the road's alive and everybody's all here....

The fall has started in earnest,and I am missing certain people more than I can say.Most of them are Geminis.Life has been just insane for the tail end of the summer.I have been keeping incredibly busy and playing with a lot of people on a bunch of playing fields.I am so ready to settle into the slanted light of autumn.There's nothing i love more.On the first cold night I opened my windows and I felt myself wake up again.I sat in the window til I shivered and my teeth started chattering.I am still working on finding the cast for the next act.I have an outline,and blessedly,my anxiety level is dropping significantly.

Pax and I have decided to do a massive overhaul and move the entire house around.We decided that with things the way that they are,we feel like little girls with adjoining rooms,hell,we might as well be in bunk beds.So she is turning the living room into her bedroom,we are moving the living room into my studio off the kitchen and my studio will be in my current bedroom,while my bedroom will then be in the adjoining room that is Pax's currently.So i get a suite and our bedrooms will no longer be separated by only a wall and a door.It's also because I still have issues with the fact that my bedroom doesn't feel like "mine",it still feels like Gabe and Emily's room.I still miss Gabriel so fucking much,so it is very bittersweet.I have a hard time sleeping in there,but I don't think I will have any problem being creative in there and I wouldn't want to give that room up at all.I just don't want to have to sleep in there anymore.So i am excited about

taking over the entire east side of the house.

We are also getting neighbors downstairs again.2 twenty something girls,one with a two year old.we shall see how that goes,since I hate children.I know it makes me sound like a total monster when I say that,but honestly,aren't there enough people using up the world's resources?

I don't tolerate them well at all.I try my best,but I also have a mouth like a sailor,and I am terrible at keeping it under wraps when someone brings a child near me.They can't possibly be worse than the old codgers that lived down there before that would bang on the ceiling if we walked after 9pm.Then again,I shouldn't speak too soon.

I am slowly but surely making my preferential switch for the fall.I blew off the girl (and I use that term loosely,since she was a bit butch) that I was kinda seeing over the summer because she ask me why I didn't go to public places with her.Honestly,I just don't really deal well with lesbian society in this city.One on one,it's all good and I have a good time.....but when you get the sewing circle together,it's nothing but drama that I didn't even sign on for.So I have been on the search for bed-warmers for this winter.A few prospects,still working on it.Boys are weird,but I am finding them attractive again,and by the by they are much less complicated than women.

I am also excited about a party that Pax and I are throwing this weekend.She has decided to share her birthday with me and so we are having a birthday/fall kickoff extravaganza.I warned the new neighbors that it may be a bit of a madhouse,since our parties have been known to get a little out of hand.We shall see.......

Gotta go enjoy this gorgeous weather by rolling around in my bed in front of my open windows,then out into the night.

like an arrow,i was only passing through

September is a strange time,at times both ecstatic and heart wrenching.In eight days it will have been eight years since my brother died.I still miss him all the time.I was there when he died and I still feel like I was left behind.He was my other half.

I have never been close to my blood brother.He's nothing to me,but when i met Gabriel,I had found my twin.He went so far as to convince many people that we were related by blood.I have never had love in my life so pure.I haven't felt it since he died.It doesn't seem like it has really been that long.

I had been doing a good job of not thinking about it until B called me at 4:30am a few days ago.We talked for a few hours about so much that brought up many memories and I am processing them now.I think that he calls me when I have just gone to sleep because I don't have any filters then. We say everything and we are perfectly honest with each other while we watch the sunrise on two ends of a line.I guess it serves to let me know that we are both still here.B says that our ashes have to be scattered in the same place.Too much heavy shit going on right now.too bittersweet.I gotta go.

things I might have forgotten.....

The Fates are playing with me.They are making me examine my life very closely lately.I have been in touch with a whole different cast of characters,and I can feel the fall coming at night.The other night this intense storm whipped up.There was insane lightning all evening,and I just beat the rain home.Finally the deluge started and it was coming down in buckets,I couldn't bring myself to go inside.I got drenched,but it felt so wonderful.I reconnected and felt the wind rise.The trees were speaking so loudly.it was fucking incredible.Whatever they had to say,I needed to hear it.

Hung out with some folks last night,and as usual,whenever you get any group of people together,the talk tuned to politics.I am so damn tired of politics.I was reminded why I am not a part of any movement.I don't think that what I believe in is better than whatever everyone else believes in.If everyone would stop trying to convince each other that they are right,then the world might be a much much nicer place.I did get to talk to a guy that I really enjoy talking to.He had been friends with my sister's ex,so essentially I hadn't spoken to him in months.I forgot how much he makes me think.I love being mentally stimulated.It's been happening more lately.

Earlier tonight I got to hang out with one of my sisters from a really really long time ago.She is one of the few people in the world that I have ever been comfortable enough to do any more than light energy work with.We traded readings and I had completely forgotten how wonderful it is to be with her.Both the readings went straight to the jugular,but I would expect no less from the both of us.We learned a lot from each other when we were younger and it really shows now,many many years later.It's amazing to see your own influence in someone that you respect the shit out of.I am hoping that we will see more of each other soon.

I think that I am really starting to understand the last dream that I can remember.I was in a boat and I was in some river.The boat was full of water,but it wasn't sinking.I was catching fish with my hands,they would come right to me.I would inspect them and decide whether or not to put them back,or put them in the boat to come with me.They seemed fine with whatever I decided.It was all very peaceful.I was figuring out who is turning the corner with me.

knocked on your door at dawn with a spark in my heart...

The end of the summer is coming.I have been languishing in the heat and going out too much. There is so much shit I need to do,I just have a hard time making myself do any of it,when I would rather sit around with a friend or two,or make an ass of myself in some bar.I am painting and plotting.Biding my time and looking at the angles.I think I might have to pull off some prime miracles before the equinox,which is only a month away.Luckily I know when my windows of opportunity are.

So, I think I might have had a little breakdown for a minute.Not unusual for the season,but it really came out of the blue.I think I might need to hit the reset button sometime soon.I can feel the fall girl rolling over in her sleep,getting fitful from the waiting.I have been nauseous for days,haven't felt like eating.Cannot remember my dreams at all.For a while I felt like I was going crazy without them to provide me with my cues,but now I am finding that they shut off to put my intuition in the driver's seat.It is serving me pretty well so far.It's like one has to shut down to make the other stronger,like when you close your eyes to intensify your tactile sense.So it's like walking around in the dark,but I have the overwhelming feeling that I am making the right decisions.I am just running with whatever feels right.Planning anything with me lately has been a total joke,as I am likely to blow it off and do something completely different,but I have been moving in some interesting directions.I am almost constantly intrigued.

I found out from my mother that my grandmother on my father's side died in may.I haven't seen her since I was a child.She taught me one of the most important things of my life time.After my father died,she has nothing more to do with us,but that was just her way,she was foreign and my father was 1st generation in America. Eastern Europeans can be a bit strange about family.She passed on some of their oral history,but there were communication issues.She taught me about reading cards.I learned with a deck of playing cards,which was the only way that she knew.I eventually moved on to tarot.I wish that I had known when she passed.My mother just found out from a friend of my grandmothers,but she didn't have many details.I have often wondered where she and my grandfather were,they were travelers.I still don't know if my grandfather on that side is still alive or not.

I realize that I don't really have anything to do with my family on either side other than my mother.I have a brother that I will barely talk to.So many of my friends are so embroiled in their families.I have never really felt that way since I became an adult,ever.Yet when I think about the cast that my grandmother died without me knowing,I feel like I am missing something.

chlorine

Recently I got back in touch with a friend of mine,R, whom I have know since I was a kid.He lived next door to the house that I spent my summers in here in Memphis.He is about that same age as I am and we were best friends every summer.He recently found me on facebook.He told me a couple of days ago that they guy,Joe, that lived on the other side of the house I spent my summers in had died that morning in a motorcycle accident.I have been trying ever since to figure out how I feel about it.

You see,Joe was about 4 or 5 years older than we were,but the kids in the neighborhood were mostly older than R and I,but we ran with them just the same.They just kept up with us,made sure we were alright,taught us all about climbing fences, what pools were good for breaking into, showed us horror movies,etc.Joe was always an ass to me,telling me I was too little for things, throwing me in the pool fully clothed.The summer that I turned thirteen he started being really nice to me and I was kind of suspicious.I found out later from a friend that he had walked up on me having sex with this guy Casey in one of the pools we were forever sneaking into.I don't remember seeing him,but apparently he saw plenty.Casey was about 18 and a total sleazeball,but I didn't really see anything wrong with it,being a very sexually confused (and experienced) young girl.Apparently after that Joe didn't see me as a little kid anymore,but something to get a piece of.

He started taking me for rides on his motorcycles,and was always trying to get me alone.When we would all watch horror movies,we watched them in the dark.He would invariably sit next to me,and put his hand up my skirt.I remember trying not to make any noise,so no one in the room would realize what was going on.It was like a game.But with my past being what it was,it was a game that had psychological repercussions.I let him do a lot of things to me over the course of that summer,but I flat out refused to actually have sex with him,because I had this bone deep dislike of him that I couldn't really get rid of.

When I went back home at the end of the summer,it's like I forgot it all.I hadn't thought about that summer in a really long time.Looking back on it I realize that they were WAAAAY to old to have been doing those things with me.But it was definitely part of my makeup whether I remembered it or not.That summer was when I realized that there was a certain power in withholding sex from someone,because the more I held out,only gave a little,the more in control I felt.....and that was a very precious commodity for me in those days.

So yeah,I have this huge ambivalence about what I feel about the fact that he died in a motorcycle accident a few days ago.I feel terrible for R,they had been friends practically their whole lives.I feel that he kind of deserved it on some level,because really,what kind of person preys on a girl so much younger,that they had watched grow up,just because they thought there was a chance that she would put out??Then there is some part of me that is thankful for that sense of control that he gave me when nothing else ever made me feel that way when I was at home during what I considered my "real" life.I don't know how to feel about it.It's been bothering me ever since R told me.

However,I did figure out something about myself since all these memories got brought up.It is a sense memory that I never really understood.Sometimes in the summer when am driving thru rich neighborhoods,I will get a whiff of a pool,the chlorine I think,and I get the sense of wet concrete,still hot from the sun,one my back and I get incredibly turned on for a second.I understand where it comes from now.

like the mines

I was consolidating some of my things,cleaning out a plaid onboard bag from the fifties that I hadn't unpacked in a few years.I found some things that I had pretty much forgotten about,but can never get rid of.
I found a Grateful Dead keychain that my friend Joey gave me,on it was just one key.It was the key to the studio that I was moving my things into on Lammas Day '93,it was the same day that he was murdered.I only see it every few years,and it reminds me of that day.
I found a collar that I used to use when I worked in BDSM.Later I would put it on whatever toy I favored the most at a given time.It took me back.I cannot even tell you how many people have worn this single ring strap of leather.It's thick,with metal plackets all the way around.It is incredibly worn in and surprizingly heavy.I didn't remember it being so heavy,maybe it's the weight of so many memories attatched to it.
I found a knot pendant that my brother Gabriel gave to Jeffe a very very long time ago.Back when they moved me in with them.Around the same time Gabriel gave me a pendant as well,which I still have as well.The knot pendant came to me indirectly through a friend who was Jeffe's neighbor.She has a habit of diggin thru whatever is on the curb when apartments are cleaned out.She found it and said that she thought it belonged to him and ask me to give it back to him,because it felt important.I recognised it and tried to give it back to Jeffe,but it was kinda soon after Gabe died and so he told me to keep it,since he was trying to work thru things and it was a really painful time.I imagine there will come a day when he will take it when I try to give it back...so I keep it.
I wonder about why I keep so many things that give me such fits of memories.Sometimes I feel like they are line field mines that I leave for myself.....but I cannot find it in myself to throw them out.

How they shimmer, how they glimmer .Those butterflies

I have been terrible this summer.I have been neglecting to write,I haven't painted anything AT ALL.I have,however,been playing my guitar and singing,and learning songs that it will be very ironic(and i mean that in no hipster sense of the word) to play at my ex-wife's wedding this winter.

She is marrying one of my ex-lovers from a really long time ago.They ask me to play the music at their reception and honestly,I cannot find it in me to turn down a paying gig.There is something deep inside me that is far more practical than emotional,and it happens to rule my decision making center.Sometimes I am deeply thankful for this fact.So yeah,just playing music and being musically passive aggressive (which is not really my style,since i am normally aggressive-aggressive)

The summer is making me languid and smoky.I have been going to a lot of smoky bars.I have seen a few good rockshows.I am realizing that the kids are not alright.What the fuck is up with the le zombies??I keep telling myself that the only good thing that can be done with the youth is to take one or two of them at a time under the wing.They have to show marked potential for being an interesting member of ones past one day.Hopefully sending them out into the world with a differing and open mindset will change things for them,and even if it is just a drop in the bucket,maybe change the world in a small way.The collective consciousness is altered one mind at a time.Have been also spending heap big squirrel time with my ladies.It doesn't realy feel the same without LL in the squirrelicane situations,so I try to hang with them all separately.She's spent pretty much the entire summer with her VA lover/husband out in the sticks.I miss her.

So yeah,there you have it.I have been trying to be productive in between all the days when I cannot for the life of me leave my a/c's immediate vicinity.I am reading lots of books.I smoke and drink too much and go to rock shows.I make friends with whatever stranger happens to sit near me.I die a little every time I get into my volvo/blast furnace to go anywhere.I am apparently too lazy to stop my hair from dreading in this beastly weather.I am still waiting for fall.

and so the days roll on and I spend most of my summer hours curled up in front of the air conditioner with stacks of books.....you would need a crowbar to prise me away from it.It is fucking simmering in Memphis.It's like New Orleans heat,but worse....because though the heat is the same, you are not in New Orleans.Ugh.

I think that this is the most antisocial summer I have ever spent. I haven't even really been inviting people over...their body heat increases the ambient temperature in the house.It's sad when your life is dominated by efforts at temperature control.I spent two nights recently in an unairconditioned house hanging out with some of my sisters,and seriously,fuck that.I will either see them out,or they can come over here to ModConlandia to hang out.I was melting.I have realized that in high heat conditions,I cannot think straight.It explains all the bad decisions that I made that summer I was living in the attic with no a/c (trust me some very very stupid decisions were made that summer) So Yeah.Books.I think I will be at this til at least mid-September.

Fall......Please get a move on????

I was here at home,waiting for my twin to return

it's just one of those days when you let yourself get really cold.you steele yourself for it and open all the windows on a cold rainy spring morning,actually it's the last day of winter.it puts the freshness of spring right up your nose,and the lingering chill of the winter.you dance and run around the house with incense for a while,trying to stay warm,and enjoying teh fresh air...but eventually you surrender yourself to the cold,and you feel your hands numbing.there is something about cold wind that cleanses you though.it's almost painful the way that it rips right through you.i love it though.sometimes i feel as though it's the pain of losing the things that need lost...let that cold wind just carry it away from me...the things that i don't need anymore.however,the cold does it's part,it numbs you to the pain,so that you start to enjoy the sensation.i know people who savor physical pain,i am not one.but in that numbed state i am better able to study the sensation.likewise the cold makes me more able to bear the emotional pain of the having things i emotionally and psychologically do not need anymore removed from me.the wind is my surgeon.

i feel like it is a way to pay homage to the passing winter,to have it complete,it's only fitting.i sit here and i shiver,but i keep the window open anyway,the fresh air is intoxicating after the warm humidity yesterday before the storm.the cold clears my head and makes me feel alive in a way that i don't understand or rememeber when the time comes for languishing in the dizzy,heavy heat of summer.there is a different person alive in me then,she will wake up after the thaw.i know that she has been stirring during the warm days recently.i look forward to seeing her again,but i know that there is nothing like the feeling i get at fall equinox,when the fall girl wakes up.today is the last day with her.she's going back to sleep tonight.

when you see me coming you better run....

Life has been fierce lately.Things are moving fast and spring has come on really strong.So many things are changing and the venues are being shaken up, the casts rearranged. Time got set forward and everything switched into the same mode.Then again this trend could have something to do with mars picking up speed after going direct.Equinox went by in a flash.

I have been going out a lot with my squirrelfriends. The ladies are having a blast and I am really glad since we haven't really come together in genuine "squirrelicanes" in some time.It's been a level 4 hitting the city,I am enjoying it.I am still a bit blue that my favorite bar burnt down.The interim bar was closed down and now I am wandering around in one of the only other bars in the city that i really like to go to alone.I have been working on making friends of the bartenders.I can get them to come around the bar and drink with me,So I think that I am doing a fine job.One must have a close relationship to the bartenders in the bar that you go to alone.Then they do the job that your girlfriends/wingman would be doing in some other bar.They take care of you,keep you entertained during downtime.I am working on it,because my favorite Alone Bar had a roving cast of bartenders.They change out about every nine months.So I have to go and woo the new ones at intervals.

It's not all nightlife though.I am settling into life with a third roommate that resembles the absent minded professor(despite being a student) I think that I am doing alright.I have certainly worked on making my bedroom more of a sanctuary from everything and everyone.I think that I am digging life in my house. I feel like I am coming to peace with the fact that I still have to live communally from time to time. A month ago I had the grand urge to uproot and move on,but it proved only to be the predictable flight urge that comes when a one year lease is done.I am fine here for a while.I have done a good job of keeping my Gypsy blood in check in recent years.I used to wear myself out moving every few months.My record was 8 moves in a year.I was very busy,I nearly had a nervous breakdown by the end of it.

So I have pretty much wasted a entire morning listening to some wonderful music and smoking too much and writing in my various journals.It all has to go somewhere.I need to put my ass in gear.

and she was with some kid called David, from the garage up the road.

So sad that my "weekend off" is coming to a close.I ended up doing a lot more hair than I wanted to yesterday,but Hey business is picking up again,and it's money(or good trade) so who am I to turn that away???I ended up at a birthday party last night with several of my cohorts.By all accounts it was a strange group.LL is in heat.Erin is looking for parties where there is a keg,a fire and a fight.Lelyn has been off and on interested in the birthday girl,who is also a newer hair client of mine.

Within half an hour LL had already crawled up on the prettiest/dirtiest boy in this party(and I mean a boy of twenty) and Lelyn was embroiled in politico talk with The Dame (who apparently is on the outs with both the birthday girl and the DJ) and Erin is canvassing the room for cigarettes for us to share on the porch,and I am being bombarded by the attentions of some loud hippy in a tiedye who professed both satanism and cannibalism.I later paid him two dollars to stop talking to me.It was terrifying.

The next thing I know LL is giving us her car-keys,leading that boy out the door,and telling me she'd call me in the morning.Erin nearly starts a fight on the porch because some guy tried to snatch something out of my hand when he was not in rotation.I think that she was probably trying to fill in one of her party requirements,since there were actually two kegs,but no bonfire.Lelyn looks like he's planning espionage with some stand up comic,and I am watching The Dame give the stink eye to this weird theater chick because she slept with the DJ(who is asking me when I can fit him in to do his hair)At this point we decide to leave and go see Lil' Gay Tony at Perkins for muffins.

It seems like that is usually how Saturday night usually ends.We do a bunch of ridiculous things (last week we went to a drag show and watched the guest star set fire to the stage) and then we go see Tony to trade tales of what we have been up to for free, hot and buttery muffins.He has to work the graveyard shift every Saturday and he was our clubbing buddy for years uncountable. He will usually text me from the kitchen asking if the hot boy sitting next to me likes guys. We sit and rehash everything we saw before dragging ass home or to Alex's (the only decent afterhours bar left)

Today I felt off all day because we lost an hour last night to the Daylight Savings Time, which is an evil joke. I feel like I have a slight case of jetlag.LL and I decided to combat this by going to see Tim Burton's 3-D Alice in Wonderland,and then we went to Trilogy to have a winking,cubist Babe the Blue Ox tattooed on LL's ass,while Pixi popped in every once in a while between her piercing appts.Eric,the tattoo artist,played Sleepy Time Gorilla Museum the whole time(thus continuing the whole satanic theme that had been started by that hippy last night).Eric's a strange manbird,and an old friend of mine.After that we went to Track's for supper,only to be waited on by this ol' queen that I did way too much cocaine with on the club scene back in the early nineties.I had no idea that he'd turned back up in Memphis.So then we went to the Walgreen's to run around in the isles until she saw that filthy and adorable boy that she had left with last night.

I think that Hunter was right,when the going gets weird,the weird turn pro.

I am pretty happy that we seem to be reassembling the Squirrel-icane.Last night it was a Level Three before we lost LL to the demands of her libido.Seems like it might be a very interesting spring.

a love to last past Saturday night....

Apparently the spring tides are coming in with a bang.It's bringing to mind the vision of waves smashing into cliffs,tidal pools and watery caverns.It's like feeling a primal force creep up your spine.It is the basis for the idea of "Spring Fever". I guess that am just really excited about the spring and summer.A lot has been happening.I think I cam coming out of the self imposed Hermit time that I so desperately needed.I needed a minute to simmer things over.

It did cause a blow up with my roommate.I finally got too fed up and we had a yelling match.Unfortunately it happened while I was doing a two color process on a new client,a referral from my friend Erin.I put in way more highlights than I had planned on because I was trying not to start a fight with my roommate.I had to tell the chick that I would do corrective color for her for free if she didn't settle into it while she was out of town.It was a really terrible day, and we had it out and we both feel much better about things now.She is in Florida for a week visiting Sister Sunshine for a week.I think it will do us good to not be in each other's face for a moment.We got things out on the table.

I am watching LL come back into herself.Actually I should say that I am watching her come alive again.Being single has definitely lit a fire in the girl. More truly I think that she's gone into heat and has started a virtual relationship with a guy in Virginia.They went to high school in the same tiny Louisiana parish.They had chemistry back then. They found each other on the internet. He is a shriner clown and he's doing a circus in that selfsame tine Louisiana parish.He's promised that if she comes to it, he can get her backstage to meet an elephant.She is incredibly excited about this last part.It happens to be during her spring break.They are both incredibly "no strings attached" and I think it's the best thing for it.It's good to see her excited and happy.

I am adjusting to having another roommate in the house.More or less it's the weirdness of living with someone you have never lived with before, and a guy at that.I haven't lived with a boy in the house since the last time that B lived with me.That has to be at least 4 years ago.Suffice to say that it is odd to learn your friends habits.I do like having him around though.He's a lovely person and is incredibly entertaining.We just all have different schedules. It is definitely shaking things up.

In other news,I am being reunited with my books. They have been in boxes in a closet for over a year.I was waiting for Deb to finish refinishing the bookshelves since we moved into Clark House last March.It's amazing how you fall in love with your own things when you have been denied them for long enough. Whooo!! So on that note,I am off to shelve more of my babies,my lovelies, my books!!!!

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.

gives back to me what I give to them....

had to hit the reset button again.it makes it's need apparent.i found that i am very comfortable with someone that has been around for a while.i am being brought back to life.winter is making me very thankful this year,and teaching me patience.beauty can be found so many places that you would never suspect.The sunrise on the trees,encased in ice,it caught my breath and offered it up to the sky.