Yes, the check is in the mail. This, regardless of the fact that the mean old post office lady told me no dogs allowed when I was there to mail my chapbook entry off. I took poor Nola (who was shaking terribly inside the post office with all the strangers anyway) out to the car and went back in solo to wait in line. "You really should have a no animals sign posted at the entrance," I told the mean old lady. "And really, she was not in the post office, she was *in* my arms."

Whatever.

woo-weeeeeeeeeeee

I just did a quick run through my tax form and see I am getting $523 back...I like it...add taxes in the mail to my tomorrow's to-do list.

Why is it that my best intentions this morning have been brushed aside? I was to be in yoga right now and was once again orevented from getting there. Does that mean I am to sit out this entire 6 week session? I think not!! Thursday...focus with me...I need to be in yoga Thursday morning!!

Last night I had to deal with having that damn worm on my laptop. I think I managed to remove it with the assistance of E going into the registry for me as that is something I will never be brave enough to do on my own. Let's just all keep our fingers crossed.

I have to focus on getting everything done for the O'hara chapbook competition which has a Feb 1 deadline(not Feb 28 as I was thinking). My goal is to get it into the mail tomorrow actually, so I guess that means no going to the cafe in the morning. I am going to take a copy to work and maaybe work on it today a little so the cafe might still happen. We will just have to see how it goes.

Today begins a new yoga session and since I have not gone but once in the last 5 weeks(what the hell is up with that, somebody please tell me), I am letting it be a new beginning. Time to get my ass into the shower.

I have a few clients I maintain on the side, 4 families, for the most part who have a monthly in-home visit from me, their own personal hair artist. Last night, one of them decided I needed a 25% raise. May that be the beginning of a trend that follows through all around. If only JCP would do the salary raise 25%. What a difference that would make!!

I added a few new links to my daily reads on the left. I found them through the dish link, from a link where Kristie takes over another site for the day. It is all part of her book promotional stuff, which I am happy to say, EP will somehow be a part of. We are publishing a piece of her work in the next issue and reviewing the book, too.

Not a whole lot else going on around here lately. Work is the same old crap, though I did tweak my schedule again so I will no longer have to work any Sundays. This means an 11 hour Monday, but it will be worth it to just be there 4 days a week.

There is some sort of minifunk rolling around, but nothing which is in any way prohibitive. Mostly I have not slept well in weeks and it is making me crabby and not wanting to go out much. Unfortunately it is right at a time when E wants to go out more, but we are working through that. I would like to see her actually going to events on her own when it is something she really wants to do, but that has not happened yet.

I think I might send the John Bologna piece to my writer's list for critique. Maybe.

I was just informed that if you google 'lesbian booklist' my booklist comes up first. I'm number one!! When I went to look at the list I saw that I am the only personal list. One other mention is from pentalk, a lesbian blogger who links my booklist. How cool is that?? All the other google responses are either glbt organizations or libraries or retail outlets or porn links.

I am number one!!!!

Sunday morning and I have to go to work today. Oh, how I hate that. I need to consider the idea of working Monday or Friday 8-7 whuch would eliminate the need to work Sunday to maintain the 35 hour requirement for benefits eligibility. I have one old client who I really like who I have to work Sunday for and she comes in abot once every two months. I know I could do that but I have to consider which day I want to be 11 hours. It would likely be better to do that at the beginning of the week rather than the end.

I wish I could go back to bed this morning.

My mother just informed me that the golden girls, that would be her and her sisters, ages 58, 71, and 79, are going to Florida for a few weeks...no real plans, just driving down to "Santa Marie Island on the west coast and finding a condo".

Go Mom!!

In further consideration of John Bologna, I realized that the previous entry, Jan 12, is somewhat mis-stated. I did not live next door when John lived in my ex's apartment. That said, the following is what I wrote about him yesterday at the cafe. I am not sure if it is finished or not, but it is what it is.


John Bologna


The only recollection I have as an adult of being truly lonely, was realized when I was dating John Bologna. John was an Olympic level power lifter turned bobsledder. For those not in the know, that means his arms did not hang gracefully at his side because his biceps were as big as, if not bigger than his thighs, and his chest was larger than his waist or hips or anywhere else. These two things being on the same plane made his shape that of an extremely exaggerated inverted pyramid. His breath would quicken any time he moved simply because he carried such an excess of upper body weight.

His naturally curly, somewhat thin hair with its receding hairline gave him the appearance of having a large forehead, and this brought to mind a comparison to neanderthal man, not one my friends or I ever shared with John, though it was so obvious, I cannot imagine he had never heard it. When he walked, his gait was very deliberate, a pace hard to synchronize my own with, but we rarely walked anywhere together so this was hardly a problem. He was also very nasal-voiced. I mean all the time, though thankfully not high pitched, just always sounding like he-with-the-pinched-off-nose.

This all makes him sound rather unattractive, but remember, he was a world class athlete, and for extra cash, he was a bouncer at the local hot spot which made him something of a catch back in the day. Also, if you haven’t figured it out by now, he had a big one, and he knew how to use and also that it was not always necessary to use it. He was multi-talented in the sack. He loved to eat pussy, quite literally for hours at a time, and fortunately for me, he frequently desired mine.

The obvious season for bobsledders is winter, but Lake Placid being a world class training facility town, the bobsledders are pretty much there year round. I met John at Mud Puddles when he started working there as a bouncer. I was part of a group of friends who went there regularly several nights a week, part of the locals crowd. By this point I had been going there for at least two or three years, and like Cheers, everybody knew my name.

I had to work on John for a few weeks, flirting on overdrive. I was in hyper-tease mode around him, and was trying to decide if I wanted to date him or not. He was at times, rather dull. This did little to influence me in either direction at the time. I had a propensity for athletes at the time, and that was the primary consideration. Bobsledders in particular, have such a finely sculpted physique, bulk where you want it for hanging on.

One night after about three weeks of rather suggestive conversation between us, I was telling John how I wanted him to sink back into his couch and get nice and comfortable while I hiked up my mini skirt to reveal my pantyless ass so I could straddle his lap and grind away riding him ‘til neither of us could move. At that, he finally leaned in and kissed me. I mean he really kissed me. That might have been the best kiss I had ever been given up until that point. It is certainly marked as the best kiss ever from a man. Our kissing went on long enough for him to pull me close, close enough for me to feel his hardening cock while he felt my ass to see if I was indeed pantyless. Of course, no false advertising, I was.

I went home with John that night, and as promised, pushed him back onto his couch and proceeded to fuck his brains out til dawn. His fucking, when he was on top, was very mechanical, like he was doing very purposeful push-ups. It was an uninspired technique, but his cock was so big, it was his way of maintaining enough control so as to not hurt me. Also, it kept his bulk from smothering me. I can’t fathom being able to breathe had his chest collapsed on top of me. This push-up technique led us to a pattern of me riding him or him eating my loveliness with little variation. Do what you do and like best and do it with vigor, that was an unspoken model for our relationship.

At dawn, John got up to take a shower and I dozed off for a few moments. Soon enough, John’s fresh, clean self was kneeling on the floor beside the couch raising my legs over his shoulders pulling my pussy to his mouth. I lay like that for at least an hour while John indulged in my wetness. It was during this time that I realized that John lived in my ex-boyfriend’s apartment, not just my ex, but my son’s father. This struck me as odd, and it was an inopportune time to laugh, but I was suddenly overcome with a fit of giggles. This only inspired John to double his efforts and soon enough he was drinking in the fruits of his labors and I was again not able to move.

John made me breakfast after this and we sat and discussed what we would be doing the rest of our days. He had a heavy training day and then work, and I had work and then dinner plans with my friends. John told me he would like to see me again and I agreed, so we made plans to hook up again the next day or so. It was equally definite and vague.

We went on like this for quite some time. I would go out with my friends, and quite often, I would go home with John. He was becoming something regular, but there was no talk of it being a relationship. We did nothing together beyond sex, and clearly our relationship was more of a convenient booty call. There was no sense of us being a couple. It was certainly a casual relationship, John had introduced me to the world of casual sex and he never mentioned disappointment, nor did he exhibit any signs of jealousy if I decided to see or go home with someone else.

I remember seeing him last on July 2nd, 1986. It was a Wednesday night and we left the club and walked around the corner to my apartment. He told me he did not want anything for himself that night, but he wanted to eat my pussy, inducing multiple orgasms to insure for me a good night’s sleep, and that he would then quietly let himself out. I was fine with this.

When I woke up Thursday morning, there was a note on the counter from John. He wanted me to come by on my way to work for a few minutes and said he had something to discuss with me. I allowed an extra hour and stopped by his place on my way to work. When John invited me in, I pushed him back onto the couch and climbed onto him straddling his lap and kissed him hard. He gently lifted me off and said really, all he wanted was to talk.

This did not really alert me to anything out of the ordinary because we often got together just for tea and biscuits, though not as often as just to fuck. John had a serious I-don’t-know-how-to-get-this-conversation-started look on his face. I told him flat out that if the sex was over, the sex was over, not really a big deal as he was easily enough replaced. He might even provide me a reference. I was joking to lighten the mood a little. No, that was not quite what was on his mind.
“Just say it,” I told him.

“Well,” he began with something of a stammer, “I still want to keep seeing you, but my girlfriend will be in town for the holiday weekend. She will be hanging around the club. She will be staying with me and would hear if you left any messages.” He was obviously referring to messages I had left him when I really wanted to fuck him and he was training or otherwise not at home. They were somewhat explicit, much like an erotica audio file.

You have a girlfriend. This was more of a statement than a question. I was letting it sink in. The obvious implication was that she was somehow more or better than me. I just did not like that.

“Why in seven months have you never mentioned her?”

His explanation was along the lines of not wanting to complicate things. It seemed to him we had a tacit agreement that ours was a casual relationship with no strings and that it seemed to be going well enough without complicating it with too much information.

I just got up to leave and when he asked if I would be keeping this confidence, my only response was that I just did not know. My general instinct was that my problem was not with her, and there was no cause to involve her as she did not live nearby, but I just did not know.

I went on to work, and made it clear that I was not feeling well. The office manager, Jan, was a friend of mine and she called around and found a replacement for me so I just worked about an hour. I walked home and replayed the conversation with John again and again. I suppose I was in shock to some degree, but I really did feel sick to my stomach. It wasn’t jealousy, that much was clear.

When I got home, I made sure the answering machine was on and I pulled closed the drapes. The darkness was instantly a comfort and I fell to the bed and began sobbing. Soon enough I was crying full out trying to rid my self of the awful way I felt. The only thing I could think might help would be to wash away the tears with a cold shower. I was curled up on the shower floor, water running icy cold, in the dark, when someone turned off the water. It was Jan, my friend from work, having used her emergency key because I did not answer the door when she was pounding away. She wanted to be sure I was okay, that I did not need to go to the doctor.

She found me my robe and put on some water for tea and then we sat and I related the whole story to her. I still did not really know what I was feeling, and after a moment, Jan labeled it for me. “Discarded,” she said simply in a soft voice. “And lonely.”

In an instant, that was it. I began to feel a little better almost immediately. Then I began to really consider loneliness. I felt lonely for a while after that. Casual sex became something rather empty and less sought after. Though I did not at all consider myself lesbian or bi, I had been in love with Jan for some time and this episode with John led eventually to things heating up with her, but that is a story for another day.

I am off to Cafe Artiste to write some more thoughts about John as mentioned in the last entry...wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee...

Recently something made me think of John Bologna. John was an olympic level power lifter turned bobsledder who I met whan I was 21 or 22. He lived in the apartment that mine looked into from the building next door. The apartment he lived in was previously inhabited by Duffer, my oldesr son's father who I was with for nearly three years, but who I had left when my son was just three months old. There was a certain irony to John living in the same apartment.

E and I were discussing being single and how life might be should circumstances lead us to a return to that. It was a what if conversation, and it was definitely more about the lesbian dating scene than about either of us having any designs on being single again. Somehow the discussion turned to how lonely it might be to find oneself single in one's 40s. It memtally took me in that instant to the only time I have truly felt lonely.

more later...

We went last night to a poetry reading/open mic event at Hollywood, a gay owned coffee house. Donna Garrett was the featured reader and she promised an evening of erotic poetry and she delivered rather nicely. I left with her chapbook and an email contact to do a feature on her for EP. I think we will review her book and meet up with her again for a pic and some interview questions as she has been doing this, my guess, for quite a while. She was very engaging and I am glad I went, though I should have known to be prepared to read some work. My friend Lori had let me know about the event in a quick email and it did not occur to me to read. We sat with Lori and a few of her friends so we also met a few other women.

After the reading at hollywood, we then went to get some food at MoMong. We ordered the crab claws, shrimp dumplings, and phu quac, all tres yummy. Having a good parking space there, we went across the street to shoot pool for a bit at Slick Willie's pool hall. They have recently done a remodel and we have to get a better feel for the 'new' place. It seems as if it might be a little more hetero than before, but I suppose I have to consider how long it has been since we have been there on a Friday night.

We shot pool from about 930 til near midnight and I think I drank 6 or 7 beers while we were there and also did a few shots. They were 2+ ounces each and tasted like lemonade, a combination of bourbon, peach schnapps and sour mix. I had two of those. Then my third shot was a raspberry kamikaze...

When we arrivedm the energy, as I mentioned, was very hetero. After about an hour or so, a table near us was occupied by 4 very butch dykes, at least 2 of whom were a couple. Once I had seen them, I got a little more aggressive in kissing E in an effort to run off the family playing to our left. Not that I really wanted to run them off, but I was looking for a shift in the energy of the place, which happened soon enough.

We had put a couple of dollars in the juke box soon after we arrived, and as it happened, the family to the left was ready to call it enough, and then our songs came on. We were then in the groove, of coursem the shots had all been consumed by this time.

As our songs ended, we decided to stop across the way at the lesbian mega bar. We entered through Chances, which is a local's type energy and got a beer there. Then we headed to the middle bar, The G Spot, formerly called The In Between. The music played there is often tweaked here and there to conform to the crown, and maybe they even offer a schedule of sorts. We just do not go often enough to know what will be playing when. Last night it was heavy duty house and we were just surveying the crown. I was surprised to see that Lori had turned up on her own. She joined us and we danced away the next hour or so shakin' some mighty fine ass if I do say so myself.

We left there before 2, perhaps not long before 2, but definitely before. Then it was home to allow E to fulfill her resolution aspirations.

Still hanging in there at the moment, having slept in a little, we went out to lunch at Dacapo, a lesbian owned( I think) cafe, and then it was over to Beth and Irina's for them to get their hair done and to shoot some pool.

E has gone to drop her son at the movies and I have dinner going, roasted mixed veggies and some tilapia...mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...

What is up with my computer having difficulty finding blogger.com at 3 a.m.? At least it did eventually find it, I suppose.

We took the new EP to Meteor tonight for the Professional Women's Networking Happy Hour (read that as mostly upscal lesbian night at one of the more posh boy bars) and were pleasantly surprised to see our friends Beth, Irina, Mimi, Gayle, Pam, and two of our contributors Jenny and Cara, as well as a host of other lessssssssssssssbians. It was a treat to finally meet Cara as she has been a contributor for a while now.

I was awakened by Nola who might have had ideas about going outside until I opened the back door to rain...she did a prompt u-turn and went back to bed. Now here I am wide awake...fucker...

It was so nice to go to bed last night knowing I did not have to get up this morning for anything. So many days I feel like I have just too much to do by just having to get out of bed at a certain time for work, or yoga, or anything, really. My body really does best when I let it rise when it wants to. That was one of the luxuries of taking the 12-9 work schedule.

This week begins Monday and Friday as 8-4 hours. That might be a chore, but in the long run I can see it better to be home earlier those days. I just have to get into the flow of the schedule.

Oh, how I hate feeling like I have to get my shit together. Of course, I feel my shit is together for the most part, and I have some sinus crud issues currently, but in general I have been feeling smething less than focused.

I have been able to get stuff together for the new issue ofEmerald Pillows, but I have been less than inspired. E is instituting a redesign of the website so that has inspired me some, but I am feeling rather ambivalent about it all. I think it has mostly to do with not having unlimited free time to pursue it as I did when we started it. Still, it rolls along mostly effortlessly.

I am more ambivalent about my women's group. I am committed to seeing it through, yet I at times have to question my place there. At best I see it as something of a documentarian. I will have to be sure that is a word, I suppose, but it seems to capture what I feel my role is. I have been chronicleing my involvement with Hitaji and I will continue to do so. Could be it remains for my eyes only. Just not sure yet.

It is a new year and I really want to focus on new goals...I am just...not...there...yet...

"All is quiet, on New Year's Day..."

I have to work early this morning so I am up, having gone to bed around 10 or so. After Y2K, New Year's always seems so anticlimactic.

Dave and Buster's was fun yesterday, but they have retired a few of the games I liked, so there is really just one left to enjoy which is Chips Away. Oh, there is the derby, too. That was fun. I used some of my points and got a rice steamer and a couple of stuffed animals for Nola, as well as a cute grrl partly beaded purse.Maybe I will even take that to work today.It has an animated scene on it and then is hilighted with beads and sequins. They were a new item in prize redemption just put out yesterday so I was meant to have one.

Must get ready for work.