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After

stitchinmyside's brilliant race and fabulous brunch, what was there to do but go shopping en masse? I mean, I guess we could have gone out and picked up litter from the race. Yet no.

There were mad sales. Clots of

stitchinmyside fans wove in and out of each other's contrails, making pretty pollusive patterns in the ever-bright capitalist sky.

I visited both the small-footed man's friend (Payless) and the generously-assed* man's friend (Mark's Work Wearhouse). My new, dead sexy, incredibly cheap jeans and shoes are not the point of this story, however much we might wish they could be. My new dead sexy bedspread, black with gold stars and a huge sun/moon, however, is.

Several people had remarked that my flowered patchwork quilt and the FAUX LEATHER TAB CURTAIN were not in perfect harmony or even witty discord so much as sputtering incoherence. Bee was a notable exception, who saw the joy of the puritan and the libertine in one bed, and I thank her. However, I think it's fair to say that the new black-with-gold-stars spread, conjoined as it is with the red faux fur satin-lined throw and the FAUX LEATHER TAB CURTAIN, is ultra gothtastic.

As

stitchinmyside said when she saw it, "Well, I think your bed's officially guest ready."

Indeed.

Speaking vaguely of which, I never did finish telling the story of the Girl's Night Out as a Boy. There are only fragments left to tell.

For example: The runner-up best moment might have been after our bout of still-urinal-giddy Madonna dancing, when we were in line at the bar again, and my valiant companion expressed concern about the general state of sweatiness inevitable in these situations (by "situations" I mean here dank, poorly-ventilated gay clubs without proper fire exits.)

I leant over. "Don't worry," I muttered reassuringly, "You will never stink as bad as a boy."
Whereupon, in order to back me up, the guy in front of us ripped a vile fart. We stared at each other through the haze, weeping with amused chagrin.

Or afterwards, when we'd shut the bar down, and everyone was milling outside in what felt like a genuinely friendly, relaxed, crowd moment before we all dissipated our dissipations, and the two of us suddenly realized that we must buy and jointly eat a Mr. Tube Steak from the vendor who had in his genius set up across from Victoria's only gay bar. He must make a freaking fortune on irony alone.

Or again: Earlier in the evening, as we were getting ready to set out for the bar for the great urinal experiment, she muttered something about packing.
"Oh, are you going to pack?"
"Well, I have to. I can't carry a purse."
"...oh, pack like that."

And so on.

And now more, perhaps, than you could possibly want to know about me.

I started dressing as a boy on and off (often quite off) from about the age of fifteen, and I would sometimes pack, though I didn't know that's what it was called, or what I was doing. I got my first packer, by accident and fate, at the Fair.

If you know anything about the towns and cities of the remoter parts of BC, you know what a big shrieky deal the Fair is. There's no April-to-October Playland deal in the Interior. There's the Fair. The Octopus, the Tilt-A-Whirl, the inescapable perfume of cotton candy and vomit, the 4H club, and the midway.

I always go for the dart balloons. It's the only game anyone can consistently win at, if by win we mean "pay fifteen dollars to take home a six-inch stuffed Bart Simpson."

Do not fear; my first packer wasn't anything as traumatic as a stuffed Bart Simpson. With a small felt balloon saying "Ay Caramba" perhaps.

It was in fact a stuffed stick of dynamite. I have no idea who thought this was a winning toy concept, or the perfect midway prize. But there it was, and I won it. I won it, and I looked at it, and the first thing I thought was, "Jesus, it looks like a giant tampon." Which it did, because it had a long white string attached to it to play the part of the fuse. The I can only call it shaft was red satin, the ends were yellow felt, and emblazoned on the side was the life-changing word "BANG!"

There was something so terrifyingly right about the whole thing. So somehow inevitable. What else could you possibly do with a satin stick of dynamite that said "BANG!" on the side? You clearly couldn't let children anywhere near it.

There were two of them, originally -- I won one and my brother won one. He did not care so much about his, having already won life's dart toss at conception. He didn't miss the stuffed one when it mysteriously vanished.

One stick eventually fell to pieces. The other, well... I have it still. Mostly for sentimental reasons. I've never been big on packing as a general thing. I've never bought or made any special gear. I like to say I have the same thing in my pants that any other guy would have: a pair of gym socks.

I mention this because it turns out that

stitchinmyside (Who now qualifies for the award for most links-to in one post) and I both do certain things when it crosses our minds that there's the outside chance we might bring someone home on a particular night. She tidies her apartment. I indulge in false advertising. Or let's say a kind of visual tall tale.

It is a quiet pleasure to know that someone could ask, oh, for example, "What've you got in your pants there, sailor?"

And I could quite legally say "A stick of dynamite."

{rf}

*Of course I meant to say it like that.