I’ve been thinking about relationships. Clearly, it’s only a coincidence that I’m now living with M.

I think trust in a relationship isn’t defined by the usual suspects of infidelity or drinking or money worries or howling at the moon. I think “trust” is trusting that this mood will pass. The moods that have you thinking, “Huh, I wonder how deep a ‘shallow grave’ is and how long that’d take to dig?”

I’m confident that this time it will pass, but for now, I’m hiding the knives.

My work paranoia is making me crazy. I really wasn’t made for closet living. Fuck, I don’t even know how to use a closet that well. Weirder still, folks still seem to be nice, and I’m closing in a month’s labor without thinking otherwise.

One strange thing about my current salt mine is the number of people who passed through good, old Cambridge and left. Key words, “and left.” They came, they saw, they did the ivory tower of power bullshit (at least that’s the vibe I get) and left. Adios, see ya, gotta go live among the flower children, predictable, yet ever-surprising, micro-climates and possible earthquake threats.

Among the differences at this workplace from others in my past is the whole reaction to the comedy thang. Back in staid old Beantown, my quest for stand-up comedy greatness (defined as something >mediocrity and pure cock-sucking) was cute, I think, among the bosses above me. Their looks were quizzical, patronizing.

Here, there seems to be some actual spark of interest. I was surprised today by one of the directors, who by carriage and accent seems far from crappy bars and seedy entertainers. She offered to put me in touch with her son’s ex, who performs around SF. Better still, she asked not in a cloying fakey fake interest way, or patronizingly, it was all very “not sure how networking works in comedy, but if you want…”

I’m getting lulled into trusting humanity again. I fucking hate that.

Refreshingly (in terms of maintaining a cynical edge), some of the buzz at work involves Wolfowitz’ new gig at the World Bank. I can’t not think about him sucking on a comb in Farenheit 911, when his name comes up. I’m all up in the world-wide money bags, these days. I even got one of them bracelets all the kids (and middle-aged, Bob-Geldof-loving rockers) is wearing.

There was a little bit of cache back in the research world I left in Boston. The hip and glamorous world of fighting disease and occasionally spotting a stricken celeb. But, now, I’m way less than six degrees of separation from the forces of evil in the world. One of these days, I might be on the phone with the offices of comb-sucking Wolfowitz or Condoleeza “Devil’s Handmaiden” Rice. One step away from a Black Mass or raising the dead, I figure. Rock on.