Love is a really strange and beautiful and sad creature isn't it?

I didn't really think much of Valentine's day this year. I don't really buy into the "magic" of holidays. Most "magical" days happen on regular old normal work days. Like last week when I got the commercial.

I think I spent the V-day doing really mundane stuff. It was Saturday so I woke up when the tamale lady was screaming in my driveway. I bought her out pretty much of all her cheese tamales. And ate two tamales for breakfast.

Later that day, I subbed this drama class for little kids. The kids are working on "Annie." This one kid had total ADD and was jumping up and down and kept getting out of his seat and repeating the same stuff to me. It's funny how you can't get kids that age to do improvs about being in love or saying things like "I like you" to someone.

Then what did I do next? I went down to Visual Communications to get a copy of "Beat the Bus" dubbed onto Beta SP for the NAATA film fest in SF. Me and Abe, who works there, went down to Chinatown and bought cheap dim sum from a bakery. We got so much food for $11. I said to Abe, "Thanks for being my Valentine's lunch date."

Then I went home, futzed around on the computer, then me and my friend Yayoi went to see Top Dog/ Under Dog at the Taper. Then I went to see my friend Rochelle's show at Highways. I ate chocolate in the lobby and made myself a little sick.

When I was home, my friend Jocelyn wrote me that our friends Howard and Efren got married. San Francisco has been handing out gay marriage licenses all weekend as the new mayor's response to Bush's reiteration of his anti gay marriage stance. Way to go!

The last time I was in SF and I asked Efren if gay marriage was legalized, would he go ahead and do it. He was kind of whatever about it, mostly because we all knew him and Howard would be together forever regardless of a marriage license.

I think its funny how anti-gay marriage advocates say that allowing gays to marry would ruin the sacredness of marriage but marriage seems to be desecrated anyway by straight people like Britney Spears who get married, then divorce for shock value.

I guess it wasn't all that surprising that SF would do this, until I realized that there was a huge difference between domestic partnership and marriage licenses. Howard and Efren decided to take part in something historical and get married. And dressed in their best jeans and t-shirts went down and waited for four hours at city hall to get married. Howard even got french fries while they were in line because they got so hungry. And I really began to think about how amazing it was that Efren and Howard could actually take part in something so historical.

They got a lot of press. Some of it is right here. A lot of attention because both of them are very active in the API community. Plus they were one of the few Asian couples getting married that day.

I kind of got teary reading about it. I take so much for granted that I can just marry a man any time if I wanted to. (Though I don't want to get married these days. EVER.) It was so beautiful to hear that so many people were given the opportunity to be treated like everyone else for one weekend, to be given the right to love who they want forever, and that they were so well supported by onlookers who draped them with gifts after. I am so proud that San Francisco did this and that my hometown is San Francisco. And that this is what I come from.

Segue.

I kinda went out with a lesbian tonight. We kept joking that it was a date which made me think... is this a date? We drove to Malibu and ate Jack in the Box on the beach at 2AM. She's got short hair and she's really short. But very cute. Like a bunny rabbit. And she's 30 but she looks like a little girl. I kept joking with her, "If I actually did something with you, I wouldn't be able to look at kids the same way."

She opened doors for me and put a shirt out for me to sit on so that I didn't get sand on my butt. She paid for my food. She helped carry the food onto the beach. She listened to me talk about everything. We sat on top of a lifeguard station and she laughed at all my jokes. We were going to get our palms read by a psychic who had a storefront by the shore, but the psychic wasn't home. I got all nervous for some reason around her all night. And she would put me at ease with her words and gentle pats on the arm. Then we hugged goodbye for a nice long time and we said let's see each other again. She was a total... gentleman?

So of course the thoughts of "is this a date?" made me think "am I a lesbian?" or "Am I bi?" and "Does this mean I have to start doing shows about being bi?" and "Do I get to march in the parade now?"

You gotta understand, I grew up in San Francisco at a time where it almost became trendy to come out as bi-- at least as a woman. Or have a gay guy friend. Though for some reason it was not cool to be full out lesbian, or be the actual gay guy who made the girls who hung around you cool. There were people coming out all over the place during this brief span of high school, and I swear to you, some of them were not really bi! There's this one gal, who I believe to this day is not bi, but instead is really really trendy. I kinda don't pay much attention to my sexuality. I don't check off "straight," "gay," or "bi"-- I always write-in "open" or check "decline to state" and figure I will figure it out when I figure it out. I thought I was bi for sure in college when I was totally fascinated by this girl named Alia who had tattoos and piercings all over the place, and drove this cool VW van-- but later realized it was just fascination and I just wanted to be her. My friend Paul, who's in his 50's now was married twice and has a kid, started dating men because that's what he felt like doing at the later stages of his life.

Sexuality is a constantly evolving thing.

Anyway, so I did ask her, "This isn't a date right?"

She said, "No, it's not a date because you haven't come out yet and you can't come out without having written a letter and having a party."

Hmmm.....

something to ponder,

kristina