but not every apple is red...

Tonight I am going to a "reunion" for the people that used to practically live inside this club called Red Square.It was honestly some of the most fun that I ever had when I was in high school.Some of the closest friends I had back then were people I met in that place.Before it was Red Square it was a gay club called Rumples.I am looking forward to seeing some of my old friends.I am kinda wondering what ever happened to alot of them.I just think that it's interesting that i never went to any of my high school reunions,but I will put my hair in curlers for this club reunion.

Sometimes I miss those days.I was always awake and I had drag queens living in my walk in closet.Life was a parade all the time.I also remember feeling like I was going to fall over from exhaustion most of the time.never the less,I miss it.

The spring is coming,and while this prospect excites me to no end,it also marks the beginning of Flood Season.The spring tides are already moving and it is making people insane.

under the sycamore tree

I am in a kind of strange place lately.There is too much going on and I am trying to assimilate.

I think that a tide has turned and i am trying to get out from under.I have a strong feeling that things are about to pick up again and that the time for Keep-Your-Head-Down-and-Keep-Working is almost at an end.The spring is coming.I saw the first budding things a few days ago.People are budding as well.It is not a comfortable process,but it holds great promise.

I have to step back for a moment and try to figure out how to re-act to everything that is happening.I don't react immediately most of the time.Body will sometimes react physically to things that are overwhelming,but the mind just keeps on functioning and taking me forward.I think that I have been taking on a little damage spiritually.So I have to stop and do damage control,figure out what even merits a reaction,then proceed from there....Making decisive moves. I have had to be too many things to too many people for the past two weeks and I think I need a mental health day to get myself back in line.

at night when the bars close down,brandy walks through a silent town

I leave them alone for one night and THIS is what happens.The Drinking Annex of my living room has gone up in flames.At least I got to spend the past two nights there relatively unscathed.

Deb and I went there for steaks wednesday and then we went to hang with B and drink on thursday night.Things got a little out of hand later,but we had a grand time.Then this.very sad times indeed.

The past two days have been a little hectic and insane.I feel like life is happening so fast these days.I have been getting so much input from outside.I am trying to assimilate and keep up at the same time.It helps to write it down.Random event style.

I saw more cops on one night than I have seen in the past 3 months.I am talking gatherings of up to 15 cop cars.They were all over the interstate when LL and I were driving and smoking and talking last night.We actually spent some of the drive smoking a # and following a swat van for shits and giggles.

I got to see one of the boys that used to sneak in through the window of the house that Deb and I shared on Evergreen.He would just show up in your bed and be there when you woke up.He's a wonderful heater,and can sleep for three days if not disturbed.I didn't realize how much I had missed him until I saw him again.He's been busy being a rockstar,drumming for bands and touring.I hadn't seen him in at least 8 years.I just remember him coming to see me every week for tarot readings,and being amazed by the process every time.He's all grown up now.

One of my younger Gay Boyfriends showed back up after flying under the radar for a few weeks.Apparently his lover had bashed him in the face with a pool cue and he had to have surgery and was recovering.He's still on the mend.I ask him what happened and he tells me "I have terrible taste in men,and a very smart mouth.This is a dangerous combination" I am hoping that he heals up alright,and that I never run into the asshole that put him in the hospital.Assault charges won't look good on me,I am convinced of it.

I somehow got roped into doing hair and makeup on The Dame for some burlesque shows that she's doing with the Memphis Belles.I have to say that I actually impressed myself with what I did with her hair yesterday,in under ten minutes,with limited resources no less.I have to do it again tonight,but I am getting into the show for free,and some of my other friends are performing as well.I think I am amazed that I can still surprise myself in this arena.I learned quite a bit technically and health-wise when I was in cosmetology school,but it was a million years ago(the early nineties) and since then I have innovated my own techniques and styling methods. I am still in awe of the art of transformation,I think that is why I continue to do it.I think that it's the only art that I have done consistently since I was a sophomore in high school.

LL and I have stumbled onto a mystery.Another of our Gay Boyfriends was telling us last night that a friend of our that we have always assumed was straight might have been hitting on him. She and I started thinking about it and we realized,we never hear him talk about ladies,or gentlemen,or anyone for that matter.We realized that maybe we just don't know which way he swings,and we are intrigued.The other night when we hit the reset button with him,he said some things that made me kinda wonder.I also noticed when we were snuggling that he has the softest hands(they make mine feel like total lumberjack hands in comparison) and he always smells good.If it's a matter of genetics,his mother is gay.Suddenly we are like the Nancy Drew twins. We can think of nothing but ways to divine this man's sexual orientation.I fear we will become terrifyingly annoying before long.

I have apparently scheduled myself for way too many things today and I don't know how exactly I am going to pull it all off.I am still a bit worn out since I didn't eat right the past few days( honestly I just didn't eat at all for the most part,and too much caffeine) and I haven't had enough sleep and drank way too much the night before last.I had to carry my roommate around the the house,she ran over the neighbors lawn trying to park her car,and I actually drank a lot more than she did.She puked on the floor after telling me that she didn't need a bucket when I ask if she did.I could only get her half undressed before dumping her into her bed.She's very unwieldy on whiskey.I couldn't get a straight answer as to whether she had to go to work the next day and it tuned out that she was supposed to be there 2 hours after I carried her to her bed,and she had all the manager cards that the restaurant needed for opening up.We had gotten a bit carried away drinking shots with B and a bunch of our friends at SSG,which consequently burned down less that 24 hours later.I think I might need to get going.

wish me luck.

it's just the night in my veins

I am coming to terms with the fact that pretty much all of the people that I was with when I was doing hard drugs are all dead.It makes me very very thankful that I have been off dope for almost 12 years.Apparently they took a very different path.I have just found out about three of them in the last month.

First was an old friend of mine named John.He was a genius,one of those tortured ones who had to find a way to turn it all off sometimes.He lived on Southern,back in the day.I was about 19 or 20.We used to buy from the same girl.Her name was Jennifer and she lived upstairs from John the baptist(who is alive and well and just had another baby) Jennifer had one of those apartments that most hippy chicks had back then,Two and half tons of giant cushions and tapestries on the walls,and those little multi-colored christmas lights.I spent a lot of afternoons there falling in and out and talking to John.I had heard from a friend of mine that he had moved away and had gotten clean and he'd started his own company.He made the mistake of coming back to Memphis and got entangled with a girl who is still nothing but trouble.He OD'ed not long after coming back to town.So sad.I thought that he'd gotten past it.

Then a few weeks later,I hear that Josh B died of an over dose as well.I hate to say it,but it surprised me that he lived as long as he did.Back in the early nineties,he used to come over to the house I lived in with Shannon (my ex-wife and Dharmin live there now,soooo weird to go in there now) We would put on some Velvet Underground and fix in the living room floor,so that we wouldn't fall off of anything.He would put on my silky dressing robe and we would sway through the house and read Byron to each other from this antique book I found in the attic,The collected works.He never paid enough mind to his dosage and we had to bring him back numerous times.He had a penchant for wearing leisure suits,he walked with a cane because he would often lean perilously.He had a habit of showing up at our house,tilting his head back,closing his eyes and running his hands down his long body,announcing "I am siiiiiiick". Shannon used to impersonate him to make me laugh.

I recently saw Shannon's husband had commented on a friend of a friend on the old Facebook. I sent him a message asking if he had her #,I wanted to have coffee,catch up since I hadn't seen her in ages.I lost touch with her about ten or more years ago.She had married this guy,had a little boy and was going through nursing school.She seemed like she was straightening up and flying right.He messages me back and he tells me that they divorced a while back.She had apparently stolen drugs from the hospital she was working at and was shooting up again,then she was working for Pam's pimp,and had moved in with him.He got custody of their son,thank god.He told me that Shannon overdosed on morphine about seven years ago.It was three weeks before her family found out that she was dead.It knocked the breath out of me.

I had been looking for her for years.I guess I can stop searching.She and I were really close friends when we were young.We had been through a lot together.We were like sisters for years.We had lived together several times.It always imploded eventually because I couldn't handle the chaos.I guess in the end,neither could she.

I guess I am just reeling from the impact of the message that the universe is sending me so far in 2010."Keep your feet on the path you are on,because that could have been you".It's hard sometimes,because I don't have anyone to talk to about it.No one that I am in contact with understands what a huge temptation that it is.I am glad for that fact.Actually,Dharmin is the only one I can talk to about it(he's the only one left alive).He says that he might do it again in his lifetime.I am hoping that I never do.I just don't know anyone else that understands that it's a matter of staying off of it....every day.....no matter how long you have been off of heroin.Because you remember what it felt like.

It makes you feel so alive,because you are just dying a little bit faster.

black and white

Today I saw a picture on a friend of a friend's facebook.It was taken in the CK's coffee shop back sometime in the early 1990's.It reminded me of something that I had completely forgotten.It's just a black and white of a guy reading a book and talking to a girl who looks like she's had one of those days.I recognized the guy.His name was Chris.I met him when I was eleven years old.I was stuck in Memphis for the summer and a couple of my friends had convinced me to go to this summer camp with them.He was a camp counselor,about 18.I was rather advanced amorously at that age, and I wanted to get it on with him.I remember one day I was on the trail alone,and he caught up with me.The sun was about to go down,maybe he didn't want me walking out in the woods alone. It took us ages to get back to the cabins,we were just walking really slow.I remember stepping over an earthworm and daring him to eat it,thinking if he doesn't take my dare,I will tell that he has to kiss me.He picked it up and ate it on the spot.I was disgusted and still somehow turned on.I was a strange little girl.

Flash forward about ten Years.I am about 20 or 21,and He comes into the coffee shop that I wasted my youth in.When he came in I ask if he was meeting someone.He said no, so I ask him to sit in the booth with me.I told him that I wanted to read and didn't want to have one of my friends come and sit there and a stranger might discourage them.He fell for it. we read in companionable silence for a little while,peaking at each other over the tops of our books.We ended up talking before long, and I realized who he was.He ask if I wanted to do some blow and I told him my apartment was on the corner.So we go back to my place and spend the rest of the night blitzed out of our minds, and swaying, and having some really gritty sex.It felt grainy like an old photograph.I was fulfilling some kind of pact that I had made with myself when I was still a little girl.The years had brought out a lot the edges on a man that I had only known when he was in the blaze of youth.Afterward,I just lay there appreciating all the marks that a hard life had left on him....and at the same time I hoped that I would never have to see him again.To leave that whole incident as a photo in my memory.Eventually it became one photo in the many that live in my mind,and it was practically forgotten.

Then today I run across a black and white of him.Unmistakable.It brought it all back.I can still remember swaying with him and hoping that he wouldn't remember who I was.