant in this picture too, and Andrew in the background looks tough and angry, I don’t really recognize anyone else. Probably I didn’t recognize them then either, all boys and this was the time when I would look at boys and only see monsters. Except for the one or two who were my friends but mostly I preferred the adults who pretended something different on the outside.

A lot of the girls were different too, so I liked them better. I don’t remember what Robyn and I talked about, but I know that I liked to give her huge bags of Skittles, they were her favorite candy and I’d slip them in her backpack in between classes: I wanted other people to eat, somehow that made it easier for me not to. Here in the picture there are maybe 10 of us and she’s the only one who looks present enough to give a smile that’s almost not fake. I mean she’s the only one smiling at all, maybe girls were supposed to smile.

Back to 1985, even in my best moments it’s like there’s someone else in the room with someone else. But I can read one of the titles on my bookshelf this time: Butterflies. Oh, and up top: at least 19 Agatha Christies and a large volume that probably contains several more. Three four-leaf clovers in tiny gilded frames, no wait in one frame there are three so that makes five total. A big spool of gold sewing thread; a blue globe just above my head, which one is floating?

I am floating, we all know that. If I float long enough then I can figure out how to float away.

Pink Saturday: party or police state -- in the SF Bay Times!

Here it is, pretty much the same as my post -- the editor sent it to the Sisters for a response, so we'll see what they come up with...

On the red carpet...

High five

What is it about people who acknowledge unconventional glamour on the street and then require you to recognize them for approving your existence? I mean I’m all for acknowledgment, okay -- but I don’t necessarily want to shake random people’s hands, just because they’re holding them out to me. I mean it hurts to shake someone’s hand. Some people even demand a hug for their praise, cigarette in one hand and beer in the other and they’re coming towards me. At least then I can dodge.

But lately there’s the problem of the high-five. The other night it was some drunk WASPy dyke insisting on the gesture, even after I said actually, I have a lot of chronic pain issues. It was like she was praising my flamboyant attire, and questioning my masculinity at the same time. At least then I was with Randy, did Randy give her a high-five? Her friend was embarrassed.

Today it’s this aggressive drunk straight guy, yelling give me a high-five, give me a high-five! I hold my hand out lower, and he looks at me in that angry drunk masculinist way: you get dressed up like that, then you can give me a high-five!

I’m not sure I understand the connection, but I hold my hand up for his smack anyway. Then I get this burning sensation in my forearm, like the tendons on the bottom of my wrist are ripping, actually I didn’t expect it to hurt this much and then I get angry, angry at myself for not just walking by, angry at the things people assume anyone can do and really I should be angry at that moron for demanding my participation in his covert harassment. Or wait, I guess it wasn’t exactly covert because there he was yelling at me on the sidewalk -- I guess it’s harassment masquerading as acceptance, I’m not sure whether that’s better or worse than a regular old angry stare.

A brilliant article on gay marriage, by Yasmin Nair...

While the gay and lesbian community is widely seen as a liberal/progressive one, its rhetoric around marriage often mirrors the discourse of the Right on the need for marriage as a stabilising force. Gay marriage activists have taken to deploying the strategies of the Right in asserting that marriage is necessary to cure a host of ills, for instance even going so far as to claim that not having marriage increases the social stigma faced by the children of gay couples. But surely we live in an age where the children of unmarried straight people are not considered “bastards,” and are not disallowed from inheriting property or from receiving parental and state support because their parents were not married. In such claims to moral standards, gay marriage advocacy hearkens back to the conservatism of the 1950s and earlier eras. It’s this conservatism that allows for a blinkered distraction from the other, and more pressing, issues that face queers who are not, after all, immune from the ravages of the world.

Here's the rest...

But wait... (yes, all at once!)

A chocolate heart glossy clock? Oh, right -- that's just what I was looking for...

Before, or after

I’m wondering when I started associating the beach with freedom, and I’m guessing it was right around when I started drinking or maybe before because we could walk around by ourselves in a way not possible back at home, my sister and I or my sister and I and Steve and Cynthia, the Daniels kids. But maybe that was around the same time as when we started drinking.

Backing up to school, sixth grade and I liked to say that I didn’t need alcohol, because I was so happy. Did anyone believe this act? I’m looking at a picture from that time, just around my 12th birthday -- Memorial Day at the beach, actually -- and I’m standing frozen in the camera’s gaze, one shoulder up way higher than the other and I’m rail-thin, hair in an overgrown bowl cut and I guess the scary part is the way I’m standing, like in shock almost except this is a pose, a pose for the camera, relax!

And then my eyes: so distant like I’ve already left, this is my body I’m not here this is. Smile.

Somewhere there’s the transition from the kid who always looked scared unless answering a question in school but that kid always got the question right. Kids noticed the fear but adults just commented on the intellect unless they were teachers and they worried about the wrong things, never the parents. If you’re reading every book you can find to escape, that’s good behavior.

This photo is before the transition from trying to disappear to trying to appear. Here I’m still in those first 12 years when I wore the exact same clothes as my father, in the picture that means corduroy OP shorts, Izod shirt, bronze-rimmed eyeglasses literally the same shape as my father’s, the only difference is that somehow I got away with wearing a women’s watch with the skinnier band, maybe because my wrist was too small for the men’s watch. Probably they didn’t call it a women’s watch; sometimes people would call me she. Probably a children’s watch, that’s what they would call it. Was this before, or after I stopped eating?

I think it’s after, because now I’m looking at another picture from that same period, probably slightly earlier because my hair is shorter but they both say 6/85 on the back. I’m so glad pictures used to come with the date imprinted like that, it’s helpful now. In the second picture I’m standing in the exact same position, the light even reflects off my glasses in the same way, rose almost -- maybe it’s the metal. It’s like I’m standing at attention, no one was ever getting me ready for the military but it almost looks that way. This time I’m wearing a beige Izod shirt instead of the green one and it makes me look paler, like I’m going to fade into that shirt except for my chapped lips. I’m pretty sure this is after I stopped eating because my belt is wrapped high and tight around my waist like maybe I could get smaller. It makes the jeans hang strangely around the hips.

This picture takes place in my bedroom: there’s no way that I could know that one day I’d sit here trying to read the names of the books on the shelf behind my younger self, what is that wooden box on the desk? That vertical rectangle against the wall that looks like a hard drive but this is way before something like that -- oh, it’s the world atlas, another book I liked to disappear into.

I forgot that I liked plants then too, the rubber plant doesn’t look like it’s doing too well because all the leaves at the bottom are gone but the pine tree looks healthy, would it make sense that I got that pine tree as a tiny little sapling someone was selling around Christmas and it wasn’t supposed to grow? But I kept it.

So here I am standing in front of the plants, straighter than the vertical blinds behind but more distant. Maybe I want my belt to pull tighter. After the picture I’ll go back to reading, or wrapping fingers around wrists -- thumb to middle finger, thumb to ring finger, can I reach thumb to pinky? I worry about the skin I can squeeze, too much fat. I remember doing this in Hebrew school, where everyone called me Mental and they didn’t mean it as a compliment, sounded like my Hebrew name and I tried to disappear into more words, letters shaped differently: I didn’t know what they meant, but I could sound them out more clearly than anyone else in the room and they hated me for it.

Lostmissing #35

Lostmissing is a public art project -- I’d love it if you’d participate.

And here's what lostmissing #35 says:

A few days later someone came up to me, one of your old roommates from around when we first met and she said she couldn’t believe you were in nursing school, you’d make a good nurse. A good nurse. That interrupted the narrative arc I was building here. I don’t feel calm anymore.

Pink Saturday: party or police state?

Okay, so I actually kind of like Pink Saturday, the night before pride when the Castro gets blocked off to traffic and people wander around getting smashed and dancing to terrible music blasted from sound stages in the street. I like it because it’s more honest than any other pride event -- no one’s pretending to do anything but wander the streets getting smashed, walking back and forth in a never-ending international gay suburbanite runway gawkfest. In all of its disastrousness, it is kind of fun to watch.

Over the last few years, Pink Saturday has gotten younger and younger, probably because San Francisco has never been a great place for queer youth, since there’s nowhere for queer youth to go. Except on Pink Saturday, when the bars are turned inside out so that the street is where it’s happening and inside just feels like a bad view. Oh, and the other thing about Pink Saturday is that it’s probably the only day of the year when dykes outnumber fags in the Castro, since the Dyke March ends right at Castro and Market and that’s usually where the main stage is placed. So there’s this crazy intersection between every dyke in the Bay Area and beyond, queer youth of all races flooding in from the suburbs, and the usual gay tourists and yuppies.

I like to sit in front of Harvest Market, eating vegan soup and watching the crowds, gasping at the outfits, and cruising the fashion masculinity fags I wish I wasn’t attracted to. Over the last few years, this has been a tradition I’ve shared with my friend Hilary, who is usually visiting from LA, but now she’s just moved here -- in fact, this year we actually decided to call it a tradition, and made a plan for 9:30 pm in our usual spot.

I decide not to take the underground to the Castro, since it’s always so crowded on pride, but then I regret my decision since the bus is so slow. It looks like Market Street is blocked off earlier than usual, since the bus is taking about 10 minutes per block, so I get out just after Church Street and sure enough there are all sorts of people sprawled out in the middle of Market and it kind of feels festive. I walk towards the barricades, and can’t figure out why exactly they go all the way across the sidewalk -- usually there’s a place where the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence harass people for “donations,” but only several blocks up. This time some guy in an orange security t-shirt starts yelling at me from behind the barricades that this isn’t an entrance, I have to stand in line over there, and he points to the other side of the street where there are hundreds of people crammed together, trying to get in. I say oh, I’m just going to Harvest Market, right over there, but he yells at me that I have to stand in line, so then there I am, in line with hundreds of suburbanites and teenagers, and suburbanite teenagers.

One of the Sisters is standing on the median in the middle of Market yelling through a bullhorn that we all need to stand in line, and I yell: why don’t you just open the fucking barricades? Then the blonde woman next to me, red-faced with booze, turns to me and says: do you think we should rush the line? I say not a bad idea, but people would probably get hurt, and she looks surprised and sad for a second, decides against that idea.

Get this: the security staff yells at us that we need to form separate lines for “men” and “women”-- I kid you not! Binary gender lines at a queer event in San Francisco, organized by a bunch of queens who dress as nuns. The security staff is frisking people and making people throw away water bottles, asking us if we have any drugs or sharp objects -- wait, I thought this was a public street, I didn’t realize we were visiting our friends in the tank at 850 Bryant.

As far as I can tell, pretty much everyone who’s working security is straight, and aggressive, and way behind the security line are the Sisters, standing with their donation buckets and acting like they don’t notice the screaming hordes. My turn and the security guard pulls my bag out of my hand and tells me I have to get rid of my water bottle. My water bottle is one of those overpriced metal things that I carry around so that I don’t have to waste plastic everywhere -- I don’t want to just throw it away, so I’m arguing with him and he says I’m not even supposed to let you bring your bag in, you’ll have to get in the back of the line, so finally I just throw the bottle to the side, in this pile of discarded plastic bottles, and then I walk through the financial checkpoint so enraged that my eyes are almost closed and it’s a good thing no one says anything to me because otherwise I would just rip them to shreds.

Over at Harvest Market, there’s no sign of Hilary and I’m worried that I’ve missed her because now I’m 45 minutes late. But no, turns out she got stopped at another checkpoint and they made her go home to return her backpack. Are you kidding? What the hell is going on? When did Pink Saturday turn into a police state? Not just security at the gates, but roaming around inside are dozens of uniformed SFPD officers. And probably a few hundred of the security monitors in orange shirts, almost all of them straight black men. Did the Sisters consciously make this racialized choice, or did they hire an outside contractor to do their dirty work? Triple Canopy? Dimecorp? Xe/Blackwater? Or, perhaps a local favorite like Bechtel Corporation.

You can’t even piss on any of the side streets, because then you have to go through another checkpoint. I go into a restaurant to use the bathroom and they stop me, I say I don’t mind buying something, but apparently that’s still not okay. The waitress points me in the direction of port-a-potties, and there they are with maybe 85 people in line.

Back at Harvest, the owner is working the register and I figure maybe he’ll have some insight, I say when did they decide to move the barricades so far back? He says I guess this year. I say what the hell is the point of all this security? He says oh I’ve seen it much worse -- he’s probably talking about Halloween, when roaming straights show up with baseball bats and a few years ago the police decided to shut the whole neighborhood down instead of letting anyone in. I say what do you mean, nothing has ever happened on Pink Saturday! He says it’s to keep away the outsiders. I say what the hell are you talking about -- 95% of these people aren’t from San Francisco!

At least Hilary and I can be angry together. For some reason the cops keep coming over and staring at people’s ginger ale bottles, telling people they can’t be drinking that in public. This is ginger ale! But, guess what -- you’re not allowed to drink anything that’s not in a plastic cup -- even if you’re sitting on the benches provided by Harvest Market, drinking something that you bought inside.

This is crazy. Earlier someone pointed out the huge disco ball hanging in the middle of 16th and Market, but somehow I didn’t notice that it was suspended by an enormous crane. Who the hell paid for that? I go closer. Oh, no -- it’s sponsored by some new vodka called Blue Angel -- I guess it’s like those U.S. Navy fighter jets that terrorize US skies to get people all excited about blowing up Iraqi or Afghani civilians -- drink Blue Angel, and double your pleasure -- get bombed, while you’re doing the bombing!

I forgot to mention that one of the other things I like about Pink Saturday is that it doesn’t usually have any of the corporate sponsorship -- at least not for the last several years. Way back I remember maybe it was sponsored by Budweiser, and was an official SF Pride event, but I never remember security checkpoints on all sides for blocks around, and right in front of us is a huge booth dispensing Popchips -- “Never Fried or Baked -- Love. Without the Handles.” You can even get your picture taken in a free photo booth -- as long as you’re holding a bag of Popchips. No doubt to use in their promotional materials. But can I guzzle my Blue Angel at the same time as I’m chomping on chips? Pop!

Then there’s a huge video screen suspended from the corner in front of the giant disco ball, Hilary and I are watching it to try to figure out what it’s advertising but we’re not sure. The dance stage, sponsored by corporate gay dance radio, starts playing Michael Jackson -- everywhere in the world, they’re probably playing Michael Jackson right now in one kind of corporate-crazed ritual or another. And then we spot the Budweiser truck parked on the corner -- oh, no! Sure enough, walking further we discover a huge booth, just like the ones at Pride, selling overpriced beer and cocktails and bottled water. Oh, that’s why they had us confiscate our bottles -- so that they could make more money-- they don’t even do that at pride!

What are the Sisters doing with all this money, I mean all the money that doesn’t go to Budweiser or Blue Angel or Red Bull, sponsor of the tables in front of the Budweiser booth, decorated with the Sisters insignia and featuring maybe 20 bartenders pouring drinks. And, of course, across from the Budweiser booth is an enormous booth selling Polish sausage and ribs -- this all explains why most of the neighborhood businesses look relatively abandoned. Supposedly the profits go to nonprofits -- I love that phrase, so let’s repeat it: the profits go to nonprofits. I love nonprofits that enforce a security state, how comforting!

But there’s more -- just as Hilary and I are trying to make our way through the crowds to get to one of the exit checkpoints, we spot a few friends, and guess what? This year, the Dyke March got stopped at 17th and Sanchez, stopped by the line of straight male security guards who demanded that all the dykes walk single-file through the frisking station. That’s right -- on the one day of the year when dykes actually flood the Castro, it’s important to make sure there’s extra security! Outsourced security, no doubt.

Track six

There’s that morning moment, before eating, track six and I’m looking out at the light onto buildings and for the first time I can see exactly which window panes are warped, track six open up my hips the sky not that smoggy sky outside but this one right here I can open up my arms and just hope this is how I’m feeling today. I’m cleaning the cutting board and I actually like cleaning the cutting board, chopping beets and brussel sprouts and wait this is fun this is fun this can be fun!

Let me try that again with my hips -- oh, no -- track seven! Okay, rewind. I don’t want to tell you what it’s called because electronic musicians choose such cheesy names for such beautiful beats, I would call it When I Notice Which Window Panes Are Warped, but okay it’s called Fly Hawaii -- see what I mean? Someone should hire me to write song titles, please hire me.

Okay, I’ll admit that that sky is already lost, now it’s the sinus clog from last night at Blow Buddies, the smoke coming in from outside mostly pot smoke I always think I’m going to leave faster. The beginning was the best part -- when it was so crowded that people were gathering in those groups of desire so often lacking these days, later I was talking to someone about the music you see talking about music is one of my favorite things I said these are good beats, ’96, you don’t hear these beats much these days, I mean the song’s kind of cheesy but I like these beats. Turned out he produces music, also likes the songs that knock you down.

Back outside into a heat wave night, how could it have gotten so warm just my body or the air too, and today my sinuses really don’t seem worse than they would be from the smog I can see outside powder blue sky fading into tan the air is still and I’ll keep thinking about track six.

Two paragraphs earlier

I’m in that place between complete exhaustion and a little bit of energy, I guess I should appreciate this space, especially since an hour or two ago I was going to write: will there ever be a time when I’m not so exhausted? I still don’t know. Maybe in a few minutes, maybe never again. Here it is, the exhaustion, and I don’t know where this sentence goes. I mean where I am in this sentence.

Here I am: I left the house early today, I mean before 5 pm to get some bloodwork done and then I was in Union Square watching the tourists but not as many as I expected, barely a hint of the Gay Tourist Onslaught, even. Maybe they were already in the Castro, or maybe they arrive later, after work. On the way home, I stopped to get a prescription for thyroid hormone, for my new strategy of dissolving one pill in a tincture bottle of water and taking a few drops a day, so that I’ll be taking something like a hundredth of a pill each time almost like homeopathy. A doctor suggested this strategy a while back, he thought the hormone would just wire and drain me otherwise, and sure enough that is what the smallest dose did, so I might as well try a hundredth of the smallest dose, right?

They need a half-hour, so I come back home and accidentally watch the trailer for an MTV pilot from someone’s blog and then it’s too late to get the prescription but I kind of have energy, maybe that’s why people watch tacky TV but you already know it doesn’t last long because soon enough I’m two paragraphs earlier in that place between complete exhaustion and something else or just complete exhaustion again and I’m waiting.

Bending toward oblivion: My interview with Martin Duberman in the San Francisco Bay Guardian

Here it is...

And feel free to tell me what you think...

Uncovering Feminism: Emma Bee Bernstein and a few questions about suicide

Okay, so I’m looking through the Seal Press catalog for the second time, just to see if I’ve missed anything interesting, and what calls my attention is the bio of one of the editors of a book called Girldrive: Criss-Crossing America, Redefining Feminism, and I can’t necessarily tell whether the interviews will be challenging and provocative or dull and fawning -- but what I do notice is the bio for co-editor Emma Bee Bernstein -- right after her name we see the years marking her life, 1985-2008. But nothing telling us how she died. So I know it must not be what is generally considered a tragic accident (car/plane crash) or a noble battle (cancer), and I go online to find out how she died at age 23.

Suicide. But I can’t figure out why. All the available accounts -- her parents, her coeditor, her parents’ friends -- point to a particular narrative where here she was, something like a child prodigy born into a New York family of artists and writers, publishing interviews at age 12, drawn to dreaming and strident visions, traveling cross-country after finishing college at the cloistered University of Chicago to work on this new project about feminism and the future with her camera as accessory to her vision, filled with so much hope and possibility and yet overwhelmed by a monster, a monster of depression that she finally succumbed to.

I’m suspicious of this narrative. She killed herself inside the Peggy Guggenheim collection in Venice, Italy, where she was working in a prestigious internship program. What did this final gesture mean to her? Did she leave a note? What was this depression about? Where are the cracks in the story, and why does everyone insist on sealing them up after her death? If her death means anything, can’t it at least mean that her life becomes revealed in all its complications? Would she have wanted that?

I also don’t believe in this vision of depression as a monster that challenges the hopefulness of a feminist visionary. We live in a horrible world where violence covers violence covers violence and here we are wrapped in it, no matter what. Feminism, or any intense analysis, means that you see all of the horror, you uncover all the layers, and yes you try to figure out a way to challenge the violence but you rarely succeed and you keep trying. You keep trying but sometimes it’s not hopeful, you are not hopeful and you try to act with hope anyway but really what is hope if you’re still surrounded by violence, this world, your role in it?

My question is this: how do we know that Emma Bee Bernstein didn’t kill herself because of her feminism, not in spite of it, and what would it mean to think about this gesture, in all of its sadness and yearning, as something she wanted us to pay attention to, not to cover up like an aberration?

Okay, what exactly are they saying here?

The next book?!?!

Okay, so I printed out the first draft of my new manuscript -- the one that starts with visiting my father before he died and then it goes into trying to regain a sense of hope in my own sexuality, the overwhelming the everyday, relationships that end, the end of my hopes for San Francisco, and childhood -- maybe in that order, but really I don’t know. The part about my father is the tightest -- the rest is just everything that I’ve written over the last 2 1/2 to 3 years, most of it on this blog -- I’ve kept it all in one document because I didn’t want to direct what exactly I wrote about, because I’m not exactly sure what this book will be, right?

So I printed it all out, and guess what? It’s 411,000 words, which is about 1100 manuscript pages -- don’t worry, I printed it out singlespaced and double-sided, so it’s maybe about 300 sheets of paper, but that’ll be a lot of turning of the pages, oh no for my hands! Just to give you a sense of how much 411,000 words is, So Many Ways to Sleep Badly is about 90,000 words, and Pulling Taffy is about 50,000 or so…

First I have to get it bound, and then I can start looking through it -- I’m kind of excited, but I’m not excited about the pain. A lot of it will be easy to cut cut cut, or least I’m hoping. And then a lot of what I want I’ve barely even started writing -- especially the parts about childhood. I’m not even sure this is one manuscript, but it’s funny how I used to write so little, and now I have so much -- this next book will be quite an adventure!

Liniment

There’s something seductive about the repetition of something you weren’t trying to repeat -- like the word something, right? No, I’ll give you more information. I’m in the bathroom, putting on more Posumon -- I know it’s more, it’s just that I don’t know that it’s more, right after more. I mean I’ve already put more on, and I don’t realize it until I’m washing my hands, and I remember oh, I just washed my hands. And now my fingertips kind of hurt, dry skin from too much soap, water. Soap, water.

Should I put on more Posumon -- it does freshen my sinuses, no not my sinuses but the feeling around them -- my sinuses are cracking from the dancing, the dancing that made me kind of high for a few minutes, pushing through my head like a board, board head into that bright hello, runway, literally runway in my house music hallway but now it’s my head pushing through me. At the Nob Hill Theatre, when he says he likes the way I smell he doesn’t mean the Posumon he’s talking about my armpits. I know, because he says I like the way you smell right after his nose lifts from, yes, my armpits. I am a detective, but I’m not that kind of detective.

Everyone sweats. Everyone smells. But not everyone puts on medicated liniment 37 times in one day, one hour, one moment just waiting for the next menthol cinnamon eucalyptus cassia moment no wait that’s the toothpicks what’s in the liniment please more liniment, please more just don’t dry out my hands.

When revolution was right around the corner from the corner store...

Yes yes a delicious interview on Against the Grain about Smash the Church, Smash the State: The Early Years of Gay Liberation, the new book edited by Tommi Avicolli Mecca -- the juicy conversation features Tommi, and contributor Paola Bacchetta.

To be continued

Okay, I’m just going to make some notes because it’s the beginning of the day and I don’t quite have energy but I have ideas and I want to put all those ideas down in some form just so that I remember them and usually I would do this in a list with a pen but last night was it last night I was doing that and it destroyed my right hand and I don’t want to destroy my right hand so early in the day but now that I think about it it might already be destroyed so okay I don’t want to destroy it more.

So much happened in my sleep no it was not good sleep but so much happened so to me that means that this might be a good remedy -- the new homeopathic remedy, that is -- it’s called China, and I don’t know what that means. I’m guessing something to do with porcelain, but really I have no idea. I do remember I took it at some point before, but I can’t remember if it was a good fit but even if it wasn’t a good fit then it could be a good fit now.

Okay, the disadvantage of doing this instead of writing a list is that I’m writing too much, I mean I’m spending too much time and I’m going to run out of energy and forget everything I wanted to mention. The other disadvantage is that I keep having to go back and make corrections, because the voice software doesn’t always write the right thing, although now that I’m talking about the voice software it’s doing much better -- oops, not now -- you didn’t see that, but I did, oh no!

I didn't spill the beans, but I did spill the buckwheat...

Soon, hopefully, I'll be out of bed for long enough to write something...

Worse, not better -- ouch my stomach ouch!

The bed, yay for the bed!

Better

The problem with getting a cold is that I don’t feel that different than usual. I mean I feel much worse, but that doesn’t feel different. I read my interview with Martin Duberman again, make a few changes and print it out, get back in bed. I think about going outside, but I don’t go outside, and I don’t care about going outside, really. Fresh air sounds nice, but too cold for my cold. I run water for another bath, so I can get back in bed. I make another change in the interview. I eat more. I think about the things that I can’t do. If I didn’t have a cold, maybe I would try anyway. Maybe this cold is helping me. I get back in the bath: this bath is too hot, I can feel my body leaving my body. My farts are making bubbles in the water -- I wouldn’t write about farts if I didn’t have a cold. I look at my leg, or what used to be my leg. I lean back anyway, until I feel the opposite of a headache no the opposite direction -- like it’s going inside instead of out. Maybe I didn’t put enough eucalyptus oil in this bath. When I get out, my hands are bright red, but they’re still cold. Although not as cold. Should I drink water, more ginger tea, eat more food? More goldenseal, or is that what made me so cold? Should I check my mail, in case the new homeopathic remedy arrived? I just can’t deal with more mail for my neighbor, I still get all of her mail, even magazines that she must’ve renewed with the wrong address -- I get everything: bills, garden catalogs, health newsletters, even her social security. More sneezing, but at least my body doesn’t make as much. I guess the good thing about a cold is that when it goes away I’ll feel better.

Counting sheep

But just when I’m in the middle of the story -- or not even the middle, but the middle of the beginning -- that’s when I have the worst night of sleep in a while, I mean there’s always the worst night of sleep in a while so maybe this is the worst night of sleep in more than a while, or the worst while in the night of sleep wait that doesn’t make sense and it’s all because of the night I’m just waking up from! But first there’s the problem, the problem is when I first wake up, then I’m lying in bed and trying every strategy to fall back asleep for what I’m certain must be hours -- I even try counting sheep, something that has probably never worked for anyone outside of a cartoon and when I visualize the sheep I visualize Brokeback Mountain since maybe that’s the last time I’ve seen sheep, the sheep were the only good thing about that movie, who knew that a movie about a straight guy raping another straight guy could become the gay assimilationist love story -- anything can happen with scenery so vivid! I count up to 50 and I get bored.

Maybe the problem is that I’m trying not to let my eyes go up in my head because the feldenkrais practitioner says maybe that’s what causes my sinus headaches except I think it’s also what lets you sleep, and eventually I get out of bed, which is what makes it the worst night in a while, because I never get out of bed, but this time I pull off the eye mask and look at the time and I can’t believe it’s only 9 a.m. that means I slept for way shorter than I thought I mean usually when I can’t sleep and I pull off the eye mask it’s at least 11 a.m. but at least since its earlier the light is softer and I take six amino acids, I mean six capsules that contain maybe 20 different amino acids, and then I get back in bed and I’m actually calmer and eventually I’m standing on the counter in some store trying to make a purchase there are so many people in line I have to stand on the counter. I’m holding my box of Entenmann’s donuts like it’s a bag -- you see, once you eat the first two you can make that part of the box into a handle, it’s easy because of the plastic window there are still six donuts left and I’m holding the box like a bag so they know I’ve already paid for the donuts, I just need to buy this lemon-lime soda and a box of Chiclets, the Green kind.

When you say citrus, people think oranges, right? And then they might think grapefruit. That’s why you have to say lemon-lime, when you’re talking about this soda. I’m only buying these things so that they trust me for the interview, which is supposed to happen before the chase that goes all the way from here and up the whole state even though the cops could have apprehended them before the chase they all want to get in on the movie deal. But what is Hollywood doing invading my dreams, just when I stopped reading a book because I couldn’t deal with Hollywood, I mean Hollywood in all these stories I usually like those stories where people throw in some random reference you’re not necessarily supposed to get but here with all these references in a row it just felt suffocating. And now in my dreams -- first Steven Spielberg, then Brokeback Mountain, and now I’m standing on the counter trying to buy Chiclets -- you can tell I’m at the beach because I’m not wearing any shoes.

But this is what I realize -- I’m walking through the basement of my parents’ house, telling someone yes, that room that looks like a library is my father’s office -- he’s a psychiatrist -- and then this other room is also his office. But then I notice that in the basement are also all these collective artists’ apartments -- it’s amazing just walking through and looking at all the vintage sofas and clashing dreams on the walls and I wonder whether it was always this way, and whether these people are renting from my parents and that’s when I wake up and realize maybe my eyes are hurting because I’m allergic to this eye mask I mean something in the detergent so I switch to another eye mask but then I’m awake so I’m angry.

At least I found my glasses -- they were lying on the bookshelf in the corner, just like that -- professorly. I only need them at times like this, when I’m trying to decide whether to lie on the fire escape in the sun while my food is cooking and if so then I wouldn’t want to put my contacts on yet but maybe it’s already too late for the fire escape, I mean too late for the angle of the sun at this time of the year so let me take more amino acids just.

But here’s the problem, or one of the problems. I just realized wait, I’m supposed to be working on the next book, so I rushed over to the bookshelf to look for those manuscripts I printed out a while back, and then I noticed oh no, it’s not divided in the way I thought it was -- so first there are several hundred pages that were supposed to be my next book, but then I didn’t like them because they felt like a continuation of the last book and then also there was the mess in the middle where the voice activation software wasn’t making any sense and that part was just too awful to even try to decode, but now I realize that the part I think of as the beginning of the next book is actually at the end of this other manuscript I mean it’s all blended together. Maybe that’s not a problem. I just have to print out something else, there’s always something else to print out.

On the fire escape: there’s some public event going on, and they’re blasting Whitney Houston, is that really Whitney Houston? Didn’t they take her away, because of all the drug problems? And then the roar of a crowd -- wait, is that a baseball game? It is Sunday afternoon, but please tell me there’s no way those stadium speakers could reach this far. No, it’s Civic Center, but too early for gay pride -- is it a protest? What kind of protest would play Whitney Houston?

When I interview Martin Duberman, he doesn’t answer my question about the last two sentences of his new book: “I keep hoping for a place to land, a sustainable community. The dream, improbable though it is, persists.” I want to know what makes this dream so elusive. At the Nob Hill Theatre, I realize there actually are people around because I hear a really loud burp and then two guys come out of one of the booths with a green light on, I mean they all have the green lights on and that’s why I thought no one was around -- I had sex with one of these guys before, and he runs away like he ran away with me I mean from me and the other one asks me if I’m German. We end up chatting and yes, he does say is that the name your mother gave you, face red with booze but there’s something about his spongy fingertips or the way he’s telling me his boyfriend just broke up with him today, after a year and a half and he knew it was going to happen because the boyfriend said let’s meet at the Thai Noodle Café but they never meet around here they meet at the boyfriend’s house because he has a nice place, a two-bedroom in the Inner Richmond, and then someone comes down to tell us to put money into a booth and he says let’s go outside while I smoke a cigarette.

Voyeurs only

Just when I think I’ve figured out the solution for keeping the smoke out of my apartment, I wake up surrounded by it. My nostrils can barely open, and it’s like someone flattened my forehead while I was sleeping. I look in the mirror, but luckily my forehead looks the same as usual. But, oh no -- why did I get that hairline trim at the barbershop down the street? He took out the clippers so fast I couldn’t even say scissors only. At least they got rid of that part that of my hair that hangs over the ear when it gets too long and I hate it, that’s all I wanted to remove but instead he took out the clippers.

At least the sideburns look perfect, and probably it’ll look fine when I style it again but for now it’s hinting at ‘80s and I don’t mind ‘70s or ‘40s, but not ‘80s -- not ‘80s right now! Andee’s right -- I get upset about the tiniest thing with my hair, no one else notices -- but here I am again, getting upset. But back to the solution for keeping the smoke out of my apartment, which isn’t the solution anymore, because I look out my bathroom window and yes, the hallway window on the sixth floor is still open -- the trick is to open it enough to let the smoke out, but not too much so that someone closes it. But right -- that’s not the trick anymore, or maybe it’s the trick, but not the solution -- oh, the solution, where’s the solution?

Here’s the part where I have to decide whether to write about last night, which is in my head, or last weekend, which isn’t in my head as much but there are more moments that felt like revelation. Of course, what isn’t a revelation is just as interesting to everyone else, if only because it exposes the search for a revelation, which is almost the same thing as a revelation, right?

At least I didn’t wake up because of the smoke, instead there was sex with Steven Spielberg and then the good part is that I could put my room at the Holiday Inn on his tab, but even better maybe I could add the cab all the way through downtown Oakland looking for the Whole Foods because I’m visiting my mother on the side of a highway, always on the side of the highway in the DC suburbs but this time the Oakland although I better ask him first so he doesn’t think I’m exploiting him.

I mean I guess the room at the Holiday Inn is more important than the cab -- nine days, that’s a lot of money, but somehow in the moment it feels like paying for Whole Foods is more necessary. And what the hell is Steven Spielberg doing in my dreams -- I haven’t seen any of his movies since The Color Purple, I mean when it first came out. The sex was okay, I didn’t know it was him until afterwards. I even had to think about how to spell his name -- “ph” or “v,” and I even got the “ie” reversed but the voice software got it right immediately -- the voice software knows all about celebrities, even though it doesn’t like it when I say fuck, no matter how many times I train it it still what’s to say fark, I mean is fark a fucking word?

Oh, no -- I’m looking in the mirror again -- the way the side is cut is exactly the way I wanted it with my old hairstyle, so that the spikes in the back would stand out more, but now I want it to blend, softness on the sides, please softness! But back to last night, or the day that leads to night yes still day and for some reason I decide to write a new description for my cruise site profiles -- oh, I know -- it’s after I come back from the barber shop and I’m all excited from the social interaction, the person who started the store lives on my corner and he’s seen me around the neighborhood, is he flirting or just friendly? I even do that thing where I decide maybe he’s straight, even though he says something about the glass dildo shop next door, when I say maybe the tourists don’t know what it is -- he says that’s one thing we all have in common: sex, the bigger the better.

Anyway, at first I look through the profiles on craigslist because I’m not banned anymore, but then I get exhausted so it’s later when I’m writing a new description, when I’m still exhausted but why am I writing this, again? Oh, I know -- because I banned myself from those sites until I created a new profile, I mean not profile but profile text, because I wanted to say exactly what I’m looking for, whatever that is. But anyway -- writing the text kind of puts me in a good mood, even though it’s too long and then I have to fuck my hands up -- the voice software wants to say “thought,” as if it doesn’t know how much fucking isn’t about thinking at all!

But wait -- I’m in a good mood, I mean I was in a good mood, which is maybe worse once I crash but Randy calls and asks if I’m going out-- just like that, as if I go out! Then I start thinking about the place I want to go, except for the smoke -- just so I could go somewhere and socialize or flirt or whatever, and then I get exhausted again, because I’ve already decided I can’t go there. You know what it is -- it makes my ears stick out too much -- it’s not really a hairline trim, I saw when he took out the clippers and started going up further, I said hairline trim it’s on the blackboard menu! But now I’m obsessing about my hair, and I wanted to get that hairline trim so I wouldn’t obsess about my hair.

So I feel awful, and I’m writing the profile anyway, but the profile makes me feel less awful, even when I post an ad on craigslist because it’s taking too long for the new profile text to be approved, and anyway nothing ever happens for me on those cruise sites. Here’s the thing -- I’m trying to figure out some way to have sex where I don’t end up feeling the pressures of compulsory masculinity, and online is really the worst place for that. That’s what was so great about last Saturday, when I went to that weird thing at Yerba Buena -- it was great, because I was an item as me, I mean in all of my flaming glory -- don’t get me wrong, I’m certain that many of these styley fags cruising me were probably as vapid or pompous as it gets, but at least they weren’t looking for the answer in hey dude, what’s up?

Oh, no -- am I allergic to the B12 supplement? Because now I’m getting that scratchy thing in my throat. But oh, the profile, I mean posting on craigslist -- I guess I might as well just tell you what it said:

I love walking up the hill late at night when the air gets fresh and then I can look down at all the lights and the sky, yes you can look down at the sky…

Sometimes I’m not sure exactly what I’m looking for, but who is? Like, do I want someone to talk to, do I want a hug, do I want to read a book, do I want to go over your house and dance to strange electronic bleeps and clanks and that bass yes that bass or do I want your come down my throat? Maybe all of the above! Anyway, I’m fun and smart and flamboyant although strangely butch sexually who knows where that comes from and I laugh a lot even when I’m feeling awful and I love making out and public sex and looking at graffiti and watching the angles of light over buildings and hugging and sucking cock and biting your neck and intimate conversations with people I don’t know and sex with friends although I’ve never actually succeeded at that one but maybe one of these days, right?

Oh, and I like big eyes and big smiles and big hair and shaved heads and thriftstore glamour and punk or preppy or whatever look you’re working and spit in my face and sitting in your lap and holding hands and laughter and public spectacles and funny adventures and jumping on the bed and long deep intimate sweet hugs, are you ready?

Oh, wait -- that first part was the original headline but it was too long so really the headline said: late at night when the air gets fresh, but with a capital L because I just don’t like capital letters after colons. Okay, my hair does look better after I style it -- even though this is day four without washing my hair, or maybe because this is day four -- wait: Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday -- yes, day four, and I always capitalize the names of days. I’m trying to wait as long as possible to shampoo my hair, so that I don’t have to stress out so much about oh no, why is it so dry -- is all falling out?
So I actually get a few responses to my ad right away. We all know that the ad they like the best is the one where it’s just a photo of your cock and it says something clever like suck my cock-- that one will get me like 30 responses in 15 minutes, but if I say something real than forget it. But this time two people respond right away-- the first one says very cute and sound like a barrel of fun!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And the second one says you sound like fun.....;=)) Lots of fun.

So we’re getting somewhere here with the fun, I ask for more info and the first one says I’m 59 and I’m in San Jose, here are some pictures just so you know you’re not missing anything. And the second one says he’s not comfortable being gay in public, which isn’t going to work too well. There’s another one is nice, but he’s lying about his age too much -- I wonder if there will ever be a time when people who are 21 said they’re 50, just to get some action, but the funny part is that I even feel better after these limited interactions. Then I go to the Nob Hill Theatre, which is one of the places I didn’t want to go but it’s also the one without smoke so then I’m there, in a good mood staring at one of the video screens that says VOYEURS ONLY and I’m wondering if you can have voyeurs if no one’s around.

Roots

Why do I always hear the phone ring, when it’s not ringing? The sound of piss into water against porcelain, does that really sound like the phone ringing? The sound of plastic shower curtain rings against the metal pole -- yes those are rings, but ringing? The sound of the water in the shower, or is it the wind against the window pane, through the shower curtain and into the water -- is that the phone ringing?

My ears. Outside, it’s one of those nights when I’m worried about disaster, any disaster. Like what happens if some drunk driver slides off the road and into me, against the wall of this building, any building? Maybe I shouldn’t be walking around at 2 am, even though everyone’s looking me in the eyes and it’s kind of festive. What if this metal sewer cover is the next one that will blow off, right as I’m walking over? Like the one just down the street that ended up causing 30-foot high flames and what if I were walking over there right then? What if this car is about to run me over? Here’s the hospital: this is where people go to die, I mean not to die. What is this box outside -- maybe it’s where they put the bodies.

The worse I feel, the more I’m scared of disaster. Because I don’t want this to be permanent. Or, if it is, I don’t want it to be worse. Something about this kind of worrying makes me feel guilty. Because these kinds of accidents happen all the time, but they haven’t happened to me, and I still feel this awful. But wait -- why do I feel guilty?

I think I need to get back to the roots of all of this, those roots in a childhood without safety those roots I’m not sure I want to ground me but they are the roots, right? And roots are for grounding.

I keep walking, past the hospital where I turned because I didn’t want to walk too far but now I think maybe another block, but no just a half a block and I hope this woman doesn’t think I’m following her back downhill -- I’m just trying to get home before I crash.

It actually works, second night in a row of not walking too far and now I feel so much calmer.

Lostmissing #34

Lostmissing is a public art project -- I’d love it if you’d participate.

And here's what lostmissing #34 says:

If I had more energy maybe I’d show up for one of your weekend afternoons in the park dressed in layers of mourning, head-to-toe black lace complete with a gorgeous embroidered veil, and out of a fuchsia rolling suitcase I’d remove seven huge three-dimensional letters made of glass and lay them out on the ground in front of you. Through the glass you would see the grass, but also the reflection of the sky and maybe your eyes -- G-O-O-D-B-Y-E -- and then I would take a tiny metal hammer with an enamel surface covered in elaborate flowers and smash each letter, one at a time the grass the sky your eyes the sky the grass the sky the sky, and then when I was done I would take out a tiny pink vacuum cleaner to remove every glass shard even the tiniest remnant and then I’d walk slowly down or up the hill through the crowd whichever felt more dramatic in head-to-toe black lace with my fuchsia rolling suitcase.

Of course, if I had more energy maybe I wouldn’t think about you at all, not even when wondering what kind of vacuum I could find that would be so small, and cordless, and that I could be certain would remove any traces of the glass, so as not to hurt anyone, and of course you would be the person I would ask such a crazy question. And you would say: here’s what you should get. Or: that’s a crazy question.

Once I asked you whether chickpeas would ever lose their shape and you said no, you’d have to put them in a blender. I didn’t realize that would be one of the last questions I’d get to ask. But I just cooked chickpeas for seven hours and they lost their shape, a small victory.

Sometimes I feel better when I don’t think about you, and sometimes I feel better when I think about you, because maybe that will mean that eventually I won’t think about you, and sometimes I actually don’t think about you. The other night I went to some huge public event and I thought maybe this is the time -- I saw so many people from so many different parts of my life even our life and it was kind of fun, I almost thought it would be okay to see you too but then I worried that would mean I wasn’t really expressing myself. So then I thought about the glass letters again, everyone smashes windows. Right now I actually feel calm.

I don't know about these rabbits...

Palate

Sometimes when you’re really tired you notice things in a different way a different way than what it’s hard to think of not being tired, especially while staring at a single piece of quinoa on the shiny black background of a postcard, illuminated by the ceiling light reflecting off all that shiny black. Should I eat it?

No, after staring at it for so long, pristine against the softness of cardstock, somehow it doesn’t seem right for my palate. You can use words like palate when you’re tired, I mean really tired.

Helped

I’m not supposed to look at my email before I leave the house, but there’s that little window that opens up that shows the five most recent messages, why do I stare at those names with some kind of fear in my chest, am I feeling more anxious lately? I should make a plan to go to the reading with someone, tomorrow’s reading, I haven’t called anyone yet because I haven’t felt like calling anyone. I call Jen, Katia, and then I figure I might as well call Donna back to give her the recipe for chickpeas and change our feldenkrais appointment, and then the doctor’s office to make a follow-up appointment since they didn’t call me back, and then the homeopath to tell her no, nothing different has happened, I just feel much worse, and I think it might be because of taking the thyroid medication just twice, one dose on the first day and a quarter on the second. I don’t say: when I speak in the way that I’m feeling, people get worried.

The laundry arrives, I lean down to smell it, just to make sure that it isn’t filled with toxic chemicals and oh no, why did I get so close? Fabric softener right into my nose and rushing to inhale eucalyptus oil doesn’t help I already have that crunching in my sinuses. I hate that I have this privilege that’s kind of a necessity for me, I can afford to send my laundry to a place where they supposedly don’t use any chemical products, and then the laundry arrives and it’s like a blast of the end of the world, right here in this unbleached cotton bag.

I guess I’m not supposed to notice. I try not to notice -- I really try. Sometimes the odor is much fainter, I try not to notice there’s a rash below my eyes right where the freshly-laundered eye mask hugs my face. Freshly-laundered because it gets moist while I’m sleeping and if I don’t wash it frequently then I’ll get a different kind of rash. I try not to notice when my pants smell more like fabric softener than my shirts, maybe the fumes won’t reach my nose. I try not to notice when the fumes reach my nose anyway.

I can’t believe that this horrible toxic product isn’t illegal -- I can’t believe that they keep telling me they don’t use fabric softener, not even in any of their machines, and obviously that’s a lie or they’re sending the laundry somewhere else and this time it’s so bad that I’m going to have to ask them to wash these clothes again, please wash these clothes again, please.

Maybe a shower will help -- in the shower, I’m fantasizing about my own laundry machine which means fantasizing about some kind of apartment that I own, since there isn’t even enough water in this building to run a shower, and sure enough, just as I’m thinking this, the hot water stops running and then it turns to cold, and then it gets hot again but there’s no pressure and when I get out of the shower I turn the news on again, Free Speech Radio News, a worker-owned collective, and today’s first news stories were about Peruvian cops murdering indigenous protesters in the Amazon to make way for oil and gas development, and horrifying conditions in camps for Somalian refugees, and now they’re talking about gay marriage in New York state and I don’t want to hear anything about gay marriage ever again.

There was a time when I actually liked critiquing the hypocrisy of the gay marriage agenda, but now I don’t want to talk about marriage ever again -- I just want it to go away. Yet even on this progressive radio program that I listen to almost every day, the program that gives great in-depth coverage of US colonialism here and abroad, here on this progressive radio program there’s nothing but fawning support for gay assimilation -- marriage, military inclusion, hate crimes legislation, whatever -- they just throw it down with no critique whatsoever so when they say “the question of marriage equality is coming down to a few key lawmakers,” it sounds like they’re reading from a pro-marriage press release. What the hell is “marriage equality,” other than a scam by certain “nonprofits” to feed an endless machine for more more more money, what do they say every time they lose they say we need more more more money -- we lost once we lost twice we lost three times give us more more more money and we’ll try the same strategies of exclusion, the same strategies of presenting a sanitized, straight-friendly version of gay identity that silences anyone on the margins, we know these strategies will eventually work because eventually there won’t be any margins left, we’ll make sure of that!

And, of course, what do they say when they win? More more money we need more more money! Meanwhile, Free Speech Radio News wants me to know that “Brendon Fay wants his six-year-old Civil Marriage Trail Project to become irrelevant” -- luckily I’ve never heard of this project before, but searching for it on the web I do find that yes, they are invoking the Underground Railroad that helped bring slaves to Canada “where they found the freedom and equality denied in the U.S.”

Get it? Freedom Trail = Civil Marriage Trail. Freedom = Marriage. Wait, the movement to help gay people to go abroad to get married is a continuation of the movement to help slaves to escape servitude? Of course, I should never be surprised by the willingness of marriage advocates to appropriate civil rights discourse for their own gain, but still -- I’m surprised!

Yes, apparently the Civil Marriage Trail Project was founded to assist same-sex couples in New York to travel (underground?) to Canada, and more recently Massachusetts and Connecticut, to finally receive state support for legally becoming each other’s property. Well, not quite the Freedom Trail, but, according to Fay, some people are “too ill, too frail, or too disabled… or maybe those who are too poor, or who can’t afford to take the time off from work” to make the trip to Stamford or Toronto -- but, guess what, if civil marriage passes in New York, these poor disabled couples will finally be able to wed in their home state! Apparently this will solve all the problems related to poverty, illness, or disability -- now these lovely couples will have… marriage! Yes, marriage will help you to get a personal home attendant. Marriage will help pay your bills. Marriage will help give you enough healthy food to eat. Forget about providing basic resources, what we need is -- I know -- marriage marriage marriage! Say that again: marriage marriage marriage! More money for marriage! More money for marriage to help people with more money!

Fay wants to add that, apparently, a legal marriage helps you to immediately “get in track for legalization for immigrant purposes.” What track, exactly, is this? That’s right -- no need to change laws relating to immigration, just let more people get married! Need a new hat? Get married. Need a home? Get married. Need a job? Get married. Is that ICE at your door? Put down that gun, officer -- I’m married!

And how does this progressive newscast end? I know -- by telling us, without any critique whatsoever, that, if this bill to legalize gay marriage in New York passes, the state will “gain $210 million annually through increased wedding activities.” No critique of the same consumerism that drives all of the exploitative tentacles of government/corporate profiteering that Free Speech Radio News is always busy challenging. Sorry, if it’s gay, it’s okay -- just get married!

But wait -- before I get married, I need to get out of the house to get to the office supply store before it closes -- all of my pens have run out of ink, except for the ones that hurt my hands. So I rush outside and luckily the bus is just pulling up and I get to the store with plenty of time, although they have no answer as to why my pens run out of ink within a week or two, and I’m constantly having to return to fund the plastics industry, but then I’m home and even though I just ate something a few seconds or minutes ago I’m already hypoglycemic, maybe I should try some of these nuts -- macadamia nuts? I try one, my eyes get a little glazed but it’s not that bad so I try another, and then a third, and then I’m eating something else and I start to get that scratchiness in my throat -- I used to just think of it as a swallowing allergy, I can’t stop swallowing, but then my sister said something about hives in her throat and I thought oh, maybe these are hives, and then my nose starts running and I drink some water, but now it’s not just an itch in my throat it’s a pain, and then it’s like there’s something stuck on the roof of my mouth, some kind of skin, but there weren’t any skins on these macadamia nuts-- this is my skin, turned into something sandy.

I call Rose to thank her for the birthday gift, she wants to know if I’ve tried anything, she means any drugs. I say well, I did actually try something new, a thyroid medication, but it didn’t help. She says do you have a thyroid condition? I say I guess so, I’m slightly hypothyroid but the medication didn’t help -- I guess I’ll go back to the doctor, but I’m not that hopeful. Rose says: you need to go back, they’ll give you something that’ll help. I say I am going back, but I’m not that hopeful. Rose says: I don’t know of any thyroid problem that hasn’t been helped.

It's all about the shadows, thank you for the shadows!

A lostmissing poster from Matthew Grandstaff in West Virginia!!!

So much love around here!

Hopefully I can escape

Of course there are different kinds of waking up exhausted. Today I wake up feeling okay, which might be the first sign. The first sign of what?

So then I’m cooking and I just feel so agitated, when will this be ready? I mean it hasn’t been that long, but already I’m gritting my teeth and then when I eat it just feels like I’m not really eating, just putting something in my mouth, is this food? I eat more, and then I’m annoyed at the music no not the music I’m just annoyed. And then I realize oh no, this is that type of exhaustion where my eyes kind of close and the only thing I can do is get back in bed, even though I just slept 11 hours I need to get back in bed right away or I’m not going to be able to function.

I love this bed, under the covers and I’m hugging the pillow but then I’m wired again I try to fight it but eventually I pull the eye mask off: oh, this is a good view, a good view of my apartment. I can see all four windows and the sun. I get up for more eating, then I’m in the shower and why does my hair get so dry in the shower, I mean as soon as there’s water on it it’s dry, shampoo makes it worse and I start worrying about the hair that clogs the drain, what if all my hair is falling out and clogging the drain and I don’t care about the drain but what will I do about my hair? More conditioner but my hair still feels brittle in some parts -- I’m getting ready to go outside for a walk in the sun, but maybe instead I should try that henna treatment -- my hair is more important than the sun, right?

I can’t find the directions for the henna treatment I mean I don’t have any directions because I bought it in bulk, something like three scoops in a cup of boiling water but how big were the scoops? I try 3 tablespoons, but it doesn’t seem thick enough. Another tablespoon, but now it’s gritty. I rub it into my hair anyway -- it feels cooling but it looks like it’s drying my hair out. Wait, what if I put green clay in my hair -- maybe the bulk labels were wrong and this is green clay! I rush back into the shower, wash this gritty green substance off and put on more conditioner and then I try to wrap a pillowcase around my head to keep it warm because warm is supposed to help and a towel feels like too much weight but actually the pillowcase feels awkward too I don’t want to hurt my neck so I try a hat.

The conditioner feels cooling too -- maybe I should soak my feet in vinegar again now and then I can cool myself in both directions. The light outside is getting softer, this is my favorite time of the day, the time before the day ends. I know I’m probably worrying more about my hair because I feel so awful, can’t I at least rely on my hair? Tonight there’s some kind of free late-night thing at Yerba Buena -- it’s a museum, so I’m pretty sure there won’t be any smoke, right? Although of course they’re serving liquor, because people need liquor to do anything at night, and I’m sure there will be a whole lineup of chain-smokers right by the door. But Yerba Buena is pretty big, so hopefully I can escape.