vr

a novel

Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss

December 1997

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

From: Kate
Date: 3 December 1997
Subject: another dose of slush

after a long silence, prepare the sick bags.
an annoyingly happyhappy dose of slush.
i'll get back to grumbling aboutbeing cold and broke and out of work soon.
--k

no names have been changed to protect the guilty. deal with it.

--

back to pacifica...

So long since writing, I wonder that my hand still knows the shapes and forms them with any fluency. So long since writing, I wonder how to entangle these two months into words.

A too short time, a glimpse of shared life saturated with love, that barely lasted a moment and has left me craving for more and more.

The time in california seems like several ages ago--from the draggingly long flight out and the frustration and grumbling when there was no snarl to meet me (but the smilingly helpful and slightly hesistant t4 instead). And the slight awkwardness of conversation with someone when i was flightblasted and impatient--the difficulty of being delighted to meet someone at last, but looking over their shoulder, and foot-tapping for the arrival of another. (I felt so appallingly rude.)

Those first two days in Pacifica (in a tiny motel by the beach, just eleven rooms) are a blur or rainstorms and black waves with fluid-fire dragon crests of white of salt spray and coffee laden breakfast, of ice cube fights, and pretzels and delighted touches and smiles. an exchange of presents, endless kisses, dazed recognition. the shock of physical closeness again--the luxury of touching a smile with fingertips and not just memory. the rediscovery of texture and scent and warmth. remembering squirming under a tightly drawn white sheet, and the touch of warm breathy kisses through the cold cotton. glow in the dark ghosties. magenta on the side of a half climbed hill, outside a multi-coloured house. a maid with impossibly bad timing fumbling to unlock the door. the smell of gitanes and cranberry juice and garlic and skin. the phantom sea-borne circus music late in the night. the almost-naked tattooed man leaning into the rain, carrying a chair back and forth, barefoot on the asphalt. garlicky finger-sticky food shared in a room decorated with the strangest 1970s cut-out wooden fish shapes. sitting bundled in clothes on a bench in the darkness, watching the storm build as the wind whisked away scraps of paper and smoked bubbles. watching the birds scurry across the beach, peckpecking into the sand and seaweed heaps.

then a bright morning, all packed, sitting on the rocks smoking cigarettes, warming skin in the sun and sipsipping coffee from a paper cup with orange patterns. then one huge waves breaks high up over the rocks, crashing water over half of me and at least as much of a. so we run round, squawking and giggling, spinning around to avoid a persistant wasp as well, and we clutch coffee and wait. half talking to some plump tourists who ask me how i like america, and admire my accent and my scarf. then jen appears, (spotted across the car park by her bright blondness) to whisk us away. we hover about and stand all chitty-chat and pausing till the cab arrives, and jen passes her wallet on a chain (painted with daisies) back and forth between her hands, grinning, as i lean back against snarl and realise how incredibly happy i am just to be with him again.

[and i am playing with a little rubbery octupus toy and a wooden lion, and i admire my crayons in their smart new crayon case, and can only think of this, from anima poetae, by coleridge:

"if a man could pass though Paradise in a dream, and have a flower presented to him as a pledge that his soul had really been there, and if he found that flower in his hand when he awoke--then Ay!-- and what then" ]

at jen's, walking up and down wooden steps overhung with trees, we dump out bags and produce presents, and play with her cats for what seems like an age--flickflickering a feather on a boingy stick back and forth for leaping alien cat, as jen wakes them growl and pounce by tormenting them with her new sea-otter toy. the sun seems so bright and stark as we walk along the ocean side (blocked out by a think wooden fence, the gaps making the waves seem something like a jumpy zoetrope. 25 cents a look. drop a quarter to see real waves action! lifelike ocean movements! roll up! roll up!)

jason is awake and playing computer games when we return with caffeine in our blood, and after some very quiet hello stuff, not yet hungry at all, I change and jen walks outside with us to show us the way down to the beach.

zigzag chain edged wooden steps down down a cut in the cliffside to the ocean. we strip off our shoes and socks (blimey! a silver toenail! how did he get that? i just have bluegreen shreddings on my fingernails. somewhat less stylish.) and dig toes into the sand, grinning at each other like little kids on holiday.

dazzlebright sun on the waves making the water silverywhite, so foamy as it slides up over the beach. foot sinking into the sand, muscles stretching, we wander off to the right, between water and overtowering crumbly orange cliffs (carved with letters and nicknames, some eight feet high), making curve patterns with out steps. dance-running in and out of the surf, both with rolled up trousers and dangling shoes, surprised and soaked with hit by unexpectedly high water surging up our thighs to wrap cold around the hips. and it dries fast in this sunshine (i could already feel the freckles breeding on my skin) but leaves coastlines of salt on black fabric. we write nonsense to each other in the sand, but it vanishes back into the ocean in moments. my skin is tight and redenning (pale english skin), but we sit and bask and i am more dazzled by a and his love than by the brightest sun. walking back, past the small boy learning to surf and the woman walking with her panting, sand-digging dog, the distance misting with bright sun through spray, leaving drift rubbish and flattened sculpture sillhouettes in the distance, panting up the many many steps.

now starving, we walk through the almost deserted shops, indecisive (jen has walked us to the end of the road, a remarkably placid cat in her arms, along for the ride). we end up eating pizza and a mound of sald, drenched with gloopy dressing as i shiver and complain about the cold now that the sun is falling, and my half-burned skin goosebumps with chill. we buy the biggest pomegranate in the world, and gallons of juice to drink with vodka, and return. jason is playing oddworld, jen is on the computer. we ooh and ahh and coo over the graphics of the game some more, watching jason play, giggling stupidly and repeating the 'hay-lo' and 'ooo-kay' and 'follow me' voices. but this is dull, so we half play cards and sipsip at our drinks and i want to jump around in front of the screen and say 'talk to us! look, we're cool! let's go out to play!' but there is only murmured conversation and tight, tangible awkwardness and eventually either snarl or i doze off curled against the other (perhaps we both do) untill it seems that perhaps we should sleep after all. the futon is unfurled and dressed up in fine coloured sheets and skittish cats rampage over and under the bed as snarl and i wrap around each other in sleep. woken viciously early by the surprise of sunlight and the chirping of birds, restless, i wake snarl in the nicest way i can think of and we wriggle and rustle under the covers, he purring quietly, me rather muffled when we have to leap from edging towards pleasure to blinking just woken up and respectable as someone makes getting up noises and emerges from a bedroom.

a slowish morning of coffee and reading papers and talking of films and smoking, leaning against the railings outside the fresh paint smelling coffeehouse, then back to get stuff and talk with jen about heading into the city, to see a film before meeting up with others of the BAM crew for dinner. bus to the BART up and down steep house lined hills, that i remember as candy-pastel coloured, overwhelmingly, but feel that i am misremembering, with glimpses of the sea pulling further away. an oddly coloured train, after a confusion of change and machines and tickets, then a wander through an oddly interlinked mall place, for lunch of salad and fries and litres of diet coke (got to love those free refills) and a search for key cutting and phone and the essential purchase of a large sparkly glow in the dark ball (left, eventually, for dag) before seeing wenders' new film, the end of violence.

...

and now i try to put myself back onto a small balcony, blowing bubbles down onto neatly clipped suburban grass, vertical lines of a blind clattering behind us as i watch you, in frayed edge cutoffs and tightlaced boots, smoke a cigarette down to the very end...and i try to order the events of those days in california in my mind, and i know that they will jumble.

that friday, a movie. a disconnected, menacing, observed voyeurism with startling clarity and terrible awkward interactions ringing false, unsettling power and perfect tension, but grating voiceovers. i need to see it again, i think. we three, jen, snarl and i, walk from there through a half remembered city to the stinking rose to meet the others for dinner. we are shockingly early, so stand and smoke outside the place with an almost conversation until dagard, harper, ford and some_name appear. (dagard lanky and boinging around, with a leaning back peering forwards out at the world through colourshimmying shades grin...harper all neatly packed in and grinning wide with contained energy and shiny friendliness...ford an amused and chatty observer with unsettling eyes and gossamer hair...some_name a computer tshirted, blue ribboned, nervy newcomer.) we are ushered into a booth at the back after a jumble of hellos and handshakes, and sit in a tangle of elbows under a ceiling looped around and around with the longest garlic string, surrounded by disconcertingly bright painted picture walls. a plump, rainbow-braced camp waiter is overfriendly with his greetings patter and i feel like we have mistakenly wandered into dinner in a sitcom as with listen with polite smirks and a few swallowed laughs to his routine about his computer order-pad. drinks. food. talk. nonsense. friendly-warm. for a garlic restaurant, there is general surprise about how not-very-garlicky the food is, excepting the pulpy mush to spread on warm bread, tasty oily mouthwarming food. a pleasant blur...mix of old friends regathering and newcomers tangling in old jokes and retold stories (the shorthand of friends) and greeting explanations and edging to find the conversation ground that can support everyone. i fold and fold salad leaves, popping them into my mouth, as other food is demolished and moved around and devoured. as always, i am surprised by how rapidly an american restaurant meal can pass--no lingering between courses, no long gap between initial order and food, no bottles of wine to finish over last finger pickings of shared dishes and cigarette smoke. dagard, snarl and i rush out for a between courses smoke and after we agree to drink across the road, at a favoured bar of dagard's.

but there is a flurry of fire engines that appear and cluster and disgorge firemen weighed down with body-wrapped hoses...then disperse. then return in a clamour of sirens, and vanish again in a disappointed confusion. and we point out the bizarre signs on the smut shop on the corner, and note that they have an entirely unenticing special offer on their lingerie...while jen battles with dag's phone in the screaming noise of traffic and crowds and sirens, calling and calling more and stomping up and down the street before we flow across the road in straggling chattering lines. cluster in the reddish light glow by the windows in the noisy bar and i make sarky not-understood comments about red-light areas (which are hardly worth explaining in the sorry, can you say that again bar noise) and dag explains her policy of generous tipping and we order drinks. pints of guinness all round for the blokes. i get teased for not liking the stuff...though i explain how i have tried and tried to like it, even practiced hard, but always failed. so i order a newcastle brown, which most people try and go yumyum about. jen drinks more and more diet coke and gets twitchy and jumpy as she tells us, apologising over and over, that we will be staying with dagard from now on...not returning with her. all the reasons are unclear (a falling out with hausmate jason, it seems, unexplained. undercurrents.) snarl and i blink at each other, amazed. just a few hours ago she had a spare key made for us. shrugshrug, no no problem. dag so welcoming it seems churlish to complain. flurry of now what. seems that jen will collect out stuff and bring it over in the morning. sure, sure, we're fine for the night. got all we need. and i get a heartsinking rush of everything going wrong. but dag is patting me on the knee, obviously worried by the blank look on my face, telling me how he will take us home on the train and put us up and give us beer and make us at home and break our brains and provide clean towels. so what can we do but nodnod and thank him and ask jen to please please stop apologising.

so, as the evening gets more beery in this corner of a clamoured bar, and harper hangs out of the window to greet a surprised group of old friends (sorority sisters), and we watch those who hover outside in the street, and jen is whisked away by golden boy, it seems the time has come to move. an early night for a city...and the reality of a long journey into the outskirts of suburbia, to i have no idea where. a giggly hand-holding, hand-waving, stompstomp walk down hills, and across town past darkened restaurants and shops, past bars wth half-told stories of other nights of drinking, to part near a bus stop. a bus, then, to a train station, with dag's reassuring repeition of the process of our journey, of what awaits us. we smoke a final cigarette on the platform before clambering up the narrow stairs to the top of the shiny metal double-decker train and nest in an end corner, talktalking about everything and nothing, adn the evening and about words and movies and geeky stuff and work as we rattle and edge slowly out of the city into the reaches of the bay area. and i become sleepy and fight to stay awake as i lean against snarl for warmth and comfort and reassurance in this uncertain change of plans flung at us, and after an hour of starting and stopping in the dark, we get off and shiver at the bus stop, waiting, smoking, checking change, yawning...a bus, an odd exchange with a kid who wants to borrow dag's phone, a scamper across an over wide street, a walk past a boarded up wooden building with a shiny coke machine glowing outside it, round a pristine corner to an apartment building with long brightly lit corridors and a clean plainness that feels like a hotel, into dag's apartment. jen it seems has already been here...our cases and bags are by the door. a beer, a chat, a bed made up, a wish of 'sleep well, kids'. and we hold each other tight and i fall asleep with a bemused 'where the fuck am i' sensation.

[yuck, the chocolate syrupy dregs of this mocha at the bottom, hiding under the coffee...tongue coating thick sweet intense.]

...

ack, this cold is dreadful. i want to pee all the time, but dread the bathroom and the shedding of layers...

...

so, the next day. a saturday. snarl and i wake with kisses and caresses and smothered laughter on an early morning, to the sound of a shower crashing waking up dag. he heads off on errands (bill paying and juice buying) and once again, on his return, we are thrown into the struggle for instant respectability as a key turns in a lock. dag is all smiles and breakfast offering and talkative in the sunny bright room, half filtered through long blind slats and a breeze through a meshed door. we learn the house rules...drink the beer, be nice, relax, don't feel obliged to do anything, there's the television...so relaxed and generous is our host that i feel less perplexed, and thankful that someone is so kind as to take on two waifs and strays, the pawns in a hausmate struggle eslewhere. i find out where we are...mountain view, near palo alto, and menlo park. deep in the tidiness of silicon valley. there are no plans for the day, as far as i misremember, so we wander out for coffee and read papers and generally hang out in the way that only americans seem able to do...with low level conversation and some television and some beer. and later, chinese food. huge mounds of food that comes in folding cardboard boxes, and handfuls of fortune cookies, and is that the day dag comes home with a clinking cardboard box of nitrous? perhaps. i refrain, but smirk and giggle as snarl makes peculiar snorting and gasping sounds and his eyes spin around and he crashes back onto the bed giggling his face off, whilst dag breathes long and deep without a squeak or a giggle, just a not-quite there head spinning grin on his face. a drug i know nothing about, so one i avoid...not being someone who steps out into an unknown chemical. too unsettled to experiment blindly. i stick to the beer. but if it is that evening, sleeper, another mooer, comes over, and joins in, and i feel horribly straight and not terribly entertaining, but snarl falls asleep, all sprawled out in my arms on the bed in the sitting room while we watch tv some more and talk idly between the deep inhalations. so i parcel snarl up into bed when they depart, to elsewhere or to bed, struggling with his warm, crashed out body to remove belt and jeans and tuck him under the covers. but even half comatose dead asleep, he wraps his arms around me in his dreams, pulling me close and nuzzling into my skin, making me smile with closeness and the reassurance of being wanted.

and this continues to amaze me...i have always been someone who has felt every bone and lump and discomfort and deadmuscle when wrapped around someone, even just curled on a sofa...tolerating it for short periods for politeness...but with this man i find that we interlock and fit so well, that it gives me great pleasure to nestle, not feeling trapped in a nocturnal embrace of warm skin and sleeping breath, or in a filmwatching sofa bundle...just a melting of edges into a single physicality. interlaced limbs, tangled fingers, pillowed heads and one breath.

oh, and there are now two cats in the apartment...ejn's creatures. she and the felines have moved out...we were not the only ones evicted. and still we don't have the full story, but all night the cats wander and fret and sometimes curl but wake up with scratchscratchscratching in their space-pod litter box. i wake up and bribe them with crunchy food and they settle for a while, then scratchscrath again. snarl and i decide that marcel (the more normal cat) is not really called marcel, but called claude. this seems to be his secret name, the real name of the cat. and zoot is an alien. a tiny handful of cat with no fur, just the warm wrinkly underfur of a devon rex, except for proper bunnyfur around her ears and on her legs. she feels to warm...all uninsulated and radiating, like warm suede. huge eyes and batlike ears and a crazed expression. another night she keeps trying to get under the covers of out bed, and i freak out, convinced that she will get squashed, and the feeling of her against my skin disturbs me because she is more hamster than cat, and too fragile.

and sunday was a day of rollercoasters.
---

From: SAGReiss
Date: 4 December 1997
Subject: Today de Gaulle, tomorrow the Emperor

The men's room at the Theatre National. Charles_de_Gaulle and Georges_Pomipdou stand side by side at the urinals.

Georges_Pompidou [to Charles_de_Gaulle]: Quelle belle piece.

Charles_de_Gaulle [to Georges_Pompidou]: Pompidou, je vous en prie. Regardez devant vous.

From: Kate
Date: 4 December 1997
Subject: (art-jobs) Erotica Writers Needed

thought this was worth passing on...after all, "Writers will be unusually well compensated."

--k

>From: tomas
>Subject: (art-jobs) Erotica Writers Needed
>
>"Erotasy"- a San Francisco publisher of erotic literature,
>is again soliciting submissions from writers.
>
>We want unpublished works by authors known and unknown.
>We are seeking short stories (1500-10,000 words), for inclusion
>in a new collection to be marketed online, as well as in print.
>
>Writers will be unusually well compensated.
>(Note: this is a request for submissions, not a job posting)
>
>We look for erotic stories as smooth as wet silk,
>stimulating and provocative, without beating us over the head.
>
>This is NOT the stereotypical slam-bang porno-for-pinheads that
>is free (and worth it) all over the Net.
>
>This is literature that recognizes our sexuality as full of
>mystery, suspense, longing, foreboding, and taboo, even humor.
>Straight, Gay, Casual, Committed are all OK.
>NO non-consensual or under-age stories. NO sleazy porn.
>
>Think- Anais Nin, Marianna Beck, Isabel Allende - Mary Smith (one need
>not be famous to create well), think compelling, tightly written
>literature that just happens to be erotic.
>
>Send manuscripts by *snail mail* only, please.
>Include a SASE for our reply, your phone and email address.
> We Am Press
> 3145 Geary Blvd, Ste. 17
> San Francisco, CA 94118
>
>
>____________________________________________________
>for more on craigs-list browse http://www.cnewmark.com [art-jobs posting 85]
>

and:

"Erotasy"- a San Francisco publisher of quality erotic literature, is looking for a serial-writer of erotic stories.

We want someone capable of producing a weekly chapter of compelling, tightly written erotic serial story. This will be an interactive serial, responsive to the input of readers. Editorial and deadline experience is a big plus.

This is a contract position. Compensation is negotiable.

From: SAGReiss
Date: 4 December 1997
Subject: High security, low budget

We celibrated the Emperor's birthday last night at the Rainier Club. The guest of honor was not present, but security was still tense. The Consul General of Japan and Germany were both there. A new Axis alliance? (The Consul General in a medium-sized city like Seattle is someone's brother-in-law, the two thousand five hundred and forty-third most important political appointee of his government. We are all waiters and waitresses who have served some higher-calibre men of power. I served tea to Brian Mulroney, as you know, as well as Senator Partick Moynihan, who arrived two hours late and too drunk to deliver his featured speech.) About half way through the reception we ran out of food for the buffet. I was cocktailing and didn't really care. Discrete enquiries were made. The verdict: no more food. This was no sushi bar. There were shitty little spring rolls, hors d'oeuvres and turkey leftover from Thanksgiving. I guess the stock market/real estate/currency crash has taken its toll on the entertainment budget of the representatives of the Imperial throne.

From: SAGReiss
Date: 6 December 1997
Subject: Hospitality

Yesterday this scruffy family of three, two drunken hippie parents and a teenage daughter, came in for breakfast, steak & eggs, omelettes with guacamole and salsa, beer and coffee. I am of course partial to all parties who drink, no matter how bad they smell. I took care of them well, and vice versa. This morning, dead with one big lunch party I wasn't doing because I was hosting, they call up room service and order eggs benedict, a club sandwich and nachos. I conned the cook into making it for me and earned twelve bucks. They called back later for jalapeno peppers and more guacamole and salsa. I had to charge them, since the chef was there. He said three bucks, but I didn't add my automatic fifteen-percent gratuity. It seemed rude. Another five bucks for the trained food-service professional. At ten past two, just after I had turned away some cheap assholes who wanted coffee, they called again asking for the key to the laundry room. I brought it up. After I had finished my books and drawer, I heard them walking down the hall. They saw the gate closed. I stuck out my head and heard: "Here's our friend. Can we have a beer while we wait for a taxi?" I opened the gate: "Well, we're closed, but rules were made to be broken." I served them two bottles of beer. I went back into the kitchen: "Tim, I've got two people who've been taking care of me all week-end. They just want a beer, but I've closed the register. I can't say: 'Sorry, we're closed.' I'll get cash and ring it up tomorrow. I just don't want to be fired for an unnatural act of kindness to the guests." Another five bucks for the trained food-service professional. Sometimes it looks too easy.

From: Nichelle
Date: 7 December 1997
Subject: I think this is one of my favorite guest descs.

Despite her pale color and the unhappiness which clings to her the way a bad dream clings to a rumpled pillowcase, she is lovely. Her hair, as straight and red as ketchup rides gravity's one-way ticket all the way to her waist; her blue eyes are as soft and moist as huevos rancheros and the soft curl of thier lashes cause fimbrillante shadows to fall on the swell of her cheek. She is b-not a tall girl, yet the legs which hang out of her short grey skirt are those of a tall woman and beneath her tight wite t-shirt her astonishingly round breasts jiggle ever so slightly like balls balanced on the noses of valu-valium eating seals.

Nichelle

From: SAGReiss
Date: 11 December 1997
Subject: bgates@cheap.com

Dear MSN Member,

As we indicated in our recent letter to you, we at MSN believe it's vital that all members are able to share equally in the full array of services, information, and entertainment offered by MSN. Unfortunately, the misuse of membership privileges by some members prevents others from being able to enjoy the benefits of their membership on MSN.

We are concerned that the large number of hours your account continues to be logged on to MSN in recent months may indicate inappropriate use of The Microsoft Network. Our records show that [sagreiss] was logged on 325.94 hours. This kind of online time may suggest that either your account has been logged on simultaneously on more than one computer or that your computer has been left unattended while still logged on for long periods of time. We ask that members using MSN in this way take corrective action immediately.

Because these practices can obstruct the use of MSN by other members, it is a violation of the MSN Member Agreement.

It may be helpful to remember that since the beginning of the year, MSN has tripled its connection access and there is no longer a reason to stay logged on when leaving your computer. You can now be confident that you'll be able to reconnect at any time quickly and easily. Another tool you may find useful in the newest release of MSN is a handy new feature called Quick View; it features a time-tracking device that lets you know how long you've been connected to the service.

If you have questions concerning this issue, please send e-mail using the link below. Please note that only questions addressed to this e-mail alias will be answered.

mailto:MSN_Usage@msn.com

We hope that all of our members will work together to make MSN the best online experience for everyone.

Thanks!
MSN Member Communications Team

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sir or Madam,

Further to your letter entitled "Account Usage Alert - 2nd Notice" I would like to give voice to my concerns. First of all, I believe I am billed for, and pay for, unlimited internet access, so I don't see how I could be "misusing" or abusing your services. Second, you suggest that I may be logging on simultaneously from two different computers, which is obviously impossible, since I sometimes cannot reconnect soon after logging off because my "account is already in use". Third, you suggest that I may be "idling" online, which is also impossible because my account logs off automatically when inactive. Last, if you are so suspicious of your members' enjoyment of the services they purchase from you, perhaps you could check my account, instead of making baseless accusations, and see that I only log on from my home phone (206) 324-7468. Suffice it to say that I am a little unhappy with your letter and hope for an explanation.

Respectfully,

Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss

From: Columbine
Date: 11 December 1997
Subject: Re: bgates@cheap.com

Go Gabriel go! Chew their asses.

I'm tempted to actually succumb to the wiles of the devil and get an MSN account just to see if I can earn a letter like this. I'd frame it and put it on the wall.

From: SAGReiss
Date: 16 December 1997
Subject: Choose your pathology

At first I thought I had pissed off bgates' minions and they had finally toaded my internet-addicted ass. But no, the servers are just down for cleaning. My guess is they won't toad anyone who isn't selling something seriously illegal. They just try to intimidate the so-called misusers into connecting for fewer than three hundred hours a month. Fuck them. I can always get another account. Shiiit, I'm working about fifty hours a week. Because of Columbine's weird copyright fetish, I have no printed text to work with. I can't see what the problem is with stealing free shit off the 'net, unless one makes a profit on it. If the fruit of my labor is selling, I think I should get a reasonable cut. Otherwise I don't care what becomes of it and have no scruples about down- or up-loading anyone else's shit. So long as it's free, what difference does it make? Who gives a fuck? I'm an expert neither on TV nor homosexuality. I never watched TV in Europe and haven't seen much Amerikan TV since the mid-seventies. I believe it's true that there is a little more T&A on French television. I don't count this among the obvious superiorities of French culture. These people also pay to import Starsky and Hutch, a very big series over there. It might be tempting to consider the relative tolerance of accute alcoholism as freedom, but that is just freedom of my particular pathology. France is certainly not a bastion of gay rights. Male homosexuality is struck with the same kind of opprobrium in France as elsewhere, most everywhere. (Female homosexuality is seen, there and here, as a charming hobby, harmless and even titilating, to make a bad pun.) There is no escape from sexual prohibitions, incest codes at their most fundamental, to make another bad pun. There are no sexually-liberated societies. Society is the enemy of sexual liberty. That these codes vary from one culture to the next is no more surprising than that the Russian language has two words for "brother-in-law", one meaning my sister's husband, the other meaning my wife's brother. The high-brow and low-brow representations I've seen of (again male) homosexuality do suggest to me that it is pathological behavior. While I enjoyed Les Nuits fauves and The Living End, I don't think they represent healthy lifestyle choices any more than The Lost Weekend or Under The Volcano. My experience (admittedly limited) with the working-class sisters confirms this impression. Their own she's-a-ho mentality does little to uphold comforting middle-class values, which are, socially, healthy ones. Of course I don't know the doctors and lawyers who poke one another up the butt in the comfort of their tastefully decorated homes. I don't know anyone who owns a home. Disney is another story. What I imagine as the real behind-the-scenes tale is quite simply that very few straight men would ever want to work there, so what choice have they got? Still, let us not confuse rights, the few and generally well-protected, from privileges, many and myriad and subject to negociation. As I understand it this is an issue in the gay rights community, whether to let NAMBLA join the Pride Parade and whatnot. There is a difference between outlawing bum-fuckery and not granting insurance coverage to Buttboy. Gay marriage is asking society to sanction and approve of what the boiz do. That seems unreasonable to me. While I have no particular problem with it, it doesn't seem like a right to me. Right to marry? Can I marry my heiffer, or negatron his goose? Same goes for NEA grants. While I don't much care that my tax dollars are wasted on, among other worthless things, homo-porno-photo exhibits, I can understand that some people only want to pay for socially-uplifting art, as oxymoronic as that may sound. Shiiit, Nichelle thinks that all sodomy is pathological. The other day in the employee break room at the Rainier Club there was this really annoying bitch whining about her imaginary health problems, and one of the real flamers said, with a quiet dignity I much admire: "I'm HIV positive." Choose your pathology indeed.

From: Columbine
Date: 16 December 1997
Subject: Re: Choose your pathology

>Because of
>Columbine's weird copyright fetish, I have no printed text to work with.

mouth organ has the same policy I do: if you don't repost it in a public forum and don't make any money off it, then by all means go ahead and quote it.

The latter part is the more important one: if we don't make any bucks from our own words, why should you? Which is basically what you said.

As for the former, "public" is subjective, I admit - and the bookkeeping is a mess: I don't mind being quoted on this list (which I consider private) but I would mind seeing words from my web pages appear on YOUR web page, which I consider public. But things which I say here are fair game for you or Nichelle to repost on your web pages. That doesn't bother me. Anything I say here, the world can have. Hell, I dunno. I know it when I see it.

>Male homosexuality
>is struck with the same kind of opprobrium in France as elsewhere, most
>everywhere. (Female homosexuality is seen, there and here, as a charming
>hobby, harmless and even titilating, to make a bad pun.)

Not sure I buy this. Male homosexuality is ignored and tolerated by the majority in France, as far as I can tell from the footprints; it is loathed and feared by the majority here.

I agree that female homosexuality is *always* perceived as less threatening, a colorful and harmless quirk. Why this should be, I do not know. Nor do my coeditors.

>There are no sexually-liberated societies. Society is the
>enemy of sexual liberty.

That's a tad extreme, isn't it? I'm not saying society is a friend of sexual liberty; I'm just wondering if there's any connection between the two at all.

>Of course I >don't know the doctors and lawyers who poke one another up the butt in >the comfort of their tastefully decorated homes. I don't know anyone who owns a home.

I do and they're mostly normal. (Well, they're sometimes jerks, but only to the same statistical extent that all doctors and lawyers are - which is to say, often.)

The stories you tell me suggest to me sometimes that you work with people who would be pathological whether they're straight or gay. I suggest, again, that the two are unconnected.

From: SAGReiss
Date: 17 December 1997
Subject: Vivent les pedes

I'm not sure where you get your information on homosexuality in France. If it comes from tourists, be suspicious. Paris and Nice are not France, any more than New York and Los Angeles are Amerika. It has always amused me that the so-called cultural diversity crowd would be literally incapable of functioning in any culture outside of Amerika, possibly outside of Amerikan academia. If one thinks English is a gender-sensitive language... Anyway we could change our references to, say, Gide and Genet or Hubert Selby and John Rechy. Or we could go back to that most shrewed observer of gender-bending and socio-sexual repression, my friend Sade. In one of his most famous, outraged self-defences, he deplores female adultery, because of the unhappy social consequences, and notes that he has never compromised a married woman. (One must remember how ironic and self-serving his justifications always are. One biographer astutely pointed out that he never seems so guilty and criminal as when he is in the right, denying having committed a crime which in fact he did not commit.) From the age of about sixteen, when he left the Jesuits to join the cavalry, described by his superior officer as "Fort brave, fort derange", no respectably-married woman would have anything to do with him. However I think he puts his finger on the socio-biological fact which has always had a deep influence on how male and female sexuality are viewed. No one knows his father, and no man knows his child. DNA testing might change this, but only if it becomes wide-spread. I'm not sure how this bears on male-female homosexuality, but I think it might. An amusing article I read by a gay-boy stopping in Seattle on a national book tour suggested that human sexuality could be summed up by the fact (He didn't cite sources.) that male homosexual couples had sex an average of three times a week, heterosexual couples twice a week, lesbian couples once a week. I have very little experience with dykes, except that they are thought to be cheap in restaurant circles, possibly male-homosexual, misogynistic propaganda. Again data are hard to come by. As I said to Nichelle last night, restaurant workers tend to experiment more with exotic food, blacks tend to see things in racial terms, homosexuals define their individual and group identity by what goes on between the sheets. It doesn't suprise me that promiscuity or S&M would flourish among them, if indeed it does, and I may be wrong about that. What would one expect to see in a gay gift shop, if not the little porno toys Nichelle was describing to me? What is gay, if it is not in some way related to sex?

From: Columbine
Date: 17 December 1997
Subject: Re: Vivent les pedes

I confess, when I think France I think Paris ... and Paris is the source of most of my information ... and I get extremely irate when people assume all of Louisiana is like New Orleans (not coincidentally the only urban, halfway gay-friendly part of a largely agrarian state). In short, I should put my own house in order first.

French *is* a horribly gendered language ... German is bad too ... but to my American ears, those genders are meaningless. German genders make so little sense to me that I had to learn them by rote, divorcing them of their meanings. I have learned "das Maedchen" as a literal, and it never occurs to me to wonder or be offended by the fact that the little girl is always an 'it'.

Similarly, in French a lot of positive qualities are male and a lot of negative ones are female. You tell me: is this genuine sexism anymore, or do Frenchmen merely use them as pronouns, without prejudice? Are there Frenchmen who still believe that all rough beasts are female, or that beastliness is an inherently female characteristic?

***

I am not two-faced like Sade. I deplore all adultery. There is never a justification for adultery. But note the definition. If your husband or wife is aware and has given approval of your fooling around, then it is no longer adultery. Perhaps it would be better to say I deplore all fraud.

But then, after we stated a similar position in mouth organ, we got mail saying, "So are you saying that one should never lie to one's spouse?" and, no, we wouldn't want to say that. A lie is often - usually - easier to swallow than the corresponding truth. Else why lie in the first place? Some hurts, I suppose, are small enough to permit the lies. Some hurts, the bigger ones, one should never lie about.

If that seems backward to you, consider this metaphor, if you please:

A wall in a house is in horrible shape visually. There are little pits, nail holes, and small cracks in the sheetrock. There is also a huge bend in the sheetrock where a large object has collided with the wall and cracked one of the support beams.

You are attempting to sell the house.

The little marks and pits can and should be filled and plastered; they are only visual anyway. The big one should not be covered up: it is a major piece of structural damage which the buyer needs to be aware of. If you conceal it, you are deceiving the buyer in a way which will cause the buyer (and possibly you, if he sues you) great trouble later.

I like that metaphor. I stole it from myself. :) It's from a mouth organ column to be finished later tonight on the same subject.

***

You are absolutely correct in one particular: gay groups define themselves in terms of their sexual identity. *I* define myself in relation to the rest of the populace in terms of my sexual identity. The whole mouth organ crew does the same. It is very difficult to think in any other terms, since that one shouts so much louder than the others. Yes, we're all possibly very intelligent people: So what? We are not discriminated against nor distinguished by our intelligence. We don't get worse service at the Burger King (hard to imagine how it could get worse, but let's go with that) because we walk in reading The Economist instead of People. We might get worse service if we walked in reading Playboy though. We'd definitely get worse service if we walked in arm-in-arm with someone else of the same gender.

It seems natural enough to define one's group in terms of what most sets that group in antagonism with the rest of the populace. It is distressing to me that even a tame horse like mouth organ is sufficient to be contraband reading in some places in this country. It is distressing to me that anal sex - no matter who practices it - is illegal in Texas. (So is owning more than five dildos. More than that, and you're a dildo pusher.) And, to come back to the points which began this whole exchange, it is distressing to me that in Europe these problems apparently do not exist to the same degree.

There's also a personal issue here: I learn more and more things about this country to dislike every day. I am not in any danger of defecting - I'm largely happy here - but it's a wistful thing. Why can't I live somewhere with an American technology market, a German educational system, and Dutch morals?

From: SAGReiss
Date: 21 December 1997
Subject: Geang gai

The bartender and I shared a laugh over a couple at the club, a lady in an evening gown and her SO in a tux. Why did we deem this funny? We're probably two ignorant, homophobic, male chauvanist pigs. (I'm not sure why ignorance is traditionally thrown into this mix.) Anyway, Columbine, I think your mistake is not so much holding hands with your ladyfriend as going to Burger King. Service is bought and sold. There is even such a thing as theft of services. Restaurants are ruthlessly materialistic places. We care about our tips. Everything else is irrelevant. Guests generally get the service they deserve. Immediately order a bottle of wine or a round of drinks and you should get excellent service. Say that you're in a hurry or ask for separate checks and you'll probably suffer the fate you deserve. Start dropping five- and ten-dollar tips on the local waiters and bartenders and see if you don't get their attention.

From: Nichelle
Date: 23 December 1997
Subject: homophobic waiters, etc.

DEATH TO THE CHEAP:
You will have to forgive Gabriel. It is his belief that 'lesbians are cheap- all waiters know that', not that it matters to him or the other boys at the club, who earn a wage plus a tip per head and don't have to hustle for tits, er tips.

SWEET WORDS TO HER LOVE:
Yes, sweetheart, I hate using pine, so will you please forward this to the list. I miss you. I can't sleep.

SOY TO THE WORLD:
I have failed at my attempts to convince my mother and stepfather to buy a Tofurkey for Christmas dinner rather than the traditional meal. Even the other Tofoultry options of Tofoose or Tofuck did not appeal to them, although all are accompanied by four tempeh drum-ettes and a delicious golden mushroom gravy.

REMOTE CONTROL TOYS:
I had my first look at a Sony Web-TV last night. My friend Mr. X (not his real name) has got it, probably because he can't get onto AOL without a computer. This is the same guy who picked up a six foot tall whore downtown and later asked me if all women smell that bad "down there". Apparently he payed her money to come back to his apartment to eat her out. So this is the sort of guy with a Web-TV. It just doesn't feel like the internet that way. He's such an asshole, he had to show me all of his favorite humor pages and read them to me. It took us a while to get through the Mensa version of the Night Before Christmas. He didn't know most of the words. "Wow, Nicki, you've got such a big vocab." "Yes, it's even got the word "vocabulary" in it."

ONLY THREE SHOPPING DAYS LEFT:
I have become an efficient shopping machine over the past year and something since I moved in with Gabriel. Today, mother and I spent an entire day worthlessly roaming the malls looking for last minute gifts for those 'problem people'. Mom later commented that I used to be 'the easygoing and laid back one in the family' and that I am now 'grumpy'. For the record, shopping has always made me 'grumpy'.

BOBBING LIKE CORKS:
I saw Titanic last night, the movie with the largest budget ever. It was a grim thing. I liked it despite all of the horrible Hollywoody effects- short clips, fast camera changes, visciously loud soundtrack... I hate myself for liking this kind of film, but I was impressed, even despite the cheesy romance storyline. I think it takes balls to show thousands of people falling to their deaths, later bobbing frozen and dead in the water.

THE TELEVISION IS BROKEN:
While trying to get it up last night (Web-TV, that is) the television was playing hard to get with Andrew. It took him four minutes of panic and frenzy to get the thing to work. I secretly hoped it was broken.

THE SUMMING UP:
I hate the television. I cannot think. There is nothing but noise, confusion and junk food here. Home is quiet, despite what Gabriel thinks. We're all friends. We can eat together, be silent while the other types e-mail, understand the need for things like vegetables and grapefruit... I can't think. I miss home.

From: SAGReiss
Date: 23 December 1997
Subject: Gender studies

Gender is a grammatical category of articles, nouns and adjectives, like case and number. It is not to be confused with something that exists in the real (non-linguistic) world. A language (such as Finnish) can have more than a dozen cases or fewer than two (subject/object). Similarly many languages (such as certain dialects of ancient Greek) have three numbers, singular, dual and plural. Gender is useful in that it allows writers to make neater distinctions, more complex syntax, longer sentences. It provides clarity. People who speak only one language do not generally think about it very much, if at all. It is implicit. English speakers do not think of their verbs' aspect, another purely grammatical category. I would doubt that anyone on this list could even identify a verbal aspect. Yet English is a relatively aspect-rich language, if gender poor. To use the traditional BBC examples: "negatron is jerking off. He jerks off every day. He hasn't got laid in a while. He's been working on his intergender communication skills." There are the four aspects of the English verb, progressive (or continuous), punctual, perfect and perfect-progressive. I could go on, but this is boring, so back to gender studies. French gender is inherited from the Latin, which is based on the Greek, so we'd probably have to look at Indo-European gender tendencies to get anywhere. German gender is half Germanic, half imported from the Latin by Martin Luther. A note on women and children: child is neuter in German, as are the diminutive suffixes. Thus Frauelein and Maedchen must be neuter because of the endings, which determine gender. Weib (whence wife) is also neuter, for reasons I don't know.

From: Columbine
Date: 28 December 1997
Subject: Re: Gender studies

>A note on women and children: child is neuter in German, as are
>the diminutive suffixes. Thus Frauelein and Maedchen must be neuter
>because of the endings, which determine gender.

I knew this. My point, I think, was that it's just as stupid and arbitrary a system as any other. Ideally language would have one gender (in the purely grammatical sense). But what fun would that be?

From: SAGReiss
Date: 29 December 1997
Subject: Fresh fruit for rotting vegetables

Some days I'm good, boiz & grrls, and some days I just get lucky. I was casting about for something funny or interesting to write about when this happened:

You sense that Mauve_Guest is looking for you in The Linen Closet.
It pages, "Good day."
page mauve Who are you?
You sense that Mauve_Guest is looking for you in The Linen Closet.
It pages, "Do you mean my name?"
page mauve I'm fucking busy. Have you got something to say to me or not? Who the fuck are you?
You sense that Mauve_Guest is looking for you in The Linen Closet.
It pages, "My name is Charles. You don't know me. I wanted to ask if RLMOO is still a functioning entity or not."
page mauve Well, that makes things clear, Charles. RL MOO is dead, I'm sorry to say.
You sense that Mauve_Guest is looking for you in The Linen Closet.
It pages, "I'm sorry to hear that. Do you have time to tell me why?"
page mauve I haven't had a good year financially, so I got tired of paying fifty dollars a month.
You sense that Mauve_Guest is looking for you in The Linen Closet.
It pages, "How frustrating. Do the databases still exist?"
page mauve Yes, my friend has them saved to disk.
You sense that Mauve_Guest is looking for you in The Linen Closet.
It pages, "Would you like RLMOO to exist again?"
page mauve I would like that very much. Are you in the business of giving out computer space?
You sense that Mauve_Guest is looking for you in The Linen Closet.
It pages, "Yes, if I feel like it. I'm the sysadmin of an ISP, so I can pretty much do whatever the fuck I want with the servers and the bandwidth. I'm not going to commit, but I would be interested in finding out what's involved."
page mauve It's a very small MOO. negatron could tell you more precisely, if the fucker were ever around when I need him. Why don't you @join me?
Mauve_Guest teleports in.
Mauve_Guest says, "Well, e-mail would be just peachy, too."
You ask, "What's up, Charles? May I ask where you got your interest in RL MOO?"
Mauve_Guest says, "A random walk. I was on purple-crayon at MIT for a while, and got intrigued with the notion of MOO as a projection of reality rather than a workshop for fantasy. An Alta Vista search led to you."
Mauve_Guest says, "Or, more specifically, to RLMOO, but you seemed to be a nexus for it."
You say, "Well, we tried to create a different kind of MOO, but I can't say we met with very much success."
Mauve_Guest says, "What was the limiting factor?"
You say, "There are perhaps different answers. Some say that the MOO is a dying technology. Some say that the big MOOs, LambdaMOO most guiltily, tend to obliterate the smaller ones. Some say that I'm such an asshole that no one wants to talk to me."
Mauve_Guest says, "I have to leave soon. Do you know if RLMOO was based on Lambda's code & core?"
SAGReiss [to Mauve_Guest]: It was. Would you like me to give your e-mail address to negatron? He can explain. He's a geek.
Mauve_Guest says, "Please. I would have to run it past the CE, but I can't see that he'd have a problem with it."
You ask, "Thanks. I'll pass it along. I spoke with him this morning, something about his going to eat his relatives' food and drink their whisky for a few more days. He might get back to you in a week. Would that be OK?"
Mauve_Guest says, "That's fine. I'll look for it. Adieu."
SAGReiss [to Mauve_Guest]: Later, bro.
Mauve_Guest goes home.

I wanted something amusing to impress our new friend, Veronique, whom some of you may remember from RL MOO or even Lambda. I was very impressed by the home-porno-video mpegs she's got on her web site, but she made me promise not to divulge the address. Anyway it's been more than a year since we brought in any new blood, so I've taken the liberty. I hope she's not expecting literature, unless she understands that word the same way I do, which is highly unlikely. She joked about sending us her food diary, which might fit in quite well in this "Refrigerator of the Mind". Her address is above, along with Kate's new one. Here is what she wrote to me:

Misery

Why am I so miserable? To the outsider, I've got it all. Really. I take stock of myself everyday and I still feel rotten... I'm in my late 20's, have a good, solid job in a fast-paced company. I've been promoted 3 times in 3 years and am well known and well respected by my colleagues. I've got stock options, a brand-new car, just moved to a swank apartment in a luxurious tower near the city. I've got everything I need. I'm completely single, have plenty of friends to socialize with, invited to countless parties. So, I'm totally in control of my life. I've got it all, right? I mean, what else could I want?

The question is, why am I so damn miserable? I wake up in the morning and feel completely apathetic - I have to give myself a pep-talk to get myself to work, a double latte in the car, another 2 cups in the office. Getting my projects done at work has grown tedious, and I have to force myself to get
through the day. There's little joy in anything anymore. Basically, I think my problem is that I've achieved nearly everything so early in life, things most people don't get until their in their late 30's/40's and there's little more for me to strive for. Emotionally, I'm a 20-something year old - professionally I'm a 40-something year old - I'm split right down the middle most of the time. Thinking one thing, saying another, kissing my bosses' asses, climbing the proverbial career ladder. But for what ?

If these things aren't making me happy now, then what am I reaching for? Will more money make me happy? Will a more expensive car make me happy? Will new friends make me happy? Will new projects at work make me happy? Will a vacation to a ritzy resort make me happy? What will make me happy?

Maybe I just don't know what happiness is. Maybe my expectations of happiness are too high? Maybe happiness is something different. Let me know if you figure it out.

From: Veroneek
Date: 28 December 1997
Subject: Re: Fresh fruit for rotting vegetables (Veronique's rotting stomach)

From: Veroneek

Food and Exercise Diary - December 28th, 1997 (Sunday, bloody Sunday)

11am-12pm: 4 small Homemade buttermilk pancakes with 100% natural Vermont maple syrup.

3.30pm: 1 small spring roll, 1 small veggie spring roll (totally greasy - shoulda skipped them)
4.pm: 1 box drink (half pint) of Parmalat skim chocolate milk

6.00pm: Cajun Salad - greens, cheese, tomatoes, cabbage, grilled cajun chicken slices and honey mustard dressing, on the side. Cup of decaf coffee and cup of water.

8.25pm: Felt like a Heffer. Running on treadmill in gym for 40 minutes.
Listened to George Michael "Faith" in Walkman. Wanted to listen to Falco, but the damn tape wasn't in the case.

November 1997

January 1998

vr: 1997