Ugh

Ugh. I don't get jealous. I just don't. But here I am, sitting in it, in all of its agressive glory. I hate her for it right now. I don't want to feel this right now, don't want to feel like she has the power to hurt me. The truth is that I felt it last night. I felt like something was happeneing with her. I know you think that's crazy, but I have always known. I have always known when things were happening with her, even miles, days, silences away. And I felt like something was happening last night. And then today, her seeming dissatisfaction with me . . . Will I ever feel like I am enough for her? I wonder. But it isn't purposeful to wonder anymore. It's just painful. So I'll just stop. You can do that, you know. Sometimes you can just will yourself to feel something. So today I will myself to believe again . If I am not enough for her, then so be it. Truthfully, there are bigger things than me and her.

Curing Cancer

I cried last night for her mother, for her, for myself. I desperately wanted to make it go away for her, to cure cancer, to release the heaviness that hung on her with every breath. She tried to talk about other things, but I couldn’t. It seemed so trite to talk about my job, or my relationship, or the things that seem so small compared to the struggle that is beginning for her and her mom. And then there was the anger. Her mom hadn’t had an easy life. She’d spent most of her time in factories, or in kitchens, stocking shelves or making beds in hotels. She’d never had health insurance. Her $11,000 a year paycheck was too much for Medicaid, so she had to quit her job, apply for disability, and pay the first hospital bills with her savings. Fuck, I’m so sick of this country. I want to throw up, push everything in a hot violent surge from my stomach, and relieve the queasiness that comes from living in a place where our greed and ignorance is taking lives. Fuck, what I really wanted to say was, I’m sorry.

How I'm Feeling Today

It kind of feels like when I was a kid and I would run down to the 7-Eleven and put a can of Betty Crocker chocolate frosting in my courdoroy coat pocket and walk out the door. I'd walk home, fast, sit on the floor of my closet and eat the whole can by rounded spoonfuls. It feels naughty, and most likely to make me sick. In fact, I'm feeling a little queasy right now . . .

You Lose Weight?

So I walked into Coffee Mine this morning to get a bagel and the owner said to me. “You lose weight, eh?” Yeah, a little. Uhm, thanks. Weird. I know that I should feel good that I have established relationships with the mom and pop stores that surround the place where I work, but somehow it always makes me feel a little uncomfortable. Maybe because it is a false intimacy, an intimacy based on polite inquiries (How are you today?) and pat answers (Fine. Good. Pretty good.), an intimacy based on the fact that I keep coming back, day after day, to spend money in their store. They comment on my weight, or my hair, or my hat and it is a commercial transaction. How could it not be? Anyway, I have worked at my current job for 4 and a half years, longer than any job I’ve ever had, longer than I was in college, longer than I have ever lived in one place. And it’s really that idea that is starting to freak me out. Is this really what I do?

As an aside . . . today I am wearing cords on cords. A brown, wide whaled corduroy car coat with black, thin whaled Levi’s cords. Cords on cords are a definite no-no in my book, but look at me. What can I say? I was freezing, and my corduroy coat is the warmest thing I have. Sigh. What’s next? White New Balance sneakers with jeans? Yuck.

Living Here

Today in the crack alley near my work there was this man sitting, lying, stuck on the sidewalk next to my building. He was street dirty, shirtless, and smiling up at the sky with glassy, drug-induced clarity. He had what I can only describe as a hole in his arm, an ulcer that spread about six inches long and four inches wide along the top of his forearm. It was like his skin had been eaten away and what was left was a tough pink and crusty white exposed crater that looked deep into his tissue and down to his bone. He is a leper living on the streets of San Francisco. And we let him, walk by as though half his arm isn’t missing, as though he has chosen to slowly disappear, tiny skin cell by tiny skin cell. I went into work, walked into the bathroom as my stomach pitched and rolled, and waited to see if my oatmeal would be pushed back up my throat. But it wasn’t. And somehow, that seemed worse.

Older Still

Last night I decided to pull out the dusty, old box of tapes from under my bed. Mostly I was trying to scratch a The The itch which had started Saturday night when I went to this Turkish movie (Head On) in which a therapist quotes Matt Johnson to try and cheer up the suicidal punk-rock lead. I popped in Infected, but the tape squealed and faded in and out. Fuck. I grabbed another tape out of the box - my Phone Sex Mix tape - a combination of clips of girls describing (among other things) how they go down on women (from Juliana Luecking’s Dream Cum Go Down) mixed with riot grrrls and alterna-bands. . . Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, Huggybear, Babes in Toyland, Nation of Ulysses, Sleater-Kinney (the early years), Tuscadero, etc. Hello 1995. 1995? FUCKING TEN YEARS AGO. Argh. Listening to the old tapes is a bad idea. Anyone have any whiny, white-boy emo? I so need some 2003 right now.

Up on My Soapbox

Gay marriage and the mainstreaming of queer culture has never really been my issue. In fact, I think we should get rid of tax cuts and special rights for couples and couples with kids. Single people get screwed in our country. Married people get rewarded for being monogamous and having multiple kids. Honestly, I think we should reward single folks for not contributing to the world’s population growth issues, to not placing another burden on the social systems of our local, state and national governments. But that’s another rant I suppose.

Yesterday, however, for some reason, I felt every vote in those 11 states where they passed amendments banning gay marriage. I felt the entrenched hatred of every person who stepped into a little booth, under the cover of anonymity, and voted to pass a hate law. And that’s what it is. It’s not about preserving an institution, or being steadfast to your religious beliefs. Ultimately, it is about thinking that a queer is less of a person than you. Tying a young queer to a fence, beating him senseless and leaving him for dead, or voting to make sure that he can never marry, can never have the same rights, it all comes from the same deep seeded belief that a queer life is worth less (worthless).

Sometimes, we get so caught up in our ironic cynicism. If we’re not careful, those same people that are voting against gay marriage will start voting in the daylight, and end up in our offices, on our televisions, and in our bedrooms.

Storms

I woke up last night in the middle of the most intense thunderstorm. We don’t have those in San Francisco. It was strange. For a second I thought I was in DC again. I used to love the thunderstorms in DC. They would come quickly, a rush of dark clouds and thick, warm air, and wash through just as fast. Mostly I loved them after. I loved the trail of cool, clean air they would leave behind. I miss that. It’s not the same here. There is so much heartache around me right now. Not mine, necessarily, but it hangs heavy just the same. I listen, give advice, and get frustrated with all the fucked-up people in fucked-up relationships, or good people in fucked-up relationships, or fucked-up people in good relationships that just stopped working. Doesn’t anything work out anymore?

Hung

Hangovers suck. I’m sitting at work drinking coffee and trying to motivate, but my stomach feels uneasy, a light rolling here and there, and I’m fighting that fuzzy-tongued, mushy brain feeling that feels all too familiar. I always imagine it a muted memory from when I was fourteen, waking up in my bed after a night lying on the soft green grass on the 9th hole at the snotty golf club in the middle of the suburban town where I grew up, a night spent drinking Southern Comfort ripped off from Mark’s parents liquor cabinet, a night smoking pot, burning little smiley faces into our legs with our cheap Bic lighters while debating Morrissey vs. Johnny Marr. Of course, back then, the next morning wasn’t like this at all. My body is slow to recover these days. Slow to recover from the gym, from injury, from being drunk. That’s what I’ve noticed most as I get older. The chemicals that used to get pumped through me as quickly as they were made now sit a little more stagnant. They visit longer and leave more noticeable traces of their toxicity.
Of course our bodies are dying everyday, one cell at a time, but it always seems to catch up to me on days like today.

Believer

So I’m a believer. So what? People are so suspicious of faith these days. Suspicious of one another, of the idea that someone might want to do the right thing just to do the right thing, suspicious of morality, suspicious of strong feelings about anything or anyone. We are so jaded. It’s not hip to be a believer, not cool to have strong conviction. I’m not talking spirituality here, but I could be. So I believe in something totally irrational and illogical. So I have no evidence to support what I believe except my intuition, except for my heart, and I still believe it. So what. All you non-believers need to get the fuck off my back and go find something to believe in. It’s not that hard. Just step outside of yourself for once, and listen to someone else.

Beauty

It's Friday and the speed freaks are out in the alley next to my work. A woman in shorts and a t-shirt, barefoot, with the tell-tale toothless gums is swaying on the curb. She's smiling, a wide open grin, and slowly rocking back and forth as she hums. She looks relatively peaceful. And for a second, I wish I was with her, riding waves of warmth as they spread to the tips of my fingers and fan out along the tiny veins in my eye lids. Of course it's only temporary. I don't want to be around later, when she comes crashing, when she wakes up on the piss stained pavement with bloody feet and numb fingers. But my god she looks happy. And somehow, in this moment, it's beautiful.

Bad Feminist

So I went to MadCat tonight and watched this film of a Yoko Ono performance piece where she tries to rip off her bra. I couldn't help but think, "Yoko has nice tits." I am a BAD feminist. Bad. Sigh

I think I am going to go to feminist hell, otherwise known as Houston.

Flying Too Close to the Sun

So I was sitting at my computer working (theoretically) on a freelance project when this big ole fly buzzes in and lands on the edge of my tea mug. I ignore him and go back to the computer screen when the next thing I hear is a faint sizzling sound. No. Couldn’t be. And I look into my mug and sure enough the fly is now lying wings down in my hot tea. I’d just witnessed a fly suicide. What kind of fly jumps off the edge into the great tea abyss? Did he hit a slick spot? Or did he just try to fly too close to the sugary sun? His wings melted, that’s for sure. And now I am stuck with his remains. Yuck. I hate it when living things die in my presence. It feels like a weird omen or something. Yuck. Fuck it.I’ll just have a Corona instead.

Gossip

People talk, and talk, and talk. They want to be a fly on the fuck, but the moment has passed and everything after is just lies - mine, and hers.

Being Regular

So I realized today that I am a "regular." Shit. I get up everyday, go to the same coffee shop and get the same coffee. I am a regular. They know what I am going to order before I order it. They have it ready before I even pay. It's weird. I don't think I like being a regular. It's like an invasion of my privacy or something. Can't they just pretend that they've never seen me before? Yes, I got a haircut. Thanks. Can't they just pretend that they have no idea what I'm going to order? What happened to good old-fashion, mega-chain, customer service where you're just a buck seventy-five and a number? I mean, who knows? Maybe today I'll be a mocha whip double shot frappacino, or a tall iced nut americano, or some other such creative (read:faggoty) crazy thing. Maybe today I won't be the same thing I was yesterday. Okay, the truth is that I'm a regular. And I hate that they know it too.