Okay. Time for normalcy to return, whatever that means. So no more weekday afternoons off, no more lazing around like I really want to do while watching reruns of old game shows like “What’s My Line” and “Match Game” and “To Tell the Truth.”

Although this morning as I’m thinking this, things got turned upside down in the afternoon. There will be a change which will actually be a blast from the past. That’s about as much as I want to go into it here. But change is in the air, and I’m actually quite excited about it.

Last night I had a dream that I was at the supermarket, but there was a line of people at the Lotto machine waiting to purchase tickets. Since I almost never have cash on me I wasn’t able to buy tickets, so I went over dejectedly to the checkout aisle to pay for my groceries. I don’t know why I remember this.

I’ve been having trouble sleeping through the night lately, so each time I wake in the middle of the night I put on an episode of “Daria” to help me get back to sleep.

On Saturday I decided to start the day with a little hike in Forrestal. It’s amazing to see how much the flora have grown. At the entrance what is usually brown shrubs that are patchy at best, you see this:

These flowers are taller than me.

I didn’t see any snakes today, but this time more flowers have started to bloom. Rather than just the brush sunflowers, there were also plenty of Catalina lilies and Indian paintbrushes bloom everywhere.

After getting sweaty and tired and realizing how out of shape I am, I go home and eat a Subway roasted chicken sub (not pictured.)

That night, Cathi, Tyson, Ben and Emma took me out for steak and cake. Rather than go to our usual haunt of Damon’s in Glendale, we go to the Bull Pen in Redondo since everyone loved it when we went last year. I had a prime rib with baked potato, and no pictures were taken because if you don’t know what that looks like, I feel concerned for you.

We go back to my place for cake and games. Eventually it was Emma’s bedtime (since she is 5), so they all went home. I then go out to Bar Mattachine with Daniel and Staci. I have two Manhattans and a Tuxedo #2 (gin, maraschino and absinthe.)

Here is Daniel:

Here is Staci pretending to be angry at me while I pretend to pout:

There were a couple of very drunk girls that we witnessed. One exposed her crack for the world to see. Another tried to sit on a set of velvet ropes only to realize that gravity isn’t very kind.

We closed the bar, went to Astro’s, then I got home at 4 am.

On Sunday I wake up at 7:30, get upset, turn on Daria, go back to sleep and wake up at 9:30. I go to brunch with Madd where I have this Bloody Mary at Maggiano’s:

Here is me with my Italian sausage brunch:

We walked around the Grove and Farmer’s Market. I got marzipan. Several people also compliment me on my Siouxsie tee. I go home at 6. Go to Trader Joe’s. Go to sleep.

This morning I unfortunately have to go into work to process payroll for our warehouse workers. I leave at 9:30, come home, do laundry and do nothing all day.

It’s been a better than expected birthday.

Recently my bathroom reading book has been Fernando Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet which I’ve written about here before. It probably works best as a bathroom reading book because it’s essentially a blog of one of his characters Bernardo Soares (or heteronyms as Pessoa likes to call them). Soares is an accountant working in the turn of the 20th century Lisbon, and his “diary entries” are quite existential and dreary. Gee, I wonder why I would gravitate towards that?

I guess these brief snippets have gotten me a tad bit glum the last couple of weeks despite the great warm weather we’ve been having. Or maybe it’s not being happy at the job. Or being broke. Or not having been fucked in a while. Or realizing what a stupid shithead the President is. Or going to a job interview, getting your hopes up then getting turned down emphatically. Or an impending birthday.

With taking care of The Grandmother for these past years, I keep thinking about how long I am going to live. Or, more accurately, how long I want to live. Everything is fine right now, but what about as I approach 60? 70? Will I even make it that long especially since I spent 16 years of my life as a heavy smoker (~ a pack a day.)

It’s sort of funny to stare at the hopelessness that most of us feel in this world.

Last night I did fall into the trap of watching the World Baseball Classic final since Team USA was playing. The last baseball game I watched was Game 7 of the World Series which was very thrilling. Although the WBC Final didn’t have the sphincter-clenching tension the World Series Game 7 had with Team USA beating Team Puerto Rico 8-0, it was still enjoyable to watch.

First, can we talk about the Puerto Ricans hair? As a show of unity they all decided to bleach (or attempt to bleach) their hair and facial hair.

I’m all for interesting ways to show team unity ¹, but I couldn’t help but think back to the awful frosted tips trend of the late 90s and early 00s. God, those were awful. Maybe that’s why the gods had them lose in such a devastating way.

As for the game, it was a pitchers’ duel for the first several innings which are my favorite games since they tend to breeze by. A two-run homer by Ian Kinsler in the third opened the scoring. But it was the three-run seventh inning that put the any doubts away.

What was pretty amazing was hearing how loud the Dodger Stadium crowd got. Those volumes are usually only reserved for playoff games.

¹ Actually, the thought of conformity utterly strikes fear in my heart which is why I never got into team sports. But I suppose these are things that are needed for team sports.

One of my favorite things to listen to recently while at work is my Spotify Daily Mix #3. A sample of the tunes this particular auto-generated playlist gives me:

Fad Gadget – Luxury
The Cure – Lovesong
Adam and the Ants – Puss N Boots
The Church – Under the Milky Way
Duran Duran – New Moon on Monday

You get the idea. It’s heavy on the 80’s new wave/new romantic nostalgia and fuck man, it really gets me through the day of futility and frustration.

I finished up Westworld last night, and it really irritated me. First off, the sheer amount of characters in it confused me a bit especially since I walked away from the show for about a month after watching the fourth episode. I still don’t understand how the robots were able to kill the humans with guns when we were told that humans are impervious to guns in this little world. Are the guns used in the world special guns that can only kill the bots, and finally real guns that could actually kill humans were smuggled in? And, most importantly, who gives a fuck?

When I finished it last night, I really didn’t think much about it. But now it seems that I’m quite angry about the show. I mean, really, the show was a 10-hour long Jurassic Park with robots instead of dinosaurs. 10 fucking hours!

Last week on Facebook, Tyson posted that he took in a cat-hoarding agoraphobic neighbor’s cat after said neighbor died a few weeks ago. The cat died a few days later, sadly, but thinking about the old agoraphobic cat-hoarding neighbor, I realize that that could be me. So what did I do this weekend to combat this unfortunate end?

I stayed home, watched tons of movies and tv shows and made my spaghetti sauce. Yeah, I’m really doing a great job combatting what I’m assuming to be my fate.

That said, I got through half of Santa Clarita Diet (inoffensive fluff) and am almost done with the first season of Westworld (the show thinks it’s more interesting than it really is.) I watched What We Do in the Shadows (pretty fun), I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore (a bit dull, but I found myself having a strange attraction to Elijah Wood), Krisha (pretty good first feature film), Nowhere (perhaps my favorite movie of all time) and Sausage Party (typical Rogen/Franco haunt.)

Speaking of Elijah Wood, I remember running into him once at a Scissor Sisters show at the Wiltern back in 06 or something like that. My friend Nicole had tickets and I had nothing to do that night, so we went. I remember seeing Elijah jump up and down in so much dancing ecstasy. We both giggled at that. We ended up leaving after four songs since neither of us liked Scissor Sisters and it was jarring for me seeing these muscle queens wearing pink boas and thinking they were flamboyant.

Here is a text exchange I had on Saturday where the other party was drunk while I was sober. I need to be far less sober in my life.

It was little Emma’s fifth birthday a couple of weeks ago. It was held at an indoor playground right by their house, and one thing that held me spellbound was seeing how many friends she had.

I don’t remember having a lot of friends as a child. The neighborhood in Louisiana I grew up in didn’t have a lot of kids. My dad always preferred staying home drinking his beer and watching the television on his days off, and my mom was usually busy with work. So most of my play time involved me in our yard just making shit up and trying to keep myself entertained.

I had a golf club, so I would hit the golf ball around the yard and pretend I was Chi Chi Rodriguez. We had a bunch of azalea bushes, so I would pick the flowers and have a field day so to speak. I also loved kicking ant hills and running away before they would get to me. There were the books I would read, the tv shows I would watch since I did have a tv in my room.

That made my birthdays family affairs: my mom, my dad, my Mama and Dallas Aunt (who went to LSU during this time.) But I was fine with that. I wasn’t that much of a friend person. Sure I had friends at school, but these weren’t deep friendships or anything. They were just people I could talk to and socialize with at school.

I guess this is just further confirmation of what I learned during my Christmas road trip to Louisiana — that deep down inside I like being by myself.

I made a mixtape for you of shit I’ve been listening to lately.

1. Gods in Heat by Tobacco
2. We’re In This Together by Nine Inch Nails
3. Animal by Kanga
4. Uppercut by Ohm
5. Resist by Front Line Assembly
6. I Don’t Love You Anymore by Anohni
7. The Negative (Perspective 3) by Solve
8. Bound By Light by Ritual Howls
9. Fleece by Crystal Castles
10. Toleration or Truth by Pig
11. Is Your Soul For Sale? by Babylon Zoo

Right click on the player to save.

Okay. I had a slightly less disturbing dream last night.

A straight male friend of mine was raped by a guy, and we decide to go and get revenge. We get to the fucker’s apartment, stake it out and overtake him as he’s getting ready to run out. We get him onto the floor and keep yelling at him. “Why the fuck you gotta rape people, you fucking asshole?” “You like it when it’s forced?”

I grab the fucker’s hand and force him to stroke me off. He has this look of horror on his face. All the while I keep taunting him as I force him to pleasure me against his will. I cum all over his face which is paralyzed in that look of horror. My friend and I leave.

I wake up.

I had an awful dream last night that I was part of a group segregated from the rest of population in an internment camp-like existence. We were placed in squads and could only be out and about when our white leaders led us from one place to another. Other “normal” citizens were able to move about freely. But us queers and blacks were forced to wear a drab uniform while marching about town.

When it was time to feed us, they would make us go through these ridiculous obstacle courses in order to get to the food. Once they made us march to a building where we all knew someone was going to get gassed and killed. We then had to drag the corpse to the incinerator then march back to our “barracks.”

A couple of times I got separated from my squad, and there was a dread that I would be found out and killed. I kept trying to return to my squad. Once I ran into Tyson and Catherine and managed to talk to them for a couple of minutes before finding my squad and returning.

The whole time I was in this awful world, I was filled with a lot of fear. I didn’t know how long I would have to endure this, but I had hope that people would overthrow Trump’s policy and give me my freedom back. But as each second ticked by, my cynicism took over and the fear of being detained indefinitely kicked in. Not knowing if you’re next to die, if you’ve done something to piss off the powers-that-be, if your fellow detainees are finks.

There is no secret why this popped up in my subconscious last night. All weekend long I’ve been on the verge of breaking down because of everything I read and saw in the news. The immigration and refugee and Muslim ban. Seeing the ACLU lawyers work pro bono and literally on the floor to try and free those who were detained. Seeing the federal court issuing a temporary stay of the Cuntwad’s executive order. Of seeing the protests at the airports across the country. Of realizing that this is now our new normal, of having to fight like hell just to keep the Consitution from being the political equivalent of Charmin toilet paper.

All this to say I’m fucking scared like I’ve never been scared before. I went back through the archives here and looked at what I wrote during W’s administration, and while I was angry at a lot of his policies I never thought that we were headed straight to the end of the world.