may 22, 2002.

I'm sitting in my parents' living room, the hum of the computer and the slow-loading web my only stimulus. I'm amused at myself and how I want to pile on more: more books, more sound, more excitement! Or as the Cure say, "more stars more pain more love, more sex." Even writing this (as I check my email in another window) is a grab for stimulus, although only a linguistical nerd like me could truly surf on the excitement of writing personal narrative. Whee!

I said I wouldn't do this, yet here I am doing it. I started having trouble making the words fit together, and instead of writing through the block like a semi-mature person, I chose to leave the arena completely. When you think about it, as I have, you realize that very few nutjobs feel guilty if they don't write a public chronicle of their daily activities. Which I suppose makes me unique in yet another way.

Anyway, I seem to be still doing this. I'm a little afraid that this has become the only game in town for me - that my life will lack a little something without the constant online outpouring. I suppose that I was supposed to think about this in Toronto. But No! Time! To! Think! We're on a party schedule here.

"Your hair is the party that never ends."

- me to stacy, too early in the morning

Parents' Visit (May 11-16):

Very nice, actually. For various reasons they've always liked visiting me more than having me visit them: they see more of me for one and they're away from their stuff for another (it's amazing the kind of salutary effect landlessness can have on some people.) We ate in a lot, which gave me the opportunity to work with 2 other women in my kitchen. (And despite the honking load of food in my house, I did very little actual cooking. They're both middle aged mothers and they did most of the chopping & mixing & sautéing; I concerned myself with clean up, ingredient-location and managing flow. It was charming.)

Having the Summers in to visit was also a very positive element of the trip; they were excited to be in Nova Scotia and their presence smoothed out some potential emotional edges. As Calvin says to his uncle, "my mom is much more patient with me in front of guests." They ended up doing a lot more sightseeing than my parents, as they didn't have to hang around Wolfvegas for the graduation ceremony. I think that my parents really enjoyed having peers - they had enough time to hang out with me & the Boy, but when they were restless they could play tourist with familiar faces.

I'm not sure if the presence of the Summers helped my parents deal with the new tattoo; all I know is that everyone was very supportive of my constant Polysporin-ing even if they might've doubted my...er...artistic inspiration. It's so nice to have these things out in the open, you have no idea.

Graduation (May 13):

The whole experience made me feel confused for no particular reason. Everything went off without a hitch, but I found myself unable to make small talk the whole afternoon. This was not my usual pathological truth-telling problem, it was simply that my brain was several steps off from my mouth, and when I was asked questions I could not supply even the simplest answers. I think the neatest thing about the afternoon was getting my envelope with the magic white square. Now that I have my teacher's license, the world is my pedagogical oyster and I am the spit-born pearl.

We went for dinner at Piccolo Mondo, a most fabulous Italian restaurant in Halifax. Our dinners took almost 2 hours to arrive, so we were rather swilled on the excellent house red before the entrees. A great giggling good time, despite the wine spilled on me by the Boy and the water glass my mother shattered as I tried to hand it to her.

Um, we tipped big.

The First Weekend, part 1 (May 18):

This was the dancing bingeing 'No Sleep 'Til Brooklyn' weekend. Except that we did sleep, and this turned into one of our biggest problems: sometimes we were too sleepy/lazy to get a proper start on things. Saturday we went a-Gardening, bound for Bondage but never quite making it that far. This was the night I discovered that I'd mistakenly grabbed the Boy's contact lenses instead of my own, and I'd unwittingly precipitated one of my most popular anxiety dreams: I'm trying to get dressed, but what I have is wrong. I was pissed off enough to make a virtue of my wounded vanity, and declared my pioneering new look to be "goth librarian" (reshelve your own fucking books.)

I have to admit that it was a pretty swank outfit, glasses or no: corset, long black skirt & black opera gloves. And I had to stop talking about the glasses, as it was interpreted as fishing for compliments - something I'm certainly not above, but a phenomenon that is wearying on a steady diet. Dav seemed sincerely pleased with the look, however. As I said, we ended up having so much fun at the Garden that we never made it to fetish. The only casualty was Dirk, who wore a heavy admiral's jacket that was too hot for the steamy Garden and unnecessary for any environment other than a Victorian Fetish party.

The First Weekend, part 2 (May 19):

On Sunday we tried really hard to do things, but we were defeated by our own slackness. An afternoon of watching teevee with slack-jawed expressions finished off Dirk for the day, and after a big dinner of barbecued salmon, he trundled off to bed. Stacy was socially obligated to make an appearance at the Garden's trance night, so I decided to tag along to keep her company. I put on the world's smelliest PVC pants, left my pink Powerpuff Girls t-shirt alone, and used my one surviving hair elastic to put up a little ponytail on the top of my head. I had always intended to buy another set of elastics and make a symmetrical hairstyle, but the lopsided anime vibe grew on me. I decided to grab Stacy's purple space pistol and paint a caste mark on my cheek - presto! I was an interstellar assassin in the pay of a shadowy government agency, too stupid to know the meaning of the 'T' on my face. Stacy dressed in similar duds and picked up a pistol of her own. Suddenly we were looking forward to going out & being seen -- thus proving that the best nights are those that owe a substantial debt to MacGuyver-style improvisation.

(Right away our pistols became a useful toy, as we rose from the subway just as the streetcar pulled away from the curb. Shooting the car repeatedly was a wonderful relief...and rounding the corner, we found another bus waiting for us! He he he! We continued to use our pistols to threaten & cajole various people throughout the night, my best moment involving a cigarette, the pistol and a palmful of glow-in-the-dark paint.)

Many interesting people populated our booth as the night went on, including Dop, Steph, Dav2 and a slightly high Jesse. Our guns were a big hit, and we closed out the night with big grins. You know, if you have to walk down a dark alley at 3 am, it helps to have a purple space pistol in your fist. I'm not sure why, but there it is.

The First Weekend, part 3 (May 20 - Victoria Day!):

We had planned to visit Centre Island on Monday, but the cold ugly weather was more than discouraging. Instead we wandered around the City, visiting a retro store, a Catholic supply store (St. Rita is my new favourite saint!), buying books at the huge Chapters and catching the afternoon showing of Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner). Atanarjuat was an incredible experience: it's the first movie created by an entirely Inuit cast & crew, and it takes place in a completely different time sense. We left the theatre amazed and a little snow-blind. A hot dog helped.

Our evening plans inevitable, we simply went where we were supposed to go. Shannon's Dance Cave Monday was rather depopulated, but there was a full compliment of cute bendy punk bois and the usual tunes ripping up the room (my new favourite song is "Sex (I'm a...)"). The new sound system is boss, although Shannon herself seemed tired.

A few weeks before, I had decided to archive a night of Shannon for posterity, so I spent the entire night running back & forth from the dancefloor to my notebook. Four pages later, it was all scribbled & preserved for the ages. Shannon seemed a bit taken aback by this project; we joked that I would soon start showing up at her house, dressed in her clothes. On the basis of this comment, Dirk dubbed the project "Single White Shannon."

Hee hee hee...

3 years ago today: "Wedgies actually shock you out of the self-pity loop...and if they don't, I could always flush your head in the toilet."