Changing looks.

I changed my hair again. Or, um, I changed it back. Basically, I put back in the highlights that I had in it earlier this year, when I decided I was at my personal cutest, and I kept it longer so that it looks perpetually disheveled. Laura, my hairdresser, looked at it for a while, told me that she'd fallen in love with it and said it seemed Billy Idol-ish. That made me laugh.

It was Saturday. I'd opened the bookstore at 7 in the morning. I hadn't shaved in four days, and I looked terrible. My clothes were all wrinkled. But I'd decided, instead of going home and taking a nap, that I would get my hair color done. I was going to Larry's annual Christmas party that night, and I wanted to look good.

While I was sitting in the salon, there was another guy there dying his hair and goatee strawberry blonde. He and I kept exchanging glances, and I would make a face each time I looked down at something frightening in the DETAILS magazine I was reading. And he would look at me. After a bit, it was sorta obvious.

When my hair was done, Laura and the receptionist girl told me that I looked really good. The receptionist girl predicted that the hair and the attitude that the hair contained would get me four dates. At least four, she said.

I told her I'd test her theory. I wrote my phone number down on a piece of paper, and I approached Mr. Strawberry Blonde, whose face and hair was still coated in chemicals.

Holding the piece of paper in my hand, I said, "I'm going, but I'm curious how your hair is going to turn out. Would you like to meet me for coffee at Starbucks when you get done?"

"Sure," Mr. Strawberry Blonde said. "The one inside the mall?"

"It's outside the mall, across the street," I said. I put my phone number back in my pocket. I didn't even have the guy's name. He didn't have mine. But he met me for coffee about 45 minutes later.

Mr. Strawberry Blonde's name is Matt. And his color looked great. We sat for maybe another 45 minutes, just chatting. He's a biologist. He lives in Buford, near the lake. He's 25-ish. He's a bit heavyset, and he's sarcastic.

I'm supposed to call him this week. Or he'll call me. I don't know.

I went home. I bathed. I shaved. I changed clothes. I went to the party, arriving late.

The last time I'd seen Larry's crowd all together was at the Halloween Wine and Cheese party, and the whole group's started looking, I don't know, differently at me this year. I think it's because I've done two readings for them. But I'm not sure.

One of the Davids said hello at the party. He actually talks to me now, even though I've known him for years. Though he's still older than me, He's the dorky cute, youngest one of the Davids (of which there are 17), and I've noticed him before. Usually, all attempts to chat with him come off awkward and forced. Since the readings, that one of the Davids, I don't know, regards me. I mean, he's not attracted to me. It's something else. It's like Larry's always had me around at parties and such, and that one of the Davids finally realized why I was around, that I was nice enough, smart enough and talented enough to be more than a kid. That one of the Davids is being nicer to me now. I'm attracted to him, but I'm trying - however unsuccessfully - to never, ever, ever act on it.

(That one of the Davids had carpal tunnel at the party. I tried massaging his wrist, since I'm good at massages in general. All I can say, it wasn't as odd as it could have been, but it was odd enough to come across as sorta obvious flirtation. At one point, he told me that, if I wanted to get sick to avoid work the next day, I should go for something "harder than wine." I asked him what hard thing I should try. He missed the joke. And I, unable to escape it, had to explain it. He said, "Oh." But it didn't really matter, I guess, because I was still had highlights, and I was wearing a cute sweater and my geek-rock eyeglasses. So we talked some more. He made no note of my obvious, embarassing attempts at flirtation. I walked him out to his car later and told him to have a good holiday. I saw him tonight at the "Angels in America" screening. He was nice again. When I went out to the patio alone, though, I think I made eye contact with him as I was shutting the glass door. He thinks I like him. He thinks I'm up to something, and I'm guessing he can picture what it is he thinks I want. And he'd really rather not, and I know that even without asking him. So I've got to stop that. Soon. I want a friend. I don't want a problem.)

Ever since my second reading for Larry's group, when I did "Circle," I have to admit that it's been easier to talk with those people. Once you open up the darker aspects of your past to strangers, showing that you have layers and that there are reasons behind why you act the weird way you do, people suddenly become more willing to look at you as something more than "Larry's juvenile trophy-ish ex-boyfriend who thinks he's being funny." (Larry never treated me like that. That's why we're still friends. Yes, at 21, I was cute and young, but I understood and quoted John Donne, which made me worth talking to.)

Also at the Saturday Christmas party, another person who'd heard me read, this guy who's married to another one of the Davids, talked to me for a long time, howling at my jokes.

I'd actually said hello to him when I walked into the party, but, when he approached me during the party, he clarified who he was. He said that I probably thought he was just "some random guy hitting on you when you walked in the door." I replied, "Why would I think anyone was hitting on me?" He laughed. Then he told me that he'd referenced something I said at the last party in a conversation he'd had just that week. (I'd said at the last party, in response to someone saying they'd seen a good parody of performance art, "Considering performance art, how can you tell if you're watching a parody?") Then we talked about other stuff.

The David Spouse and I were talking for such a long time, in fact, about embarrassing moments, our mutual former careers in arts journalism and other stuff, that the spousal David left us talking there for a bit. The David Spouse was interesting. He'd interviewed Quincy Jones and Kenny G when he worked for a jazz magazine. He spent some time teaching in Colombia.

They were both at "Angels in America" tonight, as well, and the guy married to the David smiled big when he saw me.

Before the reading, when we sat across from each other, they used to see me at parties all the time. (I think I once saw a stripper gyrate across them at one of the Pride functions.) We'd never talked much before. At all. And, even then, it was polite.

I look different to these people now. All of them. I feel different, to myself, since I moved to the city. Since I started the blog. Since I finished the High School Reunion book. Since I did readings at two of Larry's parties.

But I have work tomorrow, and I need to go to sleep. And I still found myself attracted to a 17-year-old boy in spite of myself this morning. So, as you can tell with that and with that one David, I'm still capable of huge, dumb moves when it comes to flirting. (I like the ones who browse in the foreign film section and then touch me on my shoulder to say, "Thank you," before leaving the store.) And I'm sleeping alone tonight, and that's fine. And I have credit card debt and bills to pay, and that's pretty much fine. And these gay people aren't the end all-be all, and I don't really need their approval to get on with my life.

But it's a neat feeling And it's different. (That will be my last comment on it before my head swells and I become unbearable.)

They look at me, and they notice that I'm there.