PARTIES AND THINGS

Another great party last night. Not the same friends as the Castro party. Basically a lot of indie rockers.

In the first part of the evening, I was dragged aside by a friend who hasn't seen me in a while and who demanded that I tell her everything about my life for the last few months, since we haven't had a chance to dish before. She used to live in London, and she gave me a long talk about how crappy it was and how depressing all British people are, and how angry about not being the world's leading empire in spite of being so bloody smart, and that sort of thing. Explained in detail just how bad of an idea it was to move to London. She was very nice about it, of course, because it was a very obvious "stay here with us" conversation.

Actually, before that I had been cornered by the cat, who was very intent on making me feel welcome. Her name is "Felix," and I feel kind of guilty about knowing her name but not the name of one of the cats I'm 'sitting'.

Anyway, the three hosts dressed up as the main cast of Three's Company (Jack, Chrissy, Janet), and some others (boyfriends, etc.) came as other minor cast. tack came as a flasher, which was excellent. We commisserated about having no money, and it was kind of funny to have that kind of conversation with a really skinny guy wearing nothing but a trenchcoat.

Hmmm...what else. Wine flowed like, well, wine. Hard alcohol and beer flowed like hard alcohol and beer. The hostess dressed as Chrissy made some phenomenal food (tapenade, baked goat cheese, etc.). The music was loud, the talking was shouting.

Conan's band is going to be touring the UK next summer, and I know he will drop in for a visit if I'm over there at the time, which is kind of cool. Someone, possibly tack, told me that Th0rsten (that's really how he spells it) is in Camden, so I'm thinking we might have to do something. It would be nice to have some sense of continuity.

Kind of interesting talking to everyone. So many people are out of work, and we talked a lot about what we were all doing to get by. One friend (seems like they should remain anonymous at this point) said he'd thrown away all his scruples and applied for a job at Chevron. Another is working four smallish jobs in addition to running his record label. You know, it occurs to me that the worse times get, the more important these parties are.

And everyone is upset over politics, of course. There's an election in a couple of days, and it will be interesting to see if Willie Brown's cronies still manage to get into office with the current mood. I mean, there's a lot of awareness about so many of the financial problems people are facing being due to the ties between political and corporate corruption.

A lot of the ad campaigns focus on that sort of thing. The positive ad campaigns basically say things like "This guy ran a successful business for 20 years!" and the negative ones say things like, "He ran an S & L into the ground--what's he going to do for California?"

The Chronicle ran an article yesterday that mentioned that foreclosures have jumped 21%. I'm thinking, no kidding. There are so many jobless, more people getting laid off every day, and the television is full of Emperor's New Clothes reporting. People talking about how our economy is recovering, even as you hear about Xerox laying off thousands of employees. Lots of pundits going on and on about the stock market being in great shape, even though it's obvious that things are dismal.

I remember before I left experiencing this ominous feeling every time another friend told me s/he was laid off. It was like hearing about the Holocaust, and people talking about how another family had disappeared.

Anyway, enough of that. It was a great party. I eventually left and came home.

Less than an hour after I crawled into bed, I had one of those hallucination things, I think. It wasn't exactly a dream, but I couldn't have been fully awake, because I saw something that wasn't there. I looked up, and I saw a man standing next to the bed. It was too dark to see his face; he was mostly in outline. He had longish curly hair.

All I know is I screamed like I've never screamed in my life, and I kicked up at him, and then he was gone. It was a really weird scream--I think because I was half-asleep and didn't have any conscious control over it, so it wasn't checked in any way. It was just pure, animalian sound. Very weird. It was kind of reflexive, because I sort of blacked out while screaming and kicking upward, but then I kind of came back to consciousness and was fully awake. My heart didn't slow down for quite a while, although strangely enough, I wasn't really frightened once I stopped screaming.

Then there was a gunshot outside, and a bunch of sirens, so I wonder if maybe I heard something that my brain interpreted some other way.

At any rate, that was like nothing I've ever experienced. I've had half-waking hallucinations and that sort of thing, but this was weird and different.

Anyway, the cats are bugging me for attention, so I'd better go. Yes, these are the cats that nobody sees because they hide under the bed when anyone's around. They have now decided that I am the Bringer of Food, and they won't leave me alone.

SEEING THE EX

Well, my ex came over the other night--I made dinner for him and his new girlfriend. She's wonderful. I think she'll be really good for him. I'm really happy for him.

Of course, later, I had a good cry over it. I know this is going to sound weird, but it's not because of jealousy or anything like that. I am so so happy for him. This is exactly what I want for him, and I'm so proud of him. He has grown so much.

Michael is probably the kindest and most well-intentioned man I've ever met. Seriously. There is absolutely nothing bad in him. He would gladly give you the shirt off of his back. I asked him for a divorce, but it wasn't because he had ever done anything wrong, or was a bad person in any way. We had married really young--I was 19 and he was 22--and he had really low self-esteem that never went away. His parents had been horrible to him his entire life.

No matter what I did, no matter how hard I tried to instil self-confidence, I just couldn't seem to. For example, he never bought clothes for himself, because he felt like other people would just do it better than him, and he should leave it to them. His self-confidence was so low that he never really developed entire areas of his person. He never really bought me birthday, Christmas, anniversary, Valentine's Day, etc., presents, but not because he was a jerk, it was just the whole self-esteem thing. He didn't make friends of his own, or develop tastes of his own, because he figured other people would do it better, and then they could just hand him CDs or introduce new friends to him. I tried so hard, and finally I realized that the only thing I could do to help was to leave him. That the only way he'd ever grow into an adult was if he was on his own and *had* to shop for himself, and *had* to make his own mistakes without me there. I cried so much. It was the hardest thing I've ever done.

He has done so well. He started going to therapy. He took up salsa dancing. He's learned everything he needed to learn. I'm sure there are some things that he's tried and decided he just didn't care about them, but there are so many others that he has just taken up with joy. He loves shopping for his own clothes, especially when it's for things to go dancing in. He has all kinds of different CDs that he bought all on his own. I found out at dinner that he has started getting manicures and pedicures, and he has decided he has to *cut back* to one a month, so that he can cut down on expenses. He opens doors for women, and buys the most amazingly thoughtful little presents for people.

He actually commented on my socks last time I was at his house. He told me I needed new ones, because the ones I had on were appalling.

I am so proud of him, and so happy. He's a really wonderful, adult man.

And in all of this, somehow after seeing him and being so happy and proud, I was hit with the realization that I'd had to be out of his life for him to grow up like this and discover himself. I'd had to be out of his life. I couldn't have been there. I couldn't have been a part of his life for it to happen. I didn't get to be there to see it, and my very presence would have prevented it. Yes, I had known this, and it was the reason I'd asked for a divorce, but for some reason this hit me pretty hard the other night.

Anyway, I'm on my way to another party right now. I have waaay too much of a social life.

WHAT THE HECK AM I THINKING?

Every time I come back to San Francisco, which is definitely "home" for me now, I wonder, what the heck am I thinking? Why am I even thinking about moving to London?

I have amazing friends here. I mean, really amazing. I have a full social calendar, and in this case "full" means full of doing things like last night's party.

When I was in London, I was desperately unhappy. I was experiencing culture shock, I had no belongings, no home, and few friends. Matthew made my life a living hell.

I didn't have any money, so I couldn't do the things I usually do that lead to a social life of my own. Incidentally, Matthew was an idiot about this. He looked at me as, geez, she has no life and wants to spend all of her time with me, and I don't think it ever occurred to him that I have a full and meaningful life, it just happens to be 3000 miles away at the time, and it's going to take me a while before I establish for myself here what I have at home.

The single stable element in my life was Matthew. By 'stable' I mean, I knew him before I arrived, and he seemed to me to be the thing to hold on to, to make me feel less alone and scared in a country in which I had to stare at the coins for five minutes before figuring out how to pay for a bus fare. Two days after I arrived, I found out that he'd been seeing someone else in my absence, and when I asked him about it, he lied. I trusted him, because I wanted to. I wanted to believe that I wasn't alone and lost.

Of course, then everything else happened. Him continuing to sleep with the ex-girlfriend who used his affection for her as a weapon in a battle she created. He not only watched her hurt me, but participated in it. There was a pretty constant stream of shows he invited me to, and then would argue with me two days before the show, and take her instead. I know this sounds really stupid, but I was really looking forward to those shows. It was like looking forward to Christmas and then realizing that your parents had forgotten to get you parents.

He was mean to me--when he argues, he gets really cruel and says really cruel things. When I'd confront him about his behavior, he'd say, "Well, I figure if I say cruel things to you, I must not love you," like the problem was some defect in our relationship--like if he'd found his 'soul mate' that he'd be kind, and I obviously wasn't living up to this theoretical person--instead of in his own character. He'd screen my phone calls. He'd tell me not to come over because his ex-girlfriend was at his house. One of his friends invited the two of us to parties, and he decided not to let me know that the invitation had been for the two of us. He never took me to a party that he went to. I think he was ashamed of me, because I'm not attractive like his ex-girlfriend. He made a lot of comments about how attractive other women were. He never complimented me, but would compliment them in front of me. He thought I was insanely jealous because I cried when he said that he really liked Michelle, but she was his friend's girlfriend, and he didn't steal friends' girlfriends any more. I don't know; I can't imagine telling my boyfriend that I'd rather be dating someone else who was just unavailable.

A typical day: I'd asked him if he had enough time to get together with me for an hour or two the next day. He said, sure. I asked what time, and he said to just call him right before I wanted to come over, because he'd be home all day. I took the hour train ride into the city, spent time in the Internet cafe looking for jobs (which was my daily routine) and then tried to call him, since I obviously didn't want to take the hour train ride back home and then another hour into the city to see him. He didn't answer.

I spent the rest of the day finding things to do in the city, and calling him, and he never answered. Finally, around 7:30 pm, I decided to leave and go home. I tried his phone on my way to the train station, and he answered. He said he'd gone to work that day, but didn't bother to tell me. He said he was too tired to get together that evening, and he didn't want to see me, but at that point I was hurt enough that I talked him into it anyway.

Almost every meeting we had was like that. We'd meet after he'd just done something so outrageously inconsiderate and insensitive, and then he'd say that he didn't like getting together because we had such a miserable time. It never occurred to him that he was creating those miserable times.

Why did I stay with him? I don't know. Because I'm an idiot. Because he was once kind to me. Because--because of this compilation CD he once made for me. Because I kept thinking that all of his behavior was due to the fact that had been hurt himself, and I thought that eventually he'd come around and see that I wasn't going to hurt him like whoever it had been in the past.

When I got sick, he just waited until I got better and called him. He never came over when I was sick. He never called and asked if I was all right. He never asked if I would like him to come over and bring medicine or cook. I remember telling my friend Sarah that it's easier to be alone. Because if you're in a relationship, you hope--you think there's the possibility that someone will be nice to you, that someone will want to bring you medicine when you're sick, and it hurts your feelings when it doesn't happen. When you're alone, you know it's just you, that there isn't anyone to bring you tissues or warm blankets, and you just get them for yourself, and it's no big deal. You don't even think about it.

Eventually, we broke up, and then eventually got halfway back together. Somewhere between friends and 'dating' or whatever you'd call that. I had no money and was running out of time, and knew I had to come back to the United States, and I was scared about it. He knew that. I knew that the moment I stepped on the plane, I was stepping out of his life. He would screen my calls again, he wouldn't email me, I would be out of sight and out of mind.

It didn't matter that I was scared. It didn't matter that I had no money and felt like I was jumping out of a plane with no parachute, and he knew this. None of this would matter to him, because he'd be too busy questioning his feelings for me to take time out to be kind. I didn't get any support from him when moving to the city he lived in--how could I possibly expect any kindness when I was moving away?

I would never expect someone to try to force himself to love someone he didn't love. But if you decide to be someone's boyfriend or friend, then you do have an obligation to be kind. You have an obligation to be as kind as possible to all human beings.

I was right. He did everything I'd imagined. Contact all but ceased. I finally confronted him about it on the telephone, and he acted like I was some stranger he'd had a one-night stand with at a party. He said I was asking for things he didn't want to give me. That I was not someone who had any kind of relationship with him, I was someone who had just once been in his life.

I spent the next three months completely alone. My sister and niece went to Alaska for the summer, and it was just me. I didn't know anyone in Spokane. There wasn't much within walking distance--a library and a couple of grocery stores. I had $20 per month. Not enough for gas in the car to get anywhere else, and not enough for groceries. It was really hard to be completely isolated like that. I was sometimes afraid, walking long distances and then fainting, and knowing I had nobody to call and couldn't afford a taxi ride home. It's really hard to have nothing but empty hours to fill when your heart has just been broken. I really wish I'd had someone. I sometimes would cry, and sometimes would stop myself from thinking about crying, because it felt like if I started, I'd completely break into pieces, and I was scared of what would happen.

So why am I thinking of going back?

Because it doesn't have anything to do with Matthew. I'm going to go back to London, not to him. Not that he'd have me anyway. It's kind of weird the way that works--pretty much every time I've seen people in a bad relationship, it ends up being the crappy person who leaves and doesn't want to get back together. Like they're some kind of fantastic prize that is undeserved by the other party. It's weird.

And I figure that when I go back, it will be like being sick. This time I'll know. I won't be thinking that there's the possibility that Matthew might care when I'm sick, or that he'll introduce me to one of his friends, or take me along to one of his parties. I'll know I'm alone. I'll know what the money looks like, even though I won't have much of it. And I'll concentrate a little harder on finding things to do that don't cost anything, so maybe I'll meet some people.

London's a big city. There must be people there something like my friends in San Francisco. I just have to find them. I don't know how, but I do know that I have only myself.

By the way, strangely, Matthew wrote to me the other day, and we ended up having an email conversation for a few hours. Nothing serious; just kind of idle banter. I'm not quite sure why he wrote me, although I know on some level he wanted something from me. I don't know what--maybe he was bored, or maybe he was looking for some kind of affirmation. I wrote back because, well, I'm stupid. Because I wanted to. Because I enjoy stupid little idle conversations with him.

Whatever it was, I know that he got what he needed. He believes he's a good enough person again, or he believes that he can still have a friendship with me if he wants it. Believes that he still retains the right of first refusal. I won't hear from him again unless I initiate the contact and give him a compelling reason to respond.

Under normal circumstances, you think things like, well, maybe he's just busy and has legitimate reasons for whatever. I'm really considerate when it comes to things like that. If him forgetting to call me when he wouldn't be available after all had just been an isolated incident, I wouldn't even remember it. But it happened constantly. I waited alone at pubs where friends' bands were playing, checking the door every few moments. Things like that. It's not an incident, it's a lifestyle.

So I still talk to him occasionally, just sort of leaving the door open in case he wants to change as a person. I know it won't happen, but it's this weird almost reflexive action on my part. Always give people chances, always send the inlaws who aren't speaking to you invitations to your parties. If they come, you'll make them feel welcome, but you know they never will.

HALLOWEEN IN THE CASTRO

From a letter to a friend:

I didn't have a costume, (being broke and having only the contents of my suitcases) but the party was a "Grey Gardens" theme, which is a documentary film about a couple of the more insane relatives of Jackie O. So I did what anyone would do in similar circumstances--I wore velvet and ostrich feathers.

I guess the sick part about this is that "the contents of my suitcases" obviously included velvet and ostrich feathers.

Teased my hair as much as I could, but it refused to be teased, so I put on long false eyelashed, red glittery Hedwig lips, and eventually walked to Flower's house in the Castro, where the party was being held.

When I got there, Flower, dressed as Edie, told me my hair needed more teasing. I explained my difficulties, and the next thing I knew I was sitting in a chair with my hair being teased and then covered in glitter like some sort of strange cranial nebula. It looked fantastic. A black mask arrived, and the look was completed. I got hit on an awful lot throughout the rest of the evening, so I'm pretty sure people thought I was a man.

Well, except for the men in the Mission who thought I was a roundish woman with lots of makeup, which is even better.

Anyway, Flower's house is basically in the Castro. She made a nine-flavored wedding cake, brought out a keg and lots of other beverages, and loads of people showed up. Eventually, she locked up all of the house except the front room and just opened the front doors, and so random people from the streets wandered in and out all evening.

We walked the block or so down to the really crushed part of the Castro, saw costumes from the fabulous to the unfortunate, danced to street drummers, and eventually wandered back to Flower's house.

At one moment when we were walking through the streets, I saw a woman dressed as a pooh bear with a tiny pooh bear stuck to her head, and I turned and said to Andy, "Look, a Pooh with a conjoined twin," and no sooner were the words out of my mouth than she turned to me excitedly and said, "Thank you! You got it! You got it!" It was kind of funny. A second later, Stephen walked up to me and said, "Look! A Pooh with a conjoined twin fetus!"

My favorite costumes of the evening were, of course, the incredible drag queens, Michael W. dressed as a Grey Garden, and Flower dressed as Edie.

I wandered home fairly early, being a single woman walking through the streets at night and all, and washed the goo and glitter out of my hair. Amazingly, (although I'm sure there's still some glitter in there), it immediately returned to its normal straight and shiny condition.

Halloween is by far the most important holiday of the year in San Francisco.

Incidentally, the topic of Burning Man came up on a bunch of different occasions with a bunch of different people. I think I might have to go next year.

I've been invited to two different parties tonight, so feel like I should go to the one I was invited to first, which is again within walking distance.

Explain to me again why I'm moving away from here...?