I finished reading “Take a Thief” and another Mercedes Lackey novel called “Storm Warning.” I’m getting a sense of the continuity of plot and characters throughout her entire Valdemar series. I’ll probably have to return some others “Firebird,” “The Ship Who Searched,” and “The Serpent’s Shadow” before finishing them.
I’m also reading “Queer in Russia” by Laaurie Essig.
OK, so Paul postponed an IM chat with me yesterday so that he could hang out some more with a new Brazilian guy he met named Bruno. He finds him very handsome and wants to spend lots of time with him before Bruno has to go back to where he lives in Northern Brazil on Sunday.
I was disappointed that Paul cancelled our instant message date because I wanted to connect with him this week. I also have to remind myself that last week I was away at Breitenbush and wasn’t communicating with Paul. I guess the important thing is that we both have happy fulfilling lives even when we are not together.
I also have to consider the possibility that I am just one in a line of week-long affairs that Paul has with guys visiting from out of town. Hopefully, we have more of a connection than that. I certainly feel more. Only time will tell.
Yesterday, I went to the regularly scheduled queer longhair brunch at the Espresso Bravo Cafe on Valencia Street. Among the usual attendees, there was a new person named Loren who I hadn’t seen for over a decade since we worked together at Sun Microsystems. Sloan (Fruitboy) also made it to brunch and after brunch he came over to my place. We and my housemate Jack weeded the backyard and Sloan laid cocoa hulls as a sweet-smelling mulch. I harvested more than a dozen lemons from the lemon tree to give Bette my next-door neighbor. The garden looks great!
After a shower and relaxing in bed came the radical faerie re-entry party for faeries in San Francisco who had gone to the Breitenbush gathering. Myles (Mouse) asked me to host it at my place and the housemates agreed. 15-20 faeries showed up including Mouse, Fruitboy, Onyx, Mark (Ptah), Rick, Joel, Daniel, Johnny Thunder, and others. There was lots of good food including the split pea soup and wild rice I made and the salad Fruitboy made. We read fortunes from the Faeries’ Oracle tarot deck that Owlswan from work gave me.
Lance and his roommate Sami came too.
I’ve seen the following movies recently:
* Ghosts of Mississippi: excellent film chronicling the eventual conviction of the assassin of civil rights leader Medgar Evers, starring Whoopie Goldberg
* A Civil Action: bad film about a good cause, the poisoning of groundwater in upstate New York, starring John Travolta
* Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: middling adventure film
I finished reading “Winds of Fate” and I’m partway through “Take a Thief,” both of which have the character Skif in them, though at much different stages in his life.
I have six more Lackey books out from the library and there are still many more to go after that. She is quite prolific!
Yesterday, I went to a protest of queer people against the war in Iraq. I biked over to Castro and Market Sts. where there was a brief rally followed by a march to the LGBT Community Center. My housemate Jack was there, as well as faerie Roux, activists Tommi A. Mecca, Liz Highleyman, and David Solnit, and many others.
I talked with a bunch of folks about the San Francisco ballot propositions for secession and participatory budgeting.
Since I missed the February 16 protest in San Francisco while at the Breitenbush gathering, it was good to feel some of the march-in-the-street energy again!
Also, it was a relief to have a die-in in front of the LGBT Community Center without inappropriate police action like apparently happened when Gay Shame protested mayoral candidate Gavin Newsom’s appearance there last week.
Here are pictures:
http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2003/02/1577256.php
It’s been really hard being so far away from Paul. He’s still in Rio, working at the architect firm, teaching Spanish classes, hanging out on the beaches, and getting ready for Carnival.
We email back and forth, talk on the phone occasionally, and have also started instant messaging each other. Yesterday, we were IM’ing for nearly an hour.
I really miss him.
I hope it works out for his trip to San Francisco in May.
The faerie gathering I attended at the Breitenbush Hot Springs Community in the Cascade foothills of rural Oregon was fabulous! I feel so relaxed.
I met about 175 faeries some of whom I’ve seen there for years. I think it’s my 16th or 17th visit as I’ve only missed one winter gathering there since 1986 or 1987.
Dean (Fister) was kind enough to pick me up from the airport and give me a place to stay the night before heading to the gathering. He introduced me to his friend Bam Bam. We went out for a couple of drinks at the queer bars on Stark Street, one of the two gay districts in Portland, Oregon. I saw some really goodlooking young longhair guys, some of whom were probably hustlers and none of whom seemed interested in me. So I hung out with Bam Bam until Dean joined us later in the evening. I did meet one nice fellow named Dustin. We played 20 Questions to see if we could figure out what each of us does for a living. I finally figured out that he is a diver. He figured out that I’m an Internet activist.
The next morning, Jim and Lars arrived at Dean’s place and we went to buy some boots at a butch camping store called G.I. Joe’s. I got some great pics of those guys in front of the store, then in the rifle section. Jim and I both bought the same size of women’s boots, called Bog Boots, perfect for Breitenbush weather. Then, we drove over to Three Friends, a fabulous cafe where the faeries meet on weekends. Lars and I played a very close game of pool while waiting for our food. We were famished and ate quickly. Then, we stopped at the car rental office to get me signed up as a driver.
We drove in a few hours to Breitenbush. Damien and another faerie greeted us at the parking lot and a lovely camouflaged nun pointed us to our parking spot.
I unpacked my stuff into geothermally heated cabin D8 which I shared with Viking Diva, Elephant’s Child, and another faerie whose name I can’t remember. My faerie name is Stardust.
The gathering was perhaps the mellowest one I have ever attended. I really relaxed, avoiding doing any of the organizational stuff since I got so sick last winter as co-Queen Registrar with Rosemary for Remembrance from trying to take care of everything about the gathering.
I just ate excellent vegetarian food, did yoga, exchanged massage, soaked in the tubs, went into the sauna, danced the Dances of Universal Peace (“sufi dancing”), attended Scotty Dog’s workshop on faerie intentional communities, and made love with a couple of really sweet faeries named Jacob (Cob) and Rodney.
The fashion show and the talent/no-talent shows were wonderfully entertaining and not as long as at most gatherings.
I met and connected with so many wonderful people that it would be impossible to list them all here.
I hitched a ride back to Portland with Rodney and his roommate James. We went to a re-entry potluck event at Walowa’s place. I ended up spending a wonderful night with Rodney at a Portland hotel.
OK, I’m back from Brazil and adjusting to the time zone. I’ve had a little digestive trouble. And I’m missing Paul, the guy I met in Rio. In fact, I called him today. We have a good email thing going, but haven’t figured out chat yet. I’d like him to come visit, but it doesn’t look like that can happen until May when he finishes his architect stint in Rio.
I visited Steve night before last for dinner in the Castro. I felt a bit put off… he didn’t greet me very enthusiastically as he was cleaning his electric toothbrush in the bathroom.
Lance has found a new job! It’s for a good nonprofit cause as well. But his cell phone is cut off and so I can’t call him for a week. He’s getting his act together at home over the weekend.
I tried meeting up with Matthew on Thursday evening as well, but he was too busy with work.
I’m feeling frustrated that after two weeks in Brazil no one I’m “dating” seems that keen on seeing me.
So instead, I’m at home upacking, doing the laundry, and reading Mercedes Lackey’s “The Fire Rose.” I’ve reserved a bunch of Spanish language books from the library so I can start talking with Paul in Spanish. Actually, I’m surprised I didn’t take up Spanish earlier since I live in the Spanish-speaking area of San Francisco.
I was sleeping much of the time and the weather was overcast the first couple of days in Rio. That turned out to be a blessing because it was cool. Once the weather cleared, the temperatures soared to more than 35 degrees Celsius every day. Even just walking outside one day for less than an hour without suntan lotion gave me a nasty sunburn.
I met some Americans also staying at the Vermont Hotel in Ipanema: Paul, Dale, and ? (Indian heritage, who I had met through Daniel Bao at the first Life After Capitalism dinner at the World Social Forum). My favorite place to eat is the New Natural Restaurant, just on the opposite side of the same block where the hotel is located. The restaurant has a really wide variety of vegetarian dishes at really reasonable prices. The juice place on the corner of the hotel street and the next street toward Copacabana was a favorite with more than 80 choices of juices!
One of the first nights in town, some of us went to Bofatida Bar on the Rua Farme Amoedo, which is where the guys go to cruise in the evening after hanging out on the rainbow-flag waving gay part of the Ipanema Beach. During Carnival, the gay folks apparently sometimes get into fist fights with rough locals hanging at another choppo, or draft beer bar, on that street. After drinking some rot-gut caparinhos at Bofatida, we headed onward to Le Boy Club. At first, we almost didn’t go in because they tried to charge the woman who was with us twice the entry charge of the guys, but when we went next door to the empty La Girl Club, an employee or perhaps the manager from there convinced the Le Boy folks to let her in for the same price as the rest of us.
That’s when I met Paul… I saw this gorgeous long-haired guy standing in the club watching the drag and hunky guy strip show. I decided “what the hell!” and went over and just started talking with him. We both felt an instant attraction which built as we talked and realized that we have quite a bit in common. We talked and made out for hours. Finally, it was time to go… he for work the next morning and I because I was dead tired. We went by taxi and dropped him off at his place after we exchanged numbers.
I called him the next morning while he was at work and we arranged a date that day and every day for the rest of the time I was in Rio. Often, we snuck him into the hotel room for the night since it wasn’t too cool for me to stay at his place. While he was at work, I checked out sites such as Corcovado, the large statue of Christ atop one of the hills of Rio, and the Botanical Garden, which has nice houses of orchids and bromeliads. We spent almost an entire weekend together walking on the beach, exercising, swimming, sharing dinner and conversation, and making love.
Paul is an architect from Cordoba, where his family lives. He’s the oldest of three sons. His father is of Ukrainian-Italian heritage, works a lot, is very rational, and likes to plant gardens on the land that the family owns in the hills near Cordoba. Paul also has a piece of land there and wants to build a house on it. His mother, who is entirely of Italian heritage, and his father had split up for a year but are back together again now.
It’s been a long time since I’ve been with someone who was willing to really take time to get to know me. Most people in San Francisco are so busy trying to work to pay the rent that it’s hard to find quality time to share. I’d have to say that I enjoyed every moment we spent together, even when we were doing something that both of us thought was boring, like visiting the museum at the fort between Ipanema and Copacabana beaches.
I think Paul is totally gorgeous, sexy, and smart. He’s kind and took good care of me when I wasn’t feeling well. He could make an excellent boyfriend. Of course, there is the slight problem of the distance between San Francisco and Cordoba!
Anyway, I hope that he and I will have more chances to spend time together soon.