jacktellslies

on new year's day i watched a bit of the parade, or, rather, i watched people drunk in the morning or early afternoon and happy and making noise and dancing and teaching one another to strut and generally being lords of misrule. and it was funny: you see, i do not turn heads in this neighborhood. i am nothing unusual here, and so i mostly forget that sometimes i rank somewhere around the gayest ever. but the people who come to watch the parade are not from here; they come from elsewhere in the city. what i mean is, there is something strange and ridiculous and wonderful about being stared at by a bunch of people who came here specifically to watch half of the men in philadelphia run around in ugly dresses.

as punishment for making terrible choices (terrible choices is here translated as, "out with megan." i still maintain that i was a drunk, drunk kitten, and that being drunk does count as an excuse if i was apparently drunk enough that i didn't notice that she hadn't showered in three days. i also contend that the knowledge of this is more than punishment enough.) aiden kidnapped me and took me to delaware, of all places, where we mostly failed to witness traditional delawarean language, dress, and culture, and to taste unique, exotic dealwarean food. we also mostly didn't cruise quaint suburban neighborhoods with the windows down and the bitch and animal song about dildos playing more than loudly enough to break a few children. but we kind of did. crossing the border back into pennsylvania, the joking suggestion that we should totally go to hooters resulted in our actually going to hooters when i admitted that i'd never been. my favourite part was that for as big as aiden and i both talk, neither of us seemed to be able to speak to our waitress like human beings. we were both shy and so nervous. i said thank you so many times. but it was everything it should have been: we ate mediocre food and the waitress touched our arms when she talked to us and sat next to us when she took our order and pretended to have gone out of her way to get aiden a lighter and told us that we weren't like those other guys; they were lame and drunk and had just been here yesterday, but she could tell that we were cool. we wondered what the very young children whose fathers had taken them to hooters would grow up to be like, and i hoped that if a customer should become awful, the hooters girls would all reveal themselves to be amazon warriors and gang up on him to defend one another's honour. i came home and aiden left and patrick, the most amazing boy in all the world, came over for tea and puppetry and a nice walk. he is brilliant, and has touched and made things most of us never even bother imagining.

today i worked, and while i did that, aiden took the keys to my house and hung out there by herself because apparently some people don't like to listen to their roommates having loud sex if they aren't directly involved in it. i don't pretend to understand. when i finally joined her we watched a good deal of the first season of what i would argue might actually be the best television show ever made, the adventures of pete and pete. the nineties were so much better than what we are now. she left and meredith introduced me to my first ever bollywood film, bride and prejudice. it was wonderful, managing both jane austen and transnationalism perfectly. i want to learn more about the genre. bernie came over, too, and gave me a nuns-doing-cool-shit calender that i love, and a crazy cd, and pirates. everyone left, and there was a house meeting. it seems that i might be a little bit closer to one day having a room again, or so i pray. the past few days have been so full. i am blessed. there are rain noises outside my window, too.