23 June 2004 ~ Gemini Sun, Venus in Cancer, and everything else in Virgo...

Busily working on editing some stuff I wrote the January before last...

I don't know how the hell I manage to WRITE between the lines and still be completely blinded to what it is I'm saying.

Once, I took some of my work to the Writing Center on campus. And yeah, I know I worked there, but I wanted somebody else to look at my own stuff. And this girl, with whom I'd never held a conversation before, read things into my work like a fortune-teller. "How do you know that?" I kept asking. She just blinked and pointed to the pages in front of her. I handed her a packet of pictures. "Can you guess who this one is?" I asked. She got all of them right.

I don't really believe that I'm a writer. I think I'm too stupid to be a writer. I think I just provide excellent typing and grammar skills for some freakish Muse who takes great pleasure in putting me into trances and using my typing fingers for his or her own sick, devious purposes. I'm just not bright enough for this. I wrote this shit over a year and a half ago, and I'm JUST NOW getting it?

Oh, Helena, you are such a nincompoop.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Once, the guy who manages one of the local Denny's asked me: "If you were on a desert island, and you could only have five CDs with you, what CDs would they be. You can have double CDs and box-sets, but not mixes. But I guess soundtracks would be okay. Just not mixes you've made yourself, or that other people have made for you."

"Huh?"

"It's like a personality test. You can tell so much about a person from their answers..."

"Okay... Well..."

My five would be:

Tori Amos -- "Little Earthquakes."
Portishead -- "Dummy."
Low -- "I Could Live in Hope."
Sarah McLachlan -- "Fumbling Toward Ecstasy."
B-52s -- "Cosmic Thing."

The B-52s would have to be on there. I like melancholy and moody music a lot, but there's got to be some kind of balance. Unfortunately, my one and only copy of "Cosmic Thing," which I do actually have with me, has mysteriously stopped playing. The OTHER side of the tape works, but not the "Cosmic Thing" side. I have all of the other CDs except Low. How I managed to leave the house without that, I cannot fathom.

"Why Sarah McLachlan?" asked the Denny's guy.

I kinda shrugged.

You know, even the Portishead one is sort of expendable.

Hell, that Denny's guy was right: these things are really very telling.

* * * * * * * * * * *

On the bus yesterday, I was listening to one of the above-mentioned CDs, when I saw my friend W. outside. I hadn't eaten all day and I felt like I was gonna die, or I might have stood up and yelled out the window. I might have even pressed the buzzer and gotten off the bus to talk to her. I haven't known W. long, and she's got some traits -- and a Barbra Streisand collection -- that make me kind of homicidal, but I really do adore her. But, I thought, I'll see her soon enough.

From behind me, even over the sound of my discman, I heard a commotion. So, I turned the CD off to listen. I'm a terrible eavesdropper. Rather, I'm a very good eavesdropper. It's only terrible if you consider eavesdropping to be morally wrong.

Behind me, these five people were laughing at W.

Loudly.

See, W. is a transgendered person, who is anatomically male, but who frequently dresses in women's clothing. I refer to W. with feminine pronouns. I mean, if you're going to be wearing pink high heels and lipstick, I'm going to call you "she," and "her," whether you have boy parts or not. It seems only fair. And W. doesn't much care one way or the other, as long as you don't call her a faggot. Actually, W. tolerated ME calling her a faggot, but only after it was firmly established that I knew all the words to "I'm The Greatest Star."

The people on the bus laughed and laughed at W. What the fuck was so funny? Yeah, it's a man wearing pink high heels and a frilly little hat. So the fuck what? "That was a MAN!" someone yelled, delighted.

"God, if I were a man trying to dress as a woman, I'd have better taste than THAT!" someone else said.

"These gay people think they're so hot. Jesus."

(It should be pointed out that, since I met W. last month, she has had more dates than I've had in a lifetime... While I personally don't find W. attractive In That Way, an amazing number of people do, and frankly, W. probably IS pretty hot. I just don't have the eyes to see her That Way. In any case, I do think she's awfully cute.)

"I knew this gay guy once. What do you call those ones that, like, think they're girls? And sometimes they get their dicks chopped off?"

Cripes.

I despise ignorant people.

Despise them.

I can even sort of tolerate those people who don't approve of "the gay lifestyle" for religious reasons. I think it's really stupid, but I can deal with that. I CANNOT deal with people who use phrases like, "...get their dicks chopped off," to refer to individuals who are post-operative male-to-female transsexuals. I mean, if you don't know the proper terminology, at least have the decency to look it up. Or at LEAST keep your damned voices down on public transportation.

"I think that is SO UGLY and SICK!" said one of the girls sitting behind me.

"Yeah."

That? THAT is ugly and sick? THAT happens to be a PERSON, and that person happens to be my FRIEND.

W. gave me a tank top and a pair of boxers when I had nothing to wear to bed. W. gossipped with me for endless hours, she smoking cheap cigarettes and telling scandalous stories about Jehovah's Witnesses she had known and loved. I told W. some of my secrets, too. Not the really weird ones, like about the Great Metallic Hell-Bird of North Dakota, but I did tell her a few of the scandalous ones. I have a few of those. Sometimes we asked each other, "does this look okay?" We were close enough to say, "nah, that's fucking ugly." W. met my family and hugged all of them. W. understood the thing about not being able to get a decent pizza on this coast. W. is an oddball, and we don't have a ton of things in common, but we were friends immediately, and I love her as such.

Dammit, these people were talking shit about MY FRIEND.

You don't fucking talk shit about my friends.

I reached into my bookbag for something to stab them with. Not that I was actually going to stab anybody, but it feels better to be holding something sort of sharp. All I found was a pen. One pen. A rather special pen. I put that back.

I debated turning around and yelling at all of them: "You stupid, ignorant shits! That's my FRIEND you're talking about." But I would have had to have gotten off the bus then. Turning back around and sitting down would be SO anti-climactic. I would have had to exit then and there, and I was nowhere near my stop. And it was the last bus of the night.

I could have turned around and calmly said, "do you mind not talking shit about my friends?" But calmness was too good for these fuckers.

And in the end, I did nothing. I sat there and raged until tears came out of my eyes. I felt like somebody had violated me. It takes a LOT for me to call somebody a friend. My friends are family to me, even the weird ones. ESPECIALLY the weird ones. On the date of my birth, Venus was in Cancer, the sun was in Gemini, and damn near everything else was in Virgo. That means, in other words, you don't fuck with my friends. Or I fucking hate you.

...but I couldn't do ANYTHING about it... There was just nothing I could do to make these people understand they were talking about a PERSON, not just some weird faggot in pink high heels. And there wasn't anything I could do to punish them for their ignorance. So, I just gave myself an ulcer trying to contain my anger.

* * * * * * * * * * *

I have so much work to do. And no time left in which to do it.

~Helena*