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2001-10-26 / 11:08 a.m. ~However Small, We Are Doing Something~ I have so many thoughts going through my head right now. It�s early as I write this, clock says 9:32 a.m., and my stomach hurts. It was one of those things where I felt fine at home, it wasn�t until I got ready to walk out the door that it hit me, and now�well. Ugh. I�m really tired too. Anna (not even close to her real name, as Lulu is not even close to Lulu�s real name) and I stayed out kind of late last night. And, well, we ended up drinking beer, and my body is so not used to having much alcohol in it (I drank wine at home after work too), I think it�s reacting poorly. Wacky body, mine. I met Anna in front of the gay bookstore, chatted up a guy from Florida while I waited for her to show up � he said how it was too cold, not like Florida, as he stood smoking while his friends were in the store. We watched a group of inebriated patrons leave the restaurant across the street, laughing, talking about how they were on a �field trip� (the gay center of the city). The guy smoking, and I, rolled our eyes simultaneously, laughed, and I said, �I think they�ve been drinking�. It was fun to chat up a stranger. Anna and I plastered posters on every utility pole on that street, she with the staple gun, a phrase, a terminology she said she�d only just learned, �stapler�, I said, �Staple Gun�. We chatted along the way, a sort of, Hey, this is fun, posting Rally/March posters on utility poles, highly illegally, kind of way. She says I really should be going to the meetings, she says Carlos has gone to every one, when I tell her I think he�s cute. We talk about the poster, how we don�t really like the wording, the headline �No More Victims, At Home or Abroad�, how it doesn�t really say what kind of victims, what we�re protesting, until the bottom, in small print. She hurts her finger, with the staple gun, and sucks on it, and I say, �SEE, YOU are a victim!�, and we laugh! (Pause to update an employee�s address � you should hear my voice, it sounds sleepy, calm, soft) Anna and I laugh about everything, and I remember how much I love to make people laugh. It�s not hard with her, she gets my humor, even in a language not her own. I realize I use a lot of idioms, a lot of colloquialisms, and I find myself repeating phrases like �I�m up for that�. She drives us to my old neighborhood, and it�s so great to be in these places, this part of the city that I forget I love so much, on foot, scoping out utility poles, looking for the wooden ones. Soon I take over the staple gun, and I laugh at using it, laugh at what we�re doing. In the car again and we hit up the neighborhood she�s already covered, get out on foot to go into restaurants, clubs, bars. We even went to MJQ, the club that I couldn�t drag myself to the past few weeks for their anniversary and tribute nights. There we were, walking in to hand flyers to the guy sweeping the floor before they open. 10:30 at night, and we�re either too late for restaurants, or too early for clubs. On we went to the trendy East Village, yeah, we have an East Village, and we go in and out of all the pubs I see ads for in the free weekly, the place that was rated as having the best bathroom to have sex in, the place rated the pub with the most beautiful people, in and out, posting flyers to bulletin boards, using the last big posters for the utility poles, and I have a staple gun and pepper spray (I brought it, attached it to my key chain, hung it outside my pocket, in case any overzealous �patriots� were to give us a hard time). I joke how strange it is that I am �armed� like this. Watch out, people, I am a woman with her staple gun and pepper spray. Maybe you had to be there, but it was awfully funny. (Pause to take a call from a guy I�d swear was calling from his bathtub � major echo � it took everything I had not to say, �Are you in the bathtub?!�) Finally, fresh out of posters, flyers, but still with staples, and we end up in a very cool bar where one of our fellow activists works. He was on the trip with us to D.C., and apparently he, unlike SOME people, also attends the meetings. It was SO great to sit and talk to Anna! SO. Someone who�s keeping up with the alternative presses, who�s questioning what she hears, who doesn�t even watch the national news on television, someone who feels the same as I. I told her about what it�s like for me, 40 hours a week, working here, with these women who talk incessantly about shoes, hair, makeup, clothes, and their religion. I told her how we used to talk about what happened, what was going to happen next, how we were together, here, 9/11, but now, now it�s all changed, they�ve shifted, they talk about anything but, only superficial things, and shopping, and sure, that may be appropriate for work, most likely it is, but it�s pure hell for me. She says I need to socialize, I need to go to the meetings, be with people like myself. Yes, Anna, I know, I don�t know what my problem has been, not exactly. I don�t know why I�ve isolated myself since the march. I blamed it on my attraction to Carlos, feeling I didn�t want to be rejected again, but it was a fear of socializing, of joining a group, and that makes no sense. F. works upstairs in the bar, in a room entirely red, and he says it has an effect on people. I say it�s aggressive, the color red, but he says people make out up there all the time, and turns to point out two boys doing just that. I tell him I think another club in town is like that, conducive to making out, and yes, he knows the place, of course, he�s a club kid, he is a creative person who works clubs, does video installations, and I say, �I�ve made out there�. He says, �Really, with who?!�, and what an odd question, as if he would know if I told him, so I say, �Strangers�, and we laugh, and it�s partly true� So, things have changed a bit, for me. It�s been so hard for me here, at work, so hard to write about it in my diary and feel attacked. But now, things are falling more into place, I�m engaging in healthy debates, I�m talking, I�m trying not to be so defensive, trying to talk, to explain, to teach what I know. It�s hard for someone like me, I don�t possess enough patience, but I�m trying. And having the opportunity to be around people to whom I DON�T have to explain is so wonderful. It�s a warm bath on a cold night, it�s soothing, comforting, eases some of the torture I�ve been feeling deep down inside myself. Sounds trite, sounds overwrought, or melodramatic, but no one could know exactly how low I�ve been, and how it�s been difficult to function feeling this way. I need to connect. With people surrounding me, not to connect with anyone is the worst feeling in the world. What�s a good analogy? Maybe a child who is never hugged or touched by his parents. Maybe a foreigner in the USA. Maybe any foreigner, anywhere, maybe like me when I felt alone in Brussels, my first night in Europe. Maybe being with Anna last night was like me in Brussels when I heard people speaking English. That first night I needed to be with people who made me feel at home. I feel at home with Anna. At work I am a foreigner, and no one speaks my language. Like on the train from Paris to Verona�the French people who sat with me, offering me boiled eggs, but unable to speak to me, and I tried, my broken French wasn�t good enough, and they didn�t speak any Italian. It was my birthday and I sat with them while they talked amongst themselves. I couldn�t wait to get to Verona to be with my uncle. I needed to communicate. So�we�ll meet tomorrow morning, create some signs for people to carry, I�ll take my camera, and we�ll gather, we�ll march and we�ll have a rally, however small (F. jokes that he thinks 17 people are going, maybe 18, he says, and of course we laughed), and like Anna says, it�s something. However small, we are doing something. It�s not like what she accomplished in her country, an �embassy of concerned citizens�, but it�s something, it�s what we can do, for now. And I can�t wait. It�s 10:44 as I finish this, amidst numerous interruptions, stop to look for typos, to edit just a bit, and my stomach has settled, stopped railing against me. The women here are planning a potluck lunch, Lulu left a flyer on my desk, sort of dumped it there, without a word, and I begin to wonder if she is afraid of me. The woman who had the hair I wanted to touch, the one who used to work here, is also an Aries, and she too would remove herself from the group at times. She had had enough, I�d guess, didn�t feel a part of the group, or something, as I feel now, and I confess it was hard to approach her, she didn�t seem approachable. I think we all stayed away when she secluded herself. That must be how they feel about me� Cost of the War in Iraq
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