I’m getting spanked later today. I’m charging for it, of course, but for all those faithful readers who have expressed their concern and impatience over the past month or so, please consider my backside’s appointment with a hand suitable chastisement for being such a poor blogger of late; and I have been very, very poor.
I promise that it’s not that I haven’t been trying to write (I have), but I’ve been suffering a paucity of words when I do – and the longer I’ve sat, the harder it’s gotten. Open spaces look emptier and emptier the longer they stay a faithful, void-blue promise. It’s not exactly that I’ve run out of things to say, but the rhythms of the past few months have been interrupted with, well, you know, life, and sometimes you find that the effort of staying upright is almost as important as where you’re trying to do it; and does this ship ever toss and turn.
I’ve been transitioning. As you do.
And I started to suffer hooker-burnout, which I have known to be an inevitable caution looming on the horizon, but it still sneaks up on you: one day it’s arrived, and you still don’t have enough money in the bank - not that there’s ever enough money in the bank – and when you’re unmoved to answer the money phone, or return query emails, because the thought of simulating passion you no longer feel for something that isn’t even novel anymore seems insolubly heavy, and you would rather lie in bed until 2 in the afternoon, not getting things done almost becomes an activity in itself: not rising, not eating, not going out; but drinking again, yes; watching apocalyptic volumes of TV, yes; ruminating on birthdays yet to devastate your time sensitive goals, oh yes. April’s been a peach, right up until the end.
Although, I have had fun. Sometimes, avoidance is its own reward. I’ve done my best to intoxicate (re: annihilate) those parts of my brain giving me trouble, and demanded nothing less that utter submission. I’ve demanded submission on dance floors, in bars, on stages; at home, at friend’s; once, I even demanded it in the back seat of a taxi. That ended better than it could have.
I think I’ve mentioned before that I’m prone to taking things a little too far when I get on a roll. I like to think that it’s just because I’m an enthusiastic person; but more probably, it’s because old habits die hard, and patterns, no matter how badly proven, are necessarily easy to repeat.
But I shake-out easier these days. Not exactly wrinkle free, but you can still wear me.
I hit the wall somewhere around the first week of April. I sat down, and wrote:
If bad, harmful, and frustrating things all come in threes, I count these past couple of weeks as 6-6-6. I've got doubles of trebles in everything -- and none of them involve me being occupied at both ends in a way I find pleasurable.
First, I'm broke, which is the germ from which all the problems emanate. No matter how well turned out, turned on, or well advertised, it seems the Trade has (city wide) hit a slump. Socks yanked up around my calves, and marching out into the world with grand designs, I'm still laid low by industry lag. Most frustrating about this is the fact that what you can do to increase business, as a purveyor of sexual favours, is only as much as you are doing in the first place: promote, promote, promote; and make sure that you're available. I do, and I make sure that I am, but in the end if no one calls the sleek, black money phone, I can't very well answer it.
And as I turn inward, curl around the question of how I can have made so many psychologically exhausting choices, lied to my friends and family, and proudly maintained my successes and failures in silence, even though I've been dying to tell people, I feel helpless. How? is what I have to ask. I mean, really; how?
Second, I'm leaving. It's time again to cast one nation off for another. This I've known for a while, but the time line that I gave myself hadn't been to strict -- I had a last date of possible departure kind of thing worked out. Shit if it hasn't crept up on me, and fuck me now if it's not inconveniently close, with my bank balance lower than it has been since November of last year.
But don't be too worried. I hit bottom. I bounced.
