Coming back to reality after the White Party was a little difficult. Four days of light-heartedness, desert breezes and sensuality is hard to top, so returning to office-work, bills and routine felt anti-climactical.

I haven't talked about work in a long while, primarily because it's been going quite smoothly and there has been so many other things to talk about. I've been on the same project for months now, and it's gone very well. The only major development mentioning is that I'm pitching for promotion this year. There's only one reachable spot above me, and it's a hard position to get to - a Principal Applications Developer. There are only a handful of them in the entire consulting division of the comp ou have to be somewhat political in order to claim one of those spots, since the promotions are decided by a management team from across the company, most of whom won't have heard of you unless you've managed to get yourself on the radar screen. So I king hard, along with support from my boss, to be involved in visible projects.

My general level of satisfaction with the job has improved enormously over the last year. Being on a long-term project has helped, since it keeps boredom at bay. A change in my attitude has also played a part, since I realized that I really was in hy 9-4 job in a stable company, which gave me the time and resources to pursue film-making in my ample spare time. But a large part of it has also been the job satisfaction that comes from being appreciated as a "performer". I hope it pays the end of the year with the promotion. If it doesn't, I'll really have to leave the company, assuming the job market picks up, since I can't afford to go another year without advancing. I don't want my resume to look as if I'm in a rut.

On Wednesday, in my acting class, we filmed a scene from my most recent screenplay. It was a scene where Jackson's (the protagonist) roommate Scottie comes home to find a dead body in Jackson's bed. Since there were no other men in the class, I ha ewrite the scene to make Jackson a woman (Jackie), and I played the part of Scottie.

It was my first real acting since grad school, fifteen years ago, and it was tough. The opening of the scene was the hardest, since I'm alone. I have to walk into the room and see, with shock, the dead body covered in a bloody sheet. I think it's , and so I'm shocked and grief-stricken. I just don't have the training to know how to pull that off, so I felt I was kind of floundering for this part of the scene. But then Jackie appears with a towel around her head, fresh from cleaning off in the oom, and I realize she's still alive. I rush up and hug her (which doesn't exactly come naturally to me), and the rest of the scene is spent dealing with her shock (she'd killed the guy on the bed in self-defense). What I loved was the interaction - reat fun to be in a scene with somebody else and be in the moment, responding to what they do, the look on their face, the actions they take.

My lack of ability for the opening part of the scene has me considering taking a beginning class. I think I need to get back to basics. I originally took up acting classes in order to improve my understanding of how to direct actors. But now I'm g such a kick from it that I'm interested in pursuing it for its own sake. Don't know how I'll fit all that in along with writing and preparing to make another movie, but I guess it will sort itself out. I know I just got through telling myself a few ago to simplify my life, but I'm not sure I really know how to do that.

On Friday night, I went out dancing with my club buddy Stephen. We started off at the Stud, which has a night called "Cheap Trick" every Friday. It turned out to be not quite our scene, since we prefer men who use deoderant, but it was nice to run into a guy I haven't talked to in years, who also turned out to be the host of Cheap Trick. I'd met him the first time I'd visited San Francisco, when I was a very young twenty-three. With great trepidation, I'd arranged for the straight friends I was staying with to drop me off at the Stud. I still remember what I was wearing that night - a paisley shirt, and a red cardigan. Oh Lord. This sexy New Yorker started chatting with me, and I told him it was my birthday (which it was), and the evening ended with him taking me home to his flat in the Haight where, for the first time, I had three orgasms in one night. I was flat ready to fall in love with him, but it was only in the morning that he revealed he had a boyfriend, and that they were leaving on vacation for Mexico that very day. It was one of the first steps in my education. Now, fifteen or so years later, he's still a goodlooking guy. In fact, he really doesn't look any older than he was when I met him.

After the Stud, this past Friday, Stephen and I moved on to the Endup for their venerable "Fag Friday". I don't go out with the express intention of meeting anybody, which is probably why I'm enjoying it so much. Yet I do seem to be meeting a lot of men lately, and it happened again at the Endup. I met a lithe, sexy Asian guy from Sydney. We spent the night together, but it was an oddly dispassionate affair. I realized in the morning as I drove him to the place he was staying, that it's been so long since I've been having one night affairs, I'd forgotten that they don't all set your heart on fire. It felt kind of like an empty experience, a feeling which left me mildly depressed for the rest of the weekend. In some ways, I'm relearning old lesssons, I guess, even now.