The Cyril incident.

I had a genuinely wonderful day today. After a threatening start, too. Nice surprise.

Erin called this morning from Hartman, left a message saying be sure to bring in your driver's license so you can fill out the paperwork to go on the payroll and get paid. Uh-oh, I think, I need this paycheck just to make the rent. I don't have a driver's license, but for my MVD Notice of Revocation which serves as such for now and all the papers to prove I am contesting the revocation, and none of that's one of the items on List A, B, or C the Department of Justice requires any time you start any new job. (Suddenly routine things are a *very* big deal. A production, if not a predicament.) Then I got a card in my mailbox this morning that said a certified letter had gotten delivered but taken back since I wasn't there to sign for it, and I had to give two day's written notice to the post office to get it. So I signed for that and will get it the 30th. I assume it's from the MVD and can but hope it doesn't tell me that my hearing was yesterday and that the revocation stands if I don't show. (By the way, if you're reading this, and you *ever* drive drunk, even slightly, you're an idiot asking for major trouble the likes of which you cannot begin to imagine, regardless of whether you hurt anyone by doing so.)

I go in to work at Hartman and winds up an expired passport is fine, in list A, meaning I don't have to show anything else. Woohoo! I'm all official, on the payroll. Handed it all filled out to Mark and -- get this -- he *apologises* to me for not having the papers for health insurance and retirement savings all made up, but it would be a lot extra to fill out right now and -- here I finish the sentence he's afraid to utter -- of course you don't want to do that 'til I know this whole court thing is behind me and you know that I'm really quite stable. He gives me a sheepish "you said it, not me" grin that I take as a very good sign that finishing the sentence was the right thing to do. I think he's also a bit pleasantly surprised I'm not deeply offended, let alone belligerent, as all us on-the-public-record drunks are known to be to all and sundry.

Dude. At no job that I've *ever* worked has even a word about that sort of stuff been spoken 'til at least 90 days of continuous employment with *zero* fuckups on my part, much less a temporary, seasonal job for which I'm "no call, no show" two consecutive days after less than a week on the job. I've been with Hartman, what, under a month? And certainly when I answered the ad on craigslist to apply for the job there was no mention that I might *ever* have such benefits, and he's *apologising* to me for putting them off!? He's telling someone who is expecting to be out of work on that front that "it's not quite time yet" for the benefits I've only gotten previously by signing my whole life away for humiliating fulltime graveyard work.

Imagine that! I might actually go to see a doctor! I might actually get my teeth cleaned! Get new glasses! Yes! I might even actually start to save money! All this may well be within reach, if I just hold my act together.

This is a job I could see myself sticking with for years. Easily. Not because I'm desperate, but because it's about as damn close to a damn perfect job as I've ever had in my miserable life and I'm not about to do anything I can prevent to jeapordise it.

Of course it still might wind up being temporary like the ad I answered said the job would be. But man, I'm doing all I can to stay there. I'm working fast, and accurately, and checking everything three times, because sometimes a doublecheck is simply not enough. I'm coming in early, finishing early, and staying late to take on new tasks. I'm not afraid of heavy lifting in the least; and to put it somewhat rudely, I "work like a Mexican" when I need to so I can move on to better things -- like working on the computers, and (always the gay man) then somewhat self-deprecatingly point out that I "only" made it from "Z" through "T" in the hour I spent correcting the names in the 25,000 name database that the company uses for letters. Of course, yes, I'm left handed, and work backwards, but thilly me, what would you exthpect from the doorman at the drag bar?

Today I was in heaven! Yes! Heaven! I had my own workstation in my own cubicle upstairs and was changing people's names in the database from all caps to standard Proper Name Format so mail merge letters don't go out saying "Dear YVONNE", but "Dear Yvonne". It sounds like drudgery, but it isn't -- it's just attention to the little details which, attended to correctly, no customer will *ever* notice, which will help sales, because no one will see the letter and automatically know at the greeting that it's a form letter and throw it away without at least scanning what follows.

Then to Flying Star for my "eating on a budget" pancake and coffee and wireless access.

Then to Foxes for a wonderful night. Slow, yes, but wonderful. Hard to explain, but the energy in the bar was exceedingly good. Either it is or it isn't -- chalk it up to alcohol, I guess -- there ain't hardly no middle ground at all. It's either magical or tragic. Tonight was, for a slow night, magical.

Ben was showing "Independence Day". One of those movies I never caught in the theatres and would never ever think to go and rent because I'm such a fucking snob. Wow. Yeah it was all this crap about the US military saving the world but man, what a finely crafted piece of crap it was! Every single "major US city destroyed" genre convention combined with something approaching absolute formula perfection. I must admit, if not a fan exactly, I can appreciate propaganda and it was absolutely brilliantly conceived and executed. Found myself repeatedly looking over my shoulder not to check for drunks walking in but for aliens trying to kill me, and checking the parking lot expecting not to see stumbling homeless guys and crack whores but armageddon in the skies. Yeah, it was really that engrossing. (And, yeah, Foxes, and Albuquerque for that matter, is really just about that weird.) Next thing you know I'll be enjoying football, at some level, as well. And what the heck is wrong with that? Ralph Nader does. Therefore it must be good.

Then right at close -- I'm on my toes because anytime the whole night goes well I just expect things to go wrong at close -- I step outside for some reason for half a second. Maybe to say goodnight to Mercedes or to scan the parking lot one last time, I really don't remember. Suddenly I hear glass breaking. I dash in, even though it's only three very mellow, well-behaved people at bar.

Broken glass on the floor. Big native guy named Cyril's dropped his drink, something called "liquid cocaine", about which all I can tell you is it's got something like five different house liquors in it and he's had more than one. He's been more than fine all evening. An utterly perfect delight of a customer, in fact! Glad to have him, without reservation. Tipping well, cheerful, engaged, not behaving all drunk or fucked up, not bugging anyone, hell, being the life of the bar! Heck, he even got up to dance with everyone else for a while not half an hour before, so it's not like it hit him all at once when he stood up the first time.

In other words -- I should have seen it coming. After all, I did get arrested for DWI after getting up and singing karaoke twice in the style of Stewie Griffin.

The second time he tries to stand, apparently, it *does* hit him. Suddenly, out of nowhere, he's as helpless as a baby. Big old guy. I'd guess he's pretty close to 300 pounds, if not quite there. He's mentally all right, but his legs will just not hold him up. His body, suddenly, is failing him. He's terrified, and you can see it in his eyes. I've seen the same eyes on animals in shelters. The textbooks we sell at Hartman call it "Alcohol poisoning".

I help him in to the bathroom and check him once -- discretely from the dooorway, not to cruise him -- to make sure he's OK in there and not breaking the porcelain. (If he misses, I'll mop it up, big deal; I just don't want him getting hurt or ruining our bathrooms.) Help him out to a chair -- not a barstool. Get him a glass of water.

While I'm fetching the broom and dustpan from the ice room he goes to move and flops over on the floor like a beached whale. The chair and table are all out of place and the glass of water's on the floor. He's helpless. At least, this glass, he didn't break, unlike the one that his last drink was in. I pick up the glass and put it behind the bar for washing.

I'm making physical contact with him like mad just to keep him awake and alert. I give him bear hugs, pat him on the shoulder, stroke his hair, hold him up, take his arm, massage his neck, stroke his hand, and hell, go down on my knees before him, stroking his thighs to help him focus on digging the ID from his pocket so we can call his cab. What he makes of all this I can only imagine. Door whores indeed. (I wouldn't be a bit surprised if two weeks later he comes back and points and giggles at me, telling his freinds beneath his breath so I can't hear him, "yeah, he went down on me, right over there, yeah, in the bar.") He knows he's really fucked up right now and is just dying to sleep it off. I wake him up repeatedly to ask him where he lives.

Cyril: "Indian"

Myself: "Indian School Road?"

"Northeast Indian Street"

"What's the address?"

"Second Nine"

"Indian School, right?"

"Yes"

"What's the address?"

"Indian Southeast"

"Southeast or Northeast?"

"Northeast"

"What's the address?"

"349"

"Is that the street address or the apartment number?"

"Yes"

"Where do you live?"

"Indian Six Second Nine"

"What's the street address?"

"62"

You get the idea. He lives on Indian School Road. There's a six, a nine, a two, a three, and a four, involved somewhere in his address. I ask for his ID and he fumbles through his wallet. Gives me a dollar for my troubles. (I'm holding onto it, btw, since I still owe two hundred times that to the universe.) Finds more dollars. Starts to count money. Need to see your ID. Your driver's license, please. He finds it. Brings it out. Sid's on the phone calling a cab. I hand his license to Sid.

The address on the Driver's License is a Reservation address.

Great. Meanwhile the cab dispatcher's waiting on the phone.

"Do you live in an apartment, or a house?"

"Yes"

"In an apartment, or a house?"

"Yes. An apartment"

"OK. What's your apartment number?"

"349"

"Great. Where is that?"

"Indian Street"

"Where on Indian School?"

"Six"

"Sixty-two?"

"Six second nine"

"6209?"

"Yes"

From this Sid ascertains the name and location of the complex where he lives. I write it down on a trick slip.

If my recounting this exchange seems cruel, well, reader, when it's all behind me I'll make no less public on this website the contents of the criminal complaint against me, complete with details what I was asked and how I answered by the officer who stopped me. Suffice to say it might seem just so comical.

The crucial difference? I'm not a cop! I'm not trying to catch this guy, I'm really trying to get his information. I have the time and patience to weasel out the pertinent information to get the person home safe without having to worry about getting him off the streets. My job's not to keep the streets safe but to keep Foxes open. A pretty simple job, really. I get him another glass of water -- this one with no ice -- and feed it to him with a straw -- he wretches at the first sip, then takes another, thirstily, and then another. He drinks about a quarter of a cup. I tell him -- it won't sober you up any faster but will help get the poison out of you.

I go around turning off lights and check on him periodically. I turn my head for another two seconds and now he's thowing up on the table.

I don't know what to do but try to get him in the bathroom. Luckily Sid has the wherewithal and experience to get one of the big gray trashcans over to where he is, instead. He leans over and vomits into that. I get a smaller one that's better for him to clear out his internals into.

His vomit is pure alcohol. It looks and smells exactly like the fancy mixed drinks he was ordering. I do not doubt he hadn't eaten anything that day. Lucky for me. Hardly more disgusting than wiping up a spilled drink.

Sid brings over some cocktail napkins. I get my bleached rag that I use for ashtrays and wipe it up as it comes out, and wipe him off as well as I can.

Differing philosophies as to how a bar should be run? I have no doubt that Alex would have shown him out the door when he first broke the glass from which he had been drinking. That's his way, and who am I to criticise him for it? It would have worked about as well, where keeping the bar open is concerned.

I sat there and nursed him back into such shape that he could walk on his own to the cab. Throughout I just kept telling him, you're ok, you'll be ok, I know it looks really bad now, but trust me, you *will* be ok, here's the door, we're getting you home safe, there's a step down here, you'll be ok, you have nothing to worry about, there's another step down here, you're ok, just stay awake a few more minutes, and you'll be ok, then you'll be home, you'll be ok, and you can sleep it off, you'll be ok. OK? OK!

Ktchunk. Ktchunk. Doors locked against the madness of the world.

I love my jobs. Both of them. Absolutely.

I love my life.

I wouldn't trade a second of it for the world.

It's now 5h41 am. I'm sitting at home writing this out in TextEdit. The spirits of the ancestors are upon us. It's raining lightly.

Thank god for Dunkin' Donuts.

Would you believe it? I have *finally* found a place with late-night wireless internet access.

It's the bigass chain known as Dunkin' Donuts and it's right smack dab on Central, across from UNM, a couple of blocks down from Frontier. I've been looking for months! Now if only some local businesses would wise up, stay open this late, and have internet access I would patronise them, instead. Gladly.

Not exactly the fine atmosphere, great service, and delicious food you'll find at Flying Star but heck, at two AM you're lucky to get online, period, if you don't have it set up in your house. A measly two fifty something bought me a fritter and a large coffee I need at this hour like a hole in the head. There's one other guy here online and what appears to be a street person sleeping at one of the tables. Kinda dingy and run down but heck. I'm online!

The guy who's working just asked the sleeping girl if she's alive. Some other customer went over and managed, gently, to wake her up. She is OK, but doesn't know where she is or how she got here. That's gotta suck. Apparently she's been here for three hours. So I dare say I hardly need worry about getting kicked out for sticking around more than the minute or so it takes me to finish my greasy fritter.

Been here two hours now poking around craigslist. Sipping my coffee to make it last forever.

Life is good.

A rant upon the pointlessness of spectator sport.

What a wonderfully uneventful day at Hartman Publishing I've had.

I got there ten minutes early and started organizing invoices. Today was mostly samples. Moved some boxes from the warehouse to the mailroom. Packed the orders, packed the samples, metered the mail. Moved some more boxes from the warehouse 'cause they're asking me to come early on Thursday to help receive an order of four pallets worth of expensive textbooks from the printer. Got all the letters sent off, made up some more Instructors Guide CDs and generally got a good head start on the rest of the week while still managing to get out early.

I work at Foxes tonight. Monday night football. At a gay bar. Go figure. I would more expect to see a drag show at Hooters (not that I'd be caught dead in such a place; and so for all I know, they *do* have drag shows there). In my world it would be Judy Garland night, or maybe C-Span night, but oh well, apparently the management wants to bring in more customers than it drives away, for whatever reason. At least we do have free hot dogs at halftime. They're kind of gross, honestly -- we're not really set up properly for foodservice, but heck, it's fun (I guess), it's food, and most importantly, it's free. I can't complain.

I must digress. I do not understand sports. Yes, Weasel, I apoligise for going into this again. I just don't get it. It's not for lack of trying on my part. I mean, really -- what's the point of watching a bunch of guys jump all over eachother because they're trying to move a ball in opposite directions if you can't even get in to the locker room? (I was extraordinarily lucky in that regard to be a "ball boy" for the local university's basketball team when I was seven, and must admit I thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience.) The only time football held any attraction for me was when I was twelve and discovered how to cruise the always busy men's rooms at the stadium -- but again, you can't do that from TV, so why televise it in the first place?

If I want to watch men in padding attack eachother I'll just get two drag queens to fight over which one gets to flirt with me, and honestly, even then it's not something I like to see. I guess that does make me a bit of a football myself. But it also saves me the effort of even pretending to try to care enough to pretend to try to understand the gibberish people inevitably talk about during games -- one down, seven to go, fourteen to ninety-seven, all of that gobbledygook. And finally, the whole hypertestosteronated cult of masculinity is very simply much too much for me. I understand sport has its rituals of sorts and that the human body in motion can indeed be a beautiful thing. But the whole manhood thing -- like drinking beer, watching TV, and eating hot dogs has anything to do with being male -- is laughable, at best, and more often, disgusting. At least to my eyes.

The bar is apparently in favour of some team from Denver because Sid is. The bartender working tonight is in favour of another one from Dallas. I do not understand the rivalry, its roots and causes, its intended outcomes, nor anything else about it. It seems to have nothing whatever to do with where the person comes from or who they know. Epiphoenomenal bullshit. People will yell at eachother over these things like it matters, then suddenly be freinds again as though nothing had happened. Meanwhile people give me strange looks for simply knowing who Arlen Specter is.

My conclusion, based upon the above observations? The human race is full of idiots. Loveable idiots maybe, some of them, but I can not understand how the outcome of a game, the object of which is to move a ball to point "x" can *ever* have the same importance in a person's life as say passage of even minor legislation.

I still need to do laundry. This is ridiculous. I can't get up to do it in the morning. I sleep until I need to get to work, not knowing if and when I'll be able to sleep again. Then when I get off early in the morning all I want to do is go online --- impossible, unless I want to drive out to the Arby's way out on Coors Road in the middle of the night. So I putter around the computer 'til sunrise and sleep 'til it's time to get to work. I don't know how people organize their time. I've never been able to do it. I don't know how people organize their spaces. I've never been able to do it. I just let things go and go and go and go. I really ought to quit messing around online and just do my damn laundry. Maybe sometime this week it'll happen. I hope so. If it happens it'll be a life-changing, milestone event, I am sure.

The Tony incident.

The "Wheel of Drag" show was a lot of fun, after all. Nice crowd. The Court handed out checks to representatives of the charities supported by the shows of the last several months, none of whom were, by any stretch of the imagination, regulars at Foxes. (Downright respectable straight people who didn't resent, but didn't seem to understand my asking for IDs, despite their being in their fifties and above.) In total we gave something like close to two grand out, no strings attached, raised literally one dollar at a time by the queens who'd regularly risked their lives walking down Central to Foxes dressed as women in the first place for the shows.

I start my shift at eight since it's a show night, and there's already drama underway. Jay, the bartender, has heard a rumour that he's been accused of breaking into the jukebox and is about to get fired over it. Needless to say, he's in about as foul a mood as a bartender can be while still managing to work the bar. He didn't make it to the AIDS walk, after making up his crosses and everything. So no, I didn't miss him, he just wasn't there. Oh well.

Around 8h15 this guy, Tony, gets up to leave. He'd come in before I started and apprently maintained himself sufficiently to order one beer without raising eyebrows. But now, he's weaving like a Hopi man back in the day when they grew their own cotton. I follow him outside and he's running hard into the air conditioner for the DJ's booth -- face first -- a stunt no stunt man in his right mind would dare attempt. He's in no shape whatever to drive. Hell, he ain't hardly in shape to walk. He puts his keys into his car door and I strategically go over to flirt with him.

Yep. Forget the maglight, my flirtation is a weapon, and it's powerful -- at least against the horny drunks. The doorman, Mr. Hard-to-Get at Foxes is suddenly all Mr. Lovey-Dovey "hey you're cute", gladly returning hugs and gropes and all. I'd never, ever do that sort of thing if I didn't honestly believe his life, and maybe other people's lives, depended on it. But fuck -- after 53 hours in county jail I ain't lettin' *anyone* leave drivin' their own cars out of my lot in anything even remotely approaching the shape that he was in. If they give me a big sloppy corn-squeezings-flavoured kiss on the lips while I hold up their dead weight, so be it. If my judgment is wrong, or if Sid doesn't like it, fine, he can fire me. No grudge. He's got his way of running a bar, and obviously it works well enough. (If it didn't, we wouldn't be the oldest gay bar in the Southwest, would we?) But if this guy goes out and kills himself or someone else, or gets arrested and tells the cops he came from Foxes, it's on *my* head -- legally or not -- it's on *my* conscience. And anyone who doubts my consciense need only know how I voted these last two presidential elections to know the strength of that little inner voice of right and wrong within me.

I bring him back inside. I call Saferide.

Quick aside for my non-Albuquerque readers (which happily for me are the majority): Saferide is basically free taxis from bars, paid for by the City of Albuquerque. Damn good program. I have *no* doubt it's saved more than a few lives, literally -- and many hundreds, figuratively (in that a DWI arrest can easily ruin a person's life if they're not *very* firmly tethered to reality). Unfortunately, funding has apparently been cut, because whereas they used to run Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, they now just run Fridays and Saturdays, and only allow five Saferides per bar, per night.

Too bad the City won't just up and make the buses on Central, San Mateo, and maybe two or three other major streets run 24 hours (at least Thursday through Sunday) so people can get more-or-less wherever they need to go instead of staying fucked up all together in the same part of town around Central and Wyoming that everyone overdramatically calls "the war zone". (Realistically, it's just a standard, run-of-the-mill ghetto, if a biggish, spread-out one.) But, of course, if the City did that, Mayor Marty "Raid-the-Fag-Bars" Chavez wouldn't have the money to get his precious travelling panda exhibit to come to the Zoo for a few months, nor to fund commissioning an "opera" (read: "Municipal Pageant") which he's apparently convinced will make Albuquerque into the Vienna of the 21st Century -- not that he isn't personally responsible (to hear him tell it) for the City having survived the last 300 years. Closet cases are always like that.

Anyhow. I'm about to call Saferide. Tony doesn't remember his address. He's giving his apartment number as the street address, and can't remember what street he lives on. I ask to see his ID and he gives it to me. I get his address. I call saferide, leave a message. Jay then remembers they aren't running 'til eleven. Oh, shit. We're gonna be babysitting this guy for a while. Well -- I am. OK. I leave my message and don't call back to cancel. Then the real fun begins.

A native woman talks this guy into leaving with her. OK, you're both gonna walk. Together. Fine with me. I'll watch you 'til you leave the lot, make sure you're both OK, and all of that. They leave and in the lot he tries to get into his car. Without touching his car or person I stand between him and the driver's side door.

Tony: "Aw man what are you doing?"

Myself: "I thought you were walking."

"I am."

"Then why are you trying to get in your car?"

"I'm not driving."

"Then why are you trying to get in your car?"

"It's OK. I love you man. You love me?" He extends his hand in one of those infinitely variable Northern New Mexico handshake greetings you just *have* to know in order to survive on Central. I take his hand the right way and return the greeting properly. Meaning: close enough that he doesn't freak out, pull out a gun on me, and shoot me in the face. So. Do I love him?

"Enough to keep you from killing yourself, or someone else, or going to jail, or getting us shut down for serving you."

"Come on man. Leave me alone."

"It's OK. I'm not stopping you. But you're not driving out of here. Walk out the front and I won't follow you. I promise." Handshake again.

"You trust me?"

"Yeah, man, I trust you. Thanks, man. Go on."

"You won't follow me?"

"Nah, man; you just gotta go out that way. It's OK."

"I'm fucked up."

"Yeah, I know you are."

"I am *totallly* fucked up."

"It's OK, we all get fucked up sometimes. Yeah, it sucks. I'm sorry I have to do this."

"It's OK." Handshake again.

"Later, dude."

"Later."

After maybe fifteen or twenty minutes of this, the native lady who'd offered (for whatever reason) to walk with him has left. Alex won't let him back in, and tells me to keep an eye on Tony. Because of that, not only can't I let him leave, I can't let him back in the bar, even though he "just wants to chill". Chain of command. I'm on my own with him. Eventually he leaves, saying he's going to the Ranch. Fine, I think -- let the Ranch deal with him, then he won't be my problem, at least for a while. We've got a show starting soon. He leaves.

I tell Alex to call the Ranch. He makes the call, tells them he's coming. Tony, hispanic, short dark hair, wearing a black Bob Marley shirt. Wasted. Don't let him in if you want to stay open.

Meanwhile Tony just circles 'round Foxes, coming back in through the back entrance to the lot on Wisconsin. I see him bending over trying to get the key into the door of his car. (I patrol this lot countless times each night, every night, how dumb does he think I am? Damned if I know -- but I'm sober. He's sure as hell not.)

Back again. Hey guy. What's up? I thought you were going to the Ranch. Yeah, you'll have better luck there. They're much busier. Yeah thanks I'd love to take you home but man I've gotta work. Blah blah blah. Mr. Door Whore in supreme good form, alternately playing "turned on", "coy", and "plugging the competition" (while calling the comeptition on the sly to let 'em know he's on his way) to someone no one wants on their licensed premises, if they're in their right minds and don't want to get their licenses revoked.

By now it's about 9h15 and the first performers for the show are arriving. A round-faced native I've never seen before, dressed all in white, runs down the sidewalk at speed into our parking lot, Westbound on Central. He's veering towards the door and I intercept him, blocking the door. He sees me and runs right around out back. I open the door and call for Alex. By the time he comes out, an APD officer in a cruiser is asking passers-by which way the guy he was chasing went. He pulls into the lot from Central and drives out through the back. Alex chases after them in that general direction. Nothing. He's gone.

I wonder how many people have evaded the law through our parking lot over the years.

Meanwhile, I'm still dealing with Tony. Again.

He says he's going home and walks off, East on Central.

He comes back again two minutes later, like he hadn't tried the same "walking aorund the building" trick just before, or like I would forget he was there two minutes prior, or like what he's doing is nuclear physics. He's trying to get into his car. Again.

Again I do the flirty thing. Eventually he says he's going to McDonald's, across Wisconsin. He leaves. I go around in back and he sees me watching him. Indeed, he walks over to McDonald's. Alex says to tell him if he comes back so he can call security. Shall I just continue the little game I'm already playing with Tony? He says -- why not? OK.

The cop (driving cruiser A37) comes back through the rear entrance to the lot and asks me which way the guy he was chasing went. Am I being detained? Damned if I know. What the hell. I will answer his questions without asking, despite (or because of?) being out on nothing more than court papers with a handful of reasonable but absolute conditions I don't want to get into explaining. To a point, anyway. I don't want problems with the cops before the Tony situation is resolved. He went that way. I gesture towards the rear. Damn. Did he come in? Nah man, I blocked him, he just ran out back, sorry. Good luck, man. The officer drives off from the front.

I start to write the Tony incident down in the bound-and-dated logbook which, by law, all bars keep. I get one sentence down before I poke my head out the door and see Tony back in his car, starting the motor.

I rush to intercept. Reach in. Grab the key. Shut off the motor. Try to take the key out. It won't budge. I don't know where it needs to be in the ignition to come out. Alex runs out behind me.

"Stand back."

I do.

Alex grabs Tony by the arm and pulls him out of his car. Very professional -- effective, but not tortious. No one gets hurt, but he's very much out of the car.

"Grab the keys."

I do. I figure it out and pull the keys out of the ignition. Lock the door and shut it. Take the car key off the keyring. Check it against all his other keys to make sure he's only got one of that particular key. Give him his remaining keys back so he won't be shut out of his house. Tell him he's welcome to come back and get his car key whenever he's sober, but that he's *not* driving *now*. At least not out of *our* lot. Run in behind the bar. Write "TONY" in a sharpie on the key. Brandish the key like a war trophy before the queens before putting it into my shirt pocket and buttoning the pocket. Alex is at the door telling Tony he can't come in. Tony leaves. I give Alex the key, he gives it to Fernando, one of the bartenders, for safekeeping behind the bar. Jay goes out a couple of minutes later and brings Tony back in -- chain of command again, bartender's prerogative, better to have him sobering up in here than stumbling down Central. Fine with me, can't say I disagree. He's drinking water and socializing. I write up a storm, with timestamps, in the logbook, stopping only to check IDs of people coming in.

Saferide arrives. Tony's escorted out. Alex gives the cabdriver Tony's key. They leave through the back.

The show goes off without a hitch, except that Felicia, who's playing Vanna White at the wheel, keeps failing to notice when she needs to be onstage, which itself becomes a part of the act over the course of the night. It was (in Heffer's words) a hoot! Mostly real drag queens doing real drag numbers they really knew because they'd bribed the DJ to "randomly" happen to play the numbers they perform anyway. As for the "wheel of drag" part of the show, it's really just a couple of supremely unlikely guys in wigs and feather boas who'd normally be wearing boots, jeans, and cowboy hats (and are still wearing boots and jeans, if not the hats) -- not hardly drag, I can assure you, but just close enough to make the crowd go wild seeing them decked out that way for NMAS Emergency Services.

The night was a complete success.

Until close.

Then this one guy -- really fuckin' sad -- has two beers in his hand. Both full. Everyone else has cleared out with hardly an announcement beyond the turning up of lights. The time's 1h51 -- bar time -- and he's determined to stay 'til two drinking his beers. House policy is that no one have more than one drink in their hand at any given time. State law is that they have no more than two. So this guy's violating house policy without violating the law. For whatever reason that we can't begin to fathom -- he's in tears, and drinking hard.

Both bartenders, Jay and Fernando, are livid, pointing fingers at eachother for having possibly served this now belligerent guy his last drink. It's highly probable he took his current second beer from someone else who didn't even miss it upon leaving. But regardless -- neither one of them wants to be the last one who served him, and who can blame 'em? Three months in jail for opening a beer for someone who's behaving fine and pays up when he orders it? Puhlease. Alex is goin' nuts, trying to pull this guy's beers from his hands. Sid takes the reigns.

Sid (with a chill in his voice worthy of a martini): "When do we close?"

Undisclosed bartender/doorman: "We've stopped serving."

"I asked what time do we close?"

"Uhm, two o'clock."

"And what time is it?"

"One-fifty-three."

"So let him drink! Leave him alone."

So. Sid was being a "bitch". This was his "evil side". I'd heard of it from others who had worked for him. He basically tells whoever's been working all night in front of a bunch of non-tipping, hard-to-please customers that they're wrong and need to do such-and-such after walking in shortly before close.

They hate it, understandably. They've done their part to keep the place open and deeply resent being told off in front of "their" customers. At the same time -- anything that goes wrong, he is responsible for too -- and if he tells them to lay off, and they do so, and anything happpens as a result, *he* is responsible, exclusively. He also understands this guy's just gonna put up a fight if we bug him, but will probably drink up and leave if we don't.

It looks -- to the customer -- like he's blaming the barkeeps for being stupid, yeah -- the customer feels vindicated, calls the barkeep a dirty name or two, and leaves, and then it's not our problem. But to the law, Sid is responsible. He also has been around long enough to understand, in this case, that the person in question will morosely drink up whatever he's got left and leave, if left alone, 'til close. If that entails making a bartender look stupid in the eyes of this one customer, that sucks, but better that than escalating things to where someone gets physically thrown out, making everyone fill out a bunch of paperwork which may well never make sense in the eyes of the law. (The logbook at Foxes is hilarious. People who start problems described in terms of "not attractive" and the like by the bartenders we go through like a hot knife through butter. As though any of that means *anything* before the law.)

Fair enough. Stand back, give him a wide berth. Everyone's angry at everyone else. The guy leaves. Sid locks the doors himself, tonight.

Sid: "John? Did you write this in the log?"

Me: "That's from Tony. Earlier this evening. Basically parking lot drama."

"There's no need to write a novel."

Actually, there is. But that need's personal, and what's in the log is nothing more than the barest notes on the novel to be written. He doesn't know that, doesn't need to. I've done the "giving depositions" game and know what lawyers ask about, so include everything I can that may be relevant, right down to Tony's address and full description of the car he's driving. He's just annoyed at the end of the night and not wanting to read two whole pages in my 19th Century longhand. Fine with me. Nothing personal. I've taken far worse snide remarks from employers before for infinitely dumber reasons than that they don't want to have to read through a bunch of evidence-style details written down. I sort of grate a bit but figure hell, he's stressed and taking it out on anyone within earshot, now that the place is empty. Neither one of us it at eachother's throats. I'm happy.

It's now 7:50 pm and I'm at home writing this. I just woke up and returned Alex's call from around 4:51 pm. He tells me Tony's girlfreind spoke to Fernando and that the car he was driving was stolen! Oh wow. So apparently I've maybe not quite helped to apprehend a stolen vehicle, because I had no clue (before putting my fingerprints all over it to grab the keys), but at least I helped to stop it from getting wrecked by a drunk driver. No wonder he was so eager to move it.

Then again Alex does have one trick slip with my notes, including Tony's full name, street address, ZIP code, driver's license number, and a description of the car complete with license number and all of that.

What next? I've no idea. I still haven't done laundry. I must. I have no pants left, and thus can't get service. I'll figure something out.

Two marches in one day.

Woke up at nine this morning, after going to bed at 4h30, to realise I was late for the AIDS walk I'd promised Jay I'd be at to carry one of the signs he was making.

I rush down there, park and run up to the end of the march down Central. I fast-walk all the way up to the front. I see Mercedes but not Jay. Then I slow walk letting the back of the march catch up with me and run into Sid. Still no sign of Jay. Oh well.

Then home to get Don Schraeder's books which I borrowed way back in March. I expect to see him later on in the day, but don't; so my briefcase, already heavier than usual with laptop, Chinese medical dictionary, and notebooks, now heavier with court papers and more notebooks, becomes heavier still with the four books I am returning. If you're reading this, or hear it from someone else, Don, please forgive me, your books are coming. Someday. I promise. I just need to run into you -- my day job's such that I can't just pop over when I know you're in and I don't want to leave them with somebody else.

Then down to the anti-war march across the from the WalMart off Central and San Mateo. I walk from the staging area down San Mateo and almost make it to Kathryn where I meet the marchers who are already on their way up from the Truman Gate at Kirtland AFB. Thank god -- that's several more long blocks that I don't have to walk all loaded down!

It's a long, long march up the sidewalk. Very good event. I'd estimate easily a thousand people. The cops aren't stopping traffic though so we have to wait for the lights to change and cross Zuni in separate groups. It's fine, really -- *much* more traffic sees us that way without anyone feeling they're being "held up" by the marchers, besides which, we stretch out and look bigger. Muhah. Lots and lots of support from people in cars. More honking and thumbs up everytime, it would seem. More marchers too. Real momentum.

I did some shopping at the staging area. I shouldn't have, but what the hell. I bought a patch and pennant and t-shirt from the IWW. Yeah, my membership's lapsed, but once a union man always a union man. I figure what the hell, as long as I'm gonna be spendng the next several months paying fines and attending classes and all that shit for not calling a taxi I may as well clear up this bit of unfinished business as well which means much more to me. I've already started the ball rolling about getting reinstated. I want to be, and to stay, in good standing.

Two marches in one day, my god, what am I, some sort of hippy freak? I guess. My feet don't just hurt, they've got blisters. And I've got to work tonight at Foxes. Last night was good, nice little crowd, with very little drama. No complaints there. Show tonight -- "Wheel of Drag" -- which is either the best thing since man first donned feather boas and high heels or the worst, depending who you ask. Sort of a drag/karaoke show by lottery, which likely makes for bad get-ups and halfhearted (if not mean-spirited) performances. I suspect the real queens resent it, maybe feel they're being made fun of, who can say. Lucky for me I have to work and won't be anywhere near drunk enough to don a wig until long after trial's behind me, if then. Tomorrow I have OFF. No Hartman, no Foxes. Might spend the night at a freind's house closer to work, but might not, too; I'm being pretty reclusive for the door whore these days.

Yeeh. I was drinking iced tea but one batch came out way foggy so I switched to iced coffee. Five glasses later I'm literally shaking. I've got to warm up, then maintain, I've got a long night ahead. Almost five now so I'm gonna go and hear the news before I head on in to Foxes.

Welcome to Foxes.

Tonight this guy comes in behind my back while turned for half a second. First time that's happened in a long time. Ben asks if everything's OK; it doesn't register he's asking me discretely if this guy's OK to serve or not, so I say yeah. I figure he's just asking generally. Then I take a look at this new guy and realize he wasn't in here a minute ago. Whoops. Ask fast, Ben's got the beer in his hands and the customer's just about to hand him money.

He doesn't have ID and starts to show the wounds on his arms and explain that he just got out of the hospital and that "they" still have his wallet. Ben doesn't wait, he just puts back the beer before he even touches it. Very close call. Wonder how he drove his older Lincoln from the hospital without a driver's license. He's also drunk, which becomes abundantly clear after about two seconds of talking to him. No way. Sorry man, I should have asked sooner but no we can't serve you. Come back with ID when you're sober; you'll be more than welcome.

"No, you don't understand..."

"I understand. You have to have ID to be in here. State law."

"Nah man, you don't understand; I know this is a faggot bar..."

"OK, you've got to go."

I grab the maglight. He starts to back up towards the door.

How dare he use that word that way in my bar. He hasn't earned the right. Out in the foyer he says don't pull a weapon on him or he'll jump me. I tell him don't threaten me, just leave. He goes into his long hard luck story about how he's got a "faggot" son and just "wants to understand them" but he's unwilling to listen even for a moment as I try to explain I'm just keeping us open. "Wants to understand" my furry black ass. You'd think he could talk to his son, but apparently not. He probably thinks it a terrible disappointment and sufficient excuse to get shitfaced. You want to understand you son but won't talk to him or listen to his pervert comrades at arms.

So you come to Foxes to learn about the faggots? Excellent choice. Since you won't sit for the lecture, here's the practicum. Consider this lesson number one.

Welcome to Foxes. Get out.

We're not here for you to gawk at and you've made three bad mistakes, you're gone. You're wasted and you do not have ID and you dare use that word against us to our faces. Any one of those things is enough. Learn this, if nothing more: we do protect our kind, and yeah, specifically from creeps like you. Get out.

He hangs around in the lot for a while, talking to a native queen who happens by. I keep a close eye on him and he leaves a few minutes later. Let him get arrested and tell the cops he came from Foxes all he wants. We didn't serve him, and not only that, we made him leave. Idiot.

I also witnessed two DWI arrests across the street. It seems the little side streets flanking Foxes are among APD's more popular spots to stop motorists and seize their vehicles, whether they've got a checkpoint up or not. Of course I've heard stories from lots of guys about all the different bars. But I'd love to see a map of all the DWI arrests and related vehicle seizures in this town, showing how many happen at different specific locations over a set period of time. I would be willing to wager a dollar that significantly more happen around the gay bars way out on East Central than right downtown, where all the upscale straight bars are clustered. I drive right through downtown whenever they haven't got Central blocked off and while I see lots of cops there I have never seen a DWI arrest and/or vehicle seizure in progress. And honestly I'd dearly love to have my worst suspicions in that regard *not* borne out by the actual numbers -- I'd love nothing more than to see it down in incontrovertible black and white that the police are not, in fact, targeting us that particular way.

Aside from that it was a nice mellow crowd tonight. Some people were dancing, which is always nice, given the fact that we've always got music and lights whether anyone's dancing or not.

I need to be at Hartman not at one tomorrow but at noon, so I should really get some rest. But I'm enjoying this late-night radio show too much and don't want to spend a minute I could spend writing not writing 'til I know for a fact I'm not going back to jail, 'cause that's about all I want to do in there and there aren't even pens or paper. I should do laundry on Saturday and clean up my apartment some both Saturday and Sunday. We'll see if I do it. Again, since I'm not drinking (I'm not saying my drinking *caused* my apartment and car to get so messed up, though I'm sure it helped) I've got that much less of an easy escape from the squalor I live in and that much less (or more) to do with my time.

Sitting at Flying Star on Central and for the first time ever -- in years -- they've let me down. (Not a bad track record for any restaurant, btw.) Their internet connection isn't working. I only have a couple of hours a night that I can go online so I come here. I order a chicken pot pie and iced tea expecting to sit for a long time. The internet's not working. Some lady who works here resets the server. Nothing. Resets the firewall. Nothing. Agh!!! I'm turning back into Neanderthal. I just spent a bunch of money on food and I can't even get online! HELP! That's why I come here! I'm about to start throwing things and screaming.

No, wait, it's OK. It's fixed. Life goes on. No hissy fit from me today. Oh well.

Up in the air.

I am posting today for no reason. I have nothing whatever to say. That's not totally true. I was put on a project at Hartman today, correcting information in the contact files for all the community colleges in North Carolina that offer courses for CNA and/or HHA certification. There's less packing to do and I'm basically given the choice when I finish the invoice clerk's duties to either go early or work on the computers. I'd rather work on the computers even though it's windows 'cause I need the money and would rather keep myself busy these days. Today I even got to work upstairs. In a cubicle, no less! I was in heaven.

I work at Foxes tonight and expect it to be a fairly quiet night. I know I was kinda down on Foxes in my last post but somehow when the alcohol clears out of your body there's nothing quite as thoroughly disgusting as drunks and the dumb things they do. I still love that place. I'm no less dedicated to it than I was before my conditions of release stipulated that I couldn't drink at all; but I do find that even the very moderate (one drink a day) drinking I was doing while working was enough to sort of take a certain edge off being there for hours every night. It was like I had that much of something in common with everyone else present, I smelled just enough of alcohol myself that it rarely reached my nostrils from others unless they were completely bombed. It's very much like how your body's smell changes when you stop eating meat, or start up again, for that matter, and can tell who eats meat and who doesn't when you don't but can't when you do.

I'm very much up in the air right now. Assuming I don't get slapped with more than a few more days in jail the Hartman job is set to end later this year but might turn permanent if things keep going about like they seem to have been going these last couple of weeks. The Foxes job is not so temporary. Where will I be three months from now? In jail? Working at Foxes? Working at Hartman? Doing both? Doing neither? Damned if I know.

Yuck. Here's that creepy rastafarian couple. Thank god they moved elsewhere so I don't have to look at 'em. Turn me off my food faster than anything else (short of jail food) if they sit near me. I'm sure they think about the same of me so I don't feel too bad about being a bitch. I like the downtown Flying Star much better, now.

I've still got a couple of hours before I need to be at Foxes. Hours to kill. What else to do between now and then? I dunno. Why not walk up and down around Nob Hill for a while. Happy memories part of town. Why I moved here. Why not? Later.

I could get very used to this.

The office life, specifically.

Good pay. Easy, not idiotic, work. Nice coworkers. Good hours. Evenings free. Downright normalcy. Zero drama. No resentment from the very people who benefit from your presence. "Crisis" exemplified by the computer losing an important contact file or a letter going out a day late, no life or death situations at all. "I'm going crazy" meaning "something's not in its right place and I'm confused", not literally "I am in imminent danger of undergoing an acute psychotic breakdown and you'd better run for cover". In short: a job that doesn't slowly kill you.

I've got to make myself invaluable at Hartman. Not because I am afraid they won't like me or can replace me with anyone off the street but out of a combination of deep gratitude for all they've done for me already (more than I'd ever expect from freinds, let alone employee contemporaries, let alone the CEO) and because dear god I want to work there just as long as I am able. Best job I've *ever* had. Oh yeah. By far. Far and away. Hands down. No question. Nothing else compares. Not by a long shot.

The tricky part is I was hired as seasonal help. How can I make myself *so* useful that they feel they have to keep me around? Oh, yeah. Be really good at *everything* I do. Come early and stay late each day I can, or else finish up work early and find other things to do. Do *everything* *perfectly*. Without exception. Make everybody else's job easier without making a fuss about it. Pretty easy, I guess. That's about what I do anyway.

I'd love to be able to get out of Foxes, out from customer servicey situations of that sort completely. Honestly. I love that place but it's not a good place to spend every single night whether you're working there or not. I truly do believe it's haunted, and not exclusively with happy spirits. I do have nothing but admiration for the people who stay there or work in bars for years. It takes not desperation but dedication. I do not think I'll ever make bartender, and frankly, wouldn't want to at this point. As doorman I do not have to be polite to people. As barman I would have to be not just polite but entertaining for the entirety of my shift to many people whose company I absolutely can't abide.

Flying Star's closing. Damn. They cut back their hours. That's going around. So I guess they close at ten on weeknights. It's OK. I'll come back first thing tomorrow morning, hopefully.

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.

I have returned.

After 13 days radio silence, I have, at last, retrieved my laptop from the Evidence Room of the Albuquerque Police Department.

As I am sure you can imagine, there's a story there.

How much I ought to say I do not know for sure because I do face trial on 14 October. I wish I could say it were for something brilliantly noble and inspiring -- say climing the fence at CMB in Los Alamos -- but alas, it's for simple drunk driving. Well, actually aggravated drunk driving. Seems to be a bit of an occupational hazard in my line of work, especially in the gay bars, if you know what I mean. Dumb thing to do, at any rate, suffice to say. A taxi would have been cheaper.

So I spent 53 hours in Bernalillo County Jail. Everything bad that you've heard or imagined about jail's just the tip of the iceberg. It's hell. Every detail. Every second. I didn't think that I'd survive at certain moments, and felt totally cut off from all the world, and didn't have a clue who knew what or that people on the outside were working to spring me all the time that I was in there. I was shut off from all the world and never have felt so alone in all my life.

Winds up I'm bailed out by a drag queen now living in New York, originally from Dublin, whom I'd met just once -- the night I was arrested. We spoke of James Joyce and I gave him a ride from AMC to Foxes. Promised him a ride on Friday night in drag from his hotel so he wouldn't have to negotiate the front desk and a taxi and whatnot, just figured I'd save him the hassle since his hotel was practically on my way in to work. Well sir on Friday night I wasn't there -- I'd been in jail for nearly 48 hours at that point -- and he asks Alex where am I? Alex tells him and he says "what do we need to do to get him out?" Alex and Jay are willing to sign jointly to secure my bond, which has been lowered from $5,500 to $2,000 (since I "don't have any connections to the community" -- meaning blood relatives or a biological girlfreind into whose third party custody I may be released), but they still need 10% of the bond to bail me out and they don't have that much cash between them. This near total stranger pulls out two hundred bucks, gives it to Alex, who gives it to the bondsman, who gets me out of jail just a few hours later. He tells Alex I can repay him when I win the lottery and disappears.

I spend the rest of the week running around like mad. My car was in the tow lot way out by Isleta -- five miles past the last bus stop -- and Mark, the owner of Hartman Publishing gives me a desperately needed ride out there. I get my car. It's in pretty sad shape but mostly driveable, after I get two new tyres and one new rim. Heh. The alignment is still screwed. I file the necessary paperwork with DMV to contest the revocation of my driver's license under the Implied Consent Act just before the ten day deadline to do so automatically deprives me of the privilege of driving for six months. I call the Public Defender every day and leave as many messages as I can -- their voicemailboxes are almost always full. The paralegal assigned to my case calls me back yesterday and I'm apprised of penalties and advised against seeking recusal of the particular judge I've been assigned.

It's mostly out of my hands, now. All I can do is continue to comply with the conditions of release, which I have got *no* problem with, believe me. And finally after being bounced around from Information to Property to Evidence to Records back to Evidence within the APD and having my mother priority mail me my passport from Texas so I can prove to the evidence clerks who I am, I have retrieved my computer and notebooks and Chinese medical dictionary.

Life goes on.

Of course there's much more to it than that but that's about what I can say in the limited time before I head to work. Then there's the little problem of my facing trial; I'm probably a fool to discuss any of this at all with anybody, but oh well. I have always processed my life through writing. I *need* this computer just to make sense of all that's happened to me, of all that happens to me. When I go to trial I'm making sure a trusted freind has the computer just in case I have to do more time. As for the car, yeesh. Well. I'd rather have the laptop than the car if it came down to that. I hope it doesn't. Doubt it will. I'm not alone. So many people have done so much to get me back to where I am today -- back to some semblance of a real, normal life actually worth living. It's gonna be a while before this whole thing is behind me but at least I'm free to up and leave at will whatever place I'm in -- the Flying Star on Menaul at Wyoming, in this instance.

I think I'll do just that.

Be well.

Second busiest day.

Second busiest day in the publishing house's history and I hold up just fine and leave in good spirits. Today was nutty -- all the orders it seemed took seven boxes or had to have the invoices reprinted or went to three addresses or what have you. Hehe.

One of the bartenders from Foxes got jumped on the street near his home. Got a screwdriver through his left cheek and worked today in bandages. The guys who attacked him didn't ask for money or anything. Of course, I think it was a hate crime, but the guy who was attacked is convinced it was "totally random" even though they didn't get off with jack shit and I can't come up with any better reason for him to be attacked as visciously as he was. I dunno, man. Can you?

What else? Oh yeah. I have the night off at Foxes so of course I'm going in to spend the night at Foxes.

Later.

An exciting day packing books.

The new job for the publisher seems to be going *quite* well.

Met the owner today.

He has one of the same bumper stickers on the back of his car that I have on the back of my own. Surprise!

What do you know? It would seem the place I work's not just "gay-freindly" (whatever that means) but gay-owned. I *knew* it felt "different" -- *very* different from any job I've had before, including all the ones with nominally equal benefits &c.. But at the same time it's not the sort of job that's *about* being gay (although it seems to help) -- in other words, it's not at all like being the doorman at Foxes. We have more straight people working there than our own kind, I think. (Actually, we have one breeder working at Foxes, too: one of the daytime bartenders is married.) But the focus is on the details of just running the business, of getting things out on time, making sure they look good, and who cares who the guy who packed the box sleeps with, or doesn't, and I don't get flirted with, which is fine, five hours a day every day is more than enough of that for *any* human being, I assure you.

I like it. It's sort of a, well, integrated workplace. I feel like a human being. Not some "thing" to be exploited because he works ten times harder than his breeder counterparts on the one hand, and not like a piece of meat because he's "hot" and "available" on the other. So every single day I get to go between the integrationist and the liberationist tendencies of our society. The integrationist pays better, but the liberationist's about a million times more interesting and always seems to be more out in front.

Learned how to burn CDs at work today. They have a neat machine that burns seven in about thirty seconds flat. Wow. I want one!

Then I'm also getting into more and more of what my own laptop can do. I copied a DVD to the hard drive a couple of night ago. As simple as copying files. Heh heh! Too easy. I also subscribed to the podcast of Democracy Now since I seem to be working when it's broadcast and I *don't* want to miss it, *ever*. So *that's* what all this space on my hard drive is really for!

By the way if you're wondering why textbooks are so expensive it's because I'm paid a decent wage and don't send out the cruddy books that get damaged in shipping from the printer. Also because we send out tons of samples to instructors. So stay in school guys and buy lots of textbooks 'cause that's where my rent is comin' from.

Got two Katrina refugees in Foxes last night. Guess who were the stars of the evening!

What else? Oh yeah -- Flying Star on Central in Nob Hill's too queer for me. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but I swear the music they're playing softly is about 70% the same exact disco songs we play very loudly at Foxes and I do kinda wish I didn't have to listen to the same exact music ALL THE TIME! Oh well. This location's also a bit more run down than the downtown location which just barely opened up a few months back. But it's got some *very* happy memories for me and dernit I ain't gonna pay for more gas to drive farther and have less time than I already do online per day.

Enough for now. Later, you crazy cats.

Intercourt diplomacy.

I've been basically out and about, mostly working, for the last 36 or so hours. Only slept a couple of hours yesterday, haven't even been home but for then. I'm tired. It's three in the morning as I start writing this. I just got off work at Foxes. Wouldn't have been out so much for so long if I could have helped it.

What a night. Started out before I came on -- some guy came in just to use the bathroom and wound up having an explosive diarrhetic fit, dramatically missing the loo by roughly half a mile. Meanwhile the women's bathroom's toilet's overflowed and someone threw a roll of toilet paper on the floor, the soggy, stinking mass of which someone now has to pick up. (Wonder who that might be.) The front of the house is looking pretty bad, too, no empty ashtrays, chairs moved everywhre they shouldn't be, napkins and peanut shells and litter on the floor. Oh lovely. What a way to start the night, when I'm already tired. Alex was an angel and did the bathrooms, letting me do garbage in the lightly falling rain.

He's funny that way, you think from his demeanour that he'll be Mr. Impossible, but when it comes to really hideously unpleasant tasks it's like the two Goofy Gophers in the old Warner Brothers cartoons. "No, you go first", "no no, I insist" -- he and I almost argue over who's gonna do the *really* ugly thing and because he's got seniority I eventually defer to his judgment. I'm sure I'll have time to clean some really nasty bathrooms in my day, so why rush it? Eventually that guy comes back and I ask, let him in or no? He says -- surprise, surprise! -- hell no. I don't.

Then the bar's busyish. Friday night crowd. Started out a little bit morose with the happy hour stragglers but Ben, the bartender, put on videos from various Pride parades including one in San Francisco and the mood lightened considerably. Through the magic of the video machine, Don Schraeder put in what may very well be his only-ever appearance in Foxes, God bless him. (I've *still* got to return those books to him.) Mark, the DJ, was also pretty downright inspired, tonight.

Then Precious comes in, all out of breath. She reaches for her ID and I tell her basically honey you're one of the few people I totally trust to have it on you. What's wrong? Nothing much, she says, she's just been running because some guy was trying to kill her with a bat after she refused to have sex with him for free. (The volatile heterosexual male rapist libido strikes again.) Where is he? She doesn't know, she finally lost him just the other side of Wyoming, over a block away. How far she'd been running before that (in heels, of course, darling) I don't have a clue. Alex goes out to the street to look, readying his handcuffs; I just watch his back. No sign of the agressor. Eventually -- like maybe ten minutes later, *if* that -- she walks right back out again.

Fortress Foxes: last refuge of the dispossessed, safe haven for drag queens from bat-wielding straight men out to kill them for various really stoopid reasons. They take care of themselves, but when they need a safe place to go and be around people, they come to Foxes. And that includes those times when they need to be kept safe from their own kind.

Mickey pushed Jamie a couple of weeks ago inside the bar and is not to be let in until she's talked to Sid. Of course who comes in tonight all full of attitude but Mickey, and she says she has already talked to Sid and why don't we call him to find out. We do. She hasn't. She emerges from the bathroom to find she won't be served a drink because we called her bluff. That she and Jamie have made up does not matter. What matters is that Sid, the manager, needs to talk to her in person before she can ever be served another drink in his establishment again. She asks us to call Sid back. Sid's busy. He'll call back. She can wait. Or not. She leaves. It's very much a power play. She's gonna have to talk to him eventually, or else climb on the water wagon, or leave town.

Sid makes the rules. Anything goes at Foxes -- except for a few things -- mostly dangerous, illegal things. No drugs. No solicitation. No physical agression. He's absolutely serious, so are we, in his absence. And he's *always* a phone call away if there's even the slightest hint of a shadow of trouble. Anything goes at Foxes because a few things (and the list is *very* short, the things I mentioned above are really just about *it*; the rest's mostly Liquor Code stuff and some common-sense house rules) just absolutely positively don't. At all. Ever. Period. No questions asked.

Because of those absolute rules, we stay open. And yeah, they'd *love* to shut us down -- many of the queers along with most of the cops and politicians in this town, I'd gladly bet, because we're not always, in fact, the best place to pick up some "hot young thing" to go home with, because there are more nights we're not packed-to-the-rafters busy than nights that we are, because (believe it or not) there are those of us to whom being gay is about much more than sex, sex, sex, and sex, and because our continued existence is an embarassment to those who'd rather just forget each day what happened last night. Foxes has a memory three decades long and running strong.

But you: go out to any fag bar in this town on, say, a Thursday night and try to get your drink in a *glass* glass. I'm serious. Just try. It's plastic only, Thursdays, at AMC. At Pulse it's plastic always -- besides which, they gyp you with overpriced big drinks that are mostly ice and water. The Ranch may give you glass, but unless you're buying their bottled beer (the most expensive in town), the drinks are hideously inconsistent since nobody measures anything ever or learns to mix from recipes.

People complain about the rules at Foxes but keep coming back, not week after week maybe, but year after year, precisely because of them, however much they may complain. Yeah, man, we check IDs, even if you *were* born 1932, yes, the doorman *needs* to *know* that. You don't have to like it, I don't have to let you in. Especially if you strike me as even slightly drunk. We also don't get shut down whenever the police decide to raid the fag bars, usually right before elections. Yeah, all the bartenders *do* use the jigger to mix drinks -- and you know what? They actually know how to make a lot of very different drinks extremely well, even if most of the people sitting at the bar seem to be drinking mostly beer and think nothing of tipping change for a round of ten different drinks.

Alex bribes the DJ to embarass me with a dedicated song apparently entitled "I'm Too Sexy For My Shirt", since I've acquired a reputation of sorts for turning into a big old flaming faggot any time I sit at the end of the bar drinking martinis. (Sid truly makes the best this side of Musso & Frank's, by the way.) I also do some fancy catwalk turns while working door -- not for show, mind you, but simply because I have a limited number of axes down which I'll normally travel to keep clear open sightlines to key points in and around the bar, and use them to minimise the time there's no eye contact with anything relevant. I also have a collection of about ten thousand utterly exquisite shirts (all, indeed, for which I am *entirely* too sexy). As for the martini thing, what can I say? You grow up in El Paso, sometimes your best role model is Scott Thompson's Buddy Cole. Say what you will about me, I am one of a kind.

Alex gets his turn next with "Ice, Ice Baby", so all is relatively fair and even.

Then practically the whole upper eschelon of the Court comes in. They're doing the Sandias Court Performer of the Year Pageant tomorrow at the Ranch so Empress Iwanna is in town from Fort Worth to judge. She's utterly charming. Her Most Exalted Royal Majesty Empress XIII Mercedes, Her Royal Highness Princess XIII Sunset Diva Gigi Rae, Emperor XIII Ken, Emperor Emeritus XII Bill and a bunch of others are there (of course with Prince XIII behind the bar), all sitting around the famous "bitches' corner".

I'm terrified because a month ago these towering women with their intense eyes would breeze in resenting my asking for their IDs, and now they're all talking and pointing at me and giggling and talking some more and looking in my direction and I can't move from the door to defend myself in what I know damned well is gossip about me because people keep coming in. Yes, I do have a reputation. I'm loosening up a bit -- not in a bad way, mind you. But they're warming up to me, a little bit, as well.

It's absolutely terrifying to find myself being accepted, even welcomed, by the drag queens. It flips the whole equation upside down and turns it inside out: I'm supposed to respect *them*, because they have the guts I don't and gave us lousy rotten faggots everything the dykes didn't that we just take for granted, and hey, everybody! Look what a great guy the simple fact of my acknowledging that simple fact makes me! I've made a gesture of noblesse oblige to people slightly different from myself who've got it a bit harder than I do. The fact that they are not just getting used to me, not just barely tolerating my presence, but having fun with me is something of a sign that goodness gracious I must really be some sort of fucking freak fitting in. One of the Central Ave. "characters", perhaps. Who knows? Who cares? I'm starting to have fun myself, so why not just enjoy it?

I start to, when out of nowhere a fight *very* nearly breaks out. One woman runs out the door and a guy in a cowboy hat runs after her. She slams the door in his face and I run out after them. He's about to attack her, it seems, yelling "what the fuck did you say about my truck!?"; she's yelling back "all I wanted was a ride". I start -- *just* start to get between them outside when Morgan, a strong (and positively drop-dead gorgeous) surfer dude steps in and pretty much takes over breaking it apart. He goes off with the woman to talk to her -- they know eachother. The cowboy's freinds come out and talk to him. I'm very glad (but also just a bit embarassed) he showed up when he did, about two seconds after me, saving me the trouble of any absurd attempt at a heroic intervention. (Ah yes, it would have been such a perfect, classically tragic death in all the yet-unwritten operas to be based upon my life.) Eventually they all come in, then leave, then come back in again -- I take it the misunderstanding's cleared, the cowboy gives her a ride to wherever and spends most of the rest of the night kind of sulking.

Unbelievable the dumb things people fight over when drunk. "He looked at me wrong." Or as tonight, probably nothing more than a misunderstanding. Words not heard as uttered underneath the loud dance music, taken as the grossest insult possible, or threat. Who knows?

Then Alex gets sick. Quite suddenly. Pale as a sheet. Running out to the parking lot thinking he had to throw up. Winds up he didn't and he gets better before the end of the night but it still was a scare.

Tonight, I work alone. Alex is off so he can perform for the Pageant. It's my first Saturday on my own at the door. The show's not at Foxes, but you can bet *all* the queens will come over to Foxes as soon as the show's over. I know where to stand and what to do. Tonight the judgment calls are mine to make. I don't have to ask anybody. You're drunk, you're obnoxious, you messed up our bathroom, you can't come in, you have to leave. I'm wearing all black, except for the red in my red and black shirt. My clothes need to convey the message: "STOP". I have to harness the power of the hardest word I've ever had to learn to speak: "no". Why? So everyone else can have a grand old time.

It's almost guaranteed to be an interesting night. I just hope it's not like yesterday, I hope it's interesting because it's fabulously good, I hope the energy in the barroom's positive all the way. I don't want to throw anyone out. So -- better to deny entry in the first place to anyone and everyone who *might* cause trouble. No escaped felons or drug dealers or addicts or bums or drunks or psychopaths or moochers in my bar. It'll be busy. We can afford to alienate a few people we don't want there in the first place.

It's seven. I go in at nine. I'm going to try and kill a little bit more time online before I head in but I want to get there early. Ciao.

Three jobs.

Started a day job yesterday. So now I've got myself three jobs, if you count working for Charles whenever that opportunity presents itself.

The job is in a warehouse packing and shipping books all around the country. The company is Hartman Publishers and they specialize in textbooks for CNAs -- they feature such charming titles as "Nurses Assistants Handbook Workbook" and "Assisting with Nutrition and Hydration in Long Term Care". It's a temporary job (through December, probably) from craigslist and so far I really like it. The pay is very good, the hours are great, and most importantly, so seem to be the people that I work with. Completely different pace and attitude towards a lot of things that bothered me in restaurants. We *won't* sell slightly damaged goods. I *won't* get approached and gazed at by total strangers who "remember me from somewhere".

I'm basically the mail clerk in an office, now, in addition to being the doorman at Foxes. I wonder which is the Clark Kent and which the Superman.

So -- thirty years old and I am *finally* out of foodservice. If I'm smart I'll bring my kitchen stool to work, though, since being on my feet all day like that does get to me. I'm wearin' out.

So I work yesderday afternoon, then go to R.B. Winnings to go online and eat something only to be told the kitchen's closed and normally I couldn't even get coffee after five except they've got a poetry reading that night. So I eat a little granola date bar and have my two permitted refills of coffee. It comes to the same it would have cost for a huge blueberry pancake and unlimited coffee at Flying Star; and the person behind the counter's not exactly rude to me, but not exactly helpful, either. I get the clear impression that I really shouldn't be there. It wasn't "all in my mind"; I'm just *very* sensitive to that. It wasn't really pronounced, either, to be fair, and I have also had exceptionally good service there from time to time. But why the hell should I have to put up with that anywhere that I spend money?

It's almost enough to make me stop tipping, at least when it *isn't* earned. Then again, what better insult than to tip some pathetic nobody *too* well?

Winnings, I *adore* your coffee, love your plants, enjoy your quirkitude, and all of that, but man, I'm very, very sorry -- as a business, you're just not fulfilling my needs. I can't depend on you. I *can*, and *do*, depend on Flying Star. I genuinely hate the way they're opening up a Satellite right across from you (I never plan to go there) and do not want to see you die but I can't go online when you're open and don't make enough to eat out more than once a day and little granola date bars just don't cut it for me.

I then went to work at Foxes. No big news there, a fairly quiet night. Chased one drunk guy out of the parking lot. (A very slight exaggeration, that: in fact I merely went out front with the maglite; he saw me and said he was leaving, then left.) Everyone who was out was at AMC.

Good god. I'm in the Nob Hill Flying Star (formerly the Double Rainbow) on Central because it's closer to both jobs than Downtown and gas is up to three and change. It's filling up with queers. Couples. They're talking just like normal people. Out in the open and everything, where people can see them. (Are they completely mad?) There are a few breeders out too but without the screamin' kids. Reminds me why I moved out here. There's no place like this in El Paso.

Driving home saw the cops in front of me stop one lane of traffic just to bug a couple of guys outside of AMC who were apparenlty making out. It's not surprising. They stop so many people around our bars specifically you might be forgiven for thinking Maryor Chavez and the police chief were both homophobes. At any rate our hired security guard was there at the same time and I'd just gotten an important call so I had to move on.

The call was from a good freind who shall remain anonymous. I'm tired and I want to go to bed, but I make the mistake of calling this fellow back and winds up he's suicidal. Or at least talking about it like he is. He's very capable of it. He's tried it in the past. So it's not just a "come and listen to me" ploy, though honestly, that always seems to be a factor. He's been out drinking and is in really bad shape. Desperate and very, very lonely. Had conversations with three or four people in the bars but wound up not really getting anywhere with any of them so between that and some other stuff he's basically convinced his whole life is worthless. I go over to his house, we go out to get him cigarettes, and I spend the rest of the night basically sitting up with him.

My reward: a DVD full of *superb* silent era Felix the Cat cartoons from Walgreens. More than I could have ever reasonably hoped for.

I get home around 6:30 am, take a bath with the cats (they're fascinated by the running water) and fall asleep to the sounds of the world falling apart around me thanks to NPR. Wake up with maybe four hours sleep to head in to Hartman Publishing and we've got a big load of books going out. The delerious joy of laughter at seeing customer's strange names -- just try and imagine pronouncing "Isibor Joy Nosebge" or "Mark Crsbo" while folding a few hundred letters sometime -- is a special thing. Then over here to write this. Next to Foxes. I need to be sure and go home alone tonight and sleep. Working graveyard for over a year taught me that -- a sleepless night now and then never killed me but every night sleepless for months on end very probably will.

No day job tomorow, next day, or Monday -- just Foxes, and I probably have Sunday off, there, meaning I need to go in for chicken. I may actually break down and go to a laundromat now that I have laundry that needs to be done but it isn't such an unmanageable pile yet that I can't move it.

Life is good.