Drag Queen Trapped in a Lesbian's Body
...was the title of Ruby's (then Carol's) first Planet Out ad.
To illustrate, she went to a photo booth and took four black and white pictures. Not having the necessary applications or hardware to create the image she wanted, she visited the old Capitol Hill Kinko's after midnight, when it cost less. There she spent one hour and twelve dollars figuring out how to scan and shade the individual photos.
There were a number of responses, but Ami's stood out immediately as being witty, smart, and genuine. Ruby wrote back a series of serious, semi-serious, and bizarre questions. Ruby still remembers Ami's response to one of them.
Q: If you were to demolish the Space Needle in an act of humanitarian and aesthetic benevolence, who would you first assemble within it, and why? (Note: Ruby officially disclaims any desire to demolish the Space Needle or anybody who might happen to be in it, but at the time she thought it was singularly ugly.)
A: A convention of meter maids! They eat their young!
Says Ami:
Alright, well, my job.
I'm working for the first time. At a real job. For the past 8 years I've been going to school and waiting tables, working and reading and working and reading...I always figured I would go to grad school. I finished an honors thesis on William Blake, a minor in Latin and a minor in history. I got an AS in math and I studied flamenco guitar and sound engineering for a while. I always was taking 19,20,21 units, scrambling to figure out what I should do. I guess maybe I wore myself down. You probably know how that is if you're on a class break at 4pm! But then at the same time, I was always driven to figure something out, write something clearer, push a little further out. What I'm doing now is good, it's just not at all what I planned. I'm working at a company that sets up printing networks. It's growing quickly and the financials look good. Networking is interesting, as long as you're really good at it- good enough to not let it nerd you out. And I don't have to decide anything right now. But I don't know if I'll ever really fit into a 'place' like this-- will always seem like a silly game on some base level? Maybe it will be the nudge I need to go back to school. But maybe it's not necessary to go back to school. School has its definite down sides, too.
So I'm a little stuck in between.
What are you studying?
I luv the pics! Did you do the coloring yourself?
I'm a true Aqaurius, I suppose. Addicted to ideas, in love with the process. But I need money to build the digital music studio I want, so I may as well make a buttload of money while I can, live like a renegade and invest every penny, retire at 32 and move all of my friends to Venice...mebbe?
=) Ami
Says Ruby:
Yes, I did the pictures myself. Went to Kinko's at midnight the other night and scanned them in, then spent the next 55 minutes fiddling around with Photo Shop to try to turn them other colors. Turns out it should have taken me about 12 minutes, tops, but I was a Photo Shop virgin.
No more.
I'm studying acupuncture. Not such an academic topic as are Blake, Latin, and flamenco (which, by the way, is a beautiful and graceful combination), but interesting enough to keep me going another 2 years.
I'm having a difficult time with something I haven't allowed myself to voice, even silently. May as well share it with someone about whom I know an iota more than nothing. (Huh, huh, I said whom.) I have always wanted to study acupuncture. While other "careers of the week" come and gone, acupuncture was at least recurrent, if not constant. So when my case management career came to an abrupt and long overdue halt, I haphazardly enrolled in acupuncture school. I won't say that I regret it; I don't. It's just that I have always known that it was never going to be an ending point for me. I don't want to BE an acupuncturist. I want to do acupuncture, but it's more about the magic of it than the healing or the China or the New Age or the sadistic desire to put pins in people (tho that's nice, too). I've described acu school as a rite of passage, the door to an intuitive way of acquiring knowledge that I can buy my way thru. (Thru which, blah, blah...)
More words should end in u.
The other thing (and probably the more important one) is that I've tentatively, cautiously, reluctantly begun to write again. It's the words, baby, it's all about the words. What I'll ever write I have no idea. Professional email writer, at your service. Personals. Captions. Presidential speeches. Warning labels. Last week I heard a slam poet say a line I will mangle for you: Difficulty is the surest sign that you are on the right path. If that's the truth, look out Toni Morrison, 'cuz I'm coming after ya, and by then I'll be all bloody nail beds and skinned knees.
Can I be an acupuncturist and a Writer? Sure. But am I REALLY either? Acupuncture has some built in safety, in that it is scoffed at just enough that if I fail--well, who will really know? Writing feels so much more like me than what I do, y'know?
But who asked me, anyway? Yeah, I've eaten Spam, fried, on untoasted Wonder bread with mayo.
And thus ends my confession. Gimmie a coupla Hail Marys and I'll be on my way.
One of the curiosities of my life is that I know that prayer by heart and I never learned it anywhere, least of all from the atheist folks. Probably heard it in enough movies and the 12 times I ever went to Mass (aptly named), but I like to think it's more COSMIC than that. Like maybe she and I were lovers in a former life and I said it to her as we bedded down in the straw. Ouch.
Enough.
Aquarius, huh? Gimmie some more vitals. I'm still down on you in the info dept. Shit, you even know what I look like (well, sorta). Do you have one of those personals thingies?
Thanks for being such a prolific emailer. I rarely get to write to anyone as diligent about it as I am. If you're one of those taper-offers let me know, so I don't get used to it.
No pressure, I swear, just like to know what I'm dealing with.
Ruby would love to say that she immediately knew Ami would one day be her betrothed. But that was not the case. For over four years Ami and Ruby were friends, then better friends, then there was the time they weren't friends at all, and then one day they were both single again at the same time and...You get the idea.
We should be on a commercial, like those old folks on the e-harmony ad. PlanetOut should sponsor our wedding.