Recently in the Life: or One Final Procrastination

I've got a big, epic, end of the school year post that has themes and subheads and all that fancy blogg-y stuff in the works, but for now I'm doing a quick photo update of life. 

So the last few weeks have been fairly hectic. Busy in the best way possible. I don't know how I've managed to successfully juggle everything.

Looking cute at the Jeopardy Release party.

If you read my post about a month ago, you know I have a boyfriend. His name is Ethan and while I don't think either of us was expecting a relationship to end our respective senior years in college (his last, my first), we're both happy to be together. 

While we're still negotiating how we want to deal with him graduating and moving away, it's an open conversation and in the meantime, we're spending as much time as we can together until then because that's just a lot more fun than worrying about already uncertain futures. My only regret is not listening to Facebook's suggestion that we be friends a lot sooner, because I like knowing awesome people, and he's pretty damn awesome.

Former Drag Empress of the Imperial Sovereign Court of the Evergreen Empire
Shanita Blough flanked by Timbaland and Oliver Clozoff.

 On May 24, I made my debut as my official drag persona and co-emcee of the WWU Third Annual Condom Fashion Show: May DeFlowers. It was a bittersweet moment in that this event that I've put so much time and energy into was finally here! On the one hand, it would be done, I wouldn't have to think about it or stress about it or be interviewed by journalism students covering an event for their intro to news writing class. On the other hand, it would be done, no more events for this school year.

The show itself was a blast and we had a decent turnout despite a big concert being scheduled for the same night. Frustrating, but unavoidable given the circumstances.

Some of the lovely models at the CFS.

Performers, volunteers, organizers.

The models, performers, donors and beneficiaries were all amazing. And I'm so glad I got to be a part of this wonderful show. 

If you would like to see more pictures from the CFS, I have some from backstage posted to my Facebook.

Creepy hands are creepy.

 I hung out with my friends Rachel and Alaina the weekend after the show because Rachel is graduated and her lease is up, so she's moving home. As one last huzzah, we had ice cream at Mallards.

They're one of those essential stops for anyone visiting Bellingham because they're locally owned and operated, fresh, hand-crafted ice cream. These aren't the kind of flavors you get in most stores. I got a double scoop of Rhubarb ice cream with a scoop of strawberry seaberry ice.

After ice cream, I recruited Rachel to help me fashion hersheys kisses flowers for Ethan, because I'm just that kind of crafty fatherfucker who makes adorable things for his boyfriend. I made pizza and we had some fun with the extra pipe cleaners.

Since hanging out with Rachel, I don't think I've done all that much of note. It's been dead week (the week before finals), so I've been wrapped up in studying.

I started reading a chapter from Yopie Prins's Victorian Sappho on recommendation from my professor. Consecrated fecal matter do I love when I find a genuinely useful text for a paper! This book works perfectly for building on the kind of arguments I'm trying to make in my term paper for my Victorian Poetry seminar class. 

In my paper, I'm analyzing A.C. Swinburne's "Anactoria". The short version of my argument is that lyric poetry of the kind Swinburne writes creates a sense of embodiment in the reader to the point where that effect is consuming.

As part of the peer-review process of writing these term papers, we've been organized into panel discussions where we gave a brief outline of our argument and paper to the class and then received feedback and questions from the class. Our professor has been bringing hot water and tea for these panels, so for the last panel I made chocolate-coated, lavender shortbread cookies. 

Chocolate-coated lavender shortbread artfully arranged with a sliced strawberry.

I've realized that I take my confectionery skills far too seriously considering everything else I'm involved with. I've always considered myself crafty, and I guess that just translates into food as well. If I wasn't so dedicated to the bodies I love learning about, I might consider dropping out and going into food artistry.

"Saw this, thought of you :P"

Received this picture from my friend Alex this morning. He's off having adventures in NYC because... reasons? At first I was all, you saw yourself in a mirror? But then I looked at the sign behind him. I'm glad my friends think of me when they see gay stuff. I think.

Any time Alex and I hang out, we inevitably talk about bodies since he teaches martial arts and I'm studying kinesiology. He and his friend Ali joke about opening a dojo together and wanting me on board as "The Healer/Organizer." Ali is another one of those people I wish I'd met a lot sooner, from what I know of her, in personality she's somewhere between Alex and I in terms of sarcasm, organization and outlook on life. The three of us would probably make a pretty kick ass team if we don't kill each other. 

One of my favorite Seattle bands, Impossible Bird is playing in Bellingham this coming week on Wednesday. I'm excited because that's the day I'm finished with finals (except for my PE final on Thursday, which I have to show up for and look like I'm trying in order to pass). It's also the day Ethan is finished with finals and we've agreed that after yesterday we're both going to throw all our focus on finishing up the quarter strong, so Wednesday will be the day we get to hang out again.

Also, one of the band members wrote on my Facebook wall:

When one of the members of your favorite local band writes on your wall, you find a way to show up to the concert. It also shows you've probably been to far too many of their performances and are friendly enough that they don't think of you as some kind of stalker/groupie.

So yeah, that's my life recently (and upcoming). Hope you all are doing good.

In which Danny rambles semi-coherently.

Tonight is the AS Awards Banquet. It's a chance for all the crazy folks known as Student Employees of the Associated Students of WWU to celebrate all the hard work we've put into making this year great for all the students of Western.

It's going to be great fun.

I would rather be home working on an essay, or cuddling with my boyfriend, or as would most likely be the case, at Ritmo Latino Salsa Club dancing (it is Monday after all).

Don't get me wrong, I love recognizing people for the great work they do, and I love that our organization works to make people feel wanted and appreciated. But I don't really feel like I' ready for a banquet just yet. I have one big event on the way still: The Third Annual Condom Fashion Show. It's Thursday, and the event is kind of my baby for the school year, so I won't feel like I can truly celebrate the end of the year until it's actually over.

But rather than make this a post about how busy Danny is, because I've learned how to manage my time this year, I'm not actually as busy as I think I'm perceived to be and I know many people who are far busier than I am (busy people tend to congregate and be involved in at least one thing with each other so that we know all the other busy people).

Instead, I want to talk about stones.

I recently got a piece of amethyst when I was wandering downtown giving out donation letters.



I thought it was kind of pretty and picked it over the other pieces of amethyst.

Unless it's food, I'm not usually prone to these kind of impulse buy for myself, but I was in a store called Stone Moon and it felt right.

For the first few days that I had it, I carried it around in my pocket. I worried (2c) it in my left hand until about two days later I thought I lost it.

Did some laundry, and like magic it reappeared. I wire wrapped it and have been wearing it as a necklace ever since. I'm getting rather good at that.

Amethyst is supposed to ward off insobriety and increase psychic abilities as well as enhance dreams. I'm not completely sure how I feel about that, but it's pretty and I like wearing it.

A Well-Dressed Accordion

5/8/2012

I'm sitting in another man's bed as I write this. Not in any kind of erotic, post-carnal memoir sort of way (what do you take this for, a sex blog?), but a comfortable, hanging out kind of way, with his roommate procrastinating her homework by browsing tumblr on the other side of the room.

With everyone else I've been interested or involved with, there's been something defining that drew me to them, enough that I've been able to label them with some obscure but fitting nickname for anonymity's sake, because while this blog is personal to me, I also very much want to respect the privacy of the people I'm writing about. No matter how hard I try though, I can't come up with any kind of silly pseudonym for Ethan.

I find though that I like that.

We've been seeing each other for, gosh, a little over three weeks now, though it feels like so much longer. Buddha's shining belly, has it really been less than a month since we were first introduced?! On some level, I feel like I've known Ethan for a lot longer because I've known of him for over a year now. We have enough friends in common that Facebook, in all its nosy social media interfacing, has been suggesting him as someone I might know for months. Now that we've actually met, I'm kicking myself for not listening to it sooner.

I suppose it doesn't help that upon hearing that he and I are involved, the majority of mutual friends we have (and apparently there are quite a few of them) seem to react somewhere in a range between inarticulate excited noises that can only be described as fangirl-like squees to “Ohmygodyou'resocute!.” He and I have reached an unspoken agreement that the appropriate reaction to this phenomenon is death glares with the occasional “Shut the FUCK up” depending on who's saying it. Feeling like the center of the who's dating who rumor mill in a campus community can be exhausting, and for us at least unifying.

We met at a party the weekend after Easter that I almost didn't go to. He'd gone because of his roommate and I'd ended up going because I had made a commitment to our hostess at the Birdhouse promising her I would show up to the party.

Unsurprisingly, we were introduced in the kitchen, not because that's where the booze tends to congregate, but because at parties like this one it's the place you're most likely to be able to hold a conversation and be heard over the music/drunk people. That and I'm always drawn to kitchens,  bookshelves, or the dance floor. So when he showed up in the kitchen, I was there.

I think anyone who knew either of us at the party could see that there was something going on. Once we were introduced, I don't think we were separated once the entire night until he reluctantly left my side around two in the morning, sending me his number via his roommate. We even left the kitchen together a little later in the party, only to end up sharing a chair in the living room, casting sidelong glances at each other through our conversations with everyone around us.

I wouldn't exactly say that sparks flew when we met,  we are in Bellingham after all: the City of Subdued Excitement, but I would say that there is definitely chemistry between us, the kind of magnetic attraction you don't even notice until it's gone and all you can feel is the lingering pull.

My work in the Sexual Awareness Center has really opened me up to being very direct when approaching people I'm interested in, because I'm not sure if it was even a full twenty-four hours before I asked Ethan out on our first date. We were both busy, but agreed to coffee or ice cream the following Saturday.

We continued talking throughout the week and somehow “coffee or ice cream” turned into dinner followed by ice cream. I'd been hinting at that possibility most of the week and resigned myself to just a simple coffee date up to the point where he texted me while I was at the grocery store purchasing ingredients for dinner. Needless to say, I saved those ingredients until the next day.

I surprised him with a flower (long stem, red gerber daisy if you must know) when I met him at the Copper Hog. Though he didn't turn red exactly, Ethan blushed and looked down at the table for at least half a minute before meeting my eyes. I wanted to kiss him.

After dinner we walked downtown and I treated us to Mallards Ice Cream since I had cash and it would conveniently fill my stamp card so that the next time I came in I would get a free scoop. I invited him to my friend's Big Lebowski movie night. He told me that it was one of his favorite movies. I felt like this was a sign the universe was telling me it wanted this to happen.

At the movie night, we were relegated to sharing a beanbag chair since all other seating had been claimed. I don't think we would have complained even if we'd told we would have to sit on the floor. I felt comfortable enough in his presence that it wouldn't have mattered. I laughed quietly to myself as he quoted more than half the film. After the movie, we sat in the dark on our beanbag chair, an island of sobriety surrounded by a sea of drunk on white russians, holding hands while a Creedance Clearwater Revival playlist played in the background

Then he kissed me.

For a chaste, closed-mouth kiss that lasted less than ten seconds, damn was I seeing stars. When I walked him home an hour or so later, I couldn't help myself, I grabbed him by the tie and pulled him into another kiss.

Some time after our first date, Ethan talked with our friend Jesamie, and as she relayed the conversation to me, she'd asked what he liked about me and he'd answered that I'm the kind of guy who would bring a red rose to a first date (I would have, too, had I not been concerned about the historic and literary connotations associated with red roses). As Jesamie put it, “In other words, his Danny-ness.”

I think that's what I like most about Ethan as well. I could talk about how I think he's adorable and nerdy, or that I'm constantly amazed by his intellect and skills as a writer, or his great taste in movies (and uncanny ability to actually get me watching them) but there's something more innate than that to which I feel I'm attracted.

We haven't had any kind of formal a relationship discussion yet, on Friday so I don't now feel comfortable referring to him as my boyfriend, though given the way we interact with each other, I suppose he'd let me get away with it. For now, I'm just happy to have someone who wants to hold my hand, who randomly texts me “:]” on a Saturday afternoon when we have plans for the evening, who asks me what kind of wine I like before we meet so I can make dinner (and picks a damn good one, too), regardless of what labels we use to refer to each other.

As I sit here in his bed, a pink stuffed bunny at my side, he's sitting in the other room on his computer, working on something for one of his creative writing classes, muttering almost incoherently to himself  about the idiocy of some of his classmates. It's kind of endearing, though that may be the sleep deprivation talking.

For now, I guess I just want to say I'm content.

Second Date: The Date that Almost Wasn't

So there have been a few “dates” since this one, but I think things with Glitter are getting to a point where sharing everything with the reading public might not be the best idea (for privacy's sake), so this may be the last post expressly on this subject for a while. I give you our second date:

I just concluded my second date with Glitter a couple of hours ago.

It was a little lower key than our first outing to the Temple Bar, but somehow this time felt more public since we were having lunch on campus.

He's quickly learning the lesson almost all of my friends have learned: you can't take me anywhere without running into someone I know or who knows me. This problem, or maybe gift depending how you look at it, is exponentially increased the closer you are to population centers I frequent, like the middle of campus.

I call this the date that almost wasn't because I accidentally double booked myself. This is why I have a calendar that I more or less use religiously, it helps me keep my appointments straight (or in my case, queer).

Last night I'd gotten a text from my dancer friend, JaguarPrint, reminding me that I would be meeting her class to teach salsa somewhere between 11:30 and 12:50. We'd made these plans about a week and a half prior, the same day where I'd made my lunch plans with Glitter for noon.

I'd completely forgotten about my commitment to help my friend with her class presentation, but really didn't want to flake on this cute guy I'm kind of trying to start a thing with.

What's a queer to do?

Make everything fit like a puzzle piece, that's what! I let my friend know about my date and had her email her professor to see if they could take the first twenty minute presentation slot so we would be finished by 11:50. Just in case that didn't work, I also texted Glitter asking if he would be okay with me being a little late.

All this morning I was on pins and needles, hoping things would work out in my favor.

10:35am. A text: “We are going first at 11:30 :)”

I could have cried in relief. I sent a quick text to Glitter telling him that I wouldn't need to be worried about being late after all and I would see him in the Atrium at noon.

He ran into me about 100ft from the entrance where I was talking with two friends I work with about seeing them last night after getting a drink with my friend Hat. I admit I had been a little bit tipsy by the time we got to the grocery store (The Reese's Klondike Bars in my freezer are amble evidence of that drunken impulse buy) and I cannot fault them for assuming Hat and I were together when I'd said “I'm with him.”

Nonetheless, it was quite embarrassing to have two beautiful girls fawning over the the idea of me and the guy they saw me with when my date was walking up.

Inside, Glitter and I made our choices between overly priced pizza, overly priced sandwiches and overly priced prepackaged meals. We both went with pizza.

We'd agreed ahead of time that for this short lunch date we wouldn't talk about finals because that's all we hear or talk about with pretty much anyone on campus for the last week and a half. So he asked me how next quarter is looking.

I laughed.

He tried to laugh, but kept stopping himself as he ended up coughing. He sounds better compared to our first date, and I'm glad the herbal tea I dropped off at his place this weekend seems to have helped.

In Which Danny Goes on a Date

I feel like I rarely post about my personal life in too much detail here, probably because the majority of people reading this are friends who receive regular updates in person and thus it seems redundant and detractive to the semi-academic, semi-social justice, poetic vibe/theme that has permeated this blog.

That said, I went on a date this past weekend. I can't remember the last time I've been on a “date” that had the intention of being a date and wasn't some kind of confusing blend of potential interest and existing friendship. I went on a date with someone I barely know, with the intention of getting to know him better to see if we have any kind of chemistry or if maybe we should abort mission and head for the safety of newly minted friendship. For now, I'll call the gentleman in question Glitter.

I brought him flowers.

“Would you tell me, please,” said Alice, a little timidly, “why are you painting those roses?” -Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland 

 I've never gotten someone flowers like this. Well, unless you count the time over the summer where I got a calla lilies at the Pike Place Market and then forgot them when I stayed the night at my friend Joe's and didn't remember them until I was an hour away on public transportation and told him to give them to his mom.

They were white roses. Or rather they were white roses when I purchased them. I took them home and painted the roses red. I never asked if he understood the literary nod to Lewis Carroll, but the playing card (Ace of Hearts, naturally) with the quote probably made it painfully obvious. Assuming there are future dates and my budget allows for it, I'm toying with the idea of continuing to give Glitter literary flowers.

Perhaps as a friend of Dorothy, I can acquire some poppies. And morbid though it may be, perhaps I can rustle up a small bouquet of the petals Ophelia names in her madness before drowning. A daffodil and a mirror might be too strong a message of Narcissus.

On second thought, maybe more flowers are a bad idea if they're all harbingers of doom and death in literature.

Even as I was painting these roses, I felt really insecure. I'm not sure how many people I texted for reassurance that this was a good idea, but I really needed people to say to me “Danny, you're being ridiculous. Stop thinking and just go with it.”

The afternoon was entirely too long.

Part of our date was going to the Vagina Memoirs, a monologue performance process on campus that gives women opportunity to speak truth to power and break silence. I should have seen it coming when Glitter sat down next to me in line and asked if the flowers were for the cast member and mutual friend who sort of introduced us.

Now, the obvious answer would have been to immediately say no, these are actually for you. But I froze. I was a little embarrassed to not have anticipated that any and every other bouquet of flowers in the concert hall that night was going to a Vagina Memoirs cast member.

So I waited a painful 15 minutes in line letting him believe the flowers were for someone else before I half-whispered (lines are loud) in his ear and told him that if he wanted to give flowers to our friend, he now had some since the roses were for him.

He held on to them for the entire first act before putting them under his seat during intermission. Part of me wanted to trade the flowers for my hand every time I caught sight of this out of the corner of my eye.

The Date

Boys'R'Us Kid

I don't want to get up.
I'm a college age kid.
There's a million boys here
at my school that I can sleep with
from Alex to Steve and Cory and Ben
It's the warmest bed I'm in!
Give in!
I don't want to get up
'cause baby if I did
I couldn't stay here in my bed.

Yeah... this is the kind of stuff my brain comes up with on the days when I stare at the clock wondering how long I can wait before I actually have to get up.