Good morning. Hello. How are you? #1010
Back from Boston, Godflesh, Ear plugs vs covid masks, the Middle East Downstairs insane CO2 levels, Man Ray thoughts, Jane is sick, I am busy, chores fail
Good morning! Hello! Now, let’s be fair and say that it is, at this second, still morning, technically. It is 11:26AM. However, given the absolute wall of work and insanity that my day is already, I can absolutely, 100% guarantee you that there is no way in hell this thing is going out in the morning, unless you live on the West Coast.
It seems that Jane probably has pink eye. Charming. I am still in quarantine so IT WAS NOT MY FAULT. We all know whose fault it was. I am looking at you, cesspool of germs, modern American schooling. Look, I am no fan of the whackjob christian fundamentalists trying to kill our schools, and I am definitely not a “parents rights” lunatic — quite the opposite. I share views with the idealistic young Hillary Clinton who figured kids should have rights. I’m probably further in that direction than her, actually. Let ‘em vote at 10. Emancipate them at 10. Parents are mostly poison (to be clear, I loved my parents and they did a great job). I read this article yesterday about some dude who’s spent like 40 years fighting public schools and trying to get all that sweet, sweet education money funneled to christian parents, and he’s all like “secular humanism is a religion they are teaching a religion,” which is of course absolute bunk, but then he’s like “I’m against schools indulging kids in their trans predillictions because that is actually harming the kids,” and it’s all just semantics. The modern conservative movement preys on relativism, the same relativism that they decry. Really is such a monumental exercise in hypocrasy.
Woah I lost track of things there. I was gonna say, you know, they’re whackjobs, and I’m not them, but I also wish American Schools could be profoundly different. Except, you know, better. Good ventilation. A resolution on the gifted situation. Better special needs classes. More individuality. Decent salaries. Sanitation. A lack of typos.
Right. So. Jane is sick. I am swamped at work. I am still quarantining. Which, I mean, is horrible for my family but also thank god because I have enough time, just, to get everything done.
Where did I leave off. Oh right. So Friday I spent all day getting the new apartment into better shape, and I did a pretty good job. Bathroom, kitchen and a single bedroom are functional. Place has AC. You can sleep. It’s comfy.
I am shocked Somerville does not have municipal recycling oh, man, liberal New England you disappoint me.
Then I went to see Godflesh with Emily Taylor. We saw Jon Whitney there, that was great. The CO2 levels in the Middle East Downstairs were the absolute highest I have ever seen, anywhere, in the entire history of the pandemic: 4,800+. There was an HVAC vent blowing on Emily and I and I thought “oh, the CO2 meter has been in my pocket, I will hold it up to that nice, fresh, HVAC vent and the number will go down.” Lol, nope. It went up. There were maybe four people at that packed venue in a mask. Myself included, natch.
And then, I had forgotten how fucking long it takes for a band to turn over at the Middle East, really, Boston in general. Bowery Presents, most of NYC, and certainly Cats Cradle down here all have super fast band turnaround. It was maybe 40 minutes between bands. So annoying. Doors at 7, two openers, one was a DJ, main band didn’t go on till 10:30. Come the fuck on. There were obvious sound problems during Godflesh’s set — I mean I like noise rock but I can tell the difference between noise rock feedback and feedback feedbacks. And they finally got it fixed about 30 minutes into the set. By that time Emily was out of there because she needed to go home and change before Man Ray but also the CO2 was 4,800+, and she was getting tired, like you do, in shitty air.
A thing I realized is that everyone there was wearing earplugs. These people. They will endure the micro-hassle of a measure to protect their hearing — the loss of which will not kill them — but not wear a mask. Not even during a 109db noise rock show in a room with 4,800+ CO2 levels, too loud for them to talk to anyone. Zero drawback to the mask, but… nope. No one. Humans are so fucking weird.
And then Sean showed up, had a single drink and we went to Man Ray for the Fetish night, which was as weird as Wednesday. Whole new set of Miss Allens and tons of young fetish people and I remember first going to Man Ray, 18 and knowing no one, and thinking about how many gorgeous age appropriate people there were there, and it’s still true for some new 18 year old! And for a 50 year old! It is bonkers! I spent most of the night at Terrys bar with fellow old people including an old gay friend who has not age, gave me shit for being a breeder, and was just exactly the same, it was super fun. I thought about how pioneering those Man Ray trans kids were thirty years ago, transitioning in the early 90’s. I thought about how much Man Ray must have meant to them. I thought about how when I was young there, I was looking for love, and drama, and there were all these old people in the corner just shooting the shit. And now I am an old person in the corner shooting the shit. Hakuna Matata.
Then I passed out, woke up, airport, flew home (RDU Balloons! Yes!), only an hour late, to my quarantine home, to find that the concrete for the greenhouse wall has been laid. Exciting. Jane and Emma came over and wrote their name in the concrete. They left and I did my best to get chores done but it was really a headspace reset, mostly writing down all the chores I was going to do on Sunday. I was so excited about it. I spent the evening alone catching up on a week’s worth of YouTube and it was divine. Then bed, and up and atem at 6:30 to get a strart on the day’s chores.
…Except I felt like absolute ass, hugely nauseus. Probably just four days of drinking and eating crap, but it made doing any chores basically impossible. I got the Walmart run in, packed up the recycling but couldn’t take it in, watered the garden, and fixed the gate issues because the gate got stuck open all night one night and the deer ate all my strawberries and I am pissed. Did laundry. Checked vitals at work and their bank. Paid some bills. Unpacked my mail, moved some stuff around.
But I felt like ass so I went back to bed and napped three hours. It helped. Felt much better. Spent the rest of the day watching Youtube tutorials and reading articles.
This morning Emma did not bring Jane to school — the school is calling me leaving stern messages about how I have to tell them why as if a 5 year-old is playing hooky or something — and I had to go to a meeting I had set up ages ago to be right after I dropped off Jane at school at a nearby breakfast place with a work consultant who was passing through town and so I just had a two and a half hour meeting with him and it was great. Then I finally dropped off the recycling, went to Walmart, again, for some medicine for Jane. They were playing “De Do Do Do De Da Da Da” by the Police really loud so at one point in 2023, the words “ties me up and rapes me” were sung very loudly across a rural North Carolina Walmart parking lot and I feel like someone in their programming department could maybe think that one through a bit better.
Oh and I left my Azelastine in Boston so I gotta go out again, to two different pharmacies, to get my medicine and more medicine for Jane.
MONDAYS.
Got playlist for you in honor of Man Ray. Not that they played any of this. Except Rakim. That ruled.
Missed you guys. Hope I’m back in the saddle by tomorrow. Xoxo gossip girl.