Feeling almost human again.

At Flying Star on Central -- the old Double Rainbow -- right beside the coffeeroaster. They're roasting up a batch. It doesn't smell good yet, but will on short notice. Ordered a western steak salad -- nice, but weird -- barbeque sauce over lettuce, hmm, but heck it's the first real meal that I've had in nearly two weeks, meaning not a sandwich, or fast food, or instant noodles, or whatever's within walking distance from wherever I happen to find myself at any given time. The air conditioning vent is right above me and I'm feeling just a little draft from it, which combined with my chewing the ice in my tea makes me just a bit chilly. These wonderful, tiny discomforts remind me I'm alive.

I guess I've graduated to the next level of being doorman at Foxes because I'm starting to see weirder and weirder things. Last Tuesday -- a week ago tonight -- was freakshow in the parking lot. Quiet all night inside but periodically there'd be these roving bands of weirdos from the State Fair coming round and getting into arguments around the cars centering on this crackhead who's gone mad because he missed his bus. He does this something like five times over the course of the evening: misses his bus, goes nuts, attracts a crowd, then wanders off somewhere without apparently ever getting picked up for anything.

I had to chase people off. Yeah, actually -- not just go out and ask them nicely but actually get them gone. Amazing what a little jailtime does to a person's way of dealing with others -- in my case, I needed it: a little "assertiveness training" if you will -- I now have absolutely positively *no* compunction whatsoever to tell people "you need to go" or else "you can't come in". No bullshit explanations, that's the way it is, get out. I also literally overnight picked up the knack for telling who's already drunk, which was the thing I was worst at and just *not* really *getting*. Now *nobody* gets in who is already sloshed. If they don't like it that's their problem, not mine, and the bar's better off for it, besides which they probably won't remember getting turned away even hazily.

Friday and Saturday were both show nights raising money for the AIDS walk next Saturday. This is one of those corporatized top-heavy charities that's more about McDonald's and WalMart's well-publicised sponsorships and shiny, well-designed posters and ads than about making a difference in anyone's life but it's been around for years and every year Foxes pretty much has to do its own little sponsorship of the event too if for no other reason than that it always has, from way back in the day when it was by and for the queers when everybody else just wanted us to die. So I sort of swallow my distaste and agree to walk with what I guess is the Foxes delegation carrying a cross with a red ribbon and some names that Jay is gonna make. Hell, I've worn a Palestinian headscarf in the streets of Austin, so I can carry a cross for one of the guys who got me out of jail.

I have no shame.

The shows themselves were odd. Empress Mercedes had taken ill and so it was the lower-ranking Court members mostly who carried off the show. Busy both Friday and Saturday, but around 10 pm on Saturday APD sets up a sobriety checkpoint right across the street from Foxes. It's one of their favourite places to do this. It *kills* business, and they do it every two or three months. Word spreads like wildfire in the bar that they're out there and people stop drinking. Completely. They also stop tipping. We stop getting new customers in because anyone with half a brain cuts clear away from the traffic that's backed up for four blocks. Meanwhile all the people they arrest mill around in the parking lot at Griff's, which is a hell of a sideshow. Then the show ends at one and the place empties out in ten minutes flat.

They just dumped the batch. What a smell! I could fly to the heavens on just the aroma of fresh roasted coffee on Central.

Then I guess it was Friday night some guy we had to throw out threatened Alex and me from the parking lot with what may have been a gun, but mostly he threatened Alex. He still handles the really tough cases, I basically provide backup. One of those "under the shirt" situations which would have counted as armed robbery if he'd been robbing us, which he wasn't. Alex has all the necessary licenses and such to use handcuffs and doesn't hesitate to when he must.

Working in the office at the publisher is positively a vacation. It does involve some heavy lifting, and some brains, but seriously it's nice to have a better-paying job where, you know, you're life's not threatened and you don't get slandered just for doing your job. It's really nice to have four hours a day where my biggest concern is making sure I copied the invoice and packed the copy in the box while making sure the original goes to the billing address.

There's another little game the people play in this town, called "oh I've slept with him", of whom one of the chief objects seems to be the doorman at Foxes. (Bartenders are also fair game, it would seem.) I've heard this from several people indirectly, that so-and-so said they'd had sex with me. Uhm, no. Afraid not. Yeah, I would remember. Then it's "you dog, you". OK, fine, don't believe me, see if I care.

Enough for now. Not that there's not much more to say but I'm getting cold and feel like walking. Later.