Auburn, NY

May 22, 2015May 22, 2015 ~ Elliott

Yesterday we went to Auburn with the objective of me giving a reading at an open-mic-style event for writers. As I often do, I got cold feet as it got closer to the time to go. We still drove out there anyway and gave it a try. There was a very small, homogeneous crowd of people who I felt awkward sharing my writing with. I didn’t feel like outing myself to a room of about five middle-aged to old, cis and straight appearing people. I don’t mean to be prejudice or stereotype, it just wasn’t comfortable for me facing the unknown. And I hate small crowds. It’s much more awkward than a large one. My social anxiety has been pretty nasty lately.

After we left, we went to a place called Emerson Park. Joey took some photography, and I took some phone photography, which actually works better for me than the DSLR camera. We were on Owasco Lake. It was nice out, and I had taken some Klonopin to relax for the reading, so I was pretty chilled out. I played on a playground and we looked at the water. We stayed til dusk. Now I am back in Syracuse, in the Valley at a coffee house I’ve never been to before. I find it kind of funny that it’s called The Broadway Cafe because this is sort of the middle of nowhere and definitely not anything like Broadway. Oh my GOD I am craving a cigarette. I have this ecig thing but it just isn’t cutting it today.

I am mostly trying to keep this particular blog about my travels and not a lot of self-reflection. I save that for my other writing. But if it leaks out time and again, that’s fine. I can’t wait to get our motor-home and just be on the road all the time. I’m not sure how much longer that will take. I’m ready though. Then these posts will start getting more interesting.

So next trip is to Geneva, NY for the Finger Lakes Pride Festival, where I will be selling and signing my books. Here’s some info on that, if you’re interested:

The Good, the Bad, and the Funny

Finger Lakes Gift and Lounge, 60 Seneca St., Geneva, NY

May 30, 10 pm

I’ll be reading along with other local trans storytellers.

Finger Lakes Pride Festival

Seneca Street Parking Lot, Downtown, Geneva, NY

May 30, 1-7 PM

I’ll be selling and signing copies of my books as well as art. Come say hi!

Boston and Providence

April 17, 2015September 6, 2015 ~ Elliott

OK, I realized that we are headed to Connecticut and New York City tomorrow and that I need to just write this Boston post already. Oh, if you are in New York City, you should come to the Rainbow Book Fair on Saturday. I’ll be selling/signing my books and giving a reading. I’ll also be selling my artwork. Do it.

So, back to Boston. Joey had his top surgery consultation in Brookline, MA. ~~It was our best experience so far, and I believe that is the surgeon he’s going to choose. We will most likely be back in Brookline for that in June.~~ (Later note: Do not go here, they are fraudulent!) After that though, his insurance company was being awful and he spent a good couple hours arguing on the phone with them. Luckily I think that’s taken care of and they are going to cover it. Which is still fairly rare, I believe, in the U.S. But they still acted like dicks. To alleviate my stress, I took a series of pictures of Joey looking stressed. I don’t think I mentioned that he got himself a DSLR camera, so that’s been awesome to play with. I also took some pictures with the telephoto lens of geese. We were parked next to a pond. This went well for a while, but then the geese decided to charge at me, and I just barely escaped unscathed.

After the consultation we went for coffee again in Jamaica Plain at Fazenda Cafe. That’s where my reading was last time. While we were hanging out, a person came up to me and introduced themselves as one of my facebook/instagram friends named Margaret. I was like, “Oh cool,” but kinda derp, and we talked for a minute and then they left. Joey was like, “Do you want to ask them to get coffee or something?” But they were leaving and so I just shrugged it off. After dealing with all the surgery-related crap, Joey was exhausted and didn’t want to drive home. Actually, he thought about it, but I confessed that I really didn’t feel like a 4 hour car ride and we decided to just stay near Boston somewhere. Joey spent a little over an hour in the parked car trying to find a hotel deal on his phone, because he really wanted to stay in the city. I once again took photos because I was incredibly bored and impatient.

After he gave up, we went to the Midway Cafe, which is a bar and music venue. It’s where we went last time for “queereoke.” And I ended up facebook messaging Margaret, and we all hung out and watched the live music, and it was cool. We also talked about Syracuse, because Margaret is originally from Skaneateles. Skaneatles? Skaeneateles? Oh well. Upstate New York. One of the bands was called Night Slice, and they had a song about geodes (in the sun/my favorite rock formation) and mothman (he’s a mothy mothy man). I was drunk. It was fun.

The next morning, we drove to East Providence and met up with my friend Red. We went to this place he likes, Seven Stars Bakery, and we talked for a while before driving home to Syracuse.

Uploading and formatting photos is annoying, so from now on, I’m going to make a gallery on flicker and link to it. (this will be a link soon). Maybe.

So I realized I haven’t really been holding up my “cat” promise with this whole “cat road trip” thing. I promise, eventually there will be cats. Maybe in the meantime, before the actual cat road tripping, I will just post periodic updates and Mittens and Snowflake. Because otherwise, my blog really isn’t fit to call itself “Cat Road Trip.”

This is Snowflake. She loves you. This is Mittens. She hates you.

Until next time.

Albany, NY

April 11, 2015April 11, 2015 ~ Elliott

Me at Professor Java's. — Me at Professor Java’s.

Tuesday afternoon, Joey came downstairs and said, “I’m going to Boston. Want to come along?” He had a consultation with another top surgeon. So we got in the car and drove halfway, to Albany, where we stayed the night in our signature Super 8 jacuzzi suite. The hotel was directly across from a juvenile detention center, which may have explained why it was cheap and also why we kept getting weird looks. At first I figured it was because we were two male-appearing-people staying together in a romantic suite. We’ve gotten homophobic crap in the past. At a hostel in Toronto for instance, they insisted on giving us a room with two beds. So in Albany, we forgot the key one time, we had to ask at the front desk. A woman, different from the person who checked us in, already knew which room we were in. So we got the feeling we were the talk of the Super 8. But we also mused that since anti-aging-transgender-magic makes Joey look like he’s in his early thirties and me in my late teens, they may have thought he had just picked me up from the juvenile detention center. We thought this would make a funny erotica story or porno. Then we realized it wouldn’t and changed the subject.

The next morning we went to a place called Professor Java’s Coffee Sanctuary, based solely off the name and that it wasn’t a Starbucks. It was pretty cool. My latte was fine and all. After that we stopped briefly in downtown Albany because I wanted to take a few photos. None of them really turned out as I planned, but eh. And then we drove to Brookline, MA, which is what my next post will be about. Coming soon.