I was going to write about Gaudi. It was the next step in my Spanish chronicle. I was going to write about Balsa Man, in all of its miniature burning glory. I had a plan. But then some asshole punched me in the face.

Let me take a couple of steps back here. We are literally going to back up a couple of steps, the steps leading out of the Very Serious Circus School. It is 8:30 and I am leaving the Very Serious Circus School, having just finished my workout. I am wearing my gym clothes (tights, knee-high socks, shorts, leotard) with a sweatshirt and 20-hole boots. There is a gym bag slung over my shoulder. I pass a man smoking a cigarette in front of that vegetarian Indian restaurant that I never go to. As soon as I pass him, he starts to follow me.

Naive creature that I am, I slow down because I think that he may want to pass me on the sidewalk. He does not want to pass me. He keeps pace with me and flashes me a fist full of bills. Oh. I see. This asshole thinks that I'm a prostitute - a prostitute catering to sweaty gym clothes fetishists in a thoroughly middle-class neighborhood next to the teaching hospital. I shake my head. I don't think that I really need to do anything more to make it clear that I am not interested in trading sex for money. I cross the street towards the park, where my car is located. Halfway through the crosswalk I realize that he is still close behind me. I reach into my pocket and pull out my keys. See, creepy man? I am going to my car. I have places to be and they don't involve you. He does not appear to have received my subtle message. I close my fist around the keys, with the sharpest key sticking out between my fingers.

At this point, I realize that I need to stop at the corner. The place where I am parked is dark and there is no one else around. If I am going to shake this guy, I have reached the last relatively safe place in which to do so. I stop. He flashes his fist full of bills again. Apparently, "I am going to stab you with my keys," translates as "hey baby, let's go back to my place." He reaches out to grab me. I push his hand away and tell him to fuck off. He fails to fuck off. He's still standing there. For a moment, we face off and I get a very good look at him. I look carefully. I think, do I know this guy? Is this someone playing a joke on me? Is he waiting for me to recognize him so we can have a laugh? And while I am thinking, Assaulty Assaulterson punches me in the face.

I would like to take this moment to thank my friends in the East Bay, who met with me every Sunday morning for many years so that we could hit each other with sticks. Because of them, I know what it is like to be hit hard and I am not afraid. Because of them, my first reaction to being punched in the face is to reach out with my left hand, the hand which is not holding the car keys, and punch him in the throat. I feel my knuckles connect with his larynx. Assaulty looks surprised. His cigarette wobbles between his lips. I yell at him to go away. And he does so, running.

My nose is running. I take a moment to make sure that it's not blood. I pinch my face to make sure that my nose isn't broken. I run my tongue over my teeth to make sure I won't need an emergency trip to the dentist. I wait an extra minute to make sure that he isn't coming back, and then I walk to my car. I drive home. I put the car in the garage. I pull an ice pack out of the freezer. I Twitter and wait for the swelling to go down.

I never feel scared. I never feel the rush of adrenaline. I feel the way I feel at the top of the rope, thirty feet up in the air, doing a trick I've done a hundred times before. I know that I should be scared, but I don't feel anything. I am sitting on the couch, laptop across my knees, trying to play Scrabble when I feel a lump in my throat like I'm going to cry. That's when it occurs to me that I should file a police report.

I call 911. I have never called the police before in my life. I must be shaken up by then, because I mix up the name of the street where the Very Serious Circus School is located. They send a couple of policemen to the Bunker to take a report. By the time the police arrive, J has come home. The police are very impressed with the Bunker. J talks with one of the guys about the cats and painting the walls and all of our art while the other one takes my statement. I describe my attacker in detail. What was he wearing? How tall was he? What did he weigh? Would you recognize him if you saw him again? I don't think that they will find him, but if they do, I hope his throat hurts.

I was so proud of myself. I was going to be a reasonable bride. I was going to be that down-to-earth creature that smiled patiently while other people described their out-of-the-way locations, or the cost of booking a church, or complained about their fiancee's numerous relatives. J and I sensibly divided the event into three parts:

Part the first: civil ceremony at City Hall.

Part the second: honeymoon in Spain as a reward for putting up with our parents during the civil ceremony.

Part the third: wedding reception extravaganza in November, with a fancy dress and a farcical ceremony and a cake from beyond space and time. Trapeze artist! Industrial band! The set from Faust! A palanquin on an elephant! And other bizarre exclamations!

Stop me if you already know where this is going. Stop me if you don't want to hear about the things that have already gone horribly awry. I kept my cool when J could only take a week off of work for the honeymoon. I did not explode when my parents bought our airline tickets for the wrong dates and the honeymoon wound up being somewhat shorter than expected - these are free airline tickets that I am not paying for, I am not in a position to complain about them. I got a bit testy when J's parents travel plans forced us to change the date and nearly all of the plans for the civil ceremony. But I did not truly know what it is to be blinded by wedding-induced madness until Betsey Johnson sold out of my dress.

It was love at first sight. It is a terrible thing to fall in love with a dress. It will never love you back, not even if you drop everything and immediately spend $350 on it, which I did not. I walked away from the perfect dress, with its clean 1950's lines and embroidered birds and pockets because surely it would still be available in July, and perhaps it might even go on sale. By the time I had screwed my courage (and checkbook) to the sticking place and walked into the Betsey Johnson store to purchase the embroidered bird dress I so richly deserved, it was gone.

It was gone in my size. It was gone in every size. It was gone at the online store. There were rumors that the dress might still exist at the LA, or New York, or Boston stores, but those rumors turned out to be ephemeral. There were rumors that it was available under a different name on at online retailer, but by the time I found it, the dress had sold out. I cannot find it. I cannot find anything even reasonably similar to it. And now I am getting married in less than two weeks and I have nothing to wear.

Now, if you will excuse me, I am going to stand in a corner and rock back and forth while hugging myself.

Dear Sex Offender,

I appreciate that you came here in person to explain your situation, but my organization is not going to take your appeal. It's not because you are mildly creepy or because it took me twenty minutes to get you to admit that the reason you went to jail was that you had been convicted of attempted dissemination of indecent material to a minor. It's not because you excuse your behavior with a mixture of, "I knew it was a cop all along!" and "She started it!" I am sorry that you have "unipolar" depression which made the four months you spent in prison particularly unpleasant in a variety of ways which you have taken the time to relate to me. I understand that you don't belong in prison, since you are white and middle class and you've been to law school - twice! I am sorry that you were not pleased with the performance of your defense attorney, who must have been in collusion with the local police department. I am sorry that your judge must have been corrupt, as evidenced by his promotion to the court of appeals. I understand that you are certain that your ISP has violated your civil rights in some way, by allowing the FBI to place a cookie on your machine which allowed them to keep track of the 12 hours a day you spent browsing pornographic websites. Yes, I appreciate that browsing pornographic websites for 12 hours a day is not illegal. Indeed, that may be why the charges against you were not "excessive porn-browsing." Yes, it is terrible that our tax dollars are being used to employ second-year law students to pose as 14-year old girls looking to sex chat with men in their thirties. Yes, I heard you the first time you said that was entrapment. It is shocking that your attorney advised against making that argument at trial. Please, feel free to file a malpractice claim against him. No, we are not going to do it for you.

Oh sex offender, it is not that you are mediapathic - I would send helpful links to Hitler if Hitler had been sent a fraudulent DMCA take-down notice - it's that I don't see anything in your appeal that would create new precedent in the field of digital civil liberties. I understand that you would like to speak to an attorney - surely, I am turning you away because I do not have the finely-honed legal mind that it takes to grasp how appropriate this case is for my mysterious workplace. Now I want you to understand that even if you were to speak to an attorney, they would send you to me. If you email them, they will forward that email to me. If you leave messages on their voicemail, they will send that voicemail to me. We are not going to perform tens of thousands of dollars in free legal services on your behalf, sex offender. Now please get out of my office before I have to call the police.

Everyone likes to think that they function well under stress, just like everyone thinks they're detail-oriented and hard-working, open-minded and like all kinds of music. I deal with stress by making lists. I enumerate. I schedule. Crossing things off of lists is one of my stupid quotidian pleasures.

This week, I have made a lot of lists. I have not been able to cross everything off of my lists. I know that I do not function well under stress because the thought of little uncrossed items on my lists, errands undone, meetings not kept, sends me into anxious palpitations. This is not the effortless Zen-like calm that allows one to overcome obstacles with grace and ease. This is, in fact, the opposite of Zen-like calm.

The list for Thursday read REHEARSAL 7:00. It was a longer list than that, but REHEARSAL was written in big letters, because REHEARSAL 7:00 was the big event for Thursday, September 19th. There are a dwindling number of REHEARSALS between Thursday, September 19th, and Friday, September 26th, when I am expected to climb on the aerial tissu in front of other people in a way that does not remind the audience of grade school ballet recital.

The gym where I practice my ridiculous and time-consuming hobby has a policy of canceling their scheduled classes if there are not at least three people signed up for them. Mindful that I am not signed up for the Thursday evening aerials class, I call the front desk in the morning to see if the class is still taking place. No, says, the woman on the phone, there is no one signed up for the class, but you will have to leave a message with the guy who teaches it - here is his voicemail number. I leave a message on the teacher's voicemail. When I do not hear from him by the afternoon, I leave another voicemail. When I have still not heard from him an hour before the class is scheduled to start, I call the front desk.

Never: Hi, I'm calling about your Thursday evening aerials class. Is there anyone signed up for it?

Front Desk: No.

Never: Can I just come in and rehearse during that time, then?

Front Desk: You can't come in to rehearse unless you are cleared for the Open Gym Program. The director of the program has to personally clear you.

Never: You mean J, who teaches the class which has been canceled?

Front Desk: Yes.

Never: Oh good, I know him. He knows me. So can I come in and rehearse tonight?

Front Desk: You can only use the gym during Open Gym Time. There's no Open Gym on Thursdays. The next one is on Saturday.

Never: But there was going to be a class today. The equipment is right there. The teacher is right there. I'm signed up. You have my money and all of the forms that say I will not sue you if I break my neck. Why, exactly, can't I come in today and rehearse?

Front Desk: There wouldn't be anyone to spot you.

Never: I don't need anyone to spot me! I don't need a teacher. I don't need a coach. I just need the tissu and a boom box for about an hour.

Front Desk: Open Gym isn't until Saturday and J has to clear you first.

Never: Can I speak to J?

Front Desk: J is teaching a class.

Never: ...

The next item on my list: lock self in office bathroom and cry.