Garden.

This morning I picked three big cucumbers that had ripened while we were away, and one bright red, shiny jalapeño pepper. There are about a dozen more on the plants and they're turning red as well. I pulled up the tomato plants and the bell pepper plants that never produced fruit to give the cucumber and watermelon vines more room to spread out. Last week before I left I put up 3 quarts of bread and butter pickles. Between our garden and the CSA farm, we had cucumbers coming out our ears.

Nashville.

J drove to Nashville (leaving last Wednesday) and I flew on Friday. I rode back with J. We left yesterday and planned to take two days, but we were on the road by 7 a.m. and J just kept driving until we got home at about 10:30 last night.

One of the things that makes regular blogging possible for me is that I don't require myself to narrate every event or episode in my life. I would get bogged down in it and eventually lose interest. So forgive my skipping the Nashville trip, except to say that we visited many great friends, finally found some marijuana, ate Southern food, and drove around to look at our old apartments. (In two years in Nashville, we lived in 3 different apartments, our exit from each of them surrounded by unpleasant circumstances. Some day the whole story will be documented on the "Whatever Happened to Y'all?" blog.)

On the way home, it dawned on me that I have a shitload of work to do on the Lizzie Borden show and not much time to do it. Tim, my collaborator and I, will spend a week together in August (possibly at an artist's retreat in the Berkshires, maybe in New York) rewriting the show, but I need to get a head start since there are several new songs to write.

I'm re-reading A Private Disgrace, the book that gave us so much inspiration for our first version of the show. And I just checked out another Lizzie Borden book from the library; this one, Forty Whacks, by David Kent, came out after we wrote the show.

Milestone.

Did I mention here that I finished a first draft of my screenplay? I can't remember. This is the story with all the sex in it. Until this draft, I was calling it Anonymous Sex, but I was never too crazy about that title, I just couldn't think of anything better. Now I'm using Public Sex, which is more descriptive of the story, as a working title. I like the sound of it better, too.

I applied to the Sundance screenwriters lab program with this script. They only ask for a two-page synopsis and the first five pages of the screenplay, so I was able to submit it before I finished a first draft. But if you make the first cut, they want the full script pronto, so I wanted to have it ready. The Sundance program is a long shot, but I think the subject and approach are provocative enough and the writing good enough that I have a chance. I should hear from them around the middle of this month.

The other reason I wanted to finish it is that when I start school in the fall my priorities will take a sharp turn. I won't be doing much discretionary reading and writing.

All other considerations aside, I think I've written a really good script.

Jungle.

It's been raining on and off heavily for several days now, over a week. Every day, at the least we've had a downpour around dawn and another in the afternoon. If it were about 20 degrees cooler, I would swear I was in San Francisco.

I love the rainy weather, and I especially love that this very wet spring has postponed the arrival of the summer heat.

My room at the back of the house is surrounded by tall bamboo, and I have big windows on two sides. All I see is dripping wet green.

I'm reading A Private Disgrace by Victoria Lincoln, a book about the Lizzie Borden case. Her telling of the story, especially her account of the day of the murders, is mesmerizing. If you're interested at all in the Lizzie Borden story, this is the book to read first. I think she was the first to connect the murders with Lizzie's temporal epilepsy.

B.O.

I spend way too much time thinking about my armpits.

I can't wear deodorant. Well, I can and sometimes do. I put some on this morning, which is why I'm thinking about this. I shouldn't wear deodorant, because my armpits break out in a painful rash that can take weeks, even months, to heal. This only started happening a few years ago, and it conveniently coincided with a general relaxation of my attitude about my appearance and hygiene. I don't care as much as I used to, but I still care too much.

I think my mother introduced me to deodorant before I even had armpit hair, and I remember that terrible feeling those mornings when I realized on the school bus that I'd forgotten to put it on, and worrying all day that someone might smell me.

I used to use antiperspirant when I was performing regularly, and it didn't bother me much. Sometimes I'd get a little itchy, but it seemed worth it -- I can't imagine what my costumes would have smelled like otherwise. I tried switching to Tom's and other "natural" brands, I even tried "the stone," but they were more irritating than the big name brands, so I switched back.

Mitchum was my favorite for a while -- it was so astringent I only had to put it on every 2 or 3 days, which was very nice when we lived on the road and couldn't always take a shower every morning. I can't imagine what that stuff is made of -- glue? Eventually even the brands I'd always used started to irritate me.

When I was cooking for a living in Utah, in a very hot kitchen, I tried again, but I had a severe reaction, the worst ever. (That was the rash that took almost all winter to heal.) It was similar to the breakout on my legs that I got in my twenties and then again a few years ago, bright red blotches that itched so severely I wanted to jump off a bridge.

Doctors never know what things like this are. They call it eczema, which, translated literally, means, "I have no clue."

The first time it happened was in my late twenties in the late eighties. My shins were covered with burning red splotches. I was sure I had AIDS. It would get bad every summer, just in time for shorts weather, and recede in the fall. And then one year it didn't come back. A couple decades later it returned when I was living in Nashville. The free clinic I went to gave me two courses of steroids, which got rid of it.

I could go on about my skin problems, but I'll save it.

I put on deodorant this week because I've been spending the afternoons with a new friend, someone I don't know too well yet, or more to the point, someone who doesn't know me too well yet, and I want to make a good impression. I've been riding my bike to his house and arriving drenched with sweat. Sometimes I can get away with putting on deodorant for a few days. My skin doesn't break out right away; it's a cumulative reaction.

Going without deodorant is like becoming a vegetarian. No matter your reasons, lots of people will assume that it's about politics and that you're doing it just to offend them personally.

I don't have any reason to think this new friend is the kind of person to judge a man by his body odor, but these biases run deep. As comfortable as I am (sometimes) with the fact that I might smell, especially in this muggy weather, I usually have an involuntary negative reaction to another person's body odor. Is this aversion instinctual? A territorial thing? Or am I echoing the disgust my mother expressed whenever she encountered someone who smelled ripe?

However, if it's a man I find attractive, I like the smell. I want the smell. That's another story.

My New Home.

I went to the Texas Department of Public Safety today and applied for a Texas driver's license today. The woman who processed my application took my New York license and wouldn't give it back. I guess they figure once you're a Texan you don't need to be anything else.

Even with all the moving around I've done since 1998, I still had a New York license. It came up for renewal when I happened to be living in Jersey City for a year, in 2002 (after I'd lived in Nashville for two years and on the road for two years), and it was so easy to renew it by mail -- and I was almost living in New York, I was right across the river -- so I just did it. Since then I haven't really had a home anywhere, till now.

I love my new Texas home, despite the fact that, after just spending half an hour on the front porch reading and drinking a beer, I have 40 mosquito bites on my ankles -- really, forty. But, because I can sit on my porch at 7 in the evening in late June and drink a beer and read a book, I know my life is pretty damn good.

Security.

It struck me very funny today to think that I suddenly have this tremendous feeling of security knowing that I will be graduating from college in 2 years, about $20,000 in debt, with a liberal arts degree. I guess it says a lot about the course of my life that this is probably the safest choice I've ever made.

I feel secure knowing that I will not have to think a whole lot about where the money is coming from for a while, but there's also a bit of the traditional something-to-fall-back-on feeling mixed in there, because I find myself thinking that, with a degree, I can always teach to make a living.

I think in the past most of my resistance to finishing a degree came from a fear that I would relent, that I would give up my art and take a teaching job if I could. If it got too hard. Because I knew I would be good at teaching, and because I like school. And because it would be easier. Maybe now, after 25 years of not giving myself anything to fall back on, I have more confidence. I know that, even if I end up teaching, I'll still be an artist.

So I'm ready to introduce the possibility of security. But a liberal arts degree is a pretty flimsy security. Then again, is there any security that's not flimsy? (The answer to that question is "no," by the way.)

Fried Okra.

I just fried some okra, and it was about the easiest thing I've ever done that tasted that good. Cut the okra into half-inch rounds (they're not really round, but you know what I mean) and put in a bowl, sprinkle with salt, and cover with water. Refrigerate for an hour. Then drain the okra in a colander, but don't rinse it. You want it to be sticky.

Put some cornmeal on a plate with lots of salt and pepper, heat up about an inch and a half or more of vegetable oil in a pan -- use a wok, you'll need less oil -- over medium-high heat. The oil is hot enough when you throw a pinch of cornmeal into it and it goes bwishhhhhh and floats.

Dredge the okra in the cornmeal, try to coat it pretty well, and throw it in the oil in batches. Too much at a time will bring down the temperature of the oil. Move them around with a slotted spoon, try to flip them over, but don't worry too much if some of them won't. When they change color a bit, pull them out and put them on paper towels or newspaper.

Serve NOW!

(Save and re-use the oil. Put it in a jar in the fridge and it'll last for weeks.)

I also made a batch of pumpkin muffins which are just about ready to come out of the oven. And I'm soaking some posole to make a vegetarian posole stew tomorrow.

The food at the drug trials makes me crazy. It's not that it's so bad. In fact, it's really okay. It could be worse. There are people, after all, who eat flour mixed with dirt every day. It's just all very processed and characterless. It's loveless nutrition.

Yet, when I'm there I look forward to meals. Sometimes, depending on the protocol of the trial, there will be periods of fasting, so I'm famished and can't wait for dinner, but even when we're not fasting, meals are breaks in the long days of ECGs and blood draws, or just long days of reading.

It's a cycle of disappointment. I look forward to the meals yet they are never satisfying. It's the samsara of drug testing.

I need some real food.

Laundry and Peeing All Over Everything.

This morning I woke up at a little before 7 from a dream in which I was spraying urine all over everything in somebody's house and couldn't stop. I pulled the skin of my penis up over the top and pinched it to try to stop the flow but it just turned into a fine mist. I thought if I could get the spray fine enough and keep moving so as not to spray too much in any one place, maybe no one would notice. But the finer the mist, the longer I kept peeing, all over a couch, chairs, a table, the floor.

In some of these drug trials, they collect your urine for a given period of time. Every drop of it. They send you into the bathroom with a plastic container and you drop it off on the way out. And then during that period, there are specific times at which you have to produce at least 40 ml of urine. We're always drinking lots of water anyway, to keep hydrated, which makes the blood draws easier, so we're peeing often, but still we have to be aware of the time and not empty our bladders too soon before those times when they want the 40 ml.

So when I woke up at 7, I had to pee but I knew I had to pee again at 8:10 and I was worried that if I peed at 7, I might not have to go again at 8:10, at least not 40 ml worth.

I was a bed-wetter when I was a kid, and usually the way it happened was that I would dream I was peeing and wake up to find that I actually had. It was a big deal when I started to wake up from those dreams not having wet the bed. I still fairly often have dreams of urinating in inappropriate places. And I still wake up extremely relieved that the bed is dry and I still have to go.

Which leads me to laundry. J and I got a washing machine a few weeks ago. Though trips to the laundromat have not been as onerous the last few years, now that I have so few clothes, still it's nice to be free of that. And I'm happy that we're air-drying our clothes, which is a big energy savings.

But it's been an adjustment for me. I was never one to separate laundry. I just threw it all in there, rugs, underwear, towels, t-shirts, everything. And it all came out clean. White t-shirts didn't stay white very long, but that didn't matter so much to me. Even the plastic shower curtain liner came out sparkling.

Not so with the our new washing machine. All my black pants and t-shirts came out with splotches of white powder from the soap and fuzzy lint from the towels. And my white t-shirts weren't just dingy, they had brown stains that weren't there when I threw them in. I tried the "extra rinse" feature and the "extra spin." I tried the "heavy duty" cycle. Same thing. For a while, I was washing all my dark clothes twice, the second time with no soap, just to rinse out the white spots.

Of course, J's laundry comes out fine. He separates, and that's what I'm going to start doing. Not just lights from darks, but towels from everything, to avoid the fuzz. I still don't know how he avoids the white powder problem. I've switched to liquid detergent, and I'm not happy about it because it costs more.

Newsy Week.

1. I got an email message from the U.T. financial aid office on Thursday with my financial aid package. I had imagined a letter, so the email threw me, and I had to stare at it for a while before I was certain it really meant what it said. Ta-da!

It's a generous package too, quite a bit of grant money, including a Pell grant, and two grants from the State of Texas. Using my rudimentary and marginally reliable math skills, I figured out that I can probably get by once school starts only working a few hours a week, or possibly doing an odd job here and there, to make a little extra money to help pay my credit card bills.

2. I'm in another drug trial this weekend. I checked in this afternoon. I'm actually an "alternate" subject, which means that if everything goes well with all the regular subjects, I will be sent home tomorrow morning. So, I'm praying for one of them to have high blood pressure in the morning or get caught having sex in the bathroom tonight. Just kidding.

I'm in the same facility as before but a different section. We're in a big room like an old-fashioned hospital ward with beds lined up against opposite walls. All our procedures will be done in our beds (ECGs and blood draws), rather than the other times where there's been a big procedure room and separate dorms with bunk beds. I like it better, it's not quite as chaotic and this sleeping arrangement feels better. Those little dorms rooms were so close and airless.

If I get sent home tomorrow, I'll only make $75, instead of $900 for the whole weekend. But, even more than the money, the best thing about being able to do the whole study is that I can stop trying to get into a study for a while, I can smoke some pot (if I can find any) for the next couple of weeks. If I don't get in this study, I have to keep at it until I do one!

Creatives.

In the Statesman this morning, there was a profile of a woman who is apparently a party planner and wardrobe consultant. The article led with the news that "creative" is now a noun as well as an adjective. Creatives are people who offer "creative services" (stylists, event planners, people who, because they have or are perceived to have some kind of rarified aesthetic sense, can help people sell products or sell themselves, or in some way be more successful).

Sorry to be a big curmudgeon on a lovely Friday afternoon, but articles like this are what convince me that the end is near. What more clear sign do we need that our culture has been corrupted by money? Our economic system can't support art because art is worth supporting. It can only recognize the worth of creative activity when it works in service of profit. So we end up with "creatives," who are, as far as I can tell, just deformed, stunted artists.

I hope no one will take my comments personally. I do not mean to disparage anyone who does this sort of work. God knows we all have to make a living, and it's pretty hard to do that these days without compromising. I doubt that I would say no if someone wanted to pay me to tell her which pants to wear this morning or which lamp to buy.

I also find this subject interesting in the context of the big argument we're having about immigration. "We" are angry at a whole class of people who, to oversimplify, come here to do jobs that nobody else wants to do. And, on the other hand, we've created a category of jobs that don't even need to be done, an industry that serves a false need. What's interesting for me as an artist is that my job choices mostly fall in one or the other of these categories.

Quesadilla.

We have a pile of green and yellow chilies in the fridge. A couple of them are poblanos from our garden. The rest are from the CSA farm; I'm not sure what they're called but they're the ones used for pepperoncini.

We also got a small bunch of sage in our CSA box, and I wasn't feeling inspired to do anything with it. I think of sage as a fall or winter herb, I guess because of sage dressing on Thanksgiving. But I was making myself a quesadilla for lunch and I was pulling out a couple of the chilies, saw the sage lying there on the shelf and pulled it out too.

I sliced the peppers and sauteed them quickly in olive oil, salt and pepper, with some of the sage, chopped. Then I threw a tortilla in the pan with the little bit of oil left, covered it with grated Jack cheese and the chilies and sage, and cooked it on both sides until it was slightly brown and crispy. I added a little Tabasco sauce before I ate it. It sure was good! Combining the sage with the chilies brought out the smoky quality of the sage.

My first boyfriend Eduardo, who was Mexican, used to make quesadillas for breakfast. I can still hear him saying it, pronouncing the "d" almost like "th." He made them with cheddar cheese and topped them with sour cream and salsa from a jar.

This was in 1983, when we lived together in an apartment on 11th St. and Avenue C in New York. One morning, shortly after I moved in, he told me to make sure I emptied out the kitchen drain trap after I washed dishes because the bits of food left there were attracting roaches. That bit of kitchen advice felt ominous to me, the first sign of discord in a summer romance that continued through a long, silent winter.

Our breakup was bad -- epic bad: he was the Latin one, but I, the shy kid from Indiana, was the one smashing glassware and kicking holes in the bedroom door. I learned things about my temper that I am grateful to have learned early and grateful didn't get me killed.

Very soon after the Eduardo episode, I got a job waiting tables at Bandido!, a new Mexican restaurant on 2nd Ave. It was a trendy place, one of the first 2nd Avenue restaurants with outdoor seating. Standard Tex-Mex food and frozen margaritas with plastic monkeys and mermaids hanging from the edge of the glass, back when that was a new thing. First there was Caliente Cab Co. in the West Village and then came Bandido! in the East.

I worked the day shift. I think the manager who hired me, hired me because he thought I was cute. It wasn't because I was a good waiter. He was cute too. (A few years later, my second boyfriend and I had an awkward 3-way with him, a night which mostly consisted of three guys making small talk and waiting for someone else to get things rolling.)

The daytime manager was a blond Midwestern girl who had grown up in Mexico and spoke perfect Mexican Spanish to the kitchen staff. I remember that she was impressed with my pronunciation of "quesadilla," and after she pointed it out I became self-conscious about it. I'd learned the word from Eduardo, and it still sounds strange when I hear it pronounced with a hard "d."

The quesadillas we served at Bandido! were not much like Eduardo's quesadillas. They were made with oversized tortillas folded in half, stuffed to the gills with cheese, seasoned chicken, and cilantro, and topped with guacamole and sour cream.

The owner of Bandido! was Russian and drank vodka like Texans drink iced tea in the summer time.

The Test.

Friday night Z and I made plans to get takeout dinner and watch a movie at his place. He had just returned from a 4-day business trip and he was tired from driving all day, but we wanted to see each other since he's leaving again today for several days, this time a vacation, a solo road trip.

One of Z's favorite movies is Sordid Lives, a very funny film about eccentric Southern people. So I suggested we watch Junebug, another very funny movie about Southern people, and one of my favorite movies from the last few years. (J and I were both obsessed with Junebug for a while; we still quote lines from it now and then.) Sordid Lives is a broad comedy; Junebug is subtler, but I still thought he would love it.

I think he liked it. But he didn't seem to find it very funny. His response was more along the lines of "that was thought-provoking." (I hadn't noticed what a quiet film it is until this viewing.) I was disappointed that he didn't love it the way I do. I've seen it many times, and I still hang on every moment. I can't get enough of it, especially Amy Adams's performance. I mentioned to Z that she was nominated for the Oscar last year for that performance, and he seemed surprised, whereas I was appalled that she didn't win.

Anyway, we probably all know that disconcerting feeling, that dissonant feeling. It's like a test. "If he doesn't get this movie, then what else is wrong with him?" It's silly, but real.

Then last night, J and I watched Days of Heaven, another of my favorite movies. I've seen this one a few times too, and it always takes my breath away. I rented it because I wanted to see it again but mostly because I wanted to share it with J, who hadn't seen it. He didn't like it much. He found it unconvincing.

Now, if anyone has passed the test, all the tests, it's J. We've known each other for 15 years and I've never been closer to anyone in my life.

Lesson: the favorite movie test is not a very good test.

Thai.

I used to say I don't like eggplant.

But my Italian friend in Syracuse makes eggplant Parmesan that I swoon to think about. He slices the eggplant very thin and stacks the slices between layers of paper towels with lots of salt. After they've released some of their moisture, they're dredged in seasoned breadcrumbs, fried, smothered with cheese and the best tomato sauce I've ever had, and baked. Oh, man.

And we used to make a grilled eggplant sandwich at Greens that I loved. The eggplant slices were tossed in garlic and olive oil, grilled, and stacked with roasted peppers, arugula, and basil aioli on toasted foccacia. Mmm.

Even so, it's a vegetable I approach with caution. Simmered in a stew or ratatouille, there's something about the slippery sponginess that puts me off. But we got two small eggplants in our produce box yesterday, and how could I not fall in love with them? That perfect purple, and they're so light when you pick them up.

So I'm making a Thai eggplant, cucumber, and tomato salad, because we also got 3 beautiful tomatoes, several cucumbers (as well as the cucumbers from our own garden), and a bunch of basil. And I'll throw in one of those fiery red Thai chilies, minced. The marinade is lime, ginger, and tamari. It's a Moosewood recipe, modified.

I'm also working on a curry sauce today. I made some vegetable stock this morning, and I'll put together the sauce later. It's a pretty standard Thai red curry with coconut milk. On my way home from Z's the other night, I snagged a couple leaves from his kaffir lime tree, and I think a few stalks of lemon grass in the garden are big enough to use. J will be out of town overnight, so I'll wait and put it all together tomorrow night. It'll be red bell peppers, roasted potatoes, basil, and summer squash from our CSA farm.

Thus Far in Vegetables.

I think it's time for a mid-term status report on the garden. I probably have a tendency to only report the disappointments, but there have been successes too, and not just of the "learning experience" variety.

The one little Thai chili plant is prolific. It's slowing down now, but I've already picked about 30 red chilies . They're tiny but potent. It only takes one of them to make a whole batch of red curry fiery hot, so I've been freezing most of them.

I picked two big poblanos yesterday. They were just starting to turn red. There's one more poblano coming along. That's three chilies from two plants, not a great record.

The two jalapeño plants are covered with dozens of peppers. They all appeared at about the same time, and they're ripe enough to pick but I want to see if they'll turn red. I used one last week in some salsa I made with tomatoes a friend brought over from her garden, and it was very hot for a jalapeño. Since there will be so many at once, we'll probably give a few away, and roast and freeze a bunch of them.

The bell peppers are nearly a bust. On six plants, there are only two peppers. The larger one is being eaten by worms. The smaller one seems okay, just small.

I picked two perfect cucumbers last week and made a cucumber salad. They were sweet and delicious. There are dozens more coming along on the vines which are creeping everywhere.

No fruit yet on the watermelon vines, but the plants are healthy and pretty.

The two peanut plants that survived are growing slowly and blossoming every once in a while, but no peanuts yet.

The green bean vines continue to produce a handful of pods every day. They're Blue Lake beans, and we've used them in salads mostly since the quantity is so small and it's nice to use them when they're very fresh. They're tender and very tasty.

One tomato plant has several green fruit and one that's almost all pink. I can't remember what kind of tomatoes they are, some heirloom variety. They look pretty good, but they're full of punctures from the leafrooted bugs, so I don't know how they'll taste. The other plant is full of little green pear-shaped fruit that, for some reason, don't tempt the bugs. I think it's a Roma.

The zinnias have slowed down, but the sunflowers are crazy. They're not the ones with huge flying saucer flowers; they're slightly smaller, in various shades of brown and yellow and white, with several blooms per plant.

College and the Rollercoaster.

I walked over to the financial aid office at U.T. today. It's about a half-hour walk which starts out along and across pedestrian-unfriendly I-35. But most of the rest of it meanders through a pleasant part of campus, past my new favorite museum, the Blanton, and a stretch of academic buildings. It's very hot today, and I was hoping for some college boys playing frisbee with their shirts off, but I didn't find any. When I was in college (the first time) boys took their shirts off on hot days and played frisbee all afternoon. Do they still do that? If so, where?

The friendly, well-groomed young man behind the counter in the financial aid office looked me up on his computer and told me that my letter of appeal had been received and forwarded to the "woman who will either say yea or nay." No word yet; it should be a week or two. For some reason, I felt buoyed by that non-news. At least it's not a "no." I really would love to go to school in the fall.

I think I've found my equilibrium again today, after feeling out of sorts since Tuesday, when I was rejected from that drug trial. Friday is the day they post all the new trials, so I'll call tomorrow morning and try again. Even if I'm going to give up this drug trial nonsense and look for a job, it makes sense to do one more. I don't want to start a new job when I'm so far behind with the bills. And I can't make a decision about my future livelihood before I find out if I'm going to be able to enroll in school in the fall. So I'll try for another drug trial while I await word from "the woman."

I had a small epiphany this afternoon on my walk back home. You may get the impression from reading this blog that I worry quite a bit about money. But I worry so much less than I used to, and the worry I experience now is relatively mild. I used to worry myself sick. About money, and about almost everything. I had ups and downs, but the constant backdrop of all my joys and sorrows was a paralyzing anxiety.

About 6 years ago, at a time when just about everything I thought was solid in my life was disintegrating, I changed my attitude about money in a simple ritual involving a dollar bill, origami, and a campfire. Despite the fact that I had very little faith in the hocus-pocus (I was practically rolling my eyes), it worked. Not once since that night have I let myself feel the kind of deep despair I used to feel about being broke, in debt, and without prospects. Now I experience my financial insecurity in a more reasonable way. It's just something that comes and goes. Sometimes it demands more attention than other times, but it's temporary, and freaking out doesn't help.

And I've always had an acute fear of heights. But in the last 6 or 8 years, I've been tempting it, experimenting with it, pushing against it to see what happens. And I've found that I can often talk myself into experiencing that rush of fear as I approach a steep cliff, or look over a high-rise balcony, in a different way. Physically, fear is the same as exhilaration, so why not experience that rush as a thrill instead of terror? Little by little, I've been retraining myself out of my fear of heights.

I figured this out when I was wondering why, if I'm afraid of heights, I'm crazy about roller-coasters. The thrill of a roller-coaster ride is being forced to look right into my fear, knowing that the situation is controlled, that it isn't going to last forever, and that I'm not really in danger. There is a risk of harm, people do die in roller-coaster accidents, but once I'm strapped in, it's too late to do anything about it but surrender and enjoy it. If the thing is going to hurtle me head-first into the pavement, I'll have nothing to say about it. The moment when I make the decision to ride is separated from the moment of peril.

So it's about surrendering. I feel better when I have surrendered.

Back to my epiphany: as I was walking home from the financial aid office and thinking about how yesterday I was so strung out and today, after talking to the guy at the financial aid office and not really getting any news that should reassure me, somehow I felt much better, it struck me how arbitrary the anxiety is, how truly unconnected to anything real it is. And I remembered my fear of being broke, and my fear of heights, and how I have virtually talked myself out of those fears, and I realized that I could treat all fear the same way. I can decide to experience it differently. Instead of being afraid because the circumstances of my life seem so precarious, I can enjoy the thrill of it. Like a roller-coaster ride.

No money for the rent! OooooooooaaaaawaaaaaaAAAAH!!! Need new glasses desperately but can't afford them! eeeeeEEEEEEEAAAAAA!!! What the fuck am I going to do with the rest of my life??!! YyyaaaaaaAAAA!!!!!!

I think it's working.

Eeeeek.

Maybe the bug thing is getting to be an old saw. Sorry. But I can't not write about the 3-inch long cockroach that just crawled out from under a piece of paper on my desk a minute ago and scared the holy shit out of me.

In New York we called these things waterbugs. Roaches were the much smaller version, not so immediately, personally scary as their giant cousins, but much more disheartening because if you saw one you knew your kitchen cabinets would soon be crawling with them. Waterbugs, on the other hand, though filthy as rats, were usually just passing through.

But Texans will laugh at you if you call these creatures waterbugs. They're cockroaches. Or I've heard them called tree roaches, I guess because they live in trees, a thought I don't want to contemplate for too long just now, because I will have nightmares.

They have no unique name here for the little ones, except "little cockroaches." I haven't seen any of those around.

Bugs and Money.

I'm still battling those black bugs. Except now they're all grown up and have wings. They look extra super creepy now, and they buzz when they fly. They want those tomatoes bad.

I was all set for a drug trial starting this Thursday. I did the screening yesterday. The recruiter called me back to pee in a cup again today, but shortly after I got home, she called to say that the doctor excluded me because of my penicillin allergy. That has happened two or three times, even though they say at first that my penicillin allergy is not an issue with the particular drug, they change their minds at the last minute.

What next? I've been trying to do one of these studies since April. This is the fourth study I've been rejected by, and each time I go through this process and don't get in the study I'm set back a few weeks. I'm way behind with the bills.

I think I'll go to the financial aid office at U.T. this week and try to find out if I'm going to be starting school in the fall. Knowing about that will give some structure to the money miasma. I'm leaning toward looking for a job, because I crave at least a hint of routine. But what kind of job?

I was talking about my predicament to J's friend C who is here visiting us for a few days. She asked if I'd considered construction. I said that I would rather be one of those guys who begs for change at the intersection than do construction. If I'm going to be outside in the heat all day, I don't want to have to do anything physical. If I have to get a job, I want a job where they leave you alone and just give you the money.

Money.

I just got a check from the American Federation of TV and Radio Artists for $596.70. They were holding it in trust for me, and apparently would have held it forever if my mother hadn't happened to google my name just for the fun of it and found my name on a list of performers owed money. AFTRA didn't know my whereabouts, which is not surprising since I'm not a member of AFTRA.

The money is residuals for an appearance J and I made on an episode of Premium Blend, a show on Comedy Central, in 1998, which they have rerun every summer since. Beats me why this money was sent to AFTRA, a union with which we've never had any affiliation. And why are we being paid residuals for 2005 and 2006 (that's what the check stub says) and not for 1999-2004?

We still get a check for about $13 every year from BMI for this TV appearance. BMI is the organization that collects (some would say extorts) money from radio and TV stations, restaurants, theaters, and other venues that broadcast recorded music and distributes it to the writers and publishers of the songs according to an arcane mathematical formula. That thirteen dollars represents our share of money paid by Viacom (who owns Comedy Central) in royalties to BMI for permission to broadcast songs written by BMI artists. We sometimes get an extra couple bucks every year for radio play in various Eastern European or Scandinavian countries.

Whatever. The check could not have come at a better time, and I'm grateful.

It's a big fucking mess, the way artists get paid (or not, usually) in this country. But I shouldn't complain; I'm usually an advocate of pulling down the whole "intellectual property" paradigm. As soon as I deposit this check, I'm going right back to that stance.

Summer Cold Index.

I'm completely off any kind of schedule these days. Somehow it just hasn't seemed necessary. What that means is that it hasn't seemed necessary to get anything done. It's just been a strange, not unpleasant sense of whirling into the increasingly dimly-lit future.

I'm waiting to hear from UT about financial aid, which news will determine whether or not I start school in the fall. I'm still trying to get into a drug study. (I just started the screening process for another one today. Cross your fingers. The most alarming side effect of this particular drug was (rarely) bleeding of the mucus membranes surrounding the eyes. Sounds pretty, doesn't it? The drug is being developed to treat restless leg syndrome, which I have. Unfortunately, these are safety trials, not efficacy trials, so I won't get enough of the drug to treat the condition.) And I'm in between drafts of my screenplay. If I get into this trial, or any trial soon, I'll use my time in the lockup to start rewriting.

The heat has simultaneously tranquilized me and awoken me to the fact that I'm not doing anything. (Possibly similar to what I imagine it's like for people who are executed by lethal injection, where the first drug they're given immobilizes them, making them unable to react but no less aware of the fact that the second drug is excruciatingly painful. I said possibly.) I don't believe that doing nothing is a bad thing. In fact, I think it's a pretty good thing. The only drawback is that it's habit-forming. I put it in the same category as pot-smoking. They have definite benefits, but maybe not every day.

Thursday night, my throat started to feel kind of ack-ack, and I woke up Friday with a full-on sore throat. It hurt, my tonsils were big, red, and shiny, but I was relieved to see no white spots. (White spots on my tonsils almost always mean that I'm going to have to find a doctor and get some antibiotics, which is a pain in the ass and an expense I can't afford. Not only that, it would fuck up my ability to do the drug study I screened for today.)

But ... no white spots. Just a sore throat.

I was ready to call Z and cancel on his birthday dinner Friday night, but I got such a sweet email from him in the early afternoon, telling me how much it meant to him that I was coming, I couldn't disappoint him. I bucked up.

A big group of his friends had arranged to treat him to dinner at Austin Land & Cattle Co. (a famous local steakhouse -- Z's choice). Z wanted me to be there, and he knew I couldn't afford it, so he told me he would pay for my share. I felt very embarrassed (the whole idea of such a thing is that your friends pay) and guilty (he took me out for such a nice dinner on my birthday a couple months ago) and touched that he would want that badly for me to be there. (He had arranged in advance for a friend to chip in for two when the bill came, to cover my share without making it an issue at the table. I was so moved by that.)

His friends are a diverse group of colleagues, former neighbors, old drinking buddies. And they're all crazy about him, of course. He's one of those men you meet and think "Why is this guy single?" He says he's very picky about men. He's picky about a lot of things. Maybe he's too cantankerous for most guys. But is that a flaw? I don't think I would want to spend much time with someone who considered cantankerousness a flaw. Or maybe he's too honest. I don't know. I do know that if I were anywhere near the mood to fall in love, this would be the guy.

Dinner was great, very lively. I had a beautiful, perfectly done steak, the first steak I've had since I was cooking them myself at the restaurant in Utah. Afterwards, we drove back to his house, he parked, and we walked to La Dolce Vita for gelato (I had coconut and chocolate) and then took a very long walk home around his new neighborhood. It was super-muggy that night. We held hands.

Saturday I woke up with a real live summer cold. I felt miserable, and I didn't do much but read and nap all day. I missed J's performance in the gay pride thingie in Zilker Park in the afternoon.

I caved on my a/c rule. It has not reached 100 degrees. I think the highest it's gotten is 96. But the Summer Cold Index was at least 102. However, I made a welcome discovery. My window unit is really much too big for the room. I can turn it on, at the lowest setting, for about half an hour, turn it off and my room stays comfortable for a few hours. So I feel slightly less guilty about my consumption, and slightly less anxious about the summer utility bills.