thanksgiving was fucking great. i was initially bummed because i thought nobody was coming, but then amanda said she would come & i realized that she is all i need at thanksgiving, because she’s really inspirational & important to me. & then etta revealed that she wanted to come too and the three of us made this perfect thanksgiving trifecta and it was just great. really magical in this way i can hardly describe.
& then i went to ali & colleen’s afterwards and that was fun too. i read everyone an amazing text that my sister sent me: “”i didn’t know what this song on my itunes was so i named it the dirty song by the pottymouths”-mom re: sublime’s what i got”. all the americans laughed heartily at that one but there were two rad israeli fags who didn’t catch the reference. so we all tried to sing that song for them & it was really funny listening to dignified gay people singing sublime for some very confused israeli dudes. but maybe you had to be there.
also there was a hideous hot-pink sparks-esque beverage being passed around. i drank some out of a crystal teacup because it was too hilarious not to. and now i am feeling it. blah! i could hardly sleep at all last night & today i feel really sick.
anyway, i read everyone some poems by the amazing lesbian native american poet chrystos that ali had picked out and i don’t know, it was a really fucking good thanksgiving. oh, and amanda & i saw a rainbow walking home from the mert through the graveyard. and i met a guy at the bus stop who told me all these stories about how he failed mechanic school: “i was always fallin’ asleep. the guy would be talkin’ about the crescent wrench for a whole hour! who could sit through that?”
hello. i’ve had a lot to say but not a lot of time or internet access to write it in. i went on a strange midwestern roadtrip two weeks ago & then last week was the g-20 summit in pittsburgh. i didn’t actively protest but i did attend some protests, just to witness this strange moment in pgh history. it was nice to see people out and about; nice to see some new blood; nice to see some old friends.
it wasn’t nice to see the former love of my life running towards the riot cops looking totally crazed. realizing that she was here, in pittsburgh, and didn’t even try to say hi. i don’t know if she saw me, but it was heartbreaking. utterly heartbreaking, but i won’t bore you with the particulars. at least i could comfort myself with the fact that her hair looks completely and genuinely horrible. small comfort, but sometimes it helps.
i’m in the empty office. i want to be at home writing for my book or my zine. but i’m here because our particular corner of the country is experiencing crazy-high winds and the siding blew off my office. well, half of it did, and the other half is flapping in the breeze. i’m waiting for my boss’ handyman to come in. i’m waiting for a lot of things.
me and ray, on his 23rd birthday, at a lake in butler county. there was a big sign posted that said “NO INDECENT OR IMMORAL BEHAVIOR”. aren’t we indecent just by existing, though?
char & ian at the lake.
unfortunately, they didn’t have “bisexual auto parts”, so this was the best i could do!
oh, did you know that yesterday i got my first tattoo in 8 years? and that it was a tattoo i’ve wanted for nearly a decade now? and that it was done in my kitchen by a very lovely dyke tattoo artist? well, now you do.
cackling through the pain. everyone there was really funny. robin said, “i’m trying to tattoo you in between laughs!” amanda said, “me and pino are trying to tell jokes in between tattooing!”
amanda & pino alternated holding my hands.
a different perspective!
me & robin the tattoo artist, done for the day. she’s gonna fill in the typester in a few weeks. huzzah! i’ll post close-up pics when it heals a little more. it was a really good night, full of love for the ladiez in my life.
on monday i was hanging out with my AMAZING middle-aged-butch-dyke, cranky-genius, cuban-refugee-via-ny-and-sf-turned-lawrenceville-homeowner, pino. we had a good, strange night hanging out, and in the course of that night, she was successfully able to define the term “hipster”! people are always struggling to define that term, but coming up short. nobody can quite put their finger on it. until pino.
“a hipster,” she proclaimed, “is somebody you don’t like.” then we shrieked with laughter. it’s so true!
sunday was my 5 year anniversary of quitting smoking. i would still do anything for a damn cigarette. well, obviously, i could just walk to the corner store right now and buy a pack. there’s nothing physically stopping me from doing it. but i can’t. maybe you know why & maybe you don’t.
last night i was going to go to bed in defeat but kelsey & amanda did a drop-in. one bad thing about the drop-in was that i left all manner of inappropriate shit laying around and i think they saw it all. sorry! but other than that it was good. we all cuddled in my hammock under the stars (i initially, accidentally, typed “stores”) and told stories about our day and i felt very loved and taken care of, both by them and the universe.
it’s gray out, my empty p.o. box is making me bite my nails, i already hate what i brought for lunch today and i haven’t even eaten it, i need a change. i got to work an hour early today so i could take positive steps to change my life; using the computer and printer for resumes and applications.
in work news, at job #1 we have a new guy who i initially thought might be okay, but he pisses on the toilet seat! totally not okay, ever, if you’re not a quadriplegic or something. also, he revealed yesterday that he’s anti-choice. i think he is going to be the straw breaking the camel’s back when it comes to this job–there are many things going on here that are far worse than working with a douche-y law student, but i think that it’s going to finally be my impetus to leave. i’ve been at this job for 18 months! that’s the longest i’ve held a job since 2000.
in other work news, i am 90% positive that i work with an ex-gay at job #2! i had long since suspected that he was an ex-gay, since he is very gay-acting but mentions his wife frequently. but on saturday i was eavesdropping on a conversation he was having on the phone. he chatted with this client long after he was done giving her the survey, like literally 20 minutes after. i could only hear his side of the conversation, but at one point it went like this, “no……no, i’m married……yeah…….yes, i did that a long time ago, and it cost me, um, a very good friendship, and hurt a lot of feelings, but it just wasn’t me…….i don’t want to be around those people, but unfortunately i have to interact with them when i’m out in the world……..yeah, that behavior is offensive to me.” !!!!!!!!!!!!! i was flabbergasted. totally shocked! i did not think that young-ish, educated people were ex-gays.
incidentally, i am terrified that people think that my boyfriend & i are ex-gays, just because we both look and act fairly gay, yet we’re together. when people learn that he’s trans, it all makes sense, but he passes extremely well and 95% of people–even other trans people–have absolutely no fucking clue. although we are pretty fucking cute and happy and most ex-gay couples are pretty mismatched and miserable. probably nobody thinks that we’re ex-gays and i am just being paranoid, but it’s cause to fret nonetheless.
lately i swing wildly between being madly in love with this city and wanting to grow old here & wanting to leave immediately. i’d say it’s 75% in the first category and 25% in the second.
i am craving garlic today. freshly-chopped and sizzling in a cast iron skillet. just the smell and the sight more than actually eating it. it’s weird.
last night i dreamnt that aaron cometbus came to the zine reading i’m doing on friday and hit on me. he said, “i have to go to this lame-ass hardcore show, but the whole time i’ll be wishing that you were telling me your sweet weird little stories.”
i handed him my zine and said, “you can read this at the hardcore show; it’ll be like i’m there.”
he said, “why don’t you come to the hardcore show with me and then afterwards we can hump each other?”
i said, “let’s cut out the middleman and hump each other now!” so we walked to his house. he lived on negley ave. in pittsburgh and i felt awkward because i was wearing some sort of thing under my clothes that made me look like a big, muscley guy. i woke up feeling kinda crushy, which is weird, because i’ve never had a crush on aaron cometbus before, although i do love his zine.
hi, blog! it’s been a long time. mainly because i am very uninspired by, and bored with, the internet lately. also i am working myself to death. i just worked 22 days in a row and had one day off (spent with my sweet sweet boyfriend, riding our bikes all over pittsburgh and looking at dino bones at the natural history museum and running into nice people and eating cinnamon buns and cooking) and now i’m looking at 17 more days of work before i go to new york. sigh. maybe i’ll get one or two days off thrown in there but i am stressed out & see no end in sight unless i get fired from one of my jobs.
my 27th birthday was one of the best ones i’ve ever had, but i can’t think of an accurate summary.
this morning i got to work and my boss’ wife was struggling to open the door with the wrong key and was yelling a lot. my boss turned to me, when she wasn’t paying attention, and calmly said, “she’s a loon.” after i had opened the door with the correct key, and she stomped in, ranting and raving, he said, “she can’t seem to figure out how to correctly turn a key in a lock. other than that, she’s a fairly good woman. not a very good woman, but a fairly good one.”
one of my best friends is in the hospital and i have a bad feeling about it. i really hope i’m wrong.
…and here are some bizarre things that i saw. 
isn’t this AMAZING!?!?! it was at the gay bar.
isn’t this even more amazing??!! in case you don’t know, 516 is the area code for long island, ny, where i hail from! to think that ANOTHER book-mad long islander wound up in the totally random town of wheeling makes me really happy.
we did both.
(not pictured: the shoe hospital downtown [yes, a hospital for shoes, much like the teddy bear hospital {but more useful}], a witch supply store, following a bunch of over-the-top drag queens from a mediocre gay bar to a much better one, making out in a cage above the dance floor in said gay bar, having pretty much everyone we encountered be completely shocked that we came to wheeling. it is entirely possible that we are the only people who ever visited wheeling just for shits and giggles. i thought it was fun, but i was very glad to go back home in the morning, and very glad that i don’t live there [even though there are a whole lot of gorgeous abandoned houses that are probz dirt cheap].)
yesterday i had a strange and beautiful experience. i was angrily stomping around butler street on my lunch break when i saw a flyer saying that bitch (of bitch and animal fame) was playing at a coffee shop in the hood that night. i don’t normally listen to her music, but i had a feeling that it would be an interesting thing to see live, and i was right. i was thinking about people playing music in the same room as you, how that’s such a gift, and how it’s easy to overlook what a privilege that is, what a rare special thing.
so i went home & made curried lentils & wrestled with my computer (not literally) & then went back out for the show. i laid on the floor, in a lushly carpeted & pillowed show-space, surrounded by lesbians (half of whom i know–this is pittsburgh, after all). one thing that i hadn’t expected (but i think i knew subconsciously, which i think is why i felt compelled to go so strongly) is that bitch moves like axi, and makes the same face when she sings.
have you ever known anyone who died? i think it’s not an uncommon experience to remember your dead loved one as a series of still pictures; not an animate human anymore. i think it’s not uncommon to forget their voice, forget how they moved, forget what their presence was like. partially because remembering hurts too much and partially because there’s just nothing left to remind you. and so here i was, sitting twenty feet from this woman who looks and moves so much like this other woman; something i thought i would never see again. and here it is, right in front of me.
in the between-song banter, bitch was talking about how she found a scary lump in her breast and spent a whole month totally freaking out, convinced that she was going to die, and how she made a promise to herself that if she was okay that she was going to live really fiercely, that she was going to love really hard and dance really fast and have really hot sex and do something that made a difference in her life and the lives of others. i had a very similar experience last year with a scary lump in my neck & a very similar realization stemming from it. and so after the show i went up to her & said that i’d had the same experience, and how it lit a fire under my ass. i said, “after i found out i was okay, i wrote a book, because i realized i didn’t have any more time to waste. and you need to let the lump be a gift.” her eyes got really wide, like she really needed to hear it. “what is your book about?!?!!” she yelled, but then she got pulled away by someone else.
so i wrote my email address on her mailing list, and then drew a bunch of arrows pointing to the other side of the page, and wrote “p.s. my lump-inspired book is about kale and compost piles and group-house love and the families we make when our own throw us away…” [which is not really an accurate description, but it's what i could think of at that moment. i get flustered trying to explain my book.] i was chatting with this lady i know and then bitch came back and said, “wait! so what’s it about?” and i showed her what i wrote and she yelled, “I LOVE YOU!” and gave me a big hug, and the whole thing was so exactly what axi would have done. it was fucking eerie, and so unexpected, and so so beautiful. i didn’t cry; i went to the lesbo bar with some acquaintances of mine & then rode my bike home super fast, feeling triumphant and safe and loved.
Filed under: brilliant moments, gayz, new york, nostalgia, pittsburgh, wingnuts
i’ve been super-homesick for ny lately. i still have no desire to live there. it’s like a line i read from a sherman alexie story: “looking through photo albums she got that look on her face and i knew she missed my father. not enough to want him back. she missed him just enough for it to hurt.” enough that i get irrationally angry & jealous when other people get to go there. i miss strange, little things, like riding the subway all the way from brooklyn to astoria with kastoory and buying fruit at a vegetable stand in queens with her mom. like weird guys at health food stores telling me that everything in the universe has the same basic pattern, and that both mushrooms & stars look the same inside. like going to events surrounded by beautiful queers, with people onstage screaming the truth & everyone absolutely, full-force getting it. that’s not an easy thing to turn yr back on.
in other news, super bowl sunday was strangely fun. i went to the blue moon, which is a ridics gay bar in my hood. here is a picture of most of my friends freaking out because the steelers were doing something, and me & eric semi-trying to care:
the best part was, after we won & everyone was on the street freaking out, this drag queen named candy decided to celebrate by dancing naked in the middle of the street, which was amazing:
(both of these pics were stolen from branden. thanks branden!)
while we were walking back to tiffini’s house, she pointed out that one street corner was full of white people freaking out, and the opposite corner was full of black people freaking out. and that made me not want to be here anymore.
anyway. lately i’ve been looking at old lists that i’ve written. i love lists. mainly just things that i love and hate. #1 on my things i hate list from 2002, when i was twenty, is “being female”, which is kinda surprising now. #1 on my things i like list from 1997, when i was fifteen, is “beavis & butthead”. why am i telling this embarrassing fact to the internet? i don’t know. i think i am overdue on making another one, and i think that it’s important to periodically reflect on how, even when things change so much, they still remain largely the same. a thought both comforting & horrifying. it
amanda & i decided to celebrate the fact that we both randomly received 90’s-dance-song-themed mix cd’s in the same week, both of which were made by people who know our love of kitchen dance parties, and who insisted that their cd’s be used in the kitchen. this was a bizarre coincidence, but a nice one. & so on new year’s day, we gathered some good peeps together to freak out to junior high dance songs.
how can you make a document of something using still pictures, using fixed words, when its inherent nature is one of movement, one of change? not using flash helps, but who likes dancing in adequate lighting? not me. when you want to remember, but you don’t want it remembered like this:
the flash arresting everyone, frozen in an eternally awkward pose. when it wasn’t that way at all. when you moved, you were beautiful. you felt it. you became part of something larger than yourself, as cliche as that perhaps is. cliches happen. your formerly freezing cold house was now sweaty; everyone’s outerclothes in a gigantic pile on a kitchen chair. you let people come into your home & you had a moment, without spending money or worrying about looking cool or whatever. you just let yourselves go; you let yourselves happen. and it was amazing.
that’s a little more like it. but still, not accurate. but really, how can you or i or anyone describe anything that happens to us & have it be accurate? that’s just how it is.
p.s. did you know that i apparently make this stupid-ass face:
every time i dance? i guess you would if you ever danced with me. but since i don’t often look in the mirror while dancing, i had no idea until amanda took multiple pictures of me dancing & i was making that face in every single one! oh well.
