it is like 20 degrees again. so much for 90 degrees. unbelievable.

last night I went out for the first time in ages. I mean with the poets. it, it was awful. I mean, I just don’t feel myself among any of them. individually, I feel okay with each of them, understand them, but as a group I feel an enormous pressure to connect them all somehow, in conversation, or in some feminine charm, like dancing late at night, which I absolutely cannot do, like I cannot dance in front of my parents at a wedding, for I feel under a microscope, on spotlight, and under a belljar, like whatever I do or say wouldn’t be me, the real me would be kick and screaming and angrily not keeping my mouth shut at some of their judgements, criticisms, ag, I hate it.

and it feels like part of the job, this part I haven’t been doing, being social. last night it was even more of a job, it was almost like a dream, for I was driving a poet friend back to the place where he was staying. it was real quite nice and unexpected, I mean, we hardly knew each other in ny, I worked for/with him for a little while, we have some people in common, and he came here to give a reading. I was even surprised by the number of people who turned up to see him, I had no idea he was so known. we had dinner beforehand with some other poets, during which I had one small glass of wine and was quite tipsy when we walked out without his host and it became apparent that I’d be taking care of him for the night, as I walked him to the place for the reading and we stumbled along the street and I realized I was responsible for his having a good time. it became like a job, but a nice one, an honorable one, and I introduced him to the npr interviewer (since it was on the radio) and it was so funny because I know her, of course, but she didn’t know me, even if she’s seen me at readings, I definitely looked, with a haircut and with my flushed cheeks and wild eyes, ahem, different.

and after the reading we all went to the bar here, the one that’s like a shoebox, the one the poet said reminds him of twin peaks, and we spent way too long in there, I wasn;t drinking anymore, because I knew I was driving, and tired, and perhaps that’s why I lost my steam, and just started to sink in there. for a while there were some good people there, moving about making me laugh, bust soon the oppression started to descend, and I couldn’t prevent it, and the more drunk the poet go, the more that he’d look at me (we were sitting next to each other) and ask me if I liked this song, that book or video from cumfiesta, whatever they were talking about, and he’d try so hard to make me smile and was so sweet I had to smile, and he’d put his arms around me in this masculine protective way which nearly made me cry, for it made me think, maybe he thinks I haven’t slept with someone in a while, maybe he thinks I don’t have boyfriends. he even interrupted a conversation once to tell everyone at out table how I don’t look the same, I seem different, less happy, and that I need to trick myself into happiness. and I just felt, what, should I drink, would that make eveything okay for you and me, so I could be silly? silliness is an art, I admit it, and maybe it would help me relax, but I was exhausted, and some small part of me, the rare private girlish part that likes to split blades of grass when sitting in the sun, was enjoying being there with him, taking care of him, having that connection to the poet, and everybody knowing. but then everybody knew I was unhappy, which was even worse. he asked me to say what was wrong, nearly begged me to with a marvin gaye song, and I just shook my head. at one point during the night I opened the book he signed for me to a poem that seemed somehow to relate to me