Well, I’m still a bit stuffy in the head, but otherwise this cold has managed to work its way out of my system, just in time for tonight’s presentation.
I don’t want to say too much about the presentation — I alluded to it in my Backwash column last weekend, I know, but normally I try to avoid mentions of those kinds of things in a forum like this — but I am a bit nervous. I did this presentation last year (just a few days after the two-year anniversary of the .org), but that was for a much smaller crowd, plus I had an assistant. This year we’re expecting attendance to be real high, plus I don’t have an assistant this time. I’ve reworked the presentation so that I should be able to do it on my own — provided the University can rig me with a hands-free microphone tonight — but of course I’m still nervous.
Sex education in general is a very important topic for me; I think the main reason sex ed isn’t as effective as it could be is because it’s usually taught in a dry and boring way. Thankfully I’ve seen our other presenter tonight, Thomas Jackson from David’s House, in action before, and I know he always finds a way to make things nice and interesting. And as for my presentation, well, I try to keep it interesting too, and I won’t deny that part of the reason I’m doing the presentation tonight is for a bit of “shock value”, something to draw people in who otherwise might not go to a safe sex talk. But, of course, my work in that area goes beyond the personal; there’s also an element of politics to it that the whole community is starting to feel, and given my strong beliefs in that area, I guess there’s an element of politics to tonight as well.
I just hope it all goes well. I’ll leave you all with a line from Recoil I was just listening to, which has a number of levels to it that I can’t even begin to describe to you; let’s just say it’s more important to me than you’ll ever know:
“Every woman has an itch, and every good girl wants to switch.”
— Recoil, “Breath Control” (from Liquid)