Back about 25 years ago, I was reading deeply into Kate Bornstein, and one day I heard that she was going to be speaking in the hell city in which I was dwelling at the time. So I bought tickets and went. She was a delight.

During her talk she quoted herself from her books:

“In the literature of my people, we are always getting caught.”

A witty and warm thing to say, because by Literature she meant literary smut and written porn. By ‘my people’, she meant genderbenders, and in context especially crossdressers. It was true. In that genre to this day, there’s a big trope about the fateful day the protagonist’s dirty little secret is discovered by someone else, and all the complications that ensue from that discovery.

Today, genderfuck is nowhere near as central to my life and thinking. I’m just a big man thing, a Samson.

But I want to adapt her quote, thus:

“In the literature of my people, we are always taking out second mortgages to fund our creative visions.”

Also true. Among wannabe artistes, the stories of taking extreme financial measures to get the movie made, or the book published abound. Among the well-off, you will hear about Copolla going bankrupt multiple times. But even below, here, much further down the socioeconomic ladder: ‘We put every cent of our credit card balances on the line’ … we swung for the fences, and it could easily have resulted in catastrophe, but … it didn’t! Yay!

Sometimes, it’s the loving parents of the artistes taking the big risk, but I really don’t think we want to go there; not right now, do we?

No.

We might could go here, though.

We’re to the point now where they’re within half a point of what my mortgage costs anyway.

And even that ugly entrapping variable rate is no more than I’m paying on debt right now.

Soon.

Real soon now we’re gonna get to the trigger-pulling stage.

Maybe out toward springtime.

***

They’ve rearranged the floor plan over at the Fairgrounds this year. That fool announcer sounds quite a lot more muted and that’s a blessing.

As soggy as it has been these last days, even the evil new neighbors have had to take their evil new yap-dog inside, too.

My screen windows are open to the air day and night.

The Iceman Cometh.