Monday
November 16, 1998

Working on it. I've just this instant gotten home from my second trip to California in as many weeks, and I still smell like airline food.  Let me unpack and unwind and I'll throw something onto the website. And you know the drill: click here to relive the wonder and splendor of that last entry ...

Later That Evening:

I came home to Oregano City today, after three days away, and the whole city looks like some kind of weird autumnal Mardi Gras went on in my absence.

The trees are stripped and the streets clotted with orange and gold leaves, thick as confetti.  The air feels tired.  Everybody is walking around hunched over, as though if they make eye contact "someone" is going to ask them to help clean up the mess. I hardly recognize the place.

The worst was coming home to The Tree House. I opened the curtains, and there was nothing but old branches idly fingering my windows: no more leafy shield between me and Binoculars Guy. It's almost as though, suddenly, the whole world is privy to everything I do and think and eat and read and wear and drink and say on the phone and ...

(Oh wait. I have a website. Shit.)

I'm in love. What can I say? It's wonderful and terrible and miraculous and unplanned and predestined, all at once ... and it comes at a PRICE, as does anything this valuable ... and part of me wants to write about it but can't, and another part of me wants to write about it but has been delicately asked by committee to be "sensitive," and another-another part of me wants to write about it but is terrified of jinxing it by putting it into something as mundane as words, and another-another-another part of me says "What the hell? Let's tell 'em everything ... "

... but for tonight I think I'll just tuck my travel-weary selves into bed and dream about oranges and aliens and U-Haul trucks, and let the repercussions fall where they may ...


My online friend David (DRaftervoi) and I had fallen in love during my first trip to see him, two weeks earlier.  At this point we were still trying to keep our new relationship on the down-low, mainly because he had recently ended a romantic involvement   --  with a woman he'd met in the same chat room he'd met me  --  and we didn't think it was appropriate to broadcast our happiness at her expense.