Decrease the Surplus Population

As a consequence of an extremely long bus trip with really only Twitter to keep me company, I wound up reading a lot about politics and the health care plan.

Here's my question to the insurance companies losing money on individual policy plans: Are you losing more than you are otherwise making, or is the amount you are losing a negligible percentage of profits? Because here's the deal, if I make $11 an hour, and I know that $2.50 is taxes, $5 dollars is rent and utilities, $1 is owning a car, and another $1.50 is debt, I need the other dollar to eat and buy clothes and <strike>otherwise stimulate the economy</strike> live my life. OK? I might be able to toss you sixty cents, maybe, but if you want $3? I can't do that. Change up any of those variables and tell me where I can find that $3. Because I think to do it, I have to make $14.

So, health insurers, are you making 11 dollars an hour and can't give sixty cents to the people who are asking for it? Or are you making $20, putting money in the bank and thinking, "Damn, I could save a lot more if I wasn't spending $2.10 <strike>buying all that avocado toast</strike> supplying people with health care."

I get it, you want to make money, you're a business. Maybe it's because I work in non-profit... OK, it's totally because I work in non-profit, but I feel like if I were in a position to lose a percentage of my income on something important to me (like, the health of my members?), that doesn't hurt me. So when you tell me you're losing 3 million a year, I can be sympathetic to that... if that's 6% or more of your income. And maybe it is, but you're not telling me that, you're telling me you lose 3 million a year. If 1.6 million Iowans, or their employers, are paying an average of $500 for their insurance, you're making 800 million. It's awesome that over 680 million goes right back to providing care. Awesome; I really hope you're working with drug companies and medical providers to make sure that those costs are reasonable for you. Because nobody should have to pay an outrageous amount for health care.

Running Out of Time

In a fit of, "what if I need to wear not-pants after I move?" I tried on a skirt that I bought in college.  I wore it to run box office for Rocky Horror, and may have worn it once more.  It looks better on me today than it did when I was 20.  I think I feel better about myself than I have since I was 19.

I have four days.  There are a million things I haven't done.  I will do them.... Tomorrow.

When I sit down and think about it, I know everything is going to be OK.  Because even if it isn't, I have the power to make it OK.  I've done it before, I can do it again.

I've committed myself to two projects: Instagram the experience for people in Iowa who will care for approximately a week and a half, play a D&D campaign run by the only friend I know I have in the city.  I'm going to wind up owing him a lot, I think.  Both of these are part of a larger commitment to learn the city and make friends.  Say yes.  A lot.

I'd like to write.  Actually write.  For the theatre?  Except not by myself and not a script.  ...I want to *make* theatre, but writing's the most valuable contribution I can make to that process until I stop being a chicken.

Burr's willing to wait for it.  Hamilton's running out of time.  I like to think that I vacillate between the two of them, but, I'm not.  Neither am I Angelica.  I'm...  tense.  My jaws, my shoulders, my thighs- it's pretty bad.  If I relax, do I lose my grip on myself?  Do I give in to the voices telling me this is stupid?  Maybe.

This! Is! Athens!

My best friend marvels at my ability to travel.  "I don't know anybody who packs as light as you do," he says.  If I can't carry it, I don't need it that badly.  For 5-7 days (in the urban wilds of Toronto, because let's be honest, camping would look a little different), I pack in a regular school backpack and the WWII musette bag that I use as my usual bag- clothes in the backpack, everything else in the bag.  It's great, I don't have to check a bag and I can maneuver public transportation in rush hour without being that asshole with the enormous bag.  Wheelie bags with handles are great in airports.  That is the only place they are great.  

Moving struck me as a challenge.  This time, the laptop has to come, and so should at least two pairs of shoes, clothes for all weather and possibly towels.  The usual bags were not going to suffice, but the ability to manouever by myself was imperative.  The largest bag I could find, without wheels, that fit within Greyhound's luggage requirements and carries like a backpack was a GI duffle.  I went down to the army surplus store to check it out.  Normally, I need to visit a product in person before I buy it (this is the specific reason that I don't own any very expensive sex toys, too).  The shop was out of almost every single type of bag when I went to look, but since the price was ten bucks less than the list price online before shipping, and even that was a lower price than I'd seen on any normal civilian travel bag, cheapness beat out.  

While waiting for it to come in, I've been assuming that the total capacity would be something on the lines of a laundry basket.  I picked it up this afternoon.  I can fit two queen sized blankets and two pillows in there and it's still not packed full.  I've been collecting cookie boxes from work for the last two weeks (they're brilliant, they're about 12X7X9, which means that they're cheap to ship and even a five year old can carry them around) and assuming that I was going to need more than ten, but if I can get a full wardrobe in that bag, all I have to pack are some kitchen stuff and heavy winter stuff.  This is good.  

It feels like this is going to work.  

Show Me the Money Shot

One of the least desirable things about the men I have sometimes sexted was their need to send me a picture of their cum.  They all seemed to accept that I wasn't going to send them anything, and respected when I said that I did not need or want to see their dicks, but somehow, most of them would wind up sending me that photograph.  

Was I supposed to praise this?  Was I supposed to be turned on by this?  I'm about as thrilled by ejaculate as anyone who has ever tried to clean glue out of a paintbrush might be- aka not at all.  It's thick, slippery, difficult to clean up and it smells pretty bad.  

A friend explained that it's sort of like proof of pleasure.  This still didn't make much sense, unless you've beaten a personal distance record or filled a Dixie cup, or something, I'm not sure what the motivation is to share this achievement.  

Until today, reading an article about the history of money shots.  I don't watch video porn.  I'm not a voyeur and the idea of watching other people have sex doesn't do anything much for me at all.  So I've seen less than an hour's worth of typical porn.  Turns out, this is a trope in porn to signify orgasm, pulling out and cumming on someone's face.  I can definitely understand how someone could construe that this was important to share.  

I've not explicitly mentioned that I've been screwing around with a poly guy online.  I don't know what else to call it, but screwing around is pretty accurate.  It's fun and keeps me off balance in more ways than one.  

Today, I raised a concern that relates to my ex.  I should have realised when I couldn't bring myself to say, "I don't want to think that I'm preventing someone else who deserves it more from the opportunity to experience your orgasms," that probably I didn't need to say it, but, I'm not there yet.  

My ex-husband frequently indicated he didn't want anything to do with me physically.  I always accepted this, reluctantly, thinking, "OK, he doesn't want to do anything, he's tired, he works hard, that's fine, I am mature enough to handle this, I will check in with him next week."  Today, I pose the question to the poly guy, "I'm not preventing you from having sex with anybody else?"  And it hits me like a sack of bricks.  Of course not.  I don't even need his answer; as soon as I asked the question, I knew that's not even the situation.  The idea that his orgasm is the only reason to be sexual with somebody else must be incredibly foreign to him.  And it was.  

Nickels and Dimes

I haven't even left yet, and I'm lonely.  Tonight, I was talking to a friend in Canada and another in LA and realising that even these two relationships are going to change.  Everything is going to change, entropy demands it, but this time is going to be faster and more thorough than others.

I spent what would have been my 11th wedding anniversary sitting in a park in Toronto deciding to move to New York.  Thirty days on, that decision will have been acted on so thoroughly that I will probably have to spend it in a park in New York simply for the symbolism.

Three months ago, I spent 6am in Times Square, and 24 hours later, I was at Younge and Dundas.  A place like that, when you're almost the only one in it, and the screens repeat and the sun rises, feels small.  That was the first bookend; the moment in Toronto, frustrated as always at trying to figure out how to make public transportation work for me when I am too tired to function, when I thought, "You can do this.  You got on a bus to New York City yesterday and went there.  You can get on a bus to go another couple miles.  You drove all the way from Iowa.  In a car.  That you just bought because you didn't die on the way up here.  How did you become the kind of person these things *happen* to?"

A friend said, later, when I mentioned this, "You mean how did you become the kind of person who does things like that?"  She has a point, but I still feel like all my decisions are the result of being pushed in the right direction, and I always feel like I stand still for too long.

It's June, but feels like the end of August with 90 degree days and 60 degree nights.  Summer nights smell like irresponsibility; all of the leftover scents of the day under cooling asphalt and dew.  In August, add the sense that time is rapidly slipping away.  And so it is.  In June.

The Greatest City in the World?

I think it's relatively well-established that I am not in to food, alcohol, night life, spending money, crowds, or cities.  So of course I am moving to New York City.

Why?  Well.  I have to go someplace if I want to even have a chance at doing the kind of work I'd like to do.  Anywhere else in the world requires dealing with traffic or crossing an international border, so New York it is.

I'm giving myself three months to find a job.  If I can't do that, I'll move back home in the fall and apply for grad schools.  If I can't do that...  I'll admit defeat and get a shitty job and live in Iowa for the rest of my life and admit that, no, I don't have what it takes to be an artist, and the best I can be is unhappy.

Hopefully, I can find something to stay solvent, spend the summer learning the city and get a tour guide license, which should make me more employable or possibly even self-employable.  The sheer number of museums and theatres means that I have plenty of opportunities to turn in applications, so eventually, someone might be interested in hiring me.

Actually, with the knowledge that I am probably absolutely going to hate living there, this will be the push I need to get me to apply to everything in Canada.