...And So It Goes On, World Without End, Amen.

Hey, guess what! I feel good! I'm actually well for the first time in months. It's fantastic, really. I'm a little worried that this sudden access of energy and cheer is just the prelude to a manic episode, but what the hell... put the mania to work, I say! And that's what I've been doing the last few days.

I hit bottom with my cold/flu/malaise on Wednesday of last week, the cold medications were starting to do more harm than good, particularly to my gastrointestinal tract... and Wednesday night I decided to stop taking the NyQuil, and so didn't sleep at all; Thursday I was a complete wreck, I actually looked sick and exhausted (everybody commented on it)... so after finishing an important time-sensitive project, I just went home and slept all afternoon.

I tried to go to work the next day, but my body wasn't having it, so I called in sick and spent the entire day sleeping. And I do mean the entire day... I woke up for maybe two hours in the early afternoon, and a couple of hours in the evening, then slept all through the night and late into the next day (Saturday).

And when I woke up, I felt grrrrrrreat! I've continued to feel pretty great ever since, too, so I consider that day and a half a good investment of sick-time.

So on Saturday, I felt so good that I actually finished getting all the Christmas out of my house! It was a bit harder than I had expected, since I decided to make the most of the opportunity and actually went through the boxes and removed all the things we don't use anymore... putting anything that might have sentimental value attached into banker's boxes and throwing out anything that was broken or torn or useless (which turned out to be quite a lot). And then I went up into the attic and re-stacked things so that the boxes, when replaced in the attic, would all be in one place and easily accessed. Then (with Caroline's help) I got all the boxes and bags back into the attic and arranged the living-room furniture to its original formation.

Whew! I was beginning to think I'd never get that done! I was so thrilled with that, I went through my DVDs and sorted out all the ones I don't want anymore, set them aside for removal to Goodwill, and sorted the remainder into genres. Then Caroline and I watched Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, one of my favorite movies of all time.

It was a beautiful day, and I fell into bed with a sense of satisfaction that I haven't felt in absolute eons. And then I slept like a rock for ten hours.

The next day, Grandmother didn't feel like going to church, so I slept in some more, and then got ready to do a drag show... the first I've done since September! I felt a little rusty, but I managed to get all my stuff together for the Winter Extravaganza. And I even took pictures! In fact, I had the brilliant idea to photograph my progress as I put my face on... so at each stage, I stopped, set my camera on my makeup case lid, set the timer, and waited. Wanna see?

Step One: start with a clean, well-moisturized, close-shaved face. I recommend MAC shaving cream for the best shave... that stuff can't be beat. I also used Preparation H on my face earlier in the day, it tightens everything up nicely.

Step Two: I like to lay down a good matte foundation, a blank canvas as it were; I used Max Factor Pan-Stik (Fair/Pale) and l'Oreal mineral loose powder (Translucent), though since Max Factor has stopped making the Fair color, I think I might have to go back to Dermablend (which costs a LOT more but comes in a zillion colors).

Step Three: I tried something new with my eyeshadow, going for a smokey look that I hoped would distract from my wrinkles; I don't know what brands I was using, but they're loose powders and very good quality; I put the darkest brown in the crease of my lids, with a lighter rosy brown on the lids and under the eye, and a shimmering taupe under the brow.

Step Four: I like a blackest black liquid pen eyeliner for the upper line, I'm using Almay because I'm wearing contacts but ordinarily I don't care about the brand; the lower line and the eyebrow is brown/black pencil (the cheap kind...eye and lip pencils are not worth spending money on); I used Maybelline (I think) for the mascara, it's one of those two-coat types that really thicken the lash. I always put a little dot of liquid eyeliner on the apple of my right cheek, a little trademark I've been doing for years... the first time was to camouflage a zit, but it really balances my face so I adopted it permanently.

Step Five: contouring is one of the most important steps in feminizing a face; I use a brownish-rose blusher for this, outlining my face, outlining the bridge of the nose, diminishing my jawbone and browbone, and adding a false shadow under the lip. The lipliner is a pencil, also the cheapest brand from the drugstore, I swear the expensive pencils fall apart immediately, I've never got more than one use out of them.

Step Six: the frame of the hair makes such a difference to the face, I like to put my wig on before I finish my makeup to see if I need to make any alterations or additions before I finish up.

Step Seven: a fresh coat of pressed powder and a coat of lipstick finish the face; the clothes (black ballet tights, black boots, strapless longline bra, beaded corset, brown silk suit with fox collar and cuffs) and jewelry are my favorite part of drag, what I got involved in it for in the first place. I can't quite explain the oddly dissipated expression I'm wearing in this picture, it makes me look drunk. I got a lot of compliments on that pendant, it's actually a snowflake Christmas ornament that I got at Pottery Barn!

The finished product. I felt so pretty in this outfit, and it was really quite comfortable. The boots got on my nerves after a while, as did the underwires in the bra, but it was very slimming without being terribly constrictive.

And finally here I am with my good friend Jason, whom you may remember better as Angelique deVil. I had a really good time at the show, hanging out with Jason and Damon and all the Court folks whom I haven't seen in months and months. And the venue, the Bench & Bar, is so big that I was able to hang out comfortably without feeling crowded at any time (a frequent problem at smaller venues). All that combined with my already good mood, and I had a really fantastic evening.

And then I went grocery shopping afterward (after changing back into jeans and washing my face, naturally)... and it just goes to show how good of a mood I was in, I actually enjoyed it! I was smiling the whole time and even felt indulgent toward the patently incompetent checkout clerk. The fact that there were five separate absolute hotties wandering around the store while I was there helped.

Well, the next day was the Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday, which I had off from work, and in which I planned to clean my room. Unfortunately, the show on Sunday and all the manual labor on Saturday were a little more than the frame could take, and I had to admit that I'd overdid it just a trifle. I did manage to get some laundry done, and I cleaned out Claudius' tank, but most of the day I FaceBooked and read Dearly Devoted Dexter (which was amazing, I heartily recommend).

Now I have to go back to work, which will be a test of just how good I feel... and whether or not I'm feeling good or am just running manic. I'll let you know how it turns out. In the meantime, rest your eyes on this loverly specimen:

(I just realized this is the second time in as many months that I've used model Ashtyn Long in a post-punctuation. This image is the desktop wallpaper on my laptop, and I gaze and gaze and gaze at it. I think I may be falling in love again...)

...And So It Continues...

"Teeheehee, that Robert~Marlénè is a stitch!" ~ God

My plans continue to progress, but not at the pace I had set for them. I am about halfway to the place I had expected to be a week ago... the boxes are up from the basement, but I still have to repack them and then get them to the attic; the tree is gone, but the ornaments are sitting on a blanket where the tree used to be, the living-room is still arranged around that empty tree-space, and all the other decorations are still in situ; I'm two-thirds of the way through my laundry, but the bedroom is still full of trash and dust and the same sheets I've been sleeping on for months.

But we seek progress, not perfection... the journey is more important than the destination... and other platitudes to that effect.

The thing is, I'm still sick. I'm not sure if it's a new facet of the same cold/flu I had at New Year's, or if it's another one that came along and kicked me while I was down, but I've progressed from the weakness/aches/nausea symptoms to the sniffles/congestion/hacking/sneezing symptoms. I'm able to do my job (more or less), and to get some things done at home, but every time I do anything difficult, like picking things up or stooping to get something off the floor or climbing stairs (basically whenever my pulmonary rate goes up), I start wheezing and hacking and coughing and have to stop and rest for a while. Which, as you can imagine, is rather limiting when most of the work you need to do involves stooping and lifting and climbing stairs.

So I'm taking a slow-and-steady-wins-the-race attitude towards the whole thing and I'll get where I'm headed eventually. It might be Easter before the Christmas is all gone, but whatever.

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In other news, my fascination with (addiction to) FaceBook, or rather with the various games and apps in FaceBook, continues to grow. I started off with a game called Blood Lust, which my friend Indigo invited me to join; one goes on "quests" and "journeys" and whatnot, slaughtering all and sundry and getting paid in gold and nifty equipment for it. Then my niece Ariel invited me to join a game called Make Me A Celebrity, in which one works various "gigs" for points and cash, which can be spent on a variety of luxury stuff. Another friend, Spencer, invited me to an app called MyFarm where one stocks and operates a little farm with fruit trees, staple crops, and animals.

All of these games/apps require absolutely zero skill to operate, you just click a button (Do Quest, Take Gig, Harvest Crop, or what-have-you) and everything happens on its own. Yet I get a wonderful little thrill when my button-clicking actually achieves something, like reaching a new level of celebrity or defeating a particularly terrible vampire foe. I get a kick out of sending gifts to my FaceBook friends, which is what drives several of these apps; I feel like I'm actually communicating with people without having to think of anything interesting to say.

Soon I added Lil' Green Patch, Lil' Blue Cove, Pet Pupz, YoVille, and Elven Blood, and I visit all of these apps at least once a day, some of them several times a day, earning frequent visit bonuses all over the place. I'm a level 54 Pop Star on Make Me A Celebrity (there are 100 levels total), with homes in Beverly Hills, Manhattan, and (as of this morning) Greece, as well as a Rolls Royce and a private plane; I'm the second-wealthiest MyFarmer in my group of farming friends, with $82,048 in cash, 140 crops planted, 128 fruit trees bearing, and 42 animals (which don't do anything, but you can sell them); I'm at level 41 in Blood Lust and level 35 in Elven Blood (I don't know how many levels there are, nor how many quests to the end), and my Pet Pup Aloysius the Pug just learned how to play dead.

I wonder what life would be like if I didn't have these ever-changing obsessions... would I be productive instead, or would I just stare off into space? I have a feeling it would be the latter; in fact it is for that reason that I allow myself to do these things at work, because I spend less time on them than I would spend staring off into space. Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

And So It Begins...

"If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans." ~ Woody Allen

I made a resolution to start the new year with a clean room and a clean attitude. I planned out my attack, decided what to do with all the stuff I want to get rid of (it's going to Goodwill), and took New Year's Eve off from work so I could get an early start.

And then I came down with a flu. Hear that sound? It'd God laughing His ass off.

Well, the clean attitude came into play here, and I did what I could with my room despite the weakness and the nausea and the screaming pain behind the eyeballs.

I've taken over the guest room to deal with my clothing surplus... one bed is covered with laundry, which I cart out of my room by the armload every time I exit; the other is covered with clean clothes that I intend to keep, and there's a big box (in which our new vacuum cleaner was delivered) slowly filling up with clothes that don't fit very well or which I no longer wear. I also went through my CDs, including software, and got rid of everything I don't want. Laying around and feeling miserable took up the rest of both days (as well as celebrating midnight with the Grandmother and a very ill-looking Dick Clark, watching a few episodes of the HBO series Rome, and FaceBooking all over the place...I'm totally addicted to FaceBook just now).

So once I have all the clothes out of the room, I am going to start taking out the trash... there's a lot of it, and should take up this evening fairly well (I'm now feeling a lot better and hopefully will have the energy when I get home from work). Then Saturday I take out all the pillows and stuffed animals off the bed, wash all the bedding, and cover the bed with a dust-sheet to become (for the day) my book-sorting surface. I'm emptying my shelves, dusting them (this is the important part), and putting the books that I want to keep back in nice neat order...and putting the rest into the Goodwill box. The goal is to reduce everything by a third.

Sunday I will take down the tree and put Christmas back in the attic for another year, and then on Monday I return to the gym (with all the other Resolutionists, it will be crowded) and start my diet-and-exercise regimen anew. And then, giggling God willing, I will be starting the new year nice and fresh!

Other plans for the new year include getting my finances under control (shopping may only occur when there's a surplus from the previous month) and getting a handle on my mental state (I have an appointment with my shrink first thing in February, and the diet-and-exercise thing as well as the cleaner room are designed to help lift the depression a little more in the meantime). Finish my novel, write more on my blog, go to more meetings, do more work at work (and less FaceBook), and exercise more patience with the Grandmother rounds out the list.

I'm looking forward to accomplishing some of these things this year (or at least keeping God ROFLMAOing). This is a Seventh Year of my life, and Seventh Years always bring amazing changes, so I am hopeful and excited about 2009.

I'll keep you posted on my progress!

Fake It 'Til You Make It!

My depression is still dogging me, not as heavily as it was but rather in waves of sadness and nights of obsessive thinking; my joints still hurt; I still haven't done any laundry and am now wearing mismatched socks; I'm still tired all the time; my bank account keeps overdrawing itself no matter how I try to juggle things; I'm still fat and uncomfortable in my own skin.

But you know what? I DON'T CARE ANYMORE. I'm going to smile and laugh, anyway. I'm going to pretend I feel good, and I'm going to enjoy whatever I can enjoy. I'm going to decorate the Christmas tree, no matter how much I hate the filthy stinking thing. I am going to cook Christmas food no matter how much I resent having to do it. I am going to set a festive Christmas table no matter how much I want to pound the forks into the wall and toss the glasses down the chimney. I am going to exude Christmas cheer over all and sundry even if it kills me.

It's not really that hard. I let people know that I'm still feeling a little crazy, so they won't be surprised when the mask falls and I start screaming and trying to stab myself in the eye with a Bic pen; but I don't let the being down get me down; I don't let let negativity dwell.

And when all else fails, I look at beautiful boys. Beautiful boys always cheer me up.

Sick and Tired

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome sucks. I doubt if what I'm dealing with would be characterized as CFS by a physician, but I am certainly experiencing some symptoms, and I'm sick and tired of them. Being tired all the time is just so bloody inconvenient.

I wanted to go to a Court show today, Mama P's Charitable Christmas, in fact I've been planning on it all week... I planned what I was going to wear, what I was going to perform, all that. But come the day, I was too damned tired, I had too much else to do around the house, and I just couldn't pull myself together enough to even go, much less dress and perform.

And so instead of sporting the rather fabulous gold outfit I've been longing to wear for some months, I lay here playing Blood Lust on FaceBook and reading. I got up to take a shower, at least to get dressed and maybe get some housework done, but showering and dressing made me so tired I was shaking, so I had to come back and lay down.

After my bout of depression last month, I have yet to fully recover what little strength I'm used to. I've been sick with nameless ailments twice, one a sort of flu and the other an obvious cold, each lasting a few days and making life difficult. I haven't missed any work, or at least I didn't until this Friday, and my productivity is OK, but maintaining my standards is very draining. So when the weekends come, I'm so done in that I spend the whole time laying around instead of doing the things around the house that need doing, both for Christmas and for just regular upkeep. Simply feeding myself is a challenge.

I'm not sleeping well these last few days, and that's taking the greatest toll. I have a hard time dropping off, I wake up a lot, and I have very vivid and sometimes disturbing dreams.

The thing is, I'm having to face the possibility that this is what life is going to be like... that this is something I'm going to have to learn to manage, rather than something that will go away if I could just eat the right things or get enough rest or even change my medications. What if this is just the beggining? What if CFS is about to becoe part of my life the way bipolar disorder has become part of my life?

It's kind of scary to consider. I don't want it, no thank you, not today.

But then, I don't get to choose, do I?

As always, I shall remind myself that it could be worse, that taken all in all I have a pretty OK life. But I still wish it was completely OK. Or maybe even fantastic.

Is "fantastic" really so much to ask?

Reason Regains Her Throne

I just came through a very dark time. I mean, I was angry that Prop 8 was on the ballot at all, I was angered by the outright lies of the Yes on 8 advertising, but I had no idea I could even be as angry as I was when it passed. The rage took up every corner of my heart and mind. The desire to punish and hurt was so strong I could barely function around it.

The thing is, I have no way of processing that kind of anger. All I know to how to do is hold it in so that I don't do anything while I'm angry which I'll later regret; I couldn't even talk about the topic, much less my feelings, without spewing hate and ugliness... I had no safe vent for the feelings, they were so horrible and destructive that to let them loose for a second would hurt somebody.

What I really needed was to be able to just curl up and hide, ride the feelings out, pray and meditate my way through the anger... unfortunately, I had to work. And at work, due to some sudden personnel changes, I've once again been spending most of my time in the Career Center with all the various customers coming and going... so many interruptions, so many sketchy personalities, so many little crises and concerns, and me doing my WASP best (which is not inconsiderable, if I do say so myself) to be pleasant and to smile and to pretend there was nothing wrong.

Which I suppose, for a normal person, would be exhausting... and it was exhausting... but I'm not a normal person: I'm a manic-depressive, so all of the above spun me into a depression so profound that suicide was my every other thought. It was probably the lowest ebb of depression I've ever experienced, even worse than before I was medicated. It was too terrible even to talk about, not to my best friend, not to my shrink, not even to you.

One of the elements making things even more miserable is that I firmly believe that Grandmother voted for Prop 8. Maybe she didn't, but I feel certain her "Christian" principles would have demanded it of her. Still, I haven't asked her, largely because I was afraid of what I might say or do if it turned into an argument... I could clearly visualize myself smacking the shit out of a ninety-year-old woman, and I couldn't let that happen. But the feeling of pain that this suspicion caused me made everything so much worse... I had to shield Grandmother from my anger, so I invented an illness so that she'd leave me alone. She thought I was coming down with a flu, and I let her believe that.

So after three workdays of this ghastliness, I finally got to Saturday... I got a lot of sleep, going to bed at six Friday evening and not getting up until ten the following morning. Then I went out with Caroline and bought some new clothes, which always makes me feel better. And then I spent the rest of the day on the couch watching inanities and taking catnaps.

Sunday, however, brought a fresh hell: church. A room full of Christians, many of whom also probably voted for Prop 8, singing about their God of Love and Peace and Whatever, their hearts full of hypocrisy, their disgusting religion hurting more people than it could possibly help (at least those were my thoughts at the time).

After the sermon, I abandoned Grandmother in Bible class, telling her I had to step out for some fresh air and taking a brisk mile-or-so walk around the neighborhood. During that walk I boiled over all of my hatred for (inspired by anger toward) the so-called Christians who worked so hard to pass this discriminatory Constitutional amendment: thinking about all of the money raised by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (some $25 million, all tolled), thinking about how many orphans that would have fed, how many homeless it would have housed, how many sick it would have comforted. What Would Jesus Do With $25 Million? I wanted to ask them.

My thoughts then turned to my relationship with Grandmother: could I forgive her, if indeed she did vote for Prop 8? And if not, what would I do? Would I give up my relationship with her, move out of the house, live in my car or go couch-surfing if I had to?

And the answer was: Yes. I could do that. But not while I'm angry. I will have to give some thought in the coming weeks about how and whether I can continue to live with a person who thinks that homosexuality is a sin... or, rather, someone who labors under the false delusion that homosexuality is more of a sin than other sins which she and others commit all the time. I just have to wait until all the anger is gone before I can talk to her about it.

Of course, by then, I will probably have lapsed back into inertia and complacency. Yes, I could leave Grandmother... but will I? It's such a lot of effort. Another topic for prayer and meditation, to be sure.

I guess what really boils down to is that I don't understand where these people get off... what is their beef with homosexuality, anyway? What difference does it make to them? Sure, OK, let's say for a moment that it's a sin, that God wants us to not indulge in homosexual behavior. Kind of an asshole-y God, if you ask me, but for the sake of argument, let's take the Bible at face value.

Even then, it's pretty minor: it's only mentioned three or four times (five or six if you stretch a point), it's not one of the Commandments, and Jesus Christ never said Word One about it (not that was recorded, anyway). Sure, those three or four mentions are pretty damning, but have you read them in context? Each one of those mentions is accompanied by admonitions against adultery, as well as a few other things. And Christ Himself said that to divorce and remarry is to commit adultery... and even my sainted Grandmother divorced her first husband and then remarried. A forty-seven year adulterous relationship? For shame!

Logically, I can understand: you focus on a sin that you yourself are not interested in committing, and then you imagine that this sin is much worse than any sin you might commit, in order to compare it to the sins you do commit and feel better about them... comparison to someone supposedly worse than you is the easiest way to feel better about yourself.

But how can people claim that God is working in their lives when these kinds of spiritual dichotomies and lazinesses and outright hypocrisies still live in their hearts? Where exactly do they get off pointing out the splinter in my eye while ignoring the planks in their own? How can their God allow them them to be so blind?

If that God is the real true God, I'm better off without him. Such a God would be a dick, plain and simple, and not worth worshiping.

But God is not a dick. God is the controlling principle of the universe, He is all that is good... I believe that with all my heart. My jury is still out on Jesus, but I can't believe in the Bible because the God of that Book is a dick.

A lot of people defend organized religion by pointing out all of the good it does. But I truly believe that the people who do perform good works in God's name would do so without a church or a book telling them to so do... just as the assholes of the world would still be assholes without a church or book to back up their evil. People are good or evil in their own right, in their own hearts; religion is just a structure on which to lay that good or evil... it would exist without the structure just as well.

But what organized religion can and does do is to poison the hearts of good people with misinformation, and it is for that reason that I think the good it does is outweighed by the evil it does.

See, my Grandmother doesn't want to think of me as sinful, she doesn't want me to go to Hell, she doesn't want me to be punished... but she was taught by the assholes who perverted her religion that I am sinful and will be punished in Hell... and she has to believe that in order to believe everything else they told her, all about Jesus and Heaven and eternal life. It all comes of-a-piece for her, her mind formed long ago around faith-based thinking; she can no more change that than learn to think in German. Her natural goodness continues to nurture me and the rest of the family, but the poisonous hate she ingested in youth prevents her from loving me as completely as she wants.

Well, anyway, the proposition passed, and everyone has moved on to the next steps... getting it overturned being the first logical step. In the meantime, a lot of people have taken other steps, protests in front of Temples and City Halls, petitions to revoke the tax-free status of churches and to illegalize divorce, for no other reason than to show Those People what idiots they're being. They seem rather futile gestures to me, but we all have to deal with our anger and disappointment in our own ways.

I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm just glad I'm not so angry anymore. I am still angry, but it's the containable anger that I've been carrying around with me through years and years of unfairness and discrimination, the anger at the first person who called me a faggot when I was seven, the anger at the last person who made fun of me because I'm effeminate, the anger that keeps me working toward a goal of justice and liberty.

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In other news, here's my Halloween costume, as previously promised, though a couple of weeks late:


This is the version I wore to work, the version with the least number of accessories and encumbrances. I won the costume contest with it... though the victory would have been somewhat more satisfactory if I hadn't also been the person who organized the contest and purchased the prize.

By the way, that black beard is not painted on... I actually dyed it black, as well as my eyebrows and my hair. My hair didn't come out so well, it was very patchy in the back, but I just packed it with product and slicked it down; the whole effect was quite delightfully sinister. And I actually look pretty good with black hair, it complements my skin tone. Of course I tried dying it back to brown afterward, but it was a disaster and my hair is now a tricolor mess.

But back to Halloween... later on, Caroline and I went out to the City to check out the revels there...


The wig and the jabot were added, which were too warm to wear to the office (hence the hair-dye), as was a full-length black cape with a rather fantastic stand-up collar which I did not get photographed. Ah, well. Caroline dressed as a 50s Showgirl:


We had a pretty good time, me ogling the other costumes (sneering at the store-bought as a good queen should) and Caroline meeting new people (cute boys and effusive girls) along the way, then hanging out at Cookie Dough's Halloween Show at the Octavia Lounge, but I had been at work all day and was incredibly tired by the time we went out, and then finding parking was even more of a nightmare than usual... we ended up parked on Geary and Divisadero, about two and a half miles from Castro. Ridiculous! But still somehow better than taking mass transit.

Anyway, a good-enough time was had.

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In other other breaking news, I just came back to this post after watching Dancing With The Stars and am thrilled that my beloved Cody survived this week's elimination. This is the second week he's been in the bottom two, and though I think his improvements are stellar, I don't know what kind of a fan-base he has (outside of myself) so I couldn't be sure he'd be spared. I was so worried about him, and he looked plenty worried, too... I think he was preparing to go home. But in the end, it was Maurice Green who was voted off... I thought he had improved a lot, too, but he was still rather graceless, strangely heavy on his feet for a runner... and he isn't a big-eyed blond moppet... so I wasn't sad to see him go.

So YAY! I get to see more of Cody next week, and he's such a cutie!

And speaking of cuties...

I just can't handle it...

I'm so unbearably angry right now that I can't even think. I can't function.

I want to scream, slash, maim, burn, destroy. I want to curl up in a ball and cry. I want to hit somebody. I almost want to kill myself just to express my feelings.

I'm so furious and disappointed and hurt that I can't even enjoy the victory of Barack Obama... Prop 8's passage has ruined democracy for me.

For now, anyway. This, too, shall pass.

God, grant me strength, grant me patience, grant me understanding.