Diary #264

Some weeks are such a mixture of good and bad that it’s hard to decide which outweighed the other, especially when the good was so very good and the bad was so very bad.  On the one hand I got to visit with one of my favorite gentlemen, attend an excellent party, spend an evening with Kaytlin Bailey and serve as emcee for the Sex Worker Appreciation Day comedy & variety show, which was a great success; I’m also preparing for my first visit home since February.  But on Sunday morning, Grace called to tell me by beloved kitty Friday (whose “stage name” on this blog was “Nancy”) had suddenly fallen ill; by 2 PM she was gone.  I suspect the culprit is a virulent parasite spread by ticks which took one of our outside cats last year; it races through their little bodies and kills in hours or days, and there is as yet no cure.  I know that she had a good and happy life, that she was loved and cared for; I know that her death was mercifully swift, and that many pets and humans die long, slow, agonizing deaths that take months or years.  I know that death comes to all of us, great and small, and that I’m generally very philosophical about it.  But I also know that for all of my hard-as-nails demeanor, razor-sharp wit and iron logic, I’m still a soft-hearted woman with overdeveloped maternal instincts, and that it’s incredibly painful for me to lose someone I love …even if that someone lacks the gift of speech.  And the fact that I wasn’t there to hold her at the end, or to somehow prevent this from happening, makes it all that much worse; so did having to tell Matt, who loved her at least as much as I did and probably more.  Yes, I’ll be fine; I’m a big girl and nobody involved in Sunday’s show even guessed that I was grieving inside, because whores are experts in feigning moods.  But just the same, I really wish my happiness didn’t always have to be mixed with pain and sorrow.