My One British friend on Britain's Ugliest Dog.

My one British friend sent me this email after we had exchanged emails where I set up an evening out at a country-western bar near my apartment, where we gathered people in honor of a German friend of his's being in town -

p.s. my younger bro. sent me this web link. i told him that it is not right to make fun of the disabled. even if they are a dog.

- where this was the linked picture -



When we finally did go out, we ended up talking about the dog, and he said magnanimously that he wished that some woman hadn't adopted the dog, because he would have.

"But maybe I can be his god-owner," he was like, "Though I suppose you have to be in the same country for that."

When I asked him how would he behave with the dog, since most people with small dogs buy cute fluffy ones to cuddle, he was like, "I wouldn't do that, but I would pat him on his head and give him encouragement."

And then, he was like, "And I would beat other dogs off with sticks if they ever attacked him!"

And then, he was like, "And I would buy him corrective lenses."

And then, he added, "Although, since they would fall off, I would buy goggles as well, to tie around his head."

...it's more funny if you think of that exchange in a british accent...

Forgot - Comment of my one Dutch prof.

I forgot -

I had been reading up on the 15th c., and when I was talking with my one Dutch professor, I mentioned that, and that after I read more, I wanted to sit down with her to ask her about historiography etc.

"And I've been reading some Erasmus," I was like. "I really like him! I think if I had to be anyone from the 15th century, I'd be him."

"I wouldn't," she was like, very pleasantly and directly, in a Dutch way. "In fact, I detest him, he was a coward and a hypocrite, and although he was a self-styled intellectual, he wasn't really a part of the original theological ferment and innovation of the Reformation."

Then, she suggested a biography of him that I should read.

Quip of my one British friend.

My one British friend always makes up lame excuses about why he never wants to meet for things downtown, but rather only makes plans for the neighborhood around the university.

Then, one day, I told him that that was lame, and that downtown wasn't the other side of the world, but just a 20-25 bus ride away.

"I know," he was like, "And I would love to, but you see, I haven't gotten the permit yet!"

From that point on, he now always talks like he's waiting to get a permit so he can leave the neighborhood.

Observation by my dissertation advisor.

A while ago there was this lunch discussion about teaching intro religious studies classes where we pre-read some short articles of profs from a range of institutions about the subject, and one student who was there liked how one prof taught an entire course around Augustine's "Confessions", bringing in comparative material with each class, to which my dissertation advisor said that would only work with a deep book that (quoting some other prof) "you can think with, not about".

At that, the student said that she tried to think if there was an American book like that, and the only thing she could think of was "Huckleberry Finn," but it wouldn't quite work, and my dissertation advisor suggested "Moby Dick".

When I brought up if there were any memoirs that were that deep, and mentioned how I had recently read a couple where one was deeper than the other (Theodore Parker vs. Orestes Brownson), my dissertation advisor was like, "And Theodore Parker is a good person and an intellectual, but he's no Augustine," and we all talked for a while about the fact that it was novels that are the deep religious genre from the U.S., not non-fiction.

2nd best part of the election debate...

It was held right near where the sex docs are held, so after it was over I walked over to see if I could catch the end of the film and the discussion moderation by the one male nurse who grew up in an Italian neighborhood and then became a sexologist!

As it turned out, I got there right as the discussion was starting, so I grabbed some (free) pizza and sat down.

At that moment, the one male nurse (who's in his 70s) was explaining his history and orientation and outlook on sex.

"I've been penis-vagina monogamous with my wife for 30 years," he was like, "Though I would say I am more oriented towards group massage and group sex, which she tolerates."

He also said that he started this when he was in his 30s, and since the documentary was about the sexlife of women over 65, he affirmed something that had been said in the group about how he mostly had sex with people around his age because of the connection, though when he first started getting into group sex, he went as young as 19 and as high as a couple in their 60s.

One participant (a [white] woman in her late 20s) said she thinks older couples are lovely, but then she couldn't help her reaction when they interviewed an older lesbian and they panned to her partner, "And there was this woman with a flappy throat and bright, garish lipstick. I mean, I'm happy for them, but on some level, I couldn't help that I was disgusted, and I was angry at myself for thinking that."

Another participant (another [white] woman in her late 20s) was from a local advocacy group from the aging, and was saying that they had only started to consider sex recently. On the one hand, a lot of older folks got VDs really easily, since they grew up in times with less sex ed. On the other hand, sexual intimacy is an important part of people's lives, but the very set up of nursing homes can hinder it.

"First of all it's the shared rooms, and then you have, you know, beds with metal railings, and cords everywhere!", she was like. "It's a liability issue."

At that the male nurse agreed, and said it ruined quality of life for a lot of people, out of a fear of a rare danger.

"It's like how they won't build playgrounds for kids anymore," he was like.

At that point, I hopped in to the discussion and agreed, and said that just like the kids then get fat and get diabetes, the older people might be dying sooner because they can't fuck.

A little after that, the girl from the aging advocacy group said that in their retirement home there's a 70 year old who has a 26 year old boyfriend.

"I mean, I don't get it, but it's nice," she was like. "Though I wonder, what do they talk about?"

The male nurse also talked about how he dropped acid and smoked pot with his nieces and nephews when they were teens, but now whenever people ask him at family gatherings what he's been up to and he tells them what sex panels he's been on, "they scurry away", and at that he made a motion with his knarled hands wriggling outwards like cockroaches running from the light.

"And I don't mind that they're private, but they used to be so open, and they've drawn back from that openness, like clams closing tight shut."

He also mentioned that one time he was on a sex panel about masturbation with a woman with severe cerebral palsy, and a woman with less-severe cerebral palsy.

"The woman with severe cerebral palsy had to have specialized sex toys made so she could control them when she masturbated," he was like. "Fortunately she had a supportive husband."

Somehow, too, during the discussion, someone brought up that online in the (straight) kink community, all the men are dominant and all the women are submissive, but that's because it's a public space. Around the city, though, there is 1 professional male dominatrix for the women, and at least 30 professional female dominatrixes (dominatrices?) for the men.

Anyhow, on the walk to the subway station after the doc discussion I strolled and chatted with a regular attendee, this early 20s scifi/fantasy fangirl who's into BDSM with her sci/fantasy fanboy boyfriend, and I was asking her what's new. She and her boyfriend were recently featured in a short film by an art school attendee where they were engaged in "needle play" (her putting long, sharp needles into his back in artistic arrangements, and then pulling them out to let him bleed) and light bondage. She and her local pagan group also recently rented temple space.

After that, me and her got into a discussion about fundamentalist pagans! I guess there's a portion of them that are very much "my way or the high way" and are trying to return to the original practices of the original founder and are always trying to convert non-pagans or pagans who don't agree with them. But, just when she was saying that, her bus rolled up, and so I walked to the subway stop a half-block away.

Best part of the election debate.

On the bus there I was next to a middle-aged (light-skinned) (black) woman who is active in community organizing on education issues... I had met her a few times before, she's really cool and active in her kid's school, and is going back to school for a teaching degree, but we had never really talked.

Anyhow, she mentioned Tyler Perry on Oprah, and then somehow she said that he had said he wasn't making any more Madea movies.

"Oh no," I was like, "Why?", and she then started explaining about how Madea was based on his mother and the character had gone on long enough.

"And I was like, just his mother?, hell, I know a lot of black women like that, like my mother, and my aunts, and my friends' mothers," she was like. "I know my mother had a gun under her bed. I remember one time my brother was in a fight outside, and she was looking outside to make sure it was a clean fight, and as soon as it started getting dirty, she pulled that rifle out and aimed it at his knees and told him to stop otherwise she'd shoot and she has a good aim. I was like, 'Mama, you can't do that!', and she was like, 'The hell I can't.' A lot of black women are tough like that."

And Another!

That same guy was saying once this drunk (black) homeless woman stumbled up to him in the street and was like, "Hey friend, how you doing? I haven't seen you in forever! But what did you do with your, you know" - and at that she twirled her fingers around where forelocks would be - and when he was like, "I think you're thinking of someone else," she was like, "What, you're not a rabbi?"

...and Another.

At this one party I was talking to this gawky, shrimpy, hairy white guy with thick glasses and a big nose (but not Jewish; he was a Medieval Studies professor) who was saying that once he was walking by a (black) panhandler who was like, "Hey man, got any change?", and when he said no, the guy was like, "Oh come on, I know you people, you always got a few coins stashed away and jingling somewhere... You sure you don't got any change?"

One anti-semitic story...

A friend of this one master's student who's tall and bumbly and pasty white with brown hair (but not Jewish) was walking back to his dorm one night in Chapel Hill when some hicks in a pick-up truck drove by and were like, "Go back to Duke, Jew!".

"But I don't even go to Duke!", he was like (he went to UNC).

Day after thanksgiving...

...at the bar near me with the plywood sign out front!

Phyllis wasn't bartending, it was the other bartender with dark hair who I had met before.

There was this older middle-aged Mexican woman who was stumbling out with the help of friends when I was walking in, and the bartender was saying, "That is the last time I serve Rosita Southern Comfort, the last time!"

Then when she served me, she told me there was a table in back with leftover Thanksgiving food if I wanted any.

"Has it been there since yesterday?", I was like.

"Good question!", she said, and laughed. "No, I just took it out of the fridge and set it out for everyone; it's left over from yesterday, you should have stopped by"

I went up, and it was two big plastic containers of ready-made coleslaw and potato salad, and a big aluminum tray of fruit salad from the can, so I got a big bowl of fruit salad to go with my beer (I love those maraschino cherries they have in there, that are drained of their strong taste).

"So did you have a full meal yesterday?", I was like.

"Yeah," the bartender was like, "We had two seatings."

"No shit," I was like.

"That was a joke," she said.

Sometime after that, I noticed that the entire corner of the bar near me was a memorial, with signs saying "MARTIN WE'LL MISS YOU" and other things like that.

She noticed me looking, and was like, "Yeah, I'm not sure if you heard, but Martin passed away."

"To tell you the truth, I didn't know him," I was like.

"He was that older Irish guy who was a real estate agent and landlord that came in here always, we'll miss him," she was like. "Though, he probably shouldn't have been coming in here, the drinking killed him. So many nights it was him and me, and I'd tell him to go home, and he'd say that he was keeping me company till close, and I would say that that's nice, but I have to hop on the bus and you can get in your car, so just go home now so I can leave."

Later, when I left, I was said bye but said wrong the name.

"No," she was like, "My name is [I forgot again]."

Then, she was like, "Your name is [my name], right?", and when I told her yes, she was like, "That's my brother's name," and right when I was like, "Oh," she was like, "And don't assume I like my brother."

As I was leaving, she started telling someone again that it was the last time she was ever serving Rosita Southern Comfort.

Forgot... - Brazilian story.

I forgot -

A while ago, I met the ex-boyfriend of my one lawyer friend from Missouri's Brazilian acquiantance at a brunch where everyone was out, and since he was visiting (they're still friends), she brought him.

Somehow we started talking about waterballoon slingshots, and then me and some people started talking about potato guns, and then he started saying that in Brazil, a lot of people have these little home-made plastic pipe slingshot things that they can fire dried beans and rice at people, and his parents actually got him one that was set up like a crossbow.

He also said that like a month ago, he was clubbing with a friend from Rio till 5am, and then they were both full of energy and kind of drunk, so they went back to his friend's apartment, got bathing suits, and then went to the beach and laid out under umbrellas and drank more and napped all day. Only, he in his drunkenness forgot to put sunscreen on his legs and they were sticking out in the sun though the rest of him was under the umbrella, so he woke up to find 2nd-degree burns on his legs. That night, he said, he kept waking up to wet sheets from his rolling over and his blisters popping.

...what a great day...

Ran around like made and got a bunch of errands done...

Met my one friend from Buffalo downtown for coffee and to study (and also found out that she's translating the 1st novel ever published in the form of the vernacular Indian language she studies, as a project that will feed into her dissertation chapter; her advisor is a native speaker of the language and is checking the translation; she wants to get the novel out there, since she feels the language she studies is under-represented in studies of the literature of modern India)...

Afterwards stopped by a bank branch to order some new checks, the clerk there waived all fees after I had mentioned that I had to pick them up somewhere because the mail at my apartment wasn't secure (people bitch about big mega-banks, but I've only had good experiences with the one that I deal with)...

What a pleasant day.

Though, I really wish I could watch intense, graphic movies, because I find myself fascinated by the movies "Alien" and "Aliens" and want to watch them, esp. the last was directed by James Cameron, but I know I can't. We all want what we can't have!

Another story from my one Dutch prof: A colleague.

At the same holiday party where she told that other story, me and another grad student were talking with her over wine, and while they were talking scholarship, she brought up some scholar and his book that the other guy knew and I didn't.

"Who is that?", I was like.

"Oh," she was like, "He teaches at [a major Catholic university] and specializes in [his specialization]. I've known him for years. He and his wife are always taking their children to swim-meets. It's actually quite amazing, really; they have 8 children, and she looks 19. I don't know how she did it! Of course, that was years ago, she probably doesn't look the same now."

Story from my one Dutch prof: How she met this priest.

When she was doing her masters years ago, there was this stern elderly priest who was on faculty and always in his office and working and though he was kindly, he never interacted much with people.

Then, one year during Christmas, the school's tradition was to put on a play (in Latin) by the medieval nun Hroswita (sp.?) of Gandersheim, and my one Dutch prof was an angel and had to wait in the prof's office till a point in the play and descend down the short staircase to where the play was, and take the virgin martyrs to heaven at the appropriate moment (they got arrows through the head).

So, she was in the office waiting, and the stern elderly priest was in there working, and she actually finally had a conversation with him, and when it was getting close to her cue, she excused herself from the conversation so she could listen better for her cue, and at that point the stern elderly priest intoned, "[Her first name], are you a virgin?"

"No," she was like, "I'm an angel."

To be a city councilperson...

You need to raise at least $80,000 in a campaign (n.b. - *raise*, people sometimes spend more), otherwise you're simply not viable.

I found this out through a meeting of the local community-organizing group, which is looking to host a debate. Members of the community were really appalled by that fact, esp. since so many of the people attending the meeting were poor or marginalized or living in subsidized housing.

Was on the phone the other day with my dad....

Mom (is watching tv, calls from background): "Sarah Palin's in Haiti!"

Dad: "I hope she's drinking water from the trenches."

(then - in a put-on voice)

"She's tough, she's from Alaska, she can handle it. Drink up, Sarah!"

recent NEWFLASH update.

I saw the new Harry Potter movie last night. I paid careful attention to the school scenes, to see if there are more black students at Hogwarts than at Oxford.

My Thanksgiving: Belated Review.

My Thanksgiving was pretty good. I had wrangled an invitation to this one couple's house who have a Thanksgiving for orphans from my one friend who used to deliver singing telegrams - she's known them forever, and I had met them at a cook-out of hers back in August - and so I went there and dragged a school friend along too who was also an orphan.

The meal was good, with turkey and ham, and two kinds of gravy. One was gluten-free and the other was mushroom, and the one guy's sister who was next to me kept (gently; she was kind of big and spoke with a soothing voice) yelling at her brother because he would tell everyone that the gravy was gluten-free.

"Call it turkey gravy," she was like, "When you say it's gluten-free, you make it sound like it's missing something essential and is a second-choice gravy!"

Later, when she found out that I was studying religion, she shared with me a book she was reading, which was written by a shaman and was talking about important parallels between native american thinking and early christianity.

Fortunately, that got someone on my side of the table talking about sweat lodge retreats, which was cool... This guy was talking about how they dug a hole in the ground and filled it with hot rocks, and then covered everything with pine boughs and you were in there in the middle of the night, etc.

The other highlight of dinner was when somehow everyone started talking about traffic laws. My one friend who used to deliver singing telegrams was talking about how her mother used to call out the window in an inimitable (sp.?) southern accent, "Darling, what are you waiting for, lights don't grow any greener!". This one MFA student who ended up at dinner also shared this neologism of stopsigns you can coast through - they're "stoptional".

Also, my one friend from school, who's always finding herself in weird, dramatic situations, was talking about how she's getting a new apartment with a guy from her co-op who was kicked out for bringing a golden retriever into the house.

"I wouldn't mind it," she was like, "But the dog was abused, and I guess that changes its fur chemistry, so it's really really oily and kind of smells and likes to rub up against everything."

At that, the gluten-free woman next to me recommended giving the dog some flower extract that you can get at any health-foods store.

Later, when everyone was talking politics, she was saying that it upsets her that Obama's health care plan makes you buy health insurance, but she can't choose alternative medicine.

Thanksgiving return journey of a friend.

My one lawyer friend from Missouri went home by bus for Thanksgiving, and the trip down on Wed. was good, but on Mon. she had some different sort of folks on the bus.

One was a woman who had this helmet on the entire time for no apparent reason (maybe recent brain surgery?).

Then there was a (black) guy who was calling his girlfriend, and he was like, "Yeah, I'm coming back, I dropped out of school just to come see you... No, that was a joke, though I did escape from prison... You have a good meal on Thursday, baby? You still nice and thick for me?"

Then then, there was this (white?) girl in the seat ahead of her who kept picking chunks of skin and dandruff out of her hair, and sometimes rubbing the chunks against the sleeve of her coat real hard to see if they smeared, but mostly just eating them...

My lawyer friend kept hitting the back of her seat to make her stop, but then the girl turned around and nicely was like, "Oh, I'm sorry, is my seat too far back, do you want me to scooch it up?", and my friend said she really wanted to tell her to stop picking and eating her dandruff, but she was like, "No, you're fine, I was just adjusting my legs", but a few minutes later she couldn't take the hair-picking anymore and so got up and found another seat.

Also, she said that when she ride to work from her house, she always passes that Pakistani cafe that the cabdrivers go to, and has always wanted to stop through and was thinking once of asking me to go, but it had slipped her mind... So, we might go sometime, and she'll bring a headscarf.

NEWS FLASH - One black student at Oxford.

Or so says a NYTimes article that I read after reading a Tweet off a blog.

My responses -

- They're actually a Rhodes scholar.
- She's female, gay, and disabled, and appears in all the brochures.
- The worst part is, the kid can't even study most of the time, because everyone's trying to always touch their hair!
- (to my one British friend) "Your mission over break is to hunt them down and take a picture with them, to prove that they exist."
- Comparatively, one isn't so bad, we only have one black head-of-state.
- The kid's not even black, they were just high when they filled out the questionnaire and checked the wrong box.

The jokes write themselves. Four more and I could write a top-ten list for Letterman!

My mother's (implicit) philosophy of parenting.

A few weeks ago I made up some tapioca pudding - like last year that grocery store that had been in my apartment building had had packets of tapioca pearls on sale for a dollar and I had got a pack, but never made any - and had even mentioned to my mom I was going to make some, and then when I had called my parents after I had made it my mom asked me how it turned out.

"Good," I was like, "But no matter how long I boiled it, some of the pearls weren't cooked all the way through, though otherwise the pudding was a good consistency."

"You know, honey," my mom was like, "I didn't want to tell you and discourage you, but I've never been able to make tapioca pudding for the life of me. My grandmother used to make this beautiful tapioca pudding and even gave me the recipe, but it's turned out like yours did every time I tried it. There must be some trick out there that we don't have!"

Tomorrow evening sucks!

I'm going to the mayoral debate and missing the John Waters show *AND* the sex documentary night where the film will be about the sex lives of women over 60 and the elderly male nurse who grew up as a thug in an Italian neighborhood and then became a sexologist will be a discussion facilitator! On the email lists he already said his experiences "are not standard", but said he's been on sex-and-aging panels before and would be happy to do it if no one else can be found (which is the case).

(He also said his wife couldn't come; she never does, and I'd love to meet her.)

Anyhow, I know that that movie night alone could be the highpoint of my year. The last time there was a film that he attended (and this was ages ago, I forgot to blog about it), he was talking again about the benefits of massage among people where they feel pleasure but don't know whose hands are touching them. He then started reminiscing about how back when he was in nursing school he and a friend had invited an instructor over and were all drinking pot and sitting around smoking pot, and somehow the topic turned to nude massage, and after a bit, they all went to take off their shirts, and the instructor, was doing that - but then put his back on and bolted out the door!

"It wasn't right for him then," the retired male nurse was like.

Thoughts on my 3rd cold in 7 weeks.

I think it all goes back to that Thursday night out at the bar where they had tables for drinking games and were selling $5 forties. That must have carried through Fri. and Sat. and weakened my immune system, so I woke up Sunday with a cold.

Friends tell me I should take care of myself more and stay in if I feel sick or not go so out so much at all, but really, what's the point of that? To be stuck inside my apartment all healthy? Fuck that.

Another probable etymology.

A "thimble" is a little thing that goes on your "thumb".

2 probable etymologies.

It always surprises me how these everyday words we use in English are actually opaque in etymology.

I mean, we say "throw up", but do we ever really think that it means to throw something in your belly up and out onto the floor or the street or into the toilet or wherever?

Likewise, a "saucer" probably once meant something that held sauce, but do we ever think of that?

Dinner with Whoever.

The other day I was thinking, if I had to pick 3 people, living or dead, real or fictional, to have dinner with, I would pick -

1) Lorenzo Valla
2) Tom Paine

-and-

3) Origen

- though I don't think my Latin or Greek would be good enough to talk with Lorenzo Valla or Origen, so we'd probably have to write shit down for each other, which wouldn't be very fun.

Also, no women on my list!

4 things that happened on the recent visit of my one Dutch friend’s one Dutch friend, who is now also my friend (IV of IV): Martinis.

Because his flight was cancelled, we ended up going out to the martini lounge, and he brought his (female) friend who lives on the subway line going out to the airport, who he was staying with.

I got to the martini lounge a bit early, though, only to discover that the Swinger couple I know were sitting at the bar with friends, and when I went up to say hi, the Swinger Lady immediately hopped off her seat and hugged me and was like, “Oh, it is so great to see you here!” and introduced me to all her friends, saying “Isn’t he so cute? I love him!” after introducing me to each one.

Then, when I sat down next to them, she was asking me how the after-party for the famous sex advice columnist was that I had gone to the other week.

(He had been in town for a lecture and I had seen in the free city newspaper that there was an after-party where he’d be making an appearance at a local club that night, so I texted a shitload of friends and my one friend with the cat said she’d go, which she did, and she brought along a letter of hers he’d published years ago to get signed by him, but another friend who I’d texted invited me to stop through a movie night earlier that same evening put on by people related to the sex documentary series... It was at the apartment of the one guy who had worked for a nationwide sex magazine and was now starting a website that was like Facebook for kinky people, and the Swingers had been there, and some other people, including the BDSM activist who was the original organizer of the series, who’s back in town and working on developing scripts for role-playing games, and some friends of the host, who when I’d talk to them and be like, “So how do you know him?”, they would hem and haw and say things like “Through work” or “Through friends”, which I took to mean through massive orgies... One was this done-up, slightly fat but not unattractive Chinese girl with a really tough accent to understand, and she was telling me and the museum coordinator of the sex documentary series about how sex is all repressed in China, not like in the U.S., so Chinese guys want it just as much as American men but are sneaky about getting it, but here a guy will walk up to you and say, “I like your tits,” which she found liberating.)

So, I told her that the famous sex advice columnist had signed a print-out of a letter that had been sent in by my friend years ago, and he was very gracious and had signed it “Nice to meet you in person,” but otherwise the crowd wasn’t as cool as we had expected, it was just the club’s typical crowd.

“What was the letter on?”, the Swinger Lady was like.

“How women should shave and take care of their pussies if they want cunninlingus, and how guys should have to learn how to pleasure a woman by careful experimentation, since a woman can’t tell them how to do it better, usually, unless she’s experimented with women herselves.”

“Oh!”, the Swinger Lady was like, “That was a whole famous series of letters! I really respected him for starting that discussion up, he started it by saying he was gay and had to turn to his readers for advice on how to eat pussy.”

Then, she added that the best thing she ever learned was to douche yourself with a combo of half mineral water and half hydrogen peroxide 2 hours before you expect to get eaten out, and we talked a while about whether that was healthy, and she said her partner’s brother is a doctor and said it’s fine.

And, since she and her partner with there with 3 friends and we were wrapped around the corner of a bar, we were rather far away from each other, and had to shout out that entire conversation.

After it ended and there was a slight pause, her older (gay) friend turned to me and was like, “So what do you do?”

“Oh,” I was like, “I’m a Ph.D. student down at [---] and I’m studying [---]”

“No,” he was like, “I meant for before sex.”

Right around that time, my one Dutch friend’s other Dutch friend, who is now also my friend, and his friend he was staying with, showed up, and they joined the group and we all drank a few martinis and talked...

Later, when the Swinger Lady was pretty hammered, she was shouting to me down the bar how she hoped that the sex documentary series would screen a film on bestiality, since it turned her on.

I mentioned the infamous Linda Lovelace short film, and she got all serious and inward-focused and turned on, and was like, “Oh, I’ve seen that,” and then she snapped out of it a little and, still looking a bit aroused, was like, “You know, a lot of people’s first sexual experience is with animals. Mine was at the age of 12, when a dog licked my pussy. I didn’t know what it exactly was at the time, except that I liked it.”

After that conversation faded out, we talked more, and I guess my friend talked with her some about Dante for some reason, and when the Swinger Lady and her partner and her friends went to leave, she got up and came over to give all of us hugs, and she whispered in his ear that it was great talking to him and that when he had said that Dante was dark and sexy, that she agreed, and hearing him say that had turned her on.

4 things that happened on the recent visit of my one Dutch friend’s one Dutch friend, who is now also my friend (III of IV): Cancelled Flight.

When my one Dutch friend’s one Dutch friend, who is now also my friend,’s flight was cancelled due to weather and he was rescheduled to a flight early the next morning, my one Dutch friend advised him that now was the perfect time to locate a beautiful woman who lives somewhere in the vicinity of the airport.

NEWS FLASH - Another Cold.

I got up with another cold on Sun. morning.

When I got up on Fri., I felt a little stuffed and used my neti pot, and a little chunk of greenish brown had come out from deep inside, but otherwise I was fine all day, and all day Sat., until I was at a party and felt very tired all of a sudden towards midnight.

I was sniffling all the way home and took some NyQuil so I could get to sleep, and woke up with a dry sore throat and a big head full of dried brown snot, and the same happened today again. This sucks...

I realized I haven't been this sick since I posted that -

PERFECT HEALTH
is my
NATURAL
STATE OF BEING

- note on my mirror years and years ago, so I made up a new one and put it on my mirror yesterday... I had forgot to put up the sign again after my move. I wonder if I had done that, if I would be sick right now.

4 things that happened on the recent visit of my one Dutch friend’s one Dutch friend, who is now also my friend (II of IV): Coffee.

When we went to get coffee afterwards, we were talking more academic stuff – he studies a topic close to mine, but specializes in a different period, so it’s always helpful to get his take on things – and I was realizing I was asking this serious question that must have sounded jack-assy and pretentious to anyone sitting around us, if they were listening (something like, “So do you think that previous treatments of the Complutensian polyglot bible have failed to fully appreciate its apologetic stance toward the text of the Vulgate?”).

Anyhow, I then added that I had been thinking that when I was reading this otherwise good book I had come across, and then found someone had written in the book saying the same thing.

“Did you check the book out of the university library?”, my friend was like.

When I said yes, he was like, “Was it written in pencil?”.

Then, when I said yes again, he was like, “I think it was me.”

4 things that happened on the recent visit of my one Dutch friend’s one Dutch friend, who is now also my friend (I of IV): Lunch.

My one Dutch friend’s one Dutch friend, who is now also my friend, was in town right before Thanksgiving for research and to see people before catching a flight to spend Thanksgiving with my one Dutch friend and his wife and baby son. So, we caught up the day before Thanksgiving at lunch downtown...

First, he suggested we go to this restauarant that Pakistani cabdrivers go to, which is only a 15 minute short walk from the most chi-chi part of town (which is where the library he was doing research at was located), right on the outskirts of an industrial section where there are a few storefronts tucked away under overhead railroad tracks and amidst vacant lots. We walked up to the restaurant door and there were a ton of people inside in white robes and those little white cappy things, but the door wouldn’t open, so we walked to one side of the building and saw fence stretching out forever around the block, and then to the other side of the building and saw fence stretching forever around the block, so we went back to the door to try it again, only to have one of the serious-faced Muslim-dressed guys inside raise his hand and do a “go around!” motion with his hand.

So, we went around the fence to the right, and eventually there was a gap to a parking lot filled with nothing but 20+ cabs, and a small entrance in the back of the building that we went into... There was a pile of free Pakistani community newspapers right inside the foyer, as well as a bulletin board full of handwritten ads asking for taxidrivers. Once past the foyer, you were right in front of the main counter, where there were two old Pakistani guys in front of a magic marker board with like 7 or 8 different dishes of the day written up there (though no prices), and behind them you could see into the kitchen, and there were a few brown guys (Pakistanis? Mexicans?) slaving over giant silver pots on the stove. Me and my one Dutch friend’s Duthc friend, who is now also my friend, decided to get this goat-rice thing, which they ladled out from pots in the back immediately, and served up on this huge plate along with a bowl of some yogurt sauce and a small plate of giant slivers of chopped raw onions and a few lime wedges, to mix and squeeze into the rice.

There were like at least 15 people in the restaurant, all male, and one of them was getting up to leave as we sat down and came up to us and was like, “Welcome, enjoy, the food here is very good!”, but as we sat down in a booth and were about to eat, pretty much everyone got up and left, and me and my friend just started looking at each other, since it was very weird.

Then, the counter guy behind the counter just burst out into the call-to-prayer, and we realized that everyone must have gone to an adjacent room where they had mats and could pray at noontime...

The food was great, but my one friend said he liked it when they were in the location across the street, which was smaller and little more than a shack with insulation, and had 3 clocks up – one labelled with the name of our city, the second with “MADRAS”, and the third with “MECCA”.

Mug problems.

I have very little cabinet and counter space in my new apartment, so, among other things, I installed some hooks underneath the cabinet over my kitchen sink.

Now, I’ve broken a bowl and a small dish at my apartment, since I have to leave them to dry on my like 2 feet of counter space directly underneath my over-stuffed cabinets and stuff has tumbled out of there when I open it and struck a dish drying on the counter and knocked it off the counter and down to the floor, where it shattered.

But, recently, twice in one week, I had hung a mug up on a hook under the cabinet and took my hand away to leave it hanging, only it wasn’t on securely and fell down to the sink and had its handle shattered off.

Hipster karaoke – it was only okay (part II of II): Singing, and then karaoke.

But, before karaoke, my one (white) friend from Mississippi had been invited to play a few songs as part of a Saturday night lineup at a nearby hipster bar, one of a series of continuing (unpaid) gigs that he got through this guy he met at hipster karaoke and who liked his singing.

The bar was kind of shitty. At first glance it was cool because it was painted all neat and had old music posters up, and they had great beer prices and nice bartenders – the owner was there, this old (white) guy of Swedish descent, and they were selling glogg made from his family’s recipe, and to buy a good beer was only $3.50 (!) – but the bar sucked for several reasons.

First, it was full of (white) hipsters trying to be cool. The bar was packed, and everyone was (white), except for a few Asians, who tend to be (whiter) than (white) anyhow. So many of the hipsters try to make themselves ugly, too, which I’ve been noticing lately – get ugly piercings, not wash their hair and let it grow long, etc. It makes me just want to slap them all and tell them to grow up.

Second, the stage was way up in the front, which is one of the worst places for a stage, and not only could you not see it, but the music was on too loud, so you were bombarded with music from a stage you really couldn’t see and didn’t care about.

We got there at 10pm and left after midnight for hipster karaoke, but though we put songs in right away and stayed for more than an hour till close, we never got to sing.

The worst part was that like half the crowd were these (black) early-to-mid-20s “cool” kids, almost like hipsters...

When I first got there, this one (black or mixed-race) girl was singing Clarence Carter’s “Strokin’” and people were eating it up, only she was doing it in this ironic, repulsive way that no one seemed to notice, probably because the audience was also hipsters.

After that, it was nothing but her and her friends for like the next 7-8 songs... On one a group of (black) guys got up, and the 2 “backup” guys didn’t sing, and the lead guy didn’t have a voice, and all their friends were dancing up close and taking pictures, and on another some (black) girl got up and sang Britney Spears’s “Hit Me Baby (One More Time)”, and on another one a (black) guy and a (black) girl got up to sing and were pretty much just howling into the microphones and clowning around throughout their “duet”.

“What a bunch of bullshit,” I told my one (white) friend from Mississippi, during the girl singing Britney.

“No,” he was like, “She’s not bad, and that guy who sang before was pretty good. It’s nice to see some soul here.”

“You know,” I was like, ‘You’re giving them a free pass at karaoke because they’re black. If that was some white sorority girl from a Big Ten singing now, you’d make a face and roll your eyes because it’s so typical to sing Britney, and the rest of them are just clowning with their friends. They’re karaoke jackasses, but you don’t notice because they’re black.”

That line of analysis made him uncomfortable, but I told him that one of the things I appreciated about krunk karaoke was learning how not all (black) people sing well, and how all these (black) women think they’re divas and put some diva song in and can fuck it up too, they don’t have some magic ability to sing awesome just because they’re black, though maybe they think they do, or think they should be able to.

Later, after last call, and karaoke was still going, I left, because the host called up some people yet again from the huge crowd of early-to-mid 20s (black) kids, and this like 300lb (black) gay dude sashayed up to the microphone with this “look at me” attitude to sing Michael Jackon’s “Can’t Stop Loving You” with 2 (!) of his (black) lady friends, and I had to leave, he was pissing me off so much, I’m not going to stick around and enable some obnoxious dude’s attention-getting complex.

So, I said bye, and then went outside and hopped on my bike and left.

Hipster karaoke – it was only okay (part I of II): Pre-karaoke.

So, the other Saturday night I went to hipster karaoke, after a long chain of events.

First, I went to this discount clothing store in my new neighborhood, to get a thin cap that I could wear under my bike helmet, since I was bicycling 25 minutes to the hipster neighborhood and it was getting cold out.

Second, I first went to a hipster coffee shop to read and whatnot for a few hours... I brought a few books, as well as a Greek dictionary and my copy of the Life of Mary of Egypt from Migne’s Patrologia Graeca, to read a bit (which I did, for the entire time I was there; I just felt like it).

Third, I met up with my one (white) friend from Mississippi and a (Canadian) colleague and the girlfriend of this other student who’s friends with everyone at the taco place to get some Mexican food at this place that has really good carne asada.

Unfortunately, the carne asade I had in my torta (which I ordered in Spanish – “una torta de carne asada con todo, por favor,” which made the [Mexican] waitress smile) was fatty and didn’t taste like usual, but the restaurant was otherwise fun...

For some reason we got talking about how brides can be selfish at weddings, and it turns out that my one (white) friend from Mississippi, who’s an ordained Baptist minister, had performed several, and he says he always cedes to the wishes of the bride.

“Were these family and friends or just random people you married?”, I asked.

“Well,” he was like, “I married my cousin...”

“Ha!”, I was like, “I hear that happens a lot in the south,” which made him laugh.

Later, too, he was saying how he would present a set of like five different types of vows, and the couple could pick one.

“Couldn’t they write their own if they wanted?”, the one girlfriend of this other student who’s friends with everyone said.

“No, not many people do that,” my one (white) friend from Mississippi was like.

“It’s not like that many people can read,” I was like.

Also unfortunate at the Mexican restaurant was the fact that when I arrived I had to take a huge shit because that morning I had had 2 huge bowls of oatmeal with oats I had gotten at the discount supermarket chain, and after I took this brown, watery shit with a bunch of backsplash and mopped up the excess ass-water around my asshole and fired the toilet paper in the water and flushed, I went to go wash my hands, only to discover there was no soap. And, we hadn’t eaten yet, and everyone was eating from a communal bowl of nacho chips and salsa.

But, luckily I thought to go to the register, and they had a giant bottle of hand sanitizer sitting out by the cash register that I used, so I was able to sterilize my hands... Luckily too no brown ass-water got on it, otherwise the sanitizer would have just smeared it around, and maybe not even sanitized it.

Unluckily, though, the heat in the restroom was like 95+ degress, so I left a really nasty muggy shit smell in their for whichever patrons used it next.

Discount Supermarket Chain.

The other day I was in this discount supermarket chain in my new neighborhood, this one that had been successful in Germany and imported into the U.S. a number of years ago, I guess.

One thing that was interesting was how they had open cases of products and no frills, to drive down prices.

The other thing I noticed was the huge array of brands that I had never heard of – but when I’d flip them over and see where the brands were based, they’d all have this little notice saying they were produced by the supermarket chain in a different part of the state. I wonder if it’s part of the success of the chain, to have people think they’re buying a wide variety of different brands, when really they’re just buying the store’s generic brand over and over no matter what they buy.

Addendum - Scrotal Showing.

I forgot -

During the scrotal showing, the resident intern who originally examined me with the German dermatologist was there for like 1/3 of the time, and he stood there in order to cut me off if I gave too many hints away to the other doctors, since I was going to be the focus of his presentation that afternoon and he didn't want to give away the surprise of my condition. He even cut me off when someone asked me about travel history, even though before he got there I had told some doctors and was like, "Well, last summer I was in the Netherlands, and the summer before that...", at which point they all had cut me off, though one when she found out I was in Africa, said it was too long ago to matter. I thought that was silly, since it's not like that clued them in majorly.

Also, sometimes when I'd offer to show my scrotum, the doctors would be like, "Sure," and start ducking down to look, even though the chair I was sitting in faced a long busy corridor and the door was wide open.

Also also, I grilled the resident what he though about astrology.

"Not much, except that I read my horoscope everyday," he was like.

"That's Western astrology, I was like. "And that's bullshit."

Then, I told him about how my one friend whose parents are Indian dabbles in astrology and told me that I had the problem with my testicles during a 6-month period that was inauspicious for that area of the body.

"That's so weird," he was like.

"Tell that to the doctors during your presentation this afternoon and see what they think!", I said, and I kind of hope he did, because a good number of the doctors who came through the scrotal showing were Indian, and I wonder what they would have thought about that.

NEWS FLASH.

I started writing my dissertation today. I got a couple paragraphs, but it's still a start on the programmatic overview, which hopefully I can workshop in the winter and set myself up to get a dissertation fellowship for next year!!!

The only mitigating suckiness is that I found out this weekend that John Waters is in town this upcoming month for a one-man Christmas stand-up show for one night only, and it happens to be the night of the mayoral candidate debate I got invited to through the community organizing group in my new neighborhood, so I'm skipping John Waters to go to that. :/

I figure the mayoral thing is a one-time event, whereas maybe I'll have another chance to see John Waters again at some point in my life. And, plus it will be fun to meet new people in the neighborhood like I have through the community organizing group, the leadership of which likes me a lot, btw, because I like to go do door-to-door stuff, they don't have enough volunteers for that!

Sex doc - at a new location!: Kink museum.

Through the email list I'm on, I found out that there was a Sat. afternoon screening of this sex documentary at this kink museum in the city that I've always heard about, and since the doc didn't seem half-bad - it was about 5 women of different ages who did self-esteem building activities to put them in touch with their sexuality and make them more comfortable with it - I decided to go.

The building was in an ethnic neighborhood and didn't have a clear sign out front, but it did have these banners with a silhouette of a tall leather boot on each side.

And, inside, it was like a normal museum entrace with a display case cash register etc., except that the coatroom had the word "UNIFORMS AND COATS' above the entrance, and the artwork in display in the lobby were these giant spray-painted pictures of buff gay men who were shirtless in leather jackets in chaps, and either had huge hardons going almost all the way down the top half of their leg under their jeans, or popped out.

And, by the entrance to the cinema there was this older fat pot-bellied (white) guy with a beard and a leather cop hot and vest selling refreshements he had made himself - cappucino brownies, muffins with dried fruit and orange icing, and pizza popcorn.

"Popcorn that tastes like pizza!", he was like. "I came up with the recipe myself."

And, a free beverage came with each one, so I got me a muffin and some pizza popcorn and a cup of coffee, and then went into the cinema...

Some people in the audience I recognized from the film series, including the one retired male nurse who had grown up in an Italian neighborhood as a thug but then became a sexologist, so I sat near him and caught up before the film started.

The film was decent, and the Q&A interested. The best questions was whether you could make the same doc with a group of straight guys, and people pretty much said no, because straight guys see sex as about performance and not pleasure and the 1st step to forming a group like that is admitting you're dissatisfied with your sex life, which most couldn't do.

"I am a sex worker," one woman in the back said, who had raised her hand, "And let me tell you, that the place for most men to admit that is when they're clients. Since, it's all about, 'How do you want to be pleased?', or, 'What can I teach you?'"

After the Q&A, the male nurse made a beeline for the sex worker, and asked her if she had ever read the seminal study from the 1970s, where a sociologist had hid in some prostitutes closets and watched, and then formed descriptions of 9 male sexual types.

(He couldn't remember the title, but it was something like, "Friend Lover Slave".)

Only, the male nurses's eyesight isn't that good (he's kind of old), and he asked the question to this other, quiet (white) girl with brown hair who occasionally comes to the film series, and from what I gathered there is a lesbian.

Me and her talked a bit, and it turns out that she's a few years out of college and has lives for 2-years in these Catholic Worker-like houses run by the diocese, only you commit for a couple years to a time of faith and volunteering, not a life.

She's also a lesbian into leather.

"I wonder how that mixes," I was like. "I bet the diocese would be happy to know that!"

"Sometimes I feel like I'm doubly closeted," she was like. "When I'm around lesbians, people get weirded out about Catholics, and then when I'm around Catholics, they can't know my true self with leather."

I then asked her about the recent election in the National Catholic Conference of Bishops or whatever it's called, and she too was concerned about how a conservative was elected.

Then, she was like, "But, on some level, I'm also not concerned, because, that's not my church," meaning the hierarchy, as I understood her.

Exploitation of migrant workers.

Like over a week ago when I was at school I ran into the (black) administrative assistant I'm good friends with, and she asked me how was that surprise dinner with my neighbor who I used to campaign for Obama with in Indiana.

(I had seen her that morning, right after I found out that my friend was unexpectedly in town, that's how she knew.)

So, I told her about it, and then since in the past she was interested in my friend's job, I was telling her about how some of the U.S. companies sign up workers promising them 40 hour workweeks, and then work them 120 hours a week and if they complain they deport them.

"I honestly cannot believe that," I was like, and my friend was shaking her head, as she stepped in to the elevator to go upstairs to her office (I had run into her in the building foyer).

Then, I was like, "Actually, I can," and she was like, "I was thinking that too, that I can believe that," and she grimaced as the doors of the elevator closed and she was like, "Bye!".

ADDENDUM - Conversation with Current (German) Professor.

I forgot -

I also was telling that emeritus (German) professor and a current (German) professor about how some friend got an email about Rahm Emmanuel's missing the tip of one of his fingers, and the email said that he was born with "666" on it, and his mom saw it and cut it off with a knife," and when they raised an eyebrow, I was like, "Really!"

"Ah," the one (current) German professor was like, "The e-mail does exist, I believe you, but it is another matter if its contents are true."

Conversation w/an Emeritus Professor.

When I was at a presentation the other day, I struck up conversation with this kindly old (German) (emeritus) professor before it started.

"What have you been working on anything lately, Professor [last name removed]?", I was likely.

"Work?", he was like. "I only play golf nowadays, except when I take time off to play shuffleboard."

"Or wear bright pink pants!", I was like, and he laughed.

Barley and a Bug.

I made some beef barley soup the other night with some very reasonable, very high-quality hallal stew-beef I got at that one convenience store in my new neighborhood that I go to, but, just like when I made barley soup last time, I forgot how big barley gets in water, and dumped in 2lbs of dry barley... The recipe ended up being more a barley mash, with big beef chunks and pieces of fresh carrot, celery, and corn, with no broth, but tasty!

Later that night, as I was in bed, I saw something skitter under my upright IKEA lamp - a silverfish so big that its back end hung out, and the tips of its legs touched the udnerside of the lamp, which is almost a half-inch off the floor.

So, I got out of bed, knelt down with a sandal in my hand, picked up the light, and got ready - and because it was a big silverfish, it didn't move very fast, and kind of ran into the cord and got confused, and I smashed it with my sandal.

Successes and Failures of Monday.

1) I sent out my article to a different journal (this one in Belgium).

2) I ran into this slightly pompous grad student I know, and, like I have been, I talked to him about a union. I sounded him out on whether students should have a negotiated contract, and he said they should, but a union wasn't the right way, so I filled him in on the failure of the committees etc., and then he said people sign up and know what they're getting into, so I nicely explained about how the committee I was on said there was a lack of transparency and recommended that every dept. put up official "time-to-degree" and drop-out rate statistics, but the provost eviscerated that rec and made it optional and to my knowledge no dept. had done it, and then when he said unions still weren't a good way, I asked him what the other options were, then.

"Don't go to grad school," he was like.

What a cock. People like that are so small inside and condescending, and even though I tried my best, somehow the conversation turned into a pissing match that impeded on his cynicism, which seems to be an important part of his personality.

Addendum.

I forgot -

After the meeting, I stopped through a bar in the (formally Swedish) neighborhood on my way home, and had a beer as I did a crossword.

Bars sure are different on this part of town...

This cook off of work, a young (white) guy, was talking with the (gay) (white) (male) bartender, and was saying how nice it is to have a bar where they know people, and he was sitting like right next to me, and the bartender within my hearing range invited him to the back to sample from a sample batch of a variant of their famous mulled wine they were cooking up, made with white wine vanilla beans etc.

Later, a (black) UPS worker who was off of work came through and was sitting on my other side, and the younger middle-aged (white) (female) bartender , who had a gravelly voice seemed and called me "honey", also invited him in my hearing range to try some of the new mulled wine recipe.

After that guy left, too, the 1st bartender asked the 2nd, "What is his name again?".

None of that made me want to go back... Forgetful to regulars, unwelcoming to me while they invite people on both sides of me to sample the wine... If I was a bartender, I would have invited me to sample, that's the sort of thoughtfulness and hospitality that creates customers.

Community Organizing Meeting.

So, the other Thursday I went to a post-election "where do we go from here?" meeting put on by that local community organizing group that I had gotten invited to, which was in a church basement and included free dinner (cheese ravioli and salad)...

Like 50 people where there, and it was already pretty packed, but I managed to find a seat next to 2 later middle-aged (black) women.

One was the present of the tenants association for her building ("Aquila").

"Oh," I was like, "Like in Acts?", and at that she smiled, and was like, "And Corinthians!"

(The other's name was Pam.)

We had a good conversation before the meeting started about the upcoming alderman election for our district, and Aquila was saying that she feared some of the candidates, because everyone is concerned about crime, but sometimes that gets "twisted for other purposes", and when I asked her what she meant, exactly, she said that it was turned against all low-income housing by new condo owners.

"I've lived in this neighborhood for 27 years," Pam was like, "And I've tried to raise my sons good, when it's tough on black young men from two sides - if they go on the straight and narrow the gangs have it out for them, and then the police have it out for them no matter what. But they don't understand that."

I then told them about how the condo owners next to me were a piece of work, and had a consumers mentality, and the 1st time that the one (white) woman ever talked to me she said not to lock up my bike on a sign outside in front of her building since it was an eyesore.

"An eyesore?", Aquila was like.

"Yep," I was like, "And you know, her building has tulips outfront, and I had noticed that, and I hate tulips, they're a dumb flower; they look ugly when they're flowering, and then uglier when they die and there's just spikes and leaves left, and I wanted to tell her, 'Know what, change those plants in front of your house, I have to look at them whenver I go in and out of my front door,' but I didn't."

"Ha," Aquila was like, and just shook her head and was like, "Tulips," and then smiled and laughed some more and looked at Pam and was like, "Tulips!".

...

Overall, the meeting went well, the community organizing group had focused on turning out the vote in the low-turnout precincts, and improved it 5-8% over 4 years ago (turnout then had been in the low 50s in the low-turnout precincts; this time it was in the high 50s). Now they're going to shop that fact around to alderpeople and other politicians so they'll listen to the group's agenda.

Also, they're sponsoring/organizing a debate for the new alderman's race, and getting busloads of people to the limited-seating mayorial debate in Dec., which I signed up for!

I think Aquila and Pam are going too.

Ricky Martin's new memoir.

Yesterday I saw a picture of the cover of Ricky Martin's new memoir -

And I thought, "Yo?, isn't that a little bit macho?" -

And then I realized the book was in Spanish.

Addendum addendum.

Also also -

My one lawyer friend from Missouri's neighbor's Brazilian coworker also said this kid in her high school had a foreskin that was too tight and every time he had an erection he'd really really hurt since the head of his dick couldn't poke out, so when he was 14 he had to go in for corrective surgery, and everyone in school made fun of him.

Addendum.

And -

A few days after that conversation, when I was at a dinner party at my one friend with the cat's house, my one friend with the cat somehow brought up that story again, and my one lawyer friend from Missouri's neighbor's Brazilian coworker then mentioned how one night her friend thought she was having the best sex ever since she was so filled up and hurting, and then the next day she discovered her tampon was rammed way up in her and she had to spend all morning at the doctor's for it to get fished out.

Story from my One Friend with the Cat.

So, the other weekend I was having a drink with my one friend with the cat, and somehow brought up the fact that her one 40-year old friend has for like the past year been f*cking this 25-year old.

"That's hot," I was like, to which she was like, "Actually...", and then she told me this story about how her friend didn't have her period for 2 months running, and she was scared shitless that she was knocked up by the 25-year old.

"But then she went to the doctor and found out that it was an old tampon that had been in her for 3 months," she was like, and then when I said "Holy f*ck" or something similar, she was like, "That's what my friend said, and all the doctor could say to her was, 'Didn't you smell it?'

"So," my one friend with the cat was like, "Whenever I hear stuff like that and think that someone else's sex life is so much hotter than mine, I remember that story, because on the surface it seems hot, but they must have been having some sloppy, drunken sex for that to have happened. And, he probably didn't even know how to please a woman, since he sure as hell didn't know what one should smell like."

Addendum.

And, post-dinner, I was on the subway platform texting a friend and the wind was really really gusty, and I dropped my phone and it fell the right way and it broke into pieces, and the wind carried the back of the cell case over the edge of the platform and into a small puddle by the edge of the tracks.

A couple people nearby saw, and I just shrugged and was like, "Guess I'll have to get a new one," but this one young (black) guy in a knit hat looked down at it and was like (in an accented voice!), "No, I will get it," and hopped down onto the tracks, got it, reached up and handed it to me, and then hopped back up onto the platform, though I warned him not to do it because of the electrified rail.

"Thanks a bunch," and then added, "Though wouldn't it be funny if water was still on it and it shorted out and destroyed my phone."

He laughed, and then I asked him where he was from, and he said he was studying in the city and was just beginning his 1st year of college, and was from Burkina Fasso.

And, I told him I had been there, which made me feel like I was bragging, but we talked about that for a while.

So nice to catch up with old friends.

So, the highlight of like my past month was that my one old neighbor from my old apartment building - the hippie-ish one who I volunteered a lot for Obama with down in Indiana - emailed like 8 of her friends randomly, to say that she was in town for 3 days and suggested meeting for dinner at this Persian restaurant if anyone could make it.

(She's in Mexico working a human rights job, gathering materials for suits on behalf of workers who are issued temporary work visas by U.S. employers who lie about the conditions of employment, bring them to the U.S. and work the fuck out of them, and then deport them if they complain; it's pretty appalling.)

In her email, which used several Spanish phrases (actually, she's always reminded me a bit of those hippie women from Sat. Night Live who say Spanish words with a pronounced foreign accent), she said she was engaged to be married and now expecting a bebe (with accents on both e's).

Her engagement story was interesting...

Her and some of her Mexican friends went to a rock-climbing festival, and on the way there they kept telling her about their friend Rocko or Rocky (forget which), and when they went in, they got some wristband to show they had paid admission, and her one friend joked that it entitled her to a kiss from Rocky/Rocko, and she brushed it off, but when she saw him, she instantly knew she wanted to settle down with him.

(When I asked her if she ever expected that she'd be getting married so young, she was like, "I never thought I would ever get married!")

Anyhow, they've been living together in this little casita that he's been re-finishing on his professor's salary from the local university (he's only 26 though too like her; the credentialling system for academics is different in Mexico she said), and she recently found out she's pregnant.

"We were so excited, we left the clinic without paying!", she was like.

They're thinking of opening up an eco-tourism business / hostel out of their house, since she wants to get out of the legal work she's doing; it's way too much travel, esp. with a baby.

The dinner was very fun, though I think the waiter was pissed at me since I noticed in small print you could get a soup/salad buffet for $9.95 and like half the table did that, so almost no-one ordered the $15-25 entrees.

ARTICLE WAS REJECTED.

On Sunday the German editor wrote back a 2-sentence email (in German) nicely saying it fell outside of the journal's area of specialization.

So, yesterday I downloaded citation formatting guidelines for another journal, and will revise the citations and mail my article out again, hopefully by the end of this week.

Odd feelings about my new neighborhood.

I'm glad I moved, but I get looks from the (black) people when I get off the subway to transfer to the bus when I go into school, I've become one of those (white) people who commutes in to the (black) part of town...

The other day, though, I did recognize a (black) woman on the bus, who worked at the pharmacy near my old apartment, and I said hi to her when I got on and asked her how she'd been, and then when I got off the bus and passed her again (her stop was farther up) I waved bye and told her to have a good day at work.

Edgy British Humor of my one British friend.

After a discussion about sunburns this summer - I was starting to get one, and I asked my one British (and half African) friend if it was noticeable, and he confessed he really didn't know what to look for, since he didn't get theme - my one British friend has started calling me "his handicapped friend", since I lack pigmentation.

And, once he said he had an interesting conversation with another friend of his, and he was referring to me as his handicapped friend, and that person was like, "He's handicapped, what does he have?!?!??!", to which my one British friend was like, "I don't exactly know, but his parents have it too, and they decided to have children."

Student Union update.

I've signed up like 5 members, and got like 3 of those enthused to sign other people up (actually, 1 was one who had let her dues lapse).

As a member you can sign up other members and people will do it, but the student union has no system for that, though numbers are what we need to succeed.

So, I wrote them asking them for more cards, and asked if we had a system in place, and offered to cobble a basic 1-sheet "talking points" sheet together to give to people.

Update: My one (older) (black) friend who works at the library...

I went to go visit her at the other library last week, since I hadn't seen her in a while.

Somehow we got to talking about that book about the Great Migration, and she was going to tell her family about it.

She was also asking me about karaoke, and I was telling her about my one rendition from a while ago of Eric Carmen's "All By Myself".

"I think I know it," she was like, "Sing it to me," and when I got to the chorus, she picked it up and sang a bit and was like, "Yep, that's it!"

I also had invited her to accompany me to my scrotal examination since I could bring a family member or friend along for company, but she was cutting someone's hair that morning and couldn't.

"But stop by and tell me how it went," she was like.

And, as I left and said by and was walking away, she was like, "Just look at me," and I turned to look at her, and she was like, "I'm sitting here...

"ALL BY MY-SELF...!!!!"

- and she broke out into song into the huge empty vestibule of the science library.

Doctor's appt. yesterday.

Or, rather, an annual meeting of the local dermatological society.

They paid me $30 plus free lunch and breakfast to come sit next to a giant posterboard of a blown-up picture of my scrotal rash, and I was the "UNKNOWN" of like 12 patients they had tucked away in a row of examination rooms, and doctors drifted in and out to look at the board and quiz me about symptoms to see if they could guess what it was.

I was also in a hospital gown, and offered to show them the residual scar, and when they said no (some of them did), I'd be like, "Don't worry, I'm a ph.d. student, I don't mind, it's for education!"

What bothered me is that few seemed even curious. Shouldn't doctors be better than that? But this one beautiful (Iranian) doctor came back a few times to stare at the picture, and when she walked in the 2nd time, I was like, "Isn't this better than an Agatha Christie novel?", and she laughed and was like, "The mystery is driving me crazy!"

Addendum Addendum

I forgot, from my weekend campaigning in the suburbs -

I went to this one house to see if the sporadic voter, a mid-2os (black) male was home (we had demographic info on our canvassing sheets, and a woman who turned out to be his mother answered the door.

"No, [the guy's name] isn't here," she was like. "He's incarcerated."

Poor me.

2 weeks and I still haven't shaken that cold.

Most recently, it moved into my chest. Yesterday I had to take a one-hour nap in the afternoon, though I had been hoping to go around and drop off resumes... I think it was because the post-nasal drip had made me wake up coughing the night before.

The worst part is is that it's not that bad at all and it's like on the edge of going away, only it doesn't!

Addendum.

When I was canvassing in my new neighborhood and it was 2 hours till polls closed, I was walking some turf going door-to-door, and would ask people I passed if they had voted yet. As I was on the one stretch, it was one young (white) guy who blew me off, then another young (white) guy who blew me off, and then this fattish younger (black) mom with a baby carriage who looked really, really tired, but as soon as I asked her if she had voted, she was like, "This morning!", and said that proudly, like so many (black) people do.

(The older ones sometimes tell me they couldn't vote for a long time, and now that they can, nothing will keep them from it.)

Then, when I said that this election was making me nervious, she was like, "Me too, I am so scared, I hope everything will be all right!", and when I nodded, she added, "I hope it will," in just this really sad, serious tone, so I was like, "I got to go, but let me give you hug," and I did and patted her on the back, and she just laughed and hugged me and was like, "Thanks!", and we both turned to go.

The best part was that she was just about to jaywalk on this long stretch of street without crosswalks, so we did this all right on the side of the street, since I had started talking to her when she was standing in an empty parking space with the baby carriage waiting for a big enough gap in traffic to cross.

Memories of the Campaign (3 of 3): Recruting Volunteers.

When I was campaigning in the suburbs, like the 2nd host on my 1st canvassing list was a missed address, so I talked to these two sleepy-looking late teens/early 20s girls smoking on the porch of this rundown home, and they were both registered voters, but in other districts, and after we got to talking, they both said they were really concerned about the Republicans fucking people over, so I invited them to stop through campaign hq to make a few phone calls or do some officework or whatever, if they could spare an hour, and they said they knew where it was, and they did.



Anyhow, when I got back like 3 hours later, the one (redheaded!) one had shown up and got trained and went to canvas a bit, but then got a call that there was an important meeting she had to go to -- at her group home for drug rehabilitation.

Memories of the Campaign (2 of 3): Abortion.

When campaigning out in the burbs, this one volunteer got this late 20s lower middle-class (white) woman at the door, and when he told her he was going door-to-door with the Dems, she was like, "You know, I'm a one-issue voter, and you probably know what that issue is...", and as soon as he started to say that he understood and was trying to gracefully extract himself from the conversation, she was like, "After I got raped 10 years ago and decided to keep my child, I'm pro-life and that's the only thing that matters, I can never imagine anyone restricting the options of someone in that situation."

Memories of the Campaign (1 of 3): Angels.

From campaigning in the burbs, I remember going up to this one host on my list of registered democrats, and there were all these little angel statues by the door, and little ceramic plates with mottos like "God bless this home", and I was really nervous that the Dems had moved and some pop culture-y evangelicals had moved in...

Until I got up to the door, and noticed some statue of a many-armed buddha-looking thing, and something in sanskrit painted on the threshold and candles with flowers by each side of the door, and then I looked on my list and noticed it was a middle-aged Indian couple, who must have picked up some American Christian kitsch shit to add to their pantheon.

Phew - Election results (or the state I'm in about the state I'm in).

I put in a lot of canvassing time over the past 2 weeks for the Dems -

3 late afternoon 2-3 hour shifts after work

-and-

1 entire weekend in a suburb canvassing for a rep in a 50-50 race

-and-

1 whole day on Election Day calling, canvasssing, flyer-ing by the subway.

It was a tight race for the rep, the senator and the gov, and though the rep got blown out of the water (the senator less so), I'm glad nevertheless that at least the gov won, otherwise I'd be pissed at all the time I wasted.

A friend on "The Social Network".

I went the other weekend to see "The Social Network" with a friend I know from the sex documentary series, who is a psychology Ph.D. student and into BDSM.

We were both blown away by the movie, though we found the beginning scene a little interminable (sp.?).

Afterwards we went out for some beers, and he had some really interesting thoughts about the movie:

- So many people are seeing this movie, it's effectively going to be the narrative about the creation of Facebook, forever.

- It's like a John Hughes nerd revenge movie with stereotypical jocks and success for the nerd at the end, only the nerd is a bully in his own way who thinks he's smarter than everyone else, and so really isn't a sympathetic hero and his victory is empty.

Horror at my one friend with the cat's apartment: THEFT!!!

The other week my one friend with the cat was in the kitchen before going to bed, when she looked out in the back courtyard of her huge apartment building and noticed some guy loitering by the dumpster and looking around, perhaps at all the bikes locked up on all the back porches everywhere, so she turned off the lights to watch him... And after a minute, he went up the stairwell right outside her back door.

She didn't know what to do, in case he was a neighbor she hadn't met, and she didn't want to call the police over nothing, but neither did she want to open her door and take her bike outside, in case he was upstairs waiting and was armed and dangerous.

So, she went to bed, and in the morning she had forgotten all about it and was in a rush to go to work, but when she got back at night, she looked out, and saw that he had busted up the wood post on her porch to which her $900 European racing bike was locked, and he had hauled off the bike lock and all to be able to get the Kryptonite lock off at a more leisurely pace.

Horror at the GAP: Frenchmen.

The other weekend was beautiful and my one friend from Buffalo who's petite and studies Hinduism called me to see if I wanted to meet her downtown and walk around while she hit up some sails.

After we left the GAP, she asked me if I had noticed the huge group of French people.

"Yeah," I was like, "There was a ton of them in the men's section."

And, she told me that two of the mid-to-late 20s French guys got on the escalator after her, and as she stood there, one started making these sucking noises with her lips, and they said things in a low voice in French to each other, probably dirty.

"You mean sounds like this?", I was like, and made short "psw"-"psw"-"psw" sounds with my lips.

"No," she was like, "Longer and much wetter, it was so dirty."

"Why would they even do that?", I was like. "What kind of reaction were they hoping for?"

"Well," she was like, "Probably that they'd get my attention, and then I'd turn over and notice they were French, like I give a fuck."

Homeless person in my new neighborhood.

On my way to that little market where I shop at, there was this incredibly obese (black) woman sitting on the street begging, asking everyone who passed by to give her a quarter so she could get "a Big Mac and fry".

Next to her on her dirty blanket was a peeled tangerine.

A story bearing on why I had to move.

This past Wed. at a community lunch I was sitting with a couple deans, including one from the business school, and the one from my school (the other dean, the female non-black one), was asking me how life in a different part of the city was, and I told the b-school dean I had to move because I saw students too much.

"I totally get that," she was like, and said she can only live in the same neighborhood as the university because all the b-school students tend to live downtown, and that the worst thing ever was that when she worked for the college, she had to expel a student, and that night she was at a restaurant and that same girl was her server. She said it was mortifying, and exemplified for her the worst of the weird boundaries that occur when you work where you live.

Went canvassing yesterday.

I went canvassing yesterday in my new neighborhood with a local organizing group a representative of which I had met at a block party a few weeks earlier...

I'm very impressed with the groups organization - I was feeling a tad under the weather, so she gave me the precinct where their offices and my apt. is, so I could do it for however long I wanted and then be right there to go home - and most of all, all the people I met when I was canvassing seemed to know the group, including a lot of the (black) people in the low-income 6-story apartment building on my route. The group's rep had told me how they've formed tenants rights associations to put pressure on negligent landlords and lobbied for new building complexes to have low income units set aside, and you can tell that people know about that and appreciate it.

I signed up like 4 people to maybe help people get to the polls on election day (2 black women and 1 black man, and 1 hispanic woman), and reminded a ton of people to vote, and they all seemed to know that it was a crucial election.

One of the units I knocked on was the unit of this older flamboyant (gay) (white) guy who had a lot of friends over, and when we were talking and the guys in his apartment were all saying they were voting, and when I asked the guy at the door if he wanted to volunteer on election day to get people to the polls, one of them butted in from the background and shouted out, "But he's early voting, and he can't volunteer because we have a date on Tuesday!", and so I mock-apologized to the guy at the door and was like, "Oh, sorry for getting in between you two," and winked.

I figure, at least it'll get them talking about voting maybe to other people.

One of the other women in the unit was (black) and was also telling me that through a program she was able to move from living on the street to the low income housing, and is an election day on Tuesday!

Another woman was (young) and (black) and super-tired, but agreed to volunteer on election day, and then was like, "Sorry for being so tired, but I just got off of work, and I feel more tired just being near your energy," and then I told her that I was actually feeling low-energy because I had a mild cold.

I also discovered that the top two floors of the apartment building, which I've walked by a ton of times, is actually a residential drug treatment center of some state program!

I was going to volunteer today but am feeling under the weather, but I'm def. volunteering Mon. and for like 8 hours on election day.

I *love* how this organization knows how to use volunteers, it's like the opposite of the student union.

TRIUMPH! - mailed out my article.

Yesterday after waking up and hacking another huge brown piece of sticky snot into the sink, I made it into school and worked and then mailed out my article about that one dead language that I've been thinking about for 4 years. It cost me over $10 in printing and then like $12 in shipping to send it out to a journal in Cologne for consideration, but it feels great to have that done - for now.

The best part was that the (black) post lady was the same one who I had talked to do the day that I had my parasite.

As soon as I came in, you could tell she recognized me and was looking to bring it up somehow, and the entire time we made small talk and I was saying how I shipping this out, I had worked on it for 4 years, etc., she wasn't listening, though she did laugh and bat her hand at me when she asked me if I wanted international delivery confirmation, and I was like, "No, because you know, I trust you guys, you've never lost anything of mine before!"

Finally, she asked me how the weather was, and I said it was fine, but I had gotten a little cold, and she was like, "And we know your health can be delicate...", and just laughed.

After that, I assured her that the docs gave me one pill, and the parasite cleared up... And while I was telling her that, there was like a line of four people mounting up behind me.

Karaoke places are dying! - No more krunk.

A couple Mondays ago after a departmental dinner me and some people planned to go to krunk, only when we showed up at the bar, it was just a regular night.

I asked the (black) bartender guy what was up, and he said that she wasn't doing it anymore, and that "it had been a minute".

When I asked him further, he said that the neighbors upstairs (the bar's on the 1st floor of a tall apartment building) had probably been complaining about the noise, so somehow someone said something about they didn't have a license.

The hostess still does krunk at other venues, though, so I'll have to find out where they are and go.

Odd canvassing experience.

This past Sunday I went up to this area in the far north of the city to canvass with a local unionizing group, to the Indian/Pakistani neighborhood, which also has a fair number of Mexicans, Chinese, and Russians, and a small number of African-Americans.

The organizer I went with had never done door-to-door in that area before, and not only was it a bad day since the weather was so nice out and people weren't home, but also that most addresses on my list were apartments, and it's hard to get people to answer the door if they don't know you, even if they're home and they talk to you over the buzzer.

It made me miss the single-family homes of northwest Indiana... It's so much easier to talk to everyone there, though when the wind blows there, it doesn't smell like curry.

Woke up with a cold.

So odd -

Though I had stayed out pretty late on Fri. and relatively late on Sat., I relaxed all day on Sun. but nevertheless woke up in the middle of that night being choked by post-nasal drip, so I got up at 3am and went to the restroom and harked back what ultimately turned out to be a disappointingly small bit of dark brown phlegm.

When I lied down again, my throat hurt, so I got up and made some homemade ginger-honey-lemon tea, and then had my last cough drop as I lay down to sleep.

That was enough, though, to make me change my Mon. plans and stay at home all day, and I needed it... When I got up, I thought I was fine, but then when I gargled with salt, I harked up this huge thin piece of dark brown snot that was bigger than a silver dollar and the thickness of a crepe, and super, super slimy (it stuck to the bottom of the sink and wouldn't wash away at first when I turned the faucet on).

I did nap that afternoon, but I was pissed, since I wanted to go into school and ship out an article to a journal for publication.

What a great word.

In ancient Greek, the word I snore is "renko", which the dictionary people note was based on an imitation of the sound for snoring -

RENK! RENK! RENK!

THEFT!!!

I was on the subway platform at like 11pm after a long day at school, and I was leaning against a pillar on the station platform, when I felt a tug on my backpack, and I look back behind me, and there's a young (black) guy standing there leaning against the other side of the pillar.

I take my backpack off my shoulder immediately and look, and there's nothing open, it seems, and the guy casually asks me what time it is, and walks away.

When I get home, I find that actually this small small pocket at the very front was opened, and the guy swiped everything in that - which was actually a ziploc bag full of toilet tissue, advil, and benadryl in case I needed them at school...

I wonder if he thought they were drugs, or if he was just taking whatever.

It really doesn't bother me that that was taken, but it was more that I was right there and he did that shit, that's kind of disturbing.

Recent job interview.

I went to an open call for servers at a recently-opened country-western themed tequila & sportsbar (the Hindi-themed nightclub didn't work out).

Anyhow, after I fill out a resume and the hiring manager walks up to bring me into the interview, he introduces himself, and is like, "Hi, I'm Dusty."

"No shit," I was like, "That's the perfect name to work here!"

Then, I was like, "Do I have to have a name like that to get hired?"

He didn't laugh.

Why I'm afraid to learn Hebrew.

I'd totally get hung up on the vowel points. I totally don't get how you can have ancient unvowelled manuscripts and then vowel points attested much later, and then "just read" the manuscript and not worry about that. I'm too linguistically neurotic/anal, I think.

Problems: Puzzles.

A couple years ago my parents got me a subscription for my favorite puzzle magazine, since I had used to subscribe years ago but then didn't do it so much, and cancelled the subscription.



Since they did that, I've done a ton of puzzles, but lately I find myself like at 11pm ready to go to bed, and I do a puzzle and then a second and then a third, and the next thing I know it's like 1:30am and I can't put the damn puzzle book down.



I got to stop that.

Problems: Job.

I still haven't found a part-time server job, the economy is so tough.

But, I figure I can live on savings and loans while I look, and worst case scenario I work the entire time on my dissertation and get at least a couple good chapters together to make sure I can get a fellowship next year, and if I have to, I take out unsubsidized loans in spring/summer when my money runs out, only to take out subsidized loans when they become available in the fall to pay off my other, on-worse-term loans.

But, I'm sure I'll get a job before then, and it's nice to have time off where I can focus on dissertation now, since I'll be able to get a couple conference presentations proposed by the winter, too.

Addendum.

I told that whole exchange to my one (black) (female) dean, and she thought it was hilarious how people from England are "persons of colour", and laughed, and was like, "You're so funny."

Text to my one British friend: Proper race terminology.

The other day me and my one half-British half-African friend were making plans to play Scrabble - his sister bought a set, and so they've been playing it a lot; his sister and brother-in-law live in the same neighborhood - and after that, I was thinking of the spelling of British words that are different from American, and then I got really please with myself and sent him a joking text -


Quick question - is it okay to call a non-caucasian from england a "person of colour"?



- to which he texted back -


Yeah, that's fine. Why?



...he didn't even get the joke...

Thoughts from that polygamist reality show...

I was talking with my one friend with the cat after we watched the show, and I was saying it's weird how the family is arguing for marriage recognition, but they'd turn around and vote against gay marriage, probably.

To which, she said that doesn't bother her as much; that happens in democracy all the time, where one party tries to vote away the rights of another. To her, the more interesting thing is when religious groups prevent education for certain members of the group (e.g. women), and so prevents them having the basic prereqs to participate in civil discourse in the country that guarantees the overall group religious freedom.

...yes, silverfish...

A couple of weeks ago I was eating a late dinner, and I look over to the (off white) wall on my left, and there was this slight shadow right where I had killed a silverfish a while ago...

And it was another silverfish on the wall, like right in the exact same spot, so I got a piece of scrap paper off of the table and went to kill it, and did.

My new addiction - Polygamy tv show.

I watched the 1st episode with my 1 friend with the cat, and the 2nd one with her, as well as my 1 lawyer friend from Missouri and my 1 friend from Buffalo who's petite and studies Hinduism.

The 1st time we talked a lot about how well-educated the women were and how the kids seemed to have a lot of contact with the outside world and the polygamy really seemed like a choice, which it isn't with a lot of the backwoods polygamists, but the 2nd time we watched the show, it was different because it was with a group of women and they all picked up on these female dynamics among the wives that went right over my head, such as -

- the 1st wife didn't matter that her husband was getting a new girlfriend, b/c she was 1st and had confidence.
- the 3rd wife was spazzing because she thought she was going to the last wife, and so who is this girlfriend?.
-the girlfriend was all full of herself, b/c she felt the other wives had broke the husband in, and now she was the person who deserved him the most and got the husband that she deserved.

Also, like the 1st time the show showed the husband, my one friend from Buffalo was like, "How many rings does he have?, I don't even see one!", and later when the girlfriend was gushing about how she was finally engaged, another friend of mine (my lawyer friend from Missouri? - I can't remember) was like, "Yeah, but I don't see a ring," and she said it in this knowing town like she'd heard that promise made to women before, right before the women got fucked over.

Belated update on Dungeon (II of II): Talk.

After the tour and chatting with my friends, the talk began... About 20 people had wandered in, most of them fat and all of them (white), and they sat very attentively for my friend to talk about the documentary series and the activist work she hoped it was doing...

Discussion was interesting, with people talking about BDSM and normalcy.

My favorite part was when the old grandpa guy talked.

"People think sex and violence always go together!", he was like, "But it doesn't!"

At that, he reached over, and without looking at her, he took a big hunk of the granny-lady's hair and pulled it back-and-forth, and was like, "I mean, I can do this, and...", and as his voice drifted off, the granny-lady just stared straight ahead and smiled this big, inward, lusted-up smile, that was nevertheless innocent and sweet.

Anyhow, afterwards I hung around forever and talked, including with Steve the BDSM guy, and then as I was about to leave, I noticed this big fat (white) lady on the couch, and people had mentioned she was the owner, and since I wanted to talk with her, and since I knew she had sponsored the movie series so they could buy pizza, I used thanking her as a chance to start a conversation.

"I am so glad," she was like, after I thanked her.

"And you know," I was like, "It's not just a help to people who come to the series, but they can relay good information that they've learned onto others," and I told her that several times since, when BDSM had come up in a conversation and people knocked it, I had told them that people who are into that aren't sex-depraved perverts, but rather people just like you and me who work all week and if they can get a babysitter decide to do something different on Friday nights.

"Exactly!", she was like, but when she said she couldn't have put it better herself, I said that Steve the BDSM guy had said the babysitter thing, and I just repeated it.

Then, we talked more, and I learned some interesting stuff -

- they nickname the long staircase the "Stairway to Heaven".

- the no-alcohol policy is so everyone is conscious, since they have 'risky sex', and she's a hard-ass and will kick out anyone who comes in with alcohol on their breath, and everyone knows it.

- the low-profile entrance is so no-one wanders in off the street and expects to join, they used to do that and the club was shut down as a place of entertainment, now they're a private members club and you can't join the same day, and there's no cash at the door, and there's no way the city can bust them.

She also told me how she talked once to an A&E program about a serial killer and everyone told her not to because they'd make her look like a freak, but she talked about how people with such desires can explore them safely, and what she said was incorporated into the way the show talked about the serial killer as a rogue who'd meet submissive women off the internet and tie them up then kill them, and he was not represented as typical of BDSM communities.

I can't remember how we ended the conversation, but she somehow said something about how being tied up can be a powerful thing, and she had this big, inward-looking smile like the granny, and I was happy for her, but a little uncomfortable, so I took my leave.

Belated update on Dungeon (I of II): Tour.

So, I forgot to talk about that (straight) S&M dungeon I went to.

It was by this major intersection on the border between the hipster and Puerto Rican neighborhoods - just 2 storefronts down from this laundromat that's open late and is full of short, fat hispanic women with clothes baskets! - and there was no sign outfront, just this little buzzer that you hit, and then the door opened up onto two flights of stairs going straight up, and the entire time after I hit the secret buzzer, I was thinking to myself, "This is so naughty," and I kept feeling that more and more as I walked up the stairs, and then the door at the top opened for me -

Onto what looked like someone's living room, only there was a counter on the left when I came in. Steve the BDSM guy had me as one of his monthly guests, and even though he wasn't there yet, they let me...

Basically, on the left was this tacky bar with styrofoam bowls of pretzels, and on the right was a fireplace and these big plump couches, and a coffee table in the middle, and over the fireplace teddy bears, including one in a little cage... There was a bookcase too, and pictures everywhere were of cartoon women either dominating of being submitted, and on the couch was this older couple, the sweetest you've ever seen, in kind of neat but faded clothes, both of them plump and with white hair and looking like someone's grandparents, only the woman was reading this book that was black, except for white lettering on the spine that said "FLOGGING".

The museum coordinator who hosted the movie series and was there to give the talk was there with her boyfriend at the nearly full bar, but luckily there was a seat next to them, so I sat down, right beside this really fat (white) chick in all black and a short skirt, and down from a fat bald goateed white dude, while this kind of dumpy (white) woman who looked tense who was behind the bar asked me what I wanted....

They don't serve alcohol, so I had a cranberry juice... I could have gotten orange juice or Coke or Diet Coke or coffee or tea or bottled water as well, but I figured the cranberry juice, since winter is coming on and it's good against infections... They had a back room that I could just see through, and they had extra food back there, as well as shelf upon shelf of Wet Wipes.

Anyhow, after sitting down, the really (fat) white chick asked me if it was my 1st time there, and when I said it was, she said she was the Education Coordinator, and asked me if I wanted a tour.

She said the entrance area was a safe non-sexual space for people who needed a breather from other rooms, and then we went through the doorway - tied up Barbie dolls were suspended from the doorframe! - and we went into the 1st "playroom".

"Play in here tends to be loud and raucous," she was like, "And the music tends to be loud and energetic and heavy," and she let me walk around this big room full of contraptions like crosses and ladders and tables that you could tie people to, and we stopped in front of this crazy chair thing with multiple levels and all sorts of padding.

"Feel free to ask me any questions about what any of this is," she was like, and after I didn't, she was like, "People usually ask what this is, it's an oral sex chair," and after I didn't say anything again, she was like, "For oral sex, or cunnilingus."

Then, we walked by this thing that looked like a padded pool table.

"And that's for orgies," she was like.

Then, we walked by this thing that was a low, big metal box of some sort, but with cloth covering the sides.

"That's for puppy play," she was like.

And then, she added, "Bad puppies go in there."

After that, we went back through the main room, into this righthand room with the sign "SERENITY" over the top, and this had a lot more similar contraptions, but a lot of cages, including one where you could have this giant ball over your head that would allow you to breathe but not see anything, and there was this giant winch on the top of the room so you could raise any cage and suspend it.

"Play in here is more quiet and subdued," she was like. "It's an entirely different atmosphere."

Then, she showed me this table with hooks so you could bind someone down, and all the hooks were arranged in the shape of a person, and there were slits by the head and by the genitals.

"That's so you can breathe if you're face down," she was like, pointing to the slit by the head, "And that," she said, pointing to the one by the genitals/ass, "is for access."

Then, she walked me past an ob/gyn examination table and showed me an old wooden chair for genital torture, and then led me into a very small room that only a couple machines and candles burning on the walls.

"This is for people who might not feel comfortable playing in public," she was like. "The walls are closer in, so you can be intimate with your partner, and only a few people can watch."

Then, she took me to the side room off of there, with giant changing screens.

"People change in here," she was like.

"Oh, for costume play?", I said, knowingly.

"Yes," she was like, impatiently, "But we also get a lot of crossdressers. We ask everyone to respect the neighborhood, and bring their clothes to change here."

After that, the tour was over...