Maura's Illuminated Manuscript

I never thought I would unironically throw the horns, but I did last night at a benefit for the Satanic Temple at Substation. The ST is the organization that stands up for separation of church & state with great panache by inserting themselves into, say, prayers at high school football games (here in the Puget Sound area) and putting up goaty statues alongside the Ten Commandments on public property (Oklahoma, as I recall).

I gotta love that, so of course I showed, courtesy of R. I knew a few of the performers, including a lovely friend of Diminutive's. But the Satanist MCs said, "We're not promoters," and that was painfully evident during a couple of the interpretive dance numbers - really. However, the tunes live & otherwise were good, the black clad crowd had fun, and everyone threw the horns during the little ceremonial bit at the beginning.

Oh, and as surprisingly as sunrise, Eliza Gauger from Friday night was there with copies of her book. I saw her just minutes after I'd excitedly told R about it.

---

I have my real name on my Twitter profile, and as a result the Hubbell Trading Post followed me. I'll save you the trouble of googling it: it's a trading post at Ganado, AZ on the Navajo reservation and, at least formerly, several satellite posts. It was founded by a cousin of my great grandfather's, and my great grandfather and my grandfather and their families lived and worked at several of the trading posts at various points in their lives.

In 1965, shortly before she died and before I was born, my great grandmother Penny wrote her life story, fifty-seven neatly typed pages. Most of it deals with life at the trading posts. I offered a copy to the Hubbell Trading Post and they accepted it. I've got it ready to mail, with a fair warning about the racist bits - I re-read it yesterday - plus a few stories about my grandfather that Penny didn't write about.

---

From the weekly phone call with Mom, a bit of subversion from her. First, some background: my Evil Sister has moved to Texas, leaving my niece E behind to get the resident's break on college tuition. Mom had a picture of me - the real, female me - out where where E could see it. Mom asked E if she knew who that was, and she said no. Mom gave her the straight dope. E looked very closely at the picture, and when Mom said I was living as a woman, E said, "Good for her." So at last I have verification that the cat is out of the bag.

I'm amused, and I don't blame E a bit if she doesn't really give a damn: Mom reminded me that she was in a car accident a few weeks ago, for which she's struggling to pay bills, and she starts college in a couple of weeks. And of course I'm proud of my mother. I don't even care what her motivation was. A straight woman of nearly eighty from a small town in the Blue Ridge mountains just struck a blow for trans acceptance, and that is pretty nifty.

I went to the March for Truth Saturday morning. There weren't as few of us as I'd feared - maybe a thousand - but not as many as I'd hoped. I don't think that march was very well promoted. Over the course of the day I had to explain that it had happened and what it was about.

As we walked down Pine street, some skinny dude in a suspicious said something like, "All these people don't work for a living."
I looked at him through my shades. "It's Saturday." I wish I'd made that up, but I'm glad I didn't have to.
I think he said something about blah blah blah homosexuality - I was wearing my Pride jewelry & pussy hat - but I didn't hear him and I didn't care to.

There was a small but excellent marching band that was with us all the way from Cal Anderson Park to the Seattle Center. I gave my compliments to the glockenspiel player.

---

My hair is now bluish black, courtesy of Locks of Fury, as always. I love it!

I went to the Sin night at Kremwerk in my marching clothes to show off my new hair, and I must say, the eye & ear candy were first rate. I have of course informed the Tickler, who seems excited. Sadly, I forgot to close my tab and therefore left my debit card there. I didn't drink too much, I promise. I haven't been able to sleep worth a damn the last few days, though, for which I blame the approach of summer. Maybe I need to dig out my bondage sleeping mask.

I hadn't been to the Flammable night at Re-bar in at least a couple of years until last night. It was good to see that it (mostly) hadn't changed.

• Sweet house grooves - check.
• B-boys - check.
• Lots of casually dressed gay boys - check.
• At least two other apparent dykes - check.
• People with silly things on their heads - check. Really. This is a regular thing at Re-bar, and I love it.
• Gorgeous young women in platform boots - check? This is not a regular thing. Yes, of course I talked to them. They were perfectly charming.
• Gigantic buildings looming over Re-bar and the adjacent shops - aieee! Please don't let the developers eat the rest of the 1100 block of Howell. At least the high rises that are there occupy what used to be parking lots, which I'm OK with.

But first: My company has a tradition whereby everybody dresses up the day before Thanksgiving. Since this year has destroyed the last of my fucks, I wore one of my favorite cold weather club outfits to work: long, silvery grey skirt; violet corset; black velvet top with dolmen sleeves.

The real action, though, was yesterday. For the first time ever, I hosted a Thanksgiving dinner. It was also the first time I roasted a turkey, and unfortunately you could tell: I remembered to add water, but I forgot to baste it even though I'd carefully placed the butter next to the stove for that purpose¹. Those breasts were pretty dry, but everyone said the legs were a-OK. Also by me: fresh cranberry sauce - so easy, so tasty - and fancy kale & farro salad using a PCC's Methow Valley recipe².

It's a good thing there were only six of us, and not seven as had looked possible at one point. I only have half a dozen each of dinner & luncheon plates. I don't have enough chairs, but I managed to bum one off Ex in advance³. My lake place is a one-bedroom apartment of under 600 square feet, so it was, as real estate agents say, cosy. Nevertheless, I had a fabulous time, and I think everyone else did too.

Do I still miss the bigger Goth Thanksgivings of yore? Wayell, yes, but that isn't to say that last night's guests aren't lovely people. If my living space were about double its actual size I could maybe fit the whole gang in here. Sadly, that is not to be for now.

Oh yeah: ravey playlist because hey, it's me. If this event recurs I should call it the Graver Spinoff Thanksgiving.

Speaking of ravey, I prodded Funny Lady into doing her usual post-Thanksgiving dancing at Neighbours, the skeeviest gay bar in Seattle. Turnout wasn't great - last minute, election funk, foul weather, whatever - and there were no hot queer makeouts this time, but seeing Funny Lady is always a joy. And I did get to meet a couple of new (to me) queer ladies. For perhaps the first time ever, the music at Neighbours wasn't lowest common denominator; it actually didn't suck. All of us were amazed!



¹I made sure to get sufficient quality & quantity of wine. That may have had something to do with it.
²I did not succeed brilliantly in getting Goths to eat their vegetables. Harrumph. More fabulous salad for me, thank you very much, plus a ton of chopped greens to put in a scramble or something.
³She & m'boy are in California right now with her family. I'm a little disappointed that I didn't get to introduce him to my friends and teach him how to make cranberry sauce.

The work week was harrowing enough that I had a serious social jones despite the predicted foul weather all weekend. After a brief but happy stop at ionan & J's - fashionista J is giving me ideas about what to wear to my 50th birthday party in 15 months - I hit the Merc, somewhat underdressed for the theme they had going, but still wearing something decently Victorian-esque*. I met a lady. She's almost exactly my age. She's cute. She's OK with snogging girls**. I shall call her Gnome for a reason known only to me. We have a mutual friend. She asked for my number. I think I shall pursue this.

I went to the party for the Polegasm and Conception theme camps last night because Grenade invited me and I (ahem) really wanted to see her again. It was a lovely little Burner party in a venue that had somehow escaped my notice: the Fremont Abbey, a former church that is now a performing art and events space. Alas, I ran out of gas before midnight and jumped on a 5 home, only to find out that Grenade had arrived shortly after I left. Murphy's Law, ne?

Today: enough sleep, a 90-minute zappy session that got everything***, and laundry of course.



*Long black steampunky skirt from Mishu, fitted black high-collared blouse from cupcake_goth? It was, to tell you the truth, the same thing I wore to work on Tuesday. I kept telling people that was a secret.
**And by girls I mean yours truly. Duh.
***Yay!

Things I've done to prepare for Burning Man this weekend:

• Relearn how to pitch check my tent - ✓
• Inflate & deflate my air mattress to check for leaks - ✓
• Inflate & deflate all spare bike tubes - ✓
• Hit a yard sale hosted by the youngest woman I've ever dated, buy a leotard, and mutilate it for a top - ✓
• Take in a couple of my slutty little skirts because I've lost weight since I last wore them - ✓
• Hit Trendy Wendy for more tops & fishnets - ✓

To do: stitch EL wire to playa coat, and that'll be the last crafty bit I need to do.

Went dancing alone last night (All my ladies are either out of town or engaging in threesomes without me. *Sniffle*!) at the Monkey Loft. Tip top tunes courtesy of Riz and other locals. Met a cute, diminutive woman in a Trilby who acted as is she were rollin' hard. It was too dark for me to see her pupils. Talk about Burning Man prep.

---

My son is back in my apartment. I thought I had to pick him up at work tonight, so I texted him yesterday to ask when he needed me there. He didn't answer, natch. Imagine my surprise when he showed up about an hour before I was planning on leaving. He'd texted me about half an hour earlier, which I didn't hear. He says I'm just as bad about not checking texts as he is.

No jury would convict me. At least this time he told me I didn't need to drive before I started driving, which represents progress, believe it or not.

---

I finally got around to watching Wild at Heart. Lynch does a Hollywood movie, as only he could. It made me yearn for the young Laura Dern a simpler time when silly freakiness & grossout could be seen as revolutionary, and could even actually change a few things for the better. You want freaky? Dern and I are about the same age.

TIL Yesterday I learned: what the gozinta & gozouta for map reduce jobs looks like. Yeah, welcome to 2003, but I finally needed to know it. The long-dormant hardware weenie in me wants to hit it with a big content-addressable memory.

Also, in Java land, you can run a web site from a jar (a UNIX tar archive in drag, for you more normal people) that contains your static content. Am I crazy, or is this, like so many technologies from the Java community, a big pile of nope aimed at a pointless design goal*?

---

M'boy is with me this weekend because his mother wanted freedom for her birthday, but nevertheless I had a brief jaunt at Substation last night. I figured Pezzner** would be on too late for me - I'd promised the Wendling I'd be back by 0130 - but I was pleasantly surprised that I got to catch his whole sweet set and still keep my promise. Crowd: kinda hippy, kinda househead faithful. I bought 3D-printed earrings from a better-than-usual vendor. I refrained from talking to the tall cute blonde woman in the apparently leather swing dress because she was all over her skinny, geeky-lookin' dude of a date.



*Platform independence. Linux killed it.
**Formerly half of local glitchy duo Jacob London, if you'll recall. He's gotten a respectable amount of national exposure.

I took yesterday off for circumflatulation, but was sabotaged by a faraway anonymous douchebag who didn't return the rental equipment I needed¹. Then we had a major network outage at work, and despite my technically taking the day off, I helped deal with it because self-preservation.

So you can imagine my relief at getting dressed to dance² and getting picked up by the Tickler for bougie Mexican just up the ridge from my place, girly drinks, tales of the Tickler's freaky exploits at Frolicon, and a lovely walk up & down Greenwood Ave. I'm pretty sure I've convinced her that Phinney is phabulous.

Then dancing at Substation. Righteous groove was had. It was a Uniting Souls³ night, and I saw people there in Dirtybird (SF) t-shirts. Wonderful things about queer dates:

• You can be those tacky girls who make out and do mean things to each other on the dance floor.
• You can flash your bethonged butt at your date in the bathroom, no problem.
• You can be dirty old women together and ogle the cute girl in the tall boots & taller feather headdress, or the insanely hot tall, young Gothy brunette with the sexy dance moves. We followed her as she went outside to cool off at least once. "You think she knows we're checking her out?" asked the Tickler. "She must," I said.

No dirty hippies this time⁴, for which the Tickler was even more grateful than I was.

Postscript: This morning was one of the very few mornings when my son was awake and dressed before I even rolled out of bed. He got treated to the site of me shuffling to the bathroom in my usual t-shirt and the aforementioned thong underwear. When asked, though, he said he wasn't traumatized. Whew. No, that happened a few days ago when I stepped outside the bathroom naked to turn the light on. Sorry, kiddo. Darn Seattle buildings and their placement of bathroom light switches.



¹This is part of the motivation for my head-scratching about what to do with the spoils of my divorce.
²SFDs: '60s-esque psychedelic print skater dress from Zulily, gladiator sandals, all MAC makeup. Gold-toned jewelry to match the dress & sandals.
³Dude in charge: Ramiro Gutierrez.
⁴Unlike staxxy, when I say "dirty hippies", I mean actual human dirty hippies who smell bad.

Going to one of Ramiro's nights at Substation with the Tickler was rather lovely. I got the time wrong, so we had some nibbles & drinks at the Blue Glass first, then got some groove on. Some hippies, some hoopers, some vendors, no skeevy dudes - OK, one mildly skeevy dude while I was ordering drinks, but I could say to the Tickler, "Quick! I need to make out in self defense!" And it happened. And we were good girls in that we confined our makeouts to the edge of the dance floor, which is classier than I've (ahem) been in the past. We shall be doing that again, oh yes.

I didn't turn out the light until 0415 Sunday. Last night I slept from 1945 to 0245. I spent the small hours of this morning doing random stuff in an attempt to make myself go back to sleep. I guess that's one way to adjust to the time change.

We had big wind yesterday, and I lost power from 1600 to 2000 along with, it seemed, a lot of my friends in the north & south ends. How windy was it? So windy that WaSDoT had to open the draw span on the soon-to-be-replaced 520 bridge. Construction narrowed I-90 eastbound to one lane, and I-5 was hopeless both downtown and at the northern I-405 interchange, so I didn't drive out to see my son last night as is usual on Sundays. The lovely cherry trees across from my bedroom window lost a huge limb; biking around Green Lake may be an obstacle course for a few days. Winter and that bridge are delivering one last "fuck you" before we're done with them both.

Fun fact: I seem to be more punctual than, well, every other queer woman I know. Maybe I should be dating military brats.

Went to the Siberian Siren's round-numbered birthday shenanigans at Witness last night. She wearing an unusually subdued knee length black dress. She seemed genuinely a little bummed about being "old". Oh please, sweetie, was what I essentially told her. Bonus: I got to meet her brother, who's pretty much exactly as I would have expected, only cuter. I was about to tell him how she & I met, when this happened:

SS: I try to scandalize my brother...
SW: [rubs hands together]
SS: ...as little as possible.
SW: Aww.
SSBro: There are some things about my sister that I don't want to know.
SW: You speak for my sister.

Before the SS had even invited me to her party, though, I'd bought a ticket to see Moby at Neumo's for a KEXP benefit. For those of you who don't know, he was one of the gods of the New York rave scene in the late '80s & '90s, and he's been active ever since despite a couple of bouts with substance abuse.

Moby decided to "go hard", and he brought it in the grandest old school style. I wish there'd been room enough to dance, but you know Moby's going to pack the house. I couldn't see him without squatting from my vantage point in the balcony next to one of the hanging speaker stacks - big love once again to Neumo's sound - but I could tell he was all business behind the decks, another old school tradition of which I approve. Best Moby moment: a sample from Led Zeppelin's "The Immigrant Song", which my Evil Sister hunted down import vinyl of before she turned to, you know, evil.

The crowd? A fair number of people Moby's age (which is roughly my age), but also plenty of younger beardos and even a few sweet young thangs. It was nice to see the whippersnappers appreciating him. Nobody acted like jerks.

Where it got weird was that his set of about 90 minutes was followed by local soul artist Grace Love & the True Loves. Yes, they're fine, but seriously? Did we as a city just dis Moby? Surely not.

Returned to Witness and had a lovely chat with a cute friend of the SS's - who is straight & married. Her hubby was right across the table from us, even. Dammit. Still, it was an excellent evening.

PS: One of my neighbors just invited me over to their place. He's dressed nice, and I'm still in my workout clothes from attempting to move boxes at the old place this afternoon, just minutes after I told cupcake_goth I'd be out dancing with her. If only my dating life were going as well as my G-rated social life.