Dream And Drink
5/31/2007, 10:52:36
They say that there are more people living and breathing now than have ever lived. It is easy to blow that statistic off. It is overwhelming, but it means for all the books filled like rosters with the names of dead artists, there are more than that many living artists of such caliber. These aren't the 1 in 1000 people who are capable of drawing a good likeness. These are true masters of skill and metaphor of beauty and hell. There may be significantly more than that because as the Jewish scholars say: We see farther because we are standing on the shoulders' of giants.
About a year ago I was the odd vanilla lesbian invited to a kinky straight 'meet and greet' staged at a trendy downtown bar. The bartender was just another stocky bald guy with a goatee and glasses impatient with this lot in life. I am sure he was supposed to be a playwright or a novelist or maybe a painter. Who knows, but his overqualified presence was part of what made the bar so slick.
Ish and Kiki were part of the passel who had invited me, and they were standing in a clump, happy to see me. When I became a pornographer, all the kinky people got happy to see me. I became a rock star: a geeky, clumsy and confused rock star; the kind of rock star that stands on stage stunned and blinking into the lights. But that is how I cam to pornography too, accidentally, as though I had gotten pushed on stage.
This was all before both Ish and Kiki had crushes on me. This was before I had to justify to Ish that really I was a lesbian. It is funny like that. Straight men never have to have a conversation where they say, "Yeah, I got fucked in the ass by a guy, but I just didn't enjoy it. Now I know I am straight." Whereas lesbians as a rule have tried both sides and have made a choice. After all, it is nearly impossible to grow up as a lesbian and not succumb to all the pressures of heterosexuality. Straighthood is pushed with all the peer pressure of drug use and the backing of churchgoing society too. "Here little girl, take this penis. You will like it. It will change your life. It will change your outlook. It will make you feel so good. It will make a real woman out of you. It will give you power and control. Really ... it will feel great. Come on, just try it. What's wrong with you anyway. Don't be so square, just take the penis."
Ish immediately chastised me for not coming to his latest show. Ish is a committed comedian when he isn't making butt loads of money doing something high-powered. Even people who aren't suffering in a low paying job have dreams of doing something else, something personal and creative. It is an odd America condition. People pursue one career for money and one for the heart. It all stays afloat with drinking and dreaming, which is unfortunate because those two substances so often cancel each other out.
Lately I have been thinking about quitting this business except I don't want to go back to engineering or programming or graphic design. When I was talking to Ish and Kiki I said that I am good at all these things and a few more, but sadly the thing I am best at is painting, making art. It is the thing I don't do anymore, and it is the thing I do best. Everyone got silent, and I felt guilt for bringing the conversation into the depths of reality, again. After those silent seconds where we looked at our shoes and the surly bartender, everyone tossed back their cocktails. Things started to feel better right away.
What Comes Around Goes Around
5/8/2007, 9:41:29
Usually it is the rainy season that causes our boats to sink in unison, the first big rain in particular. The taxation of water from both the bottom and top gets to be too much. That's the rumor anyway. What I see is entirely different, but that's always true. It is the spring that I watch the boats and even the docks going under. The first boat I saw go down, I smelled first. It was 5 in the morning, and the smell of what I thought to be mineral spirits was strong enough to wake me. When it became overpowering by 6am, I had to get up. A sheet of diesel fuel covered the waters in rainbow iridescent patterns of doom. Before long there were ten people standing on and around the boat casting desiccants into the water, throwing sump pumps into the cabin. The tide was rising, and we lost the boat temporarily to that high tide. In the low tide we all drained it as best we could and then the harbormaster inflated a huge thing in the main cabin.
It takes more than you would imagine to raise a boat from the dead. Unless there is an iceberg or other disaster, a boat initially sinks fairly slowly. Cracks between the wooden hull planks allows a steady seep or stream. Things get bad when the boat gets to a certain point in its descent. There are a series of holes above the water line whose intent is to allow the evacuation of water, but it works both ways. When you hit that mark on the hull, the ship sinks alarmingly fast. It seems hopeless, but what else can you do but try.
The next ship I saw go was Tom's Submarine, or so it is now called. I woke up one morning and it was riding really low. Other people noticed too, we all in turn went to rouse Tom from his drug induced sleep. When I knocked on his window, I saw his anxious silhouette popping spring-like out of bed, his long hair crazed by sleep. "What? What?" "Your other boat is sinking." "What? No its fine. I told them earlier. It's got two bilge pumps running." And he lay back down. After he turned down everyone's early warnings, no one helped when it sank. Later when he was collecting his pride, he had conspiracy theories about someone who had maliciously pulled a plug and vandalized the boat with its own fire extinguisher. When the boat sank less than a week later we thought he was even crazier.
Last year, my neighbors sank my boat while I was living with Boobjob. I thought it was the stupidest thing in the world. They left the water running to the water tank all day. The tank overflowed into the hull at a rate of about 1/2 gallon a minute. Someone saw it going down, and everyone rushed to help. Of course when the harbormaster is called upon to help a sinking ship he does it with destructive anger. The signs are still here. He knocked out the sliding door that covers the AC panel. He ripped the v-berth stairs out of the wall in his haste. I haven't or can't fix any of it.
What comes around goes around. I left for a shoot on Saturday with worries about upcoming episodes and interview questions. I left the water filling the tank. Sincock remembered to bring a checkbook, but forgot to see if their were actual checks in that book. Boobjob left her key behind at the first performer's apartment. She didn't remember at all. The performer called as we were about start the second shoot. We made a huge ugly traffic loop. In all that time I remembered nothing about my water.
I finally remembered after all the shoots were over. Boobojob was sitting around trying to angle her way into a fuck, and I ignoring her, trying to get some work done so I could go home. Then I threw her out of the office and sped home, nearly crying. Fuck the boat. Fuck my clothes and anything else in there. All I cared about way my cat. I imagined her swimming. I imagined her pathetic mews of complaint. I pulled into my space, and ran. The boat was fine, just were I left it, a little lower maybe. The doors were open and the floors had been pulled up for pumping. My neighbors had saved the day. As I sat panting, staring in the hole, I heard her happy bell. She turned the corner and made a happy murp sound when she saw me, a sound of thanks for providing such an interesting day of visiting strangers and open doors. Steve at the end of the dock had left me a note saying I could keep the pump, now sunk in the floor, as long as I needed it.
Steve lost his cat of Friday night. I cat-sit, boat-sit when he goes on little trips some weekends. I bring my cat over and they have a play date which involves hair raising chases and growling fights. Usually his cat beats up my cat, but my cat recently had an all night adventure in the suburbs that has improved her self-esteem. The last time I house sat, my cat beat his cat. I was horrified. Steve posted signs for his baby all over the harbor. At night the light was on, the door was open hopefully on his boat. There were sad cans of food placed in the bushes at the end of the docks.
Last night Dave was standing on Tom's Submarine talking loudly, without Tom. I was settling in to my nightly nothing when the curiosity was too much. I opened a hatch, "Dave, what are you doing?" "We are trying to catch a cat. Hey, you are a cat person. You should come over and do it." So, I ran, happy. Steve found his baby safe, just like I found my baby safe yesterday.
I had never been inside Tom's Sub mainly because it was a junk heap that Tom claimed still had lots of valuable parts that could be stripped. He was right. There were huge slabs of mahogany that looked salvageable under their ware. The inside was piled with broken-ness, a chair with three legs, part of a collapsed bedstead, metal trimming. Steve's cat was under a huge pile of broken ends; she was terrified back to her feral beginnings.
I went home to get dinner, and my cat, and a book. Then I sat inside and waited for her to be calm, for her to remember herself. Steve went to buy a feral trap in the last 20 minutes the hardware store was open. Before he left there was a long pause while I was just sitting and waiting. "Kane?" "Yeah" "I love you!" "I love you too, Steve." Then he left us, two cats and a person sitting quietly beside the constant slurp of the bilge pumps, a peaceful wreck.
On An Eastbound Train To Denver
4/21/2007, 12:05:12
I told you I would do it and now I am here: the Martinez Amtrak station where the 6 Zephyr has stopped to take on many more passengers who are poor or afraid of flying. Everything looks gentler from a train window. I saw one of the passengers taking a picture of Chevron's track-side as we passed Richmond. The hills were oiled with tar to prevent any brush growth. The tanks rippled and rusted next to flaming exhaust stacks looked positively urban in its quaint decay. You wouldn't guess that these miles of tarred hills regularly belch caustic fumes giving the kids in Richmond their characteristic asthma.
Out of Martinez we pass over the mud brown delta waters high on a railroad bridge. In the too shallow waters in lines, flank to flank staggered sometimes prow then stern, were geriatric steel ships. The smallest was 150 feet. There was an old ferry and one strange vehicle that looked like a barge that had been topped with a semicircular enclosure in a makeshift attempt at a floating warehouse. The rest were retired military boats. We passed by four schools with their antenna's and roosts tangled by foreshortening. Then we passed into marshlands.
After Sacramento a guy came on the loud speaker who claimed to be a museum. He talked with a stilted gate. I thought he was joking about his age, but really he was a representative from the railway museum, and for thirty minutes he read awkwardly from what I imagine was a badly mimeographed volunteer handout. It made the life and death struggles of natives, miners and pioneers seem positively boring.
His museum partner sounded just as old, but more charismatic. He follows all his lengthy descriptions with a single summarizing phrase:
- Now we are coming up on Boca, a town that due to its low valley temperatures was a source for ice harvesting. The ice was taken from the frozen Truckee river and shipped down to Sacramento where it was used to pack fruit so they could be shipped to the East. Boca means 'mouth' in Spanish, and the town enjoyed a heyday until commercial ice manufacturing gained hold. Then Boca suffered a long, horrible ... melt down ... Boca.
It snowed for the first time in Eastern Nevada. When me and a black man with a foreign accent and a DVD player were the only ones suffering insomnia, the night was so pitched and obscure that we both cupped our hands to the windows wondering if we were in a tunnel. After he retired to curl catlike across two seats, I figured out that the small amount of light from the train cast a barely perceptible light on the brush right near the tracks. If I concentrated, I could tell we were moving in the open.
Other than that no one talked to me. That is the way it always is. Everyone is a little suspicious and wary of me when they suddenly realize the invisible person is not the mouse they imagined. I don't know how this happens or I might change it. The whole train got comfortable having spent a night together. They complain about the four hour delay, their lives back home, the food service. I overhear the woman behind me who is traveling with her 1 year old son Dylan talking about all her sisters and all their pregnancies. She gave birth the oldest on her 18th birthday. To save $86 she took the roundabout route and was three days on this train traveling from Montana to Grand Junction Colorado.
In some small town in the canyon path through the Rockies, a new conductor stepped on board and he asked me how I was doing. Then he told me that there was a beautiful canyon ahead and I should go up to the lounge car. I had suddenly become visible, and I was forced to comply. I have never come this way into Denver although this path next to I-70 is familiar to me.
My dad bought a lot in the mountains when I was young and we came up on the weekends that he wasn't building a plane in the garage or dragging us to an aerial show. He just came up to dream really. Nothing ever came of the lot except our trips to see it and a near divorce fight that my parents had when the drilling for a well did not result in water. My father wanted to continue drilling at a great cost and my mother wanted to give up. My brother and I retired to the other room to talk, excited about the turmoil. When things quieted down we asked my mother still excited if they were getting a divorce. Then my father continued drilling, because he always did whatever he wanted, and my mother stayed because she never meant her threats.
So, I recognized this Colorado river and its canyons. Still I have never come in from the West. When I drive it is either from Wyoming or Kansas. In those two directions the plains change little, but you can tell the moment you cross into Colorado because the architecture gets grossly nostalgic about the West. It is almost like a Disney quotation of a John Wayne movie from the 70's: aluminum sided ranch houses in the colors mustard, avocado, brick. The windows are proportioned a little wider for that sprawling ranch feel, and are trimmed with white and further on, a mottled brick. Inside most of the houses still have their original orange shag carpeting. I hate Colorado. The funny thing is that my aunt does too, and she has insisted on living here for 35 years, a conundrum that drags me back here once a year.
Still this is the best way to come into this glossy state reproduction of the rugged mountains: through the mountains, along the river. It is a 36 hour decompression chamber where I let go of work. I look amazed at the rocky formations. If it weren't for the common 4 hour delays and the lack of electrical outlets, training it would be the perfect way to travel.
Goating Around
3/24/2007, 20:29:57
Something is breaking or thawing. Maybe it is the Spring in me. I find myself sometimes smiling. The trees frothing with white flowers and the hills around the harbor are blooming with those yellow encrusted bushes that make everything smell like after shave. In that area that used to be both the first winery in California and later a military ship refueling station, there were goats shaving clean the hills. When I saw them yesterday at dusk, I had to stop my speeding and pull over. I smiled. This morning they were in amongst the houses that were once filled with winery workers. Now the houses are vacant and condemned, with goats walking through all the yards like pedestrians at rush hour amongst the downtown skyscrapers.
When I worked at the Lab, the offices were far far away from the workshop where we were building our particle accelerator parts. I used to feel guilty walking the California hills instead of waiting for the shuttle bus. It usually took the same amount of time, but I felt like I was loitering. I have always been too impatient for the bus. For the whole warm season, the Lab would rent a herd of goats. Moving from hill to hill alleviating the threat of fire. Twice Alex and I spent our lunch roaming the campus looking for them. And one of those times they were at the far reaches of the domain. The goat babies were playing and some of them would fall on the steep hills tumbling painlessly and happily the way young things do. I didn't see any babies today. Don't they call them kids?
Yes, something is thawing in me, even with the IRS threatening to freeze my bank accounts and the watching world cold for our site. I am starting to think everything might be ok, even if I don't want to start again with the building and the painting and the sanding on this boat. I am not going to fool myself that money might come along and save me from this overwhelming work. I am choosing to suspend my disbelief, which is the fool's trip to paradise. In fact, I made plans to take the train to Denver where I have been neglecting my aunt. It will be 35 hours each way without the benefit of electricity or a wireless network. I am going to turn off my phone and watch the cows go by, mile after mile.
I will punctuate my cow counting with reading too, because when I get home from the bookstore with a stack of perfect books, I am ecstatic in a quiet and trembling way. Like the kind of ready virgin that was not raped by her father, like the kind of virgin that was saving herself for this: fear and trembling, standing at lip of chaos, a butterfly breaking the cocoon is that the creasing spine of a book. I will have to find some perfect books for my trip.
When I get back bored to tears with my exile, sick on the chocolate of my books, I will be ready to climb again my goat life. I may even be willing to start work again on the boat.
Bum Tide
11/7/2006, 23:03:29
I said to Ariel the other day at her house when she was feigning the old age apathy of not wanting to vote, "Eventually you are going to lose your teeth too, and that shouldn't stop you from brushing them." I know this is a day late and probably hundreds of millions of dollars short of an election difference, but I hope you voted. It can't just be the result that drives you to action. Sometimes you just have to do the right thing without the motivation of gain.
It is that time of year again at the harbor. No not election time; we are having bump tides. For those of you who don't live near an ocean or just are too full of city to notice, there are two tides in a day each consisting of a high and a low period. During the full and new moon the sun lines up to create really big tidal differences. The bay experiences about a four foot difference in water levels during these higher high tides. "Bump tides" is a old time sailor term, to describe extreme tide changes that only happen in one of the two tides. This full moon we were experiencing crazy eight foot changes in sea level at night and then tepid three foot changes in the day. I couldn't tell you what makes for these bump tides, resonance, chaos, voodoo, but the scientists are able to predict it. They show up without their proper sailor title in the little tide calendars that sell for less than a dollar.
This bump tide saw some of the craziest low tides I have ever seen. In the full of this moon the tides got so low that we were beyond resting on the silt of the marina floor. Mostly the little boat stalls were mud cakes fully freed from the waters of the bay. The sea birds were standing next to our boats with delight, picking at bewildered clams. Six hours earlier the high tide threatened to overtake the levy. All the boats swayed and jostled uneasily in their stalls, rattled by bay waves.
I used this opportunity to look for things that I had lost. The bottom of the marina has taken many, many tools from me. There are two hammers, more tape measures than I can number. At one time I paid extra to get a wood folding ruler because I reasoned it would float. Unhappily this was not the case. Once the marina stole the very essential top for my food processor. Loosing kitchen equipment overboard was something so complicated it involved a power washer and an insane lesbian raw foodist (that wasn't me). In one of these extreme low tides, I was able to locate the top of the processor, although the hammers and tape measures are still missing. It is always a crap shoot. Harbor John who explained to me about bump tides, has a complicated magnet scheme for retrieving things that are metal. He claims that his success rate is near 80%.
What I was looking for this bump tide, in the dark and with a flashlight, was one of the large Plexiglas windows that blew out last year while I was basking in the cold of Boobjob's house. This "looking" involved a long poky think because anything lost is covered in silt and sediment. This looking also involved thought experiments in flying objects: If it was knocked out by a large sudden gust, projections might show it going as much as 10 feet, but if it was mostly blown out but held on for a while it might be beside or under the boat. I poked and prodded in the areas the my thought experiments determined the window my be, but it is just gone with the wind.
A couple weeks back a newer rusting barge topped with a crane came into action in the curl of mud that should have been the marinas largest channel. It's engines ran for hours doing seemingly nothing at the end of our dock. It churned up mud and made lots of noise. It looked like it would hit Crazy Tom The Electrician's boat, but someone in the flybridge knew what they were doing. Still nothing seemed to happen, and being nosy I asked Uncle Fester while he was still in recovery from the "BITCH" slap what the hell was going on.
Apparently the only remaining charter fishing boat was threatening to move out because the state of the harbor made it difficult for even their flat bottomed boat to leave during the lower tides. So it has become a priority to do what has been planned for years and years, they are going to dredge the bottom of the harbor. They can't afford to pay the people who are skilled in this kind of thing, but they have some kind of arrangement where the mud is picked up once a day and carted off. It was supposed to happen every day, but they only seem to fire up the barge once a week, back it into an awkward position and leave churning through the diesel doing nothing.
Big plans, little action. I have seen the blue prints for the completely renovated marina. Every dock has all its fingers with every stall filled. Other people have seen the plans that show the canyon walls filled with houses. Nothing happens over and over again. The permits are received and then expire. The tides come and go. The boards rot under our feet and soon every boat will spend its life on a little mud cake. Maybe all this lack of hope has something to do with the election. It is a very hard thing to vote for the better of two evils and come away with some hope. Still I hope you all voted.
Regret of the Mahogany Behemoth
10/13/2006, 23:07:23
It is easy to bisect my life. There is the time before the Mexican accident and the time after the Mexican accident. My life after the Mexican accident, has all the same chaos and confusion. It is my attitude that has changed. I have a wry bitterness and sarcasm about people, especially myself. Just to warn the curious, this is not a post about the Mexican accident.
Just before the Mexican accident I was on the verge of homelessness because my landlord was trying to sell the house we were renting. I had just managed to extricate myself from a girlfriend who I had been afraid to leave for years. She was the kind of scary psycho-scientist that repressed all her feelings to let them out in a torrent. She would call and scream and cry at me for hours. If I refused to answer the phone she would burst in the door with the key I mistakenly given her and carry on in person. Sometimes, she would steal my car. I didn't have a job at the time because my last employer had gone against the recommendations of their own ergonomic specialist in refusing to get me a desk that could be used with a computer. That I used a computer nine hours a day, with lots of stress and angst, doing intensive graphic design meant nothing to them. I just wasn't worth it. So at the time of this odd statement, I had such severe upper body nerve damage that I couldn't easily brush my teeth. This is what I said, "I have no regrets. I would do it all again the same way." I meant it too.
After my Mexican accident I have only regrets. I would do it all different including the Mexican accident itself. One of my big and ongoing regrets, is my boat. I was really aiming for a funky houseboat that I could rebuild in my own image. I bought the boat that I did because I was desperate. It was the very first boat I saw, and after two months of looking it suddenly appeared again on eBay without a reserve. Of course, it was all a scam. The guy who was listing it for the owner outbid me using a different account. Then a couple days later he emailed to ask if would I consider my highest bid. He claimed that the winning bidder had reneged. I was staying at Sincock's house while he was back East for Christmas. I had exactly 3 days before I would be sleeping in the back of my car. It seemed like I had no choice. I found out the next day from the owner about their scam. She had already deposited my cashier's check in the bank.
Things got ugly that night. I told the listing guy that I was going to file a complaint about his practices with eBay. When the owner found out, it was midnight and she was in a drunken rage. She told me the boat was hers and that she was changing the locks and I would never see it again. I had to call the police, who seemed to talk some sense into her. A couple days later, I went out to the boat to claim it. All her belongings were still scattered around. We were on the leading edge of a bad storm when I started dumping her shit out onto the rainy dock. Suddenly as though she had been waiting for me, she materialized. I regret that I was at a more polite stage in my life back then. I didn't push her into the bay. I actually helped her put her stuff in a wheelbarrow so she could get it to the cab.
It rained and howled for the next three days. There was a record cold spell and I was sleeping under a very inadequate packing blanket on the floor of the bus I had just acquired. My hand got scaly from exposure, and I dreamed not just about heat, but also about sinks and showers. This may be a demarcation point as well. Before living on a bus I was domesticated. After living on the bus, I am always slightly uneasy with creature comforts. I have become the boy raised by wolves, trying to learn how to hold a fork.
The problem with my boat is not the work it needs. I am willing. The problem is that it is an antique, a piece of history. It can't be rebuilt; it has to be restored. This is all to say it is a rotting mahogany behemoth, a wooden albatross around my neck, and in the end I will be living not in the funky customized place of my dreams, but in the image to which the boat manufacturers on 1964 would have been proud. I was not made for this kind of fitting in and yet that is what I have been doing for three years now.
About a year after I started. When I was up to my armpits in sawdust. I looked out over the San Pablo Bay and saw a strange boat coming toward to marina at the wrong angle. If it hadn't been high tide they would have run aground in muck. It looked like it had started as a regular 40 foot houseboat, but was now precariously topped by second story making it look like something from a Doctor Seuss book. In the front, on what had started as a deck, someone had built a sun room that was completely enclosed in Plexiglas panels. Every little room was painted a different color and all of them were bright. I knew at an instant that it was the boat of my dreams, and I hated the two trans boys who owned it out of sheer jealousy.
This week I had a moment of optimism. I thought that maybe I could fix all my leaks before the next rain storm. I found a new epoxy putty that is flexible enough to not crack as to boat flexes but also is strong and water proof. It cures in water. It can be sanded and painted. It is the miracle compound that could change my whole life. A lot of people have trouble finding the source of the leaks, but I have an uncanny skill of thinking like water. Just after I found the source of one of the more difficult leaks, I looked up to see the enviable tranny boy sitting on the back of his fantasy boat. In this moment of optimism I decided to bury my hatchet of jealousy and go visit.
I invited myself in and in return I had to show him my boat that looks like a real boat, his great envy. His boat was more and less what I dreamed. Everything leaked rain water. The ceiling was rotting. There was junk piled everywhere, and still I could see glimmering through the muck and mire a very great potential. The thing is, I am too far into my boat to give it up or give it away. It is actually seeming comfortable when it isn't raining and I don't need to pee in the middle of the night. (Keep in mind that my sense of comfort is tempered by being raised by wolves.) Here is where it gets hard. They are about to leave town and sell the boat. He offered it to me. Imagining the three more years it would take to get his house comfortable, I passed. I left for my office to wonder all day if this would be one of those huge relentless regrets.
This evening I was internally bemoaning the lack of heat in my boat. Last week just before the rain storm I took apart my kerosene heater to replace the wick. It took hours, and because there is something contaminant in the kerosene, the new wick is now so gummed up as to be unusable. I was listless in my kitchen trying to figure out what to do with myself in the cold night when the neighbor who lives at the end of my dock stopped at my door. He was going down to Santa Barbara to look at a boat for his girlfriend. She wants to move in, but they need more space. He too has a boat that I envy. He is a contractor and got a 40 foot fishing boat that he stripped back to the hull and rebuilt as a nautically themed loft. It is not the boat I would have created, but I see it and regret not getting a chance to create my own vision of boat livability.
I pointed behind me to the Doctor Seuss boat. If I can't have it someone I care about should. In the next ten minutes we measured the length and beam, determined which boats could be moved to fit it in a slip next to his, and tried to figure out how to domesticate the beast. He was so excited that he went down to the office to get the phone number of the tranny boys. He almost canceled his trip, but the phone number was wrong, and you can't really count on the second hand casual conversation with a stranger.
The upshot is that I get to stay on my neighbor's boat for the weekend. It is at the T of our ultimate dock. Given that the levy has been worn nearly away, it is like being parked in the bay, a million dollar view for just $600 a month. He kept playing up the 52 inch TV and the satellite dish, but all I wanted to know is how to turn on the heat. I may spend the next couple months envious, watching him build a second dream boat, but I know I won't regret a weekend of heat.
Mighty Mouse
10/1/2006, 10:01:35
Sincock was right when he insisted to the landlord that the robber would be back. The asshole came back two nights later. I guess he only does one sleepless night of thievery at a time. With a pair of bolt cutters he managed to get most of the way through one of the four supports on the bars on the front window. To cover his tracks and make it so that he could come back again soon with a saw or other implement, he propped a big board in front of his work. I showed up and thought, "What the fuck is that doing there?" Just like before he was relatively neat and it took me surprisingly long no notice the bar support just above a through bolt was cut and twisted.
I was a stunned, or in shock. Ten years ago I had a self-absorbed and sheltered girlfriend. At the very beginning of our long and horrifying relationship she decided she wanted to live free from the burden of roommates and found a studio over on Dolores Street by the park. It was so much money, but she had it then. She moved everything in and stayed there one night during which she found ... roaches. She came to my house, crazed and bleary eyed at three in the morning. Her eyes wide open and sometimes teary, staring over her shoulder in horror. I went back with her the next evening to try and make it work. She was springing upon closets in surprise attacks searching for the pests all the while talking nonstop about what a roach egg looks like. I thought she might be going crazy. The day after the second attempt I looked in the mirror across from our office toilet and recognized that look. I paced and stormed. I thought about going to my storage unit to get the religious tassels - the ones I have been too crippled by doubt to wear. And then I realized with horror I was becoming a violent, religious fundamentalist.
That was when I went to go get a shotgun. It was Sincock's idea. I was unconvinced because I didn't really want to scare this fucker. I wanted to take him down, break his knee sideways, and kick him in the balls until he told me where our camera equipment was or I was certain he would be pissing blood. I was more than a little afraid I would actually use the shotgun if I had it. I guess that is why there is a 10 day wait period even for the non-concealables. It turns out that there aren't any more gun shops open in Oakland. I don't want to sound like the NRA, members of whom I met later that day, but shutting down the gun shops seems to have been woefully inadequate in stemming violet gun crimes throughout the city. In the end, I did my research and got a stun gun.
Gone was the mouse who would hide in the bottom of her boat, and back was the deranged psycho defender I had grown to depend on in times of crisis. I spent that night in the office. Sincock and I drove my car to a safer neighborhood within walking distance. We went back into the office and he surrounded me on the chaise with a series of local weapons: a crow bar, a kitchen cleaver, the stun gun and my cell phone programmed to call the Oakland police cell emergency number. Then I escorted him to the door where he made a big production of shutting off the lights, locking the door and leaving. Then I was alone in the dark, not able to make a sound for 12 hours.
I found that two hands cannot nimbly carry four weapons. I found that there is traffic along our street all night long, and that the gas station across the gravel patch closes at midnight. I am happy to report that not many people walk by in the middle of the night, and those that do have shopping carts. I spent my time with the monitor of my computer dimmed, trying to figure out what myspace is all about. I played computer solitaire until 4:30 in the morning when the traffic picked up and I could feel if not see day break coming.
The next day with a little more sanity in my crazy roving eyes, I started thinking "Security System". Sincock had found a company that advertised being the best if Oakland. So, when I called them, they didn't even work in California. That is what in the industry is called "targeted marketing". After a lot more frustrating research, we opted for two different security systems. The first is a system that monitors doors and windows and makes lots of noise. The second is a video surveillance system that sends email to Sincock if there is loud noise or any movement. He can watch it in real time from the web to see just what's happening. I think this could be a novel feature for the future business too - a live cam so paying members can see me doing taxes and scratching my ass. Everyone will give up their day jobs for the excitement value of being a pornographer.
The first night in service, the security system kept alerting Sincock whenever a loud motorcycle passed by. It recorded about a gigabyte of incredibly boring footage of the office utterly unchanged. The next night after a little bit of audio tuning, he only got one alert. It was an actual intruder just after midnight: a very small, very cute mouse. I think now that I am ferocious and crazed a little bit of mouse might be OK. A little bit of mouse might be just what is needed.
What A Difference A Chaise Makes
7/30/2006, 9:03:43
I bought a boat. If I had enough time to sail it would be a dream come true. It is rigged for single handing, only twenty feet long, in immaculate condition, and the slip is near the end of the dock downwind so you can push out of the slot and sail into the breeze. I couldn't ask for more. The fog horn is a gentle chime, and the clinking of hundreds of rig lines against hundreds of masts says peace. I have started asking most people I know if they would be willing to sail with me. I am not yet ready to sail by myself even if she is.
My strange living plan would almost be in place except that there are some problems with the office. The first and most pressing problems is the lack of broadband. Running a porn website requires an occasional peak at the content, and in this crazy time where I am still testing out the database and related scripts to make sure it is generating a good content, I stay ftp connected to the server all day, tweaking and testing files.
Sincock was under the impression that every urban area is now capable of DSL, but not true. The poor are still forgotten. DSL has become a staple for the middle class, but the people who support themselves in retail jobs so they can stay in the ghettos of Oakland are still underserved. Every DSL provider I talked to said they couldn't cover our area. Then the local cable company did an assessment that took seven days, and decided they couldn't service our area either. In the end I went back to a DSL company, hat in hand, trying to sign up for something twice the cost of DSL and half the speed. It burned ... for a few seconds. Then suddenly they changed their minds, reassessed their abilities. They had the local phone company come out this week to install a new copper line to the building, and they are showing up in person on the first of the month to install a jack. That seems to be a trend in my life: working my ass off, getting no where, until the world finally decided to cooperate.
I also needed a refrigerator. I am going to be camping on two different boats and spending 12-15 hours a day in my office. We have a teacup sized sink outside the bathroom with no door. My exotic diet requires just the barest hint of a kitchen to get by and the fridge would make it. We splurged and ordered new from Sears. So, I am on the precipice of a different life, just waiting for them to deliver it on the 2nd of August.
I have been afraid of spending all my time here, but a little less so today. Early in the week, Sincock and I were running around in my truck picking up spare furniture for our shooting space. I contacted scads of people from craigslist, and the first person I talked to had a chartreuse antique couch. It looked like it was comfortable and stainless. As is wont to happen with craigslist, the woman who owned the couch had some issues. She loved the couch even though she was selling it. Like an old cat she was giving up for adoption, she didn't want the couch to go to a bad home. Of course, recent experience has taught me to lie, but even my lies about making documentary films were inadequate. She really wanted it to be slopped with occasional gravy from a home cooked meal.
The most effortless piece of furniture we acquired was a couch that had a truly amazing combination of leopard skin and zebra skin print. The woman was so chilled out, I was able to tell her not just that we did documentary film making, but also that it was sex related. I ended by saying enthusiastically with lots of hand motions, "Doesn't this couch just scream masturbation!" She looked at me like I was crazy and we quickly carried the couch down three flights of stairs.
What masturbation porn studio would be complete without a chaise lounge, and somehow they go fast on craigslist. I guess they are a trend these days. I called a woman named Wendy and was happily the first to make a commitment to come and see it. She lived in the suburbs of Hayward in a house on the hill. Just as we were pulling up in my loud diesel truck painted pink and orange, the husband came home. He was wearing a leather jacket over a bright shirt and tie looking at us suspiciously. He was tanned and casual in such a way that he seemed like an older version of the Brady Bunch dad. I am guessing that he works in sales. He led us into the house where Sincock and I each took a turn lying on the lounge looking comfortable. Wendy got all emotional, saying half joking that now she didn't want to sell it. They had just moved here from Southern California because their son lives in Berkeley and they are new grandparents. The new grandfather helped Sincock put the chaise in the back of the truck, and I could see the couple quelling up with emotion imagining that they had given their well loved furniture to a nice married couple to start a life together. I felt like a righteous con artist and had the bad, bad urge to yell out the window, "No we aren't together. I am a lesbian, and we just make porn together. The lounge is going to be great. The woman who we are shooting Sunday is a squirter!"
We set the chaise against the green wall. It made all the difference. It was someplace comfortable to sit, lie down, take a nap, film porn. The day after we got it, I actually sat on it to do my database crap while waiting for the DSL modem to show up via UPS. Yesterday, both our talent flaked, which gave Sincock time to put up curtain hardware and organize everything. Meanwhile, Boobjob cleaned the bathroom and all the windowsills. In the end we had a place that was not just livable, but nice. Just as we were heading out the door, the woman with the chartreuse couch called back to say, maybe her couch didn't need family values. I had to turn her down letting her know that we have everything we need.
Bye Bye, Bella
6/8/2006, 8:53:45
Tonight I am sat in my defunct Mercedes Benz, Bella Luna Il Coche. She ran on pure vegetable oil and towards the end of her life I spent too many dollars trying to fix a string of undiagnosable things that kept going wrong. There was something with the brakes, and brakes are important when you go fast. Fixing it stymied the Slavic Mercedes mechanic that plays chess on his lunch breaks. He ended it up not fixing it for free. He just handed me the keys and said it was good enough for the no charge. My sense was that was the first time he had failed to find an answer to anything. Seth, the mechanic who held my truck hostage for seven months all the while saying, "almost done", called yesterday to say he has found a buyer for the corpse of Bella. I came tonight to sign over the papers and also check to see if there is anything I left in her gut.
I used the occasion of Seth's phone call to let him know that even after all those months of him not actually working on the truck, it isn't really working well. It leaks copious amounts of oil. So tonight, I am also giving him the keys to my half painted truck. Everyone worries that I will never get the truck back. They are probably right and I should lie down here in the back of my Mercedes and let it be my grave. I don't have the energy to wrestle Seth to get it back.
I found myself sitting in the unlocked back seat of Bella marveling that in his crappy neighborhood a large collection of silver-toned change still sat sat in plain site in the console between the seat. Being poor, I put the change in my pocket even though it had a bit of motor grease on it. On the floor I found several receipts that will no doubt be useful if I ever do my taxes. The greatest discovered treasure however was my black lace bra. It has been missing for a long time. Despite my love for it and its long absence, there was a lot of reasons to leave it behind. First, I found it in a moldy looking place on the floor under a window Seth had left open. It was next to a gold shirt that had telltale black mildew spots. The other issue that left me to pause and look around bra in hand was Boobjob. I am the first non-butch she has ever dated and she looks at my faggy hand gestures with great disdain. What would happen if I wore a black lace bra? Then I considered that I am $15k in credit card debt for the porn business and own another $12k to the IRS for those taxes I still haven't done, and I realized I may never have enough money to buy another lace bra, one without the mold at a time when Boobjob has finally given up on me. I put the bra in the bag.
The sun was setting and Seth's dog coincidentally named Bella was playing in the front yard which was a fenced concrete slab, hosting a broken down station wagon. Bella jumped up on the hood like it was a trampoline that propelled her on to the roof of the car. She looked at me, bone in mouth and waited. I called her name and the bone dropped off the back of the car and caught on the rear on rear windshield wiper, an utterly useless invention until this moment when it became dog entertainment.
Down the street is the house of Boobjob's ex-fuck-buddy, the one that got away. Usually when Boobjob and I came by here trying to wrestle free my truck, the fuck-buddy was out doing her heroic EMT duties just like today. Apparently the pay is shit and the ongoing tragedy of being bit by drug addicts is killing her. She has been doing this for most of her life, whereas I have been doing nothing for most of my life. I haven't yet been able to hold down a job for a year. The contrast is uncanny. Most days I think Boobjob would have been better off pining for this unavailable butch, than with me. I seem to be everything that makes her uncomfortable and unhappy. It is funny how people choose what they want least.
Somewhere down this street the EMT's best friend recently died in his house, and I bide my time waiting for Seth, wondering which house the best friend owned when he was alive. Bella does amazing acrobatics to get the bone from its precipice, and when she leaps happily to the ground she looks at me pleased with herself. Then Boobjob shows up in her pristine car. She manages to insult my appearance and reject an advance in preparatio for the sex we have schedule later in the evening. Because there is no foreplay like insult and rejection. Then Seth shows up on a motorcycle that apparently had a massive electrical failure on the way back from San Leandro. He apologizes for his lateness, but he doesn't mean it and besides we all knew he was going to be late. The papers get signed. She is out of my hands, and somewhere in my broken heart I wave good-bye to an era and its possibilities. Bye Bye Bella.
A Day in The Sun
1/9/2006, 15:11:43
And yesterday I found myself talking too loud, Italian style, in a way that all those WASPs think of as yelling. "If anyone's luck is worse than yours, it is mine. I am not driving a stalling car 100 miles when we have already used all my AAA tow service and I don't have a valid driver's license." The problem was that I had just told her to stop yelling at me; it wasn't my fault her car was stalling. Yeah, OK, I had gotten her the thingamajig that plugs in your car cigarette lighter so that you can play your stinking iPod in the car. And, yeah, it turns out that even though it was damn expensive, it is a piece of crap and drained all the juice out of the car battery causing it to stall. I guess now is also the time to admit that the weird sound that her strut is making is likely the result not just of the speed bumps in her complex, but also the rocky road to the harbor. But I don't think I destroyed her car in any other way, except maybe the mess and dust.
Lucky for me, today is the day for the loser's redemption:
I drove to the harbor after dropping Boobjob at work and the harbormaster didn't even care that I was nine days late in paying my rent because he was so enamored with Muppet the dog looking all cute in the back seat. I explained, "Yes, he is really, really cute, but he doesn't like men so he needs to stay in the car lest he bite you." To which he said, "That's OK I would just let him bite me. Then I would walk into him and he would have to give up. It is that way with people too. We are all just pack animals. When someone rubs me the wrong way, I say, 'Yeah, I may be small, and you may wup my ass, but we are both going to the hospital in the end. So let's go there if you need to. You may win, but you are gonna' loose some teeth and if that is what you want, let's go.'" "Oh, OK." I said with a concerned look on my face, and Muppet stayed in the car.
I got to my boats and neither had sunk in the long days of flu and rain. Later my storage unit coughed up my birth certificate like a well lubricated hair ball, and I headed off fully armed for the strange bureaucracy of the DMV. Boobjob had warned me of the horrors of Daly City, but when I got there a man was leaving with a smile on his face. He held the door for me. I got to the moment of truth too soon, saying "Uh, my license expired just before Christmas and I didn't realize it, do I need to reapply or can I just renew?" She looked perplexed and told me of course I would just renew. She handed me a form, and although the place was full of waiting people it all moved so quick that by the time I finished the form, my number was called.
I waited for the guillotine to come down at the counter when they looked carefully at my record, seeing clearly that I had been driving without a license for 17 days. Instead, the clerk just asked for $26 dollars and sent me for a photo. The Indian woman in line ahead of me photographed all shiny looking. It was unfortunate because she was attractive. After a signature and thumb print she was handed a test and sent to a booth. Next a Pilipino woman was washed out by the flash, which was unfortunate because she was attractive. She also got the thumb, signature and test. Then it was my turn, clumsy all the way through. I had to do my signature twice and I blinked during the first photo, fidgeted during the second so she had to wait for a moment of calm to snap the picture. Then she handed back my form and sent me on my way. I didn't even have to take the test. Probably it will come in the mail and all the biased unfairness of the day will come to fruition; I will be the first person in days to take a good photo, and all that despite the waning flu and my hair back in a scraggly ponytail.
Maybe I should skive off my contract work and fix Boobjob's car. It seems to be my lucky day and I am sure tomorrow it will rain.
Wendy's Party
10/16/2005, 21:37:57
Harbor John walked by commenting, "Are you getting any paint on the boat? You look good as a platinum blond!" John used to work for the harbor smoothing over conflicts and making things work. Nothing much got built, but nothing gets built now either.
Now Uncle Fester has his job, which seems to consist of smoking weed and trying to get me naked. He cocks his head and says in a high voice, "How ya doin'?" as if he is sweet as sugar. He tells me leading stories about lesbians he has known that have gone suddenly straight, and when the harbor was threatening to evict me for the sake of an irratioal drunk, he stepped right up to offer to share his boat. In the past couple of months while I was at Boobjob's he has moved on to our dock.
He has been trying to compel the residents to call him Harbor Tom instead of Uncle Fester. His first major task at the harbor was to attach our dock to the new pylons. A few days later I came home from work to find the dock incomprehensibly ripped in half. The ring collaring the pylon had been too tight and when the tide went down the pylon stuck pulling that part of the dock with it, snapping at an odd angle. Frequent similar mishaps and his silly temper have prevented anyone from donning him the respect of a new name.
My cross-the-dock neighbor, also named John, stepped on to my deck to see the horrible damage done by the light dusting of rain we got on Friday. The paint he said looked good; it made all the difference. He was on top of his own ladder trying to clean the windows on his house barge. The wind was all but dead, and I looked at him and told him he should be out in a kayak. He couldn't. His girlfriend's daughter was getting married next weekend and people would be staying with them. The house had to look good. I said, then he should go out in the evening, but Wendy over on dock 5 was having a housie's party. All the house owner's were invited. Several times a year, they have parties like that and us boaties are not invited. There is a class divide. People with vague jobs have houses and people with even vaguer ways of making money own boats.
The other day I saw Harbor John standing on the levee and it had been a while. "Where have you been?", I asked. He was in a Hawaiian shirt and his hair was styled to seem reasonably professional. It turns out he has a job. He is a used car salesman. He surprised them all being very good at it. He has out sold all of them, but it is hard having a job. He doesn't think he can last. He just wants to be here at the harbor fixing things. Before this he had to take a job in construction. He was even unionized, but that didn't last. He asked me what I was doing for work and I said, "Nothing, isn't that why we are all here?"
I keep painting all day. I hurt my eyes staring at the sun drenched white primer as I brush it on. Behind me I hear another housie neighbor ripping the siding off her house with the people who have agreed to buy it in December. Then the sun is setting and everyone around me is preparing for Wendy's dinner party.
I walk inside to see that the platinum of my hair is joined by a spot of white on my bottom lip which crescendos to a smudge all the way up my nose. It is a symphony of presentational disaster. I can't imagine how I will get it off. The primer is oil based. I give up for now and decide that I should take the kayak ride my neighbor couldn't.
It is low tide and the wreck reportedly sunk in the making of a John Wayne movie is reared up, metal barnacled ribs piercing the surface and giving the three visiting pelicans a place to perch. I smell skunk and I know it is someone smoking weed, maybe Uncle Fester. The back of his boat is covered with marijuana plants which he assures me are purely medical. He has the card to prove it.
I paddle and drift, paddle and drift, it is not my usual kayak journey. I just want to watch everything change with the sunset. The moon rises nearly full over the Pinole landfill mountain. The sky is turning purple in a band. Across the bay a boat too small to see is making a loud plume going an insane speed. The spray is fifty feet high and about 300 long. The invisible boat quickly tracks across all I can see, and I can still hear him after he is beyond my line of sight. The sky turns a medium cool blue and the moon makes a smeared trail in the water before I turn around for home. The light are all lit at Wendy's house. My neighbors are standing on the top floor terrace watching me come in. We pretend we can't see each other as I maneuver towards my finger. Finally, I am hidden from view as I balance the boat like an agile cat and step back into my life. My hand catches as I run it through my hair.