deadpan

At Springville Middle School, circa 1991, in Coushatta, Louisiana, I was named "king" of my seventh grade class. Or king of the white children anyway. On your knees, hillbillies, the bitch is back. The black children elected their own kings and queens. I suppose they had to do it that way to keep white children happy. No white king or queen would have ever won otherwise, Springville Middle School being a mostly black, public school. The white children will have equality! Welcome to every horrible stereotype of the South. It was the worst of my school years in a lot of ways. The most harassment, the worst alienation, and realizing that yes I did want to suck cock and I was okay with that, but having no access to cocks to suck. But I guess I still had hope, or I hadn't totally shut down anyway. There must have only been about ten white boys in the seventh grade and I don't think any of them would have been up to feminizing prospect of competing for the title of king. The irony: sometimes it takes a queen to run for king. And I can say with some confidence that I was the obvious choice for the job. How did the nominations work? I think the election "officials" came into class and asked for nominations and then students raised their hands to vote. Since there were so few white boys I was bound to be nominated. I didn't want to be king, the limelight would be too intense. The culminating experience, well, really the only experience for the kings and queens was a crowning ceremony and dance. oH and there was a parade through town. This sounds like Homecoming? But I don't remember homecoming or any football themes. When I was nominated, I suddenly did want the title, badly. I guess there was a run-off, but I'm sure the other contestants had no interest in competing. And this is the funny part, in order to win I didn't have to get the most votes, I just had to raise the most money for the school. When I told my father this part of the process he was troubled by the ethical standards of this election and decided not to help me. I started crying. Why couldn't he ever help me? I realized the absurdity of it too, but still I wanted it. Finally he conceded to help me raise money in order to become king. I went to my grandparents and they rolled up all their pennies for me. I was pissed. Can't you write me a check, Nanny? Now I know where her son gets his cheapness from. Other contestants had more creative ways of getting money. Wendy Wilson who was competing for eighth grade white queen put a donation jar at Fausto's Fried Chicken. It was good chicken, but not my scene. I continued to bamboozle family members for donations. Wendy lost and I won, but then again she was a legend of sexual promiscuity in our school, so she was already a queen in my eyes. Maybe I thought being King would change things for me. Or maybe I just wanted to go to a party or just be a part of something. To be, well, yes, validated.

telegraph

burgeoning success through failure

failure is success. success is failure. failure through success. succeeding through failing. I wish I had never eaten his ass. I mean I never do that, but for some reason those three times that we hung out i wanted to, and did, eat it every time. there was something about his asshole, freshly shaved, that i wanted. it probably just means that i was just really attracted to him. But that's probably where I got it from which means that he has it, too. But he must be asymptomatic. when i ate him out (ha!) the first time he said, don't worry i washed everything. so he must conscious of what is and could be going on down there and i'm sure he wouldn't be knowingly spreading parasites. What a disaster that most every attempt at dating has been lately. and well, always. But this one, wow, I mean really a disaster. I thought it was mostly me before, but now it appears that he gave me a parasite. I should have just stayed at home. Again. It never would have worked out anyway. He's into houses, cars, success, labels. But he's an introvert which makes me think I could have loved him. Cute introverts really do it for me. Note to self: must retain sense of humor. There just seems like so many reasons why it doesn't make sense for me to pursue a relationship or even sex at this point. I keep telling people it's over, no more dating, no more sex. It's meant as a joke but it's also feels kind of true. It feels good at the moment to not be thinking about those things. Well, I mean I'm thinking about them, but to not be pursuing those experiences feels fine. But I'm probably just denying to myself what I really want/need. That's not necessarily a relationship, but it's definitely more, of something.
I said I was going to read Midlife Queer by Martin Duberman to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Stonewall. And I read it, or the first eighty pages. Alvin Ailey cruised for sex in public restrooms. That's best tidbit yet. Oh, and apparently Foucault praised gay men in the u.s. for creating the "first new form of sex in hundreds of years" with fist-fucking. I went to a gay shame thingy with mattilda. It was about de-centering the center to make it accessible to poor and marginalized people of the community instead of about making money. The demands they made and their manifesto seemed right on and inspiring, but it seemed to attract a very specific crowd that was as interested in fashion and being arty and cute as creating actual change. I've often thought of going to the Gay Shame meetings at Modern Times on Saturday afternoons, but I've always had to work on saturdays and now I'm glad I never went. Mattilda said there would only be like five people there. I wouldn't have anything to say. Never anything to say. Alice Walker says that when she went to Palestine with Code Pink she was surprised at how much talking all the Code Pink members were doing. She said sometimes it just better listen, to just be. Thank you for that Alice!

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the view

happy together again

Watching Wong Kar-Wai's film Happy Together again brings back memories. First there are the memories of earlier days in San Francisco, hanging out with Frankie at Café Flore, gossiping about Hong Kong movie stars and learning to say “you’re handsome” in Cantonese. We talked about travel a lot, too, and always international, of course. The film is all about travel and everything that goes with it: beauty, longing, excitement, loneliness, lust, boredom, adventure, mishaps and misunderstandings. So then I’m remembering my trip to South America which was partly inspired by the movie, but more specifically by my desire to runaway from reality and to go as far away as I possibly could. In the film, two men from Hong Kong live out their tumultuous relationship against the gorgeous backdrop of Buenos Aires. They are travelers, but stranded, which heightens their beautifully dysfunctional relationship. Or at least it seems beautiful when paired with the glamour shots of Buenos Aires decay and the roar of Iguazu Falls. Ho Po-wing and Lai Yiu-fai continuously treat each other horribly, but then get back together based on their willingness to “start over.” I didn't travel with an impossible boyfriend, but I definitely traveled with my own set of impossibly mundane problems. I was trying to escape a dead end job, ever-present loneliness, and of course, myself. I wanted to start over, too, and there’s something about a foreign country and thousands of miles that makes it seem like a possibility.
Walking to the obelisk at sunset my first night in Buenos Aires, I was holding on to the dream of reinvention. Everything was a shimmering pinkish-purple color that night, or that's how I remember it anyway. The clouds were pink, and everything was shiny and glowing. Yes, that's it. I sat there with everybody else looking at the beauty, feeling the beauty. It was the newness, the foreignness, the otherness that I loved, and that left me empty. And then there’s that question already, what am I doing here? I didn’t find any answers back at the dusty and drab, Hotel Maipu. I remember everything inside the hotel as being some shade of the color brown. But somehow even that became beautiful in the dim, distant lighting created from some unseen skylight, bathing everything in a lost grandeur. Or at least that’s how a gay man would write about it in a novel. There was no front desk, just a couple of elderly men sitting on opposite ends of a torn up leather sofa for hours on end. My room faced the street which was so loud and congested that I just wanted to stay in bed. Reading a left-behind copy of James Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain, I got so depressed. And then there was that rash on my hip which made me think I had caught some nasty disease. Unfortunately, I didn’t leave my hypochondria at home. There’s a lot of things that don’t go away just because of different times zones, continents, and languages. I didn’t really go out at night and what’s a young gay male traveler doing if he’s not going out? I attempted a couple of times, walked by a couple of intimidating looking bars. Now I can’t remember if I was afraid of being out alone at night or just afraid to go into bars with loads of attractive men because of my low self-esteem. I mean what would I say to their questions? No, I don’t really know why I’m here. I’m just waiting form something unexpectedly beautiful and exciting to happen to me which could only happen here and would never happen at home. It will happen here because I’m different here. Obviously that was a lie because I couldn’t even make into the bar to have this imaginary conversation in reality.
During the day, I thought about Happy Together and tried to track down some of its landmarks. The cruisy bathroom at the train station was first on my list, of course. It’s portrayed with comic melancholy in the film. Yiu-fai goes there because he’s lonely and horny after Po-wing breaks up with him. I can relate. Certain aspects of cruising reality are so real in the film, like the guy pretending to fix his hair in the mirror but we all know what he’s really there for. It’s busy when I go in, so I’m excited, but I know I’m just falling back into old patterns and it’s more melancholic than comical. Later I peak in the window of the Bar Sur where in the film Yiu-fai works as a doorman and runs into Po-wing again after they’ve broken up. It was empty when I walked by, closed, too early in the day for the tango dancers to be putting on their show and it didn’t matter anyway because it’s just a fancy tourist place where I would never go. Although, according to a journal entry written while in Buenos Aires, I did want to learn the tango. I guess that’s inspired by the film, too. In a beautiful scene, Yiu-fai and Po-wing practice the tango in the run-down communal kitchen of their building. I guess what I really wanted was a man like Yiu-fai. What I got were three drunken guys. Walking down the deserted street, I pass them sitting on the sidewalk, drinking from bottles and looking for trouble. And no surprise they whistle as I walk by. It’s a shock, although it shouldn’t be. What else would they do but whistle when a queen walks by? They’re just playing their part. But it’s a call back to my reality. Something like that didn’t happen in the movie. And I haven’t escaped anything by coming to Buenos Aires and I never will escape myself. I’ll always be this and only this no matter where I am. Not that I’m trying to escape being a queen, but I just wanted to be different. I didn’t want to have any experiences that I had before, but that’s all I was having. My film and travel fantasies were cracking.
There was a transportation strike on the day I was leaving, and I thought I might not make it to my next stop, Santiago de Chile, where I was now desperate to get to. Now it wasn’t myself, San Francisco, or the United States that I needed to escape, but Buenos Aires that was keeping me down. I hadn’t really talked to anyone accept for a guy I met in the cruisy bathroom at a mall who wanted to take me for a drive, but I refused because it felt risky. The remnants of Happy Together that I found in Buenos Aires were flat and blank without the camera lens and soundtrack to weed out the dirty, noisy, bright white background of reality. My own movie of Buenos Aires is tired and lifeless and not anywhere near to the reinvention of myself that I’d imagined when fantasizing about the trip. It was all so much better in the movie. But still I’m not ready to give up on that dream of reinvention. Now I just need to go back and do it again, do it better.

represent

The movie was good and that was the good part. Usually the gay film festival movies are just not worth it. But the gay men pack the houses anyway, more for the social experience I suppose than for quality films. And, of course, the possibility of seeing penis on the big screen. Or maybe they're just really desperate for images of gay life represented in film. But if its really, really bad representation, what's the point? Documentaries are usually a safer bet than the fictional films, and It Came From Kuchar lives up to this theory. The Kuchar brothers are twins, both of whom have been making "underground," experimental films for something like fifty years. They're totally wacky, not following any conventions in their work or personal lives. Outsider cinema from head to toe, socially awkward and not afraid to show it. They received an award from the festival on the night of the screening. They both got up in front of full audience at the castro theatre and rambled on, only vaguely on topic, and it was great. The audience loved it. And maybe that's why people show up to see these films - the possibility of coming in contact with something obscure and strange, but amazingly fabulous and totally camped out. But with films like Greek Pete, which sadly got two screenings, the festival insults its audience by thinking that semi-hardcore sex scenes are going to make up for a pointless and depressingly dull look at the world of escorts in london.

The date with the guy that I met in Rockridge, but who lives in san francisco, where I'm going to be living again very soon, which led me to the Kuchar film was confusing. Do I like him or not, or am I just desperate? Does he like me or not? He seemed really smart and interested in a lot of different things. He has some money. He's a real live successful San Francisco homosexual. This is their city. And yes, I'm jealous. But then not jealous and just sad. And then not sad, just defiant. And then not defiant, just sleepy. Being on date a with someone is also kind of like being on date with yourself. I mean, if you're at all self-conscious, which I am just a tad. I notice all the bad habits I have which I thought would have been squashed by now. I don't speak loud enough. That's because I'm uncomfortable in public. Or with certain people. Well, most people. Especially when surrounded by a bunch of loud gay men. But then that's true when around a bunch of loud straight people, too. Not only don't I talk loud enough, but I'm so uncomfortable I can't think of anything to say anyway. And then I drop my fork on the floor with a splash. We start talking about Isabelle Huppert and then I've got something to say. I worship that woman's screen image. M. Streep, eat your heart out. Then my chopsticks fly up in the air. Splash. At his place, we eat lychee ice cream instead of drinking beer and there's three reasons why I shouldn't stay. But of course I do stay because I'm so open to the experience. And that's it, I should have just left. But then the sex was hot. But now there's not going to be anymore sex so does it matter. I realize how desperate I am when I go on a date. How just barely holding on I really am.

walking in the dark

have a wonderful evening

If only, if only I could. The first time I came to san Francisco I had platinum colored hair. And platinum colored eyebrows. Not really a good look for me. I had wanted to dye it blonde, but jesse insisted on platinum. If you’re gonna go blonde, you might as well go all the way. Well, I’m all about all the way, so I said hit it. And he really did me up. Burnt my scalp and the whole nine. This is in Lubbock, Texas at the Looking Glass Hair Salon. The salon is in downtown, the storefront of an abandoned hotel. It’s a huge building, must be ten stories and that’s tall for Lubbock. We walk through it once and it is predictably creepy. Rooms in disarray, curtains gently flapping. Dusty red brick streets and dusty red sky, that’s Lubbock. What’s that smell? Fuck, it’s burning. I mean, that smell is cow shit, but my scalp is burning. Rinse it out, I can’t take anymore. We go to lunch at this sort of upscale restaurant. The mother and daughter at the table next to us stare. And if I remember correctly I might have flipped them off in the parking lot. Those bitches. We dyed my hair because I was going to San Francisco. Now I’m moving back to San Francisco next month. Maybe a dye job is in order.

when a diva goes hiking...

Things are so desperate I apply for a job at starbucks. Black polo, black or khaki pants, black shoes. Can you deal with the dress code? If you give me some free coffee I can deal with anything. Can you deal with people younger than you giving you orders? Sounds exciting. I'm not sure if I wowed him. I really tried to bring it, but those starbucks corporation questions are tough. I did get a free tall soy latte, so it wasn't for nothing.
Hiking in point reyes with henri is gorgeous. Maybe the best part is the next day, waking up with those images of grazing elk, wildflowers, the ocean, and the hills, still in my mind. And what about those giant black beetles, the weasel, and that snake! Or course I scream. But no divas are injured on this hike. We walk for miles and miles. About eight, I think. And I'm tired before we even begin. But then when you start going, you start forgetting. Everything.
Watching The Ice Storm for laughs and Sigourney Weaver is a revelation. No kidding! She can really chew the scenery. But then again everyone else in the film is a sucking bore. But the best part and the real reason that I adore, I mean j'adore, Sigorney is that she has the most gorgeous yellow teeth you've ever seen in the movies! Thank you lady S. for keeping it real.

deserted streets

It's getting dark and I'm riding my bike in koreatown, or is it koreastreet , I spot two cute young guys walking towards broadway. I decide to follow them to see where they're going. But then I feel like a stalker so I ride on to chinatown. And there's a tiny pizza place on the corner that I've never seen before. And people are actually eating there, sitting outside. It is warm tonight. I'll have to come back for pizza in chinatown some other warm night when I have absolutely nothing else to do. I guess that will be tomorrow night? I'm wondering about those guys again. Why don't I know anyone who I can walk down semi-deserted dark streets with? No one who I know in san francisco would be into that and everyone I know in the east bay-well, I don't actually hang out with anyone that I know in the east bay. But there's that adult bookstore over there. Is anyone there? There's one guy who might be my flavor if you know what I'm saying, but it's a big IF and just too depressing to go inside. The homemade booths with recycled 70's paneling and the stark lighting are enough to kill any of my chinatown sex fantasies, of which there are a few. I hear on Fresh Air that nine murders in the U.S. have been linked to white supremacist groups since Obama was elected. I read something similar in the newspaper and I feel ill. The hate rhetoric is heating up apparently. And I think of my family and its racism. They all say they're not racist, but they say such racist things and live in all white worlds. The father of my mom's second husband was rumored to be in the kkk. Way, way too close. Thanks mom! That marriage didn't last long thankfully. His parents lived in trailer in the middle of nowhere. I've been in way too many trailers in the middle of nowhere in my life and that scares me when I think about it. I tried to watch this documentary called Southern Comfort about a transman and a transwoman who fall in love in the rural south. But I couldn't get past the first fifteen minutes because the transman lives in a trailer in the middle of nowhere and it was just a bit too real. I want my mom do something about it. I want her to educate herself and talk to her family and be a leader in her community against racism, homophobia, and people living in trailers in the middle of nowhere. But what I am doing? Just thinking about me, me, me. And honey, whoa is me.

looking for work

Oak Street is a hotbed for random social interactions. Walking out of the lake merritt bart station, I'm worrying about finding a job. Standing at the corner waiting for the light to change and the girl standing there peaks around the light post. Excuse me, do you have a cell phone? It's been over a year, but I remember her. The last time she asked me if I had a cell was at the 19th street bart station. She must be fifteen and not too friendly, but cool. I say, didn't you use my phone before. She looks at me and laughs. Oh yeah, you remember faces. Well you're the only one whose ever asked. She says thank you after she's done talking and I say you're welcome. I wish I would have said what's your name, see you next time. I go to an interview on 14th Street, just a few blocks from my apartment. It's with a IT recruiting company, I think. Even after the interview I'm still not sure what they do or what the position entails exactly. An ability to surf the web is one of the main requirements, as is familiarity with microsoft word. I feel myself shutting down as soon as I walk in the office. It's all plastic and fake. It's a large office, but there's no one in there. I keep wondering if its all a scam. It only pays $8 an hour. She wants me to tell her about myself. She wants a real interview, but she can't really tell me about the position. She wants me to explain what Humanities is. Lady, I don't have a clue! Look it up in the dictionary and let me know. All I know is I can't spend another second in this office. Interviews are a form of torture in which you have to pretend to be happy. No, it' not going to work out because yes I'm into art and culture and not low-paying fake positions with fake companies. I could never work here no matter how broke I am. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I have this other interview for a phone canvassing position with an environmental company. They're always hiring, but who's giving them money in a recession? It's in Frank Ogawa Plaza. As I'm rushing there, I'm thinking I don't really want this job either. Calling people and asking for money even if it's for a good cause is mind-altering torture. I finally find the building with two minutes to go before I'm late. I'm trying to decide if I should go in or just go get some coffee. I opt for the coffee. Waiting for the light to change in Old Oakland, a man coming towards me is yelling at everyone he passes. I'm trying to go wherever he's not going. I don't make eye contact. I think he does call me a faggot, but it feels different because he's obviously not well. He's making everybody scared even the middle-class white dads on their lunch breaks. They've stopped on the sidewalk, waiting to see what he's going to do. He calls them faggot. That's weird, I think. I wonder how they process that one. I wonder if they've ever been called faggot before.

sites of injection

Someone is always frying something in the apartment upstairs. I hear that sizzling, bubbling sound in the morning, and in the evening, too. I'm thinking that can't be healthy. I'm picturing batter of some kind dropping into hot oil. Foreign breads I've never tasted, frying up all golden and crispy. It's comforting somehow, that sound, that image. I hear it when I'm in the bathroom with the window open. The window that opens to the airshaft, not the lake. I guess they hear me flushing. I hope they don't mind. But I do have a view of the lake if I lean out of the windows facing the street and turn to the left. Apparently, part of getting ready for Pride includes Botox injections. They're advertising $250 per site. I would do it, but I've got too many possible sites, so I probably can't afford it. I mean, I definitely can't afford it. Yesterday, I was thinking of moving to back to the city. To some hotel, the Sweden House. It looks kinda cute, not SROy, but do I really want to give up my bathroom and kitchen(ette) just to be back in the city. Why am I poor? That's what I'd really like to know. Maybe I should ask my formerly, and still, mostly, estranged family for money. That's probably what they're expecting and lord jesus knows they owe me big time. But honey, THEY can't afford it. But I'm not going to ask them. I don't want their jesus money. And why am I longing for the city anyway? Didn't I move to Oakland to escape that shit? All those dead ends burnt bridges bad memories. And that apartment with the shared bathroom covered in mold because whoever designed it thought a window that actually opened wasn't necessary. I moved to escape and now I want to move back to escape but I can't afford to escape anymore. I'm walking as broke-ass faggoty bitch for the fifty-third time and I'm hoping to finally win a trophy. Now I'm saving all my love for new york city. It's sounds perfect, right? After I graduate, I'll move to new york, become a new yorker once and for all. Get rid of all my shit, pack a few choice items, board that plane all airy and weightless. Step on the gas, I've got to get the fuck out of dodge. Flying fantasies, those are the best. And I'm talking about flying coach, not with feathered wings. But Arnold wants to cut grants for college students from the budget. That reagan wannabe. That charleton heston look-a-like. Maybe I'll never graduate, maybe I'll live in oakland forever, maybe I'll always be sad. But guess what motherfuckers, I've already won.

just a stay at home girl

again, sometimes it's just better to stay at home. forget every good thing i've ever said about oakland. i take it all back. one night out, that's all it takes to erase every dream and possibility you ever had about a place. now i know i'm just a skinny bitch white faggot. always, forever. and somehow it was all my idea. i asked sergio if he wanted to go to this hella gay party. i met him on adam4adam, of course. we had a burrito on tuesday and that was fun, so let's see where it goes. he asks if we can stop by his friends house first, they're going to the party, too. i don't want to, but i say okay. so there it is, the real problem right there. doing things i know are going to be horrible. but still let me blame it on oakland tonight. they're all educated i guess. but loving their drugs and bad tv. the nicest one says, "i like watching tv, you don't here many people say that today." sergio is loud and bitchy. i don't have much to say, big surprise. how do i get myself into this shit? their house is all middle class but i guess they're some kind of cutting edge lesbians. on to the party and sergio is now driving after drinking two beers and now i'm really just wanting to be at home. he's dancing as he drives. why me? the party's on san pablo in a neighborhood i've never been to. i like seeing the different neighborhoods, so that's a plus. it's an interesting space. funky, red and black. behind the bar, "hella gay" is blinking off and on. dirty oakland stank skank realness everywhere. sprawled on sofas, legs on coffee tables covered with bottles and butts. smoke everywhere. mean people everywhere. skinny nerd chic. tough butch style finesse, with highlights. what's up? the dance floor is moist. i think i see michelle tea in the corner, taking notes for her next novel but it's just my imagination running away with me again. if all the women left and were replaced by men, this is exactly the kind of place where i'd liked to get fucked in public. my vodka cranberries aren't doing a damn thing for me. and i still don't have a damn thing to say to these people. why doesn't ms. coleman have anything to say? that's what one of those high schoolers says. oh jesus, let me out here. then the butch one says, or maybe i just imagine it, he's a faggot, he doesn't say anything. definitely the word faggot was used more than once. am i offended? they liked to talk about white people a lot, probably to make me uncomfortable, which it did. i am working some castro clone look, i realize, but they probably don't realize that i realize it. they probably think that's castro realness. if they only knew. it's all horribly wrong. i don't like sergio, i don't like his friends, i like looking at the people dancing for like two minutes, but then i need to get out of there. they want to go to some other party. i go home and i love it so.

time management

They put me in home economics in the eighth grade because I'm a fag. I was in aerospace as my elective originally which often consisted of making and flying paper airplanes. The class was too large so four kids had to be moved to home economics. It was supposed to be a random draw of names by the teacher but I think he lied to get the fag out of his class. I was too distracting when I flew my paper airplanes. My right leg always kicked up when I threw my plane into the wind. So, two fat girls, the nerd, and me left the paper airplanes behind and started doing needlepoint, measuring flour, and talking about acne. Obviously, it was a much more useful class than aerospace. Crafting sounds good right now since I'm celibate for at least the next sixteen hours. I've been meeting a lot of guys lately. On the street, online, and in cafes (in Rockridge!). I wouldn't say too many, but it does take up a lot of time. And yes, I too wish I had something other than sex to write about. Like something political, but I don't know anything about that stuff. I've also been buying a lot of books which I'll probably never read, and checking out even more from the library which I'll definitely never read. What to do with all this time. Trying to figure that out takes up most of the day. At the library, a boy of about thirteen watches gay porn on one of the computers in the children's section. I'm pushing my black cart stacked with books and I freeze when I see the computer screen with one ass being pounded by one big cock. No faces, just ass and cock, pounding. I don't linger because the children's librarian is right there. I wonder if she's seeing this? Suddenly I love the world.

letters for jesus

I finally wrote back to my estranged paternal family. As usual, I thought I couldn't think of anything to write until I actually put pen to paper. I received three letters in the mail two months ago, one from my grandmother and probably gay aunt who live together in shreveport, louisiana, one from my aunt in uncle in atlanta, georgia, and one from another aunt and uncle also in shreveport. This all came about after I contacted my cousin on Facebook out of curiosity about my father. I wanted to know what he was doing and if he was completely crazy. Seems like he's the same as always. Same town, same house, same solitary existence. They all say they miss me and they're praying for me. Love that. I haven't seen or talked to any of them for about fifteen years. It's strange to get letters from them now saying that they miss me. I've never missed any of them, including my father or my grandmother. How can I miss insane, ignorant, evil, religious people? But still I wrote them back and I kept it all very surface. There were three choices: surface friendliness, dramatic realness, or silence. They all went for surface friendliness never mentioning anything about my father and why I've been out of touch for so long. They're all so happy to know I'm doing well. I can imagine they thought I must be living a troubled life without their love and support. What a joke. Do I need to tell I'm gay? I assume that they realize that I'm a queen. But do they even know what a queen is? I'm not even sure my butch closted-lesbian aunt knows what a queen is. But how do I throw that into a letter that's all about surface friendliness and my love of southern cooking, which is the one thing that I do miss from that life. Am I still in closet?

scrap metal

reading sarah schulman's work makes me think about my relationship with my mother. and then i get angry when i'm thinking about my mother. i go into a rage, really, thinking about all the things i could say to her but never do. all the things that would put her in bed for two weeks straight with guilt and sadness. like your life totally excludes me but yet you imply that you want me in your life, but then i'm the one who has to make the effort to be in your life. why do i have to make the effort? why do i have to travel to you when i have no money and you live in a place that makes me uncomfortable, surrounded by people who make me uncomfortable? when i visit, it's like i haven't changed at all. especially when the others are around like step-dad and uncles and cousins. i'm still the silent, sad, mute. god they make me so uncomfortable, but they're so comfortable. they've never questioned themselves and i'm sure they have no idea that i hate them or that i would have any reason, too. part of me wants to go visit. in some ways, i'm most comfortable around my mom and my sister, but only when the others aren't around. and my mom and my sister are so into the others. they're successful and fun and normal and totally fucked up. like scary TV fucked up. plastic, superficial, god-friendly, racist, suburban, hillbilly, redneck, all that bad stuff. my sister tells my niece that i'm weird and then my niece repeats it like a mantra to me the whole time i visit. i say if you're normal honey, count me out. she doesn't get it. sometimes i think if i did actually speak around the others, portraying some sense of my true self they would think i was really crazy. i can't imagine them getting my humor or simply understanding anything that i say. mouths would be agape. but maybe i'm wrong. how would it be if i was just myself the whole time, all the time. they might think i'm crazy but i would be happier.

modern possibilities

i deleted my adam4adam account after one week. hours and hours of looking at severed cocks, heads, and chests, i felt more indecisive than ever. adam did give me three interesting encounters, so it wasn't a complete waste of my life engery, i suppose. the first one was my neighbor from down the hall in number 507. we had chatted in the elevator, of course, and i thought he was sort of hot, but he seemed kind of like an asshole in that way that highly-educated, successful, fifty-year old guys can be. so i didn't pursue it. but then he saw my cock on adam and he was very excited. talk about a convenient hook-up, i just walked down the hall. it was excitement, it was joy. but then i could feel the hillbillies watching me on the 24-hr surveillance cameras as i walked down the hall. the always ruin it. he talked for an almost an hour and told me a story about this other hook-up he had where the trick told him that he talked too much. i didn't know what to say. i asked him if he was a bottom and then things started heating up, sort of. i couldn't really stay in the moment. it was mid-day, i knew i didn't really want to be here doing this, and i knew i couldn't fuck him with a condom. still, i came. unlike the second adam hook-up. i rode my bike all the way to the top of this hill with all the gorgeous houses. oakland has so many of those, so there, haters. anyway, this one is just too much. one thousand year old gates, tribal doors, totem poles, canoes, but modern, too, stucco and stainless steel, windows everywhere, balconies, god the view, rugs, paintings everywhere, and plants, plants, plants. he's a designer, he has a boyfriend, he's from somewhere else, he's busy, he might have to go, oh yeah he has to go. and there's his neighbor at the gate asking for advice on pouring cement and then i'm just some client, well you have my number and e-mail address, call me if you have any questions about the quote. i'm laughing, is he for real. thank god i have my bike so i can zoom away down the hill and forget everything that's ever happened. how do people get like that? so rich, so sure, so boring, so dumb, so fulfilled, so dumb. the third one, well the third one is yet to be determined. this might actually lead to something, but there i go being positive. see the thing is that i had already deleted my account and took a bath to cleanse my hole from the disease of online hook-ups. and there i was at the gorgeous laney college campus-seriously, i love that campus. there i was walking, and this boy is walking towards me and he says hey what's up or whatever it is that people say these days and i of course said hi and of course i keep walking. but really i know instantly who he his. or i know him from his adam profile. i look back, but he's still walking. i stop and i think i should do something. i follow him back to his back and i say hey don't i know you from online.

thinking too much

Some days it feels like I should just stay at home. I know I should just stay at home but then if I just stay at home there must be something I'm missing so I go. To go anywhere, but nowhere good, meaningful, important. Coffee, reading-okay, good. Looking at clothes-okay right now that feels good, too. Wait, go back. The real problem is that I can't make a decision and what does that mean? Maybe I am autistic after all. But anyway, the decision of what am I going to do today is just overwhelming. Mattilda's going to see the sea lions at pier 39 for his birthday. He invited me a few days ago, but now I'm thinking that he probably doesn't really want me to go. He's going to be with two other friends, and oh my god, I can't deal with the social interaction. So maybe I should just stay in oakland and meet some guys from adam4adam, or maybe call Vincent, or Toni, or just stay in and read because it is really cold today. It takes me forever, and more than one try, but I finally I leave. And that's after an unexpected fuck with Arthur, the occasional fuck buddy who is probably married. It was hot, but that is never enough. So my decision is to delay my decision. Go to the city, the city, the city. I'll call crissy when I get there and see what he's doing. He doesn't answer so I just go to the chruch st. café and drink tea and read which is fine. then I call mattilda to try to figure out whether or not she really wants me to come. I still can't tell really. I sort of don't want to go, like it feels like a big effort-pier 39, new people, the cold, etc. Christian calls and I go over, a good distraction. He really brings out the queeny bitch inside of me or maybe that's the real me that's always hiding underneath, but either way I don't think I really like that side of me. But why don't I like it? It's kind of exhausting to be that way. It feels negative, maybe. And ultimately, pointless…. But fun and funny, though. I decide to go to pier 39. I take the f market from church street. Getting off at pier 39 is like stepping into the middle of middle america. It's freezing. As I'm walking by the water to the sea lions, a lesbian rides past me on her bike and I figure that must be one of mattilda's friends because what would she be doing down here otherwise, and I'm right. Part of me wants to turn back, but I'm trying to push myself to take chances with social interactions. It's okay, I talk a bit, here and there. I just hate the way I feel in groups. I can't communicate like that. I can barely communicate one on one. The dyke is nice. The guy from montreal is nice, too. He's a writer, and she's a photographer. I don't really know how to talk with mattilda with other people around. We usually just hang out alone and I guess he accepts my weirdness and I'm fine with that, privately. I make jokes and he does most of the talking. It's like an education. But in a group, it's like who are you, do I know you, what could we possibly have to say to each other? It's freezing. Part of me just wants to go home. Part of me wants whatever this moment will bring. Thankfully it brings a cab and then a restaurant. The food is good and the conversation is okay. I feel tired and autistic, in my own world. But I do participate a little in the conversation which is actually a change for me. And with mattilda who talks a lot, a little is okay. But now I really feel like I need to be at home in warmth and alone. It's like being with them somehow confirms my aloneness, like mattilda, my friend, is this person that I don't even really know and who doesn't know me and probably doesn't even like me, so I need to go home and be alone where I can truly feel comfortable, sort of. I mean, these are just thoughts that run through my head. I've never felt comfortable anywhere or with anyone-that's the thought that comes up-and I never will, and that's the really scary part. Everything's been pretending for survival, but survival for what? For this? Yes. Now I think, I'm here for education, that's it that's my focus, that's my reason for being here, but that's scary too because I hate the school I go to, and I don't know where my education is leading me and now it's summer and I'm underemployed and nothing to do expect be indecisive and feel depressed. I think I just need to read more. Thoughts, thoughts, thoughts, that's all there is.