16 october, 1998

october 16, yep.

i have been a houseguest before, staying with rheingold for over three weeks. and what did we learn from that? space is very important to personal relationships. and houseguests fuck up space.

amy and i have had a houseguest for going on three weeks now,
kira from vermont. amy's oldest friend andy, his flame from this summer. she's passing through on a break of sorts before heading back home and to art school.
since she's been here, she's cleaned the entire kitchen three times. shining, no dirt, cleaner than amy or i been doin. and she mopped the entire house. she cooks breakfast or lunch once a day, serves tea, and has painted engaging pictures for us. the living room is decorated with her spontaneous artistic recyclings of near-east oakland trash, and these are popular with our friends. the garden is an exciting growing place because she lended her skills as a paid professional landscaper for a few days turning over the dryest old clay and helping completely uninformed media geeks figure out a little of what it means to raise plants.
she's funny and smart, and not very digital at all - she's taken to poking at me like amy does a little about spending too much time with my magic box.
and sometimes she just disappears for a day or two and leaves the house empty for some barry white type shit - oh baby.
you couldn't ask for a much better houseguest. she's improved the space, made a few things easier for us, and generally respected our lifestyles.
and caused unspoken akward moments that wouldn't exist except that because someone else is in the house, you're not free to discuss and figure out stuff. and generally guests prefer to be entertained, which doesn't include watching me make web pages or chat on aol instant messenger with wayne. or the third trip to home depot in a week
then andy arrives with the real mexican tequila and another guitar and even now is a very pleasant home made jam with the two of andy and kira noodelling their instruments at each other. it's not a bad way to live, it just makes me feel silly for doing other stuff
like taking advantage of a new and exciting opportunity - for reasons i still don't understand, i've been asked to hold forth for two hours at a conference on education and technology in sweden.
thinking about it after being free from other engagements filled me with a certain joy - here was a chance for me to articulate my vision for the web in education (some from swarthmore, some from eminds, some from wilmott). perhaps some crazy scandinavian folks will bankroll the experiment! if i draw it up tangibly enough.
so that's why i'm working. i drive around during the day, looking for cabinets and pens and glasses and all the odds and ends that fill a home and then at night i reflect or concentrate. not a bad gig! but it means tearing myself my own space when everyone else is done being focused.

kira was dinnering while i prepped my sweden stuff, and i offered to dj. no jazz, she said. so i put on jelly roll morton. what is this, polka?
later she says
this album kicks ass. it reminds me of my grandmother's house.

amy and i went through some of our worst stuff lately - a combo of her period, and some corresponding sexual hesitancy on my part, my having a new computer (and two operating systems to configure), no job - there's big change, body funk, too much to do, a houseguest. so she's sexually frustrated and finding me emotionally unavailable. i'm thinking, remembering the mayonaise she left out, the extra melon she bought, the unfinished projects and household messes she avoids by leaving this place to do her work.
she's always wanted sex more than me. i have my moments, but for example, in the morning, i'm usually excited to jump out of bed and start calling the east coast, downloading new shit, updating bud.com, etc. so we/she were talking separate beds, a vibrator (early readers of this page might recall some unfortunate vibrator results)
when she's pissed at me she become the hariest she-beast, spitting barely humourous sarcasm to every query or suggestion. it's positively depressing. i probably do something equally useless and aggravating.
but then she spiked my margarita the other night after howard's. howard and judy performed some counselling and good cheer. the damiana provided some extra proclivity to boner-her and so we had sex and fell asleep buried cumsoaked penis inside of her and then a few hours later i wake up and feel our gentials connected and somehow imagine we hadn't resolved the act and in my confusion start pumping through an odd haze trying to make her moanmoanmoanmoan! again. and then we fall asleep i think she made me masturbate her but i didn't got off that time
until the morning when we do it again. man.