Doc / Social Hour from a while ago (part II of II): Social Hour.

The social hour the other week was good too.

I ended up talking to the ghost hunter and the prof of that one sex study I was in.

The ghost hunter as a vampire for Halloween.

"Just pulled one of my costumes out," he was like.

As it turns out, in his closet he has a whole rack of costumes for sex (vampire, pirate, etc.).

Later, we were talking and I mentioned my hometown.

"Shit," he was like, "You're from [there]?"

As it turns out, his grandfather was this retired western actor who lived in a nearby major city and dressed up as a cowboy for a saturday morning local tv kids show I knew ("Deputy Don"), and would also dress up as a vampire to host late-night movies (I think, I don't remember that character too well), and that at 5 years old when he would visit his grandfather they would dress him up as a vampire too and he would rise out a little miniature coffin next to his grandfather.

I told him how once when I was in middle school at a friend's house, his mom came home from a daytrip to that city and asked her how it was when she came in the door with bags, and she was all excited and was like, "I saw Deputy Don at YaYa's Chicken!"

Later, he was talking about his new tattoo and how it hurt when they put it across his spine, and when the sex study prof asked him what it was, he turned around and lifted his shirt and revealed a giant Ouija board across his back.

"Bitchin'," the sex study prof was like.

I then said it was a little impractical, since you could never get the planchette to slide correctly.

"No," the ghost hunter was like, "I'm gonna use women's titties."

Later, before he left, we talked more, and I'm getting from information from him about his ghost tour company he runs. In peak tour time, guides can do 2-3 evenings a week, and you get $25/hour for a 3-hour tour, plus tips. He also said he does a sex tour (i.e., a tour of sex-related sites) and that that's bread-and-butter and it's mostly bachelorette parties, and that as an ice-breaker he asks women what they get off on.

"For some reason," he was like, "All the women from the 'burbs like getting choked and having their hair pulled."

"Interesting," the sex study prof was like.

After he left, I talked with the sex study prof. He asked me (per our conversation at the swingers's barbecue) whether I'd been cycling - he's a big-time cyclist - and I told him yes, a daylong trip to Michael Jackson's boyhood home in Gary, Indiana, and he was quite pleased.

"That's great," he was like.

Then, he was like, "I think I figured out Michael Jackson this week."

"Like how," I was like, "Sexually?"

"Yeah," he was like, "What turns him on," and then he explained that he started from 2 things:

1) He had the money to do anything he wanted and turn into anything he wanted, whether a woman or a better-looking man, and he became what he did.

2) A gossip column quoted Debbie Rowe as saying he would dress up as Peter Pan for foreplay.

From there, he said that a not unheard-of thing is to want to look like your object of desires.

"You know what an autogynophile is?", he was like.

"Like Schreber?", I was like, and immediately he was like, "No, he was mentally ill," and then went on to explain it was straight cross-dressers, who get turned on by dressing like women, and want to do women, though they're not the only ones - there's auto-amputees who self-amputate and also want to fuck amputees, and he even met a gay dude who goes to bath-houses not to fuck, but to look at hot men and then go to a cabin to think about himself being them, and jack off.

So, under his theory, Michael wanted Peter Pan, and to look like Peter Pan.

After we talked more - he is very avuncular, and gave me academic advice - he was tired and went to leave, and I went to hang out with Steve the BDSM guy and some other BDSMers. They showed me some digital photos of Burning Man, and Steve was saying they're starting up a regional group and the other week they went to a campground and made a big model of a warship and lit it on fire to the 1812 overture, and then later this other BDSM guy explained the dynamics of puppy play and pony play to me.

The headspace (as he understands it) is being dominated by being made to walk on your knees without pads not being able to speak have a bit in your mouth etc., or being beaten if you're a bratty sub, but also having affection given to you when someone pets you or treats you well, so you have both sex and love at the same time.

"Man," I was like, "I bet people who get into that are turned on all the time when they're playing."

"Yeah," he was like, "And remember, the tales are attached to buttplugs. That helps, too."

Again, though, he said that he's never done it, except to play the part of a neighbor and tell someone what a nice dog they have, and pet them, or go to his car and get a newspaper for beating them if the owner forgot one.

Doc / Social Hour from a while ago (part I of II): Doc.

The last sex doc I went to was on 2 HIV- gay male nurses from Florida who were allowed to adopt 5 HIV+ kids because they were unadoptable and everyone thought they would die soon back when AIDS first broke, and it was hosted by Steve the BDSM guy, since, though not gay, he has kids and is part of another sexual minority.

The highpoints:

1) Steve said he's more careful with his kids and discipline then he'd be if he wasn't in BDSM, and because of that, he's never ever spanked them.

"Yeah," someone was like, "But I bet you're really creative punishing them."

2) Steve also said that people think BDSM people are different from everyone else, but his life is quite boring and is like everyone else's who is married with a job and a mortgage etc., the only difference being what you do on a Friday night when you can get away from the kids.

3) This one (black) woman with a short leather skirt, high boots, and bleached blonde hair dropped that she works for social services and does mediation, and that she's controversial with her peers because she thinks parents should need a license to have kids, and that she's arrived at this position after having seen mistreated kids in court for years.

4) Someone said that someone they knew in Kenya said all the kids who were born with AIDS were spoiled because everyone thought they'd die at 1st, and now you have all these kids who grew up in orphanages for whom education and a profession was not stressed, and who don't have the best manners/work ethics compared to other kids there who don't have AIDS, and plus now you have to teach these teenagers about safe sex, and you have kids with AIDS and without AIDS experimenting with each other.

5) After, when I was talking with Steve the BDSM guy, he was saying he might not be able to make the next social hour, since he was building a Tesla coil.

"You know," he was like, "One of those coil things that sparks."

"Fuck," I was like, "For sex?"

"Naw," he was like, "Just for fun, with some friends. We got the design plans off the 'net."

2 (black) women telling it like it is.

1) I was in line at the local office supply store to return some index cards (wrong size, needed the slightly larger one) and get a notebook, and the line was really long, and so the assistant manager came and opened up the second line, and this older (white) dude booked from the end of the line to there, at which me and the 20-something (black) girl behind me raised an eyebrow, and then we looked at each other and shook our heads, and she was like, "Some people are so ignorant."

2) When I was coming out of the store, I was walking on the sidewalk and this (black) woman who was just about to turn into the parking lot began to stop to give me right-of-way so I could walk across the entrance to the parking lot and continue on my way, when all of a sudden this young (black) dude in a big SUV roars out from behind her and turns in front of her car and right in front of my face, going like 50 miles an hour, which surprised me a ton.

So, then, I reached out and slapped the back of his car - that's my policy; if I can do that, you're too close to pedestrians and you're being a bully with your car, I tell drivers if they challenge me; this guy didn't, he didn't seem to notice - and when I was on the other side of the sidewalk, the (black) woman pulls up with her window rolled down - she had a white knit cap on, and had these huge black sunglasses that almost covered her face, and she looked more elderly than I expected, close-up -- and she was like, "That guy was a jerk, Did you see him come 'round me and turn in through two lanes?", and I was like, "Did you see me slap the back of his car?, he was totally way too close to me", and right away she was like, "Mmm-hmmm, that is bullshit."

Evangelical humor.

The other day this prof was giving an informal lecture over a free lunch, and she mentioned how once when she was teaching out at Wheaton, this one kid who was really afraid of the Rapture was in the shower, so his roommates set up the room with their radios on and their stuff left mid-activity, and had everyone from the entire floor clear out so that when he got out of the shower he'd think that the Rapture had happened and that he was the only one left behind, which he in fact did.

Purple sweater.

The other week I pulled out all my winter clothes from my plastic zippered bag (instead of pulling out random pieces as I needed them, as I had been doing), and it turns out that my maroon sweater had gotten a small moth hole in it, and my deep purple, 100% wool sweater that I paid full price for and wore when I dressed up had like 6 all up on the right upper chest and sleeve, including 3 big ones.

I was pissed at first, but I quickly employed techniques from Stoics like Epictetus, and asked myself whether I expected anything perishable to last forever anyhow, and I reminded myself that I shouldn't be attached to material possessions, and my anger soon passed.

Like half a year ago, another friend who does religious studies said she's afraid of losing her cat she loves so much, so every morning when she cuddles her she thinks of how she'll be dead soon and imagines her rotting in her hands.

Addendum.

I forgot --

The other weekend when I was at a wedding I was talking with one guy who I know from college who spent time studying abroad in France, and when we were talking about European racism I launched into my British friend's stories about experiencing racism in France, and he said he went to Paris as this wet-behind-the-ears American kid prepared to look down at the U.S., and after like a week of North African students his age accosting him at bars and launching into 10 minute stories about how horrible things were in France and how they wished they lived in the U.S., he said he changed his mind some.

He said all of the stories were very personal too, like how someone's grandmother fell with grocery bags on a busy street, and no (French) person would help her up.

Possum / Whiskey / Spaniards.

The other day when I was biking back from campus in the evening, there was something in the street ahead that looked like a cat, so I swerved my bike to aim at it to make it run real fast out of the road, but it turned out to be a possum, and it just kind of ambled a bit faster, and I had to re-direct my bike away from it so I wouldn't hit it.

Later that night, when I was at the student bar, the older (white) bartender who's kind of gruff found out that my exams were over, and gave me free my first cheap whiskey on the rocks.

Later on, the Spaniards were there, and the one Spaniard who studies Romance lit was bitching about how when you call up the campus Safe Ride (=the door-to-door after-hours shuttle for people who don't feel comfortable walking at night), one operator is nice, but the other (black) (male) operator is a dick, and I had to break it to him that if I was the operator and I heard a male voice on the other end asking for a four-block ride along major streets, I would think he was lazy and a pussy, and be gruff too.

That brought out a story from the Catalan about how he had a (black) (male) cashier at the one cafeteria on campus be like, "Please put the money in my hand," when he had first laid the money on the counter because his hands was full with pizza and his wallet and whatnot, and how that type of behavior in a cashier is bad, and how American blacks are all full of attitude. I tried to explain to him that the 4 out of 5 people who do that usually do it as a conscious or unconscious racist thing and that it probably doesn't happen to white cashiers nearly as much, and that the guy was so used to sticking up for himself that he didn't take a second to evaluate the situation and realize that it had only happened because his hands were full.

Anyhow, no matter how I tried to explain, he just didn't get it, and said that he wasn't a racist, and that black people could be just as bad racists too, and that he treats everyone equally and that in the Spanish context you complain about bad service no matter who's giving it. I said that he was right about (black) on (white) racisim in some select instances, but that that didn't apply to this situation, and that years ago at a conference in D.C. a (black) woman at the coffee cart had told me the same thing, and next day when I was in the same line I noticed it happening to her a lot (and I lied, too, and said that it didn't happen to the [white] cashier at the next cart in the same conference building foyer; there was no other coffee cart), and since then I've changed my behavior and been very particular to put money directly into the hands of (black) cashiers, and that he should separate out intent and perception, and recognize this as a consciousness-raising moment and go from there.

At some point, too, I told him that being the demanding non-(black) person to a (black) person in a service industry job has huge racial overtones, and though sometimes complaints are justified, he should be careful into coming off like someone yelling "Jump!" with the expectations that a (black) person will ask "How high?", but he didn't understand that either, even when I explained how when I saw "This is It" at the all (black) theater the other week the (black) audience clapped and cheered when in the documentary the (white) producer who fronted money for the show was extremely deferential to Michael, because (in my interpretation) it reverses the usual situation ... In response, he said something to the effect that service from many (black)s he's encountered has been shitty and lazy.

Overall, though, he wouldn't hear any of it it, though, at all, and said at some point that he didn't like it either when he went into the black neighborhood bar and everyone looked at him...

I still don't know how to have handled the situation better - maybe to ask him straight off how he imagines the situation to have looked from the (black) cashier's point-of-view?

Race-based hostility at the black neighborhood bar!!!!

The other week my one (white) friend who's originally from Michigan and who's kind of a hippie and who is a huge black neighborhood bar fan was drinking at the black neighborhood bar like she often does and was hanging out with the bartender and talking and was the only (white) person in there, like she often is, and this one odd almost-middle-aged (black) guy who sometimes sells bootleg bottled natural essences table-to-table came in from smoking up out back in the alley, and he comes up to the bartender and is like, "Hey, [the bartender's name], is this your white woman?".

My friend started to give the dude a "what the fuck?" look, but right away, before she could even do that, the bartender was like, "Naw, she black, she just got a lot of Rican in her."