Scribbled on a purple Post-it above my desk: "Art is weird. Sometimes it's ugly. Sometimes you just have to sit and look at it for a while before you can continue."

I'm more excited about working on the Kickstarter and these collages I'm doing than I've been about anything in a long time. It feels good to work in perfect sync with someone I totally click with, which has only really happened with faustfatale (apparently I need a dom to treat me like a trained monkey when it comes to collaboration, since otherwise I tend to act like an untrained monkey). It also feels good to shut myself up in my office, where even the cats don't go, and work alone; that's always been my favorite thing.

I hope to post some photos of the collages soon. The ones I've tried to take with my little Nikon Coolpix look crappy, but I might know a photographer.

Many more lovely birthday presents came in from my wish list! It turns out that five pounds is a LOT of gummi bears! Virtual thank-you notes (since Amazon no longer gives addresses to send real ones) to Jaime Weida, Karen Marie Hancock, Cynthia Ann Coons, Colleen M. Frankhart, and the kind soul whose name I didn't get who sent the Calvin Klein Eternity for Men cologne. My boyfriend likes it.

One of the gifts I got was Lynda Barry's wonderful book What It Is, which is all about how writing and making art can become work rather than the purely fun activities they used to be when we were kids, and how to (maybe) get back to that place of having fun. There's a lot of gorgeous collage work in it that has influenced the stuff I'm doing. It's one of those undeniable cases of a book magically turning up at just the right time in your life.

OK. This is hard, but I do it for love.

Grey has started a Kickstarter project to help fund a book project that combines photography and writing, "We Are Not Nameless Faces: Letters and Images From A Gay World." I've tried my best to avoid the obvious, but I no longer can: I really ought to write one of these pieces. I hereby pledge that if he reaches his goal, I will try my utmost to do so. I haven't written any fiction in six years and I don't know if it will be any good, but I'll try.

Stayed up all night making collages. Gotta get with Grey and figure out how to photograph these things so people can see them. Crafty eBay auctions ending this evening: the homoerotic botanic treasure box, the copy of Exquisite Corpse with my handmade cover, and two blank books. This turns out to be the Make the Mortgage Payment Sale, so please bid if you can!

This video has been cheering me up at difficult moments. I linked to it in comments the other day, but want to embed it for interested parties who didn't see it there.





Just listed several new eBay auctions: the chapbooks Would You?, Used Stories, Stay Awake, Crown of Thorns, and The Feast of St. Rosalie (a hardcover); also a hardcover copy of Antediluvian Tales. My blank journals and other handmade objects are also still available until Wednesday evening.

Also, Grey has listed a one-of-a-kind photograph for sale, and a very beautiful one, too. Angel that he is, he has earmarked his profit from the sale of this piece as my testosterone fund.

For my birthday, I got ... misgendered. Constantly. Everywhere I went. And it was almost all in queer spaces, and it was all done unintentionally and as kindly as could be, by well-meaning folks, so I couldn't even work up a righteous head of indignation; I just got depressed.

I am not making progress. Part of it is that I haven't been able to afford my full doses of testosterone -- the treatment runs a little over $300 a month, which I pay completely out of pocket -- and so I've been stretching it out to half-doses, figuring some T going into my system was better than none. (Medically speaking, this isn't wholly unsound, as many trans guys start off on low doses.)

Thanks to Grey, I had a wonderful birthday weekend anyway. When we're alone together, the rest of the world recedes to the point where even gender seems relatively unimportant. And he can always boost my confidence, and he's so romantic, and he even seems to think I'm interesting. I know, the man must be deranged, but I sure do love him.

Re: misgendering, there was a good moment of comic relief at the drag show we attended last night. Local drag diva Bootsy DeVille was talking to us at the bar at Michael's on the Park before her show, and she turned to me and said, "I have a question for you. Now it's hard for me to phrase this right ... " Grey and I were both bracing for The Question, which I wouldn't have really minded answering for Bootsy, but instead she said rather hesitantly, "Did you use to be the boyfriend of a famous writer? Because we were googling Billy Martin, and there seemed to be some connection ... "

After collapsing with laughter, we explained as best we could, and only later did I realize I should have said, "Why yes, I used to date Stephen King, but I dumped him for Grey!"

If you want to leave me good wishes, that would make me happy!

The mail continues to bring treats, including a signed copy of Caitlín's The Drowning Girl. Very much looking forward to reading this one. Thank you, greygirlbeast! In your honor, I shall try to write something resembling a real entry. With, you know, thoughts and stuff. Not just random observations and eBay listings (though I do have some of those).

Life is ... sticky. I guess that's the best way to describe it. Not precisely bad, but difficult. Literally so, because the air conditioning in my house is broken and we're heading into another long, sweaty, tyrannical New Orleans summer. Most luxuries have fallen by the wayside, and necessities are starting to do so. Yet I live in interesting times, both personally, by being in a relationship that brings me joy and creative inspiration, and globally, by feeling -- as I seldom did growing up -- that we are living on the right side of history. The other day I sent Grey a text saying, basically, we may be old by the time it comes, but I think we'll live to see a day when today's last-gasp homophobes look as benighted as the news footage of rabid bigots screaming at black children integrating the public schools. (I didn't want to be a Negative Nancy, so I didn't add that I don't expect to live to see a day when transgender people are anywhere near as accepted.) Meanwhile, there are still "religious" nutjobs who want to put us all behind electric fences and courts that give evil little shitweasels thirty damn days in prison for hounding us to death, but society no longer seems to be in tacit agreement with those people as it did when I was younger.

One more paragraph for Caitlín. Christ, when you get out of the habit of writing, forcing yourself to do it starts to feel like weightlifting. I have little puny stringy 98-pound-weakling writing muscles. If I do any more reps, I'll make them sore. Clang.

So about those eBay auctions ... they are all crafty things, two more blank journals, a copy of Exquisite Corpse with a redesigned cover by me, and a "homoerotic botanic" treasure box. Please check 'em out.