I’m vain enough to take part in the 100 Things About Me project, though not so vain to assume anyone will want to read it.
1. “You’re bleeding like a motherfucker,” he said, pausing to wipe my shoulder clean. It was my second visit to Lou’s Tattoos in St. Petersburg, Florida. It was my final year of college and I was getting my heart tattooed on my sleeve. Nine years later and now I want to revise it, make it more intricate. I wonder if I’ll still bleed like that. Back then I was HIV-negative.
2. Last night I got an Instant Message from a stranger, someone who had once dated a well-known blogger. This stranger sent me a picture and we flirted a little. No, I won’t tell you which blogger. ‘Cause I’m annoying that way.
3. I just bought a car for the first time. My first car was a gift from my Mom; a little red Honda Civic hatchback, used. I was twenty-one. Once I parked it on the street in Minneapolis and my friend and I got out and were walking down the sidewalk when a taxi passenger kicked the driver in the back of the head, causing the driver to lose control of the cab and smash into the back of my car, totaling it.
4. I’m constantly afraid I’ve run out of interesting stories to write.
5. I believe Annie Dillard, who says you must not hold onto interesting material for later; you must write it all out now, give it all away.
6. People think it’s wonderful that both my parents came out of the closet after they divorced when I was eleven. I want to tell them it’s not what you think. They were never around and when they were my mother drank and my father never showed us affection. I still resent him for that.
7. Most of my current friends don’t know that I’m a really good dancer. Back in college people liked to watch me dance at parties. It was flattering and embarrassing. I can’t wait to go out again. It’s been too long.
8. Great house music breaks my heart.
9. I’m really tired of my job.
10. In grade school I once won a jump rope contest, jumping for thirteen minutes straight without screwing up. I jumped longer than all the other kids in my gym class. Later I was embarrassed because it seemed like something only a girl should be good at.
11. I constantly become obsessed with songs and will listen to the same one on repeat for hours.
12. I go through phases of eating the same meal everyday for a few weeks, and then I’ll get sick of it and try something else.
13. When my mom was dying I wanted her partner to love me like she did her own kids, and resented her when she didn’t. It took me a few months to accept what she could offer, and to understand that she was losing the most important person in her life.
14. I’ve always believed in a higher power.
15. Even when my mom was dying.
16. By working around a lot of dog trainers and problem dogs I’ve come to realize that Louie is an amazing boy and I’m very lucky to have him.
17. It really annoys me that anyone who’s ever had a dog, even if it was when they were five, thinks they know everything about how to raise a dog.
18. In my early twenties in Minneapolis I won every poetry slam I entered.
19. I became disillusioned when I realized that people responded to spectacle and not substance, and I stopped writing.
20. Four years ago I figured out a way to order ingredients off the Internet to make GHB at home.
21. One night at the Pleasuredome, on a very crowded holiday, I took too much GHB and passed out on the side of the dance floor. When I woke up my partner and a security woman in a cowboy hat were carrying me through the alley to our truck. My partner had to go back in the club to get his jacket and keys from the coat check. He had to leave me in the bed of the pick-up until he got back.
22. When I was younger I used to think that if the right guy told me I was hot, I’d believe it. After a lot of right guys, I realized it doesn’t work that way.
23. I can’t believe how amazing my life is now.
24. I have a postcard from Allen Ginsberg in which he called me a serious and gifted writer.
25. I went to Nicaragua twice in high school.
26. I once thought very seriously of becoming an escort here in San Francisco. Don’t laugh.
27. I saw an old friend yesterday who asked me if I was still “not drinking.” I said “yes” and he said “That must be so boring.” I thought to myself, if you only knew.
28. I have a really great butt that doesn’t show well in jeans.
29. George Michael’s “Listen Without Prejudice” album will always be one of my emotional all-time favorites.
30. I’ve always wished I could sing really well.
31. I once beat out 100 guys for a small role in a Sam Shepard play in Minneapolis.
32. I’ve twice been rejected by graduate acting schools.
33. All the theater directors I’ve worked with said I would be great on film, but I find the movie business repulsive.
34. I still know the names of almost every contemporary film actor.
35. I’m afraid that to choose one path means another will disappear.
36. As a freshman in high school I had a blonde stripe dyed on the side of my head. I wore a lot of black and torn clothing and listened to X and Bauhaus and the Smiths.
37. The first time I had any sexual contact with a man was my senior year in high school, in the woods near my house, with a much older man. He stopped in the middle of it, said “You just want to be loved, don’t you?” and then walked away.
38. I’ve never slept with a woman.
39. I’ve had sex with three different porn stars.
40. I haven’t written poetry in six years.
41. I’ve been single for a year and a half.
42. Between the ages of fifteen and twenty I smoked a pack of cigarettes a day.
43. My freshman year of college I was the same height I am now, and about forty pounds lighter. I still worry I’m too scrawny.
44. When I moved to San Francisco my mom told me she couldn’t drive past my old apartment because she missed me too much.
45. I’ve slept with more than one person at a time and I didn’t like it.
46. I feel guilty sometimes that I encouraged my ex to move here with me five years ago, since it didn’t work out with us.
47. Since I’ve been sober I’ve twice walked by a bag of crystal meth on the ground. Both times I was with my friend the Tattooed Monk.
48. My favorite thing to do the last couple of years in high school was to drive my mother’s car at night all over the city, listening to music. I always think of the Fine Young Cannibal’s first album when remembering those nights.
49. During that time I also used to sneak out late at night and walk all over the city with my headphones on. I remember listening to Janet Jackson’s “Control” over and over. And Latin American music.
50. I once met Janet Jackson and Jimmy Jam in Minneapolis, after we all came out of a movie theater in Uptown. We had seen “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.”
51. I’ve always been drawn to sad songs and sad movies, even as a kid.
52. Before my mother was diagnosed with ALS, I always thought she’d be the last person in my family I would want to lose.
53. I try not to think about the fact that I will outlive Louie.
54. I have a tan for the first time in years.
55. I made two gestures at suicide, one in high school and one in college.
56. I’ve been on anti-depressants for two years and wonder how my life would have been different had I not refused them at age fifteen.
57. Pills aren’t enough. Cardio, talking, and writing help.
58. I don’t know when I seroconverted.
59. I get my hair cut every two weeks by a former International Mr. Leather.
60. I want to take a long road trip and meet all you bloggers.
61. There’s at least three I think are total hotties.
62. I’ve always had a Mac.
63. One summer in college I worked for UPS, unloading trailers from ten p.m. till three a.m. It was one of the loneliest things I ever put myself through.
64. Three years ago I was a bartender in a South of Market leather-ish bar. It was one of the loneliest things I’ve ever put myself through.
65. The year before I moved to San Francisco I was a bike messenger in Minneapolis. I started in December and finished in September. I biked through snow and rain and sun. I made more money than any other messenger in the city.
66. I don’t really like to ride a bike that much.
67. I’m not very impressed by material possessions.
68. I don’t understand the obsession with professional sports.
69. I need eight hours of sleep.
70. I’ve never owned a suit.
71. Five years ago someone broke in and stabbed my brother in his house in Albuquerque. I cried when I got the call and flew down as soon as I could. He lived and I still wonder if he really didn’t know the guy.
72. I’ve only once had sex with someone younger than me.
73. I probably place too much importance on being unique.
74. We’re not all that different.
75. I’m glad I’m gay.
76. I’m very grateful to the previous generations.
77. I feel guilty when I hope I die before we kill the planet completely.
78. I wish Guy from Atlanta would gush more over me on the phone.
79. I have absolutely no idea what we will mean to each other.
80. I always want to know “where we stand.”
81. Ski still takes my breath away.
82. Sometimes I shut down when my expectations aren’t met.
83. Blogging has surpassed all of my expectations.
84. I think bitchiness is incredibly unattractive.
85. I think creativity and kindness are incredibly sexy.
86. I still smile if someone links to me.
87. I get really cranky if I don’t eat.
88. I love Oregon Chai tea.
89. You don’t complete me.
90. You do make my life richer.
91. I know I’ll be an amazing boyfriend again.
92. I like scary movies.
93. Computer-generated monsters bore me.
94. I’d rather be driving my new car.
95. My Ex wasn’t a very good kisser and it ruined the sex.
96. I want amazing sex now.
97. And intimacy.
98. I have the kind of friends I used to dream of.
99. I’ll have two years of sobriety on October 2nd.
100. I believe that love is all we can ever own.