Love note to a street hustler queen.

Oh for the love of God.

Felicia just text messaged me. We exchanged phone numbers a long time back; I don't remember why, quite honestly, except she's always flirted with me. So now I get to pay ten cents to read her message asking me if I'm asleep and telling me to call her if I can, complete with winky frowny smiley, which I'm not sure exactly how to read, except that maybe she's trying for the subtle complexity of face-to-face in text, hoping that something will "click" in my mind between the semicolon, caret, and opening parenthesis.

Met her on the night of the bar raids at Foxes where we were all holed up against the straight world of the APD Vice Squad on its rounds shutting all the fag bars, one by one. Siege mentality set in and when the night was finally almost over and we'd made it through without getting shut down -- the only bar not closed with bartenders taken away in handcuffs -- the euphoria was simply overwhelming. Quite like New Years' Eve, actually. She kissed me on the lips and I bought her some lace panties for five dollars from some street person selling stuff because I was drunk and she was utterly charming: a flawless young queen and tough-as-nails street hustler, standing synechdochically in my mind at that time as the cornerstone of gay society. She did her makeup right in front of me and had me positively hypnotized as I watched ler lip sync "Fascinated" just for me.

Sorry, Felicia, man, I love ya but I'm probably not into whatever you're wanting to do right now; for some reason sitting around over cups of coffee and working through life's problems doesn't strike me as being it. The neighbourhood's awash in drugs right now and so it's really no surprise that everybody's up and reaching out, out, out in desperation to anyone who might have money at this hour of night. Maybe you're really only lonely and want someone to talk to, and if so, I'm really sorry if I let you down in that. Forgive me, please, for assuming the worst; it's for my own protection so that I can come tomorrow and protect everyone inside the bar, including you. I've had enough drama for one evening, and the night to come promises only more, more, and still more. I'm far too busy pretending to be asleep while writing all about you to the world, right now.

I hope to see you tomorow night, looking completely fabulous and scandalizing everyone by your mere presence in whatever far too daring thing you choose to wear. There you can flirt with me and show the most outrageous scorn at my cruel and heartless ignorance of your text message as I stand watch beside the door and absolutely won't be moved: the one that got away. You had me hook line and sinker, and still amaze me. But admiration for you and your kind means more to me than anything we might do outside the bar, ever. There, we'll be in our proper roles, and can play our parts for those who watch the still ongoing story, endless variations on a single theme, each night.

Drama night.

God what a night. It's either drama night or dead, and tonight it was all amateur theatrics. I maintained my balance through it all. I don't know how.

I think it helped that I took in leftover cake for the monthly sobriety birthdays from the meeting right into the bar to everyone's delight. I didn't tell 'em where it came from *too* specificaly, just said a birthday party. I chaired the meeting and it was really, really busy -- 25 people. Went to eat with Ferdinand and a bunch of others after the meeting and who should I run into but the recruiter from Southwest Acupuncture College who had just left me a message? So again in my sober life I'm going to parties, parties, parties, while in my nighttime role I'm still just dealing with other people's very fucked up drama.

How fucked up? Well, let's just say customer A got to talking to me about how customer B had given him fifty bucks to go get drugs one time and he'd gotten busted, then weeks later got into a fight with customer B in another bar's bathroom about customer B's lost money.

Of course it's all chatty and this guy seems nice enough but he starts casually talking about if anyone lays a finger on him like small-time street dealers do to prove to their prospective buyers that they're really good and gentle souls but they can kill a man for fun if they want to but really won't unless they're seriously double crossed. So there's that lovely old unstated threat in every paragraph they speak, but of course they're all really good people open up their houses to the homeless for the holidays and take people in off the streets and all of that but damn it man don't ever piss 'em off 'cause they'll bust your ass wide open blah blah blah.

Then who walks in but customer B.

So I watch both of them 'til Chip gets freindly with customer B and between the two of us we keep a good and healthy distance between them. I'm not even on the clock at this point. Eventually customer C walks in and gets to talking with customer A and a while later they go off together. Finally he's out of the bar so I don't have to watch the space between him and customer B.

Maybe half an hour later customer C comes back with customer A's cellphone, asking where he is, and saying he got ripped off for sixty bucks in what he openly tells me was a drug deal gone bad. Great. I get customer C's phone number and do a reverse lookup on it on my cellphone. Yep, it's real, with an address and everything, just in case customer A comes back.

Later on customer C calls the bar and I see his name on caller ID. He's doing an "investigation", he says, and wants to know my name and Chip's real name and the bar owner's name. Hell no. Here's my name but Chip doesn't use his legal name professionally and you're not getting the owner's name out of me because for all I know you're not a cop (the cops would laugh at him) and I'm not being detained for questioning and therefore have no legal obligation to tell you anything and it's your own fault for giving the guy your money for drugs but I do have your number and if I see him I will tell him that you said to call. He sorta giggles and hangs up. Man, sixty measly bucks for black market goods and he *won't* let it go.

Hours later customer A comes back and I tell him that guy came back with your cellphone and asked you to call him. He said that he would. Customer A at this point goes into *his* version of the story which is that customer C had wanted oral sex in his van, and drove off with his cellphone when he refused. Customer C's story was by far the more credible, since customer A's kept changing and because he'd admitted to losing customer B's money already to me before any of this happened. All I tell customer A is that it's not my place to determine who is lying and I'm just telling you what he said and if you want your cellphone back you ought to call him and he says he will.

I didn't offer customer A the use of my cellphone to call customer C because whatever is between them is between -- you got it -- *them*. Whatever happens, there will be no confrontation in the bar regarding any of it, and if I have to I just won't let either one of them come in (you're drunk, that's that, buhbye now), and they can talk it out right on the sidewalk for all I care. I need to talk to Chip about it, though, because I think honestly neither one of them should ever be allowed back in.

Drugs are insidious. You keep it all at bay and turn around and suddenly there's disagreement over 'em inside your bar. Fine, disagree all you want, but do it elsewhere, please. This is ridiculous.

What else. Chip yelled at Alex tonight and Alex moped around for two hours like a wounded puppy. Basically there's disagreement between Chip and the Court over whether the set from last week's show should get torn down or stay up, and Alex got caught in the middle because he works in the bar but is also a line member.

Kristen got completely shitfaced and had me call a cab, then cancel it because she didn't have cabfare. Then finally I called her a saferide -- she had enough to drink on for three hours, but not enough for a taxi. Uh huh. While I was calling her Saferide I also had the bar phone in my other hand to answer the incoming call from customer C and had to sign the log of the patrolman on his rounds. It's nothing or it's all at once.

Then the four twinks had me call a cab and bugged me incessantly 'til it arrived asking when it was going to show up. I told 'em about twenty times twenty minutes. When finally a Saferide arrived the guy was driving a van, so he agreed to take 'em on as fare to Pulse (where they belonged) and take the Saferide at the same time. Following my set diplomatic ways I called the dispatcher back to make sure that the cab call had been cancelled.

Called from my cellphone to the statewide hotline to report a drunk driver coming out of our lot, too. We wouldn't let 'em in and didn't serve 'em, but they threw all their empty beer cans in our parking lot so fuck 'em. Let 'em spend New Years in jail.

It was a slightly crazy night.

Tomorrow night -- tonight -- is New Years' Eve. I have no doubt it will be seven kinds of fun rolled into one. Before I go to work I get to drive way out of town to hear my sponsor speak at a meeting. After I get off work I'm going to the Heights club for their New Years meeting marathon. Muhah. Sobriety is ganging up on my working at Foxes. Making inroads kinda like the drugs do, even. Got to get some polaroid film and give the camera to Chip for New Years, just to make it all nice and complete.

This is crazy but I want to be nowhere else at this moment in time.

Impatience, randomness, avoidance.

Got home today and went to click on Firefox in the dock. It came up with a question mark, to which I wanted only to ask the computer what exactly it was trying to ask of me.

Apparently I deleted something I needed to run it when I emptied the "trash". I don't get how Firefox (or OSX) works, I just kinda know that they do well enough for my purposes. (That attitude drives most PC users insane, they seem to feel moral superiority at having to figure out the needlessly intricate ins and outs of poorly designed Microsoft programs just in order to create, let alone find, a document or use an application. They also seem to fancy themselves programmers for knowing all the unnecessary catwalks and trapdoors throughout Windows.) I don't understand the little disk image on the desktop when I run Firefox. Never had a web browser do that before. But what the hell. It works!

So I had to download a new Firefox -- no big deal, it was an update anyway, so I needed to do it sooner or later since I'm no longer into testing every website I create in Mosaic in the name of endless backwards compatibility. Not that I have anything against it, mind you, but let's face it -- no one uses Mosaic anymore. No one. And once I start designing backwards it's hard to know where I should stop.

Truth be told I'm thinking forwards now more than backwards. I'd love to get oh say this site set up so I can read it from my cellphone but uhhh don't really want to learn CDML or whatever it's called that they use enough to do it, since the last thing I need is another obtuse and arcane computer project to obsess about. Same with my deigning to use the blogger interface and templates (if a *little* tweaked); a couple of years ago (remember this, anyone who saw the original "Random Musings") it all had to be perfect perfect *perfect* cascaded CSS and neatly structured architectural HTML with nary a TABLE nor FONT (nor any other nonstructural) tag written out by hand in BBEdit.

Result? Too much technical cleverness (I still hate the fact most browsers don't recognize CSS linespacing values beyond one decimal point), not enough writing. Now it's all about too much writing and screw the technical stuff as long as you can read it (if you are so inclined -- and that's your problem more than mine).

So the downoad takes about two and a half hours on my slow digital wireless connection. Poor me, I guess I've got to watch the Truman Show again. I do, as Firefox 1.5 downloads. (I also take a bath, which is extremely nice; I must remember I enjoy that.) Right near the end it's ready to install. I finish the movie and install. Now Firefox is all shiny and new and yeah I have to say even a little better than it was. Best of all I don't have to go reconstructing all the stuff I thought I'd lost -- my links and bookmarks and such. But then I do get to reload gmail about twenty times before it works correctly. Ditto for blogspot. I don't know what happened but maybe I emptied out my cache or something.

So yeah, boo hoo, poor me, not only does the hard return not work from my cellphone when doing blog posts through gmail on the phone's web browser (thus that bloody stoopid question mark, below), now I have to sit for more than a minute to get this page to load. Yeah, man, life's *real* tough sometimes. Next thing you know I'm gonna have to drive down to El Paso to retrieve my telegraph key just to stay in touch.

Oh dude. Does anybody in the palace remember Jester803? I do hope he didn't get washed out to sea what with the hurricanes and all. Another quick and random palace reminiscence -- does anyone remember when we both learned morse code and drove everyone crazy having lengthly public private conversations with eachother in fullstops and underscores and spaces? Man I miss those days.

I'll likely be online on Sunday night. It's Friday morning now, I think. So meeting tonight, then work at Foxes, then oh I don't know I guess I'll sleep sometime or other.

My sleep schedule is permanently screwed. Has been most of my life. Basically, I don't have one. In absurd would-be Zenlike fashion I sleep only when I'm tired. These quiet hours are when I do my best work, believe it or not. Sometimes the whole city does sleep, and you can feel it. That's when I'm at my best. I got that even working at Frontier, sometimes even that busy restaurant simply empties out and you know only everyone working there is up. Them (us) and the engineers and firemen on the trains blowing their horns at grade crossings.

And here's what I did in these hours last night. A waste of time perhaps but a fascinating little journey into Photoshop for me. Needed (uhm, yeah, "needed", ahhem) a new background image for the 96x65 screen on the outside of my cellphone since the black and white Krazy Kat just *didn't* look right at that tiny size and resolution and wasn't really work related, since after all, I'm nothing if I'm not whatever job I'm doing for a living at whatever given time.

So basically I spent a couple of hours going nuts with that flipped picture of the infamous beacon of social irresponsibility reflected in the mud puddle in the parking lot and an image of Brian from Family Guy I found on the web and put 'em together. It was a fairly complicated proposition for me -- I know it's all pretty basic stuff to anyone who's really adept at photoshop, but I've hardly ever used it for anything but the most basic resizing and changing of modes and the like so I'm perfectly thrilled with myself. So here's a little memorial to the Night of the Thirteen Martinis, in perfect alcoholic fashion: an image with no meaning to anyone else but me.



Be sure to note that you can read the "Booze 'n' Cruise" right through the glass, since after all, any perfect martini (Sid's were perfect) is absolutely colourless. So this is how I deal with cravings. Sue me. Yeah I should get back to that inventory thing but uhhh this was more fun.

I really truly need to go now since it's after 5h50 and at six the minutes start counting. The other night I just went on and on 'til eight AM before I even checked the clock. Can't let that happen now because I simply can't afford it. Maybe I should get back to my assignment. I make no promises, but it could happen. Until then, as usual -- be well!

Lost it.

Damn. Just lost a longish entry in the cellphone. Hit the character
limit and learned the hard way as usual. No great loss as what I'd
written was almost as content free as this. Mostly reporting as it
happened which regulars had just come in or left. Turned off the disco
ball 'cause it was driving Chip crazy.�Testing the paragraph break.
Guess I'll know whether it works when I in online at home when I get
off later. If you can't tell, the night is dragging and I'm just
hoping nothing dramatic happens. Enough for now. Time to find
something else to keep me busy. Be well.

Movie madness.

I love "The Truman Show". I'm sure that reflects badly on my character in some way or other. Clearly anyone who loves any Jim Carrey movie is an idiot. But I adore that film. Last time I saw it was in -- a quite unlikely place. Let's just say practically next door to Circus Liquor on Vineland Blvd. in North Hollywood. Stuck in my memory and helped to get me out of myself at a *very* hard time. Thanks to whoever put it on.

No urgent breaking news from the xeltifon show today. Got my sixty day shiny object, resisted the temptation to go around collecting them from groups that aren't really my own in order to gather enough to make a belt. Got some used DVDs on sale; Truman not among them, sadly -- that I rented. Can't really be spending money but wanted the movies to help me get through the sleepless nights when things are far too quiet. Right now, for instance.

I *want* to get up and start cleaning my apartment right this very minute. It's nearly one AM. I have the energy and inclination, *now*. Out of the question, though; I've little doubt that if I did neighbours would call the cops. The first stuff that I have to do is noisy stuff. Besides which the dumpster's full with breeder families' post-christmas crap. (Typical. They generate the most waste and the generation that's gonna have to deal with it, all at the same time, without even trying.) If I'm still up at sunrise maybe I'll start then. There is one 24-hour laundromat in town but after what I see late at night each night it's about the last place I want to be in the small hours of the morning. I don't want to wind up slightly dead for twenty bucks in quarters.

So what did I get? Kinsey, of course. Gotta have that shot of the porcupine sex. (That's just about the closest thing in my possession to "porn", btw, regardless what people assume at the bar that my laptop is "really" full of.) Good movie, seriously, I thought -- good enough to pay for used and have on hand.

Stewie's Untold Story because damn it sometimes I do like sick and twisted, and because damn it I simply adore Stewie, and enjoy being disturbed by animation.

Vera Drake because what can be better on a cold winter night than watching a critically acclaimed and controversial british film about abortion? Honestly I haven't seen it, but thought it worth getting, just based on what I've heard.

This laptop is my own private little screening room. Who would have thought I'd be happy going from the 3rd largest screen on the planet to a 12-inch diagonal anything? But I'm happy with that, so go figure.

Camera happy.

The cameraphone's addictive. I'm shooting pictures of everything and everybody everywhere because I can. I'm checking email while I work the bar because I can. I'm writing emails with bizarre text errors because I can. I'm checking world news feeds from AP, doing reverse lookups on suspicious phone numbers, checking the weather, getting maps, all just because I can. And heaven help me the first time I leave the house without my camera/gps/portable browser/email/radio device, I'm sure I'll be struck dead by lightning, and damn it, won't even be able to get a picture of it as it hits. I did use it to call 911 today because coming home at 2 am, right Downtown (you know, the part of town that's saturated with straight bars, and therefore a "good" neighbourhood, and *not* a "public nuisance") I saw two guys kicking and stomping on another on the ground. I hate calling 911 ever but it had to be done, I seriously hope those fuckers spend at least New Years in jail. I gave the operator the best information I could.

So -- first the bad news. Here's what the strip mall that included Bluejeans looked like this morning, long after the fire that destroyed it. (In other words, this is roughly what the news crews got.)

And now, for contrast, here's the orderly universe I made out of the Hartman Publishing warehouse, not that it was all that bad to begin with. But now everything's *almost* absolutely perfect. (Any surprise I got bored there?) I moved pretty much all those boxes inside, a lot of them today, with the assistance of Hardy from Snelling. Too bad they won't let him contract out on his own until he's worked 500 hours for them, he's far too good a worker to be tied to their dictates.

And finally, because I can't resist, here's yet another shot of Cat A. I get to self-indulge a little bit; they are *my* pictures, man, and they can't all be of mayhem and disaster.

OraSure false positives.

Hm. I found it.

Here's the news story on OraSure's false positives from oral swab tests, which states, in part:

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the OraQuick test for professional use last year. It is now considering a request from drug maker Orasure Technologies, of Bethlehem, Pa., to approve it for home use and over-the-counter sales. What effect the high rate of false positives will have on the decision is not yet known.

This is what I'd call a no-brainer, even though that's not a term I use. I think it's a very bad idea to approve these things for home use. Even the stock price has fallen following the news. If even mere stockbrokers can figure out that it's a bad idea, it's probably a really, *really* bad idea. If I may editorialize briefly, I will.

Now. Why might that be a bad idea? Oh, I don't know, maybe because an unusually high percentage of people (up to around 25% in San Francisco) who use the OraSure oral swab test turn up false positive? Maybe because anyone who'll only test at home is pretty uniquely isolated and vulnerable to begin with? Maybe because anyone testing positive (false or not) absolutely *needs* services available to them *immediately* on hearing their results? Maybe because all the people who test false positive *will* go through a very difficult period of time when they're convinced they're going to die a long, drawn out, and horrible death after years of complex antiretroviral drug therapies while they wince at every cough and sneeze? People have killed themseves for less.

I didn't. Lucky me.

OraSure can, in the words of Crow T. Robot, bite me.

Boxing Day.

I hope and trust everyone had a lovely Boxing Day. I have decided that's what I'm celebrating this year, since it's by far the least controversial holiday of the season, probably because nobody seems to know quite what it is. Regardless of its nearly perfect noncontroversiality, hardly anyone ever wishes me a Happy Boxing Day, and therefore I feel terribly left out, cut off from the mainstream, and generally abandoned. And yet, somehow, I think I'll muddle through.

My day started out before I even got out of bed with a bright, vivid dream. I haven't had those in years, and I love it. It's as if finally my unconscious is awakening again after a roughly ten-year haze. It's almost worth not drinking just for that.

It was a good dream. I don't remember much except being inside a giant stupa in a setting worthy of any national park. There seemed to be cabins all around on the outside; the inside was big enough to have a mezannine with small rooms going off the central room and a marvellous staircase leading up to the mezannine. A bit like one of the pods at county jail, but transformed into something both magnificent and beautiful. Lots of gold, lots of deep reds, a little bit like something from "The King and I", but with a space age california coffeeshop twist. For whatever reason, someone was standing at the top of the staircase as I was sashaying around the ground floor area with the keys, and by way of passing comment upon my behaviour, asked something to the effect of what the hell was I trying to do, get myself buried underneath the center shaft? This of course was a tremendous honour to which I dared not purposely aspire. I basically replied of course not darling, I'm nowhere near *that* fabulous, turned 'round, and walked away.

I think that may be just about the gayest dream I've ever had.

Then back to sleep.

Finally woke up just in time to meet zzigzzag at Flying Star. My god he is a treasure trove. Gave me a lot of solid information what was where, which bar burned down and how (he's pretty sure that it was Ned's -- sounds right to me), where the drag queens hung out after hours (the restaurant now called Loyola's) and what Morningside Park used to be like *before* it got the reputation it still has (but no longer deserves by a long shot). Also got me to thinking in terms of good solid bookish research -- meaning the stuff I have to go to libraries in order to pin down: precise dates, places, people's real names, and things along those lines. I hope to make it that far with the project that this seems to be becoming.

Then to a meeting because the sixteen cups of coffee from Flying Star damn it just weren't enough.

Then to Foxes, where Alex was hanging around on his night off. It was quiet all night long -- until the very minute I went back with my fresh list to stock the beer. Then it got busy and Alex took over for me on door, checking IDs. By the time I'd gotten all the old product out of the cooler to rotate the fresh stuff in behind and underneath it, I had long forgotten that he wasn't even on the clock. Checking one or two IDs or telling one or two people they can't come in when the doorman's in the back room is really no big deal off the clock, but taking over someone else's post entirely surely is. He runs into the beer room maybe ten or so minutes later and asks me just a bit gruffly if I'm done yet. Oh shit. I'm so sorry. It slipped my mind completely -- he seemed surprised, and pleasantly, to get a genuine apology from me. I put the four remaining cartons where they belonged and resumed my rightful place.

And then of course no one else walks in for the rest of the night. Poor Alex. I'll make it up to him, somehow. Maybe I'll buy him a red bull or something.

It was somebody's birthday today, so there was some generally good-humoured rowdiness amongst the lesbian and androgyne contingents.

Right at close two guys hooked up and one of 'em thinking rightly asked if his freind could leave his car there overnight. I said sure, but take out any valuables, it's rare but cars do get broken into in this neighbourhood from time to time and I can't *guarantee* it'll be safe after we're gone. We joke around a bit with me standing right by the car about my standing there for the rest of the night 'til it sinks into the skull of the drunk guy whose car's getting left that the garment bag does need to go with him if he values his windows. The poor guy was smitten with me, even as he was going home with the other guy who was OK to drive. Amazing what beer goggles do. Or in his case, double grey goose red bull goggles. Same difference, I guess. I'm standing there thinking honey I'm making eye contact to make sure you understand me, not to get your number, sorry. They go off. Chip and I close up. And all is well.

Christmas Day.

Woke up too late after getting too little sleep. Picked up the guy to take him to the party, stopping once at a truck stop to try and find lettuce or salad. Yep, it was the only place open. Opened the floodgates of memory for him being there.

Then to the party. Small gathering, just nine people, but very good. Nearly got lost getting out there. Of course both of us chatted up a storm going out there: for him oh yeah I dated someone out here, for me, oh yeah, that's where I came to bail my neighbour's cousin out of jail. Both of us laughing heartily over some really truly fucked up memories. Food was delicious. Company was great. It's like a real extended family; I'm getting really comfortable around these people. Got a polaroid camera in white elephant gift exchange that I may wind up giving to the bar so we have something to shoot troublemakers with besides *my* cameraphone which I don't want getting smashed, *ever*. I've got a good mind to put a little triangle in a circle bumper sticker on it.

Have heard from several people in the program (not all of them even gay) these last 24 hours that Foxes is a "good place", to which I always have to add "for a bar". It's gratifying to hear but let's not romanticize it any more than we have to. I do more than enough of that on my own for everyone else in this town combined. It's pretty bloody awful sometimes. But for whatever reasons we seem to enjoy a certain standing other gay bars don't in the community. Is it deserved? I guess so. They all do *something* to give back, but Foxes seems always to do a little more, each time. Still not enough. How much is enough? I don't know. How many people ruin their lives there? Hook up with guys who give 'em nasty bugs? Run into drugs and casually go along for the ride? Drink themselves into a hundred kinds of near-perfect oblivion? How much do we make off their doing so? So we have rubbers and phone numbers and support x, y, and z charities. Is it enough? Never. Maybe the difference is simply that we know it never is.

Tomorrow I have to get cat litter and do laundry. That should take roughly two hours if I can get myself up in time. I should just go to bed right now, but we will see -- I make no promises except that I'll sleep when I die. Then at four I'm meeting zzigzzag at Flying Star to gather stories. His memories of Foxes, he says, aren't terribly happy but it's all part of the project that my working there's become. He's got a lot of good information that serves to clarify what I hear from people inside the bar while they're drinking enough to make decades blend into eachother and places meld clear across town.

Christmas Eve.

I'm dreaming of an AA christmas.

Or living it, as the case may be.

First to a party to which I'd been invited by Ferdinand. It was a hoot. White elephant gift exchange -- the refrain of the evening (to the tune of "five golden rings") being "six pounds of porn". I leave the backstory on that to your imagination.

Went to work at Foxes only to be told before I even entered that they planned to close early and wouldn't need me though if I wanted to punch in they could find something for me to do for an hour or two. I thought about it, then decided nah. I needed to get some lettuce or some salad or something for tomorrow's home group party because somebody else didn't get it before the stores all closed and called me in a bit of a panic because he didn't know if he wanted to go at all tomorrow because he thought everybody would "hate him" because of it. So it kind of fell to me, or else the guy who's really organizing things and already dealing with several other people's different versions of the same exact problem, meaning there may wind up being nothing more than turkey and stollen for tomorrow's christmas party.

So I drive around for an hour trying to find anyplace that's open that might have prepackaged salad or lettuce or something remotely like it. On Christmas Eve in Albuquerque after 9 pm that's basically Walgreens, and they for once don't have the thing I needed. I check Raley's and Smith's and Nice & Fresh and Fair & Square and damn it even Wal Mart because the last thing we need drama over is lettuce, let alone the lack thereof, but all I find is empty parking lots. A real Joseph and Mary moment, if you will. Now if only I can turn up a mangerful of lettuce.

Ten at night: I'm all dressed up with no place to go and in the neighbourhood cruising for lettuce with the same determination that a crack whore seeks out rocks so I swing by the Heights Club just to see what's going on. Wow! What a meeting. With only six people there (one of 'em who made the news last year -- I won't say how, cause that'd violate the twelfth tradition 'til Tuesday or something) it was a great meeting. That went 'til 11h30 and I decided I'd head out to MCC right down the street and see if they had midnight anything going on. They didn't, so I drove around some more (hoping, I guess, to find somebody walking Central trying to pass off a bag of lettuce so that he could go get drugs -- no luck) and then came back and hit the midnight meeting, which was great, in part because (forgive me) the cranky old timer who had all the answers to all of life's problems in bumper sticker slogans rolling off his tongue walked out on seeing me come back in. Another, much mellower oldtimer and the guy who made the news and I hung out there talking up a storm all full of coffee 'til the guy who made the news went home to go to bed. Then the oldtimer talked with me until 3h45, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. He reminded me of George C. Scott in Dr. Strangelove with the way he sat beside the lamp smoking his pipe -- but unlike General Ripper, spoke a lot of sense.

Then to the Desert Club to see what was going on there because it was almost on the way home. A very different atmosphere. Everybody was loopy and tired, but it was fun like sitting at the bar with Martinique is fun. Lots of good-humoured, late-night bitchiness. As I left I got a call back from a home group member who I'd called between the Heights and Desert Clubs who works graveyard to wish him a happy christmas; he wished me the same.

Good god I'm tired, and bouncing off the walls (if you can't tell from the writing). It's after six AM and I am wide awake. Damn stupid coffee. Hell, I didn't land in jail because of it, but still -- enough's enough. I'm gonna lie down now, and while I'm not promising anyone I'll sleep, it may happen.

A purely utilitarian post.

The only purpose served by this post is to bump one jpg off the main page since there are too many and it's helping to make everything load slowly. Firefox crashed on me for the first time ever. Perhaps I ought to just restart.

Oh! There was an interesting story in the Voice which came out yesterday. (I'd love to link to it but their website isn't current by a long shot.) Seems the OraSure HIV tests are turning up false positives in New York and Los Angeles too, now. So now that it's happening on the coasts it's a "news story", not just some pipsqueak Albuquerque faggot's little tale about something that he imagined happened to him.

Well sir once again you heard it first here -- although I wasn't blogging when I got my own false positive, and what a thing that was. Just over a year ago now. You're gonna die, no wait, you ain't. Hm. That was fun.

Virtual world.

I am going to step away, for a moment, from the "outside world" of real flesh and blood human beings, and try to give you just a tiny glimpse inside an insular world not terribly unlike the bars except that it was "virtual", in which I spent countless hours in marathon sessions over a period of years -- you know, back in the day, before everything changed.

This world was called simply "the Palace".

In doing so, I'm going to take a huge risk and quote at length directly from a private email from EST, one of the old-time palacers, addressed to myself, on account of the fact that he didn't specifically tell me not to. He wishes to remain anonymous (seven years after "meeting" him online, I *still* don't really know who he is). He reads but won't post anything in comments, and doesn't want a blogger account of his own. Go figure.

So -- with apologies to him (I'll delete this if you insist, really -- mmmaybe), here it is. Unless you're a palacer yourself this is the only chance you'll ever have to hear from him in his own words.

By way of backstory, the Palace was a 2-D chat forum or "virtual world" in which chatters wore "avatars", or "AVs", usually of people or cartoon characters, and moved from room to room in search of entertainment, company, or whatever else struck their fancy at a given time. To paraphrase EST, it was a giant textual improv gig. To me it was a giant experiment in social cohesion and dissolution. EST is the only palacer I know of who's been palacing longer than I have, and I think we're trying to outlive eachother in the place.

Most people pasted and edited AVs from pictures on the web. EST never did. He made all his own: elaborate, painstaking, one-pixel-at-a-time animated creations, bizarre, funny, and brilliant, and his creations went through periods of development over years we all palaced for hours every night. He's still at it, in fact, and has never once repeated himself, with only nine 44 pixel square props and 216 colours to work with in the palace prop editor for any given AV. His AVs are impossible to reproduce satisfactorily in any forum other than the palace, which is now basically forgotten, "obsolete" chat software no one bothered seriously updating after oh I don't know maybe 1998 or so.

Completely, totally one-of-a-kind. And the place used to be filled to overflowing with one-of-a-kinds.

The old South Park Palace, heavily promoted in voiceovers during that show's first season endcredits ("where you can say stuff we can't say on the air"), was far and away the busiest and most popular of them all. The stories of that place to this day haunt those few of us who survived its tragic, slow decline and fall. Lasting freindships came into being between people with nothing more in common at the outset than that they liked South Park enough to go into a chat room designed to look like the place in the show. If that's not an unlikely affinity, I don't know what is.

It used to have hundreds of people on the server during any given night. The place would *never* empty out, completely. Dozens of rooms, with dozens of cliques setting up for hours on end in any given room, engaging in all manner of witty back-and-forth banter. Different kinds of rooms from dropzones to traffic to places to get lost in to complete dead ends.

The palace never closed. It was an incredible place to watch human behaviour, devoid of the restraints that go with face-to-face contact of any sort. Horrible and monstrous, but promising too.

Then it went bad. The consensus at the time seemed to be that Mr. Gunn, who built the South Park palace, abused his power by getting rid of Checkers, who was loved. Mr. Gunn disappeared for a long time and didn't "hire" any new "wizards" -- basically moderators -- to replace Checkers. Meanwhile, most (and then all) existing wizards quit.

The place started to be overrun by "skaters" -- kids who didn't know how to chat and all "dressed" more or less alike. By the time Gunn did appoint new wizards, he was deeply mistrusted, even passionately hated by the people to whom South Park had become "home". He also overbuilt badly -- adding too many rooms where none were needed without alleviating serious traffic flow problems, and lagged the already always busy server with elaborate and unimpressive scripts.

A spirit of revolt spread through the populace, and we far outnumbered those with powers to get rid of us, however much they abused whatever powers they had. Eventually some of us -- through diplomacy, through luck, through sheer determined stubbornness -- became wizards ourselves.

And then somebody -- an oldtimer who'd been made a wizard -- reportedly leaked the passcode to another oldtimer who hadn't been made one but should have, from the safety of another palace set up partly as a refuge from a South Park that was quickly going down in flames. The second oldtimer then went on to South Park when no other wizards were online and crashed the server by "killing" everybody on it at the time -- over three hundred people, from around the world.

It was indeed a time of wholesale slaughter. Warm blood ran through the snowbound termperatureless streets.

South Park was, effectively, no more.

Thus began the great diaspora. Existing palaces, palaces older than South Park, reluctantly took in the South Park refugees at first, but soon made it clear they wanted nothing whatever to do with us as they found themselves overrun. Most places, we weren't welcome. Too many skaters had spilled over to too many other palaces, giving all southparkers a lousy reputation. So any time the regulars figured out we'd come from South Park we were shunned, regardless of internal tensions in the place from which we'd come.

It was assumed that we were thugs, while paid membership privileges provided a clear ingroup/outgroup distinction to regulars at other palaces. South Park had been the only palace where nonmembers could change their names, or wear AVs. In every other palace, if you hadn't paid $40 a year, you were always a smileyface named "Guest 472", numbers being assigned sequentially on signon. And who wanted to talk to guests?

By the time the palace was freed from paid membership restraints, it was too late. All palaces were overrun. To this day it's just a dwindling handful of oldtimers from two or three different large palaces, largely remembering what it used to be like, continuing running jokes that at this point go years back which nobody understands who wasn't there oh say when moods was snogg or hal thought jow was a radio. Yet some of us do still hang on. We get the palace software and associated scripts and install them on computer after computer, just like some people still use modems for land-line telegraphy. We make a point to get in any time we can, just to keep whatever spark was there alive.

At any rate. To make a very long story as short as I can. EST, Weasel, Flem (Weasel and Flem are both post-southpark palacers) and myself all met in the palace (not southpark, of course) last night for the first time in more than a year. I've always been the last to leave, but when the program crashed last night with only myself and EST remaining, I emailed EST an apology for not returning, starting out:

The palace crashed. I lost my gorgeous "Foxes" AV I spent seventeen
zillion hours making perfect, too.

With all of that to work with, EST responds thusly:

It has been a long, long while since I've lost hours of editing, av-wise, but the anguish-filled memories remain. Flashbacks of going through the 5 stages of grieving (denial, "My av can't be gone, it just can't! It's just hiding from me, around the corner, in the kitchen, I just know it is! It's always playing tricks on me! That cheeky monkey! It will show up tomorrow, really it will..."; anger, "Bloody fuckin' hell, who are they to take 'my precious' av away from me! They are nothing, NOTHING!! I'm gonna call a couple pipe-hittin' 'palacers,' who'll go to work on palace-crashin'/av-stealin' homes here with a pair of pliers and a blow torch. Buckets of blood will flow throughout the streets for days! They will rue the day they fucked with me, believe it!"; bargaining, "PLEASE LET ME HAVE MY AV BACK! I MISS IT SO! IT'S KILLING ME INSIDE!! If you return my unique and beautiful av to me, I promise I will stop killing the hitchhikers I pick up every night! Truly, I will!! Also, I'll stop throwing pennies at strippers! Really! I was getting tired of doing that anyway... What do you want me to do?! Name it, and it is done!!! I'll do anything to get it back! ANYTHING YOU WANT!! ANYTHING!!! *cries uncontrollably*"; depression, "How can I live knowing that I shall never see 'my precious' ever again?! It's so dark and cold now... I'm lost... Is anybody out there? Can anybody hear me? Why did this have to happen?!! WHY?!! It makes no sense... The av was so innocent, so pure... I can't take this anymore... There is no hope..."; and acceptance, "Ah, I guess I was overreacting a bit there. Sorry about that. Surely, there will be other avs. I shall keep fond memories of this one though, they can't take that away from me! Although, in retrospect, if I'm being at all honest with myself, that av did kinda suck big time.") haunt me to this day... Hence, "I feel your pain," to quote the great 'philosopher,' Clinton.

All that to basically say "yes, I agree, it sucks to lose props and AVs". If only people in the outside world thought this way, well, we might never get anything done, but what would it matter? It would all sound so utterly fantastic we could amuse ourselves for hours on end with a single string of text.

Be well!

Testing.

Testing mobile blog posting through gmail on cellphone. Can't quite
figure out why I might ever need to do this but it's fun to know I
can. Maybe it'll prove a good way to pass downtime at Foxes.

You saw it here first.

Bluejeans, the straight dive bar across Central from the Ranch, appears to be no more.

Around eleven I heard sirens -- lots of 'em -- heading up Central. Looked down the sidewalk and Central was closed off just past Wyoming, right about where the Ranch is. As all the flashing lights were on the North side of the street, we didn't worry about the Ranch. Shortly thereafter huge billowing clouds of smoke come up and start drifting South over Central and the trailer parks past Zuni & Wyoming.

First, a street person I would casually call a crack whore tells me someone got pissed off at how they were treated at Bluejeans and set it on fire. I call Midnight at AMC and tell him as much. Then the Rose Lady shows up and says no, it's the laundromat next door to Bluejeans, but the fire's out of control, and Bluejeans is probably gonna be gone in an hour. "It's completely involved" are her words. Though given to speculation she's waaay more credible than the crack whore so I call Midnight back so he won't close AMC to go running over and see the flames. Then Wes (Albert's "husband") goes with the Rose Lady and comes back reporting flames jumping rooftops when he gets back. While he is gone I see some actual flames myself from Foxes -- I'd estimate they were thirty-foot flames, easy.

AMC closes early. There's not much traffic and what little there is gets cut off at and redirected around the fire, so business is dead, dead, dead. Midnight comes over, we close up early ourselves, and I head over to the Ranch where I get this shot from my cameraphone.

Not great photography, perhaps, but hey -- you see it on TV? I didn't think so. The fire started after the newscasts, though doubtless Mr. and Ms. Bouncy Hair from Newschannel whatever will be out there tomorrow morning for live feeds showing the burned out building on the street, because there's *sooooo* much going on the morning after. You see it in the paper? Maybe, but not tonight, that's for damn sure. For getting information out fast oh man oh man this is the *only* way to go. Digital, baby. Wireless. I *love* it.

Drinking eyewitnesses from the Ranch report a series of three explosions. Speculation is it was chemicals and gas lines in the laundromat. I went as far as I could on the sidewalk before someone from the fire department wearing a jacket saying "ARSON" very nicely asked me not to go any further. He said it would be between six and twelve hours before they had any idea what actually happened, but that the entire strip mall was definitely affected.

The laundromat was toast. All collapsed in on itself. Didn't see much further there was so much smoke and so many firetrucks and what have you. The guy in the jacket told me I didn't want to be breathing the smoke. I agree. It was nasty.

Evening started out with me throwing out an older guy who said he had "a 38" -- his words, which I took to be some sort of firearm after I refused entry to his drunken native girlfreind. OK, whatever. She can't come in and you can't have a gun in here. Good night. Unfortunately Victoria heard it at the bar and continuing with one of the bitchy back-and-forth comments that had been keeping everyone at the bar in stitches she yelled out "I'll cut you!" towards the door, which the guy took as a threat.

Got him outside, then Victoria followed me following him out and they had words at a distance with him standing right on the sidewalk underneath the sign. Got her back inside and checked from the door onto Central and damned if the old man wasn't shaking a six inch knife right at the door. That does it. Call security. Told 'em got a guy with a knife who says he's got a gun I just threw out but he's hanging around and one of the customers seems to be spoiling for a fight with him. OK, the dispatcher says, the guard is on a call but he'll be there as soon as possible.

For once Nat, the security guard, shows up not ten minutes later, gets his nightstick, and we approach the guy who's still loitering around the liquor store. (I'll name him now that he's proven himself capable and worthy of being named.) While waiting for the guard I call the liquor store next door to warn them about the guy and this woman and tell them he's armed. Security basically backs me up and we converse -- yeah, this and that's what happened, you're right, that guy was egging you on, but you're *not* getting into the bar with a weapon. OK. I've got no further problem with you, you've got no further problem with me, all is well. Good night.

Feline follies.

It's definitely time for a non-Foxes interlude having nothing whatsoever to do with alcohol. Besides which, what would any self-indulgent blog be without pictures of the writer's cats?


This, then, is kitten A (now Cat A), of kittens A-E (inclusive) that I rescued last year from the amazing weird old building behind me where the ferals have set up a giant colony. That building's amazing -- it's got five separate vaults and a fallout shelter and a few huge rooms with giant windows in them, all behind a mission revival storefront on Central that makes it look like -- what? I dunno -- maybe a bank or something, but apparently with pretty heavy-duty industrial stuff in the back. It's been a million different things and is on its way to becoming one of the upscale, unaffordable gentrified condominia of new urbanism, but for now it's still a cat factory.

I rescued kitten A twice. The first time was from a drainpipe, which I dug him out of by reaching my arm through the razor wire-topped fence on the edge of the fallout shelter right outside my bathroom and kitchen windows. Fed him expensive formula for a few days then decided to put him back, and finally got him for good on tax day by going out to jump the fence in my bathrobe during a raging hailstorm which he'd found himself stranded outside in. After that, he was *mine*.


Kitten B (now Cat B -- see above) poses -- but when I click her she makes faces at the camera. The cameraphone seems to be OK with her though -- maybe because it isn't flashing in the daylight. Who can say? Her "rescue" was far less dramatic than that of kitten A. She was sitting outside yowling for half an hour at 2 or 3 am and one of the neighbours called the cops because of it. I'm serious. I went out and brought her in; the police cruiser (there's that word again, now sporting a fourth meaning, because three's not enough) saw me grab the kitten and went about its business, then I doused her in water to show her who was in control and dried her off and took her to bed with me. That seems to be the ritual for taking cats into my life. (How like a gay man: first, "hey, you're cute", and then we spend the night together.)

Kitten D died, and I think I wrote about it here when it happened. Gawd that was an ugly cat. Ugliest cat I ever laid eyes on. Way better off dead.

Kittens C and E (now Cats C and E), a male orange cats with two matching "O" marks on each side and a tiny dark mottled female tortoiseshell calico respectively, both live with my parents now and keep them company and make more work for my already busy, busy mother. Both are healthy and happy and well, though Kitten D did break her leg jumping off of a cinderblock wall she had climbed once she moved to El Paso.

These guys keep me sane. Later.

Fag Patrol.

Busy right now being frustrated by gmail which flat-out refuses to load -- it says "loading" for ages without actually loading. It's usually great but when it's not it's pretty lousy. Right now it's being lousy. So apologies if you've emailed me in the last 24 hours and I haven't gotten back to you. I thought it might be the cellphone connection but everything else is loading fine.

Oh magic! I say something nasty about gmail and it takes me right to my inbox.

I seem to be getting comment spam. Always on older posts, always from people who have pretty clearly not actually read the post they're commenting on. Example: one person writes only "quite agreed" to a very complicated post, mostly written while still flying on red bulls and vodka months back about gardening, drinking, making tea, arranging furniture, and missing Pride. OK, you "quite agree" with what, specifically in all of that? You have the patience to read all that but not to write more than two words? I click the name expecting to be taken to a profile but it takes me to a "this account is closed" page, not on blogspot. Same as for another comment I got a while back. Not worth my time responding to those, anymore, even in comments.

I know damn well no one who's ever visited any of Charles' gardens or knows who Gertrude is or is anything else very closely connected to me or people I know is actually reading about it here. So far I've got three such "comment spams" -- maybe it's some sort of data mining effort and they're trying to get me to write back to them for my email address or something. Who knows. If I respond to vague comments like that at all it'll be through comments, but probably I just won't.

Not so for people who actually read, and now I know there are a few of you out there as well. You all are welcome here, always.

Missed my interlock download appointment yesterday so have to take care of it today, which'll cost me maybe twenty bucks. Damn stupid but I slept through my alarm. Am gonna ask 'em to make the next appointment in the afternoon.

Got a criminal summons in the mail, and a package from Weasel. (Apologies, weasel, but the summons took priority and your package remains unopened.) Called the court and asked 'em what's up with this and they told me it had been cancelled since I've paid to reschedule the class and actually rescheduled it -- classic "crossed in the mail" situation. It's on file as cancelled, the woman told me, so hopefully I won't get any warrants issued.

Foxes was dead tonight. The parking lot was crazy.

Crazy with drugs. Not *in* the parking lot, but *almost*. I stayed on top of it all night, and Chip stayed on top of it when I wasn't there, because the beer cooler badly needed organizing and I badly needed breaks from chasing off disgusting weirdo freaks. So basically we split the watch. It was quiet enough we could do that.

Got in maybe half an hour early and was calling my sponsor when this disgusting street addict goes around behind someone's car to what I know damn well is the fifth bathroom window in the motel next door. Without hanging up I go over and tell him "NO. You CAN'T do that. YOU NEED to get OFF THE PROPERTY. NOW." Tell Ferdinand I'll call him back and eventually do to tell him all's fine (he's got some choice words for the owner of the bar, at this point), but not before actually going over to the motel to exchange phone numbers with Mary, the manager and see what all she's got set up in terms of cameras and stuff for documentation. She wants him out too, runs a reputable business and all of that, but can't call the cops without *knowing* something's going on right when she calls. We're gonna be in close communication over this. Alex (bless his heart) apparently never got her number but just told her about the window. It's room 21 and the guy's name is Dan.

So here's the situation: it's *her* job to call the cops since the illegal activity's going on at *her* motel, and she actually *wants* to, but needs to depend on *me* to tell her who's doing what in *our* parking lot right when they're doing it. Great. I think we can do that. If this were nonprofit (not that any of us are making a dime off of any of this, mind you) you might say that the queers and immigrants are forming a grassroots strategic crime reduction partnership.

Found something the cameraphone's *really* good for -- chasing off drug users and street people! I just stand back, say "smile!" let it flash, and walk away. Did that three times tonight, every time they were surprised and gave me shit but *always* left the property without delay. (They don't need to know it takes lousy pictures.) After one time doing this the cops stopped this guy for drinking in public and poured out his beer in the parking lot across the street -- not five minutes later. I just hope the word on the streets is that they got called from Foxes. They didn't, of course, but if the street people think it's not a safe place for them to hang out, all the better.

I'm sorry. I know that homelessness is not a crime. It isn't homelessness I've got a problem with -- it's stupid people doing stupid and illegal shit on bar property that has nothing whatever to do with the bar itself. We have to run that place like it's the fuckin' Oak Room landed freshly on Mars, regardless what people felt it was there to be used for last winter. If you're homeless and you show up and indicate you need some help just fucking ask; I'll do what I can to get you to a shelter or something but jeez. If you're a drug fiend just "looking for someone", kindly bugger off. That goes even if you're queer. Hell, that goes *especially* if you're queer, damned if we're gonna let you in to drag others down to your level. We don't need that shit. Period. Denied entrance to three gay guys tonight because whatever they were looking for was *not* other gay guys. Got the license number of the car that they were in, as well as two others involved in what I'd call "suspicious activity" in or through the parking lot. Go ahead, *be* paranoid, puhlease. Yeah, you really *are* being watched.

It comes in waves. It's never just one person getting fucked up. They walk in groups of three or four or five or more. Out on the prowl. Prowl elsewhere. Hell, prowl the sidewalk, see if I care. But get yer damn foot off our parking lot.

Cameras on the lot would be a good idea, but then again, they might just make us lazy. They'd cost money, and that may be reason enough not to get 'em. Alex is talking about getting some at his expense. Who knows.

I hate nights like tonight. I had fun, don't get me wrong; I love it when I feel like I'm really keeping the place safe and get to sashay and toodle around inside the bar in such a way that just makes all the "masculine" type leather men wonder how I can possibly be effective while knowing damn well that I'm actually doing my job just as well as anybody can. But honestly, it is risky. (Less risky than lots of stuff I've done before, I can assure you, which is why I'm *fairly* comfortable doing it from time to time.) For what? To keep a place open where faggots can go to meet eachother and get drunk. I dunno, man. I am conflicted. Still, I love my job. I'll get this stuff figured out somehow.

Return of the flag.

Went to the Gay Men's Chorus concert this afternoon and enjoyed it thoroughly. I don't know what exactly I was expecting -- I think I sort of had the image in my mind from New York or San Francisco of a monster chorus with hundreds on a huge full-size vaudeville palace stage with everyone getting lost in the crowd but there were only sixteen people in the group. I'm not complaining about Albuquerque being a small town, but merely pointing out that this reminded me of that fact. They've been around for 24 years now, which is more than respectable.

It was nice, though -- pretty damn good as far as choral music goes. They can more than hold their own against oh say all the terrified closet queens in Bruce Nehring's Consort. They did a Brahms setting of a poem by Goethe way too ambitious for that small a group and pulled it off without a hitch; I don't know how. I was impressed, to say the very least. George, the doorman from AMC was the soloist for the dreidl song -- only GMC could ever bring out double entendre in that, but they did. Delightful. Fellow barbound concert goers were moved to tears by the last song. For me I was most impressed by far with the Brahms.

Met an older gentleman during intermission who told me what Albuquerque was like *before* there were *any* gay bars at all. There *was*, he says, a straight bar called the Newsroom in a basement underneath a movie theatre where queers would congregate at specified late-night hours on weekends, but aside from that, he says it was mostly the parks and bushes and private parties whenever they weren't raided by police. Needless to say I exchanged email addresses and phone numbers with him and I've little doubt we will be corresponding soon.

I wore my seven dollar tailored tuxedo that I got at the little thrift store across the street a couple of years ago, and looked downright fantastic. I'll wear it again New Years' Eve. I *love* dressing well. Gives me the confidence to approach anyone or stand apart without the least discomfort.

Then to Walgreens to get something for Fernando, the straight guy who still works bar during the day because Sid hired him because he's drop-dead gorgeous and Chip's not the kind of manager to fire someone without good reason, and not knowing how to handle male customers hitting on you isn't good enough reason. Needless to say I feel no great affinity with this person (I hardly ever see him, thankfully) but drew his name (the last -- of course) out of the little plastic cup for gift exchange. Bought him some baby spoons and a bib and a stuffed toy bear for his daughter who hopefully won't chew it open and swallow whatever's filling it.

Alex gave me a book -- a 1961 American poets' anthology. Clearly he's not a reader, but he put some serious thought into getting me something fitting and I'll treasure it always for his inscription, says it all.

Gave Chip a rainbow flag for the bar, which he had us put up at once, to immediate cheers and applause at the otherwise morose bar. We had one in there when Bill (now at AMC) was working there but it seems to have gone with him when he changed jobs. It's right over the jukebox, visible as you enter, lest anybody not know where they are or why they're there. It may get moved because the court still uses that corkboard for posters. Chip put out food for everyone and I ate my fill of shrimp.

Here's the only picture of me in that fabulous outfit, at least before New Year. It was taken with the cameraphone in "night mode" because that's the only one I had on me. Honestly it's like those almost ancient early photographs where if you look very closely you can sort of make out the outline of a milk cart beside something that's probably a building of some sort while what is probably a woman in a long skirt makes an indistinct long-exposure blur in the extreme foreground on the far left. Nice to have it but gawd it's got some truly lousy optics or something. Or maybe it was the lighting in the bar. Who knows? I bought it for the bluetooth, not the camera, so I won't complain, but just say that they've got a long damn way to go.


In the above picture: *if* you hold your head *just* right (try looking at it from below, or something) you can kind of tell the flag's in the background on the right over my shoulder, the stage for Turnaround is in the distance and I'm standing in the dreaded bitches' corner. Good luck deciphering what there is of this image, the only thing that I can tell for sure is that I'm quickly going very, very bald.

I wonder what all the fashionable palacers (Southparkers and Recovering Spumconians) are using these days that roughly parallels ICQ the way we used to use it back in the day, if anything? I'd like to let some people know I'm online now but don't know how without responding to emails which I can never do in ten thousand words or less (or else by posting here) by which time everyone's asleep, and apparently the days are long since gone that I can just sit in the palace and expect people to show up. I think what I'm asking is what do we use now like barhoppers use cellphones or something.

Snow White tree, Sunday.

That's it -- with the sunrise about an hour ago behind it.



As I type this the sun is just breaking through the clouds and it is BRIGHT. This is the view from my bedroom window, looking out over the last unpaved street in Albuquerque, on U.S. Highway 66.

Astounding quality of light. Camera hints at, doesn't nearly capture. Blinding. Embraces everything. Moves through the air. Sunlight you can hear and feel.

Turnaround.

Slept today. Went to bed around eight AM after several hours online.

When I got in Chip was already tired since when he'd gotten there three hours before the bar was full of drunk, nontipping street and neighbourhood people from the day shift and he'd only just then cleared most of them out, the day's business cycle mirroring the busy managerial transition, then slump as we clear out undesirables, and now steady upward curve of business generally.

"I'm not in a good mood", he said, "no, actually, I am, I just don't want to deal with this shit tonight". Enough said. I clock in 13 minutes early and go to work doing what I do. Well before showtime, all is well. I tell everyone who just plain stinks they can't come in because I smell alcohol even if it just smells vaguely homeless cigarettey enough to probably cover the alcohol smell. Slightest hint of a stumble or list and they're drunk -- I tell 'em "it's my call to make; you can't come in and that's that". The first person I get rid of is the guy I'd tried to give a ride to a shelter a couple of nights ago because he's sitting at the bar ordering nothing, talking to no one. Not a troublemaker like some people are but Foxes is a business and he's driving it away. He throws a sorry little hissy fit on the front step thus ensuring that he won't get in again.

Throw 'em out of Foxes and let 'em into AA. That's me, the doorman. Yeah, you *do* know me from somewhere. Don't be afraid, I don't bite. Really. No it wasn't in the bushes or a bookstore or arcade and yeah your dirty little secret's pretty safe with me. Come in and I will tell you all about it.

The show was weird, being turnaround. Emperor Ken couldn't handle the heels and gave a geriatric twist to his numbers being clearly in physical pain. Killroy was marvellous walking out backwards with the mask on the back of his head, multiple subsequent wardrobe malfunctions notwithstanding. Paul stole the show -- he enjoyed being in drag and wound up being absolutely fabulous. Martinique herself tipped him fifteen dollars for his last number, he was *so* good. Of course he won the crown: Miss Turnaround 2006.

Poor Angel showed up stinking drunk and so we didn't let him in, then called ahead to AMC to tell them he was coming. He couldn't have cared less as long as he could get a drink somewhere. Being turned away at AMC he came back a couple of hours later only to be turned away again. Gigi and Ben ran the spotlight in his absence and actually paid attention to the performance so for once we had a spotlight operator on the spotlight, not just a warm body sitting under it drinking like a fish and yammering away to anyone who'd listen. Sorry if that's cruel but that's about the size of it. Drunk = expendable, even -- even especially -- at Foxes.

How much longer this'll last I've no idea but the change is taking hold. The energy inside the bar is almost wholly good. The time is on its way that people *will* look back on years from now and say "Foxes used to be *happening*, but look at it now" just like on slow nights they still say that about Foxes in the '70s or '80s or '90s. Foxes in undergoing a major transformation before it yet again slips ineluctably down into the mire of "dive bar". Whether it survives the next slump is anybody's guess, but I'm responsible in part for this moment and this generation. Someday Chip will retire, but 'til then, it's his big final hurrah and I'll be damned if we're not turning that place more or less around in the meantime. It's a beautiful thing not just to witness but to be a part of.

What a beautiful day.

Started at Hartman Publishing, where I was 45 minutes late but with no worries because it's been so slow lately I knew I could do everything I needed to do and still get out on time. I did.

A thousand thanks to everybody there for making this extremely difficult time in my life much, much easier than it could have been for me. Apologies for crude comments from me about working with women (see below: I'd "take it back" if deleting it wouldn't be dishonest), but I do not understand you and blaming you guys when I'm frustrated and territorial is frankly very easy. (It's part of the fact that all men are pigs: whenever we're doing something wrong and a woman points it out, gay or straight, we *will* tend to blame you by default.) From the moment I called in on that Saturday last September and told 'em that I just got out of jail to my final minutes there, everyone was really, truly wonderful to me, and anything I might have felt at the moment to the contrary was just little old me being way oversensitive.

Erin, without your support when I got out of jail, I might not have had that job that made survival possible these last three months. Kim, thank you for your fabulous ways that invariably embody the idea of "respect and dignity" as it's encoded in the Starbucks Mission Statement. Mark, without your sacrifice of valuable time to give me a ride to the tow lot I might still not be driving at all and might have lost my car. Susan, thanks for the unshakeable peace of mind you gave me when I made that frantic phone call from the ice room at Foxes, fresh from MDC. Thad, thank you for seeing the humour in *everything*. Corrine, thanks for the freindship and please, by all means come to a drag show at Foxes and bring all your freinds and be confident if you get too drunk to drive we *will* get you all home safe and sound. Kay, thanks for the delightful and funny post-it notes that reminded me constantly that I was dealing with real people, not just funny names in strange cities. Deborah, thank you for showing me through your extensive notes in ACT just how the business works -- it's utterly amazing.

If you're in any way involved with training Certified Nursing Assistants or Home Health Aides or Feeding Assistants, by all means check out their extensive line of textbooks, inservice workbooks, gift books, and educational materials, much of it geared to each and every individual state's specific certification requirements. They give free samples of most of their books to any instructor or institution considering a purchase; and they're easily the best in the field -- and the least expensive, too. They're the only publisher specializing in CNA and HHA texts. You absolutely can't go wrong with these people.

Enough shameless plugging. Got out and the sunset was gorgeous. Sped over to the meeting which was the first I chaired and my oh my the energy of my running in five minutes before only to get thrown out of the parlour into the auditorium by some church group or other that needed the parlour carried over and the meeting ran a whopping thirty minutes. I close the door at Foxes turning people out onto the streets and now I open the doors to the AA meeting where more than a few of the people I've thrown out of Foxes seem to land. I get out of jail and wind up signing for a handful of guys who need signatures from me for their probation officers to keep *them* out of trouble. The ironies are still there, but the laugh I get out of these is healthy, not bitter and cynical. I am *exactly* where I need to be.

Then I get confused about what time I have to be at work so instead of getting food I go to Savers thrift store on San Mateo for a dress shirt for the Gay Men's Chorus concert on Sunday. Of course I walk out with three pairs of pants, six shirts, a pair of suspenders, and a tie. Still don't have the dress shirt that I need for Sunday. So I pop into Ross, get a lovely white Arrow shirt and pick up two pairs of brand new leather dress shoes on the way out -- the first I've bought in I don't know how many years. All of it runs into money but geez sometimes I take the thrift store idea too far -- meaning I look as if I dress in thrift store clothes. It only works when the illusion is maintained, you see. I think I've corrected that now and won't need any more clothes for a very long time, and can definitely stand to get rid of some of the frayed ones I've got.

Then to Foxes. Friday night pool tournaments are turning out to be very enjoyable. Good business nights with a nice crowd -- not fucked up street people but every week a few more queers in the queer bar milling around and dancing and playing pool and conversating and heaven help us all cruising. Yep. Once again there's some real cruising at the famous Foxes Booze 'n' Cruise. I'm denying entrance to lots of people tonight and still we're busy busy busy. The change is starting to take hold, people are finding out that Foxes is a good place to go on Fridays and we're all remaking the bar in our own image, following Chip's guiding vision, and his and Alex's tireless labour of love. Thomas Stubblefield, one of the street addicts who'd gotten thrown out twice last February and March came back for the first time tonight literally foaming at the mouth. Disgusting belligerent bastard. Alex recognized him instantly and we got rid of him at the door before he even got to come in. It helps tremendously to have a head doorman who's been there longer than three months.

Tomorrow -- make that today -- I plan to sleep until I wake up. If there's time I'll tidy up a bit. If not I'll just clean up, throw on some new used clothes and head to work looking fantastic for the show.

I seem to have just spent two hours editing pictures of Krazy Kat and sending them through Apple Bluetooth File Exchange to my cellphone, which I've named Quentin, from my computer, which I've named Morton. Now, three days after getting it, I'm practically rid of the annoying default Alltel backgrounds and the telephone's my own. I've also got shots from Foxes and from this now long gone storefront in Ysleta.



They always had the best nopales, short of going over to Juarez to get 'em at Mercado Quahutemoc. The picture's years old but figured I'd share it frankly just because I could. So there. Typical El Paso weirdness. Enjoy it.

Randomness exemplified.

Oh the joy at being able to post this at five in the morning from the comfort of home.

Someone came in to a meeting tonight who the last time I saw him I threw out of Foxes for being totally out of control. Hm. Said hi and was freindly without being all in his face, got the "I know him from -- somewhere" look back and backed off. The meeting was a total fiasco, the first I've been to where it was, mostly because they were doing dress rehearsal for a christmas pageant in the next room.

Then what else happened. Oh nothing much. Chip was in a great mood; gave out tickets to the Gay Men's Chorus concert on Sunday which is one of his traditions and I wouldn't miss it for the world. I may even wear my tuxedo.

Let a homeless guy sleep in my car before I tried to give him a ride to someplace he said was a shelter but then couldn't locate being drunk. Called around and found nothing nearby that was open so had to leave him on the street. Terrible, but at least he had a couple of hours to sleep in relative warmth. Wouldn't have done that if I didn't know damn well he'd get out when I told him. Heh.

Found out it's actually in the will that Foxes won't charge cover -- ever. Donations for the court are fine, but never ever charge cover according to the dying wish of the current owner's father. Kinda suspected as much all along, nice to know I was right.

Online at home.

At last! I have the internet at home.

Thanks to my mother, naturally, since I'm entirely incapable of doing certain very basic, simple things on my own.

My cellphone had been dropped a few too many times in the parking lot at Foxes and keys weren't working, neither were certain features, so I went to Alltel yesterday and started window shopping. Found the phones with bluetooth, not really knowing what it was or how it worked, just that my laptop had it. Had a phone on special with bluetooth, camera, mp3 player, radio, and goodness knows what else for under a hundred bucks after the mail-in rebate. Just short in the checking account but dying for a phone that really works I called her up and left a desperately lustful message and she says fine use the credit card and we'll call it a christmas gift.

I'm so damn good at using certain people that it honestly scares me.

But finally I don't have to run around like mad from one side of town to the other just to find a hotspot where I have to spend ten dollars for food in order to spend ten or twenty minutes setting up and checking job postings on craigslist before I get to post something in haste and maybe respond to an email or two in the fifteen minutes remaining before I have to be somewhere or other.

The internet access is free except for minutes, meaning that it's free when I get off of work, and on the weekends, and from 7 pm to 6 am daily, and the rest of the time I just have to count minutes like I do for regular phone calls. "Free" meaning I have been paying for this service all along, but incapable of availing myself of it. *Finally* I don't feel like I'm paying too much!

Palacers, beware! We'll meet again.

Finally I can do my best work when I do my best work where I do my best work. And heaven help me if I ever "need" to go online from Foxes or someplace else without wireless installed, 'cause I can do that too.

Still gonna go to Flying Star for downloads and being around people and stuff since what I've got it about as fast as 56K but for 98% of what I do this is just fine and dandy thank you very much.

Discharging the battery completely before recharging it, this phone's so new, so I'm gonna say thanks for putting up with me and sign off before I lose my typing since I'm down to one bar and the notion of actually displaying charge percentages has apparently never occurred to cellphone designers. Be well.

The shortest distance.

Cyril came back last night, maintaining himself -- for about five minutes. I told Albert to watch how much and what he was served since the last time he came in he'd gotten so fucked up on lunatic mixtures of hard liquor he threw up and forgot his address. A few minutes later, only into his first drink, he was already knocking over stage props so Chip said "he's had enough" and I danced him out to the front door, literally, since he was too into the music to notice I was trying to throw him out 'til we were both in the foyer, even though my "King and I" waltz step didn't quite seem to jive with whatever he was doing to the throbbing disco beat. He came back later for his jacket which he misplaced somewhere (not at Foxes) and that was that.

Sid came for the show. Last time he came, he said if Alex or I ever wanted a job to let him know. This time he was going on about great pay and benefits working for Black Mesa Coffee at the aeroport and hinting broadly about how the company's expanding. I didn't know he worked with coffee, I just knew he was at the aeroport and somehow thought of him selling gifty stuff. Great to be wrong sometimes!

I'm no longer up in the air -- I think I *know* what my next job will be. Suits all my needs pretty well as far as I can tell. I'll be working for a gay man I've already worked for. (With apologies to all the straight women out there, I flatly refuse *ever* to work for another of your kind. Far too many of you are completely insane and evil when it comes to workplaces, or at least have been as far as I have been concerned -- a rant I must save for another day.)

I've wanted to go back to working with coffee for a long time but (a) wanted to work for a local or regional business and (b) didn't want to work at Flying Star which is the only coffeeshop in town good enough for me to bother eating at. My mother told me about Black Mesa Roasters some months ago but I never contacted them since I didn't know anyone who worked there. Now it would seem that I do, and the person I know has already hired me and indicated more than once that he'd do so again. Of course he wouldn't be working there if I hadn't had way too many of his unbeatable martinis and some other drinks besides and gotten thrown in jail contributing however slightly to his precipitous desire to stop working with liquor altogether after fourteen years. Now look who's perfectly situated to help get me out of the bar world: the bartender who hired me into it and served me some of the liquor that got me into jail.

The shortest distance between any two points in my life is a crazy curvaceous spiral. Now I'll get to see if he's half as good with a coffee tamper as he is with a shaker. When I go to apply I'll order an espresso -- single or double depending on their bayonet configuration -- and watch the technique of *whoever* makes it like a hawk.

Still need to give myself a couple of weeks off from day work so I can clean up my apartment and car. But no more because I need to pay rent. I think I'll be able to swing this transition after all.

Just came from a party thrown by Ferdinand's home group. It was a blast. Skipped the staff party because both were at the same time on different ends of town and I didn't want to spend the twenty bucks for gift exchange.

Gave myself a haircut with the Wahl clippers I got at Walgreens because some of what Martinique said made sense enough to me to buy clippers even if I'm not about to shave my head completely. It looked like hell, and while what's there now is absolutely *not* a great haircut, it still looks about a hundred times better than it did, what with it balding on top and long and wavy below and then just out-of-control smokey fuzz all around. It used to be crazy street person hair, which I never even noticed because I never looked at the back of my head. Now it's half-assed attempt to look good hair, which is at least a tiny step in the proper direction.

I don't know how much longer I can work at Foxes. I need to stick around through New Year's, but not too very long after that I need to move on, assuming the new job with Sid works out OK and does in fact pay better (can't pay worse!). If it does I might actually move up -- imagine that. The only "promotions" I ever got, I got working graveyard at Frontier because someone else had been murdered or what have you.

I do not like working two jobs. In fact, I hate it. I always have to be somewhere and don't have the time to take care of myself. At this point I'm just sick and tired of living in squalor and want to take care of it already. Soon enough. One more week at Hartman, then I'm free.

Of course part of me says if I quit working at Foxes the blog'll suck. Where will I get my material? I honestly don't know. But now that I'm actually writing maybe it's time I stop collecting material out of the gutter. Enough drama's enough. And today's a good enough example of why I can't go on living the way I am: I had to choose between two parties and still didn't get to go online or do laundry or anything like that that I *should* do on my day off and frankly I'm tired of living this way.

The irony is fun though. Started out with a DWI arrest and now the nightmare's wrapping up with me getting invited to more parties than I'd ever be able to go to and getting offered non-liquor jobs by the guy who hired me out of sheer desperation. But -- I need time to myself. I don't care what people say about it, damn it, I *want* to be alone. Parties and stuff notwithstanding I don't like always having other people in my face and just need peace and solitude sometimes.

I'm eating at Mannie's on Central and Girard for the first time ever. They've got wireless internet access and I really like it. For what I'd spend at Flying Star for just a meal and coffee I get a meal and coffee and dessert. What did I eat? Beef liver, naturally! Any place that has liver on the menu, I have to have that, at least my first time eating there. This place is gloriously unpretentions -- "vegetables" translate to a little pile of peas and corn. Dessert is called "apple pie and ice cream", not "organic hand-peeled northern new mexico free range apples picked at the height of perfection baked with demarara sugar in a lightly glazed criss-crossed pastry crust with a side of the finest bourbon vanilla ice cream". I'm sure it's cheaper just because they didn't hire the poet laureate to write the food description. The coffee's good, too. It's also just down the street from my meeting. I can't believe it's taken me over two years to set foot inside Mannie's. Glad I did. Sitting in a booth and everything. Don't think there's anyplace to charge this thing but heck, I like it. Older peoople mostly and I'm the only one with a computer out.

Virgin territory! Uncharted lands! I'm writing about you all, and you're not writing about me writing about you! Muhah! Eat it, pretentious yuppies! I am all powerful in this place!

The year's almost over.

It's been pretty hellish at times but if I had to choose between reliving this one or last year I'd go with this one, hands down.

Last night I took Tony home from Foxes. Tony's a pretty smart fellow about my age; I met him working at Frontier while bussing tables. We've got a hell of a lot in common -- politics and ethics and other big ideas and education and all that sort of stuff. Because he's a punk rocker and I'm a flamer we'd never have even spoken to eachother in the first place say a couple of years ago, but now we get along just fine.

He was extremely drunk and since he isn't driving (he's had how many DWIs -- 3, 4? I forget) he'd walked all the way to Foxes in the middle of the night arriving maybe an hour before closing time. I shouldn't have let him in at all but consider him a freind and knew he'd just walked something like 30 blocks in the cold night and wouldn't be driving home. He didn't have cabfare of course (have money, must drink) and I know he's safe enough to give a ride, so he waited in my car while I counted and restocked beers. After letting him into the bar in the state he was already in (a bit woobly), even if just to get him out of the cold, his presence in the bar was *my* responsibility, *my* risk.

He invited me in when we got to his house and I figured I'd enjoy the company so I went in. He had tons of beer in the fridge, and was living on the remnants of potato chips, ham sandwiches, instant hot chocolate, and tomato soup. To be completely fair his apartment was neater and cleaner than mine, if only because he has less stuff. We talked of this and that for a couple of hours and he shared everything he had with me, even-steven. I used the interlock excuse for not drinking, and he seemed just a bit suspicious of it, but didn't press once I made it clear that no really I'm fine, thanks all the same. In return I didn't mention higher powers or stepwork or anything like that because I'm not some sort of missionary and he didn't seem to indicate any desire to stop drinking. Seeing how he lived was more than enough to turn me off the beer for the evening. The conversation was good. He fed me. I accepted what he offered gratefully and actually enjoyed it.

Together enough mentally to hold up his end of a conversation, maybe, but he was falling over everywhere. Spilling his Pabst Blue Ribbon all over the place. But still he kept on drinking, he said in part to put himself to sleep. I couldn't do much more than watch him fall apart in front of me. He wanted me to spend the night very badly; I wanted to sleep someplace warm, and so I did. We slept in the same bed fully clothed next to eachother. Honestly. It was nice. I asked him when the last time was that he'd slept and he couldn't remember, which was enough to turn his mind from drunken horniness to sleep.

And yes, that's truly all that happened, not that I didn't still feel I'd taken advantage of him, though most of his freinds are hardcore drug addicts who steal from him and whatnot, while I just ate his food and slept in his well-heated apartment. Around ten I had to leave so I put on my shoes and left quietly without waking him.

I went to Flying Star on Menaul grateful to have money for real food, even if the lack of connectivity was extremely annoying to me. They never did get the internet up and running while I was there. Not my favourite location, would much rather be here, downtown. Worked at Hartman about which I need say nothing.

Got out of there and drove around listening to Amy Goodman on the radio, who was covering congressional hearings into Katrina. Got a burrito from Cuco's. Then went to the meeting which I've been looking forward to because I'd been meaning to sign up to make coffee since coffee's presence at these things is a *big* factor in my own presence at them and it seems always to be a big, complex production, and the time to do that is the monthly business meeting after the regular meeting.

At the regular meeting I'm given the books to choose the reading and choose the three paragraphs in the 12x12 starting on line one of page 36 since it fits the shitty mood I'm in after the unexpected drama at Hartman. (I'll *never* understand office people, and don't really want to; they bore me even more than academics.) Seemed to strike a chord with many of the people present as we go around and share. At the business meeting I get nominated to chair the Friday meetings for a month while someone else is out of town. Oh wow.

That's a responsibility. I'm only 30 some odd days sober and I'm signed up for as long a stint chairing the damn meetings. I literally *can't* screw up now because everyone's depending on me, and not just the guys inside the bar, either. I get a key to the church where the meetings are held and thus am doing double duty as doorman. No one else who's a regular can volunteer, right now, to do it. I tell them on being nominated, which is a huge surprise and honour, "Sid hired me because he was desperate for a doorman and I'm *still* at Foxes five months later, so I think I can commit to chairing meetings for a month if you're all desperate for a chair".

It's also decided to expand the meetings to Tuesday so that soon enough there'll be queer meetings every night of the week in this town. Yay!

So let's see. You can go to these things and have honest, engaging conversation with the queers who have their acts together in varying degrees or you can go to the bars and get fucked up with fucked up people while you talk about getting fucked up. As for me, well, because I've grown accustomed to paying rent, I have to do both. This is gonna be fun!

Anything for the faggots and queers and the bull dykes and queens. That's my motto. Maybe not really bumper sticker material but hey, it works for me.

In to Foxes. Good night. Second Friday night pool tournament and it's a really *nice* crowd. Business is good, nothing goes terribly horribly wrong, though I'm *very* tired since I haven't been home in 36 hours and it's cold and my whole left leg gets so weak that it's hard to stand up. Chip works bar with Albert 'til Albert goes home early to be with his "husband" -- pardon the scare quotes, but it *isn't* yet legally binding, whatever they'd like to think. I put up tons of literature on the corkboard in the foyer about that very issue last night from the NM RAIN (Religious Alliance for Inclusion and Nondiscrimination) event clear across town at which Lieutenant Governor Diane Denish was scheduled to appear but didn't at the last minute because she was acting governor in Santa Fe while Richardson was somewhere else (of course) when the roundhouse (state capitol) flooded. Still lots of other state and local politicos there. It's mostly the same talking points we'd been given when we went up last Valentine's Day to lobby the legislature, where I met a clearly terrified Gloria Vaughn and politely disagreed on the statehouse steps with some simple simon senator or other about the variable meanings of "family" to Pueblo civilizations which flustered him visibly.

Chip asked whether I really thought anyone was going to read all that. Well, *maybe* one person out of a few hundred who pass through the doors, even if only the out-of-towner who's way too scared to do more than look at whatever posters we've got without even risking eye contact with the freindly doorman, and it's better to have *something* for them to look at than blank cork and a sign announcing drink specials we haven't had for years, besides all of which even glancing at it once or twice a week is enough to get the message "this is still a current issue" long before it hits the ballot as a referendum in an off-year election and passes into law like it has in every other single state where such a thing has happened because we're as badly disorganized a minority as there is on the face of this planet.

This is one of those character traits that runs rampant, like a monster eating itself up from the tail. We're such perfectionists we often won't do anything unless it's perfect. So because what stuff's available isn't really tailored for the bar crowd, most people in and out of the bars won't bother trying to reach the guys inside 'em in the first place. I say that's a mistake, because I work at Stonewall on the Mother Road.

He expressed extreme frustration at the misleading acronym DOMA and I have to explain to him why it's called what it is, that it's called that by the people pushing the bill, not by the people opposing it, and that we're the ones opposing it, and that it's so called so that opposition to this illegal redefinition of marriage automatically sounds like an attack on marriage. Being forced to explain the rhetoric of doublespeak to a bartender (for whom "motherfuckin' cocksuckin' piece of shit fuckin' whore" is an appropriate epithet to use on an uncooperative screw) is good practice for me, if I ever actually want to communicate, which might not be a bad thing to learn.

We do come to agree that for the purposes of communicating inside the bar, a flyer saying "Support Gay Marriage" or "Gay Marriage Under Attack" is way the hell more effective than "Ten Reasons Why Equal Marriage Rights Legislation is Good Public Policy and Politics", but since I don't have such a flyer, I make do with what I have. Got 35 cards each for a petition drive which I put out but the logistics of it are utterly dreadful -- you can't just mail your signed card in to your representative and senator but have to return them to the doorman (or the bartender who'll deliver them to the doorman -- we hope) who'll deliver them to the EQNM office where they'll figure out who your elected officials are (since almost no one really knows) and then dramatically deliver them all at once right in front of the cameras, assuming anyone is even in the office at the time.

If I get five of those things back signed and then deliver them I'll be doing pretty damn well. Getting people organized on anything political in a bar is akin to doing high-speed particle physics with molasses in January.

I am exactly where I need to be. Everything's *clicking*. It's a hard thing to explain. Maybe impossible. And yes even the DWI is part of that -- a huge part. I have no clue where this will wind up or where I'll wind up as a result of it all happening. It's *very* powerful and I can't put my finger on what started it, not that it really matters. For the moment I don't have to make a choice between two worlds, I dance between them. When the time comes that I have to make a choice which to inhabit, I think I know which I'm going with -- the one that accomplishes better results, most of the time. As for the positive results of the alternative, well, I suspect I can live without doing karaoke again.

It's 5:48 and I'm at Flying Star downtown because I can be. I'm unbelievably busy and don't have time to go online like I want to. There's no real urgent business online for me at the moment but I want to be here, and so there you have it. I process my life by writing it. If people read, fantastic. If not, no hard feelings, it's for me more than you, not that I don't thank you for being there because damn it you keep me fairly honest.

Sunday -- tomorrow -- is the Foxes/AMC staff party. I have to go. ("No you don't", says Ferdinand when I tell him, to which I say "yes I do", using "have to" as meaning "really really want to" rather than "am compelled to against my will". I do know the difference and understand what he tells me.) Like it or not, some of my wider-ranging freinds are still firmly ensconced in the bars and since I've hardly been to any but Foxes since September I'd like to actually catch up with them. I can't stay *very* long though because there's an AA christmas party at the same time clear across town to which I've been invited and really also want to go to that. (My god, what's wrong with me, don't all the fashionable people actually hate parties?) Going from a bar staff party straight to an AA party should be good enough excuse not to get stoopid, just in case going to jail's not motivation enough.

So much for my day off! The good thing is that after this week's over I am done with Hartman Publishing. They have been good to me but man I need that time to myself. The flip side of course is that I'm going to be very, very poor (by US standards) within about maybe a week's time.

I've got to use that time to get my things in order. Clean my apartment. As in gut it. Laundry, too, though honestly that's just a drop in the bucket. I need to spend about a week on my living spaces, including my car. Doing nothing during the day but getting it all in order, just like we're doing at Foxes over a more extended period. Throw away all the garbage. Rip out the carpet and throw it away. Get rid of papers, papers, and more papers. I'd like to redo the floor with linoleum tiles -- the same colours as Foxes. That might not happen for a while because tiles cost money. Then I can get dressed up nice and go out and look for another day job, hopefully closer by.

Show tonight. "Christmas Cruise on the UCS Monarch", playing on yet a third meaning of the word "cruise" so everything's going to be ship-related, probably, because damn it, the name of the bar isn't already complicated enough.

Later, guys.