This Has to get Better

After eating too much last night, I was taken with the idea of a vampire who must suck blood regularly because otherwise his blood pressure drops and he gets sleepy and sluggish. Of course, if he drinks blood too often he suffers from hypertension. I think the idea appeals to me because I often wish my digestive system would work more like an engine, or like a top-level predator's, because it would be convenient to be able to eat a great deal whenever I had the time and inclination, and then to be able to coast on that for however long without refueling. Whereas instead I am crabby if I don't have a handful of peanuts or something every four hours. I can tell myself this is because I am geared for high performance rather than efficient fuel use, but it is stingy reassurance.

Oddly enough, I am finding that one of my most pronounced memories of Dallas is of a hailstorm perhaps six years ago, a storm that appeared out of nowhere when a number of us were gathered, and we ran outside to move cars around because if any of our cars were damaged, or any of us were hurt, we couldn't really afford it, but since Ciro was days away from heading to California a broken window would mean a disastrous delay. So we coordinated to get Charlie (his car, named for Steinbeck's Travels with Charlie) to safety.

Heard an advertisement that suggested cereal is automatically healthy by virtue of being cereal (which is also a word that applies to whole grains!), so that for instance a high-sugar bowl of bleached cereal is a healthy replacement for a lower calorie, lower sugar, higher antioxidant chocolate square. "Replace your chocolate craving at the end of the day with this cereal," the ad suggests, "so you don't ruin the healthy choices you made earlier in the day." It's this wonderful tradeoff, because you don't get what you want to eat, your health and self control have both been cast into doubt, you probably spent more money, and you made a choice with no health advantages whatsoever. I'm certainly persuaded.

I was doing well today and feeling fairly good about myself, but just before I left work I had to deal again with pushy woman from the other day, and my superiors have unhelpfully made the disputed matter my discretion, which is a pain because the disputed thing is something I would do as a courtesy or if compelled by my employer, but not if compelled by not my employer.

I've asked not to be scheduled for the show anymore, which may not even be something I'm allowed to do. Although it probably seems like a ridiculous overreaction, I will probably quit if I don't get my way because I have spent literally my entire adult life working to make sure this is something I never have to deal with if I don't want to. I will put up with poverty and missed professional opportunity; I have given up any number of highly desirable things in the past over this. I will not be given unclear responsibilities and no authority.

It sounds all bravura or, alternately, self-defeating, but what it amounts to is that I can't think of anything I'm less suited to than confusing, emotionally-charged demands on the telephone from strangers while I'm trying to set up something electronic. That hasn't been an issue before on this job, because I mostly interface with IT guys, and we are both interested in interacting as little as possible, very directly, with none of this manipulative wheedling. Maybe a small absurdist joke now and then, or an intimation of respect.

I am not someone who deals with passive aggression well; I either have the power to aggressively fuck up the person who tries it, or I walk away and make sure they never have access to me again, ever. Any time I try a middle-ground approach, I wind up confused and shaky and uncertain of my own perceptions. Not even angry; just unsure whether something in me is wrong, because I can't tell whether I'm responding in an Asperger way to something reasonable or whether I'd be a pushover to not respond like this to something which is unreasonable. A friend of mine has an older brother who is a tough-guy hypercool asshole who is reduced to shaking if accused of homophobia because he is terrified he might be and he doesn't want it. I feel like that, like I have Kryptonite.

Kabuki

It's a cliche that artists are prostitutes*, and in the past it was often literally true; actors and singers (historically and across cultures) were often also prostitutes - stage and bed were both sources of income. In this context the "casting couch" is perhaps not surprising.

I am beginning to think that of the two we are more comfortable with prostitution. Since we believe as a society that unromantic sex is debasing, it is easy to accept that one should be compensated for it. The idea of being paid purely for the pleasure of our company is a little more uncomfortable. It feels suspiciously like charity. It feels as though we might be exploiting the people who like us, even if we know we have spent a great deal of time and money cultivating the talents and mannerisms that make us such interesting companions.

In order to avoid confronting this head on, we create intermediaries. We are paid a portion of the alcohol sales at a club where we perform. We sell CDs. We make it clear there are objects being bought, not us. We do whatever we can do distance ourselves from being given money directly, whether it means selling through an agent, funding ourselves with government grants, or asking the audience to pay the theater which then pays us. We aren't really doing this because it's too hard for us to collect the money ourselves. We do this because taking your money makes us uncomfortable. It breaks the illusion that we do this "just for fun," as we feel we all should, as we feel is necessary to good company.

Mind you, a real estate agent gets paid even if she enjoys the sale. Tutors get paid. (We're more comfortable paying tutors and babysitters than we are paying teachers, perhaps because we pay tutors and babysitters to assuage our own guilt for not doing the tutoring and babysitting of our own children, whereas teachers are obligated, just like parents, and should do it because they love our children, and our children are entitled to them.)

I'm starting to become persuaded that rather than try to sell or finance actual projects, what I should do is go up to people and say, "look, why don't you give me some money outright to have interesting thoughts and do whatever projects occur to me, and you won't get any of it back at all, and I can't promise I will make anything specific, but I will be able to continue to do these things which are valuable and which I alone can do in this way." It's actually more honest, even if it's terribly egotistical and sounds awfully close to exploiting one's friends.

I am probably not brave enough to do this directly, yet it has started to influence how I treat gifts of money, perhaps because I can think of a few people I would like to support in this way myself, people I would like to pay to not have other jobs, but to spend their time in whatever way they see fit. It's the same thinking behind most fellowships, I suppose.

Maybe the reason we dislike this idea is because it rests on saying "my thoughts and actions are more interesting and worthwhile than everyone else's" and the only evidence we have to back it up is "well, look at them." (And on the other side of the equation as an adult, a critic, and patron, I can sometimes look at the ideas of the artist in question and say, "yep," which is freeing like you wouldn't believe.)

This comes up because I had lunch with Val's dad (who has been my friend longer than Val has), who is always trying to give money to me and to her and her sisters with disguizes like "so you'll give your opinion on this story" (with the story something I've been asking to read). I don't fight it anymore; he's an adult, it's small amounts, and it's his call.

On my way out of the NCI building tonight, I had the chance to say goodbye to my favorite security guard, an older man, foriegn born, although I'm not sure from where. (The subcontinent?) Although we had very few conversations beyond "goodnight" each evening, we really liked each other for no obvious reason, basically at first sight.

I say goodbye and hello to all the security guards, because many years ago a friend working as a receptionist told me it was exhausting to have to notice and be friendly to everyone who came in while they ignored you. So I'm generally friendly with security guards. But this guy in specific - I loved seeing him at the end of the day, for whatever reason. I was excited just thinking about rounding the corner of the lobby. We may have mostly smiled at each other, but it was always a real smile between us.

He said he had always admired me very much (why? but then why did I respect him in a similar way?) and had never found the right way to say so, and that he knew I would be successful and that he'd miss me very much. I really will miss him, and I've known that since I decided to move. I will miss him more than anyone, because we will never have reason to see each other again, and because what we gave each other was a special connection to our community, a small daily reminder that we recognized each other as people for no reason beyond that we were.

Ciro once had a bus driver for whom he was the only late-night rider, and they had a similar relationship, and when he moved suddenly he didn't have a chance to say goodbye. So I feel fortunate both to have had this relationship and to have gotten a goodbye.

Ciro and I were woken at 4 a.m. by phone calls from India to say they were experiencing "an event" and could we do an emergency reset of the UNIX servers? Sadly . . . no we couldn't.

Tomorrow, we set off on a very long drive. Chad and James are here now to see us off.

*Here I mean prostitutes in the way we'd all like to fantasize we'd be prostitutes - beautiful people who make scintillating conversation and have langorous sex with wealthy clients who are interested in us personally - and not the reality of the average sex worker, an overly made up streetwalker who risks her life with each anonymous trick, or the stressed out stripper who is inevitably addicted to coke.