| Original story ETA |
[May. 13th, 2008|01:02 pm] |
Wow. For the first time since October, I think, I have written an original story. For the first time in I don't know how long, I completed an original story. Or at least some smut with a plot in there somewhere. It's 30 pages, longhand. I just finished it, during a fairly boring meeting. I'll be posting it here, in chunks, when I have time to type it up.
I'm provisionally calling it "I met Andriy." This line more or less encapsulates the whole story: "Nah, here's a condom. You have no idea what I've been sleeping with, and I do mean what."
Actually, that line more or less encapsulates my life. |
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[May. 10th, 2008|10:06 am] |
Last night, ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) trouble4hire took me on a date to the fabulous Boston Gay and Lesbian Film Festival at the MFA. We saw a picture called Butch Jamie. It was a comedy, (completely meeting my requirements for Friday night fare) about a butch lesbian actor who, after failed attempts to get a role as a woman, is cast in the role of a man in a distinctly low-rent feature. Her disguise as "male Jamie" is convincing, and "he" attracts the attention of the sylph-like props mistress, Jill. Male Jamie and Jill go on a few dates, then Jill jumps Jamie, who makes up a series of preposterous lies to get around the fact that "he" is not physiologically male. Jill rejects Jamie, not because Jamie is female, but because Jill is an "ex-gay" and has sworn off pussy for life.
Trouble and I discussed whether this constituted a plot hole. Wouldn't a lesbian, or "recovering lesbian," be hip enough to the subtleties of female masculinity that she could tell the difference between a man and a fairly inept cross-dresser? Or, because she's fooling herself about the whole ex-gay deal, would she also be able to fool herself that the butch with glued-on sideburns was actually in possession of the all-important Y chromosome?
This also got me to wondering how I would respond if I were in bed with someone who turned out to have a set of genitalia different to what I expected. I've slept with people with a fabulous array of sex and gender combinations, but I've always known in advance what I was getting in to. What would I do if really surprised? (Trouble asserts that I am enough of a horndog that I would carry on regardless). Could I even be surprised at this juncture? I feel that I'm fairly good at "reading" my fellow gender-queers; I exist at the borders of gender myself. I can generally tell if a man had pink blankets as a baby, and I'm not surprised when a particularly tall lady heads into the men's room to take a pee. If all else fails, my sense of smell clues me in as soon as I'm within a conversational distance.
We established that possibly the only configuration that might surprise me is a tall, lean older woman-born-woman with bony hands and a demonstratively feminine style who was on hormone replacement therapy for menopause; sight and scent, I would be apt to confuse her with a transexual lady. Looking at this theoretical model, I determined that my response upon taking off her underwear would be "pardon me, I thought you had a peen." This of course got us, and several other people on the subway platform, laughing aloud. They'd all just seen the same movie as we had, so it wasn't quite the randomly embarrassing awkward statement it might have otherwise been. Or maybe it was, but my impromptu audience were all prepped to laugh at it anyway because Butch Jamie was so hilarious. |
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| The Mothers' Day Card I'm Not Sending |
[May. 9th, 2008|02:44 pm] |
Occasionally I suffer from writer's block, especially when what I want to say is totally at odds with what I need to say. Dan Savage taught me a great trick for coping with this problem: write down what you want to say! Express the poison! Then, having written it and got it out of your system, write whatever it is that you need to communicate instead. So, here is the Mother's Day card that I'm not sending to my grandmother:
 | | | | | Dear Nana,
Happy mothers' day, you hyperjudgmental old cow. Please quit nagging my brother and my mother. I know the kid can't get a job; the economy's crap and he's lazy anyway. Trust me, I'm painfully aware of both facts, as is my mother. However, every time you bring it up, it sincerely makes my mother cry. My mother, your daughter, the one who got her fingers trapped in a ringer washing-machine at age 10 and didn't cry, the one who chased a bear off of said brother at age 55. She's tough, but you installed all her buttons and are merciless about pushing them. Knock it off. And quit thinking that you're a psychological expert just because you watch talk shows on daytime TV. In case you haven't noticed, our family is quite a lot different to the sort of idiots who will go on chat shows, so the "lessons" you learn aren't even relevant, let alone applicable.
Also, one more crack about my weight, and I will sincerely bitch-slap you.
Your Loving Grandchild.
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EDIT: It worked, I managed to send her a perfectly nice card wishing her a sunny day for yardwork, and mentioning our shared love of same. Phew. The card I sent Mama said "thanks for the excellent DNA!" |
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| Sighting of the Day |
[May. 8th, 2008|07:48 pm] |
Sighting of the day: lost, bitchy Buddhist(?) nun.
The 77 bus ride home is an ever-changing source of fascination for me. Today, I got on the bus next to a young woman with a shaved head and a shapeless shirt of some coarse natural fibre. I assumed that she was a lesbian, and smiled at her, but got no smile in return. I took another look- she was wearing an aggressively vegan ensemble, no leather anywhere, including her clunky (but synthetic) Earth Shoes-style footwear. Then she began to twiddle and swing a string of prayer beads, which led me to the conclusion that she was a caucasian conversion to a religious doctrine of some Eastern stripe (lesbianism not required). After possibly fifteen minutes on the bus, she demanded of the driver how much further it was to Belmont. The driver told her that the 77 does not go to Belmont, but before he, I, or anyone else could explain to her which bus she needed and how to get to it, she barged out the door, still swinging her prayer beads.
A little religious faith is a fine thing, especially if it gives you a more calm approach to life, but in this case it didn't seem to be doing so, and she would have been much better served by a route map. |
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| Bad touch! |
[May. 7th, 2008|07:21 pm] |
Someone on the bus today touched my Spot!* Not just a casual bump, but a deliberate "thump-thump" pat as she was disembarking. WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT ABOUT?! I wasn't standing in her way, and although I was standing in the aisle, I was doing my best to flatten myself utterly (it was rather full bus). And this woman PATS me!
In terms of social acceptability, randomly patting strangers in the small of the back is just slightly odd. However, in terms of sensitivity and emotional response, she might as well have patted my crotch. May I reiterate, WTF? I'm sure she didn't mean anything untoward by it, but if she'd been trying to get my attention or make me move or something, wouldn't a tap on the shoulder have been more conventional? I'm itchy about my personal space anyway, and now I am all out of sorts. So I make the normal response to a mildly-traumatic situation: I blog about it.
*Explanatory note to the three-or-so readers of this blog who have not already slept with me: I have a very sensitive erogenous zone in the centre of the small of my back, slightly above the tramp-stamp location. |
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| I fail at Evil |
[May. 4th, 2008|02:45 am] |
I thought I was a hardass, but according to this internet quiz thing, I'm actually a giant wuss. My self-esteem is devastated.
You are 26% evil
You are not so evil. You are overall a nice person, although I wouldn’t want to get on your bad side. You have an extravagant imagination.
Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com |
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| Public Service Announcement |
[May. 2nd, 2008|04:21 pm] |
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It is May and it seems that I am wildly pansexual. Men, women, any stripe of transgendered person and probably sentient alien lifeforms are not safe in my presence. Clear the area or bring lube. trouble4hire, brace yourself, sweet one. |
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| Ugly Kept Boy Seeks Asexual Sugardaddy |
[Apr. 30th, 2008|05:45 pm] |
trouble4hire and I are still looking for a tenant for our spare room. My beloved pointed me to this LOLarious Craig's List ad. What do you think? Should we get a housemate who won't pay rent, on the basis that he might (or might not) have sex with us (depending on if he feels like it), dismisses gays as a group in his first sentence, and looks like a frickin' greaseball to boot?
All together now: EWWWW. I'm actually tempted to invite him over to look at the room, but I think that trouble4hiremight object if I filled the house with the bloody pig carcasses and snuff films that would give this guy a more realistic idea of what to expect from anyone who'd actually take him up on his offer. |
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| Bulletin: Beautiful Man Asleep On Bus |
[Apr. 29th, 2008|08:12 pm] |
On the 77 on the way home today, I sat in one of the side-facing seats, just next to a man in a forward-facing seat. I didn't notice him when I sat down, being too busy trying not to wallop him with my courier bag. However, when the bus started to move, he started to snore. I looked over and was smitten.
He was tall, powerful guy, kind of awkwardly folded into the small space between our seats. He had salt-and-pepper hair, and facial hair that looked like Buffalo Bill joined a biker gang. It was his hands that really got me, though- big, rough hands. They'd been scrubbed clean, but still bore traces of motor oil and grease in the creases and the corners of the fingernails. His hands, let me emphasize, were huge, with big square nails slightly longer than they needed to be. I tried not to stare, because he kept waking up a little bit and looking around before nodding off again (I found this endearing). Instead, I concentrated on smelling him- motor oil, petroleum, starter fluid, my favourite cologne. Once when he looked up, I noticed that he had ice-blue eyes. Also, he had a stud in his left ear- dare I even hope? I looked away when I saw him looking at me, afraid that he'd display the usual male hostility at discovering a guy is staring at you.
I'd been gathering my courage to smile at him when I got off the bus, but he was soundly asleep at my stop. That's life, I guess. But if you're reading this and happen to be a ruggedly handsome man with a Hayn's Autobody hat who was on the 77 bus around 6:30 today and wondered why there was a little queer staring at you every time you woke up, drop me a line. |
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| Who wants a home? |
[Apr. 28th, 2008|03:24 pm] |
trouble4hire and I are looking for someone to rent our upstairs. Our house is fabulous, if I do say so myself. When we eventually obtain kids from somewherez, we'll move to this master suite and put the kids into what's now our room. But for right now, the upstairs is a nice, private area with a lot of the benefits of a studio apartment and a rather cheaper rent. Thus far, we've had two housemates living up there. Both transexual ladies, as it occurs. I liked the symmetry of the arrangement- the lesbians downstairs, us on the second floor, and a transexual on the third. Nice tall stack-o-queer. Even if you're not looking for a room, check out the pics because our house is spiffy.
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| I HATE EVERYTHING |
[Apr. 27th, 2008|12:02 pm] |
No, actually, that's a lie. I just hate my wireless/VoIP router, its expired warranty, circular tech support, and the fact that NONE OF MY PHONES RING. I've patched through to the internet by hardwiring to the router (how 1982), and it irks me that I can't go out and use the internet on the porch, but my fine collection of telephones is SILENT. Not a ding! A. I'm waiting to hear back from people who might want to look at the room I have for rent, but B. I apparently just can't survive without copperwire connectivity.
EDIT: I ROCK. As do Ellen from Comcast and Ranjit and Annie from LinkSys. Linksys itself still sucks some balls, but I'm posting this from the porch, and that's all that counts. |
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| The weight of academic achievement |
[Apr. 25th, 2008|12:57 am] |
OK, so I was going to post something deep about this amazing book I've been reading, Hello Cruel World, but my brain is broken.
Instead, I will just mention that I realised that, after I get my Master's, I will have a total of four class rings- I already have high school, college, and Phi Beta Kappa. Therefore, having completed this degree, I will have 1. the world's most erudite bling, and 2. an extremely educational set of brass knuckles. |
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| Thrilling Monday |
[Apr. 21st, 2008|11:25 am] |
At the museum, filing the field notes. This is, quite sincerely, the most exciting filing I've ever done. Field notes from the Lewis and Clark expedition, field notes from Theodore Roosevelt's safari in Kenya. Hand-written accounts on faded, yellowing paper, written by intellects I respect to the utmost. It's entertaining, too- there are notes written on scraps of paper napkin, bits of old Far Side page-a-day calendar, whatever people had to hand when they found an amazing animal.
Edit: Crumbs! Field notes from Dr. John C. Phillips, a naturalist who accompanied Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett. I kind of thought the Disney corporation made those guys up. Also, I'd previously read about how paper was rationed during and after WWII, and how thin each individual sheet of paper was during that time, but this was the first time I have actually felt pieces of paper made during that era. Very thin, and has gotten very brittle over time.
Also, trouble4hire is coming home today. I'm dizzy with anticipation. Not only is my beloved returning to me, but I've been promised a gift:
Check out that sleek Art Deco styling, the wear on the handset. It seems to be an extension phone from a building's internal telephone system, probably either a hotel or an office. You couldn't call the outside world on it, but by pressing one of the six buttons, you could communicate with the bellhop or the front desk or whatever distant part of the building. It's a thing of beauty. I quite hope that the labels on the buttons are still intact; those white stripes in the label windows give me hope, but I'm trying not to get too excited- they might just be the underlying, unenamelled metal showing through... I am going to do trouble4hire so hard. |
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| Yard work Sunday |
[Apr. 20th, 2008|03:03 pm] |
Owning my own home has induced in me some kind of relatively harmless insanity- I actually LIKE yard work now. I've been picking up rubbish that collected along our fence over the winter. There is evidence that suggests that, the more rubbish people see in a place, the more likely they are to feel that this place is appropriate for littering. Obviously, this is not the opinion that I wish people to hold of my side yard. I really do think that I'm making an impact. The first time I did this, I picked up two large bags of trash and a safe. As in, a metal box with a heavy lock, which had been busted open. Last year, I picked up one really full bag of trash. This year, only one slightly bulgy bag of litter. And- no trucker bombs on the side of the yard that abuts the gas station, down from two the first year and one last year... THAT is real progress.
There were, however, an ungodly number of cigarette butts. I found myself uncharitably wishing that the smokers who deposited them would get cancer and perish, thus leaving my lawn unlittered. This is a very irresponsible wish, so instead I shall hope that they kick the habit and take up racquetball or some other healthful endeavour that generates no detritus. However, in among a particularly large cache of butts, I found the most marvelous black beetle with purple iridescence. I picked it up, and briefly considered pinning it to a card and putting it on display in the Victorian manner. However, crazy-cool though Victorian beetle-arranging is, this beetle was so nice that I set it free to find a less nicotine-flavoured home.
I also picked up crushed beer cans and burnt logs from a wino encampment between the fence and the gas station. My attitude toward homeless alcoholics has changed drastically in the past decade, from "help and pity the homeless" to "ARRGH WINOS! Not in my back yard!" Again, this change seems to be directly linked to my acquisition of real estate. Maybe I should leave some A.A. leaflets back there.
Next up, uprooting a random spiky plant, then barbecue with the downstairs neighbours! |
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| I almost forgot! |
[Apr. 19th, 2008|08:28 pm] |
One of the best bits of today was stumbling by Million Year Picnic (the world's most awesome comic book store, located in Harvard Square), and talking with myp_tony about fashion disasters of the 1970s.
Now, you have to understand that the 1970s was a very special era in the history of fashion. When I say "fashion disasters," I am not talking about what some empty-headed starlet wore to the Oscars, or about some aging semi-celebrity's withered-teat-exposing "wardrobe malfunction." I am talking about full-on call-out-the-National-Guard DISASTERS. Behold:
I would like to point out that these were both real advertisements, for real products, created by companies that honestly expected to sell these garments. See nom_de_grr and James Lileks' wonderful pages for details. The seventies were an interesting, experimental period for race and gender in America. I appreciate that. I respect a lot of the changes that developed in that era. However... No. Just, no.
Let's deconstruct. The "Cleaver Sleeve" in figure 1 was a style of pants designed for black men, by a black man. This garment makes a statement, and that statement is "LOOK AT MY HUGE BLACK COCK!" Mr. Cleaver is asserting his masculinity for all it's worth. However, as with many symptoms of machismo, it's not really very well thought out at all. Tony and I noted chafing, small children, dogs, and hastily-closed desk drawers as major drawbacks to this fashion. A lesser but still significant consideration is, what if you pop a woody while wearing this thing? An even lesser but somehow larger problem is, what if you pop a woody, but it only inflates the lower third or so of the "sleeve"?
On the other hand, the Dorcus He-Skirt. Yes, by damn, that's what it was called. An effort to break out of the stifling norms of machismo, kinda. I suspect that somewhere on the design team was a thwarted transvestite, or, heaven help her, a nascent transexual. So for me, this fashion loses points for going by halves. So ya wanna wear a skirt, honey, that's fiiiine. But checked polyester? And what's with the phallic tie and crotch-accentuating buttons? Yes, sweetie, we know what ya got under there. The bestially hairy legs are something of a hint. Just go ahead and wear a skirt, already, but for pity's sake, how about something breatheable in maybe a natural fibre? The Radical Faeries are just waiting for you to sign up, it's OK. |
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| Ups and downs of Saturday |
[Apr. 19th, 2008|03:05 pm] |
Things that happened today:
1. Did an "ant trailing" assignment at the Peabody Museum, basically keeping track of where the visitors went and how long they stayed there. I liked it, trying to watch them without them seeing me. I pretended I was a spy.
2. On the way out of the museum, got a really nasty look from a random old lady. Seriously, WTF was that? Almost enough to wreck my morning.
3. Went to Goodwill to repair my mood. There, I got a scrapbook for filing our art show cards, as trouble4hire requested. This request had frightened me, because most of the scrapbooks in Goodwill are the pathetic remnants of failed marriages, and wedding scrapbooks are on my list of Things That Are Totally Goddamned Doomed, anyway. I am not sure if getting them second-hand at Goodwill means that the divorced couple has already absorbed the curse, or if it just gets worse as time goes on. However, I found a scrapbook, albeit of a weddingiferous nature, but that is totally blank and unopened. It doesn't say "OUR WEDDING" in big gold leaf or anything, so it ought to be OK. While I was at Goodwill, I obsessively arranged all the telephones they had available, but they didn't have anything I wanted.
4. Stopped by Artifaktori, this awesome new store in Davis Square, and fell in love:
Oh baby baby! This is a Mexican telephone, from 1979! It even LOOKS like a Mexican telephone from 1979, look at that Lucha Libre styling! Sadly, I don't have $80 of discretionary spending for a telephone that's outside the stated parameters of my collection.
5. I petted a great many dogs. All around, a good day. |
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| I must have it! |
[Apr. 17th, 2008|01:56 pm] |
No idea what it is, what it's meant to do, or even whether it's for internal or external use, but I WANT SOME! Ohh, Engrish.com, I love you. |
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| In trouble at work |
[Apr. 15th, 2008|02:41 pm] |
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For some reason, I'm not supposed to use the phrase "has been sacked" in discussing someone who has been sacked. "Fired" also gets a dirty look. I suppose I'm meant to say "let go" or "reorganized," but sorry, I have to call a "pointed, flanged entrenchment implement" a spade. |
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| Weekend of the Performing Arts |
[Apr. 14th, 2008|11:44 am] |
This weekend has been a whirl of theatre! It started off with our local community theatre, Theatre at First, enacting Much Ado About Nothing. The acting was technically perfect, with the actors' expressions and body language filling in the gaps between Shakespeare's language and colloquial understanding. However, what I found most engaging was the costumer's approach to the problem of how to equip a Shakespearean performance. This is a stumbling-block for a lot of community theatres; since they're all volunteer and generally operate on a shoestring budget, you sometimes get kings and princes dressed in robes that a third-grader would disdain to wear for Hallowe'en. The approach in this performance was to forego quasi-historical costumery entirely, which must have been a wrench for those who like silk and velvet. Instead, the actors appeared in simple, contemporary clothing appropriate to their roles. Don Pedro and his knights wore black T-shirts and khaki pants, Leonato and Antonio wore sedate button-down shirts appropriate to old men. Come to think of it, they were wearing almost exactly the outfit I had come wearing from work. I need some cooler shirts. At any rate, I loved the costumery.
I also loved the costumes for the second performance of the weekend, The Tempest, performed by Cambridge Multicultural Arts. These costumes were entirely different again from either traditional Shakespearean costumes or from the contemporary clothing seen in Much Ado. Prospero was dressed as a Victorian-era stage magician, with a full tuxedo, top hat and cape. Following this conceit, everyone else was in Victorian attire, except for Miranda. She was wearing the plainest possible white dress, with little feather butterflies pinned to it as if they had just landed there. The show included a lot of stage magic, although the audience was too close to the stage, and the lighting too good, for it to really be convincing. I really coveted Prince Ferdinand's tuxedo. Ariel was a wonder, played to perfection by a very pretty woman who could sing and dance besides.
The third costume drama of the weekend was the 2006 movie Marie Antoinette. It made the effort of humanising Marie Antoinette, but it made her seem a vapid, appalling human with all the political sensibility of a damp sponge. All I can say is that, in watching it, I was glad that these people would be guillotined within two hours.
Finally, I engaged in some amateur theatrics of my own. I was recruited to act out a skit of sorts about how to safely engage in sadomasochistic scenes. I demonstrated how to introduce myself, how to set boundaries, and how to express my needs. trouble4hire demonstrated how to be respectful of personal space, how to slow things down if you're uncomfortable, and how to cuddle. Honestly, all kink aside, they should teach this stuff in grade school, along with the class on "Where Babies Come From (and How to Stop Them)." |
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