sundries

Food yesterday¹: ( Read more... )

On the subway this morning, discussing my university:

Patty: "He says it's really different from when you where there."
Me: "Yeah, it's all liberal and dykes with shaved heads now."
Patty: "Did you just say 'dinosaur shaped eggs?'"
Me: "No, I said 'dykes with shaved heads.'"
Patty: "Oh, that makes more sense. I mean, you like dinos, so...."
Me: "I like dykes too."
Patty: "True, true. I just thought it might be a new fandom expression for, you know, WOW or something."
Me: "We can make it one, if you want."

We have met the enemy and it is PowerPoint. I've worked at a lot of companies over the years that have banned PowerPoint for the very reasons cited here.

Blogging death.

Arizona can go fuck itself.

Have finally started writing down actual words, in actual order, for the Bristol paper. Right now my poetic introduction is proving to be totally complex to write elegantly because of inside/outside (CoE takes place in September, but aired in July and both sets of dates matter intensely) timeline issues.

To the relevant parties: are any of you going to the Regency Ball in Essex on May 8?

More as it appears, but for now I need to go be constructive today.

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¹ In case you missed it I'm doing a food diary for a week in response to both "OH MY GOD YOU'RE GLUTEN-FREE, WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU EAT? and assumptions about what my habits must be due to my size. Yes, I'm posting a food diary to show that I'm an unhealthy freak with a sugar addictionequating size and health is kinda crap.

every little thing's gonna be all right

Today was a hard day on the job. The details don't really matter, but it was long, stressful and fairly emotional. So by the time I got the on subway to come home, the very last thing I needed was a couple of guys playing drums and singing "Three Little Birds." So when I got onto the subway car, with no time to switch cars, the intense annoyance on my face was probably pretty fucking obvious.

But no matter how bad a mood I'm in, the fact is I tend to view every moment of existence as an interaction with the cosmic Magic Eight Ball, and even though I don't really like the song, hey, maybe these dudes had a point. Everything _is_ going to be all right, one way or another, and that's what I'd spent the day trying to convince myself of.

Looking around the car, I saw a woman singing along, as he friend air drummed along using a lollipop and they were both laughing as hard as I've ever seen anyone laugh. And, unlike most subway musicians they didn't get off at the next stop, but did the whole song before going around asking for cash.

I cringed a bit when one of the guys asked a woman where her smile had gone. I hate when people tell other people to smile, but she said, "it was there this morning" and they chatted for a bit, and it turned out he was neither being an asshole nor hitting on her. Then the man tried to get the attention of the business guy I was sitting next to. He was reading and refused to acknowledge that he was even being spoken to. If you are not a New Yorker, I should note that this is less rude than it seems, but came off as pretty fucked up in the wacky, congenial mood that had overtaken this particular subway car.

Then the musician got to me.

"Did you enjoy the music?" he asked.

I decided to be honest. "In spite of myself, I did," I said, and gave him a dollar.

"I am taking that smile in too," the man said as he took it, putting a hand to his heart.

Afterwards, as the musucians continued to go around the car and talked to the laughing girls and told us all to be happy and "God bless" and all of that, I couldn't help by dialogue with myself.

It's a patter, I reminded myself. And you do _not_ have a beautiful smile and you're just being taken in.

And, more or less, that was all true. But then I remembered one of the lessons of a different dark part of New York -- not the subways, but sex work, or, at least, sex work as it should be and sex work as it wasn't -- it is okay to pay for pleasure.

It is okay to pay for pleasure.

It is okay to seek recompense for the joy we are capable of delivering. It is okay to sincerely like the people who provide us with services. It is okay to pay for a little bit of respite. It doesn't make you less wise or strong and it doesn't, inherently, make the value of those joys less.

So, maybe every little thing is going to be all right. And maybe it was a patter. But for three minutes on the subway today, my life got a hell of a lot better, and for the first time in all the years since I was a sex-worker, I suddenly understand why (or at least one of the reasons why) clients were never just clients but always friends or always enemies.

The dudes on the subway probably deserved a hell of a lot more than a buck for that.