Checking In
I began calling posts I made “campaigns” a few years ago before more business was involved in them. Sometimes they were just campaigns for attention, others were to evoke or elicit certain feelings on topics. I still think that way sometimes, feeling as though I’m writing essays or columns, and not status updates.
All of that has been very important this year because the freelance business became my sole source of income. And despite or because of the pandemic, it also appeared as though all these skills I had been cultivating for more than a decade had now coalesced into this media tool I could use to casually burp out finished prose, an apparel item, or a composed image. It’s been a real evolution, and there are several more big announcements coming up before the end of this year. Really big ones, I think.
So I’m taking a break today to just check in. Hello, I’m doing okay. A few people still think I’m in Sacramento or that I moved there; No, I came back to San Francisco in May.
I live in a rent-controlled 2 bedroom in Sunset with one other roommate, and in deference to his now at-home work schedule, I moved my sewing efforts into my bedroom. So that is–to put it mildly–a complete and utter disaster area. It’s a caricature of florals, sequins, faux fur, purses, and custom prints of video game characters and attractive men, not to mention big clumps of thread, elastic, paper flyers, bubble envelopes, wire, pins, and empty cans of Diet Coke basically on every flat surface you can think of.
My work schedule is pretty erratic and constant. Related to that is a sense of anxiety my doctor clued me into late last year when I told her I’d not been sleeping. I course corrected–for now–by no longer trying to fix the sleep cycle. I’m up many nights all night and sleep for several hours around 9 or 10am. I roll out of bed and sit at the sewing machine or cutting table, do as much as I can, and then try to get outside.
Exercise started somewhat as a means to get in shape for Pride, even though it was canceled. But then I realized how much I just needed to see the sun and scenery. I live in the smaller of two rooms that only faces other rooms, with no natural sunlight. So I spend many days on the track, which has gotten sort of insufferable in quarantine.
I have to admit that after being a gym bunny many years, I got tired of all the ways people mis-used those places. The excessive grunting, the hogging of machines, the dumb-faced, slack-jawed looks they got when they sat on equipment and stared on their phones while not working out. The crowded locker room. So the track was such a relief earlier this year in large because it was so big and empty and pretty. But as more people continued to not have their gyms, they took a sort of morphed version of bad behavior and now bring it to the track. I sound bitter, I know. I still love the track, I just try and go there at certain times. And it’s been a key way I’ve been keeping my anxiety down.
Warranting its own post, but the political situation both terrifies and disgusts me. Where I once prided myself on tolerance of conservative relatives, and even sharing some of their views, this president has broken that for me. But his presidency now and the past four years has helped me understand just how seriously I take decorum in my daily life from others. Ignoring partisanship, I think a lot of people are behaving really grotesquely with their words, and it’s so difficult for me to watch. Of all the horrible things this president has done, I mostly want him gone because of the type of humanity he brings out in others as a direct result of his own behavior.
The love life does exist. I avoided dating initially in March and April, and slowly began seeing men in May. I’ve written columns about my sex life so you know that’s happening… but it still is generally sparse. I sort of just listen to my brain to determine what’s reasonable risk and go from there. If I push the envelope too much one day, I retreat and hold back a couple weeks. I have been seeing someone about a month but nothing is official about it, and he will or might get around to seeing this, so I’m only telling you what we’ve discussed. Which is that I like him very much but am unclear and somewhat dubious as to where it’s going. What I do know is I’m pretty emotionally whole lately and ready for love, which is honestly a rare place I find myself in, in adulthood. It really just happened one day when I wasn’t thinking about it… my heart saying it was okay to fall for someone again.
Friendship, and related, family, has been hard. My social bubble defined itself without a formal process, and we see each other generally with minimal worry about what will happen if we share a car or picnic blanket. I honestly found myself a touch resentful of friends who kind of just carried on and never checked in in what has essentially become the whole of 2020. I’ve culled my friends list a significant amount. And even though I am often starving for a sense of normalcy in my social life from before, I also think I don’t miss the events I attended just so people were hyper aware of my presence as a significant socialite in the local gay community. I just feel generally more focused in this state… putting energy on the numerous relationships I already have and focusing on continuing to build and nurture this brand.
I will say that, of course, I miss the community at large. In Castro I feel a lot of guys stop because “A wild Saul has appeared!” and they say hi. That still happens but we just… don’t get to talk. Because we really aren’t supposed to in quarantine. So it’s most often this awkward “hi Saul” wave behind a mask and just a fast pace away. It is similarly like being inside a grocery store or on the street and the looks everyone gives each other. Not all of us can smize, Tyra; We don’t know what our expressions are saying under these masks.
All-in-all though, life is miraculously pretty good. I’m glad I’ve had enough work to distract me and good people to provide emotional and–of course–financial support via buying my wares. I know I have it better than quite a few others right now, and that’s not me trying to put some false silver lining on it. I want very much to go to movies again and to generally resume this life I had as the protagonist of my own story, wandering around in fabulous outfits and just happening upon something else in San Francisco that annoyed or delighted me, and turning that into some sort of artistic expression. One day soon, I hope.
And I hope you’re hanging in there, too. Sincerely, Saul.
Leave a Reply