31. Presentation Report
I should mention the knife play workshop I did this weekend. May and Dee have assured me that it went well. My initial reaction was that it was terrible, but after I managed to calm down and think about that for a little while, I realized I was being dramatic and worrisome. It was a solid presentation. It could have gone better, but it was by no means terrible.
It’s very difficult to recall a presentation once it’s gone from our heads into the ether of collective consciousness. It’s a situation a little like the worst parts of constructive criticism combined: an incredibly tendency toward negative feedback, and absolutely no chance to re-draft. It’s over, it’s done. I’m not satisfied with the outcome, and I have to go off and live with that obsessive perfectionist griping.
I think the makings of a stellar presentation are somewhere in the work I did this weekend, but I didn’t manage to access that this Saturday. I delivered something solid, decent, and raw. Had I been walking into Conversio Virium or a Floating World class, a place I felt comfortable and confident, maybe I could have bridged that gap and really made an excellent show of things.
Unfortunately, I don’t feel comfortable here in the Sydney scene at the moment. For many reasons, most of which are my own: that kink is taking a backseat to my career jumpstarting, that May and I have become increasingly private in our play, that we are focusing on each other almost exclusively. That I still, still, still feel awful and off-balance when I meet new people, that I still feel socially like an actress playing a role that doesn’t fit quite right. That I am lonely. That I miss the community I know and the friends I’m entwined with, and the scene here sometimes makes that worse instead of better. And that I’m having to fight the battles I thought I’d finished long ago, all over again.
I hate going backward in my life. In every other way, this move has been a great leap forward. My career is stronger, my relationship is better, my psyche is thriving. But in social spaces, and especially in scene spaces, I feel like I’ve been knocked back ten steps.
And more frustrating than the feeling of being knocked back is the logical part of my brain that just keeps on asking: Why do I care? Why should I?
30. Wood, Leather, Hemp, Stone
I’m caught in a bit of a curious no-man’s-land, at the moment.
On the one hand, I love jewelry. If I wore a single different piece of jewelry each day, I’ve estimated that it would take me a little more than a year to go through my entire collection. And I make jewelry. I’ve made about half of my collection. I love the colors. I love the spark. I am, as previously harped upon, obsessive compulsive creative.
On the other hand, I’m currently exploring the much more butch side of performativity. And I love it too, right down to my toes, to the tips of my cuffs, I love it. But there is almost no intersection between that kind of performative dress, and my brightly colored mounds of jewels. So I’ve been making new things, and running up against new questions. How is men’s jewelry different from femme jewelry different from butch jewelry? Is it different at all? Google is no help, of course. Someone must have asked this question before me.
I’ve been doing new work in wood, and in hemp and in leather. I’m still trying to figure out if I can make pearls butch. Believe it or not, I think I can.
I have images in my head of what femme is starting to mean to me, what butch is starting to mean. More and more I find that it’s the mix I like more than the far reaches of either image. All juxtapositions and inherent contradictions, as broad as my legs sprawled out in a skirt, as small as a beaded tie.
I feel like I’ve tossed a coin in the air, and I don’t know which side it’s going to come down on. In the end, I suspect, it won’t come down at all.
29. Bubble
After 3 years together, May and I still go on dates. I used to think that relationships would just work, that the time I spent with my partner would naturally progress from having my life constantly play out around another person. But that’s simply not true.
May and I are both busy, literally, all the time. Even when we don’t have specific projects on specific deadlines, we both have the sort of mind that continually invents work. In his case, it’s usually “personal projects” involving learning a new computer skill or building some new widget. In my case, it’s a story, a painting, a concept insisting to be brought forth. And when we do have specific projects with specific deadlines, they come in spades. I don’t remember the last time I only had one thing on my To Do list.
And although I’d like to think we’re wise enough to notice when we’re distanced from each other, sometimes it takes a few emotional clouts to get us back in the same room together. Then, we go on dates. We schedule time together. It sounds geeky and strange to say, but I think it’s the single best thing we do to keep our relationship whole.
The trouble is, when we plan time together, like we did this weekend, it’s hard to get back to our everyday lives. It feels as though we build a bubble, and then cannot bear to burst it.
Last night we sat in an empty movie theatre and waiting for The Incredible Hulk to start, and as the 50s oldies played over the speakers, we choreographed a little dance with our feet on the railing. I went to bed last night thinking how full the two days had been, with nothing to work on but each other.
28. A Day Like Any Other
Today was the Australian version of May’s birthday. As always, he insisted that he didn’t care what we did and didn’t want any gifts. And as always, I ignored his insistence and bullied him into having a fabulous day. I even dragged him from his bed this morning.
We went to the zoo. I have to say, there’s nothing like a well-designed zoo with a cable car, a view of the city skyline, and peacocks terrorizing the ice cream vendors to make you feel like a kid.
It’s day two of TES Fest back in NYC, and in retaliation to the continuing jealousy and nostalgia we have decided to throw our own little party here on the other side of the world. It involved orgasms, and nachos.
Tomorrow I’m teaching on knives for the Über Skill Share workshops. Er. Hmm. I’ve never taught knives in a classroom setting before, so I’m a little wary of how the class will go. On the other hand, before the class I intend to drag our asses out to the Aroma Festival in The Rocks, so at least I shall arrive at Über sated on chocolate, coffee, spices, and cobblestone street ambiance.
Huh. This blog is turning into (shock and awe) a blog. Snippets of my day and all. I remain ambivalent to this progression. Zoos, peacocks, cable cars, chocolate and cobblestones are not such stuff as kink is made on.
Wait, what am I saying? Of course they are.
27. Making Passes
Today, after a long waiting period, I got new glasses. I usually wear contact lenses, but glasses are brilliant things to keep around for all those little moments when sight is immediately necessary. For example, if one were to roll out of bed at 4:38 am to investigate an odd noise of breaking glass. I would want to be able to see past my two-foot-fishbowl if such an unlikely thing occurred.
I stood in the optometrist yesterday with two different frames in my hands. One pair was slender, black, square lenses. Very simple. Very sophisticated. The others were thick and shaped on the sides with sleek silver lines over matte black metal. Very modern. Very bold.
I stood there for fifteen minutes looking at the two damn frames, realizing that they curiously represented one of the constant decisions I make when representing myself. I bounce continually between portraying myself as a mature, clean-cut and put-together young intellectual, and a quirky young artist with strange taste and bold decisions. I swing between blazers and denim, plastic and pearls.
Fuck it, I thought to myself. I put the silver and black frames on the counter and clicked my card down. I am only young enough to do this once.
And that’s true. I am only young enough to wear these glasses once. I am only young enough to shave my head and dye my hair blue once. I am only young enough to dress like a schoolboy once. I am only young enough to wear my heart on my sleeve once.
And if I work on it enough, I’ll be young enough once to do whatever I want to, for as long as I want.
26. Three Little Things
I’m going to continue on the theme of threes, and of little revealing details. Here are three (completely true) eccentric personal traits that tipped me off to a possible career in creative writing:
When I lose contact with someone while chatting via IM or email, I immediately, automatically brainstorm several reasons for the radio silence. And they’re not rational reasons, oh no. I don’t think, “Oh, he must have been pulled away from his computer to deal with work stuff,” or “Oh hey, maybe her Gmail is crashing.” No. I think, “Maybe he was dive-bombed by a giant bird,” or “It’s the Apocalypse. Maybe it hit the States before Australia.”
I am irrationally afraid of the dark, and of milkshakes, and of drains. Respectively, because I’m afraid that ghosts who live in the dark will kill me violently, because I sometimes imagine tiny mice bones floating in my milkshakes, and because I think that tentacles may come out of drains and drag me down into the pipes.
I have a running monologue of songs, poetry, and replayed conversations in my head. All the time, alternating between profound and inane, and often involving scenarios in which I steal laptops to buy plane tickets to fly to Tokyo to become a jazz singer, except I don’t steal and I don’t sing jazz. This turns off only when I’m reading, which is why I love to read, and when I’m writing, which is why I need to write.
25. Recent Interests
My boy informs me that we really need to watch Heroes. Apparently right now. I agree.
Quickly, here are three sites I’ve just started reading:
Fail Blog
Made me laugh until I cried. Generally in poor taste, sometimes very offensive. However, my willingness to accept (or, to put it another way, take with suspension of activism and anger) this sort of thing is precisely why I managed to love Sin City.
Mod Blog
With my new tattoo in the works, this blog has been an amazing inspiration. It’s occasionally gruesome, occasionally funny, and more often gorgeous work. I’m reminded again and again how much I like body modification, although I have very few mods on my own body. (And yes, this has sparked the forcible tattooing fantasy. Again.)
Mod Fetish
No relation to Mod Blog, a website that collates pornographic images of women in odd poses. It ranges from soft to hard to, uh, weird (the squids are particularly weird), and has a general theme of objectification. I like weird pornography sometimes. Not because it’s arousing (usually it’s not) but because I like to collect strange things.
24. Perseus
Yea, I did read a lot of Greek myth when I was a kid. I was one of those children.
Unfinished, but far enough along to post.
23. The Why Behind Things
Sometimes on this blog, sometimes in real life, but most often in emails, IMs, and other types of written conversation, I am very blunt. I have a tendency to shock on purpose, to ask questions I shouldn’t, to put my foot in my mouth. Not with everyone, no. Not here, usually. But sometimes, in certain contexts, with certain others.
In many ways, laying my cards on the table is necessary for me. It’s one way I manage my decisions about other people, and I need the little bit of protection bluntness provides in my relationships. It’s my way of saying, “If you’re going to hurt me, I want to know in advance. In fact, right-the-fuck now, if you please.” But of course I don’t say that specifically. I say other things instead. It’s very late. I’m not sure this post is making sense.
That protection is important because, you see, when I think something’s right I go for it. I almost always make decisions fast, reassess, and think my way back to my first conclusion. When my instinct and my reasoning says that the relationship is good, I am a no-holds-barred, hell-or-high-water, second-date-with-a-Uhaul person. I mentioned in my previous entry that I moved in with May three weeks after we started dating, which was five weeks after we met. To most people, that’s insane. Insanity didn’t occur to me at the time; I just moved in, and three years later, here we are.
And it worked because we knew where we stood, even when where we stood was shaky ground. So in some ways, being as rude, straight-forward, blunt, direct as I am is not just a personality quirk. It’s how I keep my decisions conscious, and how I make connections, and how I learn, and demonstrate, trust.
