Maura's Illuminated Manuscript

For the first time in years I went to a Goth wedding yesterday. The happy couple are two ladies, friends of the Tickler's. The Tickler was the only member of the wedding party who lives nearby, and the none-too-organized brides either couldn't or wouldn't hire professionals to do much, so the Tickler ended up shouldering a disproportionate share of the burdens of wedding prep. One of brides is a graphic designer with an... artistic temperament, and shortly after I arrived on Saturday night, this bride had gone full Bridezilla, insisting that the napkins be ironed. I extracted my girlfriend and took her out for badly needed tacos and cocktails. Needless to say, the Tickler & I didn't get up to any shenanigans that night, and I'm OK with that.

The Tickler made us a big, tasty brunch yesterday from ingredients that her previous houseguest had left behind. ♥!

The wedding venue was "the Manor", a vacation rental near Olympia, WA that's fortuitously close to the Tickler's place. There are horses & sheep on the property. The mercifully brief ceremony was held in the woods next to the horse pasture; the aisle was lined with carved pumpkins, each one different. The wedding reception was in a barn. An outdoor wedding in western Washington state in October is a gamble, but we got lucky with the weather: no rain on the day of, and even a rainbow.

The wedding processional march? Chopin's funeral march. And the food? From a food truck. None of my elder Goth friends were ever that cheezy. The aesthetics & decorations, though? Right on. And one of the major attractions of a Goth wedding is seeing what people wear; the crowd did not let me down. Boozes and louche conversation were had. The whole trip seems to have gotten better as time wore on.

Oh: I got to carpool with the lady at whose place the Tickler & I may be staying in London. She's all right.

Oh oh: I wore the Sydney outfit, with the hat. I asked the Tickler if black lipstick was too much, and she said not for this wedding. She turned out to be entirely correct.

So if I should ever knowingly find Ms. Right and she's into the whole wedding thing - hey, I still believe the universe owes me a wedding in which I wear a dress - I have resolved to:

1. In close consultation with Ms. Right, make a goddamn to-do list. The brides above didn't, thereby wasting my girlfriend's time despite her best efforts.
2. Get a big enough posse of locals that executing that list doesn't burn anyone out. That shouldn't be too hard for me.
3. Do all the things in a timely manner. I'm pretty sure I can handle this, too.
4. Refuse to morph into Bridezilla, no matter what happens. For heaven's sake, I'm old enough to know better.

Yeah, I already have an esthetic picked out.

I'm posting pics so I can keep my self awake until a reasonable hour. I felt compelled to decline an invitation to a fetish party from V's partner, because a) I've been awake since 0300, and b) I've got some weird dry cough, dammit. I have some serious party plans for the weekend, so I better take care of myself now. I did administer beef pho and vegan gelato for dinner.

But on to the pics! I did the touristy bits today, taking the train from Newtown to Circular Quay*, wherein lies a ferry terminal, with the famous opera house just to the east and the Harbor Bridge a little further to the west. So in slightly non-chronological order:





I wish my photography did the Sydney Opera House justice. Yes, it was way over budget and behind schedule, but you know what? The people who commissioned it got their money's worth and then some. It's decades ahead of its time, reminding me of things Gehry did in this century using CAD software.

Right next to the opera house is the Royal Botanic Garden, which greeted me with a big group of Japanese school kids and this gonzo sign:



Yup, lots of different kinds of plant sex happening. The RBG (love the abbreviation, no?) brought out the biology geek in me. For instance:



An Australian white ibis, the sight of which made me freak out and take many pics. You see, I'd seen an ibis in person exactly once in the fifty years prior to this, near Deland, Florida when I was in my twenties. And then I saw maybe a dozen more of them at various points around Circular Quay, poking those curved bills into the ground.



A particularly majestic specimen of the hoop pine, which you'll be unsurprised to hear isn't a true pine. It's a native Australian member of Araucaria, a genus of coniferous trees that I had up to then believed was limited to South America. Uncle Wiki says its distribution was nearly global during the Mesozoic, but most of the ones in the northern hemisphere disappeared with the dinosaurs. It's possible that the planks in the old apartment that I'm sitting in are hoop pine.



I'm told locals call it the coat hanger. I went looking for the place to climb onto the bridge. It took me quite a bit of walking, and by the time I realized you have to pay for it, my dogs were barking good and loud.

On the way to the Harbor Bridge I saw several groups of cheerleaders in uniform, all getting photographed. They all had Australian accents. Several emotions clashed silently in my head.

I kept my appointment at Gallery Serpentine's secret lair; they no longer have their regular store on Enmore Rd. The secret lair is in an unmarked warehouse full of theater-related businesses. When I walked in the door there was a gruesomely realistic fake disemboweled cow greeting me to the left of the door, made by a prop company. Somebody had positioned a beer bottle at its mouth. I have that photo, but I thought I'd spare you.

I didn't take photos of the secret lair because it's - wait for it - a secret lair. However, suffice it to say that it's a garden of Goth delights. I... bought things. I bought an entire outfit. It's awfully reminiscent to me of things cupcake_goth would wear, only in my colors and not hers, with a longer silhouette. And I can wear it to work, so I don't feel as if I did something too terribly impractical. And the lady who helped me? My age and cute!

Oh yeah: more street art.





*It isn't quite circular anymore, but it was during the second half of the 19th century.

Instead of working out this morning as usual, I did my taxes. Yup, Uncle Sam owes me big time. Time to grab that cash with both hands and make a stash.

I went to the rally at UW Tacoma against I-1552, the so-called "bathroom bill" that puts a bounty on trans kids and tries to get yours truly beaten up or arrested. Lots of signs - I have one in my front window now - local dignitaries, trans people, and their families got up to the mike, polished or not. My favorite was a man of about forty with his nine-year-old trans daughter. He recounted how two years ago, she'd told him she was a girl. His reply was, "Let's do this." Yeah, that's a quote.

A few minutes later I worked my way over to him. I had to fight back the tears as I told him, "Thank you. There was no one like you back in the eighties."
He hugged me and said, "I can't imagine any other way."

I missed a turn going home so I took a little extra time driving up state road 509. In my 27 years of living around here I'd never driven that way. The northern end of this road is a straight shot between Seattle and its main airport, but the southern stretch where I was (eventually, after the industrial area) yields spectacular views from the bluffs overlooking Puget Sound. And of course, there are some seriously big and expensive houses on that road, but that wasn't what I was stealing glances at most of the time. It was one of those moments when I think to myself, 'Why do people live elsewhere?'

The antler mouse user pic is in honor of those whose party I missed because sleep overtook me. That's one Goth clothing sale and a queer women's clothing swap that I slept through, so you know the situation was serious. The vodka is strong but the meat is rotten.

I spent the weekend in Kirkland, mostly riding herd on m'boy and stepping and fetching for Imminent Ex while she was in Portland with Mr. Right Now. I'm so cashing in those brownie points come Burning Man.

I would have missed my hair appointment with imflying if they hadn't texted me asking to move the appointment 15 minutes later. Moral: always check your calendar for the whole day first thing in the morning.

Came back from 425-land, worked out, showered, and was about to eat alone at PCC (*Sniffle!) when I got a message from dagard saying, basically, that we were going to Witness. I needed no further persuasion. If I had needed it, though, it was there in the form of a tall, cute, lesbian waitress of his acquaintance, which was why he was so insistent.

He needed caffeine, which meant dangerous proximity to Mishu, which in turn meant that I made an impulse purchase: a certain steampunky skirt that I'd had my eye on for months. Pic to follow.

We went to Herb & Bitter Public House, which isn't as twee as it sounds. I have multiple reasons to believe the staff are cool. They have tasty and crazy strong beer. Try the mushrooms.

The pic:

I've spent a lot of time this weekend either farting around on the Internet or sleeping. I think it needed to happen.

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Yesterday I went to the hippiest baby shower ever in a yoga studio with an astounding view of Lake Union. Yes, I loved it that the mother-to-be, E of Burning Man fame, let us write graffiti on her belly. Sure, there were beautiful women, some of whom ran in the same (ahem) circles as E. However, there were zero refreshments provided, liquid or solid, and unless you were a good blues dancer there wasn't much else to do. So I soon bailed and headed for the Merc.

Got social on. Reminisced with cajunsblues and seelenschwester about the Blue House parties. I want another one, but for a venue you'd need basically need a space the size of my entire apartment building, with a guarantee of no grief from the neightbors. The Merc must, unfortunately, comply with laws governing establishments that sell alcohol.

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Went to a party in my neighbor's house where a lady tried to sell us scented candles. Sure, nice food, drinks, and conversation, but the candles were not. My. Thing. Time to go get m'boy.

The news for this weekend is that there is no news this weekend. I spent it mostly shopping, cleaning, doing laundry, and giving my son hell.

I did make it to a cancer fundraiser (?!) for krypt_kitten. Considering the sums involved, I can't believe it could have have helped much that way, but it was good to see everyone - and eat, and drink. The folks who put it together made t-shirts on which was stenciled "Sugar Tits". Yes, the cancer in question is stage 4 breast cancer.

I'd planned to go dancing in Frelard on Saturday night, but my body said, "You sleep now." Sure enough, I got nine hours of sleep, no doubt making up for being robbed of it earlier by my upstairs neighbors. I'm this >< close to just giving in and setting my alarm for 0600. Yeah, I might as well shred my own Goth card and quit calling myself a computer geek, but that may be the only way I'll ever get any sleep. Besides, it's a good way to avoid traffic during my bike workout.

Spent a few hours and about $7 on chais looking for Megan from 80th. Yes, I've been walking up and down 80th making a note of out-of-state license plates. Hush. No joy. I am (still) undaunted.

Today? StartupCo's annual marketing conference. I won't be spending the whole conference in the green room this time: I'm part of the Twitter response team. I just did an unscheduled shift at the ask-an-engineer booth. I actually got asked an engineering question!

I dropped off my son for his all-day (!) work shift, then came home to get ready for the rest of the day. I hadn't had time to do my now-usual ride around the lake, so I walked to fave coffee joint Chocolati at the north end of the lake.

The barrista had red coat and a British accent. Perfect. When he was asking a customer about whip (whipped cream for you n00bs), he said, "Spare the rod and spoil the child."
"Depends on the child," I said quietly, and made the did-I-say-that gesture.
"Didn't hear anything," he said. Seattle, I love ya.
I was (and am) wearing these leggings, with the Pride flag on the front and the US flag on the back. The younger, prettier, more made-up blonde woman in front of me complimented me on my leggings - I got a lot of that today - and I said, "They're what you call multi-purpose."
She bought my 12 oz. Chai. She bought. My chai.
She said she'd just moved into the neighborhood, and that her name is Megan. She offered her hand. "Do you live around here?"
"Maura. Yes, I live on [the tonier of the two streets at whose intersection I live]."
"I live on 80th."
Huh. Well, I had a beach date to get to. Besides, I couldn't for the life of me figure out whether I was being hit on or not; I probably wouldn't have pegged her for queer a priori in a million years. Hair? Maaaybe, plausibly queer. Clothes? Again, only a tiny bit plausibly queer, but I have to say she rocks the earth tones. Makeup? Screamed straight, especially at noon on July 4th.

It occurred to me halfway home from Chocolati that Megan from 80th bore some physical resemblance to the Blonde Angel from last year's Burning Man. The Blonde Angel had fairer skin and bushier hair, or so I keep telling myself.

Saw a WWII bomber with two similarly aged fighters flying over the north end while I was heading for...

The nude beach for my date of sorts with Much Younger Woman. Sunshine. Naked queers, mostly men. Frisbee & seaweed in the lake. Smooches while treading water.

Thence to chez theda & balzacq, where I got to say an all-too-infrequent yeau to my People in Black. Mm, eetz. I have to love a crowd where I can talk about all my... activities in front of pre-teen children without causing a ruckus. I asked speedie316 if I had, in fact, been hit on. She and a certain tall redhead are convinced that I was.

Next step: Chocolati, same time tomorrow? Walk up & down nearby stretches of N 80th St. possibly with a sign that says, "Maura from [my street]"? 'Cause I do that kind of thing.

One of my OKCupid contacts told me she's a door person at the Resurrection Goth night at the Baltic Room, which happens on Sunday night. OK, it's a little strange to meet a potential romantic interest when she's on the clock, but it was her suggestion.

But first, a word about the Baltic Room to you non-locals and non-clubbers. It started out in the '90s as the hip, swank live music joint. It had a beautiful cherry wood bar - right in the middle of the space, so its feng shui and flow were crap. That's right: a shotgun dance floor. The place seems to have had its vicissitudes along with the rest of Seattle and the rest of the US. It may be less hip now, but on the third try they've finally arranged things right, with the bar - not quite as pretty, but not bad - against one wall and the dance floor opened up.

One unfortunate thing that I learned upon entering is that a certain person who's rightly persona non grata with several of my Gothier friends is usually a DJ at that night. (Luckily, he wasn't there last night.) The door folks' advice? Check the calendar if you want to come.

The crowd was a parallel Goth universe, with lots of pretty black-clad people that I didn't recognize from the Merc, Ceremony, or the Vogue (RIP).

There was, unusually, a live band last night, namely Sazerac Orchestra. Not bad, and they apparently listen to Balkan Beat Box. The lovely young blonde thing next to me said there are other such bands that play at the Russian cultural center on the Hill. You know where this is going: yet another gay Russian girl. Chatting with her about things of interest to gay and/or Russian girls was the highlight of my evening. I certainly wouldn't mind seeing her again, even if she does have a Ukranian (!) girlfriend.

Oh, will I see the lady who invited me again? Maybe. I'm not in a huge hurry because I have other lady-shaped irons in the fire.

But first: I split my largest African violet three ways without knowing in advance just how delicate they are. One now has no leaves, and the other two are a little low on roots. I stuck a few leaves into one of the pots because heaven knows I knocked a lot of leaves off, which was not the original plan. Violets are tough, but I think I'm about to test their limits. Check back in a month to see how many live violets I have.

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Friday: after a dinner & dog walking with m'boy, I felt a really serious social jones. I think fall has messed with my mind. Went to the Merc, drank too much, and started feeling an inferiority complex about my life and the lack of stellar circumflatulation I've done since, well, I started transitioning. I may just have to fix that.

Last night: Ceremony at Re-bar. Happiness is having straight girlfriends who don't mind TMI about lesbian sex (*tips topper to cupcake_goth*). People I didn't expect to see there:

• Monny & Shawna, the former owners of the Vogue. OK, I shouldn't be too surprised because it's exactly the kind of night they had at their club for decades, but I don't see them around too often anymore.
• Riz Rollins - definitely not the kind of night you'd associate with Seattle's grand old man of house & hip hop, but he used to have a night of his own at Re-bar. It occurs to me that he may have wandered in from Kremwerk, which is around the corner. (I checked Kremwerk out on the way home. Electro flavor.)
• Some English dude who asked me if he could sit down. ("Sure." The table was empty because all the elder Goths were dancing; they & I have disjoint musical taste.) He asked me if I'm into men ("No, sorry"), and if I'm into girls like myself ("Girls generally"), and then showed me pictures of himself en femme. He let me know he was in town on business. I was creeped out, gave him the could shoulder, and was relieved when the elder Goths returned. Yeah, I've known since before transition that this is trans life. Le sigh.

I hit the Decibel Festival for a night of house at the Hot Creations showcase in EMP's level 3. I did dance my little white booty off to the openers, especially Shadow Child.

The headliners were Angelenos Lee Foss & Anabel Englund. (The latter couldn't look more L.A. if she tried.) Pity I didn't get to hear them together: there were technical difficulties that sent a sound guy scrambling across the dance floor as Foss held down the fort in a fashion that, well, didn't thrill me. I was tired from two successive nights of six hours of sleep, so I took that as a cue to leave, shortly after midnight. Yeah, maybe lame, but at least I had a blister on my heel when I got home. That's always a good sign.

Oh, and I got home not on the E-line as planned but courtesy of ionan and his lovely wife, who rolled up as I was waiting for my bus at Aurora & Denny. Naturally, I gave them my extended Decibel lowdown as payback for both the ride and the many fantastic bleepy tracks & suggestions that ionan has passed to me over the years.

Good: EMP has not one but three first-rate music venues of various sizes. Bad: Their drinks are priced to match. Therefore you can rest assured that booze didn't cloud my judgment of the tunes; I barely had any on principle.

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This afternoon: an open house at evillinn and ravenmimura's in Lake City. The place was covered with his art, some of the smaller pieces of which he was giving away. (!) I had the perfect place on my living room wall for a cartoon with the caption "Hand Staple Forehead".

But the piece that made me ask ravenmimura "How much do you want for this?" was a spoof of the famous "We Can Do It!" poster from World War 2. In place of the usual wholesome female defense industry employee is a lady with long, curly horns issuing from her temples, looking back at the viewer over her left shoulder, upon which she's resting a mace. She's wearing shoulder-length leather gloves, a tattered black coat, and nothing from the waist down. The lettering in the caption is a faithful reproduction of the poster's. This print is now hanging in my living room. I told ravenmimura that it's a wonder all the kinky women in Seattle - and we all know there are a great many - haven't beaten his door down for prints of that.

We watched babyvision. It's nice to do that with my People in Black. The little boy tried to climb, as much as a 9-month-old can, onto my big, black equestrian boots; he was fascinated with the shiny leather. Since all the adults present appreciate nice boots, we all approved. And it's fabulous to see evillinn breast feeding like it ain't no thang, because it isn't.

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Checked in on cupcake_goth because I was in the neighborhood. Really. She assures me she is eating her vegetables.

Best. Weekend. Ever.