eggnotes - January 2000
21 januaryLast night after a hard round of Tae Bo, I left the office in a last minute dash to join Amy at the Metreon for Magnolia. We arrived just in time to discover that the projector was fuct - running the movie in extreme darkness. We opted instead to go to Galaxy Quest, mostly at my urging. We laughed all the way through! It's so rare to see a comedy that sustains laughter throughout the entire film. A good plot, fantastic acting. So that was a good time.
Outside on the sidewalk, we noticed some heavy construction going down - flares marking off all of 4th street between Mission and Howard as wrecking balls and other mechanics of destruction were brought to bear on a non-descript concrete building. It was beautiful - green and blue lights filtered through dust, welding sparks, streams of water.
It turns out they've been razing a segment of the block each night this week. This section was due for destruction in a bit, so we pardoned ourselves for a brief drink and returned later to join the crowd urging the large swinging iron ball. Like Fight Club. The Lunar Eclipse had expired. The ball swung a few times, only making a few major rumbling impacts, and finally one more seemingly ineffectual swing brought the project to a rumbling shaking conclusion - it staggered down, sat for a time like that, and finally collapsed in an enormous cloud of concrete dust.
It was very romantic.
18 january
I come on strong with some design feedback for Amy's job website
egg: youre just another fucker adding a morsel of bullshit to my shitty day14 january
Two of Amy's friends, Stephen and Jay, are visiting San Francisco. First thing in the morning, between them and Amy, there's much crowing, rodeo riding, and on the stereo: the later addicted Judy Garland singing songs about show business and Swanee River - if the tunes got any bigger there wouldn't be room in the house for all of us and her.
What irony - I come home from a 10 to 10 day at Gamers and discover Jay, Stephan and Amy eating strawberries in whipped cream with champagne on our futon. Minutes later, Stephen begins calling out, "Bust-A-Groove!" "Bust-A-Groove!" - Jay and him had discovered a spare PlayStation copy laying around my room and we four commence to the bed upstairs to play.
13 january
Sometime I think about how strong Amy is. She's really got a will of her own. I think to myself, she doesn't take my of my shit, she gives me heck for it. (But then again, she lives with me so much of her life is my shit).
Out to dinner with April and her man, April observed something like I've always dated some strong women. Sometimes I think about older men who date younger women, and the power dynamics there are in that. I wonder if the older men have it easier - they don't have to take as much shit from their mate because they've established themselves or whatnot.
Then I realize that's a load of bull - women will always be giving men shit. But that's okay - that's a large part of why people live together it seems, to keep themselves in check.
If I didn't live with Amy, my job would be my life. Maybe I'd be a swinging single, staying out late, dancing. As I said to Wayne today, I remember the mobility and freedom of being single, and I remember the aching lonliness and alienation.
I like being with Amy. Besides the fact that being in bed with her feels fantastic (moving or still), she's her own person. I feel enriched being around her.
11 january
Amy paid me one of the highest honours I have yet been paid in my short life. Last December, just a month or so ago, for my 25th birthday, she threw me a party. A surprise party where people from Cyborganic and people from HotWired and people from Electric Minds and people from Gamers.com mingled with Mills girls and East Bay rockers and even someone from my Summer Roadtrip, Seth. People who help with bud.com slapped me on the back and people I work too much to see otherwise surrounded me with booze and good cheer.
It was insane amounts of social miscegenation - insane because I had a direct personal link to most all the people and since it was a surprise party I had no control over anything.
Joel wrote on our whiteboard - "it's amazing how much damage one radioactive goat can cause," I guess after Matt projectile vomited all over our office. Whoops! Well the pervading smell of puke didn't bother me because I had a stuffed up nose, and by the time my nose cleared up, Fernando the cat had peed on my favourite $25 blue leather executive desk chair. I'm sitting on a plastic bag on the cat pee these days. Man is cat pee ever pervasive.
As a constant companion I enjoy Amy's brains, and the way she smells. When she does something requiring that much effort and thought, I'm bowled over! This chick digs me! It's an honour. And a challenge.
7 january
after weeks of drought, the rains came this morning. my lips were parched and I was still half awake when I felt the water hit my body, waking me up, making me wet. I kept my eyes closed to merge the magic of my half-sleep and the feeling of being moist again after so much time in the hard dry. Finally I opened my eyes and realized that between my thrashing about, excited, and the rains, we were making mud. Yum!
5 January
Amy and I just returned from a week or more of on the road, on the east coast. Amy is tighter interwoven into her high school scene than I am - when she goes places there's many people to see. I try to catch a few folks here and there if I'm somewhere long enough. With Amy travelling, I slept in a different bed each night for 8 nights. I slept on floors and couches, in houses filled with 3-pack a day smokers saturating my clothes, I visited with a person with AIDS, and cleaned the BBQ of a Vanderbilt. We rode on Peter Pan buses, saw the movie Titus, road tripped from Boston to New York with a country music singing 19 year old leo Clay who had such wonderful quiet charm and persistent charisma I wanted him to come along for new years almost more than the rest. There was an entire posse invited into our New Years entourage - my criteria for the passing of the millenium was mostly quietude, and being with Amy. Amy wanted her best friend Eve and Eve entailed about a dozen and some other folks.
There's a unanimous verdict, whomever I speak with, being in a relationship with someone helps you spend your money. It's complication. I love it these days. I have largely turned over the reins of my social life outside of work to Amy and so I am treated to lesbian artists and aspiring singers, people less binariffic than my coworkers, certainly less jocular, and a little more cereberal. In fact I was spoutin' some shit and Amy recommended "the plague" which was a nice thing to read over the millenium - haven't finished yet, but it's a page turner. I always thought it would be intimidating or laborious to read, but no.
Her Mom is lovely, a consumate host - fruits and curries and eggs and bacon. Her dad had much grill wisdom to share.
the pressure to marry seems to have abated, Amy's stopped making ring jokes for the time being and her dad and dorothy explained to us that being married is a bad break for taxes, which seemed to even hold her mom at bay a bit. Jeez, I love this girl, she's a lot to look at and hold and just constantly exchange ideas with. But she does have a lot on her mind that keeps her somewhere else sometimes and her temper can be quite short, and she has unfinished plans that might well take her elsewhere and so it's just like we're biding a real good time. With our cat Fernando, who peed on my computer chair cuz we were gone too long and it rained and so Joolee kept him from going outside and he got pissy, for real.
Amy cut my hair like a monk sorta. Joel said it looks alternative. She said she wishes I wouldn't wear my glasses so much. I haven't enough time these days to deal with eye doctors insurance HMOs and contacts so maybe I'll go blind? I do feel much more intimate without these little hexagonal windows between us.