Friday Floatin' -- A Random Poast

The way my life is these days, it seems any writing is only going to get done while I'm at work. Needless to say, work isn't a good time or place for it. But the real life is too full for any long sit-down time, and clearly I'm choosing consistently to keep it that way. So.

Right now I'm in the company cafeteria with laptop and coffee, giving the appearance of someone who got away from his desk so he could get some work done. Desks are often bad places to work because people can find you there. The other people here are either at their laptops or having one-on-ones. It's not crowded. Its not noisy. It's large and spacious and institutionally bland and the windows look out on a courtyard green with spring foliage. The coffee was free.

I want to continue my draft of a recent visit to a sex club but apparently I left it in my other machine. I don't know if I'll finish it. My attempt slowed down because there really wasn't a story arc, and while there is some potential for humor, I keep hitting that writer's challenge of just not being in the right frame of mind when I have the time. Now, for example. Funny? What?

No, if I were to write about it now, it would be brief and possibly even depressing. The experience wasn't depressing at all. But write-ups of such things often carry an undercurrent that's not apparent until written, until there are lines to read between, and I'd want to find words with which to overcome that. Whiskey would help.

Instead I could write about a party Tuesday night, where some people (including me) dressed oddly, as Burners will, and there was much alcohol and sexiness and new friends; and also illegal drugs that don't interest me in the least, but I have little or no impulse to judgment. My only thought there is, well, yes, they're a very attractive couple and I would love to get to know them better, but I'm afraid if the drugs came out a barrier would be created, sort of like when you take wine to a house party where no one drinks, and I don't like such barriers. It takes energy to pretend they aren't there. But take that away, if the girls are hot and the boys indulgent, well, hey.

Or Saturday, late afternoon, when the blazing heat (111F, I think) was mitigated by a bunch of wine bottles that had been opened for the State Fair competition and brought back by a friend to his house where we splashed around and cooled off in his pool, and as the sky went dark the hijinks lit up, and I found myself kissing on the impressive decolletage of one girl while my girl piled up with a couple others on the next couch over.

Or late Thursday, when a few refugees of the monthly meetup converged at a gay dance bar where my girl danced with every boy and girl in our group, glowing as she does when flooded with attention and love, and I watched the hired decorations gyrate on their platforms in nothing but wrestling boots and boys' underwear, and wound up the night at a restaurant that specializes in serving kick-ass macaroni and cheese after hours.

I guess there's a theme to these snippets. Life is for living and especially for relating to people, and as a lifelong introvert who is working to put the introversion into retirement, I do admit to a wee bit of zeal. It matches the opportunities that have been given me, and this makes it all very good, even, perhaps especially, those elements that a more cynical crowd would see as tawdry. I'm familiar with cynicism and criticism, especially when it arises from ignorance or envy, which I think it must; because through these peregrinations I have met people who've had some varied experiences, to say the very least, and it seems nearly axiomatic that those who have been there and done that really have nothing to say against those who are still going and doing.

So I'll keep doing that and try not to worry about the writing, even though I am still reading source materials from the old days in California, absorbing all that I can so that when I do write about it, I will have some idea what I'm writing about. Also because I like it. Bret Harte may have dramatized some of the more remarkable happenings, but I've always preferred reality. Reality, so far, has been interesting enough.