Friday, January 09, 2004

New for 2004.

Everything is different now.

Bars in Atlanta are no longer allowed to stay open all night. No more 24 hour parties, no more wild club kids staggering around Star Bar or Backstreets on the wrong side of dawn, glitter gorgeous. It’s not that I went out late and was part of that whole scene; it’s just that I enjoyed living in a town where it existed. Somehow the 24 hour bars made Atlanta the sort of town I like to live in. Should I randomly wake up at 4am with insomnia, I like the idea of being able to pull on some leather pants and take a taxi down to see some drag.

Not that the situation is ever likely to happen. I’m just pointing out that I liked having the option, at 4 in the morning, of watching someone else throw up on the sidewalk in front of me. Those sort of things keep life interesting. Last call is now legally 2:30. How dull is that? The taxi cab drivers and barkeeps are protesting. I hope they can remember to vote for a change…

There’s a bridge connecting Spring street to the Tech campus right across 17th street now. Not that I drive, but it’s nice to know that it’s there.

The Republican’s eyelashes are blonde. I have never woken up next to someone with blonde eyelashes before. We live too far apart, and so this doesn’t happen often; still, I like to think about how he looks asleep. This admission shocks me almost as much as it shocks other people I know. I think about him when he’s not around. I feel as if I have been modified, altered by blonde eyelashes and his careful ways. This is strange and different.

Atlanta will begin a 500 million dollar new sewer system this year. Every time I see something in the news about the sewer, I hear Mr. Croup from Neverwhere saying “With cities, just as with people, Mr. Vandemar, the condition of the bowels is all important.”

I had a lovely series of dinners over the holidays. IHOP with Heidi, Devon, Aisling and assorted company; Waffle House with Skeet, Virgil and Serena; Indian food and later sushi with Jeff and company; Taste of Tokyo with my mother and sisters; Melting Pot with The Republican; Dessert with Underdown, The Republican, and Skeet; other nights and times and dinners that blur, two weeks of parties and conversations and more that blend together and are gone, one smooth string of time that made me forget the days of the week.

I came home tired to a cat that now has a big scar across her nose, a parting gift from cats less kind.

I came home to changed plans, a relaxing and happy house, and the disturbing knowledge that now, more than ever, I shape my own world and destiny, and affect all others around me as they affect my world and reality as well.

It is twelve months from where I was last, and I haven’t the energy to reconnect with where I was a year ago (two years ago, three years ago, four). In an 18 month race, I have run out of steam in a year. I have had to sit down so close to the end of a three year marathon. I just quit. I quit. I quit for now. Why was I running?

Should I move to Nashville? Should I get a regular old librarian job? What would it matter? Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me I belong in a bigger city, with a bigger tub, that I belong in the top of my field. Tell me to keep fighting. Tell me to never give in, never give up, that the person I want to be is better than a mediocre position in a badly governed state with low educational values. Tell me that all my plans were not flawed from the beginning, tell me I’m an artist, tell me to be better than the forces around me. Tell me that I will always be a fighter, that I will never rest, that I have not gotten worn down and tired. Tellme that love does not win when my main fuel, for decades, has been discontent.

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