Kasper

It's one of those weird, unanticipated results of the internet age. Woke up to the news that a friend is dead. We knew each other for 15 years, closer or further, but never in person. He was Norwegian and an anglophile. He loved the Smiths and had very good hair. At one point, I think we flirted, but by now he was simply a queer kid I'd known since back in the day.

I asked this last time and I still won't know next time. How do you mourn a friend you've always never known?

thank you, Joanna, for this cat

Johnny Karate is a scroungy little bastard, but I love him. He started out among the horde in a hoarder's house and wound up looking at me through the bars of a cage, ready for rescue. I'd just lost my evil familiar Bagheera, the most amazingly violent cat ever hatched, an elegant villain in a black and white tux. I missed her and wanted an orange male or something equally unlike her.

Instead I picked up this scrawny baby, curled him into a ball on his back, and tucked him into the crook of my arm. He accepted it, calmly meeping, and so it was done. He had hernia surgery - he's not a healthy boy - and came home to papa. Look how pitiful, poor little guy.

Took me about two weeks to figure out that my cat was broken. Sweet as sugar, friendly as you could hope for, and so sick that I first named him Humbert Humbert. This is gross, but he pooped constantly. All the time. On everything. Runny, horrible poop. For a while, I just gave up having anyone over. We suffered through six months before I figured out, through trial and error, that if I fed him gluten-free food he'd be okay. You have no idea, the sheer relief when he started to get better and I realized I wouldn't have to put him down. I replaced all my cloth-covered furniture, ruined and stained. I moved into a new apartment. I invited friends to hang out.

During those six dark months of poop, my little guy also survived a fever that scrambled his brain. He's not bright, but who cares? He's a cat, he was never going to write a best seller. He's still tiny, at almost three, and probably always will be. He doesn't meow - doesn't seem to know how - still only emits tiny meeps when he wants to make a point. He still prefers to sleep on his back in my arms like a baby. His fangs hang out of his lips, his claws never quite retreat into his paws and he sometimes gets hung up and limps for a few days. Every so often he forgets how to eat and I have to syringe feed him for a day or two before he remembers. His favorite game is kick-it-off. His breath is just foul. The boy ain't right.

But he's at my hip or in my arms all day. He'll walk on a leash and you can't freak him out. He's not smart, but he's good company. I'm glad of him.

time free

Between the storms rolling in and it being a dead week for FSU, I have an unexpected day off. On the down side, no work no pay. On the up side, I am not the least bit mad about having time that is unassigned to any task or triviality.

To daywalkers, it's getting on toward evening. You're thinking of supper and how you wish you hadn't already watched all of Stranger Things. But for me the day stretches out into possibility and a beautiful, thunder and lightning sort of night. I'll attempt to gather in a few friends, play a few games, drink the beer that's lingering in my fridge. Or read a book or maybe cut a stencil for a project I'm working on. Get high and read Steven Universe fanfic. Design a new flyer for trivia night. Sit on my stoop, fight with the cat.

And I even have a fresh haircut. Mine is a good life.

wild in the street

Six years ago, a friend of mine named Biro got saddled with the creation of a local music festival. Everybody else sort of fell away, and there she was. She'd never even set up a house show. First I sat around saying "this ain't gonna work," because I am sometimes an asshole. Then I said, "I could help with that," because only sometimes. And now I help Biro set up a great big shindig every year, with a hundred bands playing on a half dozen stages over the course of a day in a two block area. Gaines Street Festival, it's a thing.

Every band that applies gets in, pretty much regardless. From bar cover bands to instrumental metal, they all get 20 minutes and a good time. Plus all the rest of the stuff you need for a street party - food, tanks of beer, oceans of booze. Local orgs, dogs to adopt, artists and bellydancers and a guy who gives you a piece of fruit if you draw something for him. We partially fund it with nudie calendars every year.

So, the season is upon us. Between now and November 12, I'll devote more and more time to the Festival and less time to everything that is not the Festival. I'm sorry, friends. I'm sorry, family. I'll try to leave time for karaoke.

shooting

I don't like needles. More than that; needles scare me. I like the results of needles. I love my inked skin, my typewriter and boxcutter and the crayon letters in bright colors across my belly. But those needles are tiny and held in another person's hand. I'm in favor of immunizations, obviously, because I am not insane. And the life I live would not be possible without needles. My voice, rich and round and my main source of income, sounds like that because of needles. My scratchy chin, my hairy arms, my entire ability to live as a man in this society - all thanks to intramuscular shots of self-administered testosterone.

It's been a year since my last shot.

I don't make a lot of money. I'm happy, mind you, and I cover my bills, but I seldom have extra for stuff like blood tests and doctors and scrips for T. So I get a few shots here and there off friends - this is a thing trans guys do sometimes. It happens. I've had a vial for a couple months now, but I've been putting off doing the shot. First I had to get more needles - a pain in the ass to do unofficially. Then I didn't have any alcohol swabs. Band-aids. Time. Bravery.

See, all those testosterone-created changes don't just go away when I stop taking my hormones. I take to the stuff well, and I stay my regular, manly(ish) self without it. For a while.

You want to see a mad motherfucker? Talk to a trans man whose body has decided to bleed again. And then, tonight at trivia, my voice cracked slightly. Oh hell no, y'all. Fuck a whole bunch of that.

My friend Lindsey came over and sat with me. No question, just turned up at the door in her pjs with a smile and a strong shoulder. I laid out my gear like a druggie. Rolled up my pants, drew up the T into the syringe, prayed. Laughed at myself, shivering. Prayed again. Gulped, sighed, pushed the needle into my thigh. It doesn't hurt if you do it right. Emptied that illegitimate hormone into my muscle. Pulled it out - no blood, no leak, thank goodness - slapped on a band-aid.

There's no sudden rush. It's not an upper. But endorphins are an amazing thing, as is the satisfaction of simply having finished a hard task. My muscles relaxed. Lindsey hugged me tight, we said goodnight, she headed home. I feel quiet and pleased and a little as if I've fought fiercely against a familiar foe.

I have a few more shots' worth. If I do this again once a week for a month, I'll be okay until the next time a friend hooks me up. My voice will stabilize or maybe even drop some. I'll be alert but more even keeled. I'll stop bleeding, bless us. I'll be horny as hell. More active. I can't wait.

Manhood in the modern age.

end of the day

If you make yourself a late meal before turning in and it's 5:30am, you can call it breakfast if you want. If you make ramen, add soy sauce and powdered ginger and crack two eggs from your mom's chickens to poach in the boiling broth. Watch something soothing while you eat it. Watch a mystery you already solved. Don't think of better soups, enjoy what you have.

the karaoke rules

You may think you are the exception. You are not the exception. 

1. Do not sit down when singing. This is not your unplugged.

2. Do not sing a ballad. No one cares.

3. Do not take your friends on stage with you if you are nervous. You want them in the crowd, where they can yell and clap for you. 

4. Do not boo the singers. Karaoke is at least three of most people's biggest fears rolled into one public experience, so everybody gets a E for effort.

5. If you pick a song everyone knows, nobody cares what you sound like because they are too busy singing along. This crowd wants to sing. That's why they're at karaoke. 

6. No one with ass ever sings Baby Got Back. I do not know why this rule exists, but it does. 

7. All Meatloaf songs are too long for this. 

8. Guitar is not the only instrument one can air. 

9. If you can't think of anything else to sing, there's always "Say It Ain't So."

10. Tip your DJ.