It's been a wild and wacky weekend and I'm sorry it had to end. It's astounding how much time I'm left with if I don't make any concrete plans.

For reasons that are beyond my ken, Molasses and I met in Pasadena on Friday. We partook of the company-provided drinks and repast - chicken wings and sandwiches and margaritas. Then we headed to the AMC to watch Signs. Thank goodness for M. Night Shyamalan. Although, all I have to say is it is totally unfair to have me sitting in the theatre petrified with fear and weeping at the same time. I am a huge scardy-cat and therefore don't like fright movies. I'm usually justified by the fact that most fright movies are schlocky pieces of crap. Signs is not one of them. The way the audience was completely spell-bound was both terrifying and amazing. I wish I had such gifts to tell a story. Though a huge part of the movie's affect on my was the shrieking from the audience. I don't know if that's common for audiences of fright movies but I am quite certain that my fear response is somewhere between freezing and fleeing. Unless of course there is anger involved somewhere like at all the morons who walked into the theatre with cell phones on - especially if they get a call, hang up and then immediately get another and another. Or certain people who walk in loud and drunk and laugh and gossip and mock the peope trying to get them to shut up. But any way the movie was good even if I onle saw it because it was a Shyamalan flick.

So anyway I walked out of the theatre scared beyond belief. And then we agreed to head to Long Beach for dinner at Acapulco. We got back to his apartment around midnight. Agent Orange had friends over watching a film - Ammelie I believe. I liked that, although I would have preferred to stay ay me apartment before the movie, afterwords I was glad to have other people around. Around one Molasses and I headed to sleep. I stayed asleep for maybe a couple of hours while the strains of Moulin Rouge played in the other room. About three-ish I woke up and could hear the others outside clearly.

It was a damned good thing because anytime they went silent my heart rate went up another notch. The bad things in fright movies usually happen at night and as I usually try to sleep at night being afraid of fright movies makes it so I can't sleep at night due to fear (biologically speaking my heart rate stays up pumping a lot of oxygen into my brain keeping me awake. You would think that understanding this would help me relax, but you'd be wrong). After 30 minutes of tring to calm myself I gave up, put on some clothes and went out to hang.

The people in the living room were all to some extent or another under the influence of...some stuff ("stuff" yeah, that's the ticket!) they were worried I had gotten up to shush them or that I couldn't sleep because of them. It was partly true but I was also relieved that I could pass some time with them and not feel my sanity sliding closer to the abyss.

Agent Orange decided he wanted to grill me on every detail about the movie since he hadn't seen it. I headged but then decided it would be okey. The selling point of the movie was not the plot itself really, but hot it was told.

At any rate that killed a few more hours until sunrise. Then I was tired and I knew it would be safe to sleep. We slept till one. The other folks were still around but more sober and about to head off. We had the opportunity to head off to lunch with some of them but Molasses had an appointment (theoretically) with a masseuse at three. So we stayed in with some left over pizza and two DVDs - I'm Gonna git You, Sucka and The Big Hit. I did my nails but the masseuse never showed.

After that we headed off to get dinner and to my apartment to get ready to go to the Dungeon. The Ice Cream Assassin and Coyote picked us up and we were off. At the Dungeon they had some industrial-ish electronica in the front room, Bondage Sushi and...well...bondage (primarly SM) in the main room. The back room seemed to be 80s Brit pop except that a lot of the tracks not were from the 80s or by British people - just most of it. The smoking lounge, aka the room out back, had some folks selling stuff like corsets, necklaces and Tarot cards.

Damn it was crowded, and damn what a motley bunch. There were guys in black jeans and t-shirts with band names (Skinny Puppy, APC, Husker Dü, This Mortal Coil) who would have been nerds except their hair had enough gel to stop an army of lice. In the first hour the ratio of men to women was about 5:2 and approximately none of the men knew how to dance. Later on there were a few more people wo got in to the groove. Some of them looked like they had never been to another goth club in their lives and so were making up for lost time with lots of pleather. In the back room there were more people (eventually) who knew what they were doing and looked like they had plundered the corner second-hand store for just the right Victorian-inspired black dress.

Because it was there I ordered some sushi, but I can't say why - it just seemed like a good idea. I danced to a couple of tunes in the front room, primarily because they were on the Metroplis 2000 CD, and therefore felt like I knew what I was doing. At one point I'd had enough of the noise so I decided to head out back when a fellow trying really hard to look like Marilyn Manson stopped me.

Marilyn: Are you gay or straight?
Me: (puzzled) Both.
---correct answer: None of your business!
Marilyn: Oh! You should give me a hug!
Me: uhh...(short hug ensues)
---prolly should have dodged. If I had felt mean I should have told him to stay back else face the wrath of my PMS (I'm not on my period, ergo it's always pre- MS. Sorry, echos of Sucka).
Marilyn: You love me!
Me: (still stunned) Sometimes! (walk away)
---correct answer: Yes and so does Jesus!

In the back I related this story to the folks I knew who chuckled. The S&M displays were interesting but probably due to space and legal considerations, they couldn't go too crazy. Most of the folks seemed to like the flogging. There was one beautiful woman who held onto a 3-d metal cross while another woman gently whipped her front with a leather strap, a light flogger and occasioanlly a scarf. There was a woman of an older age that I don't normally see in clubs, let alone in a tiny, poofy white dress bent over a saw horse while a transvestite in a gold dress flogged her firmly. On the butt looked okey but some times it was also across the back which didn't seem fun - to me at least.

My parents were strong believers of physical discipline and the worst threat they could make was my dad with his belt. I am firmly convinced that a) they tested out their theories on me b) I'm a goodie-two-shoes purely because I don't like pain. At least not pain I don't have *some* control over. Anyway that kind of punishment was something I learned to avoid. It wasn't fun or good and I can't imagine it would be so now. There are some mild amounts of hitting that sounds fun in the bed but I don't really like the idea of instruments. Maybe a paddle, but not for very long. Just as garnish. But so it seemed that they liked pain for pain's sake and somewhere along the way it because sexual. Me, not so much. But then there was this woman who was so utterly skinny that her breasts completely disappeared into her chest (she just wore black tape across her nipples) and as she lay back over the horse her ribs jutted out in a very unappetising way. The man who went about beating her was huge, bald and had a long goatee. The contortions on his face made it clear he liked ths more than merely as a chance to ply his craft but as something more deep and physical. As he went at her inner thights and very thoroughly shaved crotch with a switch, the look on his face was long past lust and carnivorous and out into sexual participant while the woman moved her hips in such a lascivious way so that I was actually starting to feel slightly dirty.

There were many doms but a sad lack of willing subs. One of the doms was a man with spiky mowhawk, vinyl pants and spike heels. He wore a hanky around his chest and amazing make up. I don't know if he was going for a fully transvestite thing (he didn't bother trying to hide his lack of bust) or if he just wanted to break with modern convention but he looked great, regardless. When he got going he was thoroughly into his performance. I don't know if he's any good but it looked good.

At one opint I was in the smoking room with Molasses, Adam P and Rowan when the party next to the club started in a music block with live musicians. Molasses remarked that he had though he heard chords of a Portisehead song. I thought he meant the band, which was a Latin Jazz group. So I shrugged it off and headed inside where the back room was playing a Portishead track - "Pedestal" I think. We jumped into the dancing and it was nice to be part of a general body swaying and grooving along with Beth Gibbons. I was ready to break when the song ended but then, wonder of wonders, Tori's "Cruel" came on and of course I had to stick through that even as I realized I'd never truly danced to Tori.

After that I moved to the side to rest. At that point Space Dog appeared and I ran to hug him. Then he wandered off and they started playing "Kindom's Coming" by Bauhaus. Or maybe that was before Space Dog. I'm not sure.

Anyway, there wasn't much more to Dungeon. Twenty minutes after walking in Space Dog left and we followed about thirty minutes later. Coyote and the Assassin came to my place to hang for a little longer and we talked about basically nothing until some started to nod off. I for my part kicked off my boots. They had really been torturing me. The balls of my feet are still rather tender.

That night we collapsed into bed around three in the morning and woke up bright and early at a quarter to one. We stumbled into the shower, threw on some clothes and got lunch at Carl's. We headed down to the Assassin's house to hang out and a good time was had by all.

Of course this was greatly aided by a "What's My Line, Anyway?" Marathon on Comedy Central. After the thirdish episode I was starting to get restless since the guys had nothing to do and the boob tube only holds my attention for so long even if it's "What's My Line, Anyway?" The Assassin was working on his chain mail, Molasses was reading D&D's EVIL book and Space Dog was quietly working through his latest batch of comic books.

Sometime into the third hour I'd had about as much as I could take and started complaining out loud of being bored. I tried not to act like they should have known and, bless them, the boys didn't act like I should have spoken up sooner. It was a nice day out and as was pointed out LA is a city of a great many opportunities for wasting time. So after some discussion we piled into the Assassin's car and headed over to La Brea intending to hit Hollyweird.

But we were sidelined by all the sites of furniture stores between Wilshire and 1st. So we headed out to have a look around. Things observed:

---Really ugly furniture

---Space Dog is a terrible flirt (as in he sucks at it), but honestly a nice guy.

---Really expensive, ugly furniture

---Molasses is good at finding the *really* ugly stuff.

---Lots of buildings, especially on the west side of the street, where the only identifying marks were Hebrew characters.

---A wedding.

---icecream popsicle carts being pushed hurriedly by grown men.

---two cars holding up traffic, neither with anyone inside, one with the trunk open, the other with emergency lights on. the drivers were apparently on the other side of the street conversing, a tow truck was a few cars back. Neither car showed any damage to the body.

---some pretty couches

---several pretty lamps including a stand lamp that I could easily have at my place

---Indian style furniture including a tall statue of Ganesh.

---Iron wrought furniture, including an uncomfortable yet sturdy outdoor bed.

Then we piled back in the car and headed to dinner at The Spaghetti Factory on Sunset.

All in all a good day, which would have been better if I had been tired when we got to bed. Instead I stayed up for two and a half hours begging for sleep and handwriting the first half of this entry. Then I lay down with tired eyes and a sore back and wrist and dozed for a little while. I dreamed of an earthquake and woke to Molasses rolling over and my heart thundering in my chest. I froze for a moment and resigned myself to mouthing prayers until I dozed off again. I'm such a fraidy cat. *sighs*

And there's today. Monday. bleah.

more later