raverpup (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} raverpup) wrote,@ 2007-01-02 18:48:00 |
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Holidaze II
As I sit here at my desk drinking my non-fat latte and eating my protein chocolate chip breakfast square I can have little doubt that I have left the suspended animation of the holidays and re-entered into the world of the mundane. I had hoped to face this moment with a sense of rest and release, though at best I could describe my current state as irritable and slightly depressed.
The holidays started off well enough with a trip to visit Jeremy’s parents and friends in Seattle. We took off on the morning of the 22nd and spent Christmas there, returning on the 26th. Fortunately I have met Jeremy’s parents before and we all get along well, and this time I also went armed with a potent eggnog recipe that made everyone feel quite merry. On this trip I also met Jeremy’s younger sister, Megan, for the first time, as well as the extended family of his stepmother’s mother, and his mother’s stepmother (yes, it’s all quite complicated). In the former case, as we pulled up to the doublewide in the rural environs of Tacoma I was a little worried, but as soon as we stepped through the door and I spotted an 1836 Springfield rifle hanging above someone’s Union Army discharge papers, I had a conversational opening. After that, the eggnog took effect and all was well.
Going to Seattle has this tendency to activate a strong nesting instinct in both of us; for Jeremy there is of course the association with home, the familiar, and the easy, while both of us are stunned by how much less expensive the housing market is there. The rentals our friends there have would easily run for double the price in the SF market, and prices for single family homes in Tacoma seem to run about $400 a square foot; of course, that is in Tacoma, neighbor to the meth capital of the world in Spannaway, but it is nonetheless striking when you’re used to $1000 a square foot for a tiny condo in San Francisco. We left with a strong conviction that a move to Seattle is probably in our future, but at some extended date years from now when we’re really ready for it; neither of us feels any strong compulsion to leave the track we’ve started upon right now, but would rather see how things play out over the next two years or so.
Coming back to San Francisco I was looking forward to three days of rest and relaxation before Aaron’s NYE party, but things didn’t work out quite as I expected; instead of lazing and loafing I wound up running numerous errands and cleaning the apartment. I had many things in mind to do, and wound up accomplishing about half of them (though I did get my first real haircut in over a year, which at least improved my outer self-image a bit). Almost before I realized it Saturday evening had arrived, and with it Jeremy’s return to DJing at Drunk and Horny.
We had expected a slow evening at DnH, but instead it turned out to be packed. For a change I had a very good time, and even remembered a little bit of what I enjoyed about going out clubbing and dancing – at least, while Jeremy was DJing. This was confused a bit later in the evening when Michael Rodriguez, who had been substituting for Jeff while he was off with Gary on a Mexican sojourn, told Jeremy that he should change it up to “funky and familiar.” This is a bit funny, since months ago Rodriguez and I had had a long conversation about how much better the music was when Jeff wasn’t DJing, and how the whole 70s thing was over, but he seems to have had a DJ pulpit epiphany; after the party, over a rather drunken, stoned, coked-out conversation about DJ philosophy that took place upstairs, he said that his great revelation had come when he was playing some hip-hop and someone asked him if could play “some 70s.” That apparently lit a lightbulb for him, and now he considers himself to be an expert on the night’s vibe. Jeremy’s response to his “funky but familiar” line was to flip him off, which is exactly what I would have done. During that upstairs conversation Jeremy opened his burning question of how his music fit into the vibe of the night. Rodriguez’s response was to try and push him into playing what Jeff plays, while Jeff tried to make a politic, and somewhat backhanded complimentary, argument that there were people who liked what Jeremy played, and people who liked what he played, and that Jeremy had a particularly difficult slot as the opener (though I’ve never heard Jeff suggest that maybe they could switch up some time so Jeremy could have the peak hour). My own take on it is that the quality of the music is probably much more important to Jeremy and I and then anyone else involved, and that that the rest of the crew concerned really don’t respect what Jeremy does (or, less graciously, that they feel threatened by it). In any case, it seems likely that one of Jeremy’s big goals for the new year will be to find more opportunities for DJing where he can get into what he does and feel good about it, rather than trying to appeal the lowest-common-denominator tastes of Castro fags.
Sunday didn’t find us up and about until almost 2PM, so there was little time to pull ourselves together before heading over to Aaron’s at 5. We got a ride over and worked on getting ourselves into a party mood, but Jeremy was still exhausted from the night before. I had promised myself that this party was going to be a chance for me to let go a bit and even be somewhat self-indulgent, and to a degree I followed through on that, chemically speaking, but I never quite got myself into the headspace I was seeking. I had expected the party to be bigger, but instead it turned out to be a clot of my friends, and a clot of furry boys, and, given the general social ineptitude of the latter group, this meant one group of people sitting around the food, and another group playing “guitar hero” on the TV in the living room. I mostly found myself hanging out by myself in the music room, but this was pretty unsatisfying. Finally, around three we got a ride home with DJ Mak, which turned into the most torturous 45 minutes I have even spent in a car. Riding the freeway around Oakland, when you are convinced you are headed in the wrong direction, is no place to be peaking. We finally made it home around 4 and Jeremy and I got to have some nice time together before he finally succumbed, leaving me on my own to come down until about 5.30. This was when things turned especially dark for me, and I came to muse upon the way that certain of my drives tend to lead me into situations where I feel isolated from others, especially when they concern certain aspects of my sexuality. Earlier in the week a friend had confessed a secret meth habit to me, the second such friend in the last month, and this had lead into thoughts about how there is this close association between pleasure and shame for so many of us, that the things that give us pleasure in a primal way are also things that, for whatever reason, fill us with deep shame, and so they lead us into this split life, where we want to enjoy that pleasure but feel that we need to keep it secret from others. In turn we become more inwardly focused and isolated, and this only reinforces the pleasure/shame bond. All these thoughts were circling through my head when I finally laid down on Monday morning, but the one thing that brought me out of it was being able to turn over and snuggle up to Jeremy. As crazy as we both are, there is a way in which he is able to bring me out of myself and give me a ground upon which to stand. If I came away from New Year’s with anything, it was a sense of how much I really am in love with Jeremy, and how desperately I need him to keep me from becoming completely lost in the labyrinth of my own mind.
Monday at noon was not a happy time for us; I had barely slept, and we discovered that Jeremy had left both his cellphone and wallet at Aaron's. The only solution was to get a car and head back over (though in hindsight we could have taken BART as well and saved ourselves both some pain), but this turned out to be the perfect tonic for my mood. The furry boys were just leaving as we arrived, and we wound up drinking beer and having conversation with Aaron, Jody, and their two friends from down the street for a couple hours. We returned home to showers, X-Men 3 (terrible, but just about the right level of mental challenge), and pizza before making an early bedtime.
When the alarm went off at 8AM this morning I had a strong desire to call in sick and just spend the day snuggling up to my boy, especially after a night of dreams that involved numerous anxieties filtered through the lens of my academic experience (I’m failing all my classes, I completely forgot to go to the one on Thursday nights!) including an emotional breakdown in a counselor’s office (nothing is real, nothing is worthwhile, it’s all absurd). But some part of myself that likes to think of itself as responsible got my ass up and into the shower, then on the MUNI and here I am. Fortunately, my co-worker and I have agreed upon a day of very little effort, a gradual re-entry into the world of whatever the hell it is that we do.
I’d like to think that the experiences of this holiday, from playing dominoes and drinking eggnog with Jeremy’s parents on Christmas eve, to my moment of dancefloor bliss at DnH, to the stupid-ass discussion that followed, to my abortive attempt to leave earthly bonds only to sink ever more deeply into them, to loving my boy with all to my soul, to my slightly bloody nose today, will serve as guides for the coming year. I feel that I have certainly learned some things, though whether I will find the wherewithal to act upon them is something else entirely.
As I sit here at my desk drinking my non-fat latte and eating my protein chocolate chip breakfast square I can have little doubt that I have left the suspended animation of the holidays and re-entered into the world of the mundane. I had hoped to face this moment with a sense of rest and release, though at best I could describe my current state as irritable and slightly depressed.
The holidays started off well enough with a trip to visit Jeremy’s parents and friends in Seattle. We took off on the morning of the 22nd and spent Christmas there, returning on the 26th. Fortunately I have met Jeremy’s parents before and we all get along well, and this time I also went armed with a potent eggnog recipe that made everyone feel quite merry. On this trip I also met Jeremy’s younger sister, Megan, for the first time, as well as the extended family of his stepmother’s mother, and his mother’s stepmother (yes, it’s all quite complicated). In the former case, as we pulled up to the doublewide in the rural environs of Tacoma I was a little worried, but as soon as we stepped through the door and I spotted an 1836 Springfield rifle hanging above someone’s Union Army discharge papers, I had a conversational opening. After that, the eggnog took effect and all was well.
Going to Seattle has this tendency to activate a strong nesting instinct in both of us; for Jeremy there is of course the association with home, the familiar, and the easy, while both of us are stunned by how much less expensive the housing market is there. The rentals our friends there have would easily run for double the price in the SF market, and prices for single family homes in Tacoma seem to run about $400 a square foot; of course, that is in Tacoma, neighbor to the meth capital of the world in Spannaway, but it is nonetheless striking when you’re used to $1000 a square foot for a tiny condo in San Francisco. We left with a strong conviction that a move to Seattle is probably in our future, but at some extended date years from now when we’re really ready for it; neither of us feels any strong compulsion to leave the track we’ve started upon right now, but would rather see how things play out over the next two years or so.
Coming back to San Francisco I was looking forward to three days of rest and relaxation before Aaron’s NYE party, but things didn’t work out quite as I expected; instead of lazing and loafing I wound up running numerous errands and cleaning the apartment. I had many things in mind to do, and wound up accomplishing about half of them (though I did get my first real haircut in over a year, which at least improved my outer self-image a bit). Almost before I realized it Saturday evening had arrived, and with it Jeremy’s return to DJing at Drunk and Horny.
We had expected a slow evening at DnH, but instead it turned out to be packed. For a change I had a very good time, and even remembered a little bit of what I enjoyed about going out clubbing and dancing – at least, while Jeremy was DJing. This was confused a bit later in the evening when Michael Rodriguez, who had been substituting for Jeff while he was off with Gary on a Mexican sojourn, told Jeremy that he should change it up to “funky and familiar.” This is a bit funny, since months ago Rodriguez and I had had a long conversation about how much better the music was when Jeff wasn’t DJing, and how the whole 70s thing was over, but he seems to have had a DJ pulpit epiphany; after the party, over a rather drunken, stoned, coked-out conversation about DJ philosophy that took place upstairs, he said that his great revelation had come when he was playing some hip-hop and someone asked him if could play “some 70s.” That apparently lit a lightbulb for him, and now he considers himself to be an expert on the night’s vibe. Jeremy’s response to his “funky but familiar” line was to flip him off, which is exactly what I would have done. During that upstairs conversation Jeremy opened his burning question of how his music fit into the vibe of the night. Rodriguez’s response was to try and push him into playing what Jeff plays, while Jeff tried to make a politic, and somewhat backhanded complimentary, argument that there were people who liked what Jeremy played, and people who liked what he played, and that Jeremy had a particularly difficult slot as the opener (though I’ve never heard Jeff suggest that maybe they could switch up some time so Jeremy could have the peak hour). My own take on it is that the quality of the music is probably much more important to Jeremy and I and then anyone else involved, and that that the rest of the crew concerned really don’t respect what Jeremy does (or, less graciously, that they feel threatened by it). In any case, it seems likely that one of Jeremy’s big goals for the new year will be to find more opportunities for DJing where he can get into what he does and feel good about it, rather than trying to appeal the lowest-common-denominator tastes of Castro fags.
Sunday didn’t find us up and about until almost 2PM, so there was little time to pull ourselves together before heading over to Aaron’s at 5. We got a ride over and worked on getting ourselves into a party mood, but Jeremy was still exhausted from the night before. I had promised myself that this party was going to be a chance for me to let go a bit and even be somewhat self-indulgent, and to a degree I followed through on that, chemically speaking, but I never quite got myself into the headspace I was seeking. I had expected the party to be bigger, but instead it turned out to be a clot of my friends, and a clot of furry boys, and, given the general social ineptitude of the latter group, this meant one group of people sitting around the food, and another group playing “guitar hero” on the TV in the living room. I mostly found myself hanging out by myself in the music room, but this was pretty unsatisfying. Finally, around three we got a ride home with DJ Mak, which turned into the most torturous 45 minutes I have even spent in a car. Riding the freeway around Oakland, when you are convinced you are headed in the wrong direction, is no place to be peaking. We finally made it home around 4 and Jeremy and I got to have some nice time together before he finally succumbed, leaving me on my own to come down until about 5.30. This was when things turned especially dark for me, and I came to muse upon the way that certain of my drives tend to lead me into situations where I feel isolated from others, especially when they concern certain aspects of my sexuality. Earlier in the week a friend had confessed a secret meth habit to me, the second such friend in the last month, and this had lead into thoughts about how there is this close association between pleasure and shame for so many of us, that the things that give us pleasure in a primal way are also things that, for whatever reason, fill us with deep shame, and so they lead us into this split life, where we want to enjoy that pleasure but feel that we need to keep it secret from others. In turn we become more inwardly focused and isolated, and this only reinforces the pleasure/shame bond. All these thoughts were circling through my head when I finally laid down on Monday morning, but the one thing that brought me out of it was being able to turn over and snuggle up to Jeremy. As crazy as we both are, there is a way in which he is able to bring me out of myself and give me a ground upon which to stand. If I came away from New Year’s with anything, it was a sense of how much I really am in love with Jeremy, and how desperately I need him to keep me from becoming completely lost in the labyrinth of my own mind.
Monday at noon was not a happy time for us; I had barely slept, and we discovered that Jeremy had left both his cellphone and wallet at Aaron's. The only solution was to get a car and head back over (though in hindsight we could have taken BART as well and saved ourselves both some pain), but this turned out to be the perfect tonic for my mood. The furry boys were just leaving as we arrived, and we wound up drinking beer and having conversation with Aaron, Jody, and their two friends from down the street for a couple hours. We returned home to showers, X-Men 3 (terrible, but just about the right level of mental challenge), and pizza before making an early bedtime.
When the alarm went off at 8AM this morning I had a strong desire to call in sick and just spend the day snuggling up to my boy, especially after a night of dreams that involved numerous anxieties filtered through the lens of my academic experience (I’m failing all my classes, I completely forgot to go to the one on Thursday nights!) including an emotional breakdown in a counselor’s office (nothing is real, nothing is worthwhile, it’s all absurd). But some part of myself that likes to think of itself as responsible got my ass up and into the shower, then on the MUNI and here I am. Fortunately, my co-worker and I have agreed upon a day of very little effort, a gradual re-entry into the world of whatever the hell it is that we do.
I’d like to think that the experiences of this holiday, from playing dominoes and drinking eggnog with Jeremy’s parents on Christmas eve, to my moment of dancefloor bliss at DnH, to the stupid-ass discussion that followed, to my abortive attempt to leave earthly bonds only to sink ever more deeply into them, to loving my boy with all to my soul, to my slightly bloody nose today, will serve as guides for the coming year. I feel that I have certainly learned some things, though whether I will find the wherewithal to act upon them is something else entirely.
