(no subject)

minnaleigh and I went to the pride festival in DC today to leaflet for Howard Dean. We had two hundred half-sheet flyers emphasizing Dean's gay rights positions. They were gone in about fifteen minutes. I totally underestimated how many we'd need. Yay!

Things you find when you're packing.

1. The hospital bill from my hip replacement. Not counting the bills from the surgeon and the anesthetist, which were sent separately, it came to $20,055.30, of which I was obliged to pay $593.09 myself. I find that in 1997 a single morphine injection cost $42.39, which seems high given the street price of heroin. Operating room time cost $14.50 per minute after an initial base charge of $688.50. My artificial hip itself was billed in several pieces - the stem cost $4,375, the head $711, and the acetabular cup $1,875. The whole melange was held together with screws ranging in price from $135-$405. I was also charged for three "space suit sterile view gowns," which at $275.25 were each nearly as expensive as my wedding dress ($315). Fascinating.

2. A Lesbian Avengers flyer, written by me. It's protesting a bill that would have made it illegal for an unmarried woman to be artificially inseminated. Excerpt: "The only thing Kevin Mannix's bill accomplishes is to make it illegal to have a baby without first having sex with a man. Having a baby is a very private thing. How a woman gets pregnant is none of Kevin's business. Why is it so important to Kevin that would-be mothers have sex with men? Kevin Mannix: He's not pro-family, he's pro-penis." Okay, I know, but give me a break. I was only twenty.

3. My first love letter from Michael. He left it on the table in my apartment after he'd been up to visit me for a week. I'm not quoting from this one, but reading it still brings tears of joy to my eyes.

4. The menu for our wedding. I remember nothing about the food, except that I kept taking one bite of cake and putting the piece down, and then the next time I looked it would be gone. I see that we had smoked salmon, grilled brie on pesto, cold poached shrimp, fresh melon and berries, spicy Duxelle meatballs, petite quiches, seafood stuffed mushrooms, and cake. Okay. I hope it was good.

5. A picture of my ex, Lane. She'd dramatically asked for all my pictures of her back, so I thought I didn't have any anymore. Finding this one was a bit of a shock. It's a great picture - we were on the teacups at Disneyland, and she's grinning madly and her hair is flying all over the place. I don't want to keep it, though. I gave it to Michael and he threw it away for me.

6. My personal suicide note from Hilary. Hilary was my girlfriend when I was nineteen. She left a general suicide note to the world, but she also wrote some personal letters. The note's paper-clipped in to the journal I was keeping at the time. The day before she died, I had just started my journal up again after a gap of several months, and I wrote, "Hilary just called, really depressed. She says transitions are hard for her." I'm not going to quote from the suicide note either. I'll just say that it was loving.

I don't know what makes me save some things. The momentous stuff, sure. But why do I still have address labels for my last apartment in Iowa?