This is the last excerpt I’ll share before publication. The book deserves to be encountered whole. It will be out next year. Blog posts will continue as usual.
Saul spent most of the night trying to find me. I spent most of the night trying to evade him. Thankfully the Mezzanine is a big enough place and I was (mostly) able to. I went out to a barricaded outside area, in an alley, to have a smoke. As I was walking out, Mal was there. We’d just been introduced by Saul. Malincoeur was Saul’s all-nude male stripper/co-worker friend. Everything stopped when we met eyes. All those people froze; the air left the room. You’ve seen it on TV or in movies. It’s a real thing. Everything froze but his eyes peering into mine. I walked out to him. It felt magickal; little did I know it meant something darker.
I told him I was trying to escape Saul. He said, “Wanna get out of here?” Fuck yeah! We left.
We went to get pizza somewhere around there. I told him I had speed. He said he’d eat some. I gave. When we left, Saul texted Mal. (Remember, Saul worked the door where Mal was a stripper.) Showed him pics of my needles. Apparently, he was butt hurt I wasn’t going to fuck him and thought he’d dig through my bag. Tried to fuck up my night. Oddly, Mal wasn’t phased. He told me he used to be a heroin addict. Needles weren’t new to him at all. I confessed I shot up speed. Not something I’d just come out with. We decided to go get my things from the hotel Saul had won. What a fucking awkward situation. Nothing worse than a scorned, cowardly man.
We had retrieved my backpack, after so much bullshit. He asked where I lived. I told him Outer Sunset. He said, “Let me walk you home.” We traversed the beautiful, foggy streets from SoMA almost to Ocean Beach. I wish I could remember all that we talked about. The conversation was constant. The connection was invigorating.
We got back to my place. He said something I thought was was weird at the time. “Let me check your labels. I’m a label whore.” Meaning what clothing brands I was wearing. Weird, but ok. We talked some more. Then before he left, he asked if it would be ok if he kissed me. I love it when men are gentlemen. I said yes, and the kiss was genuinely good. Numbers exchanged. Awesome.
…
After that I dated around, but my goal was to spend more time with Mal. I really liked him. I went on a date with a doctor who was just looking to get laid. No thanks, you uppity fuck. A date with this Chinese guy who was cool, but something embarrassing happened while we were at the beach and I didn’t want to see him after that. If you’re curious, my jeans got caught on something and ripped at the crotch; I was going commando. You get the picture. I briefly tried intimacy with a crossdresser. A banker who I really liked, until I realized he would always be the prettiest girl in the room in his own eyes. No judgment. Just not what I was looking for.
Interspersed with all of this was Mal. But the red flags were constant. I ignored them because I wanted him. Now I think I just wanted to be loved so badly and I assigned his face to that. So strange looking back from a place of complete self-sufficient inner fullness at the person I used to be. I feel sorry for her. She wanted love so badly she let herself be pulled into an abyss by sneaky, cowardly demon. Me searching for keys on the beach all night I supposedly lost—this will make more sense later. He showed up 2 hours late for a date once. By the time he got there, I was smoking weed on the sidewalk on with the young and “cool” homeless-by-choice kids on Haight, just outside the Gold Cane. Love that bar. One time he told me I was “easily duped” when we were drinking. I wrote it down in my journal while drunk so I wouldn’t forget. Looky there, I still remember.
Then there was the time I showed up at his place, as we’d planned, and apparently he’d double-booked with one of his fellow male strippers. They also had a sexual relationship. Again, no judgment. You can’t move to SF and not expect these things, right? His name was Cornhole, but we’ll call him Corn for short. He was super upset he wasn’t going to cuddle and watch movies with Mal. He left Mal’s room in the residential hotel on Bush St. carrying his blankie like Linus, head bowed and all. You could almost hear the sad piano playing. I wasn’t trying to interfere with whatever they had going on. Mal explained he made Corn wear a wig when he fucked him. I mean, whatever. I really don’t care. People are weird. Sex is personal. To each his own is my motto.
We all hung out a lot, myself and Mal and the male strippers from Nob Hill Theater. One named Ray had a regular arrangement with a Catholic priest—we got some laughs out of that. I went with Corn to his—>her (he often switched pronouns) performance at Diva’s. Which is a place where trans and drag converge into some really awesome shows. I was trying to be supportive of Mal’s friends. I helped Lola (née Cornhole) get dressed for her show. I had a great time. I didn’t get charged cover ($30!) because I was the only GG (genetic girl) there. At the end of the night, I had such an awesome and interesting time downstairs with a elderly drag queen named Roberta. She was dressed like Jackie O... pillbox hat and all. I’ll never forget her.
Another night they dared me to hug a cop standing across the street, and I did. What I actually did was walk up to him and tell him my friends dared me to hug him and could we hug. They thought it was magick watching from across the street—mouths wide open. I marveled at how hot the cops were in SF compared to Louisiana. On one of mine and Mal’s drinking walkabouts I wrote “I HEART HOT COPS” on a cop car that was parked directly in front of the doors to the TL police station—with a sharpie, lol. Whoa, you’re thinking. Yeah, my drinking alter ego is... well, different. We did other things on these walkabouts. They’ll feature a lot in our relationship, until they don’t.
I ended up moving in with Mal in that residential hotel, even though it cost me $100 more a month than the heroic Latino gentlemen charged me and less space. Literally a twin bed with a sink in the room. Bathroom down the hall. Had to have Clorox wipes and flip-flops just to shower. Bed bugs were a real problem too. Let me give you a public service announcement about those little blood-sucking motherfuckers. Only roughly half the population are allergic to them. I’m one. They can live up to a year with no food. They have special sensors that detect breath. Their bites itch for about a week. Like leaving marks on skin bad-type itching. They are a nightmare to get rid of, if you even can. My fucked up mother used to say “sleep tight, don’t let the bed bugs bite” to me when I was little. I should have taken the bed bugs as a sign of what he was, but no, I was “in love.” Hadn’t learned to read the signs of the universe yet.
No matter that some old creep would watch us have sex from across the light-well. For those of you who’ve never been in a place like that: picture 2 walls with 3-4 ft between them, windows on either wall facing each other. I asked Mal, “Who is that creepy motherfucker watching us?” “Oh, that’s just Carl. He tried to buy sex with me for a six-pack when I moved in.”
Roberto and Juan warned against it. They saw the red flags too. They also said, “Those places have cameras in the rooms a lot of times.” I didn’t listen. I just wanted to be with Mal and have fun. Oh yeah, I forgot. I had stopped using speed by then. How did I stop? Mal said he didn’t like it and I liked Mal. I gave him what I had left right after he said it and I didn’t look back. I also made the mistake of telling him that I was about to receive a settlement of $50,000. It honestly didn’t occur to me that that was why he wanted to be with me. My dad died due to medical malpractice. That’s what the settlement was for.
...
After I got the settlement, we found a real apartment. You know, with a bathroom in it. A studio on Hyde St. We were apartment 420, I shit you not. Lol. With my settlement I paid the rent a year in advance. He would pay me his half each month. I was noticing though that I tried to be affectionate and buy him things. But if he spent any money on me, he literally had me tally up what I owed him. Like highlighter on receipts kind of tallying, to the penny.
Mal and I had a small fridge, so I’d walk to this great little market on Polk and California and buy fresh food. I learned to cook healthy and tasty food. I ate a big salad every night. These were the salad days.
I bought a bicycle for $40 from a guy on the street. It was probably stolen. Mal bought a kids bike. We’d ride around SF all the time. We’d climb trees everywhere—you can see the appeal he had for a gal like me. I’d pick flowers from the fancy buildings and put them in my hair. By the time we’d get home, I’d have a head full of flowers. :D
So, he stopped stripping. We began CCSF together. After my first semester, my GPA was 3.79. The next semester, I joined the Honors Society and the Philosophy Club. I was volunteering at the SFSPCA as a dog walker. I took extensive notes for a dyslexic student in my Abnormal Psych class; she was sweet and had the most gorgeous head of auburn hair I’d ever seen. I volunteered for the Macy’s cat adoption windows during Christmas. I went to the gym every other day. I rode my bike to the Presidio (from the TL) 2 times a week for therapy. I was so proud of myself; I’d turned things around. It looked like I was going to have a future.
I wanted to be a neuroscientist. Everything about my trajectory suggested that’s where I was headed. Including having students asking if they could pay me to tutor them in Honors Bio Psych, and increasing scholarships every semester. I didn’t take the students’ money; I studied with them for free. Jenny was trying to highlight everything in the book. I tried to tell her it was too much to study. Randy seemed to want to absorb my grades through osmosis. That class was hella hard. Only 5 tests, 25 questions, multiple choice. They weighed heavily on one’s grade. Dr. Who wasn’t pulling any punches. I loved her. If you made A’s on the first 4 tests, you didn’t have to take the 5th test, aka the final. I didn’t have to take the final. I think my success was due to my ability to visualize biological structures. Like ionic pathways in a neuron, for instance.
…
I told myself it was all for him. I knew he didn’t care for me as much, but my life was going so well I associated that with him. I thought it was love. That association just made it harder to decouple from him by the time he started doing unimaginably fucked up things in the sneakiest ways possible...
…
It gets much, MUCH darker from here. My book will be out late next year. Ultimately, it’s about a woman fighting alone against a great force of evil, who perseveres against all odds—without becoming bitter or losing her enthusiastic/innocent/imaginative spirit. It’s not about redemption; she didn’t deserve what happened. It’s about justice using the long-game, when no other path is available—just ask the Count of Monte Cristo how that works out. It will be a monument dedicated to Mars Ultor in service of that goal—a lesson to those who should have taken the time to understand the being they were dealing with.
…
Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall…
That’s what El felt. If she only knew what was coming…
Next Week
Monday — The Unmasked and Their Enemies: On Authenticity, Its Costs, and Why It’s the Only Game Worth Playing
The mask is ancient technology—older than language, more efficient than therapy, and absolutely everywhere you look once you know what you’re looking for. This essay is about why most people are still running survival code in a world where the stakes are a group chat, what it actually costs to take the mask off, and why—against all reasonable odds—the unmasked win in the long run. It’s not a self-help piece. It’s more of an autopsy with good lighting.
Thursday — The Ten Faces of Insecurity
Insecurity rarely shows up wearing its own name. It shows up as the person who just had to correct you in front of everyone, the friend who goes mysteriously quiet when your life is going well, the colleague who cannot finish a sentence without mentioning someone important. It’s a shape-shifter with a consistent motive: make the outside world do the work the inside world refuses to. Here are ten of its favorite disguises—and what’s actually running underneath.
Saturday — Happy Halloweeeeeeeeeen!
Just a little well-wishing hodgepodge of stuff to my readers (love you all) on my favorite night of the year—SAMHAIN. I get to wear a dragon costume while dancing and singing during ritual. Do it for the phantoms—that’s my motto. It’s not for human eyes anyway, lol. I think this might call for a special occasion mead called Odin’s Skull. Ancient beverage for an ancient ritual on the night the veil is the thinnest. Plus, mead slows down time—if you get the good stuff.