Radicalizing grad students.

I had seen a front page story in an August edition of a neighborhood newspaper about administrator salary levels at my university, and while only 5 people were named, I decided to write the journalists (who I've met a couple times) to see if he had a bigger list.

He did, from the university's publicly available tax forms, and on the list of like 20 highest paid officials was the provost who has continually said there's no money to give students, and who has let skyrocketing fees erode student wages.

It turns out the guy made just over $610,000 last year, of which $10,000 was bonus pay.

Out of curiosity, I dropped those #s to my one (white) colleague from Mississippi who's very passive with student union stuff and doesn't want to get involved or sign up, and write away you could see him getting pissed off...  For him, I could see that was some kind of turning point, making him more open to grad student unionization.

I'm meeting with a student union member sometime after January to get them those tax forms.  I'm not emailing them, I'm going to a computer and dropping the file from my zip drive to theirs.  Those #s deserve to be out there and inform public debate on campus, but I don't want my name attached to them getting out.

Dream of produce.

At my house, I keep a lot of produce sitting out on the kitchen table: potatoes, onions, garlic, bananas, oranges, and apples...

The other week, I had a dream that I reached down into the bag of apples and picked on out, and noticed that the side of the green apple was bruised and a bit graying amidst the brown, and I realized that there was somehow mold growing underneath the skin...

Great Xmas gift.

My present for my one friend from high school who runs an integrated homeless/domestic violence shelter, and who loves the book "Heaven's Harlots" (which I got her years ago as a present):

A huge envelope full of photocopies of MO letters from the Children of God that have to do with flirty fishing.

I was gathering those materials to teach them and printing them out for myself, and I thought, why not print them out for her, since she'll love them, and maybe one day she could be a guest lecturer for one of my classes, since she has a social science ph.d. and is interested in certain dynamics of the group.

She texted me as soon as she got them, "Just got your package.  Kick ass!!!!!! ..." (with six exclamation marks).

Last sex doc, ever.

So the sex doc series that I've been going to for over 4 years wound down a few weeks ago.  

Though it was still successful and there was always a good crowd and new people kept showing up, both the curator and the host decided it was time to end, and so it did, with a film about an Australian man with a disabled wife who decides to open a brothel.

During the discussion period, people talked a lot about sex work.

"Some people go into sex work with dollar signs in their eyes, but it's like anything else, you have to work for it, and the people who do okay in it really are savvy people," the one (white) woman who does sex work and sex worker outreach said.

Then some guy commented that he knew some people who decided to open up their house for swinger parties, and they made some money at first, but then attendance dropped off and then they just stopped.

"It's like anything, to do well in it it has to be your passion, people sense that," he was like.

Then this one couple, a (white) woman in her mid-30s with bright pink hair and black-rimmed glasses and a (white) guy in his mid-30s with a goatee and a seriously tweezed-out moustached and black-rimmed glasses - said that since they started doing sex work, they watch porn and dissect how much the people in it get paid per act.

"Like, 'Wow, a DPDA, that's $4000," the guy was like.

Later, everyone adjourned to a bar to socialize, and it was nice, since a lot of people who hadn't been to the series in a while (at least when I'd been there) came out for the last film.

One guy who did show up was the one (dark-haired) (white) guy who's a computer programmer and into BDSM, with his fiance.

He got into his favorite topic, how there's not many other male subs out there, and so him and some other people started talking about how that differs culturally, and how like in Tokyo it's nothing but male subs, and how in Belgium fem subs are seen as out-of-line for public play, but it's okay in your own home.

The one (white) female sexologist also was there, and she was talking with the (dark-haired) (white) (BDSM) guy's girlfriend about different stuff, and listening to her talk about how she loves Dan Savage etc. and wants to mainline him she likes him so much and she identifies with him since she understands what it's like not to like vagina too.

"[Her boyfriend's name] has a book of vulvas and I tried to open it up, errr, I open and I try to look, and I do, but I just can't, no, not for me, no book of vulvas, disgusting, no book of vulvas."

"Which one?", the sexologist was like.

Then, when the girlfriend replied, the sexologist was like, "Oh, that's the first one, it's a classic," and she said it had been recently reprinted.

Later, the one guy I know from there who's into BDSM who I've been friends with talked some more with the (white) (female) sexologist, and he was saying how he feels judged and out of place a lot at dungeons, since he's just not into public sex.

"Watching or participating?", she was like.

"Both," he said.  "I could tolerate it for a while, but really, at the end of the day, I'm monogamous," and at that point he started talking about how there was an assumption in BDSM that you were polyamorous or just out to fuck around, and that made things hard.

"There really is no perfect sex community," the sexologist was like.  "Though if there was, I'd like, 'Here!'".

Later, I started talking with the sex worker / sex worker outreach volunteer woman some about my bar project, and I brought up the one Mexican trannie bar that I've heard about and have passed by but haven't been to (yet!).

"I've heard of that!", she was like.  "I got a call about it, there were a lot of prostitution busts and someone was writing an article about it."

"No shit!", I was like, and then I started telling her about the one late night club I sometimes pop into where all this crazy shit happens, and there's a lot of stuff, but as I began to explain myself, I realized I wasn't using the right words...

"Yeah," I was like, "All the time I see, uh, uh, Mexican...  trannies there, and there always - " and at that I paused -

"You know, hookin'."

She kind of gave me a blank face, patiently, and then said something about "transwomen" this, but I didn't hear her say any correct terminology for prostitution, unfortunately.

Holiday Breakfast convo.

A few weeks ago my dept. had its annual holiday breakfast, where there's a buffet for like 3 hours and everyone from professors to students to administrative assistants sit around and chit-chat.

I sat down with some (female) (African-American) administrative assistants I know, and after talking for a long while (can't remember why) about swimming and where we learned to swim and where we swam as kids (which led them to talking about how some of the city's water parks got shut down b/c of gangs), somehow we started talking about local businesses, and I said it was sad how the university when it renovated this one building displaced a very good Caribbean cafe that had good business but could never find equivalent facilities to re-open and so closed down.

"Cafe what?", the one administrative assistant was like.

"Cafe [2nd half of the restaurant's name," the other administrative assistant was like.

"Where is that?", the one administrative assistant was like.

"Oh you know," she said, and described the location.  "I know you've been here, we all went there for lunch, and you ordered a hamburger, and I remember thinking, 'Oh no she didn't.'"

And at that, she leaned over and put her hand on the other administrative assistant's shoulder and laughed like they were long-time girlfriends.

Guy Talk at a Steakhouse Bar.

The other week after going to see "Breaking Dawn Part Two" with a colleague, she had to split because she was working early the next day, so I walked her to the bus stop and then grabbed a beer at a downtown steakhouse-in-a-hotel bar that I had never been to before.

It was getting around 10pm, so it was empty, except for a few tables here and there, a couple people by themselves at the bar, and this group of like 3 (white) guys in their late 30s at the end of the bar.

I took a seat in the middle of the bar towards the group of young guys, and as the restaurant cleared out, I could hear their conversations.

The one guy was saying how he was on a Southwest flight to a business conference in Orlando, and this "doofus-looking" guy who was sitting on the aisle had his iPhone out as they landed, and as they got up to wait so they could get their luggage from the overhead racks, he could see that the doofus-looking guy had some website up with pictures of naked torsoes of men, and he kept sending a message out to different men, "Just landed.  How are you?".

"It must be that GRINDR thing people are talking about," he was like.  "He got some message back, then, the guy looks around all of a sudden, he forgot he was on a plane, but I was like, 'Nope, just me who saw you, bud.'"

Then some other guy told a story about some chick who he picked up and she took him home, and he was around in the bed forever waiting to see if she'd let him fuck her, but she wouldn't, so he ended up just laying there next to her and jacking.

"I was so hard up, I shot all the way up to the headboard, I haven't done that in years," he was like.  "You could hear it land, it was thick and milky, we had been drinking all night."

At that, the other guys laughed.

"But the worst is, the way I had my cock angled, some got on her chest, and then she's all crying in the bathroom, 'Now you got me pregnant, now you got me pregnant!'", he continued.

"Dude, you didn't tell me that part," one of the other guys said.

"I forgot," he was like. 

Then, after a pause, he continued on, and was like, "I was hoping she'd forget, we were so drunk, but in the morning, she remembered."

Then, after a pause, he was like, "That's okay, though, a little awkwardness is good, it keeps people real."

At that, the other guys nodded, and the guy who had been speaking started to say what a high class girl she was, seriously.

Some other guy then said that his last girlfriend wouldn't fuck in a Pizza Hut bathroom, and wouldn't wear a short skirt so they could pretend to be in high school again and he could finger her in the movie theater.

"That's bullshit," one of the guys was like.

"Yeah," he was like, "She's just not in touch with herself."

Reduce - Reuse - Recycle.

I use old produce bags (apple bags, tangerine bags with the orange mesh) to carry my lunches in.