The Long Weekend

It really feels like I have stepped through the looking glass or some such thing. I'm no different, but somehow my life has leapt from dreary to delightful over the course of one long weekend.

Friday evening I was pretty bagged from having been up late Wednesday collecting and jury-rigging my computers and then being out late Thursday for The Ancient One's birthday. Nonetheless Brenda and I went over to Myriam's old place for her post-op party. Out of the men in the room there were only two of us that were born that way, Brenda (I think) was the only straight female there. I was too tired to be really social (although munching down on some amazing cinnamon buns gave me a bit of a sugar-perk). Nonetheless it was fun to just be around so many interesting people, even if I was biting my tongue over some too-far-left academia that I wasn't up to debating. One of the more amusing conversations was the "What do straight people call themselves?" question and subsequent debate.

I crashed in a big way afterword and slept in much later than intended Saturday morning. Saturday, of course was the big date. I puttered around the apartment doing as much unpacking a tidying as I could. My big accomplishment was to get most everything hung, especially my Jack and Sally posters. I'm not at home until those are up. Then I decided to cut my hair. How's this for an example of Murphy's Law. I pulled out my venerable old pair of clippers and set about to cutting my hair as I have done many, many times before. I put on the right taper and clipped away the hair around my right ear. I put on the left taper and cut away the hair around my left year. I put on the longest attachment and started to take hair off the top. The blades had gummed up and weren't cutting. Par for the course. As I have douzens of times before I tapped the clippers on the side of the sink to knock out the hair and free up the clippers. Only this time the clippers came to pieces and the blades, attachment, backing plate, and two small broken pieces of casing lay in the sink. The clippers fell apart. Time to freak.

O.K. Axis is just up the street, but it is after 5pm so they will be closed. I don't have any scissors sharp enough to cut hair, not to mention I have never cut my own hair with scissors. Would Natalie or Nick and Sandi have clippers? Fuck. I'm covered in hair already from what I have managed to cut and I don't have a whisk broom anymore. I don't have time to shower, dress, run around seeing if I can borrow some clippers, finish cutting my hair, shower again, then get ready to go out. Alright, time to jury-rig the clippers to finish the job. Where's the duct tape? Damn. I don't know! Alright, masking tape will have to do. Somehow I manage to hold the clippers together long enough to finish cutting my hair. Time to shower and dress. Six shirt changes and three shoe changes later I'm ready to go, just in time. Mind you, I'm in such a frazzled state I forgot my camera. Nonetheless I picked up Elaine on time (OK, two minutes late by my clock, but that's within the realm of variations between clocks - by my based-on-analog-timepieces rule +/- 2 minutes is "on time"). From there everything went swimmingly.

We walked by to my place to get the camera and cabbed out from there. Everything was perfect. Being the smarmy couple making out in the corner is great fun. It's something I haven't done since the Twilight Zone days. Frankly I haven't felt so *myself* with somebody else since those days. That's what made the evening so brilliant - I didn't really do anything that wasn't completely natural. Between kisses I took my usual pictures, talked and drank and smoked with my friends, and it was all good because she ran her own community website (which, incidentally, I hosted) and my friends are pretty much one and the same as her friends.

Saturday flowed into Sunday, and unfortunately I missed Sunday brunch (but, honestly... who the hell has Sunday brunch before 1:00 p.m.? That's just sick! :-p ). Sunday got kind of blurry actually. Somehow I ended up buying a bizarre assortment of goods at Army and Navy with Nick and Sandi without ever having even gotten around to showering or shaving. I came home with WD40, underwear and socks, candles, ice-cream and a present for Nat's daughter all in the same bag - where but Army and Navy could one do that? The place is surreal. There was barely enough time to shower, shave, and wrap the present before heading downstairs for a Thanksgiving dinner.

That's the wonderful thing about being here. I had the best Thanksgiving I've had in ages, right here in the same building I live in. The food was brilliant, as was the company. The after dinner symposium on the existence of God, free-will, and culture was a dialogue Socrates himself would have enjoyed. I can only repeat again how wonderfully *myself* I feel here. This is the life I have been looking for. It was in the hopes of this kind of sense of community and home that I tried the live-work studios. But you can't force this sort of thing to happen. Here it is happening spontaneously. The only times before this that was similar was way back in View Towers, in Victoria, in 1986. Friends I already knew lived in the building and more moved in. It was those friends and the feeling of community that makes me look back on that time fondly when the harsh reality of my poverty then could have as easily had me looking back on it as a miserable time. Likewise in 1989, in Nanaimo, there were people, old friends and new, in the same apartment complex that made it a brilliant time even when to much of it was hard. Even tonight, for example Nick and Sandi came down for a few hours to hang around. I've had more guests (of my own) here already than my whole time in North Van. No matter how many people paraded though that house they were her friends, not mine, and it left me alienated. Whether they really were or not the few friends I had over remarked immediately how they didn't feel welcome. Well, here they are, and even though there I was not alone and here I am, there I felt lonely and here I do not.

Following dinner it was off to Sanctuary. Elaine and I spent most of our time in the small room, with the old music. She exhibited an uncanny ability to inadvertently predict what was about to be played. Perhaps those lights Kim wears are really a mind-reading device? Must be the black magic of the Dark City Cult at work. Stupid point of the night was doing my Ukrainian dance through the entirety of "Ra, Ra, Rasputin" - including a sustaining the two-leg kick for about 30 seconds (Try it. I dare you. Squat down, cross your arms in front of your chest, kick both legs out in front of yourself without letting your butt rise more than 2' off the ground and get your legs back before your butt hits the floor. Can you do it once? Twice? OK. Now do it thirty times). I thought my legs were going to fall off later in the night. I give thanks for the couches and lots of gin.

Sunday flowed into the holiday Monday, which was the real "Sunday" of the weekend. Elaine wandered ahead to Christine and Michael's while I had my "morning" shower. I stopped off and bought us each a flying bat (flap, flap... flap.... fl... ap... p... p... bitogoth) then picked up Elaine to go to brunch at Hamburger Mary's.

There are so many other things to say about it, but it was an utterly brilliant weekend. There has been mention of luck and fate lately but I don't buy that this is part of anyone's plan but mine or that anything other than my own actions got me here. I've paid attention over the years to what has made me happy and what has made me unhappy. And for once I have chosen to be happy in and for myself first.

The funny thing about this pursuit of happiness (using the phrase in the Classical sense) is the how, rather than being selfish, it leaves me with more to give. This is a life I want to share, that's worth sharing. And the best part of that is I'm not alone in that belief.