sab

No, really. Fucked.

I just got a letter from the Unemployment people saying that because I left my job due to believing the "conditions were intolerable," I am not eligible to collect benefits. ETA: unless I return to said job, earn $1290 more, and reapply for unemployment, apparently. WHY WHY WHY?

I have to pay rent in ten days.

I have to write a pilot in six weeks. I enrolled in this class BECAUSE I would be collecting unemployment.

I'm SO FUCKED.

*

Also, wearemany, I got the following from the DWP: "your recent electronic check payment has been returned to us unpaid due to an incorrect bank account number."

*

And here's a note from Bobby Kennedy Jr, asking for donations for the NRDC.

*

I am sheerly and profoundly fucked beyond the telling of it. Does someone want my bedroom? If you need me, I'll be sleeping under a stranger's car.

this puts me in mind of a story.

I was doing the friday puzzle this morning and the theatre listings told me Nana Visitor'd taken over Bebe Neuwirth's role in "Chicago," a bona-fide star turn, they said or something equally promising.

so I spent the last couple hours on the TKTS line, and now Shana and I have orch seats, single P. I checked with three separate people: "there haven't been any cast changes, right?"

anyway, this puts me in mind of a story, quick before I have to shower and motor up to Times Square.

I was in her fan club, the early one in the early days of the web. they called it ENVY (get it?). they might still. We made a recipe book and we invented Star Trek food. we heard it first when she and Sid named the kid Django. I paid my dues.

so it was the summer of, 199somethingorother, I was living w/SKL et al in her folks' house while they were away, and I talked my dad into lending me the car and letting me take it up to Worcester, MA for the weekend, my first real stay-overnight Star Trek con. NV was due to be there, the ENVY crew descended from across the eastern seaboard.

and they all came in uniform, with noses stuck on and those chain earrings, and I was a little spooked, at 7 am when they banged on my hotel room door, the ENVY troupe, so we could go stand on line.

Spooked, because these people didn't know me, and I was just a fangirl in a fanclub, teetering, so easy to fall in. I could have just fallen in.

breeze through the con, because it's not important except for the bit where NV actually didn't SHOW, but at the end, midafternoon on the second day, this thing.

They did a Voyager montage on the big screen, action clips, you know how they do, with closeups and running and phaser blasts, and Janeway in that grey tank top, hammering out across the conference hall of the Worcester Hilton or Marriott or whatever, banging out to the royal Beach Boys version of Sloop John B.

It knocked me out again, later, at the end of the Sports Night ep "Sword of Orion," Danny and Rebecca in a long shot, with the tape, wandering off to the Beach Boys Sloop John B.

and it was because. Because it would have been so easy for me to fall in, then. Fall in, and then next time I'd be the one in the uniform and the nose and the Bajoran earring, I was so close already.

what's the line between being a fangirl and being obsessed? what was I so afraid of? Now, years later, after a college thesis on fan culture, am I still?

because there were TEARS in my eyes watching the montage on the big screen, and the Beach Boys singing "call for the captain ashore, let me go home, I wanna go home..."

There were TEARS in my eyes, and I beelined to the bouncer and said KICK ME OUT, send me home, I can't stay here. one more minute and I'm done for, because I love this song, this show, this culture and community, and I am TEETERING, I will FALL IN and you won't be able to get me out, KICK ME OUT, SEND ME HOME.

and he just laughed, because he thought I was crazy. But there were tears in my eyes and I pushed open the door and it was hot as hell outside and I could still hear it, "I wanna go home, let me go home, this is the worst trip I've ever been on..."

I didn't renew my membership to ENVY, though my recipe for Hasperrat's still on record somewhere, testimonial to the days when I was just that close.

Now? later? now that I've found fanfic, and you people, these people? is it better? more respectable? safer?

Did I miss something, not falling in? did I fall without looking?

So I'm off to see NV in "Chicago" tonight with Shana, who understands. Still, I have a hard time hearing "Sloop John B," and still, I'm not sure where I fit in to all this, where the competition is, why I want to be the MOST, the BEST, somewhere between that and wanting to chuckle, heh, no, that'll never be me.

And when I go to conventions now, I make sure I bring my irony with me.