Alewife Bayou: June 1998
half-asleep dreams
eleven june ninety eight five a m
A half-asleep dream. I like those. They're why I can't get out of bed in the morning. I am awake enough to guide them into material I like; asleep enough for it to feel realer than just ideas in my head. Floating enough to add an element of welcome randomness to my basic fantasies.
The random elements beget new fantasies, and on some future morning, I will feed them back into the machine and make new fantasies from them in turn.
Meanwhile I am usually late to work.
the new occupational hazards
eleven june ninety eight three p m
I can't stand this monitor. No matter what colors I use, no matter how big I make the fonts, I get eyestrain after a short while. I don't have bad wrists like my friends, but my back and neck get stiff and my body complains when I stand up.
These are the new occupational hazards, and everyone is becoming used to it. We don't have trees fall on us or mineshafts collapse or boilers explode or girders come loose on us anymore. We're safer, but the injuries aren't as sexy.
leg-shaving marathon
twelve june ninety eight one a m
Some things are sexy and some things are not sexy. Having shaved legs, feeling the cool air across them and the smoothness, is sexy. Shaving them is not sexy. Shaving them is work.
If I kept them shaved it would not be work. But if you go out in shorts, which is most of the summer for me, and you have shaved legs, people talk. Pity. They feel better.
Two hours in the tub. I have very long legs. They're hard to reach. I removed three handfuls of hair from the drain and strained one shoulder.
Maybe I'll keep them shaved this time. I say that every time, though.
the drab crossdresser
twelve june ninety eight four p m
The problem with wanting women's shoes in really large sizes is that you can't find practical ones. Really large sizes are for crossdressers and transvestites, everyone knows that, right? And crossdressers are always trying to look flamboyant, right?
Actually, no. Sometimes they want female clothing which is fairly drab. You don't dress like you're going to a nightclub all the time, now do you?
If I wanted size fifteen vinyl go-go boots I'd have seven different places to buy them. Try finding some casual strap sandals in that size. It's an odd thing when it's easier to dress outrageously than conservatively.
some men are lustable
twelve june ninety eight eleven p m
We had a really nice dinner, with alcohol. Someone got done with a week of hearing Woody Harrelson and two sleazy photographers lie about each other, and needed booze.
Then we went to see Six Days Seven Nights. I lusted after Harrison Ford for a while. Then I lusted after Anne Heche. Then I lusted after Ford some more.
I don't find all that many men sexy, but some are real rule-breakers.
in a car (rain)
thirteen june ninety eight six p m
I am not moving. I am sitting in the rain and not moving. Again.
I am trying to get from a shopping mall, where I have purchased a lovely knit dress and some shoes which actually fit well, to the house of some friends. This drive should take a half an hour. So far we are up to forty-five minutes and I haven't even reached the highway yet.
I am on the onramp for the highway. Someone else stopped on the onramp has gotten out of the car and is waving his arms at the rest of us to back up. We all slowly back up onto Massachusetts Avenue.
Every other traffic light is not working; manhole covers have all become impromptu fountains. Whole streets are submerged.
It takes an hour and forty-five minutes to complete my trip.
Later, on the way back, roads are still barred. Houses are pumping out their basements onto the streets, water and sewage pouring out across the road.
Seven and a half inches of rainfall this weekend.
bubbly afterglow
fifteen june ninety eight one a m
I am bubbly and bouncy and in a very feminine mood this evening. My friends online are amused with me.
It's nice to plan for some event and prepare for it and dress up and then have it work out wonderfully.
I'm also exhausted. I probably won't be able to get the last of the mascara out of my eyes until tomorrow, as usual, and I'm a little stiff from wearing a corset for several hours.
But, oh, it was worth it.
might as well get wet
fifteen june ninety eight five p m
It's raining again.
We're recovering from being a disaster area and it's raining again.
If I weren't wearing glasses, I'd go walk outside and get wet. I love to walk in the rain, unless I'm wearing makeup or glasses.
But I can't use a computer while wearing contact lenses. It makes my eyes burn horribly.
Maybe I'll go get wet anyway. I'll get a big cup of coffee and walk part of the way home.
If it's going to flood, you might as well enjoy it.
i can't get humiliated
fifteen june ninety eight eleven p m
I can't get humiliated to save my soul.
All right, so I'm kinky. You knew that. I'm also submissive. In fantasy play (and everything online is basically fantasy play, right?) I like being humiliated and dominated in imaginative ways.
But the one person online who's
1. a dom
2. not already spoken for
3. imaginative and articulate enough
2. not already spoken for
3. imaginative and articulate enough
also happens to be utterly taken with me and is, I think, reluctant to do anything of the sort because he fears that this will somehow affect what I think of him - like I'll start believing he's really the utter cad I want him to pretend to be and stop being affectionate toward him when we're not playing.
This gent is the last person I'd expect to have a problem with confusing fantasy and reality.
Oh, well. If one is going to have problems like these, it's a relief that they're only virtual. Helps make one realize how foolish the whole thing is.
fighting over nothing
sixteen june ninety eight two p m
ASMARA, ERITREA - No one really knows why these two countries are fighting. They have nothing. This is a country where nearly-naked people struggle to farm subsistence from poor soil. They have no resources to take, no gold mines or oil wells or anything of the sort. Yet there are tanks along the border.
The governments don't dislike each other, they don't even really have any policy disagreements with each other. The countries fought side-by-side once; they're supposed to be friends.
It's tremendously hot here, even inside, and the bugs swarm onto you in black clouds when you step outdoors. The room is filthy, but I have indoor plumbing. Well, partially. One bathtub tap does nothing; the other produces a trickle of brown-black liquid. But the toilet works.
Ethiopians bombed the airport here the other night, in Russian surplus aircraft.
eyeball always wet
seventeen june ninety eight four a m
You become awake in the middle of the night soaking wet sweating, eyes hurting. Realize that your eyes want to water, to soothe themselves, but your body's so low on water that they can't. While staggering into the kitchen in the dark, rub one itchy eye. Bad idea. No lubrication whatsoever. Your eyelashes clump and stick together in a painful shape.
A pint or so of icy refrigerated water later and you can feel your eye moistening itself again. You remember your book on anatomy for the artist and how it showed an eyeball, glistening, a little droplet coming off the bottom, with the penciled notation, "Eyeball always wet!"
Never let your eyes run out of water.
When you go back into the bedroom, you turn on the air conditioner mounted in the window.
From Atlas of Human Anatomy For the Artist by Stephen Rogers Peck
it gets uglier with time
seventeen june ninety eight one p m
I have to go to a funeral this afternoon. I wrote about death a few days ago, mostly because I was thinking about how much I dreaded going to this funeral.
Meanwhile, having skipped work to attend it, I get a leisurely read of the morning papers, which doesn't help my mood any at all.
When I revamped these pages, I kept all of the old essays except the three which had to do with "current events" affecting various public figures: Kelly Flynn, Marv Albert, and Louise Woodward. I recognize that sometimes I should allow myself to write about these things, but they don't date well; as soon as they're written, they yellow and fade like old newsprint. My thoughts about food or random numbers stay consistent, but my feelings about the Woodward case have changed several times.
The Massachusetts Supreme Court yesterday upheld the manslaughter conviction and also freed Woodward to return to England. Matthew Eappen's parents immediately filed a civil suit - mostly, they say, to prevent Woodward from seeing any profits from book deals, et cetera.
The only thing I take away from this ongoing madness is a profound sense of disgust: None of the individuals involved are saints, and they look worse every day. I suppose that's the problem with long trials as a whole - the longer they go, the dirtier everyone appears.
I don't like the Eappens - I never did. I'm sorry they lost a child; I wish I could be more sympathetic for them. The difference is, now I don't like Woodward either.
the funeral was a mistake
seventeen june ninety eight nine p m
The funeral was a mistake. I never should have been guilted into going. I don't like churches in the first place; they feel like someone else's holy ground (as I suppose they should) and make me feel like an intruder. I felt like the only person there who didn't know the deceased (as it turns out, there was at least one other).
While the family was greeting everyone out in the foyer, I didn't want to sit, but I couldn't very well go out there and shake hands, so I stood at the back of the church, six-four and obviously unhappy. People were definitely giving me strange looks. Some were just trying to figure out who I was; others probably thought I was the angel of death.
I sat on the front row, because the family member who asked me to come wanted me to sit next to her. I felt like an impostor. When the service was over, I did not go to the house afterward for food and conversation. What could I possibly say?
She's probably unhappy with me now, but that's all right, I'm unhappy with her too.
industrious landlords
eighteen june ninety eight ten a m
My landlords are an Irish couple in their seventies - charming and irascible and full of shocking reserves of energy. He has been working on a project. He is redoing the sheetrock in the stairwell, to the side of our front hall, which leads up to the second floor apartment. This has been happening for several days.
They have never had much sympathy for the late sleeper. When they want to work on our yard or such, it generally commences about eight in the morning. We shrug it off - an industrious landlord is better than an apathetic one, eh?
Yesterday I slept late, or attempted to. When the hammering finally overcame my inertia, around eleven, I found he was in our apartment, pounding on one side of the stairwell wall and hollering to whoever was fixing something on the far side of it. Technically he's not supposed to just let himself in like that. Then again, he probably thought that I'd left for the day and the apartment was empty.
The problem is that I sleep nude! I have to cross the front hall - exposing myself to the glass-paned front door, the uncurtained front window, and the front porch - to reach the bathroom. Bathrobe et cetera were all in the bathroom. Stupid, but normally it's not much of an issue.
Luckily I stopped to check first - there have been workmen on the porch for the last few days, after all. I crossed behind him while he was cursing at the wall in an impenetrable brogue, and he never noticed a thing.
This morning they began pounding at eight-thirty. But it helped me get to work at a decent hour, so I can't complain too much.
forty-six things to do
eighteen june ninety eight eight p m
Went to the supermarket to buy the particular brand of chocolate chip cookies that, next to coffee, is my big vice. No other brand will do. I've tried. At the register, saw Redbook. On the cover (right next to a big picture of Harrison Ford) was the caption "46 Things To Do With A Naked Man."
Well. Despite the juxtaposition (46 things to do with a naked Harrison Ford?), or perhaps because of it, I bought the magazine. Besides, I have rather liked Redbook ever since they started printing interviews which actually weren't all fluff.
And you know what? The article's rather good. OK, the title's a teaser in the worst sense - it's really about things married women can do to spice up their sex lives. But the suggestions are more useful - and more daring, in some cases - than one usually finds in magazines of this type.
Oh, and the Ford interview just makes him seem more charming and self-effacing than ever.
besieged by the sheetrock brigade
nineteen june ninety eight eleven a m
I started to write, in the previous entry, about a brief conversation I had with my spouse last night on oral sex, but I don't like talking about her, because, after all, it's okay for me to spill my vitals all over the page, but her privacy must be respected.
At any rate, the short version is that I was looking for some online sex last night - a mood I get in from time to time - and didn't find any, leaving me restless and, um, bitchy. There really isn't a better word.
Went to bed late after my fruitless search and tossed and turned - then the Sheetrock Brigade started their thing.
I sense an unconstructive day at work, especially since ye spouse is determined to go to the early showing of the X-Files movie. (See, now there's a detail I don't mind revealing - she's an X-geek.)
it's a conspiracy
nineteen june ninety eight eleven p m
The trailer reel was misframed, off at the bottom. Then the projectionist reframed it; now it was off at the top. Then suddenly the projector ground to a halt. (Guy in Armageddon trailer: "You never know...." [WRRWRRwrrrwr r rr w r clunk] No, you never do, do you?)
Started up [rrrrWWWWWRRRR] and immediately died again [WRRRRrrrrrr]. Repeat several times. Audience laughing. Inevitable cries: "It's a conspiracy!"
We aren't the only people to come up with this - the payoff to a week of X-Files strips in Fox Trot is that they screen the wrong movie and uberfan Jason has to see Encino Man 2 instead. Same anguished cry.
The movie was very good, by the by, but don't go see it if you're not familiar with the show. I feel they didn't do well in that regard, and that you won't understand the thing unless you've been making at least some sort of attempt to keep up.
i am not interested in extremists
twenty-two june ninety eight eleven a m
JASPER, TEXAS - I had forgotten how hot Texas gets in the summer. Even in the early mornings, before the mist burns off, it's hot, and it's not early anymore.
I am not interested in the extremists, the bigots, and the loudmouths. I am not interested in the Klan, or the Black Panthers, who have recently arrived in town for a photo opportunity. I'm interested in the regular people.
The white people in this town - the ones who don't hate black people - don't understand why the press is so hostile. Look, they say, we're not oppressing anybody. This town has a black mayor. Everyone agrees that the sheriff, who's white, did a fair, unbiased, and commendable job. These three jerks are getting what they deserve. It wasn't us.
But the black people in town know that the habits take longer to go away than the hatred. The black kids and the white kids still don't play together. The blacks still don't get certain kinds of jobs.
And James Byrd has been buried in the back part of the local cemetery; the black part. Out of view.
i wish you'd touch my hair
twenty-three june ninety eight one a m
I want someone to play with my hair.
I want someone to lean me back and tell me that it's going to look really amazing, not to worry, sit back and relax. I want to trust them enough to give them carte blanche, and lie there secretly wondering what they're up to, a tingly feeling going down the back of my neck.
They massage shampoo into my scalp and then spray it out with streams of water. Then maybe a dye, applied carefully, lock by lock, while I try to sit still, or a cut into some new shape.
But most of these pleasures aren't allowed, due to my peculiar circumstance. Boys aren't allowed to do strange things with their hair to the same extent as girls - unless they're twentysomethings trying to prove how rebellious they are, and it always looks horrid when they do it anyway.
And although I love it when people just run their fingers through my hair, I'm always scared to let them because my hair almost always feels greasy, no matter how often I wash it. I like it a little greasy - it actually looks better that way, and it behaves well. But I wouldn't think anyone would want to touch it.
the geek-judo trick
twenty-three june ninety eight noon
The Provider was down this morning, and it was very annoying. One becomes dependent upon reliability, and gets upset when the rug's pulled out. Never mind that they're only down once every blue moon; when it happens, I invariably get upset. We expect flawlessness at all times.
They're having a discussion on the MUCK about how the stereotypical Fan is hugely overweight. I said most of the ones I've met are actually fairly emaciated. They are now hypothesizing a Fandom bell curve which is inverted; i.e. it bulges at the ends but no one is in the middle.
I dislike Fandom.
I never could perform that geek-judo trick, reveling in my geekiness to the point where it becomes cool. I had dinner last night with at least two people who've accomplished it. I can't. I care too much what other people think. That's the judo part: To be accepted, you have to stop caring whether you're accepted or not. Never could get there.
Fandom reminds me of all the worst characteristics in my personality, the ones I've tried to eradicate for nearly twenty years now.
Funny thing is, I don't mind being a pornographer and a deviant and a pervert. I just mind being a geek.
it never occurred to me to ask
twenty-three june ninety eight eight p m
NEWBURY STREET - Talking to a nice woman who's interviewing us. She wants to know about crossdressing; why, mostly. I don't have answers. It never occurred to me to ask questions like that. I don't think about why I do it or why I like it. It just is.
When you're hungry, you don't say "Why am I hungry?" unless it's unusual circumstances, like you just ate a big meal fifteen minutes ago. Usually all you do is say, "Oh, gee, I'm hungry. I'd better eat something."
Maybe I'm just saying, "Oh, gee, I'm female. I'd better act the part."
No. It's probably deeper than that.
Now I wonder if there's not something odd about me because I'm so unconcerned about the whys and wherefores - like, should I be looking deeper into myself about this?
if you met columbine
twenty-four june ninety eight three p m
I wrote to someone today describing some aspects of Columbine. Here's what I said.
I apologize a fair amount and self-denigrate constantly. Sometimes I don't mean it, but I was taught to do it as a social grace. I have great respect for my own capabilities but I'd never admit that except to very close friends. To me hubris is a male characteristic, and one of the ones which I don't care for. I try to never boast. Also, men are skittish about female achievement - it makes them nervous. So it's best to be polite and humble ... and then make your way up the ladder anyway!
I try to be calm, collected, and demure, but it doesn't always work because of my personality and twisted sense of humor. I prefer long skirts, long hair, very little makeup, and a small amount of perfume, usually something citrusy - I don't like musks or animal scents.
I am likely to agree to do what the other person wants, since aggressiveness is unfeminine to me. But since I'm also very strong-minded, I'm likely to steer them so they want what I want, or to quietly arrange things the way I want when they're not looking. Even when I disagree, it's likely to be a persuasive argument rather than an arms-crossed standoff - how male. Or, once in a great while, I'll pout - if I know that's the most effective way to reach that person.
Old men don't stare at me on the subway because I'm too tall and skinny. They prefer the more well-curved ones. So do I, but my metabolism won't permit. High-fashion types love me because I'm too tall and too thin. I hate the high-fashion types; they're responsible for the idea of ideal women as skinny boys with plums in their shirt pockets. I find that I have to defend myself sometimes; other women think that because I have the tall skinny phenotype, I'm endorsing that ideal. I'm not. Any standard of beauty which excludes eighty percent of the women in the country is a flawed one.
I do not get patronized by professional men more than once, because I have an acid tongue and a sharp temper that I'm not especially proud of. Walking the fine line between pliable princess and stubborn shrew is difficult. Sexually, when flirting or such, I'd rather go toward the first extreme - I like being ultra-femme when courting. But at work, I am not afraid to let the shrew come out and scare the snot out of them. And if it's someplace I go for goods and services - like a bank - I will simply take my business elsewhere if provoked enough, and I make them aware of this.
I like being stared at when I want to be stared at, and I don't when I don't. I can go from sub to dom at a moment's notice - if you meet my standards for manners, sir, and seem to behave yourself, then I will happily be pliable for you and fawn over you and so forth. If I don't think you will play by my rules, though, watch how fast I can bring out the bullwhip.
My voice climbs at the end of sentences when I'm excited and drops at the end when I'm not.
You decide if Columbine is someone you'd like if you met her in person.
non-air-conditioned cats
twenty-four june ninety eight eleven p m
We have reached the point in the summer when the cats become resentful of the idea that there's only air conditioning in one room of the house.
We'd let them in - we're not cruel, we believe in cold air for all - but cats are constitutionally opposed to closed doors. They may have been lying on the bed, completely motionless, for several hours, but as soon as you close the bedroom door they get nervous, and they get up and scratch on the door wanting to get out. You've cut off their exit, you see.
Then they pound on the door wanting to get back in - it's twenty degrees hotter out there.
We can't cool the whole house, so all summer long we have irate cats. Life's tough.
experimenting with ICQ
twenty-six june ninety eight ten a m
No entry yesterday? Well, I wrote the cat entry early in the morning. I generally do write at least one new thing every day, but often it's dated the day before.
Yesterday I was online for a phenomenal amount of time, doing various useful and non-useful things. It's nice to be on the MUCKs long enough that you can actually have a conversation with someone, without needing to break it off for lunch or an interruption or time for bed. Time for bed is usually the worst because, for some reason, the people I most want to talk to don't come on until I'm very tired. Maybe most of them are on the West Coast.
Among other things, I downloaded ICQ, because I wanted to try talking to lanalee and Dianne this way. The Mac version of ICQ is pretty stable - it has a few minor bugs, like not updating who's active or inactive frequently enough, so I sent lanalee about seven messages last night, thinking she was active when she really wasn't.
The MUCK people can't stand ICQ for the most part. They think it's slow, and apparently the Windows versions crash a lot. I wouldn't know. I think it's kinda fun, but you can't really find anyone - searching for email addresses is buggy, and it gets to the point where you have to know someone's number in advance in order to find them. So mostly it stayed open all afternoon with nothing going on in the window.
I still like MUCKs better, since they're set up as tangible "places" where people can wander in and out, convey physical movements, and all those little nuances. I have been ruined by them, I guess - while sending ICQ messages yesterday, I found myself indicating actions like [giggles] or [scratches head in confusion] a lot. That's a MUCK thing.
I'll probably play with ICQ some more. I'd give you my number, but I can't remember it - another liability.
i despise laundry
twenty-seven june ninety eight six p m
Laundry day. I despise laundry.
When we Buy The House, which is our big far-distant savings goal, the first gizmos we equip ourselves with will be a washer and dryer. No question. This business of having to walk down the street with twenty pounds of laundry is for the birds.
But I'll miss the woman at the laundromat, a little Vietnamese woman with fractured English and absolutely no fear of anything on earth.
I tend to put off laundry for a very long time - until I have absolutely nothing to wear which is suitable for work, in fact, and given where I work, that means nudity must be impending before I do it.
I suppose if I didn't wait so long it would be slightly less of a chore.
I have to go get it out of the dryer now. Pardon me.
a most vivid dream
twenty-nine june ninety eight three a m
I have just had possibly the most vivid dream I've had in the last ten years.
As usual, I don't remember dreams unless they're actually heart-pounding enough to wake me up. This time, though, I got up and wrote the damned thing down. I couldn't get back to sleep after it anyway - my heart rate was astonishing.
I believe in the Dilbert idea that "there is nothing on earth less interesting than listening to someone else's dream" - Jesse Reklaw renditions being an exception - but this one makes a reasonably interesting story. In writing it, I have filled in some connections to make dramatic sense, but all the salient details are direct from the subconscious pipeline.
You'll find it in the Circular Cruises under the title "Perdrix." That way, you can ignore it if you like.
Be sure to tell me what you think it means.
fat happy fish dream
thirty june ninety eight eleven a m
Apologies for all this talk about dreams, but this morning, in one of the partially-awake dreaming periods, I dreamed I was standing in an all-white bathroom with a huge, white, shallow-basined pedestal sink. The sink was filled to the point of brimming over with water, and in the water were two fat, happy fish, each about the size of my fist, round and orange-red, with grey-black eyes and fins.
I worried that the fish might fight with each other, but as I watched, one of the fish swam up to the other, stuck out a small black tongue, and began to clean the other's fin, like a cat. Wow, I thought, I didn't know fish did that!
I walked around the far side of the basin and noticed that a huge intake fan was set in the wall behind the sink, with a wire grating covering it. It was sucking in air and making a great amount of noise that I was surprised I hadn't noticed before. It was close enough to the sink that it was actually sucking a thin sheet of water off the surface of the water in the sink, slurping it up like a waterfall in reverse. This water was then dripping out the bottom of the fan grating and running onto the bathroom floor.
I put my hands into the sheet of water, experimentally, and apparently I disrupted something, the fan started blowing. Water began splashing out of the fan, from the sink, everywhere, going haywire and splashing the entire bathroom. I was wet, but mostly I was worried about the fish.
I woke up to the sounds of my air conditioner fan and the rain falling loudly outside behind it.
I've always thought fish were pretty fragile. I never could keep pet fish alive, and they depress me a little ... because if they get sick, what do you do? You can try to change their living conditions, and if that doesn't work, you just sort of wait for them to die.
They were awfully cute fish though.
strange VR sex politics
thirty june ninety eight eleven p m
This is all virtual, mind you. I am rather more conservative about what I do in the real world.
I don't mind spectators. In fact, I kinda like it. Online I get to play to my inner exhibitionist, and when you think about it, what I'm really doing, since this is a written medium, is enthralling them with my words - giving them a compelling verbal orgasm to watch, or read as the case may be.
But I've learned that I don't like it when multiple people are involved in the sex act. I am not interested in orgies. Two people doing something, with or without spectators, is my way.
Three is the worst. With three, someone is going to be sitting bored while the other two play. If you like to watch, that's not a problem, but I don't. I'm an exhibitionist, not a voyeur.
Last night I abruptly left someone's room while she was playing with a third person. I refused to sit and wait my turn. I was very polite about it, and told her she was perfectly free to come find me when she finished. When I got tired of waiting for her to finish, I disconnected entirely. I had better things to do.
I suppose virtual sexual politics are ultimately less of a pain in the neck than real ones, but I just thought I'd let everyone know that if they were expecting that the online sex world would eliminate all these hassles, they were wrong.
Online sex makes politics possible that the real world has never yet dreamed of.
23 February 2026 (Last updated 09 March 2026)