Goodbye, Columbus

Isn't that a title of a Phillip Roth novel? (Actually, a short story) Was it turned into a dreary movie? (Yes, indeed, with Richard Benjamin and Ali McGraw). I don't know (acutally, I do know because before I posted I looked up the title at Amazon) and I don't care (but I'm bored enough to feign caring). What made me think of the title, aside from the fact that today is Columbus Day, is how history is revised, sometimes purposely and sometimes via the inevitable filter of perception.



My Grandmother doesn't quite realize that all history is revisionist in its nature (because of the necessarily limited perceptions of the historian); however, she objects (as do I) to conscious and supposedly reparative revisions. See, when she was a kid, Christopher Columbus had discovered America. When I was a kid, Christopher Columbus had actually discovered the New World (since he never set foot on mainland America, either North or South). Nowadays, children are taught that "Columbus," whose name was really Cristobal Colòn, didn't discover anything at all — not only were there already people there in the so-called "New World" (the indigenous peoples having discovered it some time earlier), but also because he thought he was somewhere else (he went to his grave thinking he was in Japan... which is kind of funny, when you think about it). Columbus has been reduced from a great national hero to a typical comic male who never admits he's really lost.



"If this keeps up," Grandmother quips, "eventually Christopher Columbus won't even have left Spain."



It seems that the current vogue in pedagogy is to minimize Christopher Columbus by negating old-fashioned assumptions about the man and by dwelling on the less pleasant aspects of his trip... that he and his crew introduced venereal diseases to the Caribbean, that they were only looking for weak natives to loot and exploit, that the entire Renaissance thrust of exploration and colonization was inherently evil. In my American Federation of Teachers academic year pocket calendar, today's date reads "Indigenous Peoples discover Columbus." I thought that was pretty funny, the first time I read it... but it shows quite clearly that the re-focus of thinking about Columbus as an interloper rather than an explorer is something that has been planned out for a specific purpose. "Indigenous Peoples discover Columbus" is just as formulaic an oversimplification as "Columbus discovers America."



Either way of looking at it is true, to some extent, but both of these to-some-extent truths are inherently untruthful... for when you simplify history into an easily remembered formula, you have to leave out all of the innumerable extenuating circumstances. You essentially have to filter the facts, and filtering the facts turns them into an untruth. And then, when you choose which facts to leave out of your formula, you are engaging in Propaganda. And I feel that propaganda is inherently evil, because it results in a misunderstanding that benefits the stature of some person or school of thought while degrading the names of real people.



Did you know, for example, that King Richard III of England never did any of the horrible things for which he is credited? But Shakespeare's fabulous play about that unfortunate ruler was more interesting than the real facts... and the subject and contents of that play were Tudor propaganda that apologized for the regicide of a sitting monarch and usurpation of the Throne of England performed by Henry Tudor (the character of "Richmond" in the play), later Henry VI. The reputation of a generally blameless man was sullied in the eye of the world in order that William Shakespeare might flatter Elizabeth I (Henry VI's great-granddaughter) and gain favor in the Tudor Court. The same thing is now being done to Christopher Columbus; perhaps for more noble reasons, but propaganda is propaganda no matter which way you turn it.



Sure, there were Eurocentric evils involved in the exploration of the New World. Colonialism, exploitation, slavery, and religious persecution were the main motives in these explorations... very few of the Great Explorers were in it just for the fun of adventure. Most of them wanted gold and/or power, as well as or instead of adventure. While the thirst for knowledge of the world is commendable, very few commendable virtues come unalloyed with base desires: it's human nature.



But when one writes history, the temptation is to cast people in shades of black and white. Certain historians prefer to think of the Explorers as great adventurers, selfless seekers of knowledge, and genuine humanitarians bringing the glories of civilization to the poor backward natives; others wish to cast the exact same people in the roles of ignorant exploiters, greedy spoilers, self-seeking destroyers hunting for new lands to plunder and new peoples to murder.



But the truth is that they were all peu de toute, some of each... as is everybody else in this world. If you dug deep enough into Hitler's life, you would find some evidence of human compassion and goodness; if you searched hard enough into Mother Theresa's life, you would find moments of selfishness and intolerance. People are never purely good nor purely evil.



And since History is the story of people, it cannot be simplified into terms of pure good and pure evil. By simplifying history, you reduce the great pageant of human experience into a bunch of useless dates and names; and through simplified pedagogy, you rob history of its purpose... because the Purpose of History is to give us to understand how things happen, how they came to be, and how we might consider conducting ourselves in the future. If we can understand the motives behind the great events of the past, if we can understand the mistakes or triumphs that resulted in us being where we are now, we can understand our own behavior, the behavior of others, and the behavior that might result in greater happiness and benefit in the future.



It is said (first by George Santayana and then by a lot of other people) that "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it." But it is my feeling that those who do not understand their fellow humans are condemned to a life of ignorance, anger, and loneliness. Yes, a knowledge of history does have its practical purposes in mapping the future, but I think that knowledge of history is more beneficial in understanding who people are and why they are the way they are. And for this to make any sense, you have to understand people's intentions as well as their actions.



To judge the characters of the past (like Christopher Columbus) by our own modern standards (of having the entire planet and most of the galaxy mapped, of having learned the evils of colonialism, etc.) is the same as judging our children by the behavior we grew out of in our own childhoods. Should you be condemned as a bed-wetter if you aren't potty-trained? Should you be condemned for having a fourth-grade reading level when you're only in the third grade? Should you be condemned as ignorant when you've never been taught? Well, in the same vein, one has to ask: Should you be condemned as a destroyer of civilizations when you never understood that civilizations could exist that were not your own? Should you be condemned as a religious persecutor when you had no inkling that the bizarre rituals and practices of far-flung Africans were actual religions? Should you be condemned as a vile exploiter of human slaves when it had never once been suggested to you that those creatures were the same as yourself, men and women with minds and souls and blood just like yours, but only a different color of skin and shape of mouth or eye?



These were radical and new ideas in the past, even though they have become commonplace in the present. Even though the ancient Greeks knew that the Earth was round (another thing once credited to Christopher Columbus which has been discarded), nobody had ever tried to go to the other side... and in 1492, the idea that the world was round was a fairly radical notion, just as the sun-centered solar-system was a radical idea (so radical that it landed Galileo in prison and Giordano Bruno in a heretic's pyre). In 1492, nobody really knew what gravity was. They didn't know what oxygen was. They didn't know that there was no such thing as spontaneous generation of life, that all living things in the world are born of parents and that all living things die. They were entirely unaware of the exact placement of organs and the particular makeup of tissues inside their own bodies. They had no means of measuring temperature, of measuring light, or even accurately measuring time.



And so to judge the actions of long-dead people, for whom these basic tidbits of information were completely unknown, by the standards of living people, for whom this and so much more information is readily available and commonly understood, is the same as juding an infant by it's inability to attain its parents' simplest achievements, like defecating in a toilet or chewing its own food. And then, on the same token, to apologize for the behavior of long-dead people by editing the facts of their lives is even worse, because it denies the growth of the human species and robs our race of its historical significance.



I believe the lesson here is to never judge anybody by any personal standard, because you can't know what they know and they can't know what you know. You can only, therefore, judge them by their ability to accessorize.



So anyway... sometimes I think when (or if) I go back to school, I will major in History. Preferably cultural history and anthropology rather than military history and politics. I'm always fascinated by the ways people of different times and different countries dressed, the music they enjoyed, the dances they performed, the foods they ate, the houses they lived in, the family structures they built, the gods they worshipped and the methods by which they decorated their walls. Though I have greatly benefitted from my studies of political history and political science, I prefer to know about what Louis XIV wore to breakfast than what policies he signed.



Well, time to step down from the podium. I'm going to go home and tutor my niece in the uses of the English language. My sister is home-schooling her daughter, but was baffled by possessive pronouns and many of the concepts that come after that. And since I know the English language fairly well (though I do make mistakes once in a while), I offered to help. I'm kind of excited about the opportunity to inculcate good grammar, but am trepidatious about my ability to reach my usually inattentive and sometime unbelievably annoying niece. Either way, it's bound to be more interesting than sitting in front of the TV and doing nothing.

I just love autumn, don't you?

Flying by the seat of my pantyhose...

I hate when my life gets all busy like this. For some reason, having an end-date has made me more conscientious at work. Or is it just that there are a lot of little things to do, more than usual? Then there are family things to deal with, like my niece's birthday (she was eleven on Wednesday), which involved a surprise miniparty on Wednesday and then preparations for a larger and more planned-out party this evening, and all the shopping and erranding and cleaning these entail. And now I have to get ready for a drag show. I don't remember what time the drag show is supposed to start (though I think it was 8), I haven't been able to get hold of the organizer, and I had to go online to do a Google search and a Mapquest lookup so I'd simply know the location of the building in which I will be performing! And I just this morning chose my songs and clothes. This is what I call "pulling a performance out of my ass." Wheee!



The show I am performing in (I hate dangling my participles, but sometimes it just doesn't matter, you know?) is at the Rainbow Convention in San Francisco, a Narcotics Anonymous conference for GLBT(etc) addicts in recovery. NA isn't really my program, as "drugs" (ie illegal or prescription substances) were never my problem... I smoked a little pot now and again, though it usually made me sick, and I'm terrified of everything else (my mother was a big speed-queen, and I'd rather die than do anything like my mother!) Of course, in NA, alcohol is considered a drug (any mind-altering substance is), so I feel myself qualified for that program as well as AA.



I have a lot of friends who participate actively in both programs, "cross-addicted" people who find something of value in both AA and NA (and often in Al-Anon, ACA, OA, SLA, and any other 12-step program you can name). I have little difficulty thinking of myself as a "drug addict," I can be an addict as easily as an "alcoholic." The steps are the same, the methods of recovery are the same, most of the literature says the same things. There is nevertheless a lot of discussion (and sometimes even vituperation) between the two groups about the merits of each.



I think the main difference between NA and AA is the sociocultural habits, the class tone if you will, of the people in each program. There's a kind of personality profile that goes along with "drug culture," in my experience. I mean, when you are addicted to illegal drugs, you are pretty much on the outside of society; there's a subcultural mindset that comes with that sort of behavior, a kind of "fuck the world" attitude that I don't share (class-conscious queen that I am). Alcohol, on the other hand, is legal... and it's "social" in many ways. I myself was more a "social" drinker, in that I deluded myself that the alcohol was just a social lubricant and hand-occupying pastime than a substance-addiction.



There's also what I call the "tweaker element" that one encounters in NA more than AA. Though the "N" in NA stands for "narcotics," most of the NA people I know were amphetamine users... coke, speed, crystal, etc. Uppers. People who take uppers usually fall into certain personality categories, often fidgety and strident and scattershot. Alcohol, conversely, is a downer... and most of the people I know in AA who also used drugs tended to use downers... Valium, pot, etc. Then there's the psychogenic kids, the ones who got hooked on acid and shrooms and what-have-you, who are for all general purposes clinically insane due to what the drugs did to their brains.



And on top of all that is the "addiction level index" between different substances... if you've ever compared a person giving up smoking to a person giving up chocolate, you see a distinct difference in the severity of withdrawals; the same holds true between the relatively tame substance, alcohol, and the rather more intensively addictive substances like crack or heroin. It takes a lot longer, and a lot more effort, to recover from those things. As a result, one sees a great deal more "revolving recovery" in NA (or at least at the meetings I have attended), in which more people relapse often and chronically.



In short, what I'm getting at, is that I tend to feel less comfortable among NAs than I do among AAs, and that's why AA is my primary program. And the reason I'm thinking about this at all today is that I'm about to go plunge myself into the midsts of several hundred queer NAs in the Ramada Plaza Hotel, and will then get up on stage in front of said NAs and lip-synch in a dress... and that, along with my usual peformance anxiety, is making me feel a little trepidatious.



But it's going to be just fabulous, I'm sure. I'm wearing my new black velvet cocktail dress, with the short skirt and the sheer scatter-sequined bodice, to perform Keely Smith's "Sunny Side of the Street"; then changing into my old favorite basic black sequined chemise to perform Ella Fitzgerald's "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off." Then I'll slip into the green sequined gown with voile jacket that I wore to Parade for the finale, in which the cast will come out in all the colors of the rainbow. I'll let you know how it goes.



Not much else going on just now. Oh, I did end up buying a new computer, and it's on it's way! I bought a Gateway system, a remanufactured 300 series 1400c, to be precise... with an Intel® 1.4GHz Celeron™ Processor, 17" Monitor, 128MB RAM, 20GB Hard Drive, CD burner, a 56-K modem, with Windows® XP Home Edition and Microsoft® Works Suite 2002 installed. All for just $598, including shipping! I'm pretty excited about the whole thing. I know it's not exactly top-of-the-line, or even middle-of-the-line... but compared to my current systems at home and work, it's pretty damned fancy!



And so ends another broadcast day. Talk to you soon! XOXO

And now for the real story...

I hope you will forgive me for the utter vacuity of my last two posts. I mean, I do tend to natter on about Nothing most of the time, but those last two were pretty lame (though I do still have that song stuck in my head).



The thing is, I've had this big gristly chunk of life-decision to chew on for the last few days, and I wasn't prepared to discuss the issue publicly until I had discussed it privately with those who are closest to me and who would be most impacted by any decision I would make or course of action I would take. But now I have discussed it with every effected person in my personal life, and it's time to share it with you, my digital family!



As you may have noticed, I hate my job. Last week the Boss-Lady pushed me a little too far with her usual neurotic outbursts, and something in my head just snapped. I decided right then and there that the time had definitely come to leave the job. And since today is/was my four-year anniversary in this job, I decided that today would be the day that I would tender my resignation.



First, though, I had to overcome a great deal of fear. That part was pretty easy to do, though difficult to manage (if you know what I mean). With fear, there comes a time where you just have to suck it up and do it. You just have to pull up your pants and jump out of that plane, run into that burning building, take that bullet. And so I did exactly that. I had moments of blind panic and clutching anxiety, but it had to be done (like taking those novocaine shots) to stop the situation that was causing me pain. Second, I had to find some way of doing it sanely, smartly, and without burning any bridges. And that meant trying to find a reason to quit that had nothing to do with my growing hatred for my boss, our membership, and everybody else related to or involved in my office. I had to winnow out the reason that was strictly about me and my business.



Well, that was pretty easy, too, when I sat and thought about it calmly. I mean, this job is essentially a dead end. There is no promotion possible, no other job to which I could transfer, no future of any sort. It's a four-person operation, and the other positions can only be held by union members; and union members can only be faculty working in this district, and since I'd rather roll naked in red ants and broken glass than work as faculty in this district, I'm stuck. My job performance suffers due to my unhappiness in the office, and there is absolutely no motivation for me to do a good job except to maintain a status quo that is making me unhappy in the first place. And so it's in the office's best interest, as well as mine, if I leave... because my performance will only worsen, since I have no real reason to improve it.



So I talked it over with two of my best friends, talked it over with my sister, talked it over with my Grandmother, and talked it over with my sponsor. I developed a plan, with contingencies addressed, in which I would tender thirty days' notice, work up a manual describing all of my tasks (so there would be no need of me training someone to do just as crappy of a job as I'm doing), finish off my pending projects, and help find a replacement. After that I would take a couple of weeks off to just rest and depressurize and regroup; after that I would register with a temp agency, so that I could "audition" different jobs before I went hunting for any one particular kind of job. I would have to do without my little luxuries during this down-time, but over the summer I proved to myself just how easy (if less-than-pleasant) a life without little luxuries is to achieve. I even wrote a rather nice letter of resignation.



But before I made any final move, I waited to discuss it with my coworker and friend, JB... the person who would bear the most impact of my leaving. After all, she would be the one who would have to deal with the replacement, and the one who would have to take over many of my responsibilities if the replacement was slow in being found or didn't work out or whatever.



Not surprisingly, JB was the only person with whom I discussed this who was not delighted with and fully supportive of my decision to leave. Unlike me, she likes the status quo and is interested in keeping it, and that status quo includes my presence there. And since our other coworker, BB, is still out on maternity leave and would not be likely to have returned before my thirty days were over, we would still be understaffed even if we managed to get a replacement trained and in place, leaving JB in rather a lurch. JB further pointed out that a smooth transition of staff would be more likely achieved in the period between semesters, the first half of January, when the office is always very quiet. If I would put off my leaving for a mere six weeks, BB would have returned, the office would be quiet, more time would be available for finding and training a replacement, and it would have a less negative effect on the office.



And so I altered my decision in light of these new considerations. It is the wisest thing to do, as it allows me more time to finish my projects, it gives me three more paychecks to save from, and it gives the office more time to find and train a replacement. But it certainly took the bang out of my gesture of resigning on my anniversary. And it would keep me there some weeks after my 35th birthday, which is the end of my Seventh Year and will not qualify as my Big Life Change that I expect (which means that some other Big Life Change might just come along before then...oy!). And I have to put up with six extra weeks of my boss and her foster-baby and the whining membership and the irksome executive council and the benighted district administration.



And I have to think of how exactly to handle this... I mean, thirty days is a standard resignation period... eighty days is rather strange, and rather strained. But I have to inform the boss as soon as possible of my plan to leave, so that there will be a maximum time to obtain a replacement, or one of the main reasons for putting off my termination date will be rendered moot. I just wish I could better predict what Boss-Lady will do, how she will react. I mean, I don't have a contract, she could just fire me on the spot. I could just leave at any time without notice. And I would prefer for neither of these things to come to pass... after all, this is the only real job I've ever had, and I need the good reference — otherwise I am right where I started four years ago with a Bachelor's degree and no experience, but this time with more grey hair.



So anyway, that's my big thing that's been on my mind. Another big thing is that, in leaving that job, I am giving up access to a pretty good computer. Before I changed my mind about my timeline, I started shopping around for home systems that I could afford, which would be better than the sad little Pentium-I in my kitchen (at which I am typing now) with it's 48 megs of RAM and 36K modem and 15-inch monitor. I found a system I really like at Gateway, and since I am not leaving my job right away, I can totally afford it. And so I will be getting a better home computer, which will be great! I'll be able to play my Sims with greater efficacy, as well as all sorts of other things that have in the past kept me in the office. It's gonna be fabulous!



Well, that's all I have for now. I have to get to bed. Thanks for listening! I can't tell you how valuable it is to me to have this outlet for my thoughts and my writings. You're the best!

Bring me a towel, Mr. Tangerine Speedo...

I don't know if this is my new favorite song, or if it's just a passing mania, but I just love the song "Tangerine Speedo" by Caviar, which I just discovered at the end of the Charlie's Angels soundtrack and have been listening to, over and over, for the last day and a half. It's got just the right blend of coolness, kitsch, edge, and heterosexual effeminacy. Plus the mental image of a tangerine speedo gives me the vapors!



Of course, I made up my own version of the lyrics, which have a more homoerotic tone... not on purpose, mind you, but when I looked up the lyrics, I was surprised to see that I had misunderstood a couple of key passages. To me, it was about a guy on a gay cruise running into the straight hustlers who screw American men for money. Then I read the lyrics, and that's not at all what they were singing about.



I prefer my own version, of course.



So go visit the Caviar website (it's very untidy with blind links, but still very cute), download the "vmation" and an MP3 or so (yes, I'm still living in the stone age and don't have an MP3 player of my own) and see if you like them. I, in the meantime, am going to consider stinging this with my boner (I could have sworn that's how the verse went... what do you hear?) ...

And, my dear, I'm still here...

That's a little snip from my favorite song in Follies. It's a song about survival. I love survival! Not that I'm all that into surviving, myself, but I always admire it in others... you're basically turning the events of your life into a virtue by simply not dying from them. Most people don't die from misfortune... but only a few know how to present themselves as the victors over their misfortunes by simply not dying.



I sometimes wish I could be such a person. In my own life, survival is a foregone conclusion. What am I going to do, just stop living because things aren't going my way? I guess what I'm trying to say is that Surviving is really just a socially acceptable form of Complaining. And I love socially acceptable forms of socially unacceptable behavior. If you know what I mean.



So my cold is gone, I feel pretty good except for spasms in my lower back. It's very hot outside, and I have to clean my garage today... fortunately, it will be cool in the semisubterranean garage. There's nothing on television, but then there seldom is. I went to a nifty crafts fair with Caroline today and spent way to much money on jewelry that doesn't sparkle... and Caroline spent too much money on photographs of landscapes and seascapes and what-have-you with great lighting and colors. We looked, together, at a lot of unforgiveably banal artwork, and saw lots of craftworks we'd love to have if only we could afford them. We even considered going halvies on a home sushi maker, so that we could make sushi-like hors-d'ouerves with cooked fish.



And that's pretty much all that's going on with me today... all that I can talk about, anyway. There's something big a-brewing in the Manners Life, but I'm not ready to talk about it.



"So why are you talking at all, you nattering old queen?" Because, my dear... I'm still here.



Kisses!

A cold... how common...

It's been a while since I had an actual cold. Long enough that the Robitussin in the bathroom cabinet tasted a little off. Long enough that I don't have any Kleenex around, and the Kleenex I do have is all dusty. Long enough that I wonder if previous colds felt quite so bad.



The worse part is that, whenever I have told someone I have a cold, they respond by telling me how many people they know who have colds right now. Apparently I have a very populist immune system: so long as everybody is getting this cold, I might as well get it, too. Not that I'd want to be sicker than necessary, but couldn't I get something that not everybody has? Something with a little cache, a little elegance? Consumption, maybe?



Today I did something I almost never do: I left work because I was sick. In fact, if there hadn't been an extremely important task that only I know how to do, I wouldn't even have gone in today. So I dragged myself down to the office, did the one really important task that only I know how to do, and while I was waiting for all of the elements of that task to come together, I did another task that was rather less important but also which only I know how to do. I've been considering the number of tasks at my office that only I know how to do. The sense of power that gives me, it's sort of dizzying. Or is that just the cold?



So after doing these two tasks that only I know how to do, I went home, put on my red plaid flannel clown-sized pajama pants and a fluffy red Mossimo sweatshirt (along with the white t-shirt and white socks I was already wearing), pulled my comforter and two pillows off the bed (they're all burgundy), grabbed my (mink-brown) teddy bear Antinöus, and built a nest on the living room sofa (which is also burgundy... I just want you to get a good mental picture, with colors and all). Then I got a glass of orange juice, a pot of Earl Grey, a mug of beef broth, a few soda crackers and some mixed nuts, and nestled in with the remote control for an afternoon of dozing and television. I got up every now and again to drain various fluids, and grabbed another juice or broth or tea, returning immediately to the afternoon television.



Damn, I have to go pee again. Gonna wash that cold right out of my system. I'll be right back.



So, a few observations about today's television adventures. There's this show on A&E called America's Castles, which is terribly interesting as it explores and documents the great mansions of the Gilded Age and the monumental egos that built them. Unfortunately, the writer of that show drives me absolutely bug-fucky. He (or she... the narrator is male, so I think of the writer as male) incessantly refers to architectural and decorative features of these houses in the past tense... all the while the thing to which he refers is still there, palpably and visibly existing in the present tense. You cannot say that "the elegant marble fireplace graced the north wall of Mrs. Oelrich's ballroom" when, while that elegant marble fireplace no doubt did in the past grace the north wall of Mrs. Oelrich's ballroom, it is still gracing the north wall of Mrs. Oelrich's ballroom, and will continue to do so for quite some time. I mean, it's right there where I can see it for chrissakes! I hate shoddy syntax in documentaries! Gah!



I've gotten hooked into this season's Real World on MTV. I ordinarily don't follow these shows very well, since they tend to be rather falsely dramatic and a little too picture-perfect. But for some reason, perhaps the unreality of the setting (The Palms, Las Vegas) paired with the all-too-realistic housemates, I just find the whole thing fascinating. The strange herd mentalities have sprung up, odd personal ticks have revealed themselves, and some seriously interesting background info has emerged. The camera crew and director of photography have created an interesting blend of reality and visual perfection that is quite intoxicating. The hermetically sealed atmospheres of Vegas penthouses and nightclubs and casinos give the people this intriguing hothouse aura of caged animals, these seven kids living together with really no privacy whatsoever, never really going outside or doing things that normal people do. It's quite amazing to watch.



I've even developed a lot of sympathy for one of the housemates, Trishelle. When I first saw her in the season opener, with her much-too-fabulous hair and corny Southern accent and scary pageant-ready smile, I was ready to write her off as uninteresting, just another giggling debutante goody-goody, with perhaps a touch of Baroque Christianity and a tendency to shock easily and roll her eyes a lot. But she's emerged as this fascinating Jeckyll-and-Hyde who turns into a supersensual slut as soon as she's had a couple of cocktails, which she often does have, and then spends hours of autoflagellation and apology when she remembers all the fun she had while she was loaded. So then one day she calls her sister to talk to her about this night of drunken escapades she just woke up from, where she made out with the slutty guy that all the girls are attracted to as well as with one of the other girls. And apparently the sister told the father, who came down on Trishelle rather heavily as regards "bringing shame to her family."



Now that's some fucked up shit, right there. No wonder she has to get loaded to have a little fun. I wanted to crawl right into the screen and give Trishelle a big ol' drag-queen hug (careful not to get foundation on her clothes) and assure her that anyone who can feel shame vicariously via the perfectly innocent if misguided actions of another person is not worth bothering about. Shame is just another form of control, and she's a grownup who doesn't have to put up with bullshit from Big Daddy.



Anyway, that's what has been keeping my mind off my stuffy head and and achy joints and congested chest and sweaty-chilly skin. That, and the tea and juice and broth. Damn, I have to pee again! Gotta go flush some more toxins down the toilet.



So I'm feeling rather a lot better now than I did earlier today. I think maybe a good night's sleep, and I'll have this thing licked. Just in time for me to clean out the garage. Yippee. We have a Big Garbage Day next week (in which our local scavenger company will pick up anything we leave piled less than three feet high on the driveway strip, which translates into 270 cubic feet of trash), and that's the only time of year we can clean anything without having to take it to some dump later on.



Yay! I just can't wait! I love cleaning the garage and basement! I love carting 270 cubic yards of trash out of the house! I wish I could do it every day!



That wasn't very convincing, was it? I'll have to work on my acting skills.

...and she's afraid of clowns, too!

Hello, my wonderful superfabulous darlings! It's nearly midnight and I sit here typing because I know I have to. Not because I have something fun and amusing to say, not because I have a clever gripe to get off my chest, not because I'm all wired with energy and need the tappa-tappa of the keyboard to soothe my squirreling nerves. Well, actually, that's sort of true... I got about four hours of sleep last night, after a long and arduous (though thoroughly enjoyable) weekend and a long hard day at work, and today was another long hard day, and I'm just a bit punchy right now. But really, I just need to be honest, and I need to open myself to the World. Otherwise I don't think I will be able to sleep tonight, either.



I have been giving certain people a lot of room in my head, and I have to evict these squatters before they drive me completely insane.



To the ugly fat boy who called out "What's up, Faggot?" at me Sunday night outside of the Double Rainbow in San Rafael, I hope you discover your humanity before it's too late. But first, I hope you trip on a dandelion and break your front teeth.



To the people at work who drive me nuts: you are all assholes, beneath my contempt. You would be vastly improved by the witty repartee and scathing observations I stayed awake thinking about until 3 am this morning, leaving me punchy and stupid and brittle all day today. But you're not going to get any of my wit and scathe, because my Grandmother raised me a lady, and I'm better than that.



To the so-called President of our Country, George Blinking Idiot Bush: drop dead. The sooner the better. I don't like you. You and your ilk are destroying this country. Stop it.

***

Uhm. I came to an ugly realization about myself today. Actually, I came to this realization some months ago, but it is just now becoming clear to me that this Thing about myself has to be changed or I will become a miserable excuse for a less-than-human person.



To wit, I live with a great deal of fear. I am afraid of physical pain (to the point that I have to be in screaming abject pain before I will see a dentist, pain more acute than the remembered pain of the last dentist's visit). I am afraid of emotional pain (to the point that I allow no one to have emotional access, either incoming or outgoing). I am afraid of failure (to the point that I don't even do things lest I not succeed). I am afraid of confrontation (to the point that I allow people to walk all over me, then engage in hideous passive-aggressive behaviors in revenge). I am afraid of embarrassing myself (to the point that I hold myself in the strictest poise and decorum). I live in crawling cringeing terror of opening myself up to another person or other people, including myself and God, and being vulnerable to any of the above. And yes, I am afraid of clowns, too.



And this isn't just a sort of mental fear, a little resistance that can be pooh-poohed and faced. I mean, this is the kind of visceral fear that just thinking about it makes my heart beat faster and harder, makes my muscles tighten and quiver, makes my eyes unfocus, makes my hair fall out and my pores clog up. It keeps me awake at night. Like it did last night, when I thought about the angry hateful things I would like to do to that horrid drunken boy outside of Double Rainbow, but also thought about "what if there had been more of them than there were of me?"; when I think about quitting my job and looking for another one and having to be really poor for an undisclosed period of time; when I think of confronting people with my issues about them and/or admitting my own misdoings; when I think about being wrong (what if I'm wrong?) or being at fault or simply bumbling out a stupid faux-pas and having to apologize for it.



Fear sucks. It stops you from doing what you want to do. It's stopping me from being a better and happier person. It stops me from talking to people who interest me. It keeps me from being completely honest with myself and with others. It keeps me in the same job and the same house and the same situations that vex me.



The funny thing is that I habitually conduct myself as if I were fearless. I do things that other people might be afraid to do, like perform in drag and buy porn from little old Korean ladies and come out to my parents and squish spiders with Kleenex. I carry myself as if I weren't afraid of anything, only reasonably cautious about my safety and particular about my comforts. I even go so far as to claim in public that I am not afraid of things. I have such good, clear, reasonable reasons to stay in my job, my house, my singleness. But even when there are good and compelling reasons, the main reason is still Fear. Fear of change, fear of vulnerability, fear of the unknown.



So why am I telling you all this? Because I feel like I have to tell everyone. I have begun to fear my Fear. If I don't get a grip on it soon, it will devour my life.



This year is a Seventh Year, and so far there haven't been any changes in my life, as there have been in every other Seventh Year since I was born. And the reason there haven't been any changes is because I have allowed myself to descend into abject terror and yet to pretend that it is caution and prudence that keep my in my own particular rut, holding white-knucled to the edge of the pool while splashing my feet in a frolicsome manner, a smile on my face and terror in my eyes. And because I know perfectly well that there's no such thing as stasis in this universe: there is progress and there is decay... and if I am not progressing, I am ipso facto decaying.



I don't want to decay. I don't want to wallow in this fear anymore. And so I am writing it here in public where I will remember it (and where certain of my friends will remember it and recall it to my attention when next I slip), to proclaim publicly and, I hope, bravely (with my heart in my mouth and my hair falling out all around me), that Fear will no longer be allowed rule my life.



So there.



I have no idea how to implement this proclamation, though. I guess it will be revealed to me in the fulness of time. And speaking of revealing...

This is just how I feel right now... as if I've been pantsed in public. And my butt isn't as view-worthy as these, either.