May 2000

I am drowning in corned beef. Three pounds of it following a cooking jag this afternoon. I’ll be eating it for days. Anyone want a sandwich?

No, I’m not really offering anyone a sandwich. That would involve more of an emotional closeness than I’m able to admit right now. And there’s the potential for rejection. I offered my landlord a sandwich earlier tonight and he said he didn’t like corned beef. I don’t think I can take that twice in one day.

Odd day. I was up at a startlingly early hour, one which I haven’t seen in many months and have no intention of seeing again anytime soon. Among my discoveries at this ungodly hour was the fact that the 12-Folsom bus doesn’t start running until 6:30. This was not something I really wanted to know.

At least it’s quiet early in the morning. PG&E has not yet arrived to do whatever the hell they’re doing at the freeway on-ramp. The workers who have been renovating the building next door for the past five years have not started sawing wood out back and hammering the wall behind my bed. The piledrivers and traffic helicopters are still at rest.

All the same, I don’t want to get up that early ever again. I am completely and utterly baffled by the thought that people get up at 5:00 in the morning to drive an hour or more to work, spend ten hours or more there, and then drive an hour or more home. I can’t imagine any job which would ever be worth it to me. Call me a lazy slacker if you like. I’m comfortable with that as long as it means my life is my own.

And as long as I can occasionally spend a Monday afternoon cooking corned beef and then trying to get rid of it on the web, all while watching old movies on AMC.

Maybe I should give up being a moderately-lethargic worker and try to become a moderately-active housewife. Any takers? A dishwasher, washer, and dryer on-site are absolute requirements. And I don’t get up at 5:30 in the morning for any man…

After nearly eight years in San Francisco, there is but one restaurant where (a) I’m always happy with my meal and (b) the owner regularly stops at my table offering me free dessert. That would be Tad’s. I even had my birthday there last year. The charms are nearly unending as several persons I’ve initiated say.

Impromptu dinner with Dan (guess where?) followed by a Thursday night out. I hate it when I’m in the sex bar and the guy I really like shoots his load and leaves, abandoning to me the other guy. The other guy is someone to whom I’m strongly attracted in a fetishistic way but who screams “trouble”. And said fetish will remain unnamed for now, thank you.

One of the benefits of not drinking much is that you can avoid trouble before it passes out in your bed. One of the benefits of having wonderfully bitter friends is that they can gain some amusement watching you decide if the fetish is worth the trouble. Ultimately, of course, I decided it wasn’t, which is why I’m writing rather than fucking right now.

So now I’m going to sleep. Lunch with Sarah tomorrow followed by my traditional Friday night dinner with Dan and Jamie. As it seems I’ve now started seeking sex again (albeit a tad more cautiously), you may even see me out tomorrow night. But I make no promises.

Those last few paragraphs made little if any sense, I fear. I think I should sleep now, secure in the knowledge that the I Love You virus will not affect my Mac in any way…

Seems I have good credit again, judging from the numerous pre-approved triple-platinum credit card offers I’m receiving lately. I guess that’s a good thing…

I don’t use credit cards much anymore, having learned a relatively painful series of lessons about them in my early twenties. Of course, you know what they say about the 1980s: if you didn’t have credit card problems, you weren’t really there. Now I just hold a few low-limit ones for car rentals, etc., and try to pay cash whenever possible.

Trust me: it’s better this way.

Had dinner in Oakland last night with Matthew (who’s leaving): meat loaf, macaroni and cheese, and creamed spinach at the Red Tractor Cafe, followed by a quick beer at the Bay Area’s oldest continuously-operating queer bar, the White Horse.

Had I closed my eyes for a minute, I would have sworn I was in Greensboro at the Palms. The place was so very NOT San Francisco. To start with, there were girls and boys in the very same queer bar. Imagine that. And many of them were actually smiling and looking as if they were enjoying being there. There were no fashion victims, no chemical catastrophes, and no one was on a cell phone. It was great, if a bit perky for my tastes.

Of course, there was no one having sex in a back room either, but there are always tradeoffs, I guess.

Tonight? Baked chicken for dinner, followed by a little TV, and maybe later an attempt at sex in a back room (or maybe even at home). After that, I’ll try to get all the sleep I missed last night as I kep thinking “one more chapter and I’ll go to bed.”

I started my Saturday morning in a suite at the Palace. That was fun. I didn’t wake up there, alas. I was just visting my friend Jim, who’d lucked into it through a booking error. All the same, I was hoping someone would call this morning and ask what I was about to do so I could say I was meeting a friend in his suite at the Palace. No one did. Pity.

I’m probably going to offend some reader who has one, but this is the ugliest damned car I’ve seen in a long time. What designer on what planet ever thought this piece of shit was attractive? (Note: Sarah says it’s one of these environmentally-friendly models, which makes me feel a little guilty, but the fact remains that it’s butt-ugly…)

Anyway, now it’s Sunday and it’s raining and I’m pretty damned excited about that fact, especially since it’s May.

Did you call your mother today?