Reflections on the last 7,573,824,000 frames.

Watched "Ed Wood" tonight for the first time in probably ten years tonight.

Ten years.

One decade.

Seven billion, five hundred seventy-three million, eight hundred twenty-four thousand frames of film.

Last time I saw it I projected it.

I knew vast stretches of the film by heart. Not only dialogue or motion but every single frame. Backwards and upside down, passing the gate. Seeing it again was like meeting an old, familiar freind. I counted frames, at speed.

The theatre I showed it in no longer stands. I never worked more closely with film than in the Cinema 150's dual booths with narrow catwalk inbetween. Never saw the images projected larger than on the D-150 wraparound screen in the Dome. It was a thoroughly magical place. I pulled the strings: I flipped the switch, I laced the Norelco projectors and lowered the music, dimmed the lights, ran the films, lit the lamps, raised the curtain, opened the shutters and encased 864 persons at a time in the three stories high, sharp focus world of any film I ever showed, and showed some of the greatest ever made.

I lugged the cans up countless stairs. Locked and unlocked doors, opened and closed. Made popcorn at the exact right moment, every time. Built and tore down the films, sometimes for days on end without a break. Test ran each single film before exhibiting. Transferred beheaded and defooted spliced nine-reelers both on and off the ring between platters across the catwalk on particleboard sliders while both sets of platters ran above and below me as I crouched between to prepare the next feature. Sold tickets, skimming thousands off the top in discards making candy sales look good. Won stolen money from the managers in late-night backroom poker games. Did lots and lots of absolutely crazy things in there I won't recount. (Eric sitting in the balcony and a "This Section Closed" sign come to mind, for some odd reason.) And started each and every show on time -- exactly.

To the second.

Meaning that for a movie starting at 8h10, the shutter opens on the spliced-together, properly tensioned, running at speed film at precisely 20:10:00, without fail, in focus, itermittent and shutter rightly timed, sound rightly looped, and ran to completion with neither breaks nor other damage to the priceless giant spools of film representing the combined fruits of thousands of people's labour, often spanning several continents.

Knew every nook and cranny of that place. All its secret hiding places. How to get up on the roof with its inimitable view of the Space Needle six short blocks away. Where to hide things -- or people.

The people that I called my freinds all fell rapidly from the face of the earth. I still don't know what happened to them all. (Ken, Eric, Jodey, Bill, Andy -- you'll be remembered, if not all of you entirely fondly.) When I raised the lights and looked around and saw that none were left, I took a Greyhound bus back home to Texas in the middle of the night. I guess none of 'em loved it all as much as I did, enough to escape with the memory of the place and time indelibly etched in memory before their complete self-destruction by a thousand different kinds of utter madness.

In those ten years' time I have relived in person many segments of the film in the places where its real subject lived. Now on the eve of my second anniversary in Albuquerque the film comes back to me to stand as bookends for the "research and development" phase of my existence on this earth. For quite some time I lived in North North Hollywood, you see, living something like Ed Wood's own "nightmare of exstacy". My first night there -- eventually spent sleeping on the floor under a Director's desk from Disney's Burbank Studios (circa Pinnochio) surrounded by Avery Daffys and Porkys and Grim Bettys and Ub Mickeys and Oswalds -- my host took me out to the Blacklight Club. Enjoyable, but neither my first nor last encounter with the women who aren't "really" women, to the apparent chagrin of my otherwise most gracious host, who must have hoped he was corrupting me.

It was impossible to find Ed's house when sober. Enough alcohol in you from where he bought it at the Circus Liquor in North Hollywood and you would find yourself drawn there. Same house every time. Impossible to find in daylight.

Right next to Circus was the North Hollywood Spa. What a place. Still the seventies in there. If you understand, you understand, and if you don't, you don't, and I'll just leave it there. Cost me what -- fifteen or twenty bucks? Well spent. Would never, again, naturally. But wouldn't live now without having already gone, either.

Torrential flood of memories unleashed upon me now. Too much, too much to write about. So many words per picture. Multiply by a thousand the above number of frames, and there's my life. These ten crazy damn years. Priceless. Long spool of film loosely wound. Run time to time. Do not bend or abrade, scratch, or shred. Do not burn. Splice only to repair.

The social worker.

There was a state representative's car parked in our parking lot when I got to Foxes. I got a couple of pictures but won't post 'em here 'cause I've got absolutely no idea why the car was there and one of the things people come to Foxes for is anonymity, so you'll just have to take my word on it. Or not. See if I care. Of course the staff didn't know who it was (politics? what's that?), but rumour was that he'd been there between such and such hours and left at such and such a time with so-and-so. Bizarre.

Another deadass fuckin' quiet night. Only event worthy of note was two people who came in to get out of the cold. It was down in the lower twenties.

The first was a native queen who was wearing dark sunglasses late at night. I wondered why and someone I worked with made the rather cynical, unhelpful comment that "hookers always have to be stylin'", loud enough to be overheard. I'm worried that she's either drunk or stoned; she *is* behaving kinda weird in a hard-to-pin-down sort of way, but they've already agreed behind the bar to serve her one drink only so I have to back 'em up. She's got ID.

A couple of minutes after being served she takes off her glasses and her right eye's black as night. She's also got bad bruises above her left eye covered by her hair. I ask her what happened? She says her boyfreind hit her and she explains she "kind of asked for it". I sit and talk with her a while, and basically tell her nobody has *any* right to do that to you, not for *any* reason. *Nobody*. Dead-on eye contact with her throughout. I ask her if she'd be willing to call a number if I give her some. I get her a flyer from Esperanza shelter and staple a strip with Agora's local hotline number on it. Tell her very clearly more than once this one's in Santa Fe but specializes in LGBT abuse and that one's local but is only staffed 'til midnight and either one should be able at least to give you a good referral and the Esperanza one should be able to get you someplace safe tonight if you're in danger. I offer to let her use my cellphone but she says thank you so much, no, it's ok, I have to call them from my own turf. She says she's been in recovery and understands how it works and asks me why I'm even interested in this sort of thing and I tell her about Kenneth and she says she has to deal with it in her own way and is sort of processing things at the moment and appreciates the flyer and says she'll call, but not just now, and not from Foxes. OK. Can't do much more than that.

What amazes me is that when Alex and Chip see her eye and see what I'm doing, they back off. They answer the phone so I won't have to, even though I do jump up to get it. The crude comments cease. They don't even involve me in their back-and-forth banter which serves as entertainment when it's quiet. They don't even banter, for a while. Basically, they allow me the space that I need to do the work I'm really there to do, within the established limits of their serving her one drink.

I can't imagine the staff in a straight bar working together this way.

I seem to be taking on the role of the bar's resident social worker. Honestly. I kind of like it. It's not my place to judge people beyond this person's drunk and can't come in or sober and can.

I got a number for the Rescue Mission from one of the guys at one of the meetings at the club. They've got a van they run 'til ten o'clock and a hotline to call the van to pick people up off the streets and take 'em someplace warm where they can eat and sleep. I don't know anything about the Rescue Mission as an organization, and frankly wonder whether I really want to know. It sure is helpful though to know that at least for that first hour between when I start my shift and people show up for the drag shows I've got people I can call if someone's coming into Foxes not for booze so much as shelter. At least for that one hour of my shift I don't have to turn them out, but can offer something probably a little more compassionate than "off the property".

The second guy was Josh -- a regular. He was "pendulum walking" and slow to respond. Had him breathe on me which he avoided several times. Told him he couldn't come in. Apologised. Let him call out to Chip who came over and agreed with me he was drunk but agreed to let him in but serve him no liquor. Thank gawd almighty it has finally happened -- we can let a regular come in to sit and call a cab even if they're already drunk just so long as we don't serve him alcohol. Josh has never caused problems. He does get shitfaced drunk though, and goes fairly catatonic when he does. Alex called his cab before the address slipped his memory and I extended my condolonces to one of the drivers over the death of another cabdriver from the same company and his two fares a few nights back when all three were killed by a drunk driver. The ironies alone are almost sickening.

The other night -- last Thursday -- the latest edition of the Voice came out. I did a little happy dance when I saw that the calendar submissions I'd placed were accepted. For what? The times and places of the queer AA meetings. Finally -- that information's actually inside the bars. Tucked quietly away where it belongs: where it can just be found by anyone who may be interested.

Alex comes over wanting to know what I'm so goddamn happy about. I shut the Voice at once and go all goofy on him so he won't see what I'm looking at and focus instead on how "weird" I am. He does, but then says says fine, I'll find it myself. Then I open it again and what's on the very next page? I swear. A full-page spread with pictures from last week's drag show benefit for a guy with lymphoma and the word FOXES in big letters in a headline right across the top of the page. He sees what I'm looking at. Oh. Is that it? He shows Chip. Chip shows everyone else. Look! Free advertising! That would have cost us thousands of dollars! I think Chip may even be thinking about taking out a smaller ad of some sort in the Voice at this point. I quietly say "there was bad blood between Sid and the publisher but it never hurts to be in their good graces" and shut up. Chip knows I got the Voice back on the shelf so why the hell should I go blaring "this is all my doing!!!" when it wasn't? He also knows I got that story in the last time the cops raided all the gay bars last July. So now the court's gonna be doing calendar submissions in the Voice, too, and who cares why what happened or what I was *really* dancing all over about? Confusion abounds, but once again everyone's happy.

Got my thirty-day shiny object today. The group was out of 'em (they're as disorganized as the drinking queers, sometimes) so one of the older guys who I adore gave me his. A little worn but with a lot more meaning having passed down as it did. This was the guy with whom I had a conversation about cartoon animation for the first time since I left LA.

I'm at Cafe Istanboul right now. The fresh falafel smell uplifts the air. The three army guys at the next table are talking about drag queens. I can't help but wonder why but dare not ask. I'm inbetween court-ordered screening and Hartman. Mr. Barnes isn't entirely so bad as I have made him out to be. Oh man he's still got issues but after today I have to give him credit for trying. Besides which I'm not exactly his normal clientele -- he deals mostly with really hardcore young guys in for their third or fourth drug charges and what have you. So we have got conflicting personalities. Somehow I'll muddle through. Be well.

The layoff.

So finally the temporary job comes to a close.

Hartman gave me over two weeks notice today -- they're happy with me, all of that, but there's just not sufficient business to justify the expence of keeping me on after about mid-December. So as of the 16th I'll no longer be working there. I'll give 'em two really good weeks.

Mixed feelings about it. I can definitely make good use of the time off. On the other hand I have gotten somewhat used to having that money come in. On the other hand a lot of it wound up going to court-related costs. On the other hand I need to eat. And finally what it comes down to for me is I'm kind of glad I won't be working for very much longer for the people who were so helpful to me when my life fell apart absolutely. Why? Because frankly it isn't fun to be "the criminal" in an office situation. Even when everybody's wonderful to you and you're a pretty damn good worker. Maybe especially. It's like you always owe them, and frankly it kinda sucks.

What next? Oh goodness, I don't know. I might try CNA training at Manzano del Sol where Mercedes works in her day job as an LPN. Flying Star downtown's having a hiring fair but I really don't want to work there -- I want to be a customer there -- only. Not that I haven't applied several times in the past but now I know I'm worth better and my application always wound up getting lost or I wound up taking another job. Three times it hasn't worked out and I figure it's not meant to -- better just to stay a customer there.

This does mean what I'd been planning for has happened -- I'm back down to working at Foxes for my dependable income. It's gonna be next to *nothing*. As in enough to pay bills and rent and then worry about whether to buy gas for the car or food for me or litter for the cats. I'm about where I was financially oh say a week or two before my arrest. It's been grand having the day job that pays almost twice as much but it hasn't been entirely real. I think I might finagle a good reference out of Hartman but there's no way to be absolutely sure, just in case something else that's officey comes along.

At Flying Star now on Menaul. This is the store that wasn't supposed to happen. It's like the test location for some of the design features of the downtown one -- odd. Hard to explain. No outlets anywhere. Not enough windows. Nice but not nice enough. The L-shaped dining room is pretty dull and boxy and there aren't nearly enough booths. I'm in one now which is a half-circle around a circular table and it's not *quite* comfortable. Somehow it feels like a Denny's, which maybe it was at some point in its past. Yeah, downtown's my favourite.

Off to a meeting now to get a shiny object signifying thirty days. That's nice. I need a shiny object right about now. Later.

My spot.

I'll forego another lengthly post in favour of posting a photograph of the view of the restaurant where I go online from my favourite perch atop it all. My table, at the Flying Star, downtown -- 723 Silver. The one I use when I don't care about charging the battery. There's another I sit at which has an outlet when I do. Basically though I've got two tables that are *mine*.



If you know where this is shot from don't you dare go in and take my spot when I'm not working and might pop in for a while. I've got so little time to spend on this computer in this place it makes me mad when someone's in my spot. And when I'm mad I'm mean.

OK, so I'm not fooling anyone. But seriously. Please don't take my spot. Thank you.

Cold front.

Sitting by my window now, knowing that winter's on its way. Just like last year, the next door neighbours put out the christmas wreath the day after thanksgiving, and today they started playing their old christmas carols from the fifties just barely loud enough that I can make 'em out through the lath and plaster walls.



The sky's gunmetal gray and overcast. Big cold front moving in down from the Northwest. The leaves have gone from golden yellow to icky greenish brown and are just waiting for a hard freeze and strong breeze to knock 'em off the trees. No birds around at this hour. I am seriously contemplating going to Flying Star because although I could do lots around this place I figure what the heck. Then again what I'm really after is coffee and online access, and I can't go there without spending at least ten bucks on food, while I'm still eating turkey and feeding it to the cats, besides. Maybe I'll go to a meeting at the club where I can get coffee for a buck and worry about internet access later. Surely there's nothing urgent waiting for me online at this very moment. It'll also give me more time by my window before it gets dark.

Aside from working Foxes I've got four days completely off, which is pretty fantastic. Feels like a real holiday. No DWI school (last class next week -- woohoo), no homophobic screening counsellor, no Hartman.

My checks finally arrived today. I'm two months late right now in paying utilities and cellphone bills but got 'em in the mail today. I ordered the checks from the same company I've always ordered from before but for whatever reason they never arrived. First time that's ever happened. Shipping/billing address confusion, basically -- they shipped 'em out but to the billing address and on finding out I wasn't there took back the checks and destroyed 'em without telling me. I'm glad of that, at any rate, but what a mess. They also sent me out an extra checkbook cover -- by mistake, I guess. It's really nice so what the heck, I think I'll quietly hang onto it as a consolation prize for getting them late. Of course I'll still order from them next time. Plenty of blame to go around (the company, the post office, and me), and once they knew there was a problem they fixed it *immediately* just like it was *all* their own responsibility, even air expressing me my checks when I'd not paid for air express.

Felix the cat checks naturally, as always. The designs change and these ones are, well, frankly, kinda ugly. Felix looks either angry or distressed in most of these. There's one of him sitting in a stalled car, appropriately enough. Too bad I paid off the full year's worth of interlock, 'cause I know where I'd use those if I hadn't.

I simply adore this window. There's a Snow White tree right outside, meaning it's got a face in the bark made out of knotholes. There's another which is Adam's tree -- meaning the Adam carved his name in relief in the bark. This place is fairly magical. I feel as though I stand nearby the center of the universe. It's nice and quiet. In the summer all's activity, especially with the Dairy Queen open. But now it's downright peaceful, and I like it.

I really must get this apartment into shape. I want to live here for a good long time, but it's so overwhelming I don't know exactly where to start. I'll talk to Ferdinand about it. Seems I can't do more on any given day than keep it from getting worse -- at best I do laundry or clean the catbox. Too bad it's not as easy to get and keep organized as a computer.

The air is turning taupe. It's now shifting slowly through various shades of pink. People are walking with their kids to and from Central in front of me on the last unpaved street in Albuquerque. Maybe tonight is the parade night, the one with all the lights. I guess I'll see.

One year ago I was working at Frontier. The holidays had just started meaning I'd barely begun to ramp up on production of tortillas since everybody wanted to send 'em everywhere. One year ago this moment I'd have either been struggling for sleep against whatever noises kept me up or worrying I'd finally fall asleep before I had to get to work. I think I'm moving in the right direction.

Feral cat climbs the Snow White tree. Orange and white. Perches up high and watches people going by.

Yeah, it's parade night, clearly. I can hear it starting now. Later.

From watching the start of the parade I went to the club. I've never seen so many parades as in Albuquerque. Maybe it has something to do with living and working on Central.

The club was fine I guess. There was a big meeting so what the heck I sat in on it. It was one of the dreaded "god meetings" where that was the topic of discussion. I got nearly free coffee and got to listen to people's life stories without having to chime in myself so what the heck, I've got no complaints.

Then to a video rental place where I applied for and got a membership, since now I'm finally licensed again. Checked out Stewie Griffin, Kinsey, Dr. Strangelove, and Ed Wood on DVD. Nice to be able to.

Then to Griff's for a triple giant cheeseburger, which is what I always get when I just want to fill up for four bucks. It's right across the street from Foxes.

Then to Foxes, and whoo boy does the cold weather bring the weirdos out -- or in. Not to be uncompassionate, but honestly -- 'tis the season when people go to bars because often they're the only places that'll let 'em in. Not Foxes, not anymore. It's kinda cruel, yeah, but also self-protection. The kind of people who go to bars just to get out of the cold are a weird lot, to say the very least; having nothing to lose they're the most likely to start trouble when you say time to leave. So I don't let 'em in in the first place. That is my job, and not my favourite part by far, I can assure you.

I've taken to endangering my health to tell the drunks. If I feel even slightly uncertain as to any given person's inebriation status (cold wind being quite enough to make a person stagger through the doors), I just tell them breathe on me. Yeah, seriously. I do it in just such a way it looks to anyone they're with like I've cocked my head to listen to 'em say something. So no embarassment for them, even if it is a little weird. Since now I have to blow into my car each time I drive, I have zero compunctions about making certain people blow on me to get into the bar, and can with absolute certainty say they did or didn't smell of liquor and can't or can come in.

There is some consolation to turning away the homeless people in applying our rules evenhandedly regardless of class or race or sexuality or anything else. A very well dressed older couple came in all full of attitude today. I recognised them from the week before and didn't bother carding them but they still bitched at Albert about getting carded last week. Result? He cut 'em off after round one for being belligerent. It seemed a little harsh to me but heck, I'm gonna back him up 'cause he has done the same for me without bugging me about why, and who knows what he put up with from them that I couldn't even see or hear. He politely refused to serve 'em another drink, then refused to acknowledge their presence when they demanded after being told no.

They walked over to the Ranch and came back maybe an hour later. I told 'em as they stood outside sorry can't let you in. Why not? Because the bartender says so. But can we have the reason why? Because he says you can't, not my decision, not my problem, chain of command, you see. They were pests so why should I want to get into a conversation with them about why they weren't allowed back in and but but but but but but but even though I knew precisely why? They walk in like they own the place and give us shit and that's enough reason to deny entrance and we're surely not required to explain the law regarding serving drunks to them.

Then they demand that I call them a cab. Not "would you", no "please", just "call us a cab" barked like an order. Hell no. I do not take commands from former customers. (If they'd asked nicely I'd have done it in a heartbeat, and even let 'em wait inside.) They were walking anyway, so I let 'em get a tiny taste of what it's like to be homeless in a snowstorm, fucking obnoxious snots. *That's* what you get for being total fucking shithead dicks. Thrown out of Foxes in the cold just like a drunken indian. You could see it on their faces. Total disbelief. In perfect form, with politeness worthy of a dooorman at a really fancy bar, I let in a very working class native guy while they were going through this which made 'em even more irate. I didn't lay a finger on 'em, just denied entry, preventing any real problems and giving me considerable amusement as they stewed. We're gonna call the cops, they say. Please do. My name is so-and-so. (Thanks, Robin, of bus 409 for giving me that line.) But can we have the reason? The reason is that we at Foxes reserve the right to refuse service to anyone at any time for any reason. Good night. I slam the door with the demonstrative finality that only the doorman can manage. They get on their cellphones (hardly *needed* me to call their cab, just wanted someone to do their bidding) and call the police (to complain about our actually complying with the liquor code -- ha, ha) and a taxi and are gone about twenty minutes later. Idiots.

Then there was the guy who called saying he'd already called the cops because somebody hit on him and he was straight and was told they couldn't help. Duh. I told him honey it's a gay bar but gay or straight unwanted sexual advances are unwanted sexual advances and if you come back and it happens again and whoever won't leave you alone just tell the staff, not the cops, and we absolutely *will* take care of it. Uhm, oh, ok. Thanks. Click. Fucking weirdo. Surprise surprise, it's no longer a punishable crime to cruise people in gay bars.

Then there was the "straight" guy from Portland who came in with his "girlfreind" and spent about half the night cruising me really crudely as only a bad closet case can. Real old school tearoom technique, very retro with a downright fifties feel. I didn't call the cops on him, regardless of the fact he lacked panache.

Then there was the snowstorm, which was lovely. Wasn't cold enough to stick, though.

Then there was Mitchell C. Cohn, who can be reached at (707) 840-0869. (Ain't Caller ID a grand thing?) He's either insane or a crank caller. I'm guessing he's a combination of both who has used waaaay too many drugs, besides. He calls every single day -- four times tonight -- to ask whether if he comes to Albuquerque he'll get "run out of town for wearing a tie-dyed t-shirt and flashing the peace sign". I tell him every single time nah man, Albuquerque's fine with that, we're very diverse culturally, yada yada yada.

All of which would be fine and well except he keeps calling us back. And he always winds up talking to me, asking the same exact questions, getting the same exact answers. Night after night. Four times tonight! Like we're the hotline for guys with tie-dyed t-shirts to call and figure out where in the country they can visit without hitting trouble. And he never lets it rest at "sure, come on over". He wants to talk for fifteen or twenty minutes at a time about what kinds of reactions he's gotten from people in other parts of the country. Then he wants to speculate about why it's like that in Minnesota, or Seattle, or Texas, or wherever else, getting into all sorts of frankly ignorant notions about race memory. He's probably extremely lonely and would love to talk to anyone about this subject which so clearly fascinates him, if anyone felt inclined to discuss the matter with him in great depth. Unfortunately as doorman I don't have time to deal with him nearly as much as he would like, therefore I've simply stopped taking his calls altogether in the hopes he will give up.

This simple step seems not to have occurred to anyone else working in the bar.

Just wait 'til I get the name and number now of one of the obscene/threatening variety. I think I'll actually report them to authorities before I post their information here. Mitchell is annoying but apparently harmless. Some of the calls we get are downright sick.

Stewie's story might well have been better left untold. Hilarious but disturbing. Cartoons have that effect on me. They always have and always will. I don't know why, but there's no getting away from it. Nice that they finally did something really centered on the dog and baby.

My special brand of bigotry.

I have a strange suspicion that one of the reasons Ferdinand's trying to get me to attend straight meetings too is so I won't use the meetings as a hunting ground. There's a term I've heard thrown around a couple of times about a thirteenth step which I take to be a completely bogus bad thing people sometimes do in queer AA specifically. Hm. Perhaps I should just ask him straightforwardly about it since it's not my intention to do any such thing, nor to allow it to be done to me. Might clear the waters just a bit. Then again maybe I should just not worry about it but maintain my awareness every bit as much as if the meeting-goers were the people in the bar. Why not?

Cruising is one of the farthest things from my mind at this time. (Not quite out there with buying a house, but not far off, either.) "Meeting people" isn't, but that's not the same thing exactly, is it? The people in the groups still represent to me a sort of mass of humanity with which I have a lot in common and might emulate selectively in some particulars. Not drinking seems as sensible a starting point as any. I'm grooming and dressing better than I have in years, and that's a huge improvement. Wearing ties almost every day again just like I did in high school (at my peril) and for the first time since then, I feel like I'm dressed correctly. The fifteen-dollar cashmere winter coat helps, too. As do the seventy-years-out-of-fashion hats I've taken from the closet for the colder nights patrolling the parking lot at Foxes. Finally I'm dressing like a flaming faggot again and I simply adore it and wouldn't have it any other way.

So basically I'm sitting here worrying what other people think of me. That isn't good. Where did this come from, I wonder. It's got to be one of those character traits we develop in order to survive. And I seriously believe that while they can blow up out of all reasonable proportion, to cut them away would be extremely risky, even if it could be done. Same thing as with that little voice that tells me after the fact I should have done something differently. That's simple self-awareness, really, run rampant.

But honestly. I do not understand the breeder population. I've tried. They make no sense to me. They're unbelievably dirty and generally crude. I do not understand the way they think and don't think I even want to. I know there are some good ones out there but honestly the fewer that I have to deal with statistically the better.

It's not that queers are better people. We do incredibly cruel and selfish things to eachother on a regular basis and play mindgames with ourselves and with eachother that would make most straight men reel if they were even capable of comprehending our motives, which they are absolutely not. I surely wouldn't want my daughter marrying one of their kind.

There's nothing wrong with being straight, I guess. Nothing seriously wrong, at any rate. Well, nothing terribly seriously wrong. OK. I'm lying. As far as I can tell they're all completely sick. We may destroy ourselves, but they're the ones that rape women and overpopulate the globe. Six million and exploding exponentially each passing day. A predatory virus overtaking the host organism known as "earth". I should feel sorry for them, really, since they seem incapable of changing. Not that I'm heterophobic. Some of my best freinds are straight people. My own mother is a breeder of sorts.

But I feel sorry for homeless people, paranoid schizophrenics, and habitual criminals too without particularly wishing to spend inordinate amounts of time with them. Where breeders are concerned I'm totally OK with having them serve me food on occasion and clean up after my messes so really I do understand they have their rightful place in a well-ordered society, so long as they keep their chosen perversions more or less to themselves, which they're clearly quite incapable of doing.

This is absurd. I have become a bigot.

And I adore my bigotry. That might just be a little problem.

As to historical causes for resentment, I have plenty, I assure you, without going into grizzly details. Still it's slightly insane. I literally do not go to businesses I know to be predominantly straight. Maybe that's not a bad thing since the queer ones seem to always need whatever help they can get. But frankly if a business doesn't have more queers working in it than the general population has living in it I'm just not interested in spending money there if I can possibly avoid it. If I am treated just the least bit shabbily or know that they have homophobic policies in place, even out of unmalicious ignorance, I simply don't go there. The slightest hint or expression of hostility's enough to get my tongue wagging.

Hmmph. Why is this cropping up right now? It can't be purely accidental. Everything in my life seems to happen for a reason. Even getting thrown in jail has good results. Perhaps this is something I must explore.

Thanksgiving MMV.

Eighty-seven minutes later, he is snoring.

He'd called around 2h44 am. His best freind since high school who just got out of jail is out drinking again and he has no idea where he is. Meanwhile this guy's mother blames him for his son's drinking and there's no support even when he does the right thing all the way.

His other freind, the brother of his freind who got arrested, had been a total idiot. A total fucking drama queen incapable of handling anything with no sense of priorities, who having just seen his brother arrested turns a trick in the parking lot at Foxes after closing time, throwing himself at all the drunks as they walk out ready to go with anyone who'll have him. Lucky for him he's the one who got the twenty from the stranger, not his freind, 'cause who knows where they'd be now if his freind had gotten it instead. As it was they managed to get to a hotel room where the trick his freind had turned tried time and again to get him interested in sex and drinking but no, he wasn't being stuck up, he just wasn't interested in that right now because his best freind got arrested. He wound up sleeping on the floor.

They wouldn't have gone to a hotel room in the first place except his freind insisted on it, refusing (now that they had a cab) to go home to his mother and he wasn't willing to abandon him. His freind kept drinking and slept with the trick who'd freeloaded their cab to his hotel in exchange for putting them up for the night. Then the trick tried to talk him out of his change from cabfare, but no, he wouldn't part with it, whatever that guy wanted it for, that's not why it was given by the stranger and they'd need it soon enough. The freind he'd been with in the parking lot was useless and he wound up spending most of the next day on the phone with police and bondsmen.

He'd called the stranger up earlier in the day just as soon as he got his phone back to say thank you and let him know he'd pay him back. But this time he was terrified about his freind who couldn't legally drink but was out drinking somewhere anyway. He didn't know where and felt completely powerless to stop it and tried to reason with him and didn't know why he called except he basically wanted to talk and knew the stranger surely had a million more important things to do at that hour but didn't know who else to call.

About seventy-five minutes later he just wanted to go to bed and sleep. He climbed into bed and asked the stranger to tell him a story.

The stranger told him a story about a little black cat. He recounted the glorious events of the Night of the Thirteen Martinis. By the time the narrative had reached Saturday morning's happy ending with the release of the little black cat from jail, he was sleeping like a child.

The stranger listened to him snore a while before disconnecting the call, then calmly returned to what he had been doing. Listening to music on his computer. Grateful to be alive and to have a computer and cellphone and to be able to help this guy who just felt so alone fall off to sleep with the recounting of a tale so old to him at this point it has become myth in his own mind.

Thus began thanksgiving.

It's a little after two PM now and I just woke up to find two invitations being repeated on my telephone. I am perfectly content at this point just to sit at my computer at my desk by my magical window onto Central overlooking the parking lot with the dirt lot and the fence and the trees and the Victorian houses the skyline a block away. But since I went to the big speaker meeting at the club last night instead of the regular queer meeting I've been going to on Wednesdays I got a call from Billy making sure I knew I was invited to their thanksgiving dinner at John's house, and then another call from Ferdinand offering to take me to the movies before they head out to some other freinds' house. I don't know what to make of this attention but it feels OK so I'll probably call Billy back, get directions and head over there, then wind up joining Ferdinand later on and finally heading into work where we'll have food as well.

This is insane. In a good way, I think, but still insane. At this point I sort of figure what the heck -- I'll have tomorrow and Saturday to sit here by the window too so may as well go get myself stuffed full of turkey and who knows what else.

That last comment was not meant as a double entendre, but now that I see it rereading several hours later I'll let it stand for the amusement of your filthy minds.

So I went to the queer group's thanksgiving. That was really quite nice. Then I went to the Heights Club I dunno exactly why except I was nearby and didn't know how much time I had before Ferdinand would get out of the movie and say he was at the next party. Got into a really weird conversation with a Navaho at the club about how smart sheep really are and the difference between deer and elk liver before he called and I popped over to the next party. By the time I got there he'd left, but what the heck. Another plate of turkey with a bunch of lesbians. It was a lot of fun. Then to the Thursday queer group's meeting because I really did seem to be enjoying these people's company for whatever reason. Then in to Foxes, which *also* had food but cleared out by 10:30 regardless. No more customers for the rest of the night but two couples who came in for one drink each and left again. One guy was staggering so the bartender couldn't really see it (he was only clearly drunk from the waist down, you see) and I told him as he left and said he'd be back sorry man, I really can't, you're staggering.

He actually smiled and thanked me.

One day a year. I enjoyed this thanksgiving. People talk about how "hard" it is yada yada and I've never really understood it, to me it was always more or less just another day I worked wherever serving whatever to whoever had no better place to go. This year I really enjoyed it. From start to finish.

Obsessive posting.

I'm so insanely busy when I have any downtime I feel I *have to* write in here. Then life gets busy (and interesting) again and by the time I'm free to write it's passed and I've forgotten half of everything that happened.

I would apologise for my blog turning into the adventures of AA but then I think I apologised when I started working at Foxes for making it all about Foxes and before that for making it all about antiques and gardens and working with Charles. So pardon me but I'm going to stop apologising now. This is my life as it unfolds and it needs no apology. If you don't like it check back in a few months since there's no telling where it will wind up in time.

Went to a HUGE speaker meeting with Ferdinand. Excellent speaker. Used to be a homeless guy and I dunno man I think most people hear these stories and just think "gawd that's depressing" but there's a lotta wisdom in them rooms between everybody's experiences. All different but with some similarities that just make everybody laugh out loud. Am I sick or am I actually having *fun* at these events? I think I am. Heck, that's why I went to bars in the first place, to hear people's stories. I'm definitely getting *too* sober to work in them very much longer, though. My responses to the two little crises recently stepped way the hell out of the space of "actions of the doorman" and too far into the realm of actions of a human being. And frankly I cannot be giving rides and money to every person in crisis who just happens by the bar.

Can't think of anything exciting to say now so I think I'll sign off and head on home since this is *the* one night per week I can call home in the evening. Tomorrow I go to thanksgiving dinner at somebody's house and then to work eventually at Foxes and may come in between those events to write I don't know what but surely nothing consequential. Foxes I expect is gonna be pretty sad tomorrow -- all week business has been way down and I dunno man when it's like that the only guys who come in seem to be the ones with real problems the likes of which make mine look like a chickenscratch cakewalk.

Oh. Guy #2 from the other night called me back long distance to tell me he wanted to pay me back. I told him thanks but there's no need to, if you feel the need we can go out to lunch or something whenever you come back through town. Offered whatever else I could in the way of listening/advice since I'm in the tail end now of the nightmare that his freind's just starting out on, specifically mentioning stuff about penalties and sentencing and yada yada yada. He said he'd pass it on and I never expect to hear from anyone again but who can tell.

Life's good.

Happy thanksgiving!

The suicidal out-of-towner.

Oh dear. I didn't save a copy of this evening's posts, so I can't sit here and obsess over them before writing the next.

Yet somehow, life goes on.

Foxes was dead in the one-customer-at-a-time way. Michael the stoner intellectual was there and we actually got into some interesting discussion once he stopped trying to impress me with his big, obscure words after I outdid his antics in that line. It's like machismo posturing or cockfighting. He who uses the biggest words establishes dominance, regardless whether *anything* is actually said. This guy who's two years away from PhD is ready to quit school because the street woman he calls his "girlfreind" is in jail and he's convinced that he can change her.

Foxes was dead in the something-is-bound-to-happen sort of way. I didn't really even have to deny entry to anyone. I scanned maybe three or four IDs all night long, spending the first two hours of my shift thinking "this is the longest night ever" and wondering what would happen.

And then he came back.

For the first time in ten years.

He came back in to Foxes. Why? Well, because, where else could he go? It was where he met his lover of these last ten years. There's "no place like this" in the small town that he came from (and still we bitch about it, we who live here). He says he just caught his lover in bed last week with someone else. And now he just wants to know if he can talk because somehow the doorman seems trustworthy (or a sucker) and he doesn't have the money to buy a beer but he is pretty clearly suffering.

The doorman sits and listens, for the most part. Makes coffee and sits with him. So the guy says he wants to sign his car off to someone and get a ride to the mountains where he can take his medications and "go to sleep forever". He wants help. Not an organization's help but an individual's. But help to achieve what he wants to do, specifically, which at this moment is commit suicide. It *has to* be *tonight*. Delivered with an absolutely straight face from a man not ten years my elder who, while perhaps a bit scruffy around the edges at the moment, is still handsome enough and together enough not just to get whoever he may care to choose in such a place as Foxes but maybe to start fresh with just a little help. Willing to kill himself over another queer. Go figure that one out.

I point out the service organizations' flyers and hotline numbers I've made a point to get into that bar in the first place. He doesn't want to ask for help from an organization even though he's volunteered with 'em and understands well enough how they work. "It's not for me", he says, with all the absolute assurance I might casually say a cowboy hat is "not for me". I get to take breathers from time to time to get ice for the bar and check the parking lot. Albert does a good job of making sure that I'm OK by using such pretexts.

I go into the parking lot and leave a message for Ferdinand even though it's one AM. I call Esperanza and brief the amazing staffer of my rather pressing situation while the bar clock ticks closer to 2 am. She gives me a suicide hotline number which I write on the busted-out side of a drawer I pick up from the lot since I don't have any paper. (I later enter it into my cellphone and put the name as "Suicide" -- my cellphone contact list and bill has got to be a *lot* of fun to look at.) He walks out as I'm wrapping up with her and feels betrayed that I've told anyone what's going on. I tell him who I called and what I said -- no names, no nothing that could identify him -- and tell him that I called because I frankly don't feel confident to handle his situation on my own and need support in this myself. Meanwhile of course I'm remembering how Carlos died less than a month ago and part of me is thinking what a perfect setup for me to wind up the same way.

This guy is *not* getting my address.

He hasn't slept since five AM and spent the last night in his car and nearly froze. He hasn't bathed in six days and is starting, in his words, to smell himself. He's eating peanuts from a bag he's carrying around and is flat broke. I tell him basically well sir I can't help you drive out to the mountains 'cause see I've got the interlock on my car and I don't want to go to jail for driving someone else's car without it much less for being accessory to a suicide or whatever else they might cook up to get me back in jail but tell you what, you want something to eat? You really want to kill yourself on a completely empty stomach? That's nuts. How about shelter? You don't want to rest and wash up and maybe figure out logistics tomorrow? Where's your car, what's its status? Completely out of gas, that's easy enough to fix. What are your needs, right now? He's a little fuzzy on that. He's hungry and angry and lonely and tired all at once and all I can do is try to focus him on something other than how much he's hurting. Also to take his mind of things a bit by getting him engaged however weakly in talking at the bar with Albert and myself just like all's perfectly hunky-dory, another happy (if slow) night at Foxes.

We're getting ready to close. The few regulars who are in the bar have seen me talking all night with this guy away from the group at the door and now see me opening up my car to let him in to wait for me while I count beer. I don't want to know what they imagine I was doing. (I can guess well enough from the locker-room looks they all gave me.) I've got fifty bucks in my pocket after getting tipped out by Albert. Midnight came by to close the bar tonight. I tell him very matter of factly if I'm not in tomorrow, check the papers. I tell him (just so *someone* knows what's going on who knows me) that I seem to have adopted a suicidal man and am taking him to a motel but am *not* going into the room with him. Midnight and I close up the bar and go our separate ways.

I get in the car and he can't help but stare and laugh at me humming into my damn stoopid interlock. Gawd, what an embarassment, but hell, at least he's *laughing* about *something*. It's at about this point he tells me he's six years sober through AA and stopped attending meetings about three years before. (A big part of the problem with his lover seems to be that he stopped drinking but his lover didn't.) We both blurt out the serenity thingamajig in unison and he does the third step thing I haven't drilled into my head quite yet but am working on and found myself thinking key phrases of all while dealing with him inside the bar a little earlier and absolutely *knew* this wasn't something I could handle on my own. Aside from not introducing ourselves to eachother by first names as alcoholics and saying hi back at eachother it was like a little meeting hurtling down Central in the middle of the night.

We go to the 7-11 on Central in Nob Hill. Get him a pack of cigarettes, a one-gallon container for gas, and almost a gallon of gas for his car which is parked at a Catholic church downtown with the change from ten bucks. After this first little escapade into the convenience store with him following me around the store like a puppy insisting I don't buy the can for gas 'cause he'll "take care of that tomorrow" (exactly how, he hasn't told me yet, and I don't think he really knows, himself) I just give him what remains of my cash and say this'll be easier for both of us if you do this just like I wasn't even here. From that point he's the only person dealing with counter people and what have you. I park out of sight and wait in the car just in case things don't work out.

It's like the banderillero's move in tauromachie, and just about as dangerous. Engage and disengage. Like *that*.

We go out towards the motels we saw that all said 29.95 and up. The first place baits and switches him, saying it's forty bucks plus ten deposit. Fuck that, we're outta there.

Then we remember we forgot that he was hungry and we stop at an Allsups out past Foxes. He gets a burrito and some other snacky stuff to take back to the motel room when we get one, making sure to hold onto enough cash for the motel plus tax.

Then towards the Travelodge across from the gold tower. We do a u-turn at the Tewa Lodge. Old tourist motor court. Why? Because the sign says 19.99 and up and it's right close to San Mateo where he says he needs to be so he can go to the Knights of Columbus tomorrow (a gay organization dealing specifically with people transitioning out of abusive relationships he won't touch; a homophobic Roman Catholic organization, though, he will) which he said he'd spoken with earlier in the day and been told they'd help him out granted the story he told them about his father did check out. Sounds about right to me, so what the hell. I think he's just a little crazy to do it that way but there you have it. Like I'm not crazy to be giving rides from Foxes. I think he was surprised that anyone was willing to take a chance on him.

Now I've just got to make sure he doesn't get completely dependent on me. I could see it in his eyes already when we parted. I'm not interested in paying for another night's lodging and absolutely don't want a relationship or hell even to be someone's revenge fuck. (See, I have this funny little condition ever since I tested false positive about a year ago: I value my life.) At the same time now he knows all he needs to do to get me to do what he wants is start talking suicide. Well sir -- he may still do it but if he does he'll do it fed, rested, and cleaned.

I gave him my number but told him clearly -- you'll have to leave a message and I'll have to call you back 'cause when you do what I do for a living your number gets out everywhere and you get a lot of weirdass calls from unknown numbers that you just don't want to deal with, period. (Someday I'll write about the obscene and/or threatening crank calls we get at Foxes every night.) I also tell him that I work two jobs and there is no guaranteeing when I'll be where and that I may or may not be able to give him a ride down to his car or what have you whenever he figures he's ready to go.

Yeah. Finally, some standards. If I give rides to freshly homeless guys *these* days, it's on *my* schedule, baby. Progress is being made!

And honestly I do expect to talk to him tomorrow and may invite him to a meeting depending what feedback I get from my sponsor when he wakes up and gets my freakish message from the middle of the night. Good god, I'm being such a pest. But what the hell, at least it's all with good intentions and a clear and sober mind.

Why can't I just have normal problems? "Oh yeah, my long-term boyfreind of three weeks left me, and someone yelled at me at work, and it's cold, and damned if I don't want a drink and see if you can stop me." Hehe. Maybe that's *not* the way it actually works. But after seeing this guy and doing what I could with what I had to help him, I think that I can start to understand how the whole sponsorship idea works, generally speaking. Here's someone *way* more desperate than me who's sort of latched right onto me and I have to maintain a certain distance and sobriety. Yeesh. What an order.

OK. What next? For me? Right now. What are my needs? I smell a bit myself at this point. Need a bath. Should take some Bu Nao Wan then soak a bit. Listening to Michael Murray playing Bach on the great organs of Europe on my hard drive as I type. Felix peeks out from behind the TextEdit window in which I write. I'm being watched. This is a good thing, at the moment. I am going to take my bath now.

My stream-of-consciousness life.

Someone posted a complimentary comment on one of my posts today but I don't know which one because it doesn't say which in the email I got and I don't have the time to scroll through all 102 posts and see which ones have comments from who. It doesn't appear to be on one of those on the main page right now. This is so bewildering.

So, thank you B.B., for your kind words; it's nice to know someone besides Weasel is reading. ;)

Here is what I've been up to.

Yesterday went to get the data downloaded from my interlock into the system. No violations. Imagine that. Not drinking helps.

Then I went to Flying Star to meet Ferdinand and give him the key to my apartment and some phone numbers just in case I got arrested and sent to jail, I was *so* nervous about my hearing that afternoon.

Then to my hearing at police headquarters where I got to see the officers who arrested me for the first time since the night of the thirteen martinis (as it has come to be known at Foxes). I remembered one of 'em, because he was nice to me. As gentle as a person can be putting on handcuffs nonconsensually. Not saying the other wasn't, but uhm I seemed to be dealing more with the guy who specialised in DWI for some odd reason on that night, although I can really only just imagine what that might be, since apparently, I wasn't really there. Or something. Not sure exactly how many times I drifted in and out of consciousness, you see.

This annoys the hell outta me, but I suppose it's only fair, since it's not their fault I went and drove home after all those crackling martinis: it really seems the police did just about everything right in my case. Since I have to bitch at them for *something*, I will point out that someone misspelled the word "and" on my criminal complaint. But truthfully -- that's just about the *only* thing they messed up on, at all. At least Seargent Armendariz and Officer White have genuinely earned my respect. Anyone who deals with drunks like they do -- heh heh -- has my respect. I should know -- from both ends, it would seem.

The hearing ended around 3:15.

Then I walked to the DMV downtown to get my interlock license.

They weren't a full service DMV, so next I ran clear across town to the San Mateo DMV office.

There, I got the affidavit I needed to get notarized.

Then I ran to the nearest Wells Fargo only to find it just closing. They directed me to another nearby branch in a grocery store, to which I went in extreme haste.

There I stood in line for twenty minutes only to be told the grocery store locations don't have notaries, just the free-standing branches, and they all close at four.

Then I walk out in the parking lot towards a gas station. I call the local 311 information number asking if they can tell me where the nearest notary is at this hour. They can't. No problem, just thought I'd try, thanks very much, bye bye.

Since there are only two pay phones in sight and neither has a phone book I go into the gas station and ask very sweetly may I trouble you for a yellow pages please, thank you so much. I call the places nearest by and numbers are either out of service, disconnected, or just after business hours. Then I get though to one on San Pedro down north of Lomas.

I speed off towards the "Mail Bank" store that's open 'til six. I rush in, show 'em the paper from the DMV, show 'em my passport and -- oh, I'm sorry, do you have a current...? Fuck. No, I'm sorry, no problem, not your fault, I'll be right back, thanks very much.

Then back to the DMV to get an ID card. They look at my passport again, charge me ten dollars, and ten minutes later I've got a nice shiny new state ID card. (I love the DMV in this state. I've never had to wait more than a few minutes and have always been treated extremely well.)

Back to the notary. Yes, I just got this, up off San Mateo. Here it is literally hot off the press. Fill the blanks and sign the dotted line and four dollars please and bingo, it's all nice and legal, with five minutes to spare before the Mail Bank closes.

No time to get back to DMV before they close at six so I head to my meeting, stopping by Walgreens to get a red bull and wind up walking out with a tape gun.

Then to Foxes where I'm promptly subjected to some fairly intense resentment for not having come in on my day off. Like I was supposed to know it would be busy, or like its having been busy would have had any bearing on what I know my body can endure. (I need sleep one day a week, you see. You want me to put *that* much into *any* job, you'll have to pay me *way* better than minimum wage, and for that matter, way better than I was ever paid at Frontier.) I ask Alex for Ben's phone number because there's some legal stuff I need to tell him. He gets catty and starts to insist I tell him why I need it. Yeesh. We've both got interlock, that's all you need to know. Eventually he gives it to me and I call Ben up and tell him what he needs to know. It sounds like he's in a bar somewhere. Does he "get it"? I can only hope so. Probably. He's pretty on-the-ball.

The night is slow to the point of being dead despite Chip working bar. Resentment clears pretty much instantly when I deny entry to a crackhead with a voice like Daffy Duck who goes back into the liquor store next door after to throw a fit because I wouldn't let her in to use the bathroom because (a) she was drunk (b) she was crazy (c) she didn't want to buy anything and (d) she had a bottle of something with her -- not necessarily in that order. It just happened to be the roughly one in a hundred situations where the customer makes enough noise about it for the bartender or anyone at the bar to even notice anything has happened at the door.

Then home where to my great surprise I fall asleep after taking a bath.

Then up the next morning at eight. Back out to DMV. I get my interlock license. My ID card served me well for under 16 hours. I'm 100% legal, albeit with a special license identifying me as a drunkard. Woohoo.

I can hardly wait 'til I get to quit being "the test case" for things like this.

Then to the screening counsellor, who's kind enough to give me credit for being there because I pay him even though I'm late. He's only in it for the money, I believe. He used to be a drug dealer but doubtless figured out there was more money in court-appointed alcohol counselling. Last week he did little but gloat in front of everybody about having flown out to San Diego for the weekend on everybody's hard-earned cash to see the rolling stones. This week he expounded on his belief in eugenics, specifically stating that mothers with more than one child in foster care should be forcibly sterilized. What any of this might actually have to do with competent alcohol or drug counselling I cannot begin to imagine.

Then to work at Hartman. 26 orders, mostly samples, mostly small, meaning more packing and running around for less money coming in for your work but heck. I enjoyed it.

Then here.

Next to Foxes.

Later.

Great night.

Martinique was perfectly gracious, from start to finish. She says it's the last time she'll wear a crown and I'm sure wants to be remembered well. She is a bitch, but she is wonderful, as well. As Gigi Rae says of her she's got a loving heart in her own way. She even let Victoria wear one of her outfits, which she's always said she'd never, ever do for anyone. As far as I'm concerned she'll be remembered fondly.

The bar was very busy. The show was good. There was street drama from the time that I came in, however; such that Chip asked me to punch in a few minutes early.

First the drunk homeless couple had to be moved nicely from the clearly marked reserved table where they'd set up camp some hours before as the performers came in and actually needed the table for camp of a whole different kind. Then they had to be escorted off the property when, now out of the bar and on the streets, they were no longer lovey-dovey drunks but suddenly at eachother's throats extremely visciously.

Second there were lots and lots of people I could not let in because they were already drunk.

Third there was the guy I thought was drunk but actually wasn't -- bad breath + bubble gum + stumbling over the front step equalling "drunk" in my mind at the time. I went ahead and let him in about ten minutes later after we had chatted in the parking lot of the arrest we were witnessing. Alex threw him out maybe an hour later for, shall we say, "lewd behaviour" with another gentleman in the women's restroom. Drunk or not (and he was not), I've got to trust my own instincts.

Fourth we got inspected by Department of Public Safety for the second time in under two weeks. You'd think that they were trying to shut us down. As we were perfectly legal, they had no pretext on which to do so. We were issued precisely zero citations.

Fifth APD performed a DWI arrest in front of the motel next door. Thank god that hourlong flashing lights dog and pony show only started after the bar had filled up, otherwise we'd have gotten *no* new people in but walkers. I recognised the female officer involved from when I made tortillas at Frontier because she was always very nice.

A woman who was in my ignition interlock focus group for an NHTSB study came in. Surprise! I recognised her ID, but not her. She has been in before. She's lesbian. She's in the military. So is her husband, who is gay, and deployed somewhere or other in the middle east. She was there with her girlfreind. What an amazing human being. Yes, people *do* still live that way, and they are noble human beings to their core, and Foxes is indeed their only safe space. I honestly had no clue in the talking room at MADD just who she was, though she seemed vaguely familiar; I suppose I thought something along the lines of "yeah, I've known her type". Meanwhile she was nervous I'd recognise her and say something about having seen her at Foxes while I'm bitching endlessly about working there and getting stuck in the parking lot after work while the interlock warms up. (Foxes, you may remember, was strictly off-limits to military personnel throughout the 1980s.) Hell no. So now she treats me like I'm trustworthy, when in fact, I'm just selectively forgetful. What a beautiful thing. The most closeted "lipstick lesbian" in the most hostile work environment and the outest, most flaming faggot in the gayest job ever not recognizing eachother when to do so would have put one of them in danger.

Then the universe hit me with two opportunities to do some real good for some people who needed some small kindness rather desperately.

The first, I am convinced, was a dry run for what followed.

One guy came in and showed his interlock license. We comiserated and he told me he was paying eighty bucks a month. I told him I was paying half that for the same exact machine from so-and-so and gave him the name of the company written down. Since he was drunk, he had to leave. But hopefully he'll save a little money, if he's got his act together enough to follow through. He's got two more years on it under court order.

Then around 1:15 a guy comes into the lot completely flustered. The guy he's with shows up a minute later and they stand around at the front door yelling at eachother. I contemplate going out to tell them I've had enough drama for one night and they're going to have to leave when something overcomes me and instead I go out and ask quite neutrally what's going on.

Guy 1 is scared out of his wits and shivering like mad. It's pretty cold. Guy 2 is trying to give me his bank card as ID. Eventually he finds valid ID but he has got no cash. Looking at them for a few seconds I put it together that no they're not on drugs, but something really, really bad has actually just happened to them: something so bad Guy 1 can't exactly quite say what, while Guy 2's withdrawn into his shell and hardly says a single word. Finally Guy 1 blurts out what's happened.

His brother just got arrested for DWI. Like maybe five minutes before I first saw 'em. Like maybe half a block away. They were riding with him, and Guy 1 had left his wallet in his brother's car. They're both fresh in from out of town, visiting their mother for Thanksgiving, and went out for a night out on the town. When they were coming from the Ranch, they got pulled over and told by some APD officer or other that the wallet with Guy 1's ID and cash was now APD's "property" along with everything else inside the car. (I write this on a computer held for far too long in evidence; so I doubt that is the case, whatever they were actually told.) They were told basically to get out of the way and left on the street to walk.

Where? Wherever. On that stretch of Central. Right as bars all start to empty out. With no wallet, no ID, no cash -- not even change for a pay phone, assuming they can find one, somewhere, and no ATMs outside of businesses that are all closed at this hour. Guy 1 is absolutely terrified. Guy 2 is in quiet despair. I ask them a question.

Me: What do you need to do right now?

Guy 1: Call someone.

Me: Who do you need to call?

Guy 1: I don't know. My mother.

Me: Is she local?

Guy 1: She is.

I ask him for the number and dial it and hand him my cellphone. It's the wrong number. (Amazing how even a little alcohol seems to selectively erase important numbers from memory precisely when people most desperately need them.) He starts to apologise in that desperate way that's basically a way of saying "please please please don't hurt me". It's less apology and more the yelping of a recently hurt animal. I ask him if he's *sure* that was the right number. He's not. He's sober enough to know he's making a mistake, at least. He gives me a different number. I dial it. Wrong number again. I don't even shrug, because he's going so absolutely nuts it makes up for all three of us. I just say OK. No problem. Come on inside and stand in the foyer and we'll get you a phone book. His mother's not in the phone book. OK. So who else can you call? Your sister? Great. What's her number? Don't do it, he says, because he doesn't want me "getting into trouble". What, for dialing a wrong number late at night? Your brother is the one in jail. Don't worry about me, worry about your brother. He gives me a number. Surprise -- wrong number yet again. Out of phone numbers at last and at his wits end yet again, Guy 1 starts to break down before my very eyes even more completely than before.

OK. Where can you go? Our mother's. OK, good. Where does she live? By Los Quates, where I happened to eat for the first time ever yesterday on Ferdinand's recommendation. Do you have the address? No? That's fine. The bar is out of Saferides, so a Taxi can get you close enough to walk a block or two, at least, and you don't need a street address anyway and can tell 'em turn here, turn there, if need be. Do you have money for a taxi? Guy 1 starts to break down again. Guy 2 starts out the door towards the street saying "I'll get it." Whoa. What are you gonna do? No wait. Guys, stick together. "Her" car is gone. Shit. So whatever he had in mind -- "she's" gone, and they have got no money.

The memory comes to me of a drag queen from Dublin, Ireland that I'd met once -- the night I was arrested. I check to make sure I'm not being watched by street hoods, pull out my wallet, and quietly hand Guy 2 a twenty. Somehow he strikes me as the one best at holding onto important things since he's still got his wallet, even if it is a mess and utterly devoid of cash. I wouldn't have done it if I couldn't have afforded it, and I *never*, *ever* give money to people at Foxes, period. Guy 1 is going absolutely nuts. In tears. Oh no please don't do that we can't take charity and so on.

It isn't charity, it's a payment on a debt I owe the universe. I tell him briefly how I got bailed out of jail by a total stranger. I get Guy 2's name since Guy 1's too flustered even to tell me that without major drama. I call Albuquerque Cab (whose dispatcher and I are on excellent terms since I call her back to cancel cabs whenever people disappear). I give 'em the name and intersection. The bar's about to close. The lights are up and it's time to make the announcements and people are being herded out. I tell 'em their cab'll be there in 20 to 25 minutes and they just need to stick around and wait for it.

Their gratitude is positively humbling. They are so desperate it serves not to build up but utterly destroy whatever ego was involved in my doing what I did for them. All I can do is think "yeah, that was me, less than three months ago, I'm downright lucky to be able to help these two guys out at all today". They'll come back and see me every day they're here, they say. I tell 'em thanks but there's no need -- just focus on helping your brother 'cause he's gonna need all the help he can possibly get. Just remember whatever you're going through right now he is going through far worse and needs your help much more than I need any show of gratitude.

I give 'em what the Irish drag queen gave me: a trick slip with my name and number on it. (Actually, in this case, it was a discarded raffle ticket.) I tell 'em I can't promise to do anything specific but if you need anything, even just someone to listen or advice or whatever just call me up 'cause I just went through what your brother's going through right now.

Driving home of course I thought I should have had the presence of mind to recommend they call Pacheco Bail Bonds since that is the first thing they can positively *do* to get their brother out of jail. I should have asked if it was his first offence to get some notion what his bond would be so they could start raising money. I should have given them one of the "High Cost of DWI" posters I carry in my car so they don't have to agonise for weeks like I did over what the penalties will actually be.

Amazing how that voice creeps in. The same voice really that tells me I should let a person in who I think I should not but don't exactly feel I *know* because, damn it, I'm just not good enough not to screw up. But I refuse to more than hear it, acknowledge it, and move on with my own life at this point. Given what I had at that moment, given where I was, when I was there, and what I was already facing, I think I still helped them at least a bit. They'll realise what they need to do (*not* go to Foxes every night) in their own time -- as soon as the initial shock wears off. By then, with any luck, their brother should be processed out to such a point he can be bonded out. I changed something I could and am working on accepting what I can't.

I'd say progress is being made. I guess that's how it works.

Good night.

Intermittently segmentalised spectroscopy.

If I do not write much of working at Hartman it is not because I do not love it but because its waveforms lack the alternating peaks and valleys of exhilleration and despair which characterise the life I lead by night. Its hues are almost infinitely subtler. My attempts at writing thus far glory in irreconcilable extremes.

Today at Hartman I arrived at work at noon. I packed 42 SUNA samples, 5 HHAH samples, and 24 boxes of orders for UPS. I weighed all the boxes and recorded the weights. I then packed the remaining postal orders in the order PM, FC, BK. I then went upstairs, retrieved letters, brought them downstairs, sorted them, folded them in the machine, enclosed the appropriate business cards, placed them in envelopes, and sealed and metered them.

This took almost precisely four hours.

Then to a meeting. A good one. So far they're all good. Really good. I'm lucky.

I think that I can safely say someone was at the meeting tonight with almost a month sobriety who, last time I saw him, was flirting pretty shamelessly with me at Foxes. Nice guy, really. Shameless, maybe, but not pushy. Even respectful. And good for him for keeping off the booze. I think my presence in the meeting must have scared him. He sort of gave me that unmistakable "where exactly do I know him from" look. I should have said "hi" but didn't want to drive him back to drinking trying to remember.

Then to Foxes.

My reports in the incident log are beginning to follow a familiar pattern. So-and-so showed up, extremely drunk, we wouldn't let him in, we didn't serve him, he went off wherever, this or that direction, or drove off after we offered him a saferide and I tried to keep him here for x number of minutes by all legal means at my disposal before we just could not detain him any longer. Short and simple. No drama. Lots of details. Little confusion. Two such entries tonight. One guy I wouldn't let in fell over face first in the parking lot and Alex and I called four different phone numbers for National Security which *no one* answered even one of. (Useless.) The guy left only to get picked up by APD across Wisconsin where he'd collapsed on the sidewalk outside McDonald's.

Alfredo finally came back. I told him clearly, at the door: you are NOT allowed to come back in here. EVER. I opened the door for him and showed him out. Then watched him walk away knowing that he was being watched. He's had his last drink at Foxes and I poured what was left of it out in the floor drain in front of him. Where will he go to drink? Ranch would never let him in. Ditto for AMC. Blue Spruce and Yucca Lounge and Last Chance Saloon are all long gone. (Yeah -- Foxes survived 'em all.) He doesn't come close to meeting Caravan's dress code. If he wants to drink at this point he'll have to make other arrangements.

The Turkey Ranch show tonight raised money for NMAS Turkey Baskets. Had a lot of fun working the door. Only six performers showed up so was a short show. (Won a nice gift box for a wine bottle and traded with Bobby who won some jelly he didn't want so everyone's happy.) Not many customers, either. Whole week's been slow, and Friday night shows are always a little iffy.

Tips, though, have been getting better. So apparently has business, generally. Fewer nontipping morose street people getting fucked up on long islands and more guys drinking whatever else and conversating with eachother like they should. The drama factor in the bar is way down. Off the scale from what it used to was. For the most part we no longer let in people who start problems and we back eachother up bigtime. If any one of us says "no more for him", that's *it* where everyone's concerned, no questions asked in front of customers, no recourse for the customer but maybe try another night, unless on *very* rare occasion somebody *knows* Chip, *really* well -- not just as the bar manager who wants to sell another drink to them but as someone important in their life who they can trust.

Rick -- did I write about him? I forget. I think I did but didn't post it. Anyway, Chip scolded him like a little baby ("shame on you") in front of everyone for driving home drunk after I called him a saferide the other night (I wouldn't let him in) and babysat and flirted shamelessly with him for 45 minutes until the cab came only to have him leave on his own at the last minute when the driver told him he couldn't stop for cigarettes. Talk about feeling vindicated. The poor guy was shamed in front of everyone. Not because we take delight in cruelty, either, but because we take that sort of thing *extremely* seriously. He could have killed someone and landed us in jail and closed the bar all in a single stroke if we'd served him. Sorry Rick, had to be done. And no I am not going home with you, ever. Call anytime, though.

The place is getting cleaned up in a big, big way. Chip and I mopped and shined the floor again last night so it was nice and shiny. Painted most all the walls except around the dancefloor and behind the bar itself, which is, well, complicated. New coolers coming soon -- real new coolers, too -- not used. The transition continues.

Tomorrow night is Martinique's Stepdown from Miss NMGRA. Will likely be a busier show night. Scary to think about it being *her* big night, but there you have it. Struck her speechless today making a pretend "nosering" for myself with a tinfoil candy wrapper. Literally lost for words. She *never* is. Bitch though she is, she is the reigning master of the quick comeback, the so-tastelessly-appropriate-you-have-to-laugh-out-loud offhanded comment. I can expect revenge tonight, and plan to take it all in stride.

The guys still flirt with me but all the regulars know they are basically getting nowhere, so for the most part it turns playful. The only ones I flirt with in return are those that I want something from -- specifically, that they not drive out of our parking lot right then. (Sorry guys, but one new rule: I don't hook up with guys I meet in bars. Get over it.) It almost always works. I pull it off for long enough for saferide to show up. Called four tonight. (One guy, Adam, was too drunk to let in past the foyer but had been in before then left for a couple of hours and came back and god bless him he was really nice and sat and waited for the cab with zero troubles and zero flirtation and we sort of chatted as the show wrapped up.) They get home without going through county jail and don't kill anyone that night with liquor in 'em that they bought from us, so what if I have to pretend I'm even remotely interested in them beyond their corn-squeezings drenched breath, glazed craqueleure eyes, and the general speed and direction of the pendulum they appear to be standing upon. If they drive off after I've gone through that, they stand no further chance with me, and know it unequivocally whenever they return. (Like Rick. Sorry my man, but you are *poison* in the bar right now. Get used to it or take the saferide home next time.)

I don't do certain things now that I did a couple of weeks ago. I doubt I'd ever call another customer "pathetic" to his face like I did to Alfredo. But hell, he was giving me a majorly hard time while I was trying hard to help him, threatening me with jail and even death for something I knew that I could prove I didn't do (but he did to himself). Solution? Prevention. Don't let him in in the first place.

Oh, speaking of prevention. There was one fun moment when a truck with Texas plates pulled up. Five straight guys got out. Asked what kind of bar it was. I'm from Texas myself, welcome to Foxes. Started messing around with eachother in such a way I wouldn't let 'em in. This really *is* my world. Yeah, there's AMC right down the street, too. Before they tore out of the parking lot I was on the phone with Bill from AMC telling him loudly so he could make it out "red chevy truck with texas plates five straight guys" and he said he'd rally the troops. I'm sure he did. When the AMC contingent came in later they mentioned it, but not anything about "problems" so I suppose whatever I did was the right thing more or less to do.

I just took a bath and am drying off before I head to Southwest Acupuncture College. The recruiter's been leaving messages like mad but I have never called him back. I need to go in person. My situation -- why I'm not finishing up those final hours so I can enroll -- is way the hell too complex to explain over the telephone. Still I'm grateful he's been persistent -- there have been many times his calling to leave a message has refocused me. And goodness knows I have got plenty of distractions.

Trick now I think is to transition into Acupuncture College without a break -- keep myself busy with the jobs but as the sentence starts to wind down fill my time with schoolish things. That way I'll have something positive to work towards and reason to stay sober. Alcohol deranges Qi. I want to work with Qi. I can't do that and drink. It really is that simple. It will be tricky, I've no doubt, but heck. I can do it. Nobody thought I'd still be working Foxes. Much less completely sober. Nobody ever thought Foxes could, let alone would get cleaned up.

Anything's possible.

Enjoyed SW Acupuncture's open house. Will register for treatments in the clinic this coming December. They're *that* far backed up. Time to head out for Ferdinand's party.

Post No. 101.

And I don't really feel like writing. Finally catching up on reading Weasel's Blog after months of neglect and am not even gonna reply to his latest email until later. I'm running aorund entirely too much these days in the world outside. Have little to no time to myself. Good thing/bad thing. Can't let my guard down and am starting to get things together but I really do just want 24 hours where I don't have to speak to another human being. Sunday's my only day "off" and even today I spent most of my waking hours around other people. Got some writing I'm doing as part of a project which is just way too big for me to put much attention into this website for the moment. Maybe I'll write some more here next week, but I'm gonna be busier next week if anything than this week. Sleep would be nice. I can not get enough of it. I'm going home now to my cats.

Public transit adventure.

Spent most of yesterday walking, waiting for busses, missing busses, and occasionally riding busses.

One great driver on Route 766 "Rapid Ride" had a motorcyclist pull out in front of her with his emergency flashers going during rush hour, then cruise along at 15 mph in a 35 zone right in front of her. He pulls up onto the sidewalk to chew her out for riding his tail at the next intersection and starts shouting profanities and how he's gonna report her. She explains in one sentence what she was doing, says "bus 409, I'm Robin, have a great day and god bless you", closes the doors of the bus on this idiot and leaves him in the dust. Finally a Harley-Davidson driver gets what he deserves. The look on his face was priceless. Just like straight men look when they find out their new-found loves are drag queens.

Today sort of arose out of yesterday which sort of came out of the day before yesterday. I've slept *maybe* 4 hours in the last 72, never more than 2 at a time. Riding the bus, working two jobs. I can't do that -- not with this schedule, not with having to be clear across town, not with getting off for the day at 2 or 3 am in the bad part of town while doing screening and getting a car repaired. I've still got papers to do for the stepwork I've barely started because honestly if I don't write in here everyday I don't process *anything* that actually happens to me. I don't know what to think 'til I write it. Though maybe it would do me good to be a little structured for a while. I think I'll rearrange priorities a bit. Besides which it involves defining some words -- like "be".

I spent over an hour just on that one word last night before deciding I *need* to take a bath and get a little sleep at least. They *would* ask me to define *the* most important, difficult-to-define word in the English language. And of course I *would* take it to such absurd extremes as to trace its multifarious development complete with relevant cognates, shades of meaning, and derivation. What an amazing word. I really miss the online OED -- copying 4pt (and smaller) text out by hand is hard work. I'm nuts.

Luckily my car problem was indeed just the battery. Still cost a fortune. But I've got the car. Life's still crazy, yeah, but not unmanageable.

Car crisis.

The day started with me waking up after a good night's sleep and going out to start my car.

Or rather -- try to start my car. It wouldn't start. The battery was dead, I assume from the interlock warming up six days a week when I don't need it to, followed by the battery not recharging because I'm not going anywhere at 9 am.

I panicked and called my mother, of all people. She said I should get a taxi. Made sense, and so I did. I also called Hartman and told 'em I'm gonna be late. Then I realised why the hell am I calling my mother, this is exactly the sort of panic-inducing crisis I should call my sponsor for. Speaking with him last night he said if I stick to being sober there are gonna be some everyday, petty crisis situations that'll crop up and drive me nuts and that's specifically what he's sponsoring me for, to help me get through those. As usual the idea I'd had in my mind -- about it being more like me calling him up from the bar saying I've just ordered a perfect martini and here it sits, now see if you can keep me from taking the first sip before it gets warm -- *isn't* in fact how it works at all, but just some fantasy I'd had since I've never actually done this sort of thing before. Another flying leap into the great unknown.

Laugh if you will but so far my experience with AA has been nothing but pleasant surprises.

I call him and expect to leave a message but he picks up. Oh boy. Yikes. Now I have to talk to him, and I probably just woke him up. He doesn't chew me out. He's not just calm, in fact, but very helpful. He gets me to thinking about getting the car fixed (of course, that hadn't yet occurred to me) and right then the taxi arrives earlier than they said it would because they had a cancellation. Great. I get to Hartman two minutes early, after all. It costs me thirty bucks to ride across town in a taxi but damned if I'm gonna show up late for the job. Before I hang up and dash out on him, my sponsor asks if I'm going to the meeting tonight and I say I want to but don't know how and will probably wind up taking the bus down to Foxes and hanging around there for four hours before starting my shift. That's ridiculous, he says. Well, yes, it is; but what else can I do? He says take the bus home and he'll pick me up and we'll go to the meetiing and then take it from there. OK.

Hartman had a ton of little tiny orders going out today, which is mildly annoying because it's a lot more work for less money coming in to the company. Big orders are actually much easier to pack -- you might have to label, tape, and stack twenty boxes but with little orders you're running around for one of this and two of that and putting together boxes and filling them with crumpled paper while checking everything three times. Erin had to help me near the end because it was getting down to the wire and I still had a ton of little samples going here and there and everywhere before the Gary, our UPS driver, shows up at 3h45 sharp and we can't make him wait because every now and then we need a favour from him. I got the remaining postal orders and letters done by myself and got out 30 minutes early, which I apologised for, but didn't feel *too* bad about since I did get there on time and used the hour I had before they processed orders and printed labels to move two pallettes each of SNAC TBs and WBs over and put two pallettes of NAHK TBs and WBs in their place, where they'd be more convenient to reach, vacuuming underneath where all the pallettes had been previously. Finally, we're well stocked in the mailroom again. I also found and threw away a dead cat.

I go home and stop by the Firestone between the bus stop and my house to ask can they fix the electrical system. Yes they can and work with Knittles towing but have a jump box I can borrow if I leave a credit card with 'em until I bring it back with the car so I can save sixty bucks by not towing my car eight short blocks. But -- whoops! -- the jump box isn't charged, so can I come back at 9h30 am tomorrow? Shit, I need to be at screening tomorrow at ten clear across town, I don't think so.

So tomorrow I wake up before eight to ride the bus out to screening and then ride the bus some more to get somewhat closer to Hartman in a general way and if I have time to spare will eat at Cafe Istanboul and maybe go online there and then work at Hartman and come home on the bus and hopefully pick up the jump box and get my car started and taken to Firestone late in the day and probably leave it there and ride the bus out to Foxes and either take a taxi home from there or hitch a ride from Alex or Albert, both of whom I've given rides to when they needed it and who have offered to help me out now. Hopefully Firestone'll have my car ready by Wednesday morning and I can drive to screening and Hartman under my own motive power, but if not I may have to do the bus/taxi/hitchhiking thing another day.

So anyway I go home and my sponsor (for whom I've got to make up a name, since it's all anonymous and stuff) comes by to pick me up and we go to the meeting. It's really good. Then he takes me out to eat and he pays for my dinner. Good god, that was completely unnecessary, but a kindness I won't easily forget, especially since I'm spending all my money on rides in taxis and repairs to the car. Meanwhile he sits patiently and listens to me spew all the madness in my life at the moment. He then takes me to work and drops me off with a good ten minutes to spare before my shift starts. Unbelievable. I only hope I stick with this long enough to pass these favours on someday to someone else who needs them as desperately as I do now.

Ferdinand. That's what I'll call him. He could easily pass for a Ferdinand in the cathedral at Toledo.

I go in and Chip and Alex are painting like mad. The mural is gone, covered over by a deep hunter green they both insist is "dark gray" and a maroon they just call "red" (making me wonder just how queer they really are, although the colours do look really good). I take over painting the green, which is generally the wall up to wainscoting, and paint the area around the doorman's station and the literature shelf in front of the DJ's booth. Then I help cover the back wall on the Central side, doing the green as Alex does light gray and Chip does red. The place looks a hundred times better, at least, just from this painting, already.

Then Albert asks me to call a taxi for Alfredo who's been drinking all night from before I came in.

Albert wasn't there the night Alfredo hit his head twice on the doorpost and then fell down twice in the parking lot so he doesn't know what a pathetic piece of shit this sorry excuse for a human being is. I ask Alfredo his name. He won't tell me. I say you're Alfredo, right? I'm gonna call you a taxi. What's your address? I ask at least a dozen times. He finally starts mumbling "901 motherfuckin' Jaffa" over and over and finally I ask him how to spell it. He spells out J-A-F-F-A. Fine. I don't think it is a street but I call the taxi anyway. (I wouldn't *ever* want to be a taxi driver.) He's staring daggers at me the whole damn time. Then he starts going off about how I "assaulted" him and "cracked" his head the other night. Oh really. Well, I have it documented, and Verge and Alex and the security guy saw everything that happened between 'em and will back me up. He says I'm goin' to jail and he's gonna call the cops and yada yada yada. Then he says he's gonna kill me.

OK. That's it. I take his beer. I look him straight in the eye and tell him "you're pathetic". I pour what remains of his beer in the floor drain in front of him and throw away the empty bottle. Sometimes when you do this in front of people it's as if you'd ripped their babies away from them and hacked them into little pieces with a machete before their very eyes, making them beg, plead, and demand for more. Alfredo's too far gone for it even to register what I've done. He's literally foaming at the mouth but isn't *doing* anything worse than talking shit, since he can do that without moving his thoroughly pickled corpse.

I tell Chip very discretely the gentleman at that end of the bar is giving me a hard time saying I cracked his head open the other night but neither my documentation of what actually happened nor the testimony of three other people backs his version of the story. Chip goes over to him and says it's time to leave. Alfredo tells Chip I assaulted him. Chips quietly says oh no, my people don't do that. You need to get out before I throw you out because I'm really mean and it won't be pretty. Then he goes back to hanging pictures. His taxi's not here but he insists he's waiting for it. No. You're not. We're closing. Now. He eventually gets up and I move him without touching him towards the door as he tries to stumble to the bathroom.

Once in the foyer, Alex comes over and reiterates everything I've said, only waving his handcuffs around, which once again, this guy is too far gone to even make sense of. He didn't attack you, he says, you fell down because you were drunk, I saw you. The taxi arrives right as Alfredo's leaning against the front door and the driver opens it. Alfredo stumbles out. See? Exactly like that. That's how you fell. I probably overstep a bit but go ahead and tell him you don't need to come back. Ever. He's gone.

One minute later Alex has spoken with Chip and tells me he's not to come back, ever. Great. We're all on the same page. I write it in the log and will tell Ben so everyone will know. One more pathetic pain-in-the-ass, nothing-but-trouble drunk that we won't have to deal with ever again, except probably to tell him don't you dare step through that door.

Alex drives me home. This after all night of slightly insulting "humour" from him which I no longer find particularly amusing since I'm not drinking, and am more inclined to ask "precisely what is clever about that statement?" than to reply in kind. Funny how that works. I guess it still falls into the category of "he doesn't mean anything by it". Still, it bugs me in a way it didn't used to. But of course, once again, when I need a favour (though actually, I'm ready to take a cab home), who gives me a ride clear across town to where he absolutely doesn't need to be but Alex. Go figure. It's like the world of the bars got word somehow that I'd gotten to work that night in the car of my AA sponsor and had to return the favour lest I give myself over completely to sobriety, robbing that world more-or-less forever of a pretty darn good doorman and a damn good customer. They're also starting to offer me more hours.

I'm being pulled in two diametrically opposed directions at this point. I am aware of it. I don't know how exactly I am gonna respond in the end but honestly I doubt I'll work at Foxes that much longer. The simple fact is that the other side seems to attract me more. I can indeed do acupuncture school if I go that way, but can likely not if I keep working in the bars, and frankly that is more important than anything else I've got in the works for long-term.

I love the place. I always will. I love the people there. I always will. But once again it's ingroup/outgroup and by my own free will I'm standing just one step apart from this particular ingroup. Deliberately keeping myself on their periphery while remaining in their presence. I'm one of you, but only to a point. I'll keep you safe to the best of my ability but likely never can really be one of you like some of you guys are.

I've had a grand old time and wouldn't trade a minute of it for the world. But it is getting close to time for me to move on to far, far better things. What those might be or how I'll get there, I don't really know, at this point. But once again, I have to disappear. I will have spent some remarkable months between your crumbling walls, basking in the warm glow of your lights and the incessant attention of your customers, and have helped in my small way not just to keep the place going but make it better than when I first got hired because (as I joked then) Sid was desperate for a doorman. I have already seen things happen in that bar which happen once per generation in any bar that lasts a third or half as long as Foxes has already lasted. I understand how the bars work in a way that no one does who doesn't actually work in them, and stood close to the center of a major transformation still in progress.

But it's a closed-off world. Like jail. You can't spend very much time in a closed-off world without having it change you. I think that overall my time at Foxes has changed me for the better; but I know I need to leave before it changes me decidedly for the worse. Same as working graveyard at Frontier last Spring. When I see how cynical I have become just in order to survive it frightens me. I needed a good dose of cynicism, needed to be toughened up, and tempered in the forge. But even pathetic loser pricks like Alfredo are suffering human beings, and I don't like to be in the position of having to say "it's either you or me".

Now is a good time to just stay awake. I've seen so much, and will see so much more before I go; but once the opening presents itself, and once I go, I absolutely can't turn back. I'll probably avoid the place pretty completely until someday, like Pat Bailee, I can go to certain shows because they're still the heart and soul of gay community, with all its fractious crosscurrents and eddies.

I don't know when the time to go with come. It won't be for some minor inconvenience or petty slight. As with all jobs I've ever had, I have to leave on my terms, and those terms have to be good.