Happiness: not so alarming as it seems

To think that today I am a fiery eagle of soaring energy and limitless strength, and only a few days ago I was a bloated toad hiding in a murky pond. The vicissitudes of being human!

Went to my capstone course for the first time today – “Aiding Unwanted Pets Through Grantwriting” is the full course name. I am one of two male humans in the class of 15-20. (The rest are female; no trannies, at least none visible to the naked eye.) I absolutely love it, although we have to present an “individual skill assessment” on Thursday – basically selling ourselves to our fellow classmates for the purpose of forming grantwriting groups – which is a little nerve-wracking – a job interview is hard enough in front of just one or two people! – but then again I felt pretty much immediately comfortable with this class – partly because of how warm and likable and open the instructor (Becky Boesch) was right off the bat; she’s one of those people you can tell instantly that they KNOW what they’re talking about AND it genuinely exhilarates them – and partly because I usually feel more comfortable with women for whatever reason – with men I feel more like they’re judging me (so nauseatingly self-psychoanalytical, sorry). I’m really just a big ol’ girl, but we already knew that, I suppose. (But no, Mom, I’m not going to be getting a sex change, nor am I going to become the next Pregnant Man like that Beattie guy.) Well, sometimes I feel more female, other times I definitely feel male. I’m just an in-betweener, such is my curse and blessing. ANYHOW. We talked about Temple Grandin, a high-functioning autistic who writes books, designed a “hugging machine” for herself and crusaded to make slaughterhouses more pleasant for animals, so that they feel at peace. One girl unwittingly instigated a debate by saying the supreme court is considering the lethal injection of prisoners right now and relating it to euthanizing animals, but another girl, who has experience in this area, said what they do to animals is painless, they’re supposed to put them under with morphine or painkillers first (although some don’t), and in any case the lethal injection itself is an overdose of anesthetic, it makes you just relax, just relax, just go to sleep.

Walking home after class I saw an accident on Broadway: an old lady in a little compact car fought a big white pickup, and the pickup won. I thought of snapping a photo but decided that was just too tabloid. (I’m the kid who always AVOIDED fights in the hallways of junior high, while others gathered around to gape at them.) On the Max I saw a guy who really looked like Igor from Young Frankenstein, wearing a hoodie. He had that bulging lopsided eye. Spoke with darling Lisa this morning, the one lifelong friend (intuition tells me) that I took from my semi-disastrous summer in Glacier. She swears she is coming to spend our mutual birthday together on March 18th before I leave Portland; I hope so, she could really help me rock this town inside-out one last time before I leave on the greatest adventure yet of my adult life. She said she is finally straightening out her financial situation, which in Lisa-speak I think means she got a job? (Lisa, if you read this, just kidding, love ya babe!) Went to Edelweiss and the Yellow Toad (my disparaging nickname) confirmed what I already knew about how lame he is by saying he doesn’t like German beer because it’s not hoppy enough (!!!), which is so hilarious, because Kirk & I both go there as our oasis away from hoppy Portland beers and IPAs, and we both think German beer is so greatly superior. Different strokes I guess! But they have further reduced their holdings of good import hefeweizens which the paranoid part of me thinks is a nefarious plan of the Toad’s to keep us away, because of that time I was rude to him AFTER HE WAS RUDE TO US. Anyhow. Came home and found the new RAM card and installed it, so now my laptop runs at least 3 x faster, it’s beautiful. (Last week my roommate Scott helped me figure out where the memory card was on my laptop – took us forever but we finally found it under the palm rest to the left of the mousepad.) Also just received Kentucky Fried Movie and Little Britain: Season Three from Netflix. Life is grand!

I've actually been in a splendid mood since talking with my cousin last night and coming away from that conversation feeling that all is grand with the world and with my future, thanks largely to him. He’s excited about me coming out, which makes me even more excited about coming out, and he even said I can take the train down to San Fran instead of the plane, and he’ll meet me there and we can fly to Maui together at the end of March (since he knows I hate and fear flying). He told me about the vintage furs from the turn of the century that he scored off ebay, including a black bear coat, which we discussed in light of PETA protesters in Portland and elsewhere, and I came away feeling really good and pumped up about getting through these last few months and moving onwards and upwards. Speaking of which, Kirk said something about how I was “dissing” Portland, and I just want to clarify that in no way am I talking shit about Portland as a city, and a place, and a magical happening incubator of art and creativity and freedom of expression of every kind imaginable – Portland is a great, great city and has been my (over)indulgent mother for years now (since 1990, off and on, if you count junior high/high school in Hillsboro), and I will miss it forever, and may return some day, but this is the biggest opportunity of my life so far, or that’s how I’m looking at it, and I’ve got to make one big leap at the prime time while I’m still young enough and ambitious enough and full of piss and vinegar enough to do so, and that’s what I’m going to do, to go and get tan and lean and toned and healthy on Maui and then have my way with San Francisco, where I may be a small fish in a big pond, and it may be harder to make an impression and swim ahead of the school the way I have in PDX, but I’ll survive, as always, finding a way to make ends meet, meeting the people I’m meant to learn from, making twisted demented brilliant art with colorful zany indelible characters, and finding beauty where others scarcely thought to look for it.

The fish who drowned in moonshine

Somebody left this Care Bear outside the Taco Bell by my house. That's kind of sad, right? I guess that makes it a Nobody Cares Bear.

I just got off the phone after about an hour with dear mum, wishing her a happy birthday – FOUR TIMES, since my cell still drops calls continuously when I’m at home and it’s using the wifi connection. She sounded in great spirits, although she’s afraid she’s going to have to move to a smaller room since her rent went up $40, but when I asked how much her income also went up (it does every January) the figure she gave me came out to $39, so I don’t get how it really makes a difference. I told her to crunch the numbers and talk to her people and get back to me and if she needs me to I’ll send her a check each month to cover the difference so she can keep her big beautiful room that she loves. I called and left Anthony a message about how much I love Little Britain and there’s a sketch in it where the queen or some other aristocratic fat bewigged lady is lying on a couch dictating a memoir to her assistant who sits there typing it, and every so often she stops and asks, “How many pages is that?” and the assistant checks and says, “Twelve,” and the silver haired lady utters an exclamation of disappointment and goes back to recounting more anecdotes. I watched it with my roommates the other day and said, “That’s me and my cousin writing his memoir on Hana!”

A friend of mine (I'm not sure whether to use peoples' names in a public forum, some people are shy and sensitive about that, while others are like me and don't care) said the original title of my book made her think I sounded like a trustafarian. If she meant "Live Through Me" it is (intentionally) a bit grandiose sounding, yes, but it also references the fact that people who absorb other peoples' journals and diaries are in a way living vicariously through them, just as I used to absorb Virginia Woolf's life through her diary back in my freshman-in-college days (I'm with the Indigo Girls on that one). It also relates to my mother, who is disabled and living in a nursing home in Minnesota, telling me every time I talk with her on the phone that she nows lives vicariously through me and my sister. (Naturally, she's excited about me going to Maui in the spring.) And lastly, it is (also intentionally) a reference to Hole's album "Live Through This," which although I don't really listen to it any more (just as I don't read Marvel comics any more), defined a certain era of my life and is probably one of my 10 favorite albums of all time.

If she meant the title "Como me llamo" made me sound trustafarian, I'm not sure why, unless just because I'm a white American using a Spanish title - but I'm studying Spanish in school, I genuinely find it to be a beautiful language, and learning a second language is good! Maybe she meant the translation of that title, "What is My Name," but I'm not sure why that would be either. It certainly has a personal resonance for me, since I've been changing my name to one thing or another practically my entire life, as my family can well attest. I was born with the first name Joseph, called "Joe" throughout my childhood (my sister, mother and cousin still have that name in their phones and address books for me). At one point I was toying with the first name Simon, at another J.D. At another (now highly embarrassing) point when I was a teenager, it was going to be Gary Glamdring! (Good God.) So when I legally changed it to Anthony LeTigre in May 07 it was only the culmination of a long history of wondering, more or less, "What is my name?" I still have a poem with that title in the booklet I'm publishing in January and I'm going to work this whole question of names into it as a theme.

Nonetheless, the final title I'm going with is "The Fish Who Drowned." Unless I think of a REALLY KILLER new one within the next week or two.

What are you doing for New Years? I get invited to parties (of course!), but I'm really kind of over getting drunk, and how much fun will a New Year's Eve party be without booze? I guess I'll find out.

I'm meeting with my three cast members tomorrow afternoon to discuss a script I wrote called "The Art Police" which they're going to help me film in January! And the neo-noir reimagining of Sunset Boulevard that I'm conceiving with Kirk and Melanie is starting to look really promising, and I've bestowed upon it a working title - "Moonshine Boulevard."