First off I would like to say this


Tonight was a very special night in the twisted world of professional wrestling. Yes, tonight was the inevitable night that Terry Bollea, known to most as Hollywoood hulk hogan announced his retirement. In his speech he brought up his father, who had died a little before christmas time, and his mother. Hulk said his father's last words were for him to retun to the place that made him famous, the place that made Hulkamania, the phenomenon that can never be stopped, will always be apppreciated and never fully understood, except for those gracious few who lived through the entire origional run.

Hulk hogan did many great things for the sport of professional wrestling, or for those who prefer, sports entertainment. He was the one who made it famous beyond a shadow of a doubt. And tonight, he announced his retirement. As with almost all things in sports entertainment nowadays, things did not go as plannned. Vinny Mac made an appearance and so did the Undertaker. After the truly emotional speech made by Terry Bollea, shit it the fan. All who were familiar with professional wrestling knew that it was a work, that Hulkamania was nowhere near dead and we would see him next week, same hulk time, same hulk channnel.

Professional wrestling likes to through many curveballs towards it's viewers, to keep em guessing as to what will happen next. The same is true with Soap Operas, like days of our lives, general hospital or passions. Half the fun of professional wqrestling is the wrsetling, the other half is the feuds and what will happen next.

Hulkamania will never die, it will never grow old, it will always be an ethereal phenomenon. Those who have not lived through it will always wonder what it was like, and why this man who can't pull off a ddt or superplex is so important. What I mean to say is, who can't get a shoulder up after a big boot/leg drop? Hell, I could do that.

I hope that Terry has a good run as a wrestler. I want to see him next thursday on Smackdown!. I want the ideal of Hulkamania to never end. I want to eat my vitamins and stay in school, but age and reality have different ideas...

Crap dude, I forgot, at least you were thinking about it at the time. Send Ashley an e-mail, and go ahead and make some nachos or eggs for yourself. Find out what breña is. Be happy, the sun is almost shining. Remember to Breathe; don't take the air for granted. Love everyone and everything, that is the road to wisdom. Believe in the truth, not the falsehoods. Begin to show some spirit in your life. The dreams mean something. Don't forget about them. Everything is important, nothing in pointless. The tears are symbolic and unattainable. What do tears mean to you? The pizza, that is also something to remember. And the bed, the apartment, the sheets, the warmth of her stomach versus the ice of your hand. Put some life into your cold form. Get richer spiritually and materialistically. BREATHE.

San Yaht Tii,
KaiMehTae

Plan for today:
*sigh* What an interesting and amazing life I lead.
Hrmm, my fonts are all screwed up... must be Internet Explorer here at work.

I haven't been active in E2 for a fair while, although I come back to it occasionally... I started to realise I was re-reading nodes I'd read before, and not enough nodes that were funny or interesting to me were being written, so I drifted off, heh... (not to put down all the brilliant write-ups that are being written everyday, it just takes a lot to hold my attention for long)

But today I felt the need to vent a bit, and this is really the only place I can do it in any half way coherent manner... even talking to Anna eventually turns into rambling, because I can't think fast enough for what my mouth wants to say.

So, I've nearly finished my first semester of my final year at University. Pretty soon I'll be fully qualified to be a Software Engineer/Computer Scientist. Whatever the hell that means. The truth is, I almost feel like this year is a waste of time, as I could be working full time here at work if I wanted, which I will be doing next year. And after that, I'm fairly certain I'll be able to get other jobs based on this one as a reference, if I chose to leave.

But at other times, I'm glad for the break from full time work, no matter how difficult uni is getting... I don't know, I switch back and forth between the two opinions at fairly regular intervals. I know I won't leave uni, because without the certificate at the end it'll count for nothing, and I probably won't start studying part time either, because it'd take too much effort to get it organised; plus it's just easier to get it over and done with this year, and never have to worry about it again. (Apart from my debt to the government, but luckily that's not too much anyway)

My life at the moment is quite good though, really. I love Anna more and more each day. We're planning for the future, designing our future house, planning the pets we're going to have, all the cool technology our house is going to have, and subtly ignoring the fact that it's going to cost a hell of a lot to build. That bit's for later.

The only problem is, it's so far into the future, we're just torturing ourselves. We don't really know what our situation will be by the time we've saved enough to build it; we don't even know how long it's going to take to save that much. It's fun, though, to think about. And hopefully we'll at least be able to move out into a unit in the next couple of years.

Work is giving me the shits lately though... I really with I was working with people I got along with better, people who I could relate to better. As it is, I end up having to go to lunch with someone who just ends up telling me about his drunken sexual exploits he had over the weekend. Thank god I'm only here part time.

It'd just be nice to actually be able to talk to somebody about the things that interest me for once... movies, games, television, whatever... someone who was in a similar situation to me, and who had similar goals...

Grr, and now he's playing Beastie Boys so loud, it drowns out my music...
I went to work, missed an appointment with the dentist, and then for the hell of it decided to bike (1 hour each way) to New Hope. I considered visiting Odette's, as I thought I remembered it from JohnnyGoodyear's writeup here. I decided not to, as I couldn't really justify paying that much for food by myself, which is just as well, because rechecking it, he was talking about Martine's, anyway.

But that's not what I'm here to talk about.

Since I came back from college, in the absence of anything better to do, I've been hanging out in the center of town a bit. It's a town of around 25,000 people, and there's not much else to do, so I'm not the only one with the idea. There's a parking lot behind this newsstand/bookstore, next to the local Starbucks, that's essentially host to a floating youth community. Having established a claim over the past few years, the police don't hassle them too much, and the local merchants seem kind of ambivalent - for staying out there so long, they don't really buy much, but on the other hand, doesn't "downtown revitalization" sort of imply, well, downtown life? In any case, it's here that I witnessed one thing which has renewed my faith in humanity.

It's 2002, and there are still kids living in a VW bus.

To be technical, it's a T2 camper, white and green, spare tire and rust on the front. Two girls live in the van. One is the archetypal cute white girl with dreadlocks, and the other, between the flowing skirts and the loose, white peasant blouses looked like she wandered in from the nearest Renaissance faire. Just from looking at them, you know they're gentle people.

They just park it in the lot, put the camper top up, and live. They hold court in there, run out giggling when someone they know comes by. They play music in there. They sleep in there. They make love in there. Sometimes you'd see them rolling around inside together, sometimes a third would join them. Yeah, they smoke pot; we all do. Like I said, there's nothing else to do. It just goes that much further to perfecting the image.

Every now and then, there's someone you'd never seen before driving the van. And that's OK. These people are cool too. We trust them.

I haven't learned their names, haven't even talked to them (but hey, there's a whole summer yet for that). Just watched them play out their lives, while I lean against the bookstore wall, taking in the secondhand smoke.

Last night, the police came and kicked them out. Two cars, flashlights, the whole deal. I saw it from just down the street. This doesn't really get to me too much – it appears they just told them to move, and the parking lot is directly in front of the police station, so they were kinda tempting fate. I don't know where they put it at night now, but they still show up during the day.

And after all, that's all I need to know. They're out there. The world is all right.

After writing to Jillyan the other day, I wanted to re-read something I wrote a while ago. I tried to open a particular file and Word gave me the standard "File open: open read only?" error message. This confused me. I tried to open a few other files and some of my University project work came up with the same problem. Weirdly, it wasn't the same for every file I tried, only some. I am certain I have not opened these files for weeks, and cetainly not since the last reboot.

Then I noticed that my hard disk was very busy and the dial-up prompt came up. My machine is trying to dial out? Why? I quickly cancelled it. Initially I cursed Microsoft, but now I'm worried I've picked up a virus. I'm always installing shareware and I guess you never know what's in it.

Does anyone know of a decent (free) virus checker I should use? I feel sorry for not having installed one before now.

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(sorry, shocking lack of links. if you can tell me where to find the brackets on an arabic keyboard...i'll add some more. or, when i get back from Syria)

tea, tales, and feather skirts

Damscus is full of sun, and, as it's Friday, the souks are all but derserted and the Omayyad Mosque is full to overflowing. My frumpy clothes are paying off already - I was spared the indignity of tripping over one of the brown Jedi cloaks which are provided in the Special Clothes Putting On Room. The ticket seller, and guardian of morals, approved and let me off. As long as I covered the inch or so of throat which I was brazen enough to display to the world.

In the sunshine, the mosque was dazzling. Despite the inches of birdseed fed to extraordinarily happy pigeons (happy enough to be protected from the small children chasing them with widespread arms and waaaaah! calls by a man with a Very Big Stick) the marble floors acted as polished mirrors, throwing shards of light back up into eyes, and to light up the remaining green and gold mosaics. I am always amazed by how much life and activity there is in this mosque - none of the whispering hush of European cathedrals. Picnics of roast chicken under the arches, gatherings of friends and family, and kids tearing up and down with no one shushing them.

I arrived yesterday morning, just after dawn, in a blur of no sleep and too many miles in one go. My flight arrived in Amman, in Jordan, at the unfriendly hour of 1am, and by the time I'd got into town, to Abdali bus station, it was pushing three and I was obviously the only traveller-target within range, because every taxi-tout within a hundred yards pounced on me with recommendations of cheap hotels, good hotels, and a very good taxi to take me there. Eventually, I was driven round and round the bus station, being shown the sleeping corpses of the servees drivers, and their empty empty offices. I would have to wait till NINE O'CLOCK TEN O'CLOCK to get a ride. Not believing a word of it, I still caved and chartered the whole taxi up to Damascus. A grand solo ride, in a mile wide american old beater car, strewn with carpets and tablecloths and scarves in the back. I pulled my hat over my eyes, and half dozed all the way to Syria.

Except when the driver wanted to tell me things. He wasn't the chattiest man on the planet, which was a relief, as we didn't share a single word in any language we attempted. When frustration at my idiocy overcame him, he switched on the light, and repeated himself. Several times. When understanding still resisted me, he huffed, puffed, and put the light out again, shaking his head in disgust for the next five miles.

Ten miles outside Damascus, with the sun starting to seep pink into the sky, he stopped at a row of Wild West style shops. Dust blowing across the road, doors creaking, not a person in sight. Only the gruesome vision of a hundred bagged Pink Panther dolls, swinging by the neck from the rafters. At the next, Mickey Mouse and Minnie, and a range of other ripped-off Disney dolls swayed in the wind, strangled and suffocated. The driver dashed inside (we had already stopped at five or six duty free shops on the way, for sacks of potato crisps, cigarettes, and what looked like a bottle of whisky swathed in plastic to preserve his good name). Expecting to be joined in the back seat by one of the fairground attractions, instead I was presented with apricots, plums, and a marl-bo-ro-o-o cigarette to welcome me to the city.

The hotel was just a five minute walk from the bus station where I was dropped off, and the skies were as full as swifts as those above home. But there was no room for me until noon, and I after a pot of tea with about half a kilo of sugar stirred in, I pottered off to kill some time at the Tekkiye Mosque, and then the National Museum when it opened. The Tekkiye complex is cool and elegant, with thin pencil minarets, domed cloisters of the old housing for Hajj pilgrims, and a wide courtyard with a shallow pool patrolled by fealbitten skinny cats. The anomaly is the collection of MIG fighter planes which are strewn around in the gardens. The place is the Army museum, as well as one of the loveliest mosques in the country. If it wasn't quite so funny, the visual shock would be more bothersome.

Once the museum was unlocked at nine, I started a slow drift around the halls. The collections are worldclass, but the curation and the labelling is beyond belief.

Beautiful lady from Palmyra.
Stone head.
Old glass.
Lion with his mouth open.
Gods.

I attempted to draw things, so that I could concentrate, try to remember what I was seeing, look at the details so that my eyes wouldn't skim across and reduce me to nodding daze of 'oooh, old things. cool.' I drew little bronze weights in the shapes of animals, clay cows, high priests in feathered skirts and plenty of eyeliner, tablets of cuneiform.

One of the guards was entirely perplexed. "You can buy a postcard! We have pictures of this!"
"Oh, I'll get the postcard too"
"Then no need to draw! We have a shop!"

In the next room, he found me drawing again.
"You don't want the poscards?"
"Oh, yes, I want the postcards, but I also want to draw."
"Ah, you are an artist."
I showed him my godawful drawing and shook my head.
"No, you are not an artist. Buy the postcards. We will be happy then."

So I woke up today at 5am after a night of moderate torture with some sort of creeping flu like illness. It all started a week ago when I got up bright and early at 8 and went to make breakfast, halfway through the pouring of milk into my cornflakes all the energy just drained from me, and I put the bottle down with some effort. I then went straight back to bed, my head asleep before I even hit the pillow. Waking up a few hours later I still felt exhausted, and it's been that way ever since.

I've slowly developed the flu, and fever like symptoms but I haven't been able to take the day off since then because of Orasi, and also because of my half-year university report that was due in today.

What fun *that* was.

Worked on it all last week, submitted it to my supervisor on Friday, waiting for amendments all this week, nervous and stressed, until this morning. Getting them done barely in time. And now I'm here, in university, waiting for the clock to go around so that my mother can come and collect me and take me home.

I would drive, except that a couple of days ago my BMW broke down, and its in the mechanic's being repaired. 48hrs and gosh how I MISS that car. Walking isn't half so much fun when it's enforced, folks.

Its been a hard week, quite long in some ways, and I am looking forward to going home and sleeping. This thing within me, virus, or whatever, needs my body's complete, vengeful attention, and so I'm going to turn my consciousness off and stop distracting it. Then perhaps when I wake up tomorrow, I'll feel better instead of worse. Here's hoping.

I hate my job, but I like my boss. He's a good friend of mine, and he's taken care of me at some times when he really didn't have to and it didn't benefit him in the least.

We work out of his tiny apartment in north Dallas. He's a full-blooded Italian, so there's usually some pretty good eats laying around.

For breakfast this morning he made pancakes. He's awful proud of them, and they aren't bad, so I don't complain. He laid out all the flatware he thought we'd need, which included knives. I don't particularly need a knife to cut pancakes, so I didn't use it. Instead, I spent the better part of the morning itching my head with it. He watched me do it several times.

For lunch he made spaghetti. He was getting down to the last of his pasta and needed something to herd it onto his fork. He picks up my knife and says in a mock italian accent "Ifa you ain't gonna use dis, I will!"

I state to him very clearly what I was doing with that knife earlier, and in the shitty italian accent he says "You-a lying!" and proceeds to use it with his food.

My head is by no means dirty, but if I saw somebody using a utinsile the way I was, and that person also told me directly what they were doing with it, I wouldn't use it with my food. He's a weird guy.

See also: May 27, 2002

I've slept maybe five hours since Tuesday, but you know, I feel great. I feel wonderful beyond any previous threshold for wonderful.

I started a week-long (paid) vacation from work on Tuesday, and that night, a very close friend of mine called Annalisa arrived here from Birmingham. We had been planning the visit for a couple of months and we were both really looking forward to it. We've known each other for just about three years, though we originally met online we'd met a few times (over the years) for concerts, coming-through-town sort of things, etc. But this visit was different.

It started out Tuesday night with sushi at Kanpai in mid-city, then we went to see Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (which really kicked Episode I's proverbial ass in so many ways). We went to the late show, and returned to my place at around 1:00am. We got a call from one of her friends that lives here, Lana, wanting to know if we want to hit Bourbon Street with them, as they were in the neighbourhood and Lana hadn't seen Annalisa in a few months, so we went. We ended up going to Larry Flynt's Hustler Club, which was boring to say the least, and then to the Alibi Inn for drinks, which was considerably more fun. Through most of it we just talked, like we usually do when we see each other, though I displayed a bit of my attraction to her: I said, Can I smell you? We were both drunk, and we've both been very into each other for the entire length of our friendship, but the circumstances were never ripe for getting together. She giggled and nodded, and I leaned into the crook of her neck and inhaled deeply. I sighed. She smelled so good. She smelled like my most pleasant dreams. We continued drinking and talking, and ended up back at my apartment at around 7:30am. (The bars in New Orleans don't suffer from the dreaded "last call.") We brought Lana and some of her friends back to my place for about an hour to smoke some salvia divinorum, and a good time was had by all.

Wednesday proper came into being at around 3:00pm, after about four hours sleep. Annalisa and I went to the Louisiana Pizza Kitchen on Carrollton for breakfast/lunch, and then headed back home to prepare for the Cranes concert happening at the Shim Sham Club later that evening. We made it into the Quarter at around 9:30pm, just in time for the opening band, Matthew, who I had never heard of but nonetheless enjoyed. They sounded kind of like the bastard love child of Sunny Day Real Estate and Radiohead. We milled around a bit while the Cranes crew set up, drinking Long Island Ice Teas and Tom Collins mixers, and smoking cloves. Apart from my local friend Melanie, I didn't really know anybody in the place, which is something of a rarity for shows at the Shim Sham.

At around 11:00pm, the Cranes made their entrance on stage. Alison Shaw was beautiful and fairylike, as I expected (the last time the band toured the USA, I missed the show because I was travelling at the time, so this was my first time seeing them, after having waited five years since their previous tour here), and the Cranes played a tight set packed with old favourites. I sang along to them all (the Cranes have been an enduring favourite band of mine for going on seven years now). After the last encore ("Paris & Rome," which Alison introduced by pointing to me and saying "this song is for you"), I waited by the backstage entrance to meet Alison. She came out, cheery as always, and we introduced ourselves and did that European standard cheek-peck-kiss greeting. I told her I loved the show, adored the Cranes, and asked her about a particularly special (to me) song, which she was happy to answer. I shook her hand (she has such soft skin!) and excused myself, leaving her to whatever aftershow stuff she had to do. She's such a sweet person. Upon meeting her, I've now met all three of my personal idols; Douglas Coupland (twice, actually), Nicole Blackman, and Ali. So I was pretty stoked. The show was a great start to a mind-blowingly incredible night.

The following are details about why I chose to abort my gender transition. (See my writeup under May 27, 2002 for full details about what brought me to this.)

Only recently have I been able to articulate why, exactly, I chose to stop. However, I'd been having some serious doubts since the very first day I decided to do something about my gender issues, but I never told anybody about it, not even my therapist or my best friends, mostly because the doubts and other issues were so complex and I was really at a loss for words on the subject.

First and foremost, I was quite aware that I'd been born male, and no amount of surgery, therapy or HRT could change that. I knew that I wasn't simply the stereotypical "woman trapped in a man's body," but I wasn't totally comfortable with my maleness, either. Of course not. As anyone who has known me long enough will tell you, I do have a somewhat feminine demeanor, which is often mistaken for an outward expression of homosexuality, which of course is not the case. The more I was told this, the more I thought about it, about transsexuality and so forth, but I never figured I'd do anything about it; it always seemed so extreme and drastic to me.

When I began seeing a therapist in November 2001, I told her just about everything I was feeling about transitioning... except for the doubts. I guess I really didn't realize that I even had doubts at that point because everything was so new, and I suddenly had a purpose and something to do with my life, something to aim for. However, as I recently came to realize, in the back of my mind I was doubting that I would be successful, or happy, or untraumatized, or completely destitute from paying for surgery when everything was all said and done. (read: post-op.) I also had some quite superficial worries, like, "would I be pretty," "am I really feminine enough to pull this off," "what happens if I'm never able to get another date," and so forth. When I started hormone replacement therapy in January 2002, just as I was about to take my first dose of estrogen, I thought, "after a few months of this there will be no turning back... are you sure this is what you want to do?" I ended up sitting there with a glass of water and the estrogen pill for about an hour debating myself internally. In the end I took the pill. And I took the pill every day thereafter, until four days ago, which, incidentally, is about two weeks before the effects of HRT become, for the most part, irreversible. (i.e., permanently sterile, permanent loss of (male) sex drive, etc.) Whenever I took the pill after that I couldn't help but think disjointedly about what might happen in the future of my transition, what would happen if something went wrong with it, or what would happen if I decided that I wanted to stop for some reason. Because of this the transition was always a traumatic thing for me, however happy I felt about it at the same time. I was happy to be proceeding with it, but... I didn't know what to do with the doubts I was having. I didn't even really consider them doubts, really... just kind of slight hesitations. I thought that might be normal for transsexuals in the beginning stages of transition, but I never really thought to look it up anywhere, despite my rather large collection of bookmarks for sites about transsexualism and gender dysphoria.

I couldn't get it straight in my head that something was wrong, until Annalisa asked me if I thought that there was anything wrong last week. Without her intervention/concern, I most likely would've just kept going with the transition, possibly end up very unhappy and totally broke in a few years, just stagnating along with something I really deep-down didn't want to go through with. I was so scared. So scared that I couldn't really even ask anybody what they thought about me during the transition, or ask them if they had any doubts. My parents expressed some doubts, but of course I didn't listen to them because I wanted to do my thing and not worry about them thinking I was unhappy, so I just presented an air of knowing what I was doing to them, and to my friends, and to anyone who asked, really. I was scared and hurting back in the recesses of my mind, and generally, when I'm scared and hurting, I shrivel up inside and nothing comes out.

In summary, my biggest reservations, fears, and doubts, put forth in a bulleted list for your reading convenience:

  • Would I be happy during and after the transition?
  • Could I ever totally remove the male parts on the inside of me, through surgery, HRT or other means?
  • Could I ever become completely, totally, and in all other ways female/feminine?
  • Would anyone consider me attractive ever again? Would I?
  • Could I ever be honest with anyone ever again? Could I be honest with myself?
  • Could I afford any of the surgeries I wanted? (SRS, scalp advancement, rhinoplasty, chrondolaryngoplasty, breast implants (if necessary))
  • What would happen if I lost my job mid-transition and was unable to get another due to my appearance?
  • Would $whoever ever speak to me again?
  • Would I eventually have a nervous breakdown of some sort from unresolved hesitation, doubt, and fear?
  • Would I be in a state of terminal gender limbo if I ran out of money?

So you see, there was a lot going on in my head, but I really didn't know what to do but continue with the transition. It seemed safest, which probably sounds stupid based on the doubts enumerated above, but that's the best I can do to describe the feeling.

After the show we drove out to Lana's place in New Orleans East and scored four doses of MDMA. We each took one and then headed back home. I had never done ecstacy before, so I wasn't quite sure what to expect. Unfortunately, it didn't really have much of an effect on me due to the Paxil already in my system, regulating my serotonin levels, so when we both took recharge doses (nasally) a couple of hours later, I was only mildly buzzed. Annalisa was feeling fine, and the talk flowed like wine, only now it was more personal, deeper than we'd previously dared to delve. She talked about her string of terrible boyfriends; I talked about my string of terrible girlfriends; we talked about my gender issues. She admitted to me that she thought I was having doubts about transitioning fully into a female form, and I admitted that was the case. The doubts had been building in me since I started hormone replacement therapy in January; unlike other transsexuals, who are often absolutely sure that they are of the opposite sex, despite their physical sex, not just an X trapped in a Y body. Me, I had always felt that I am male, but wanted to be female. I had no illusions about what I was, but I knew what I wanted to be... sort of. Hence the doubts. At some point during the conversation we started cuddling; soft, warm, and extremly comforting. My confusion about my gender and the doubts therein overwhelmed me and I started crying. Annalisa just held me, cradling me in her arms, my face buried in her shoulder and neck, and my tears were rolling down her arm. She just held me, and told me that it was OK.

For my entire life, every fibre of my being has longed for someone to hold me while I was crying and tell me softly, It's OK... just let it come. It's OK. I'm here for you.

It was then that I decided to abort my gender transition. With her help I realized that I can be happy with my body/sex/gender as long as I could be happy with my surroundings, and as long as I could be happy with my life, gender issues or no. I'm still quite sure that the dominant part of my personality is female; but there's no denying that there's also some masculinity left in there that can never be fully deleted from my psyche, and I was tired of fighting with it. I think I can live in peace with a slightly masculine personality and a male body. As it is, I'm just (just) below the cutoff point for hormone irreversibility. As of that morning I stopped taking the hormones, and with luck, my body will be back to normal in a few months.

I am comfortable with this.

Next we moved on to how we felt about each other. Since earlier this year (around the time I started HRT, actually), we knew that we were both really into the other, romantically and in all other ways. We both admitted that, since we first met, that's how it's been; that basically, we were in love, but it wouldn't have been feasible to act on it at any time during the tenure of our friendship. But now... things are different. I've been single (and, with the gender transition, facing a possible lifetime of singularity) for eight months, and she's been on the verge of breaking up with her current boyfriend, who I've heard nothing but awful things about, for a few weeks. She's heading back to Birmingham now to start the final process of losing him.

I am moving to Birmingham in about six months, when the lease on my place in New Orleans is up, and it couldn't come too soon. New Orleans casts such a pall over me now; I'm itching to get out of it.

Annalisa and I both figured six months would be enough time to finalize how we truly feel about each other, and to consider the prospect of a serious relationship. This also gives her ample time to deal with her "currently on hiatus because he's got so many mental problems" boyfriend. It'll give me time to get my issues straight and find an antidepressant that works for me; my psychiatrist's diagnosis of my bipolar disorder was, I believe, completely inaccurate. Additionally, I'm going to start sending résumés to tech companies in Birmingham in August or September, and start looking for an apartment.

• • •

Yesterday (Thursday), we went out for sushi again, this time at Samurai, with Annalisa's mother and aunt. Her mother likes me, apparently, but doesn't yet know that I'm not trans anymore. She'll find that out within the next few hours. She won't find out about the status of her daughter and I for a few weeks, yet.

After sushi, we rented the recent film Life as a House, and watched it from the comfort of my futon. The movie was very sweet and sentimental, and a bit strange. I highly recommend it. It's a good date movie.

We were laying on the futon side by side, bare legs akimbo, as the end credits started rolling. As if drawn by an invisible force, we both turned our heads towards the other, and then melted into the softest, hungriest kiss I've ever, ever known, with the softest, sweetest lips I've ever felt. It was so euphoric, like being wrapped in a sheer length of absolute release, and peace, and care. We spent the rest of the night alternately talking, kissing, cuddling and basically just enjoying the hell out of each other, all while the TV displayed silent snow after the tape in the VCR had run out, which was completely unnoticable from our perspective and preoccupation with each other.

Annalisa left for Birmingham at about 11:45am this morning, but not without neverending, lovely goodbye kisses and tight, I-need-you-now hugs. As she got into her car, I told her I loved her, that I have for as long as I've known her. She said exactly the same thing back to me. Then I watched her drive away, not without tears in my eyes, and then started this entry. I miss her already, but I can't recall ever feeling so right, so comfortable about anything before at all.

This is love. We'll find out if it's true love, all in good time.

Alcohol makes so many people in the world happy. I am often one of them.

There I am sitting at the bar at the Orlando Ale House enjoying more than my share of Captain and Cokes when two fellas next to me order a plate of fried shrimp. I want some. So I reach over and just take one. Yum. They want me to eat more, and keep pointing at the plate and smiling. They were from "the north of Africa" they said and could tell I had a big appetite.

I wanted to talk about Star Wars. Could you believe these foreign men had never ever heard of Star Wars. So I chatted them up a bit with my knowledge of Greedo and Jango Fett's "jazz hands." They were confused and I could not get through to them. All they wanted to do was watch the news and talk to each other about fossil fuels and how hot it had to be for different materials to burn. I offered to take them to see Attack of the Clones but they just gave me more shrimp to eat. I had another cocktail and went home. I guess I just don't understand people.

(I keep going to Everyone.com instead and it isn't the same place)

Today was a little scary. Well, not very scary, but something that completely amazes me happened. I still don't understand how people can be so think-headed.

It all started out with this annoying kid Trevor that sits with us at lunch. He's the sort you can't really just whisk away; he's the sort that really needs some friends so you feel bad for him, but still hate him. We convinced him a few months ago that someone named David Manners was stalking him. Now, I'm not entirely familiar where the David Manners thing came from (my friend tells me he's a vampire movie star or something), but he is entirely fictional as far as we are concerned. Once when Trevor accompanied us to the movies, we told him this Manners fellow was following him all around. He believed us!

Soon, Trevor went to the vice principal to report David Manners, seeing how everyone is encouraged to tell about any shady behavior around school nowadays. He was promptly told that no student named David Manners attending or has ever attended our highschool. We easily remedied his doubt by informing him that David had dropped out of school in 5th grade.

Before we knew it, rumors started coming from other sources about David Manners. Some kid in seventh grade claimed he had attempted to stab him in Walmart. This was all the more hilarious considering almost EVERYONE was in on our prank.

Unfortunately, our fun must come to an end. Today during lunch, there were police officers lurking around who were apparently keeping an eye out for David Manners. I'm not exactly sure what the punishment for creating a nonexistent false persona to threaten someone else is, but we figure it's best to stop.

It's just amazing how gullible people can be.

Pretend this is a daylog.

Pretend I told you about the albums I was listening to, the book I was reading, and what I saw on TV recently. Pretend I talked to you about what I had done this week, the people I hung out with, and the projects I was working on. Pretend I went for a walk on this windy night and looked up at the full moon but couldn’t see the stars because of the cloud cover and the light pollution from the city. Pretend I had some angsty, depressing thoughts about some girl and the direction my life was going. Pretend I came up with some pseudo-philosophical conclusions about the nature of life.

Pretend you know me.

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