Brooklyn Bound For Good

I walked my ass all over Brooklyn yesterday with Cornelia but we are now the proud renters of the top floor of a house on the southwest side of Prospect Park. We are just a four-minute walk from the park, and I can spit at the F train station. It's pretty much expensive, but I'm just glad I was able to save some money.

The bad news is that I may have to stay in New York all summer in order to work. I was looking forward to a 30th birthday party, too, but sometimes ya just gotta do what ya gotta do. Anyway, we have a lot of windows; a full kitchen in which to microwave my mac and cheese; there is a sliding-glass door that leads to basically the roof of the owners' livingroom. So we have a place to bake this summer. I'm taking the big room because Cornelia is basically a poor foreigner and so I'm paying $100 more. But it's still about $150 cheaper than this pit I'm in now.

Yes, I now just despise it here and can't wait for three weeks when I move out. What else? The walls are painted different colors. There's a built-in shelf for me television, which is nice. All in all, we're both really excited and we're gonna make it work. It actually feels like a home, so this'll be fun. And the best thing is I'll have a huge-ass room in NYC. I'll take pictures.

It's nice because the guy had an appointment to show the place today and still negotiated with us. We -- actually Cornelia -- talked him into having us pay the second security deposit in September. We each basically have to pay one full month's rent security so now we have to just pay half. It helps. So he likes us.

And he likes that we devote our time to studying and he's not doing a credit check. So he's actually crazy but we'll prove in no time to be financially trustworthy young women. We looked at another place yesterday but the woman was a bit strange. Cornelia believes she was a drug addict at one point in her life. I have no basis on which to judge such things so I couldn't concur. And the fact that it was across the street from the projects wasn't cool, either. The neighborhood is Crown Heights. Speaking of neighborhoods, my new one is called Windsor Terrace. Fancy schmancy.

I haven't been much into talking about school this semester. I'm not sure why. It could be that I really wasn't too into my classes. I'm more into the fact that I decided what I have a passion for academically, which is a scary thought. I find myself engaged in conversations on a daily basis about obliterating identity categories and the hierarchy inherent in their existence. For my gender class, I'm writing a paper on the historical development of transgenderism. I'm at the end of page four right now. I'm establishing the gender binary and from there will take parts of my conference paper to set up the move away generally from a hierarchical model of gender existence. At this point, I will bring in those individuals -- transgendered -- who challenge the binary by failing to fall into the strict categories of "masculine" and "feminine."

This will give me a chance to spend some more time on the gender issue, which is something I didn't get to do in my conference paper. Speaking of which, that paper is what I'm turning in for my culture class. Of course I'll expand on it; I'll probably be able to use some of my research for my gender paper in it. Also, I'll spend more time establishing what I just mentioned: the hierarchies inherent in identity categories.  Let's see, what else?

My feminist political theory paper will be the hardest because I've decided, with the encouragement of the professor, to do a close reading of Butler's Gender Trouble. She's up there with Hegel in terms of difficulty, although I'm sure some will scoff at the comparison. She's the butt of many criticisms for her "bad" writing, as she is notorious for her unnecessarily complex sentences and useless repetitions of the same idea. My hero. I saw Erin on Friday. Sac dwellers will be happy to know that she will be brandishing an apron once again and working full time at Cafe Bernardo's (at least that's what she said Friday) and living somewhere in midtown. So I encourage you to seek her out and have a fun summer.

This will most likely be her last summer in the area because she's about to break out. I'm going to her play next Friday night. It's opening night. And best of all, I get to go to the cast party. Once again, I will be around young actors and alcohol. I will try to be better at updating. Something strange is going on with Blogger but hopefully it will calm down soon. It's getting crunch time with school. We have I think four weeks left. But soon, I will have completed one year of grad school. I'm not quite sure how I feel about that. I miss a regular paycheck. But I think this may have been a good move for me. Will I go on immediately to a doctorate -- if at all. I sure as hell hope not. But there's something in me that's curious about the programs out there. I don't know. I've got some time.