Today I had the tent set up in my apartment (North Face tadpole23), and was coaxing the cat inside so she could get acclimated to it.
"This will prolly be our permanent residence someday, kitty-cat." I said.
The cat gave me that quizzical snaggle-toothed look (She's missing one of her fangs) I get from her when I let too many sawdust-caked turdballs accumulate in her scat-box.
"Dude, why are you obsessed with being homeless, the petrocollapse (whatever the fuck that is), your eventual abject sqalordom or being chased into the wilderness by bands of torch-bearing angry villagers? What's with all the annoying fatalistic nihilism? I don't get it." she said.
"Well, I've always kinda thought like that, and although I realize it's not exactly a Tony Robbins-type outlook, It gives me an odd sort of security believing it's all going to end badly, either personally or globally, probably both. I remember throwing up my hands once when I was a child of twenty, after some bone-headed fubar snafu went down in my little life, and exclaiming 'nothing good can come of my life.' Pretty fucked up, huh?"
"Par for the course at age 15, but most of you pampered suburban humans usually grow out of it. You suffer an arrested development on so many levels, my big cuddle-hungry anthropoid."
"Yeah, well you should meet Winston-- oh wait, you already have. By the way, he's gonna be dropping by to look after you while I'm on vacation next week."
"He's kinda hard to figure. I can't tell if he's afraid of me or is trying to make friendly-like. Can't you get the chubby girl with the wild hair that was coming last summer? She has a soothing voice."
"Naw, my friendship with her isn't at the 'take-care-of-my-pet' level, I only asked her because she's in my section at the clinic, and it was a fellow section member, as you well know, that dumped you on me."
"Boy that makes me feel wanted! But living here is ten times better than being with that weird old Chinese lady. At least you let me out, and occasionally take me to the park. But I still hate riding in that plastic box bolted to the back of your bike. What if you wipe out? I have no way out. I'll be bouncing around in their like a marble. Until a car squashes me."
"Don't worry, that thing's a piece of shit, the top will fly off the second it hits the pavement. Besides, you're a cat, you guys always land on your feet."
"Our prowess is greatly exaggerated. But I do appreciate you trusting me to go stalking in the park, even if all I can catch is bugs, seeing as how they cut off my front claws when I lived with the freaky Chinese bitch. But that time you left me overnight-- damn, it was cold!"
"Hey, I left work early and came looking for you-- it was ten o'clock and you weren't at the agreed upon rendezvous picnic table. I wasn't gonna wait around all night for you. And what about the other time I showed up to get you-- I shined my bike light at you and you ran away. What's up with that?"
"I thought you were one of those homeless guys who sleep around there. They try to throw stuff at me."
"Thanks a lot, cat."
"That reminds me-- why don't you give me a name already?"
"Don't want to. Names just seem like frivolous conceits in these end times. Nothing matters. All is dream..."
"There you go with that zen apocalyptic bullshit again!"
"You'll see. I need to toughen you up, get you ready for the rending of the social fabric. What say I take you on a cross-country bike ride this summer? I'll bolt on a bigger box..."
"You wouldn't--"
"I only wish I could reattach your amputated finger tips. Claws will come in handy in the brave new world..."
"Damn, the crazy Chinese lady is looking better all the time!"
yes, I wanted to start transitioning when I ws 19, but my ex said if I did, it was the end of our relationship. It's not that our relationship was more important than abstract notions like my "being true to myself" or whatever. It was that I was so bummed about how my body turned out that I thought that I would never be able to pull it off (c.f. "happiness=passing"). Some days I still don't think I can pull it off. So we stayed together a decade longer than we should have not because I was so devoted or tragically conflicted but because I was chickenshit.
in my book is that Jewel song You Were Meant for Me:
Sometimes when I'm really hungry and tired I like to fantasize about going to a restaurant and just ordering everything everything that strikes my fancy. Way more than I can eat, with no concern about waste. But I never do; instead I spend inordinate amounts of time deciding what to order, and feeling like it's never enough, and eating every last bit, even if I didn't particularly like it.
"everything has chains, absolutely nothing's changed
I worked a shift over at the Berkeley Free Clinic. I had only one client, but he was amazing. a 42 year old heroin junkie, spitting image of George Clooney (only better, if you cut his dirt-dreadlocked hair from living on the streets). He was pos for hep B and C, wasn't sure if he wanted treatment, very fatalistic. He was high when I talked to him, but still-- this guy was funny, erudite, and eloquent. It started when he used the phrase "wrack and ruin," and I made an off-hand reference to Ragnarok. He then proceeded to expound for 15 minutes on the difference between Ragnarok and Gotterdammerung, Norse theology, the Viking expansion, the ethnohistory of Western Europe. For the next hour as I tried to counsel him, it was the same way, one scintillating digression, one wry observation, one self-deprecating one liner after another. He was freakin' amazing. And for a junkie he had the best damn veins I had ever seen-- I didn't even use a tourniquet when I drew his blood! All the while he was also doing an intricate cat doodle in magic marker on a little pad of paper he held. He left reciting an elaborate and hilarious Star Wars parody dialog he had concocted. Amazing.
We get emailed sex questions at San Francisco Sex Information as well as phone calls. I usually answer a couple on my shift each Friday.
