Two entries in one day? Yeah. What else have I to do while I code pretty images of my company's products for a product release and wait to talk to my ex-boss?

Sometimes I fall asleep with the tv on. It's somewhat reassuring, actually. I have a black & white tv in my bedroom, and when I turn out the light, the warm glow from its screen reflects off the walls.

Leaving the TV on helps create dreams, sometimes deeply disturbing.

Sometimes comforting.

I woke up the other night to one of my favorite bands, The Pixies performing on Austin City Limits. Only... was it my imagination? They seemed to be performing underwater -- less loud, less manic. I watched them from my sleep position, on my side, kind of out of the corner of my eye.

The next time I woke up, it was to Arthur.

I didn't get the part.

Here's the line I was given to read.

LANDLORD (taking final swig of beer before crushing can): Git yerself away from thet ther door!

Hey, not all landlords are like that! (But I never said I could act either.)

And a story from a week ago or so...

I have a new friend, someone who is close to me in age but who was married and is just now coming out. When he heard a certain entertainer from the 90s was coming through town, he wanted to go.

And so, on the night of, I met him and his boyfriend at the club where She was to play.

The club was packed when we arrived and getting more so with each passing minute. Average age: 21. Most of the crowd milling around were also somehow standing in a line to get drinks.

Not too many minutes passed and Security was tossing people out for fighting. Not too many more and people were puking in the bathroom stalls. The heat must have been turned up full blast and the cigarette smoke was suffocating: My eyes were watering; my friends were coughing.

We waited.

And while we waited, we would have talks like this:

"Let's people watch."
"There are practically no people here our age."
"Certainly no one cute."
"There's somebody cute, standing by himself. Why don't you go talk to him?"

So they would stay with the table and I would walk around. There really were few people for me to talk to. No one standing by themselves were looking like they wanted to talk except maybe a few 21 year olds and, unlike how other people think I ought to act, I'm not out to terrorize kids that young.

I would return to the table to wait some more. As my friends pointed out yet another guy they thought was cute, it turned out they pointed to someone I already knew. And you know him, too, Bloggies, from these very pages! Trick.

Trick is cute and he's friendly enough. But he's not any Future. I've called him Trick because I thought it would be a one-time deal, but instead it ended up being many times over a few months. (There's another name I should use for him instead.)

The end to this short story is that I end up feeling like crap.

"Hello, Trick," I say, "Happy New Year. I didn't know you were a Fan."
"Oh yeah yeah. How you been? What'zh snew?"

This isn't the first time Trick reeks of cigarettes and beer and seems unfocused. But it's not the first time I don't reek of cigarettes and beer and seem unfocused either, so we chit-chat and make plans to talk the following week.

The questions start up as soon as he walks off. Who was that? You know him? Why don't you try dating him?

I don't feel like explaining why it wouldn't work.

And as for the famous entertainer from the 90s?

"Where the hell is she?" my one friend demands of an employee as the clock approaches 1 a.m. We've been waiting for over three hours.
"Uh... we don't know. We haven't heard."
"That's it. Bye bye."

We leave. On the way home through an empty and frigidly cold downtown, I pass a Hummer Limo, driving around, seemingly aimlessly and definitely in the opposite direction of the Club. I just shake my head.

I'm on the phone with my immediate ex-boss. I worked for him for about three years and he's the one who offered me the job that got me transferred here. He's telling me about his marriage in Canada to his partner of ten years.

At the ceremony, in an Unitarian Church, he read a poem by Robert Frost, the one about the Road Less Traveled, and his partner read "some zen thing."

I've scheduled a meeting with my ex-boss to go over my resume for the years that I worked for him. I'm going to make sure what I have is accurate and I'll ask him to be a reference.

Now I'm leaving to go audition for a part in a movie. It's a short film, to be shot in Cincinnati and they need someone with my "stats". I'm sure I wont' get it, but it will be fun anyway.