Four stories from my one art school colleague who wears women’s clothes:

1)      He was re-watching Buffy, and it really struck him how Drusilla is so gothic campy and sensitive to noise because she has PTSD from how Spike tortured her and turned her into a vampire on the day she was to become a nun.

“I had always hated her as a character,” he was like.  “But now I realize it was projection, I’m sensitive to noise too and just can’t deal with my surroundings a lot!”

2)      When his dad was a cop back in New York City, a number of times he’d have to go call on (eventually disgraced) Covenant House priest Bruce Ritter in order to see if he knew where some disappeared gay teens were.

“Hello, Father,” his dad and the other cops’d be like, as Ritter came down the staircase in this short bathrobe that ended just below his crotch, and then he’d lead them to a room in his apartment where there’d be like two or three teen boys just sprawled out across the couches.

His dad also kept him and his brothers away from *any* adult men, he now realizes in retrospect, and has now in his old age even been quite explicit to his sons about how he did that.

“I can’t stand to hang out with my own kids,” his dad was like.  “So I know something’s the hell up if some adult guy wants to always go hang out with kids.”

3)      When I told him that one art school freshperson had told me that though she tries to be sensitive with pronouns, it can be tough because you can slip up and on top of that people keep changing them, and so it’s almost like “the nerds in high school suddenly became the jock bullies,” my one colleague was like, “I’ve always said, it’s Revenge of the Nerds.”

4)      He said that he overheard a conversation where some student said that they were skipping Pride this year because of safety worries after Orlando, and another student told them straightaway, “That’s a privilege that white people have, some people can’t afford to miss Pride like that.”

(That is, some people are so oppressed, that it’s necessary for their survival to attend the city's Pride celebration.)

He says this new group of students now are fascists, and he thinks that by the time he’s old, we'll all see camps being set up again.

Another sign of my environmental neuroticism:

After I had swept up the lines of diatomaceous earth separating my apartment’s rooms one from the other – I had put them there to stop bedbugs moving between them – I emptied the dust tray into the bag of diatomaceous earth, so that I could reuse it.

Night out with a friend (3 of 3): (Mexican-American) barback.

At the second of the two (new) bars we hit up that night, me and my one library circulation supervisor friend were talking with the (white-looking) (female) bartender and the (Mexican-American) barback, since the bar was in a basement and kind of slow since it was a nice night out and the few customers that had been there had cleared out.

The (Mexican-American) barback told us about how growing up in the city, him and his friends used to go take a case of beer and some liquor and just go out driving, and one time they ended up in the state just north of us, and another time in the state just south of us.

“I can’t believe we did that now,” he was like.  “We were so stupid.”

Night out with a friend (2 of 3): Tale of the supernatural.

Back when my one library circulation supervisor friend's great-grandmother was in the last stages of dying and completely incommunicative, her one aunt who’s a little crazy said that they should do a ceremony to speak with her spirit, and so she began lighting candles and putting them all over the room.

“She wouldn’t like that,” said my one friend’s grandmother, to the one crazy aunt.

The one crazy aunt kept doing that, though, and just as she had finished lighting the candles and was beginning to do something else, suddenly there was a gust of wind, and all the candles went out all at once, even though they were in many different places throughout the room.

And, my friend’s grandmother, who’s not at all superstitious, saw a black shadow pass through.

And, it turns out the great-grandmother died right then.

Since then, my one friend’s grandmother not only believes in the supernatural, but also that she saw Death.

Night out with a friend (1 of 3): Comment on the Duct Tape on my Wart:

So, the other week when I was out for an evening with my one library circulation supervisor friend, she says, “It’s like you’re in a band and cut your finger on a guitar string, and you just put some duct tape over it.”

Rooftop bar with a view.

So, the other week a friend was in town for a medical conference, and we ended up going out on a weeknight to a new rooftop bar that has a great view, including of the city's major Trump building directly opposite it.

As we were getting sat by the (apparently Mexican-American) host, I was like, "Do you think it'll cause any problems when we start chucking beer bottles at the Trump building?".

"Too far," he was like. "I already tried it."

Later, I made the same joke to a (younger) (African-American) waitress, and she said that she's seen a few people make Instagrams of themselves flicking off the "TRUMP" sign down below them.

Political Observations: Polarization, Clinton's Campaign.

The other week at a networking event downtown, I was talking with this (slightly older) (seemingly eccentric) (black) guy who it turns out worked in state government and is a political junkie.

He said that down at the capitol, there's always been Democratic bars and Republican bars, but the past number of years it's been so bad, "It's like the Hatfields and the McCoys."

He also said that if you don't see James Carville anywhere, it's because he's in a backroom somewhere working for the Clintons, gathering up dirt to drop on Trump.

"He's plotting, I know it, Trump won't even know what hit him," he was like.  "Vetted?  They'll be digging up stuff he did in the third grade."

He said he can't wait to see what happens.