Seperate parties
Aside: If I don't have internet service restored at the apartment when I get home, I'm gonna be pissed. The bank finally sent me a new ATM card, but since Verizon was deducting using the other one like a credit card, they couldn't get their money for the DSL service, and as a result, it got yanked for non-payment. Give them the new number, and now I can check my email from work, but somehow it takes a couple of days to reconnect my actual access. Like I don't know that it's all electronically switched and this is totally punitive.

So. Obsessive readers, if I have any, might note that I didn't make any comment on my birthday last week except to mention that I stumbled on some interesting reading (I found another cross-sex body swap, in a manga called Indian Summer, but it was practically incomprehensible). Well, Martin's birthday. Sort of. I suppose when you get right down to it, it's the anniversery of the date when a person with the continuity of experiences that I call my own took its first breath, but that's a pretty cumbersome definition.

Basically, aside from being Groundhog Day, February 2nd, 1974 has significance to me because I consder it significant, which is completely circular logic (and a tight little circle it is), but the lack of remark doesn't mean I've done the arguably sensible thing and disregarded it; I just wound up not doing anything on that day in particular. Everyone has to work during the week, so we put it off until Saturday.

"Everyone' in this case was me, Wei, Chris, Kurt, Denise, and Maggie. My Martin-friends. Not that I really want to draw a line between the people who first met "me" as Martin and those who first met me when I was using Michelle's name, but the divide is there. I guess it makes sense in this instance, since what does Martin Hartle's birthday mean to Kate, Jen, Carlos, Maureen, and Telly? And what should it? I should probably just get everyone to agree to July 19th, but old habits die hard.

Mags and Kurt had obviously gotten diferent ideas about bringing significant others, which is funny, because you'd think Kurt bringing Denise to his ex's birthday party would be significantly more uncomfortable than Maggie bringing her current boyfriend. She kind of got into it, though. "So, how old are you?" "Thirty-one." "Wow, you look five years younger." Okay, it's kind of a lame joke, but we laughed. And not just because we're at a bar and drinking.

She quizzes me a little, like, so, tell me, what's the difference between what Kurt says and what he does, if I know what she means. Oh, I do, and let me tell you, Kurt didn't even bring up the subject of some of the freaky things he used to say he did all the time when he had me in bed. Which was fine with me, because, man, I was terrified at first that he was going to want me to...

At this point Kurt loudly said that no good could come of that conversation, and we all laughed, and Denise said, that was what she thought. But, really, Marti, up front, who has it better, men or women?

"Oh, there's one I've never heard before." More laughter. And I say it's different depending on the partner, and, no, I won't get into whether Kurt or Maggie is a better lover. I do say that all you guys who have only experienced it from one side really are missing out, that you're not realizing what a singular experience each perspective it is, and I feel kind of blessed to have been able to experience both. So, I'll evade this one by saying that the continuum of how good sex can be for a man and how good it can be for a woman overlap, almost totally, though my best sexual experience ever as a man hasn't quite been matched yet. But, then, neither has my worst. Unless you count puking on Carlos/Alexei's unit, but that was sort of a non-experience, right?

Kurt's declaring that this party was a really bad idea, while Wei points out that she's pretty sure Stephen Park would like to see if he could change my mind. Anyway, we eat, we see a movie (because these guys do know me pretty well), and I get a few gag gifts.

The next night at Jen's was, of course, completely different people, because my Martin-friends aren't Jen's friends, so they don't get invited to Jen's and Carlos's Super Bowl party. Jen fake-grumps that she wishes Carlos would make detective or local teams would stop making it into the playoffs, because she'd like to throw one of these parties with her husband not on crowd-control duty.

I spent most of the game talking with Kate because, well, we both liked the people more than the football. I asked her if she'd talked to Alan, and she said no, not yet, but she would this week, honest. And, hey, it's not like I'd talked to that doctor I mentioned meeting New Year's Eve. I asked if she and Wei were in cahoots or something, but she said no, she just wanted to be able to double-date if things did start happening with Alan. Besides, the whole "I don't want to date until I can just be the girl in the relationship" was the second-dumbest thing she'd run across this year. It had been in first, but just yesterday (Saturday was a really nice day in New England; melted something like a third or a half of the snow) she'd seen someone standing in the middle of the frozen Charles in his shorts. Honestly, if you think it's warm enough to wear shorts, then maybe, just maybe, you shouldn't bank on the ice remaining solid. Even trying to figure out how to date without actually dating wasn't that lacking in common sense.

Fine, I said, I may call him sometime. Geez, I say, between Denise reminding me how long it's been since I've had sex and you reminding me how long since someone's bought me dinner, my friends have done a number on my self-esteem this weekend.

And then the Pats won. Yay.

-Martina
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