(no subject)

I got myself this keyboard so that I would enjoy typing more & it has worked.  I really like typing, and I guess writing.  Heck, more than guess.

So.  Here's a recap of a conversation from yesterday:  I'm on the bus & my neighbor who's a womens' studies professor at the university down the street sits by me.  She gets on at a stop after me & the day before-  this is thursday, it snowed a lot & when we got off the bus, yet a third neighbor - this is someone who lives in our building - with us - fell as she was getting off and we stuck around to help her get up while an unhelpful dusthead on the bus got really agitated & tried to be helpful by chanting addledly that 'she fine, she fine she fine!'  But she wasn't & me and women's (not sure where the apostrophe goes there) prof & I walk her back to the building.  I'm strong but too tall to lean on properly?  Too scary/weird?  I get more self-conscious than usual because I've been getting really self-conscious lately.  Being kind of rumpled, kind of irritated, old?  Dirty - working-man.  I'm getting caught up in the look/feel of being really, really working class & all kind of dusty & broke to go with it.  Which is weird because I'm a database administrator?  but at a factory.  A dirty one.  I gotta stop wearing clothes with the company logo, but these fleece lined hoodies...  So nice in the winter.  And my house is a wreck, because I can't afford the lady to come & clean for a while, because of christmas.  Also my father is dying & it's horrible & I think about it most days without wanting to. 

Anyhow Lisa sits next to me and we get to talking - I 'm curious about the reactionary scene on campus - she's a little older than me but not so much that we can't reminisce about the 90's and how nowadays - the people are embattled but back then they were altogether marginalized-  the targets of white-supremacist antagonism I mean.  When I was a boy gay people were used as a punchline to jokes & stuff, and now people telling those jokes feel like they're in trouble & are.  That's a big reversal but it doesn't feel like one all the time.  But she's more circumspect & talks about how the older ladies need to be talked down from being hard-bitten & dismissive of the young girls who are traumatized by aggression that these older women had to tolerate as an ordinary part of their day.  Anyhow - the point of it is that I like talking to her because she's smart - fancy professor & everything but I hold my own & am smart & then she reveals what book she's writing now & I am...  Well shit, I wrote a lot of books!  Anyhow, I keep[ that quiet, my whole thing - I'm secretive (not humble - I'm too screwed up & insecure to be properly humble) and...  

I dunno - I go to my dingy apartment, through the banged up door and turn on the lights & see the painting I've made, think a little about how I can hold my own & do myself proud in conversations about linguistics & classics.  

I told Julie I was giving up trying to date people because I don't think I have anything to offer - but she said that if she met me, she'd think I was the complete package.  Maybe I'd think that too.  Of course, I can bear rejection & walk away without a fight or a word - which is the kind of thing that'll keep you single?  Also solitary.  But I think about that.  That I'm pretty good & worthy. 

I go in my dingy house & I think - This is Where Something Great is Secretly Happening.  And I get on my fancy keyboard & try to make it happen.