…and poppa tomato says “Catch up.” I have been here before, a week behind, that is (no, I don’t mean county) so here’s a multi-day entry to Catch up.
Monday April 14 was the day before court again. I stayed home, piddled, worried. It was too late to do anything to prepared. Tuesday morning as I left, I told Stacy I was pretty sure they were going to send me back to jail. I had to tell her so she would know where I was when I didn’t come back. As it turned out, they didn’t want to see me in court today. Never mind that it was the Tuesday after a completed sentence, I had a date for May 20, so they just told me to come back then. Woohoo! I was free for a month anyway. I headed back to the house to find Stacy gone. I thought she was out shopping and running errands, but I learned from her later that she had gone looking for me. She was so sad over the thought of me going back to jail that she wanted to be there with me at court. Of course I was gone from there early and she had no chance of catching up with me. She told me the story later of how she had to go to three different places looking for me but how people somehow knew to ask her, “Are you looking for xxxx? (my boy name, still my legal name)” and then tell her that I had left already.
That evening then, I felt like getting out and doing something with my trans community. I considered Natick, but the train costs money, it’s a long trip, and I wasn’t up for it. I went to Tiffany Club’s Tuesday Open House instead. I’d never been! I’d been to a couple of their Saturday house parties, but never on a Tuesday. I kind of expected to feel like I was crashing their party. After all, I know their organization well enough that I don’t need it explained to me, yet I’m not a member. In the end, I was really glad I went. I got to hang out with some of the members as they talked about various club-related issues. It certainly did give me a new insight into TCNE.
On the way home, I seemed to be collateral damage in a racial discrimination incident. I’d bought a bad-for-me snack at Wendy’s walked down the block to the nearest bus stop and decided to wait there. I expected to have five to ten minutes yet before the bus came and thought it would be good to get as much of my snack eaten as possible before getting on the bus. There was another guy already waiting at this stop, standing with his back against the bus stop sign, facing the oncoming traffic, right on the edge of the street where he couldn’t possibly be missed by the bus driver and where he could see the bus coming from a couple of blocks away. This made me feel confident to sit on a step and eat so I could manage the food better. The step was one or two feet from the sidewalk, the sidewalk abutted the street, so I could see the bus coming as well. I got almost everything down when I saw the bus coming, about half a block away. I stuffed everything in my purse, the other guy waiting stood so he was no longer leaning against the bus stop sign, and in fact stood in the street to make himself as visible as possible. I was in the middle of the sidewalk, walking perpendicular to the street and sidewalk, toward the street and the other guy standing there, when the bus blew by us at full speed. No, it was not an express bus, a limited stops bus, or anything of the sort. The driver was supposed to stop. You know what I think? The guy waiting was black and it was 11:45 at night and the driver chose not to stop.
Wednesday, I still wanted to do “something trans” but thought I had better stay away from Sisters of Worcester, for this week anyway. Ashley had already announced that she planned to be there, and I didn’t want any chance of Sisters of Boston politics detracting from the atmosphere at Sisters of Worcester. Searching around for alternatives, I decided to go to the CineMental / Aliza Shapiro showing of “The Living End” at the Brattle Theater. Ten bucks, a block from home, gay culture, no alcohol, and home at a reasonable hour. Perfect. What I took away from the movie was that AIDS had, for the main characters in the movie, turned life into death, and death into life. The gun, an instrument of death and therefore symbolic of AIDS, was enabling them to live, as in live with wildly enhanced vibrancy. In the closing scene…sorry, but I’m going to spoil it for you here…Luke yields the gun, thus ending their escapade and yielding the two of them to the dreaded living death that surely awaited them. (Now hey, don’t lecture me about misconceptions about living with HIV. That’s just the way the movie was.)
Thursday I went to the Transcend group meeting. It was great. There were actually several programs on different topics. It was interesting, I learned, and also got to socialize a bit with some of the girls. I was surprised when Stacy showed up part way through the evening! The poor thing should have been sleeping, as she had to work that night as usual, but she had a special interest in one of the programs and so sacrificed sleep.
By Friday then, I was feeling all caught up on tranny socializing, the weather was warm and sunny, and so after work I just went for a walk through the Boston Common and Public Garden to see what was budding and what was blooming. The willow trees were bright green with buds, tulips were well up, although none were blooming yet, cherry trees were heavy with buds. The star though, was the dogwood trees. They were all at their peak, and practically opaque with blooms. I was there just before sunset so they were all lit from the side and presented more as sculpture installations than flowering trees. Redbuds were beautiful too. Home for salad with the girls, I started watching a movie with them but couldn’t do it. I fell over asleep half way through, probably before 11pm. Woke up at 2:30 and crawled under the covers.
Saturday, I was back out on the town and out of control. I took the bus to TCNE again, this time for the Saturday House Party. Sharon had emailed me earlier in the week and told me that she was hostessing, so how could I not go? It was great to see her and lots of other peeps. Fun conversation and lots of bad-for-girls snack food to pig out on.
Walk to Waltham Center this time, still feeling bitten from Tuesday’s incident, I arrived just in time to see the outbound bus dropping people off. One guy said to me as he walked by, your bus will be late. We’re were about 20 minutes late. Crap, I realized–that bus was my bus, but it still had to go to the end of the line, turn around, and come back. Now I was worried that the last trains would be gone already by the time the bus arrived in Central Square. I decided on a plan: If the last outbound train was gone, I would walk home (a short and easy walk) otherwise I would take the train downtown and go to RISE. There, how’s that for absolving myself from guilt? 
I didn’t choose to spend all my money dancing, it was fate! The bus reappeared shortly, now only eight minutes late by my watch. I told the bus driver “Good job making up some time there” and he laughed. It seemed certain I was going dancing until the bus had to hit every, single, red, light as we approached Central Square. I watched my watch and visualized the last train leaving Alewife, Davis, Porter, Harvard Square… “Entering, Central Square” I imagined the automated announcement on the train saying as the bus stopped at the next to the last stop before the subway entrance. Here a bunch of people stood up to get off, and out the window I saw another bunch of people heading toward the bus to board. I didn’t have time for this. I skipped out the door, sprinted around the corner and down the stairs, and, yes, people were still waiting for the last train. Thirty seconds later I was stepping onto the train and was off for a night of dancing.
1am, RISE was opening at 1:30 (that’s half an hour early) but I needed to pee. Next door at Flash’s, there were quite a few people on the sidewalk, talking and smoking, I cut through them but the door was blocked by a bouncer with his arms crossed. A big sign was taped to the doorway stating that restrooms were for customers only. “Are you open?” I asked. He evaluated me, I tried my best to look like I didn’t have to pee, his expression changed subtly as if to say “I suppose so, but you’d better not just pee and come right back out this door.” He nodded and stepped aside. I went straight to the bar and–what else could I do?–ordered a drink. I’d barely started on it, when someone across the bar standing up to leave caught my eye. She was very tall. She was…Beverly! “Hm!” I thought, “who will Beverly be with?” Trailing just behind was…Dina! This was perfect because I had been thinking of Dina recently, missing her, and, well, mentioning her name in conversation with a mutual friend of a friend. I waited for them to thread their way through the crowd toward my seat by the door. I said Beverly’s name as she walked by but it must have all been too out of context to register with her. Then I stood and faced Dina as she walked by. “Dina.” Blink, blink, “Sonia?!?” What fun. I talked with them for just a moment though, as I didn’t want to interupt their evening. Before long it was 1:30, I was slurping the last of my drink, stopping in the restroom on my way out. (Well? It’s easier to wait when you can sit with your legs crossed!)
RISE was really good. It was a Craig Mitchell birthday party with him upstaris and Etiquitte in the lounge. One funny scene was in the lounge, early in the night, when a guy approached me with a bit of nervousness, asking “Is this a gay club?” “Oh, yeah!” I said with a big smile. He looked distraught. “I mean, uh, lots of people here are gay, but it’s a mix…” I backpeddaled quickly. “There are gays, straights…and me” I explained with a little bounce and a gesture towards myself. He looked a little bit relieved to have “me” to talk to. I’ll never know…did he think I was a straight biological woman? Anyway, I must have seemed safe to him in this scary place full of gays, and he had more questions. “What kind of place is this? What kind of music is this? Do I like it? What do I like about it?” He didn’t think he could dance to it. My encouragement to “feel” it, didn’t make sense to him. “Have you been upstairs yet?” “Oh yeah, that was nasty” he exclaimed with wide eyes. I sighed. I didn’t think I could help him but I tried to explain one more time that the people here are friendly, the music very cool, and that he should hang out for a while and give it a chance. I don’t think I saw him after that. Poor guy. The cover charge most likely made that an expensive lesson for him.
Sunday I slept late of course, did some laundry, and listened to Ethan’s internet radio show.
