2001-09-09 - 23:13
life

Last night I went to an apartment-warming/birthday party thrown by two people I know mainly from Aikido class. There were a couple people I didn't really know at all, but in the main it was a gathering of about a dozen people I feel very warmly towards. And a ferret. The ferret didn't take kindly to me. Or maybe it was just mad that I wouldn't let it burrow into my skirt.

I wasn't wearing a skirt when I arrived at the party, by the way. But there was much playing of bongos and joyous dancing, and it was a very warm night, so our hostess offered cooler changes of clothing to the dancing ladies in her kitchen. In a few minutes, about half the girls had changed clothes. Little did I know that this was only the beginning of our game of dress-up. [ominous chord] One of our more buxom friends was squeezed into various... impractical, but highly interesting, articles of clothing; after a couple costume changes, she (or someone, I'm not sure how it got started) decided that her boyfriend would look great in the hostess's plaid schoolgirl dress.

Ohhh no no no, you're not getting me into that, he protested at length, as boys will do when they want you to believe they really don't want to put on a dress. And yet, somehow, he wound up in the bedroom changing clothes. Hmm. Must have been his girlfriend's persuasive influence--yeah, that's the ticket. So after a couple minutes, the announcement was made that he had put it on, and he looked good, but nobody was allowed to see it. Piffle, said a couple of people who waltzed into the bedroom anyway. And since they were not forcibly ejected, about half the party sort of trickled in one by one to see the sights. Encouraged, I think, by the whooping and wolf-whistling and applause from the gathering crowd in the room (he really did look pretty good), he eventually emerged of his own free will to try to gather up more victims--er, I mean--oh wait, that is what I mean.

Drag, of course, like most other highly appealing and somewhat transgressive activities, is extremely contagious. Within fifteen minutes or so, five of the eight males at the party were in women's clothing, to varying degrees of success (and one had exiled himself to the parking lot--Jay, you know we would never make you a human Drag Queen Ken doll without your permission, right?). A few great images stick in my mind, like one of the other blue belts from Aikido sitting in an armchair with his legs crossed in a very ladylike posture, as if he were not wearing a black pleather minidress with fake boobs made out of water-filled condoms. (Took to drag like a fish to water, this one did. Even shaved his face there at the party because the scruffy look wasn't working with the outfit. The event was of course camera-free, but another shot I secretly wished I had captured was this same friend getting ready to change back into his street clothes, with the dress unzipped and hanging around his waist, but still wearing purple lipstick and a purple bra with augmented condom boobies...)

And verily did many other things come to pass upon that evening, but all I can really say about that is that it was a pretty good party, with much ferretage and cakeage and slashfen bonding, and people giving each other backrubs and footrubs, in a mostly platonic kind of way. And eventually it was very late, going on two o'clock, and it was time for us all to put on our own clothing again and go home.

At 3 AM, I was about to get into bed when there was a noise and the lights flickered and died. Then two distinct noises kicked in: A siren type thing, and the hum of the generators providing power to our hallways and other essential areas. We all sprang from our beds to see what was the matter. Confusion and exploration followed. "I hope it isn't somebody crashing into a telephone pole drunk again," I said, because that happened last year right across the lawn from my front door.

Of course, a couple minutes later when I returned to the hallway, there was a commotion in the bathroom where our H.A., our R.A., and a couple other people were trying to calm and administer first aid to the guy who had, while under the influence (of course), crashed his girlfriend's car into a telephone pole just north of our dorm. There was blood all over his face, but he was walking and talking, and he seemed more upset and frightened than physically hurt--the H.A.'s account the next morning said as much. After ascertaining that there was nothing I could personally do to help, I went to bed. Apparently the cops (one of whom, according to the H.A., was an "asshole") eventually came and took him to the hospital, and probably thence to jail for D.U.I.

(My mom crashed the family car once, actually. Not her fault--a truck came over the meridian and smashed into her. She came home with this huge-ass band-aid on her forehead and said how, right after the crash, she'd been sitting in the car with a huge gash on her forehead and blood all over, and some guy had come up, identified himself as a doctor, examined the huge gash and the blood all over and the hey hey hey it hurts, and just said, "She'll be all right.")

Could Have Been Worse, as they say. And now I have something more compelling to say to people who are "okay to drive."

So today I got up at, like, 10:30, got me some breakfast/lunch, related the answer to "Why is the network down?" to about fifteen people, went to Powell's and failed to find the book I wanted[1], went to the library and read 60 pages of James's The Varieties of Religious Experience and all of Rudy Wiebe's The Blue Mountains of China (less the 50 pages I read yesterday), which is really quite a good book. Came back to the dorm feelin' good. Took a look at the whiteboard outside my room, on which I pose a question or statement-for-comment every day or so (and given out points for good answers). Late last night, I'd written, "T/F: Drag is a privilege, not a right"[2] and gotten some interesting responses. By 11:00 tonight, though, somebody had erased the old responses and written:

"NEITHER
========
Drag performance (not private behavior, mind you) is misogynist minstrelsy. It's gendered blackface which should always be considered tasteless"

I gave her "0 points for being wrong, but +2 for cool feminist buzzwords." Was I harsh?[3]

Hi ho.

We might be doing Rocky on campus in October... I need to get a better floorshow corset and a cape, or have someone make them for me. I'd be sure to invite Ms. Misogynistic Minstrelsy, if I knew who she was.

[1] So I bought David Simon's Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets instead, which I used as a reward system--finish the Religion 201 reading, get a few pages of Homicide for dessert. Heh.

[3] [Cartman] I care so much. Look. Look how much I care. [/Cartman]

[edited 1/1/03]

test - 2017-10-08
boing - 2003-06-07
walk walk trudge trudge slog slog travel travel - 2003-05-21
ob-la-di - 2003-05-18
not dead. - 2002-12-08