OMG, I watched this ran­domly just now, and I can’t stop cry­ing. If only we had this 20 years ago. I totally could have used it.

1. “Panic” — The Smiths
2. “New Friend” — No Doubt
3. “Que Mas Da” — Ricky Mar­tin
4. “Song for the Lonely” — Cher
5. “Trust Me” — The Motels
6. “Come into My World” — Kylie Minogue
7. “Survival” — Madonna
8. “I Drove All Night” — Céline Dion
9. “Si tu m’aimes” — Lara Fabian
10. “Another Girl’s Paradise” — Tori Amos

So, V&I are now offi­cially domes­ti­cally part­nered in the state of Cal­i­for­nia. We have talked about get­ting mar­ried some day — if this coun­try ever gets its shit together and joins the rest of the civ­i­lized world — and being DPs is the first step in that direc­tion. It’s not at all required, but in the mean time, we can get a taste of the legal rights the state will give us, which don’t seem to be all that many. And since I’m not work­ing full time enough to have ben­e­fits, it was the only way for me to be put on his ben­e­fit plan. So, I will have health and den­tal and vision again.

It’s kinda weird. For years and years, I never had health ben­e­fits, and then even when I did have cov­er­age I never used it. I went sev­en­teen years with­out see­ing a den­tist, and my teeth were in great shape. Since I was laid off six months ago, I’ve been with­out cov­er­age, and it’s in the back of my mind that if any­thing hap­pened to me, it would be a finan­cial dis­as­ter wait­ing to hap­pen. So, all of a sud­den, I feel a sense of respon­si­bil­ity to the one I love to get my shit cov­ered so nei­ther of us is put in an unnec­es­sary posi­tion. And you know, I totally blame the United States of Amer­ica for this bull­shit. I’m not going to go all polit­i­cal about this because there are plenty of other places to find that, but hon­estly, we are sup­pos­edly the last remain­ing super­power on the planet, and we can’t pro­vide basic health­care for our own cit­i­zens with­out cries of social­ism or com­mu­nism from the igno­rant and scared — who would be the most to ben­e­fit from such mea­sures! If we lived in the UK, this wouldn’t be an issue. If we lived in Canada, France, Nor­way, Fin­land, even Peru and Brazil, this wouldn’t be an issue. It’s sad and depress­ing, and I don’t know what it’s going to take for this coun­try to wake up to the lies and dou­ble­s­peak that are being fed to them by the obnox­iously wealthy greedy power-hungry moth­er­fuck­ers who run this place. Cap­i­tal­ism will be the demise of this coun­try. Oh my fuck­ing god.

So, V is sub­mit­ting the paper­work today, and I should be cov­ered as of Octo­ber 1st. That’s good news. But at the same time, I feel like Jacky in Howards End. The for­mer pros­ti­tute who was wait­ing for her non­com­mit­tal lover to marry her was always wor­ry­ing about money and how they were going to sur­vive. She didn’t work, Len did that, and not that well. So she wor­ried for good rea­son. At one point in the movie, she’s a lit­tle des­per­ate in her lacy naughty bits, and she asks: “Len, are you going to make it all right?” That’s how I feel now. I’ve cho­sen to be a stu­dent and get my edu­ca­tion squared away, and in exchange for that, I’ve given up my full time career — such as it was — to work part time-ish and spo­rad­i­cally. I feel like I’m start­ing to rely on V for more and more, even though that’s not the case. I have my own money, I pay my own share of things. We don’t have a joint account or any­thing, and I don’t think we will any­time soon. So, basi­cally, I’m being melo­dra­matic about it all, and well, there’s noth­ing new there.

So with that, it’s Fol­som week­end here in beau­ti­ful, sunny San Fran­cisco, so put on your leathers and har­nesses and get out your chips, dips, chains, and whips (no can­dle wax on the nip­ples or witch­craft, tho), and go out and have fun!

1. Une place sur terre — Liane Foly
2. Le coureur — Jean-Jacques Goldman
3. Adri­enne — Isabelle Boulay
4. Sur le même bateau — Céline Dion
5. Dis ce que tu as — Marilou
6. De sable et de rochers — Marie-Elaine Thibert
7. Cow­boy virtuel — Roch Voisine
8. Un ave maria — Lara Fabian
9. Je t’aime encore — France D’amour
10. Et la regarder — Lau­rence Jalbert

Et pourquoi pas ?

So, this week­end, we’re jet­ting off to the Russ­ian River to spend the Fourth of July week­end with the gays. Not exactly what I would like to do, but at this point, it’s all about com­pro­mise, n’est-ce pas? Last year, we camped, in tents, and it was freez­ing and messy with 15 other peo­ple. This year, we’ve got a cozy room in the Guerneville Lodge all to our­selves with no mess and no dirt. The group sup­pos­edly has near 30 peo­ple camp­ing in one spot. I just can’t han­dle that, and thank­fully nei­ther can V, and that’s why we’ve got a room. So we’ll spend Sat­ur­day after­noon and evening drink­ing with every­one, sleep in a pri­vate room, spend Sun­day and Sun­day night drink­ing and cavort­ing and what­ever, and then come home on Mon­day. What­ever. Compromise.

Gosh, what else. Life is soooo exciting.

Happy Pride. Yay.

We went to a cou­ple of par­ties yes­ter­day and ended up in the Cas­tro for Pink Sat­ur­day. It was crazy as usual. V wanted food, so we left and got sushi, of all things. I was a lit­tle too blitzed to appre­ci­ate it. After that, we were too tired to stay out any longer, so we walked home. I think we were in bed by 11:30. That’s kind of early. We had talked about Blowoff, but we blew it off. Ha ha.

I woke up this morn­ing, bright and early, at 5:38 a.m. I don’t know why. So I fin­ished my mount quest and received my Ven­omhide Ravasaur. Really cool. It took twenty days of dai­lys, but it was worth it. And I didn’t know it qual­i­fied as a feat of strength. So, cool. Yeah.

Ho hum.

1. “Starman” — David Bowie
2. “The Right Thing to Do” — Carly Simon
3. “Think­ing About You” — Norah Jones
4. “Beyond the Invisible” — Enigma
5. “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea” — Diana Krall
6. “Coloured Bedspread” — Annie Lennox
7. “Twi­light World” — Swing Out Sister
8. “A Good Year for the Roses” — Elvis Costello
9. “Lost of Sea” — The Bangles
10. “Incom­plete With­out You” — Swing Out Sister

Last night, we went to the Lone Star for DJ Beary­oncé, and in the process drank way too much. It was a beer bust, so it was Rolling Rock on tap, which is light years bet­ter than Busch or Bud or any other yel­low beer, but still yel­low beer, and I’m a lit­tle sore this morn­ing. I’m not tore up, but I’ve got that dull pound­ing in my head that makes me wish I could sleep all day. I just can’t do it. I’m a busy, unem­ployed per­son, and I’ve got stuff to do. Like deposit my social­ist hand­outs and such like that.

I’m offi­cially reg­is­tered for the Fall 2010 term at CCSF. Yay. Voy à apprendir español. Or some­thing like that. I’m also tak­ing an Eng­lish class, and I’m excited about that. The lit­tle bits of writ­ing I did for sosh last term (in which I scored a full, legit­i­mate A, thank you — see, I am smart after all) reminded me how much I enjoy writ­ing and how much I’ve missed it. Give me a sub­ject and I can go all expos­i­tory and turn stuff out, yo. And I’m tak­ing an Amer­i­can cin­ema class, at a dis­tance, which means I can watch TV at home and get credit for it. Sort of. I don’t know how it works just yet, but it sat­is­fies a require­ment, and that makes me happy.

I’m so excited to move on and com­plete my degree. I think my first foot­steps at SFSU were side­tracked by the whole drama with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, who turns 53 tomor­row. But now that I have a sort of vision for my future and my edu­ca­tion, and now that I have non­judg­men­tal sup­port from the peo­ple around me, it feels like fun and I can’t wait to get started, I mean, really started. This GE stuff is for the birds, hon­estly. I’ve been por­ing over the IGETC require­ments and trans­fer cred­its, and it’s like an annoy­ing, drawn out puz­zle. “Will this his­tory class work? Or maybe this astron­omy class instead of biol­ogy? Oh wait, do I still need a lab?” Ugh. It’s annoy­ing. What’s even more weird, is that when I talked to an advi­sor about my trans­fer plan, I was told that the classes I took at SFSU can be used as trans­fer cred­its to go back to SFSU. That just seems a lit­tle cir­cu­lar to me. I mean, yeah, I did the work there, so I guess they still count. What­ever. My head hurts too much already. I can’t wait to get into it deep and dirty. Yeah. Il me tard beau­coup de par­ler français toute la journée, tous les jours.

What else.

Oh, I upgraded to Word­Press 3.0. All by myself.

I guess that’s all.

V&I were at Henry Street start­ing the cleanup process the other night, when a man came up to us and asked us if we lived there. We looked at each other like “what does this one want?” but instead he said that he lived in the neigh­bor­hood for 30 years and lived in our apart­ment for a long time. I was intrigued, mostly because Henry Street has a lot of curiosi­ties that have made me won­der. So we chat­ted for a few min­utes and he revealed a boat­load of information.

• He lived next door when Har­vey Milk lived at 18 Henry Street and knew him well. That val­i­dates prob­a­bly the biggest thing about our place. We lived in Har­vey Milk’s apart­ment! OMFG. Can you get gayer cred than that? Total win. V found Harvey’s name and address on a vot­ing record from the 70s when Har­vey was a super­vi­sor and lived in that apart­ment. Granted that’s an offi­cial record, but what­ever. Word of mouth, eye wit­nesses, and all that.
• He con­firmed that the abun­dance of elec­tri­cal out­lets in the kitchen, din­ing room, and liv­ing room was because the first floor had been a porn stu­dio. No idea what movies were made there, what the pro­duc­tion com­pany was called, or any­thing else, but he hinted that it was a gay porn stu­dio. Why not? And you know, one of the biggest down­sides to old Vic­to­rian / Edwar­dian flats is the lack of power out­lets. This place had no lack what­so­ever, and they all worked. It was pretty con­ve­nient, and already I miss them.
• And that funky face mask above the door that leads to the garage? It’s just there to cover the door­bell. Ha. When I first saw it, I freaked out and instantly thought it was satanic or oth­er­wise pos­sessed. I grad­u­ally changed my opin­ion and made it a pro­tec­tive tal­is­man for the apart­ment. It still freaked me out when I woke up in the mid­dle of the night, looked out the bed­room door, and saw it look­ing back at me. And here, it’s only a cre­ative way to cover up the door­bell. Silly.

That’s all I can remem­ber right now. We talked for a good 15 min­utes, and it was nice to hear the sto­ries. I don’t like talk­ing to strangers because most of the time they want to crit­i­cize me for buy­ing a Ger­man car (even though it was man­u­fac­tured in South Car­olina), or to com­plain about how the pigeons on the roof are eaves­drop­ping on them, or some crazy shit. I guess, every once in a while, you meet some­one who has some­thing inter­est­ing to share.

I’m really going to miss Henry Street.

I’m not going to get all polit­i­cal and shit on this blog, but I have some­thing to say about this Prop 8 mess, specif­i­cally about the four “expert” wit­nesses for the defense who have dropped out of the trial for fear of ret­ri­bu­tion by “vio­lent homo­sex­u­als.” If these peo­ple were so right­eous in defend­ing mar­riage in the eyes of god and the bible, and if they’re so con­vinced that they are right about gays and how evil we are and how we shouldn’t be allowed to be mar­ried, why are they so afraid of a con­fronta­tion with other peo­ple? Why are they so afraid to defend what they believe? After all, they’ve got god on their side. These four “expert” wit­nesses are cow­ards for drop­ping out.

Fur­ther­more, what is a “vio­lent homo­sex­ual”? I have visions in my head about what being a vio­lent gay is, and these images con­sist of uni­corns puk­ing up rain­bows, feather boas, moun­tains of glit­ter, and show­tunes. They cer­tainly don’t con­sist of death and destruction.

And you know, let’s boil this down to the brass tacks: it’s called igno­rance, peo­ple. Just call a spade a fuck­ing spade already. It’s not fear. It’s not god’s will. It’s just plain igno­rance, and igno­rance is ugly. It’s not like their biased hate speech will make much of a dif­fer­ence any­way. I mean, it will just be four peo­ple regur­gi­tat­ing what each of them has said before. So I guess it’s good that they’re not show­ing up; with two peo­ple, we won’t have to endure the cow­ardly hate­ful speech for as long as we would have with six.