A friend and neighbor just had her (Swiss) passport and (US) green card stolen at a train station in Switzerland. She had no trouble getting a replacement passport, but (quelle surprise!) had a tougher time with the US embassy. They managed to look up her records, but wouldn't give her a temporary travel document until someone in the USA vouched for her bona fide status (!). My friend asked me to be that someone; this morning, I faxed the embassy a note saying that she lives here, that I'm her friend and neighbor, and so on.
I wish she'd called me immediately. It's evening now in Switzerland and the embassy is closed 'til Monday. My friend wants to come home, but she'll have to wait because she didn't want to wake me up for this. I appreciate her being considerate, but what's a fax or two in the middle of the night between friends.
Wild, that in this era of strict control of our borders, a note from a nobody like me evidently carries some weight. (We'll see; she isn't out of the woods yet.)
It was soooooo tempting to write something entertaining or even mildly snide in my fax, but my overriding aim is to get the embassy to grant my friend's request. I've gotten in trouble in the past with attempts at humor when it was inappropriate; I didn't want that to be the case here.
One more thing. My friend said there was heavy security around the US embassy in Bern. We need it: belligerence and unilateralism have a way of making a country unpopular. Yet the POTUS tells us that invading Iraq has made us safer.
Thursday 01.29.04
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My (grade school) drawing of a person flying a kite.
And no, I didn't know at the time what Thalidomide was.
Wednesday 01.28.04
I've finished reading The Price of Loyalty, the recently-published account of Paul O'Neill's tenure as Treasury Secretary under Bush. I'm a little disappointed by the tone of the book; it sounds calculated to make the reader like and respect O'Neill before getting on with the story. I'd have preferred a more neutral approach.
Nonetheless it's worth reading for its accounts of how discussions are conducted in this White House and how Bush makes decisions. This administration is deeply ideological, to the point of being disinclined to make sensible compromises.
Consider the responses this book generated. The administration counterattacked; it jumped to investigate whether O'Neill had compromised any secrets. And at least one pundit has given the book a scurrilous review. These are responses that tell as much about the critic as they do about what's being criticized.
It's not as great a book as I had hoped it would be--but reading even just a chapter or two gives some insight into how this administration operates. (I realize that not everyone will want to know.)
Tuesday 01.27.04
I'm not alarmed that thousands of programming jobs are going to India. I am more concerned about the simplistic reaction in certain quarters of the USA that this is a problem we must stop. If someone's doing honest work for less money, more power to them, I say.
Yes it's easy for me to say this because I haven't lost my job yet. I'd like to think that having 19 years of experience in a specialized niche works in my favor--but who knows, maybe next year I'll find out just how fungible I really am. But even if I lost my job to more economical offshore labor, I wouldn't be running to the gummint asking that they make it stop; that would feel like asking to make water not run downhill.
Best is if I don't stake my well-being on things staying the way they used to be. I'm reminded of a lyric from an early Steely Dan album (back before Steely Dan went off a syrupy but lucrative musical deep end):
Will you still have a song to sing
When the razor boy comes
And takes your fancy things away
Tuesday 01.20.04
From tonight's State of the Union speech:
Activist judges, however, have begun redefining marriage by court order, without regard for the will of the people and their elected representatives.Imagine that, judges imposing their will without regard for the will of the people--like the five (Republican appointed) Supreme Court justices who greased the rails for your installation as President, eh Mr. Bush.
My favorite moment in the speech: the applause after
Key provisions of the Patriot Act are set to expire next year.in advance of the punchline
The terrorist threat will not expire on that schedule.
Friday 01.14.04
From BBC News:
The BBC Symphony Orchestra is to give a performance of composer John Cage's seminal piece 4'33" - nearly five minutes of complete silence.If you missed the broadcast, 4'33" is available on CD. Or you can get the sheet music ("for any instrument or combination of instruments") and perform it yourself.
BBC Radio 3 is to broadcast the entire composition live, even having to switch off its emergency system which cuts in when there is apparent silence.
4'33" is 273 seconds, a reference to... well, I won't give it away if you want to guess. Look here if you give up. (UPDATE: The connection to absolute zero may be a myth. Sorry to have passed it on unknowingly.)
I am left wondering whether Cage's estate gets royalties for the public performance, and if so, whether the amount depends on how large an ensemble performs the piece.
Monday 01.12.04
YAJEAAD (yet another journal entry about a dream)
Last night: on a city street, I come across a small ranching operation; I see cattle behind a barred doorway (you wouldn't want them getting out on the sidewalk). Don't ask me what agriculture is doing in the middle of a city. I poke my head through a large open door, see some people inside, and consider asking one of them whether they feed their cows chicken litter (way gross, but I'd read in the paper the other day that it's on the menu in some feedlots). I choose not to bother them with that question, but I see what looks like a lion on the grounds and ask about that. Yes, it's a lion, he's tame, and a guy tells the lion to go over and say hi to me, which it does--it comes out onto the sidewalk. This lion's way of saying hi features playful biting: like how dogs play, but more scary when a lion is involved. He starts getting rough, I yell for help, no one comes, but I notice that how hard he bites is a function of the pitch of my yells. I manage to get my arm free and scratch the lion's neck, pacifying it. The lion walks back inside. I never do find out what they feed their cows.
Lion taming is a rich metaphor; a lion can represent an aspect of ourselves that it behooves us to control. I'll limit my exegesis of the dream to these points:
- a lion that is tame toward others may have another agenda with respect to you
- you need to figure out how tame the lion yourself
- I felt a little sad that the lion walked away, I wanted it to play with me on my terms. But it looked like my only choices were get bitten or nothing. Or, as a friend put it: the lion's way or the highway.
Wednesday 01.07.04
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So that's Mars. Parts of my neighborhood look about like that at sunrise.
Tuesday 01.06.04
Dreams (about sex).
Had a long dream last night, and (wouldn'cha know it) the part I remember the best had to do with sex. I was being hit on, but unfortunately by a dude I didn't have the hots for. I made the mistake of letting him stroke my feet a bit (I was lying on a couch at the time) which led to him asking for my phone number. I was at a loss for how to respond; for some reason I didn't just tell him I'd rather not stay in touch. I thought I'd finesse the problem by giving him the number of my second line, the one that I never answer. I had trouble remembering the number, which I thought would be a dead giveaway that something was up--but he let it pass without comment. I shoulda realized it was a dream when I couldn't remember one of my own numbers, huh.
I did better two or three nights ago: I dreamed that I had sex with a young man, someone I know in real life but whose name I won't mention here, someone who's hot indeed. At one point, he said "you can do anything you want with me" which in the dream sounded just fine but which now strikes me as code words. I say that because in hundreds of encounters (yeah, I've been a slut), only twice did a dude ever say that to me--and both times, it was after they'd done something (outside of the bedroom) which had pissed me off. In each of those cases, the offer to let me have my way with their body was a gesture to make up for whatever wrong I'd felt they'd done me. That seemed a bit strange when it happened. In any case--I fucked both of the guys, if I recall correctly.
Getting back to two or three nights ago--having had [that fine young man whose name I don't want to mention here] in a dream makes me wonder how good he is in real life. Which reminds me of a story--
About 20 years ago, a friend of mine and I recognized a gay porn actor in a bar in Los Angeles--someone we both thought was hot--and talked about one of us possibly hitting on him. My friend joked that the guy couldn't be as good in real life as he had been the night before (i.e., my friend had beat off thinking about him). I was reluctant to go up to the guy, I don't remember why. My friend had no such reluctance and took him home. Later, the dude stole several thousands of dollars worth of electronic equipment from my friend's house. The actor/thief in question was Jon King (real name Jon Gaines; now deceased).
At 2:20 this afternoon, an AOL user in California typed the words lone pine teenage sex california to a search engine and was referred to one of my pages--although it's not a page about teenage sex, nor about sex in Lone Pine. Tantalizing, that I get such information about a reader (not to mention knowing which OS and browser they used) but I don't get to know who it was, nor whether they enjoyed reading my page, nor why they use AOL. Anyhow, I hasten to point out that the word "teenage" doesn't appear in the web page in question, although "teenager" does: evidently a close enough match for at least one search engine. Curious.
Thursday 01.01.04
Tommy says to himself: on days when not much happens, why not write about something that happened a while ago.
In 1976 (my senior year), I was friends with a teacher at my high school. I'd never been in any of his classes but I'd heard he was an interesting person, and I struck up a friendship with him. For the purpose of this anecdote, I'll call him Kevin.
Kevin sensed that I was gay (he was bisexual himself); he probably perceived my sexuality more clearly than I myself did at that point. I was still sorting things out, I felt attracted to both boys and girls but wasn't sure what I wanted. Homosexuality was much more of a taboo at that time and place than it is in most American high schools today. I remember the first time a boy wore an earring in my class, he could get away with it because he was big and strong and no one was gonna pick on him. But I digress.
Kevin enjoyed being friends with me, and we did things together outside of school. I hung out with him at his apartment and we went out to dinner together (made simpler by the fact that my parents were out of town during the week when this started happening).
Kevin often steered our discussions toward homosexuality; he asked me what I thought about it. I was too scared to say how I really felt, so I said I didn't think it was wrong but that it wasn't for me. Kevin sensed I was holding back, and tried to get me to admit what I was thinking. He said a bunch of things--including that if I were to come on to him, he would refuse my advances but wouldn't be upset with me. Heh. I was clueless about what he was really thinking, I took all of what he said at face value.
Kevin was totally playing with fire, getting that close to a student--a male student, no less. I was half his age.
He hid his attraction to me, and I hid my real feelings about homosexuality. This bilateral disingenuousness went on for a while, until Kevin told me our friendship wasn't progressing the way he'd like and broke it off. Meanwhile, my parents had come back from vacation. When I mentioned to them that I'd spent time with a teacher outside of school, they were suspicious that he was after me sexually. I told them no, that wasn't the case at all.
Five years later, Kevin and I had both moved (independently) from New York to California; I ran into him in a grocery store in West Hollywood. I had by then come to terms with my own sexuality and was able to admit to him what I had been thinking back in 1976; he was no longer a teacher and felt free to tell me what he'd been thinking. It was an amazing moment: a fun coincidence that we ran into each other again, and an unusual opportunity to tie up loose ends. Kevin told me that the experience with me back in New York had been somewhat of a turning point, it had been on his mind when he decided to quit teaching high school.
I wonder where he is now. If, by some coincidence (stranger things have happened) you're reading this now, Kevin (not your real name, natch)--please write.
update, 4 Dec 2007: it would be a strange thing indeed if Kevin wrote to me now. I've found out that he is deceased.
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