Another amazing day

Another amazing day, my third in a row. The kind of day where you keep getting to the bus stop RIGHT BEFORE the bus arrives. I sort of only have two speeds: ultra-focused or a complete mess. But when I’m really focused, I am unstoppable. In just three days I’ve done a considerable portion of what I need to do to get ready to move, including lots of sorting of clothes, boxing of stuff, selling my bike, got 4 big apple boxes from Safeway yesterday, and may have found a good home for Lucy as well – she’s going to get back to me this weekend. Woke up this morning, had a light breakfast of Caesar salad (been eating it morning noon and night since I bought a big bag that will go bad soon) and tea, exercised, worked on my artist resume which I hadn’t touched since I lived in the Melcliff, submitted “Mistress Violet” to Butt Magazine (I sent them “Natural Born Faggot” a while back but it’s too long and I’m sure they won’t be able to use it). Spoke with Pat yesterday, I’m meeting with him tomorrow for the Hat Party piece, also discussed my birthday/farewell gathering and he said we can probably have the patio which is AWESOME, the Chameleon’s patio would be perfect! I took the "art pig" photo above the other day on NW 23rd Ave while scouting my cousin's old house. Had my optician appointment at 2pm and went in with a combative attitude because I get so angry about how the PSU insurance doesn’t help one bit with vision and apparently there’s a law that says you have to update your eye prescription once a year (who wrote that law? opticians?) and then the guys turned out to be pretty nice and assured me I can have a copy of my prescription to transfer to Maui/San Fran and it will be good for a year, so then I calmed down and things went pretty well. Doc said my eyes have actually improved ever so slightly so my glasses prescription is a little too strong for me, but the stigmatism in my left eye has gotten a little bit worse, so it pretty much evens out. I asked him about the prescription law and he said for contacts its federal but for glasses it’s not and varies from state to state. He did that numbing/dilation test on me so for the next few hours I felt like everywhere I looked I was staring straight into the sun. I got a pair of lenses to try for a week and then go in and see if we need to change to something else. Then I bussed up to Minuteman where Patrick very kindly printed me a proof copy of my book on the spot as I waited in the showroom, and it looks really fantastic! Really I wasn’t expecting such quality for the price he quoted me, the images especially came out way better than I thought they would, since I hadn’t even prepped most of them for black and white. I’m going to make the final adjustments this weekend, then go back in Monday to drop off the absolute final version for printing. Then I went to the bead store on 48th & Division and fixed the bracelet I made ages ago when I worked for Susan Matlack Jones (before being fired due to my personality conflict with the incredibly annoying lesbian receptionist who picked at the scab under her nose and complained after coming back from a lengthy vacation), the girl working there was very nice and did the crimping and clasping for me, the part I don’t know how to do, so I gave her a little tip. The bracelet will be good to wear on the beach, I made it very African looking without consciously setting out to do so. Tomorrow I think my roommate will take me to UPS to ship my two boxes off to Maui. One thing I will NOT miss about Portland: walking along 82nd Ave. every day breathing car exhaust (benzene inhalation = hello leukemia!) On the way home stopped by Trader Joes and picked up some groceries including those butter waffle cookies that are devastating. There’s a cute boy working there who’s probably much too young for me. All in all, a productive day. I think it’s going to be like this from now until I leave. I’ve been sober for a week or two except for weed, and I’m going to stay that way, except that I will allow myself to drink on my birthday, if I’m good til then.

Temporal dissolution and gold styrofoam

Man alive, what a beautiful day. I sold my bike! Guy came over this morning, examined it, took it for a little spin up the road (he asked if I wanted to hold his wallet, but some people you just trust immediately), and said he’d take it! (One thing I’m going to miss about Portland: cute, skinny cycle boys.) He was only the second one to look at it, too. Now I’m trying to unload my computer but I don’t know if it’ll happen since the day of the desktop is over. Its selling point is that it comes with lots of expensive software (InDesign, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, etc.) pre-installed.

It was beautiful today in more than one way: the weather, for sure – an encouraging glimmer of spring. And also I was more active than I’ve been in awhile, fully emerged from my recent spell of winter doldrums. I spraypainted a mannequin head gold (for reasons known only to myself). It looks oddly beautiful, like a crumbled Egyptian statue. Afterwards I went out and about and had myself a productive day. Stopped by Justin & Emie’s to talk Art Police and get a new blue cloth bandage on my recent knife wound, which has healed very well. Then went to Goodwill in search of props for the film: a badge and bad art. Didn’t find either – well, there was plenty of bad art, but nothing that quite grabbed me the right way. (The perfect thing would be a painting of a cop hanging from a tree or being shot, then you’d have the art police in the film objecting to art depicting their death, it would make it kinda darkly funny.) Jean called to say she’d found the coolest vintage book on Lou Reed and the V.U. at Goodwill (which I had just left!) and asking if I wanted it but I stood firm by my policy of NO MORE STUFF. (I’m going to sell some of my books at Powell’s this week, except the precious few I just can’t live without.) Then to PSU where I took advantage of my dwindling student privileges to print out free copies of the finalized Art Police script. We are having a cast meeting I believe on Saturday then filming (at long last) next weekend.

After PSU I road the streetcar into Northwest, on a mission to find the house on the corner of 25th & Kearney where my cousin used to live. He can’t remember the house number and needs it for the book. I found it all right (photo above), a massive many-windowed dark old house with a gnarly witch tree in the hill-shaped front yard. There I felt an eerie sense of what I might call “temporal dissolution” – the sense of time being unreal, and of the lingering presence of another person who once stood right where you stand now. In other words, I tried to imagine my cousin walking out the front door as I stood on the steps. I didn’t bring a pen to write the house number down, just memorized it, then walked away and started thinking of other things and like a moron had forgotten it within ten blocks, so had to walk back and get the number again! (Memory isn’t what it used to be.) Nice day for walking, though, I didn’t much mind. Finally I picked up a few groceries at Trader Joe’s and checked to see if they had any boxes I could take for moving, and the stocker girl was very sweet to stop what she was doing and check for me, but they didn’t have any usable ones. (Where does one find cardboard boxes? Aside from buying them, which seems silly.)

Yesterday cousin Ant called from Bora Bora where he & J. are vacationing, he said there’s a place that opens into a hole in the ocean, so apparently there was a big round glass window IN THEIR HOTEL ROOM that opened directly into the sea – underwater! – and as we were talking a manta ray swam up and was playing right outside their window! Ant was yelling for J. to get the camera. The life they lead is the kind we used to watch on television shows about rich people. But I’m happy for my cousin. He and I both know what it’s like to live in evil welfare apartments in the small-town Midwest, where dreams are crushed and people cut off one another’s legs with lawn mowers for sport. He deserves his happiness. And he works hard, too. And I’m going to work while I’m there. It’ll be a vacation to be sure, and I’m sure as hell going to enjoy six months on Maui, but it’ll be an active enjoyment, not idle.

Now, let’s see, what do I have to get done before I leave? I’ve been stacking the deck heavily of late. I have three articles due to J.O. on the 23rd, including a substantial one on a gay porn star who has written a book about how to be a gay porn star (he just offered to put me in front of the camera after our interview!), plus three films I’m reviewing from PIFF; I’m volunteering at the Loveshow next Friday as an alcohol monitor (lizard?); shooting and editing a short film; publishing my book; hosting a going-away gathering on March 18th (with friends from Glacier visiting – Lisa who shares my birthday!), plus school stuff and everything I have to do to be ready to move. Hot damn, it’s a good thing I like being busy!

And on that note, I think I better go do some work. Kiss meow, glam

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.