"We're gonna destroy our chests!"

I recently met this undergrad guy named Daniel-Linh -- he's my mom's friend's nephew, also from the Bay Area. We ran into each other at a party. I've been to two undergrad parties since the beginning of the semester. We met at the party and have been running into each other ever since. Most notibly: the gym.

Okay, I am no gym queen. I look pathetic for a muscle boy. I simply go to make sure my habit of writing (slouching in front of a laptop screen) doesn't make my muscles go to jelly again. I had gone to physical therapy the summer before I came to Bloomington.

So Daniel-Linh invited me to lift with him at the gym. I have never done his equipments before: benches that look like somewhat-S&Mish-torture-metal instruments. When I met him in the gym lobby before we went in, he just said with a straight face, "Okay, so today we're going to just destroy our chests!"

It sounded violent. It sounded almost sexual. It was full of testosterone that I felt a couple degrees more butch.

I am so sore. My arms are jelly and I had to bends my head down to shampoo my hair earlier.

***

Tonight I also went to see Sister Spit perform in Bloomington. They made me miss the Bay Area community (even more so).

***

For Halloween, I am going to go out as Mother Mary Miscarried. I'll post up pictures later on.

Chink

I, for one, love the word Chink. And Gook. And Nip. Whatever the racial slur: I love them. More to the point, I love being able to say it myself. I'm vulgar, I know.

It's been over a year since I moved to Bloomington. Last year there was a guy on gay.com that would instant message me just to call me a gook. Or Japanee. And that would be it. I haven't heard from in a while, but tonight I signed onto gay.com while grading some homework when a message window from him (image from profile below) appeared on my screen:



Chink, he had typed.

By the time I had looked up to respond to him (I was going to be petty and type back "white-head bursting cunt face") he had already signed off.

That moment felt familiar.

October Blues

This October has hit me like a rape. A slow, increasingly merciless rape. Right now I find myself in a deluge of tasks:

1. I have to read through a special 500+ stack of story submissions for my magazine's fiction prize contest (this process to be completed with two weeks).

2. I also maintain reading 100+ regular stories per week for my regular magazine duties.

2. I have to finish a story in time for my workshop in a week.

3. I must read 3-books a week.

4. I have to give a presentation in a week.

5. And I teach a 23-student class. Critical thinking and composition. And I'm finding that my west coast, asset-based, popular education techniques of teaching are just not the right kind of communication that these kids are used to learning with. In fact, it actually seems to confuse them. It's been weeks of highs and lows with getting these fresh-out-of-mid-western-white-bred-high-schoolers up to speed with their critical thinking and analytical abilities. And I'm just starting to understand that they are just not used to, nor are they responsive to my style of education. I've been developing the upcoming lesson plans with my newly revisioned teaching methods. This should be intersting. Wish me luck

In the mean time, a good thing that happened to me late was that David came to Bloomington last-last weekend. And we had a lot of fun. And by "fun" I means "sex."

Also, next Thursday I'll be giving a reading as part of my second year programming here at IU. I read/performed DJ Berkley pieces last year -- poems about fisting, how fast food companies symbolize mysogyny/patriarchy, and fake craigslist ads. The dean of my program said to me after the reading: "You're a bad, bad boy!"

I truly am an academic! Put the vulgar bay area immature community kid amongst scholars and pursuers of high literary dreams, and you get DJ Berkley declaring "I'll cure you're AIDS honey / Just bend over: I'll suck the poison out" at a University sponsored event. Come to think of it, it probably looked exactly like any other slam poet performance at a college.

For this coming reading, I think I'll read my essay about David giving me Chlamydia. And maybe more fisting from DJ Berkley, just for the new students who haven't seen it.

I hope you are all well. Miss you all. Me love you long time.