Bad Hair & Civic Duties
6/14/2007, 18:41:41
Last Thursday I woke up with my hair a mess. It wasn't the kind of mess you see on the starlets these days, the 'just-fucked' chic look. It was the 'I slept on my head all wrong' look. A spray at the part stood straight up. That was OK. But then there was this section in the back that was flattened and stuck out to the side. There is no way to pull off that kind of disaster.
I spent the night on my cousin's couch, and my cousin's wife had been displaying all the signs of impending psychosis. She was enthusiastic about fairly stupid shit and she wasn't able to settle down and watch TV with us. Always when she takes these unintentional journey's into unreality, she comes to a point where she hates me. There is nothing like waking up in the middle of the night to find a psychotic person glaring at you. It is enough to make you decide to sleep on a bus.
I missed a lot of the bizarre pre-psychosis activity that night because Boobjob stopped by with Muppet. They both wanted a kiss in the car. Then we left Muppet to make spectacular amounts of noise guarding the car with his 'piranha mouth' routine. We took a walk. It turns out that my cousin lives just two blocks away from Carol Queen and Robert Lawrence who were in bed but accepted our visit gracefully.
Carol was trying to find a location for a new bit of artwork which depicted Jesus Christ as a drag queen. (I don't know why these Christian Fundamentalists hate us sex-positive people so much.) Robert was under a large black leather bedspread. They doubled his narcotics, making him even more disabled.
I tried to warn Robert about all the ways the Masturbate-a-thon could land us in jail. He doesn't take it very seriously which is how we got into this mess. During the conversation, I tallied the felonies in my head. It was just 6 then, but now that I have reviewed the footage it is more like 60. Who knew that volunteering for at a nonprofit could be so dangerous.
The conversation that was supposed to be brief lasted almost an hour. Back at 'Psychosis Homestead', my cousin was grumpy to have me gone so long. I missed the last episode of the Sopranos. I was disappointed too. I don't get much time with her.
When I got up in the morning and saw my hair in the living room mirror, I did an assessment. Usually I spend all day with just my cat in an office with no windows, but Thursday was a special day where I had to visit the butt-poking chiropractor before stopping by our Oakland mailbox to collect our checks. People were going to see me. Based on the fact that strangers already consider me crazy for driving around in a pink and orange splotchy truck, I decided not to wake the burgeoning psychotic by rinsing my hair or, god-forbid, taking a shower.
Mirrors make things so difficult. I remember good times without mirrors, times living on the bus and earlier times in my life on this boat. Sometimes it would be 3 in the afternoon before I would happen into a bathroom with a big mirror to note with horror that I had my shirt on both inside-out and backwards ... all day. The tag had been flailing at everyone I talked to like a white tongue on my collarbone. Still ignorance is bliss, and I think there is something to be said about keeping people's expectations about my physical appearance low. When I finally got back to the office where it was just me and my cat I was nonetheless very relieved.
That evening I was congratulating myself getting out of the office before dark. Zooming through the abandoned military base, I saw John and Joan coming fast in the opposite direction. They flashed their lights at me and I waved happily. Then they called me on the phone. They wanted me to go to Richmond where there was a meeting for public comment on the latest bad plan by Chevron, our inconsiderate harbor neighbor.
Since that big fire, the sirens at Chevron go off all the time. I never hear the 'all clear sound', and It never hits the news. These smaller disasters aren't being reported to the affected residents of Richmond. Still they don't need to be told that things are bad. Asthma rates downwind from the refinery are higher than elsewhere and the smell sometimes reaches to the bowels of Oakland 12+ miles away. People came to the meeting in neighborhood clusters, spurned on the one person in their midst who had heard about this barely publicized meeting. There were 27 of us who were willing to stay until 11pm when they finally were ready to hear our cries.
Before that we sat through issue after issue, residents against a larger developer. It is hard not to be swayed when every resident of a street shows up and talks about how their neighborhood will be affected by a small bit of land being divided 9 times, each with an enormous house roosting on it. And yet the committee did not seem swayed.
The whole meeting was being broadcast somewhere. We could tell by the massive screen that showed us all from various hidden cameras. The six council members sat on a raised platform in a row of tan leather chairs creased down the center in a way that made them look like ass cheeks. The woman at the head of the committee could have been a drag queen. She was somewhere past 50 with a no nonsense, compassion-free approach to ruling her domain. Her hair might have been a bee hive except it was long and straight making a domed and shellacked arch 5 inches over her head. Her eyebrows were plucked free and reshaped in a state of permanent surprise. Despite all this it was hard not to respect and trust her. She knew what she was doing and was able move things along, cut to the point. She was even able to shorten a long, aimless battle by a lame duck member who still wasn't sure how the whole approval process worked.
The first protester that rose to the bench was an avid Richmond activist who has been keeping Chevron in check with his rambling threats and ability to get the people to the street. He wore a cheap navy suit that fit his skeleton frame badly. It was shiny with wear. I would like to say he gave a powerful speech, but I couldn't follow it. I was there at the meeting without dinner, but also he was rambling and mumbling, like a preacher that has given up. I could tell he had all the anger still, but had lost the will to communicate his message.
Chevron was sitting in the row behind us, and I wondered about them. It was hard not to imagine them as monsters. I tried to look for the one or many that might go home tired to their partner and feel powerless about their horrible job. I couldn't see it. A Richmond city staff member seated below the ruling bench smiled past us with a Cheshire grin. He was making fun of the skeletal preacher protester at the podium, and he might have kept that behavior up all night except that my neighbor captured his attention and shamed him, mouthing, "You should be listening." After that he just smirked his disrespect.
Then it was my turn, last in the list. I was more nervous than I usually am speaking to a crowd, and I couldn't stop thinking that I was the same laughable and ignorable presence that everyone else had been. I was wearing my goofy elf shoes, talking about global warming, bad neighbors, renewable power generation, and our eccentric harbor. The council in their butt chairs pretended to listen and I nervously watched the my two minutes click off the counter on the podium. Two minutes can be a long time or a short time, and here it was both. Out of the corner of my eye I could see myself on the big screen as I was broadcast. It made me wish more than ever that I had risked the wrath to tame by bad hair day.
Cracker Dykes
5/29/2007, 18:39:32
Jennifer and I had lunch for the first time in many months. It was a lazy and decadent Italian styled lunch where we weren't content with an hour and a half lounge at the first establishment and had to go spend another hour at a dessert place across campus. It is funny since neither of us have time or money. We were pretending at a more carefree life.
She's been on TV and in the newspaper. The Biofuel Oasis, the only biodiesel station in the Bay Area, the one that she founded, is moving to a better location. They will now have longer hours to accommodate those of us who don't want to stand in line for three hours on Saturday pretending it is the 70's oil crisis in hippie land. She is very blasé about the coverage which I imagine is a good way to be once you have more than you can stand.
I on the other hand am courting this prudish media. I think we need some publicity stunts. I am ready to get arrested with nude and fornicating people in protest to something. Later today I will call a gaggle of prostitutes and ask them what sex workers are angry about. I am a media whore, a rebel just looking for a cause. Bring it on.
She talks about work and she is a hero activist. Everyone sings her praises and none of the reporters give a shit about her mustache or beard. The wait staff fawn over her and we almost get good hippie service. Our meal arrives not too late for a change.
When I talk about work and it spawns chaos. The man at the table next to us is well into his 30's and insistent on the kind of narcissistic geekhood that rarely survives past high-school. His short sleeved plaid business shirt was tucked into the pants that met somewhere under his bird chest. He had enormous glasses and shot furtive glances at me while trying to determine which seat was most to his liking.
It is hard to talk about my work without saying, 'fuck', 'pussy', 'ass', 'dick'. It is impossible to describe the Masturbate-a-thon without saying Masturbate. After several annoyed backward glances, he turned angry and said "Can you not use that language here?" To which I answered "I will say whatever the FUCK I want. Go sit over there if it bothers you." The cafe gets suddenly quiet, and he said still appalled and annoyed, "I am just asking!" So I responded "Yeah, and I am saying NO". Then I glared at him until he turned back around. He spent the rest of his lunch shaking his head disapprovingly.
Outside on the street Jennifer was unlocking her bike when I well-washed homeless guy started promoting his homeless newspaper. He was aggressive and a little bit angry insisting that Jennifer buy long after she had shaken her head in decline. Then he turned to me. I said, "Nope" looking him right in the eye. He rushed me, getting an inch from my face. "Why you have to say 'nope', when you could say 'no'. Why you having attitude with me, bitch." I rose back up in his face. He kept telling me how he was going to kick my ass, but I kept pointing out that he seemed afraid to make the first move. Then he called me "Cracker Dyke", which made me smirk. "Cracker Dyke", It sounds like the kind of snack you buy at the movies. I bet it has a prize in the bottom too. The surprise is that I won't back down. Call it PMS once you call me a bitch, but I won't back down. What do I have to loose, my fancy job of prestige, the appreciation of activists everywhere, the outpouring of money from my business?
When Jennifer and I were walking away and he was still babbling about how he was going to kick my ass, she asked me, "So do you do this all the time now?" I say, "No, it is just for you."
The Ground Where I Stand
5/13/2007, 13:32:03
Boobjob came over Tuesday night. It seemed like another ploy to get me into her pseudo-relationship. I guess getting dumped and then dumping me wasn't enough. Maybe for her it is like the thrill of a roller coaster ride. Her high-energy relationship assault restarted when I posted about that party. Somebody else wanting me made me desirable again. I was annoyed; I put her down; I put her off and then a cruel streak ran through me and I thought I could have some fun.
I told her I was going to put her through a series of challenges before I would fuck her. First she had to take a series of naughty pictures and send them to me via email. In the early morning of the next day just after she got to work I reciprocated. Of course she wasn't able to open the email from work since her cubicle can be seen by a whole room full of nosy people. So it just sat there throbbing in her inbox. All day I got emails from her detailing her frustration. The next day I made her write a 1000 work essay about her fantasies for the fuck. So, I admit to opening this can of worm. Still, it is like gum on my shoe, and I don't chew gum.
Thursday she started with a new barrage of attempts to get me to come over and fuck her. I told her to move on, and she told me she didn't want to. Her explanation of why was so bad that I have blocked it out of my memory and also gotten very depressed. I have gotten that type of depressed where the Cymbalta, antidepressant commercials on TV speak to my soul. Where does depression hurt? It is always my ribs, like the biggest heartache. It will never however be so bad that I am willing to tolerate nausea, dry mouth, constipation and dizziness/fainting upon standing. Sorry Cymbalta, you need to move on too.
All this week I am struggling to get my episodes edited. Everything goes wrong. My DVD drive is intermittently broken. The hard disk fills. And I can't hear well enough to edit. The compressor in the compressor room which shares a wall with the front part of our studio has for the last three month has been running nonstop from 10 am to 5pm. The whole building shakes worse than any earthquake, and I have put shims in the windows so the Plexiglas doesn't make it worse rattling in its frame. Every ten or so minutes the compressor takes a breath and shuts off. Every nerve in my body tingles with relief. My body sighs for 30 seconds and then it starts jack-hammering again. I turn up the audio on my computer all the way and I still have to lean in to hear the dialogues and excited sighs.
I told Sincock that doing this marketing work is like stoking a very hungry fire. He believed that we had reached some tipping point and could take for granted our almost breaking even status. I wanted to believe it too, but now that no one new is writing articles about us, our sales are dropping again. I have been trying to stoke our fire by sponsoring the Masturbate-a-thon. It turns out that I am idiot. Apparently you don't have to give a dime or product to profit from this event. Gamelink.com, the largest adult store on the net is getting 1/3 or a page devoted to selling their wares, and for no up front cash or in-kind contribution. It kind of makes the 200+ hours I have put into this event seem worthless. On Wednesday night the whole deal was sweetened for us, when all the terms for the streaming server were reversed and negated. We are now going to end up owing money.
Thursday afternoon I missed it when the office was finally quiet. A ball joint on the compressor exploded. It took out the water heater, part of the roof and another series of important compressor joints. In our office, we lost half the electricity and Sincock had to make a trip to the office to reroute power. Then the office server stopped working and that took us through Friday, the day that Boobjob thought we were having a date, and I thought we were having a fight.
We started with my fight where I tried to explain that she was delusional and didn't even like me. I told her that I wasn't attracted to her much anymore, that she was bad for me, that I was bad for her, that there was a perfect butch just waiting for her vicious phone call. She dug her heels in getting more stubborn with each statement. So, I gave up and we went out to eat.
The next day I described the evening to Sincock and he said if only someone became an alcoholic it could be true love, American style. I then had to admit that I drank a big glass of wine a dinner which provided the necessary lubrication for sex. I guess this is true love. Once I subscribe to some Cymbalta we will be cleared for takeoff; after another big glass of wine I will propose or blow my head off.
Hey Dumbshit!
4/25/2007, 9:22:53
It is a month ago now that I picked up the phone and something had changed in me. The woman on the other end of the line sounded very official, a bit plodding, like the clerk at an insurance office. I couldn't tell who she had asked for, and then there was a long silence when I tried to figure out which personality I should be adopting. I would probably respond to any name directed at me with enough conviction.
That last party, the sober drinker asked me was whether I had been using my name for a long time. I said 15 years. He seemed to think this was enough time and was willing to respect my decision to use it. I am so glad, because perfect strangers should feel entitled to control my identity. It is such a fabulous party trick to immediately imply that a person is ridiculous and can't be taken seriously due to a desire to live outside their parent's expectation. In fact, in 15 years it has never happened before, so let me blow your self-congratulatory dick.
Oh, does that sound harsh? Do I sound bitter or full or ire? I am so sorry. I get a little crazy when I visit my mother's side of the family. Needless to say, they don't call me Kanebus or Boots. Of course now that the change has happened, it doesn't really matter. I even answer to my birth name without cringing.
Boobjob has been calling everyday which at first was hard because I had laryngitis. Every time I spoke, I coughed. Then it was hard because I just want to be left to my insanity. She sends me text messages of her nipples and vulva, and somewhere within me there is a person who realizes this is very hot. It is very far away though and I can't hardly feel the heat. Maybe we can fuck when I get back. Right now I am struggling with some demons in the guise of little old ladies.
Usually, I stop sleeping after one night in Denver. This time though I am sleeping just enough that I wake myself screaming. Boobjob wants to know what I mean by screaming, so I give a phone demonstration. She finds it disappointing, like the word screaming is an exaggeration. Maybe she was expecting that Godfather movie, bloody horse head in the bed type of nonstop screaming that wakes the neighbors and gets police knocking on the door. Just in case you are wondering, I am not that ridiculous. After I yell myself awake, I know well enough to shut the fuck up. I check to make sure my eyes haven't been gouged out. Then I try to devise some test to assure I am still alive. I lay back down for another hour of weird dreams where my mother is someone else, someone in my life that I actually trust.
Have you noticed I have been speaking about my family in the plural. An utter falsehood. We is just me and my family is just my great aunt. I offered to take her 20 miles down the highway to visit her sister, my grandmother, but my grandparents didn't want to see me this year. They saw me last year and that was enough. They don't want to upset my mom, who might disown them like she disowned my great aunt. In case you are imagining that all this family disowning involves money, let me remind you that we are immigrants. There is no money, no trust funds, no inheritance, just viciousness and control issues.
I realized I had to make this trip soon because Aunt B was letting on in phone conversations that she could no longer drive, which seemed like a major milestone towards her impending blindness. She has macular degeneration, a condition I can't say without a New York accent, because all my older relatives have it. I think of it as something to look forward to. Her retina is peeling free of her eyeballs, and I am the only one who cares.
All day long she and I have been watching news MSNBC and CNN. As such, we were the first to hear about the Indiana prison riot, where the imported Arizona prisoners were upset that they didn't have cigarette privileges at this new facility. They pushed some guards and burned some mattresses. We didn't know all that when the story broke. There was just the same ten minute loop of aerial footage while one reporter after another spluttered and conjectured to waste time. We were wasting time together in front of the TV too. I wanted to get up and scream, the bloody horse head scream. I want to turn over the coffee table, put my foot through TV. I am not made to sit and be stuffed full of half-truths. I would rather close my eyes and walk into walls.
Also, today Rosie O'Donnel announced that she was not renewing her latest daytime television contract. Ten or so pundits conjectured on whether she was fired for her foul mouth. One of the 'journalists' even commented with disgust on the size of her ass and then pulled up some footage that featured it. My aunt kept saying that she was her own worst enemy, and a total failure. I said I would be happy to be the kind of failure with two TV shows under my belt, and then we had to let it go. I don't really care about any of these things, but her constant criticism occasionally moves me to resistance, a mini-riot.
I had planned to come earlier in the month, but my cousin was going to be visiting my grandmother 20 miles south. Aunt B didn't want to eliminate the possibility that they might also be willing to see her. My cousin had a new baby that was beautiful and peaceful, never crying and eating with ease. The last time I saw my cousin she was a blond preteen dingbat, and I remember thinking, "Well at least she is pretty." Of course that isn't really fair, most preteen girls in America enforce their stupidity. According to my aunt she is a real genius now, not like me. She makes six figures teaching science in a public middle school in New York.
She mumbles these things nonstop over the news programs. I seethe about being her lone loser. I stop listening and fantasize about having Rosie O'Donnel's daytime television job. According to my aunt I am already my own worst enemy; it is a perfect fit. I am even a lesbian. Yeah, I know middle class housewives feel hip watching a loudmouthed, fat, asexual lesbian. A skinny and weirdly gendered dykish person, on the other hand, would just bring to mind 'real' women falling at my feet. No one would be able to let go of the visions of me tainting some normal girl ... in graphic detail. Alas, they don't hire pornographers for daytime television. Still I can dream. In my fantasy, I get to use my legal name, the one I chose 15 years ago. Then I can stop answering to things like Dumbshit.
When I am at home and living my weird little pornographer life, I have the notion that I have something unique to contribute. Sometimes I even think myself a good writer. I have ambitions for writing a book or two. There are other things I would like to do in this funny business. The thing about family is that you will always just be a sack of crap to them. They remember the style of your crying when you woke in the middle of the night scared. They remember the name on your birth certificate. They remember your peculiar childhood eating habits and the fact that you used to hate the way turtlenecks chafed and made you feel strangled. It is humbling and puts me back in the mindset of aiming low and expecting nothing.
So, back to that phone call. The person on the other end of the line was calling for Boots. It was the sex columnist and pornographer Tristan Taormino, who was calling me because I had written to her handler weeks earlier saying I had balls, saying I wanted her to write an article about us. I guess it took was balls because she was calling me. She wasn't calling me Dumbshit, but she also wasn't calling me a name I could recognize.
Drunken Confessions
4/8/2007, 11:32:44
When everyone at the party was finally good and drunk, I announced in privatized clusters that I planned to live my life in celibacy, a life of good irony as a pornographer. The people that actually knew me had to agree that I am incapable of choosing low-maintenance girlfriends. Chastity lay back on the bed easily and suggested that I choose her. Mine is the kind of announcement that is likely to create its own undoing. Everyone likes a challenge, especially drunk people.
The thing I like about most drunk people is that their defenses are low and they are much more capable of being honest. You can have a decent conversations for a change. There was only one sober guy with me at the party. He explained that no matter how much he drinks he stays sober and remembers everything. I was making fun of my life as he drew a smurf who was looking at a piece of cake, but thinking about a nuclear explosion. The drawing was on the casted leg of Fayville who had broken her ankle walking to the Slow Hippie Cafe with Sincock and I last week. Except for the smurf, the drawing was hard to recognize and required a guided tour.
Fayville went on the mischievous offensive with the sober guy, pegging him for a submissive. I sat between them watching it like a tennis match, her cast leg crossing the divide. Not long after the smurf got his cake and unrecognizable mushroom cloud, the sober man left with the impression that we were making too much fun of him. Later he was resurrected a little resentful. Yesterday his 99 year old grandfather died, or maybe he was 98. It all depended on his birthday which he could never remember, but it was sometime in April. He confessed that he was fine with it mainly because of the advanced age.
In the over-bright kitchen, a Ukrainian taxi-driver was having sporadic but consistent drunken problems with me. It was fine that I fuck women because he likes to watch his wife do that. The problem was that I don't sleep with men. It was easy to blow off this kind of crap in a foreigner, but then his wife called me an 'it' and the night started to seem a little too drunk. The thing about stripping people of their sober inhibitions is that you also get their unmitigated worst.
Sincock had his head hanging out the window with Rice of Rice and Chastity, a couple I was supposed to meet years ago, but hadn't. Rice had been drinking since noon which meant at 8:30pm when I met him he was ripe for reasonable conversation. By kitchen-time Rice was slow talking drunk, and wanting to escape. There were people having sex with each other in the other rooms, and he was so uncomfortable with his sexuality that his girlfriend was looking around wishfully. She was the kind of beauty I used to covet and resent before I met Boobjob. Straight men have it so good and easy.
Some of them know it. Past Fayville on the couch I could see her husband, Sincock, on the bed naked with one of the party blondes straddling him. Fayville was explaining to me about feminism and the fact that women never get to be people. Women are always women that are ranked in a series of categories: attractiveness, availability, role. She argued that the fact that I fall into unfavorable rankings does not change the fact that I cannot become human to them. No one female is. But what about people that aren't male or female? What about my 'it'-hood?
Rice came in from the night air where he was hanging his head out the kitchen window with Sincock. He turned to me and said that I made him suspicious. I was disappointed in him. I was a kid again at that age where suddenly boys stop talking to girls because they are suddenly girls and not kids. I knew I wasn't a girl. I am not a boy either.
"You know what Rice? Everyone is suspicious. Everyone feels just that way about me. Yeah, sure I am ok to tolerate, but everyone, not just you, everyone thinks that I belong somewhere else. I can't imagine where that would be."
The gears slowly turned in his head. Over his shoulder and down the hall I could see his girlfriend wistful, watching people fuck on the bed. Sincock and the Ukrainian taxi driver started sparring like rams in rut, hitting the wall, several drunken times, while women scurried into safer corners. "So what do you ideally want?" Rice said slowly and incomprehensibly. Confessing to a drunk is a lonely act that is also completely freeing. You can say anything, just as they have accidentally said everything.
"I want to fuck your girlfriend." I said, and I patted him on the shoulder bracingly.
Hocking Fruit With Bigger Balls
4/5/2007, 8:38:07
I had to leave work today at a reasonable hour because of my neighbor, bless her. I promised to get her some cabbage at the Berkeley Farmer's market and it made me look around office and realize I could do all this work from home. So I left before 6pm with the sun still up, the orange guy still hocking fruit across the gravel patch of our driveway, the taco truck still parked in place beside my stripped truck. They all looked at me surprised.
Here is the real surprising thing, I would have left the office sooner but I was being offered a job by William, the organizer of a sex event we are sponsoring. It was the most insulting things that has happened to me in days. The job title started with the letter 'A' and some other letter I can't remember. These letters were followed by the word 'Manager'. I had to take a break from listening to try to figure out what these letters when put together might stand for. Accounting Something. Wow.
Just this week I finished two years worth of procrastinated accounting, delivering it to the weird tax guy. He works out of the narrowest building in downtown San Francisco. The elevator ceases running at the floor beneath his and then you have to walk up the last narrowest flight of stairs. If you are tall you have to duck at the top or risk concussion. I don't have to worry about that. The tax guy told us he took away his secretaries computer or email address or something because she was spending her days trolling for boyfriends. She looked to be in her 50's. She was wearing hot pants. The whole place smelled like cigarettes, and the walls were stained like they had all been smoking there for 20 years. There were no computers in his office, but there were bumper stickers plastered in random places. One said, "Earth First! We can log the other planets later" Despite dodging my taxes last year, he seems to think everything will be OK. This year I won't owe anything and last year, well it won't be as bad as all that.
So after this description of dodging taxes and hiding for two years from my spreadsheets, it should be obvious that I am unqualified for any job that starts with the letter 'A' and is followed by any other capital letter. Anyway, he doesn't even work at the place with the job, and the job isn't even really available. It's all rumor and speculation. He was just putting people together because that is what he does best. I can't tell whether I am more insulted by being considered appropriate for an accounting job or being a good candidate for management. Idea people seem to think that the whole rest of the world is around to get their ideas done.
Right before he offered me the job, he told me about an anonymous Opera singer, a blond with a pouty face that makes you think she will be the kind of bitch whose love you desperately need. He has her for the event and wants her to sing opera as she slowly walks down the stairs. And then the men will masturbate at her feet. Yes, yes, a beautiful idea. I can appreciate that. I can even donate my efforts to filming it in a way that would embody his dreams. But I am not a servant. I am in it because I can bring something to it that is unique. There are people that have both ideas and the grounded abilities to make those ideas happen. They are called entrepreneurs, and we are not made in the long term to do other people's biddings. I have my own ideas and William and I are working together right now on this event because our ideas happen to overlap at this place.
The projection of strangers on me is so hard to negotiate. The other day he called me and said, "Do you have a pen handy. Notice, I didn't say do you have lipstick? You wouldn't have that would you? That would be for old fruits like me. I have plenty of lipstick." Yes, yes, you are queer, and I am queer, and even though you are in love with a woman you can acknowledge me as some gender deviant although you should know that the trans folk see me as some outsider. I think you can all agree, all of you everywhere, that I don't really belong in your camp, even if you do me the courtesy of letting me visit.
It was odd to be coming home across the bumpy road and through the canyon without my headlights on, making everything look like a washed out flash photograph of itself. Sometimes coming home so late, everything looks monochromatic like a black and white photo; I expect to see some movie star frozen as she steps into her car, hand up against the glare of so many flashes. But tonight it was still bright out with everything in color. Out in the cove by the old whaling station there was a 'thing'. It looked like a huge semicircle rising up from the water. It made no sense, so I had to go investigate.
My kayak was filled with a winter's worth of rain. It was green algae filled water too. I think that is why Uncle Fester didn't steal it the other day while I was editing porn in my bedroom. In between gasping orgasms I could hear him out there complaining to his sponge absorbent son. "That's right there is a rule: 'No stuff on the docks!' But do they listen? No! We are going to teach them a lesson. We are going to take this and when they complain we can charge them for moving it back and tell them that they shouldn't have anything on the docks. Eric will back me up." And then their boat zoomed away and I though they had taken the kayak. This is the same Uncle Fester that is always trying to fuck me. Singling me out as the person with the least stuff on dock and making an example of me has been like foreplay to him.
I was undeterred by the algae. Maybe because I have bigger balls despite my lack of testicles. I also have a bigger silicone cock, but that is a different matter. So the kayak slid into the water and under an anchoring rope. I may be clumsy on land, but here in the water I am always stable even when my neighbor with her freshly delivered cabbage and spring strawberries leaves the rudder pedals asymmetric. One of my legs was bent and the other straight just to keep on a forward path through this water owned by no one. The sun was right behind 'the thing' which made it very hard to paddle directly at it. For a while I could paddle at it while looking away, but as I got closer I felt wary of it. It could be a sunken ship with sharp spikey parts. It could be marooned on a sandbar that would get me too. More than any practical fear was a primitive fear, as though I was approaching the corpse of a dragon. It could just be sleeping or feigning. So, I started to zig zag at it until I was 7 feet away. That was as close as I got.
It was a big ball, a big metal buoy ball that got away from it's anchorage. A rope, thick as my forearm, covered in seaweed trailed behind it, and still I did not want to turn my back on it. I was within swimming distance of shore, but I could not trust it to stay harmless. I stayed just long enough to be satisfied of its existence and then I back paddled, which I found is a very much more effective way to move through fluid. Still, it was low tide and I knew I wasn't safe paddling backwards in the general direction of the real wreck, sharp and spikey. So I turned away. After 15 feet I looked over my shoulder. It was gaining on me, and it gained on me for a long time. Until I had to admit that it was still back at the whaling station while I was almost back home where there were strawberries in my kitchen and dinner in the fridge.