hpapillon

Who's got two thumbs and an officially first date next week? This girl! No, it's not Rubbermaid, it's someone else I met by being, you know, social. We have a lot in common. We shall see!

It's funny how you can get dates by asking women out. I hate to admit it, but I used an app to do the actual asking.

Good: I went to the West Seattle munch and chatted with the Blue Moon Lady. Yes, she still seems nice. Further pursuit is in order. Ahem. Unlike certain other munches which shall not be named, there was a healthy variety of ages, genders, etc. there. BML & her colleague clearly put some effort and thought into it. Oh, and brewpub Good Society has decent beer. They have two locations, I believe.

Bad: outside rush hour, getting to Admiral & California from my place takes three buses each way. That’s about ninety minutes. I don’t think I can make a habit of this regardless of the lady’s charms. As a direct result, I’m a little low on sleep today.

It's worth noting that as much as I've complained about late night bus service to Fremont or the U District, it's worse in West Seattle. A possible exception is "the Junction", i.e. Alaska & California, which sure has seen a lot of construction in the last ten years or so. West Seattle has a long history of complaining to their elected officials about various things, and my impression is that it's justified.

There's a munch closer to the Devil Girl House run by a FOAF. He's all right, but I didn't relish the thought of two buses early on a Monday evening through the U District. I think I'm out of excuses for not going, as of yesterday.

The Tickler got us tickets to the Cut Copy show last night at the Showbox. Sadly, they had a bad IBS day yesterday and couldn't make it. Not at all sadly, they transferred their tickets to yours truly! And a day or two before the show, they informed me that Ora the Molecule, from whom I already have an LP, was to open. Shyeah!

TL;DR: I want to have Ora the Molecule's alien baby. OtM is just one tall blonde woman (?) from Norway, and she walked onstage in a red, quilted jumpsuit with shoulders padded to pointiness, a mirror ball helmet, and shades. Then she started playing a theremin. It was all kinds of dancy – her latest LP is titled Dance Therapy – and bouncy. By the end of her set, she won over the typically reserved Seattle crowd. Hey, she's Norwegian; she's probably used to dealing with reserved crowds.

Then, Cut Copy, whose shows I've been to twice. Sure, they're great, but I have most if not all of their LPs already and I was just listening to their latest last week. So honestly, they didn't have the impact on me that OtM did. And I can't not love the goof that she brought. Yeah, she's pretty cute. Hush. So yeah, I just got Dance Therapy and am playing it as I type and chairdance.

I'll have to find some way to repay the Tickler.

Now that I’ve done the most dangerous thing that I usually do in a day, riding my bike, I can confidently say that as of today, I’ve lived longer than my father did. It’s… disquieting how not-old I feel.

I know comparison is the thief of joy, but that doesn’t stop me from comparing myself to the man I got half my DNA from.

Work? Dad was a hot shot scientist, at least early on. I’ve been hacking and slacking my way through life. He did live long enough to see me be a disappointment, but he had the grace not to say so.

Relationships? He found Mrs. Right at the age of 21, and death parted them. He did, however, make her miserable on some occasions; she admitted that even before the dementia really took hold. Dad had acquired some antiquated attitudes about women from his own father, whom he idolized for reasons the rest of the family never figured out. And oh by the way, in many ways Ex is a better person than my mother was, so I get points for taste.

Raising kids? Well, if you look at the self-sufficiency score, I’m not doing so well, even if I don’t know what, if anything, I should have done differently. And as for raising kids who aren’t terrible people, I’m one for one, and my parents are two for three. But again, I don’t know what they could have done differently, and having been there myself, I’m loath to second guess either of them. I will note, though, Dad’s lack of enthusiasm for the whole parenting project; he seemed to have gotten the idea that it wasn’t really his job, possibly from his father again.

The whole sex switcheroo? Maybe he would have been OK with it; maybe not. I know he was deeply emotionally invested in having a son. I got coerced into little league baseball and reading James Fennimore Cooper. However, Dad was anti-racist and prided himself on being more enlightened than average. And I had Mom in my corner. Maybe he would have come around after a while the way Good Sister did.

If he’d been in my shoes, would he have had the guts to do what I did? I think not. He was a fifties organization man, back before that stopped working for everybody. He did once get me aside and tell me he had some cross-gender… what was the word he used, feelings? But at that point I was running away from them myself, so I didn’t want to hear anything further. I’ve regretted that, but now that I think about it, maybe he had nothing constructive to say.

One thing sticks out in my memory: a few years before Mom died and well into the course of her dementia, she said that Dad told her, “I’m a failure. You’re a failure too.” I hope Mom confabulated that. If not, it breaks my heart, because he wasn’t a failure. I know I’m not.

On the way home last night I picked up the autobiographical mini-comic "Sunflowers" by queer local artist & writer Keezy Young. It's about what it's like to have bipolar disorder, a case bad enough to include psychosis. And you know what? It's fantastic.

Not that I expected otherwise: I've already read Hello Sunshine, a nice, thick full-length comic in which mental illness, queerness of various kinds, and fantasy all crash into group of high school kids.

So yeah, buy Keezy's work and read it. She's a fantastic artist & writer and all around cool person.