Product Review: The Mirena I.U.D.

UPDATED JANUARY 28, 2009
(see below)


CHAPTER ONE. SLOTH.

Birth Control is one of my favorite things. I have had the great luck (or discipline and education) to have never been knocked up. I have never even had a real scare (just fake scares after I maybe let someone in uncovered for a little bit during my younger years when I didn't pay any attention to my blood calendar). I am sorry to say that I ever did let anyone in 'for a little bit', if you know what I mean. But you know how it goes, ladies. The men ask "Please just for a little bit," and the thinking part of your brain is suffering under the pleasure juices flowing through all your cells, and before you know it the thing is in there. Damn things. It ain't right. It's laziness! Men, if you find yourself often asking "Please can I put it in, just for a little bit?," without a hat on, you should plan on some major expenses in your future, either for pre-natal health visits, or for a session with the uterine vacuum. I recommend that you practice self-service with a condom on, so you can just get used to the fact. You might also try larger condoms, even if you aren't particularly large. The Trojan "Twister" has a nice shape, narrower at the base for a secure fit. There's more room to squirm around in the large ones, and so more friction. But please don't ever ask to put it in for a little bit, without protection. It is childish and pathetic, and makes you seem like an out of control puppy who might pee on us if you get too excited. Discipline is so very attractive.

My own disciplined quest to find a BC method that was -not- systemic and did not require daily attention yielded few results until dear friend B. mentioned her own luck with the Mirena IUD. I had always imagined IUDs as metal medieval torture devices requiring surgical insertion and threatening to slash my insides like some kind of internal morning star. In fact, IUDs are quite small (approximately 1-inch square), are inserted through the cervical opening in a procedure usually taking five minutes, and will not cause damage to your tissues except in very rare mishaps.

There are two IUDs approved for use in the United States. Both are little T-shaped devices. One, Paragard, has copper wire covering the frame (the copper creates an anti-sperm environment in the uterus) and can be kept in place for 10 years. The other is a flexible plastic thingy that releases hormones to alter the uterine conditions in favor of No Babies! This hormone releasing IUD is the Mirena and can be kept in place for 5 years.

My choice of the Mirena was the result of two major considerations:
1) Each month, about 4 days before my period, my mental state enters a pit of despair (a.k.a. a hell dimension) in which I think catastrophic, nearly suicidal thoughts and cannot imagine a future state outside of this dimension. This change to my psychological cycle experience began sometime around age 25, and it took me about 4 months to realize that it was in fact related to my cycle. This experience may or may not be diagnosable as Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder -- I don't care to know. It sucks, whatever you call it. I chose not to seek prescribed treatment but to let it pass each month. Still, it was never easy, and depending on life events concurrent with the pit of despair, escaping it could seem insurmountable. I thought the hormones of the Mirena might have enough of an effect on my lady-parts to alleviate the hell dimension to some degree. Any relief would be a welcome side-effect.
2) I don't like the smell of pennies. When I imagined a copper IUD inside me, I imagined the smell of dirty, wet pennies. Disgusting, right?


CHAPTER TWO. LUST.

My current bed partner and I had been adventuring together for about 5 months when we realized we were spending about $40 a month on condoms. I would not say that our discussion of birth control centered around a fiscal decision; it was a consideration but not a reason. It is more likely that money and practicality provided a convenient pretense for our gradual and reluctant admission that we are, to use the parlance of the peasantship, "in love," in a way that makes us constantly puke on each other. To call him "my current bed partner" is probably insulting and certainly an understatement. He is, in fact, a historical figure in my little life, not only because of my tongue-tying affection for his brain, face, scent, and obsessive-compulsive joke-making (puke, puke, love puke), but because he was the first non-familial man to prepare me a dinner made entirely from scratch: twice-baked garlic-stuffed artichokes. And if he was so ready and willing to stuff an artichoke for my palatable enjoyment, I was surely willing to stuff a little plastic thing into my uterus to improve our roiling delight.

Ladies, I must stress that you get your cooter screened for germs before you stuff an IUD up there. Of course, you should get an STD screening at least once a year (with your Pap), and every time you have a new sex partner. A responsible gynecologist will want to see evidence of a current screening and Pap before you get the IUD. The risks of IUD use, be they rare, include ectopic pregnancy, perforation of the uterus, embedding in the uterus, ejection, PID, septic shock, and potential sterility resulting from these, so you'll want to have a clear assessment of your existing health before considering the IUD. These risks, while serious, are no more or less serious than some of the possible side effects of the pill, Depo, or other forms of non-barrier BC (including abstinence and withdrawal).


CHAPTER THREE. GREED.

As with all forms of non-barrier BC, a talk about monogamy and history (and the like) is in order. Whatever your arrangement, you should know that women, being walking wet caves, are already vulnerable enough to ambient bacteria, yeasts, and viruses, and we certainly don't want to increase that vulnerability by introducing germs from a foreign cave, if you know what I mean. I'm presuming, of course, that the males would be the carriers of the foreign bodies. I'm just keeping it real, peeps. But if any of you ladies want to whore around using the IUD as your sole protection, I hope you're screwing virgins exclusively. Just because we now know that many sexually transmitted infections are easily curable DOES NOT mean we should treat our sexual health lightly. All infections may leave scars on the tissue damaged (essentially eaten) by bacteria and critters, and nobody wants a scarred cooter! Or bladder. Or kidney. And no amount of orgasms is worth a health crisis of any kind. It is important, ladies and gents, if you wish to use a non-barrier method other than abstinence, that you understand everything you may be exposing yourself to. Now is _not_ the time to exercise discretion in your honesty. I may speak for myself when I say that honesty makes me VERY wet. We are all only human beings (to my dismay, though it may be), but healthy minds keep healthy bodies, and so disclosure becomes part of health. Roll with it. Have some courage. And keep in mind your own and your partner's overall HEALTH as a primary value.

Once I settled the health situation for myself and my gentleman friend, I could proceed to address the hurdle bestowed upon me by the Judeo-Christian-Conservative ideals still currently jeopardizing women's health issues in the medical profession. IUDs are supposedly not recommended for women who have not yet given birth (like me). I suspect that this is partly because "they" believe you should have babies, and if you pop in an IUD before you pop out a baby, you just might addict yourself to the amazing amazement of childless sexuality. And as long as you're enjoying a radical sex life, you are probably much too content to go shopping very often, and your urge to consume commercial goods and services is effectively replaced by your urge to merge. Why would I need to buy a new iPhone or Juicy pants when I can just go home and hop in bed with my man? I don't really know. But I'm always on the lookout for the ways those J-C ideals are trying to mess up everybody's sex life. The decision to insert an IUD is ultimately your choice but does depend partly on the size and shape of your uterus. Your gynecologist can determine this during your next visit.

Something I didn't know until the week I decided to go ahead with the thing: IUD insertion is best facilitated during menstruation. I think this has something to do with your ute being more loose and floppy, and lower to the ground (maybe?). And so, on a fateful, menstrual, August morning, I woke up early and asked my gentleman friend if he would drive me to the doctor's office. He of course felt silly for not offering in the first place, and we both had no idea how greatly we would later appreciate the mutuality of the excursion.

I spent about 15 minutes on the table, but the actual insertion took about 30 seconds. It was a bit painful, in the way that the Pap scraping can be painful. The cervix and uterus cramp a little when touched by a mean device. I winced, and said "Oh, shit." And then it was over. My lady parts felt a little sore, still. The ute was indeed displeased. But I rubbed my back and massaged my hip bones for a minute and felt ready to go. I was stoked. Just fifteen minutes for me to claim a small victory over nature.

I waltzed triumphantly out into the waiting room, threw open the door, and cried out, "Ah ha ha ha haaaaaaa, take that, nature!" This, I later learned, alarmed some of the people in the waiting room, who had just been talking about witchcraft and the commonality of witches in the general population. I, witch or not, with a man on my arm and a little Mirena in my nether-pocket, strolled gleefully out of the office.


CHAPTER FOUR. WRATH.

When we reached the parking structure, my uterus announced in no uncertain terms that it was FUCKIN PISSED. The suddenly severe cramping rendered me nearly unable to walk, and I certainly would not have been able to drive. It was a pain unlike any before. I tried to keep a stiff upper lip but gave myself away when the gentleman cracked a joke and I let out a forced laugh. It was a hopeful laugh, I'd say. I wanted to laugh, but try as I might, I could not think about anything. And I tried to think about reaching over to the driver's seat and pulling someone's balls right out of their sack, but I could only wince and writhe in pain. It was the worst I had experienced, and it continued to worsen over the course of the next three hours.

At home, frantically walking around the house trying not to cry out like a banshee, I inadvertently leaned up against the warm dryer (or was it the oven?) and discovered that heat relieved the sensation of pain. I thought a hot shower might help. It did, but in the shower the pain overwhelmed me and I nearly passed out (no exaggerating, here). For a few minutes, I sat in the shower, whimpering and faint, unable to move. But then I had to move because I felt the vomit rising in my throat. I flew out of the shower and heaved over the toilet for a minute, but nothing came. Oh, illusory vomit, joy of female reproductivity. This sensation was short-lived, thankfully. With conditioner still in my hair, I retreated to bed, where I whined and grasped my lower abdomen, with conflicting desires to tear out the IUD, tear out my entire female reproductive mass, or tear out the guts of my gentleman friend and smear his entrails over the walls and my face. This was due to no fault of his own except that he was the person most proximal to me who was not in pain.

The gentleman was a very attentive, sympathetic nurse, which was especially remarkable (and dearly appreciated) considering that he had not planned on treating an invalid all day, and in fact was quite busy working on a vaudeville routine, or something like that, and preparing for a playdate with a pair of bisexual 21-year-old girls (not part of the vaudeville act) later that evening--completely platonic, of course. Whatever the case, my tightly-wound uterus and I didn't especially want to hear about it at the time, but as I have learned in my old age, some things are best forgotten as soon as they are learned. And my then current pain was rendering my entire future a completely blank slate. The fact of my relationship to this man/boy/shit/dog (I didn't care) paled in significance to the capacity of my body to experience physical sensations. I didn't care if either one of us lived or died. This pain was LOUD in there. It was a pain that made me question my feelings for the young gentleman who would enjoy benefits of my pain, without enduring so much as a knick of pain himself. And WOULD he endure such pain, for our sake, if the necessity arose? I wondered.

And I doubted. Surely not, I thought -- this coward. This pathetic, leg-humping puppy. This thoughtless, unrestrained dick-brain. This selfish, ball-less, stupid little boy! How dare he kiss my cheek as if it were deservedly his?!?! How dare he have a phone conversation with another female, in front of me?! How can he sit there, callously checking his email and flight information?! What NERVE he has, WORKING ON HIS OWN PROJECTS IN THE LIVING ROOM!! HOW DOES HE GET OFF GOING ABOUT HIS OWN BUSINESS WHILE I'M OBVIOUSLY NAPPING IN PAIN?!?!?!!? THAT WHORE-MONGER! MISOGYNIST! FUCKSTAIN!

Such were the thoughts of my pained brain.

And then I thought about how different the daily thoughts must be for people who live with some degree of pervasive pain, whether physical or emotional, and however subtle.

If you are indeed considering IUD use, I highly recommend, in preparation for the possibility of intense pain, fainting, and nausea, that you secure a completely loving, devotedly attentive nurse, who will drive you to and from your insertion appointment, and who will later bring you hot compresses and pain pills, and perhaps even play you a little tune on the piano, and will act as though you are the most beautiful creature fathomable. I was lucky enough to have the very same.

The pain gradually improved. Very gradually. I was in bed for 3 days, popping ibuprofen, or whatever, and trying to sleep. After a week, I was no longer in any pain.

Also after a week, I was still bleeding. I got the IUD inserted at the tail end of my period, and my bleeding remained at a constant level for about 3 weeks. Then it increased, as if it were a period, kinda, and with severe cramping (not as bad as the post-insertion pain, however). This 'period' was heavy and lasted for a full week. The bleeding subsided, but remained at a light level. Not as light as 'spotting.' Bleeding irregularities are completely normal with IUD use, especially during the first 3-6 months. My strange cycle continued throughout the two months following insertion. During those two months, I had three periods of heavier bleeding, and the rest of the time my flow was light but heavy enough to require a pad or tampon. This was not the most convenient thing, but it was certainly not the most inconvenient.


CHAPTER FIVE. PRIDE.

I should have expected that shoving a twisty piece of plastic into my uterus would cause some degree of upheaval. The cramping is normal, and had I done just a little more research, I could have been more prepared for it. I was not prepared for the increasingly pungent scent which began to crawl out of my nethers, about 1 month following insertion. I recognized the scent as one that underlies my normal menstrual blood to a usually indetectable degree. But my normal menstrual blood is thick and dead-like after hanging around in the ute for a while. You know how it is. Now, however, from the wrath of my thwarted uterus, the blood was constant, thin, fresh, and ripe, and the raw scent was magnified, TIMES A BILLION. I called my friend B. to ask if she too had experienced her coot smelling like a death camp. She said no.

I became extremely conscious of this scent. I believed I could smell it all the time, everywhere. I was sure other people could smell it, too, and must wonder when I last showered. It was so bad, it distracted me from sex, which I could not enjoy. (I'll get back to the sex part later.) The experience of being repulsed by my own scent was incredibly disheartening. I felt unattractive, sexless, and gross. I thought it must be equally displeasing to my bed mate, and I felt certain he would be soon distracted by all of those other sweet, delicious private smells wafting by him on the street. My own was a cave of fresh roadkill. When we were in bed, as soon as I caught wind of it, I would feel certain that he, too, was wishing his nose would leap off and was only feigning ignorance so as to not hurt my feelings. It was unpleasant for both of us, but of course much more so for me. Oral sex was mutually ruled out for a brief time, but my dearest kindly pacified me with regular old coitus, for a while. The wicked scent was not merely fuckin disgusting; it caused a radical change in my sexual response. Intercourse became painful, and at the time, I did not know why. I had to call a temporary halt to all genital explorations while I dealt with the shit. I later realized that because I could not get my mind off the scent, I could not become aroused normally, so my body and lady parts did not go through all their normal changes in tension, swelling, and wetness. And not being able to enjoy sex made me significantly less able to enjoy anything at all.

I worried that the smell and its side effects were a semi-permanent change concurrent with IUD use. I fretted and was sad. The gentleman was extremely kind, affectionate, optimistic, and had developed a case of allergies so severe he could not smell anything, so we decided to wait a couple weeks before visiting the doctor or thinking drastically. After those few weeks, over the course of one, the smell exited, and the scent of my sweet sweet self returned. I believe the scent could have resulted from the new consistency of blood, or from the readjustment of my vaginal bacterial zoo, acclimating to the new local hormones from the IUD. In any case, I am proud to have a wet and fortitudinous vagina. I never imagined the smell of my own genital secretions could make me so so sad, or so ecstatically happy.


CHAPTER SIX. ENVY.

The scent was gone, and the flow began to wane. I held on to hope for a wet but bloodless future. Bloodlessness is also a common effect of the IUD, and one I was very excited about. Ever since I first learned about periods in 4th grade, I thought the monthly arrangement was totally fucked. I remember telling my 4th grade teacher, "I don't need to see the nurse's video because I'm not going to start my period, ever."
"Don't be silly," she said. "It's time for you to grow up."
"No. I won't," I announced. And I meant never.

I don't take my fertility for granted. I am very VERY lucky that its employment is currently optional. And someday when I am independently wealthy or when childbearing won't enslave me to a repressive socio-political environment, or when I move out of the country, I might like to take advantage of the breadth of biological experience available to me. But for now, I will enjoy the ravages of twenty-something-hood as an equally significant biological adventure.

Exactly three months after IUD insertion, the bleeding stopped. And after one week, it was still gone. In celebration, I baked a cake: red velvet, with white frosting.

Yay, right? Yes. Yes. Yes yes yes. YES. YES. Ohhh, yes.


CHAPTER SEVEN. GLUTTONY.

Speaking of sex... spontaneity makes a difference, naturally. Sure, I put up with three months of cramps, blood, and death scents, and I ruined nearly all the panties I own, plus three sets of sheets belonging to my gentleman friend, BUT I don't have to think about it anymore. No daily pill or monthly ring to remember. No condom or diaphragm to fuss with. Just a boy and a girl oozing pheromones and imagination: poolside at the Renaissance hotel; an enclosed booth at Luna Park Kitchen; the backseat of a taxi in Denver CO; the bathroom at Pea Soup Andersen's off highway 101. I'll let you guess which one of those we've already crossed off the list. Let freedom ring.

Those first three months were downright sick, but they were a small price to pay for what could be FIVE YEARS of easy, painless, forgettable birth control. For now, I'm cruisin. That little plastic T is floating comfortably in the small space of my virgin uterus, like a piece of secret tribal jewelry, reserved for my spiritual meetings with the shaman in the tent of smoke and steam. ...or something like that.

Of course, with all this pleasure I'm reaping from MEDICAL TECHNOLOGY, it becomes increasingly difficult to consider myself a Neo-Luddite.

Oh well.




(In the words of the Sherman Brothers)

There's a great, big, beautiful tomorrow
Shining at the end of every day
There's a great, big, beautiful tomorrow
And tomorrow's just a dream away

A woman has a dream, and that's the start
She follows her dream with mind and heart
And when it becomes a reality
It's a dream come true for you and me

So there's a great, big, beautiful tomorrow
Shining at the end of every day
There's a great, big, beautiful tomorrow
Just a dream away...

P.S. I am _not_ a doctor or health professional. I'm just a lady who knows a thing or two about sexual health and my own body. In my own research on the IUD, I was surprised to find few (zero) detailed accounts of user experience, and when I was reeling in the havoc of a pissed-off corpse-scented crotch-hole, I sure wished I had more stories from the sisterhood to let me know my experience was normal. One thing I know for sure about the effects of IUD insertion is that they vary greatly, and that users must pay close attention to their bodies in the few months following insertion, due to the potential seriousness of possible side effects.

If you found this page in a search results list and are reading this because you are considering IUD use, please share a comment and let me know if the information presented was helpful or how it could be improved. Please, read on for further information: Mirena patient product information and what to expect.

Thanks to KrissyKristan for giving me many fine examples of excellent blogness, and to M-Soul for trying to teach me things about technology. Thanks to P. for agreeing to seduce a strawberry in the produce section.

***************************

UPDATE
AFTER 18 MONTHS WITH THE MIRENA I.U.D.

The short story is, I'm in love. My I.U.D. and me have, for the most part, been true blue to each other.

In month 3, I went in for a follow-up check, as suggested, and also because we couldn't find the string. Turns out the doc had cut it a little short, so it wiggled itself up into the ute pretty good. Not to worry, according to the new doc. This does not affect removal, as they have to dilate you a bit anyway.

While the ultrasound was discovering the location of my IUD, it also discovered an ovarian cyst. This is not an uncommon side effect of IUD-- since your little uterus is on lockdown against the eggs, those eggs can be stubborn about dying and may just insist on traveling elsewhere or hanging out on your ovary until they bulge into cystic forms. Some cysts are neutral, some are more painful than others, bursting is definitely not good, and some cysts can grow into freaky sculptures made out of hair and teeth (from the cells in your egg). Most of them just come and go, but they are definitely something to monitor. Six weeks after the discovery, I went in for another ultrasound. Came back all clear. But cysts may still recur. Be aware of new pain or discomfort in your pelvic area, and always get it checked if you are in doubt.

For those of you just dying to know, the crotch stink never came back. I think it was from the ripe, fresh blood that drained out of me continuously for about 5 weeks following insertion. Something new to appreciate: not bleeding!

And about bleeding, my periods have become significantly less and less bloody over the months. This is fabulous. With the money I have saved by not buying tampons, I have been able to buy a home in Malibu!

That was a joke. I've probably just used it to buy more lipstick, nailpolish, lubricant, and other things shaped like tampons.

Another thing I really appreciate about the IUD is that, after the fourth month or so, my vaginal wetness was gushing along as usual. A real downside of the pill, for me, was a little drying up of the creek... but that may have also been due to that old boyfriend who couldn't learn the value of foreplay, now that I think of it. So, thanks to both the IUD and my equally easy and (mostly) painless man-friend, for keeping the good times gushing.

And finally, thanks to all who have read and shared this blog entry. Please continue to pass the knowledge on to your female compatriates. And please, those of you who leave comments, let me know where you're from, and if you are affiliated with the medical profession or discussion forums. I like to know where Scrubbed Innocence flows!

Play good.

* * *

OVER AND OUT

Last night I went to a show alone, a music/videoart/industrial-neo-techno-barf show. The first movie I ever went to alone was Peter Jackson's King Kong. The most alone I ever felt was lying in bed next to a man I didn't love. But do you know who's really alone right now? Me and you. Both sitting in front of a machine--a poor substitute for each other.

Scrubbed Innocence signing off.

Oh Boy, Obama!

As Tina Fey so aptly noted in her recent Weekend Update report, Hillary IS a bitch, and bitches get things done.

Definitionesque: A bitch is a woman who has dropped her victorian manners (e.g. silence, passivity, lace) in favor of creating her own life on her own terms, with tenacity, assertion, and voice. When men see these characteristics in a female, she is considered pushy and demanding; she is called a bitch. When men see these characteristics in a man, he is considered powerful and influential; he is called a man. This double standard has existed since human DNA first differentiated penises and vaginas. (Side note: Blogger underlines "vaginas" as a misspelled word--not so for penises!)

For two years, I have worked as a secretary in a large organization (500+) with a strikingly male majority in leadership positions. I spend most of my time meeting demands issued by male superiors. Here, gender differences in workplace expectations are firmly in place. I hear the difference in tone of voice. I see the difference in body language. I see it in the kinds of tasks assigned to me and my female coworkers, compared to those assigned to males. I know it when I present an idea for policy change and am rejected, and then enlist the help of a male compatriate who presents the same idea to have it welcomed and praised. I know it when, at a staff training session on interview etiquette, we are told that women should wear pantyhose so our legs don't look pale, and makeup so our faces don't look washed out. (The speaker must have missed the African-American women in the room.) I see my female colleagues treated as less intelligent, less capable, and less valuable, though we are at least as educated as most of the people we serve.

If you find yourself here thinking, "Maybe you really just aren't as hot as you think?", you can take comfort in your biological maleness--it is still the favored position. And if you are female and thinking the same, I implore you to look around. You might discover that you are hotter than people would have you believe.

It's 2008! One-hundred years ago, women competed in the Olympic Games for the first time, and a 22-year-old mother and housewife (!) became the first woman to drive cross country. Only thirty-six years ago, birth control pills became available to married and unmarried women alike.

My grandmother never got her driver's license. My mother has never voted.


And getting angry, of course, just makes a bitch more bitchy.

LOVE IS

Patient
Kind
For Puppies
Blind
For Money
Strange
Forever
SICK
A Many Splendored Thing

Scrubbed Innocence at Large: THE BIG C

Every year I say, next year I'm REALLY converting to Hanukkah. As my friend B.W. rightly observed, the only people who can truly enjoy Christmas are the Jews.

But why is that? I once enjoyed the hell out of Christmas, back when I didn't have to worry about who to invite or not invite, who has what food allergies, who should sit next to whom, what gifts to get for people I don't know, being polite to so and so and making sure so and so is polite to that other so and so, taking photographs, setting the table properly, and ensuring that everyone is having a GREAT time while also being mindful of all of these things themselves. Once, all I had to worry about was waiting an appropriate amount of time between opening each present, so that it didn't seem that I was ungratefully rushing, though, of course, I was.

Oddly now, the Christmas tradition I most want to do away with is the gratuitous gift giving. The practice has become so grave. 'Something for everyone' usually results in a lot of little crap, with little meaning. I would much rather have nothing than have meaninglessness. Ha. Ha ha. What a grinch. But I absolutely appreciate the GESTURE of gift giving, I do, though as an opportunity for connection, the custom usually falls short. How about a game of Scrabble?

This Christmas was all things Christmas could possibly be. Joyful, frustrating, hectic, relaxed, emotional, tense, easy, pained, delicious, bitter, sweet, kind, friendly, polite, and memorable. I spent a week with a family not my own, all people I enjoy, though with only one intimate link, and so I was in that unique position of being an outsider with an insider view but not quite comfortable participating in a familiar way. Whereas with my own family, I am sensitive to our particular tensions and histories and can respond as I please (e.g. "Keep your crusty twat away from my cookies and stop talking about your fucking jerk boyfriend; you're ruining Christmas!"), in this unfamiliar setting I could only float and sway with the currents. And I was pretty sure I couldn't say "fuck" as much as I pleased. And that's always hard for me. AND I was in a PMDD hell dimension, which made everything worse and, according to the hell dimension, probably my fault. SO all in all it was an emotional riot. Everyone came out alive, but, of course, tears were shed, and so the baby Jesus was vindicated.

Cut the gifts. That's how this Grinch would save Christmas. Let's get drunk and play Catch the Gizzard!

I FINALLY FLIPPEDTHE SWITCH

I have often prayed that I would wake up one day as a 100% lesbian, instead of only 27%, which of course leaves 73% engaged in male-seeking behaviors. The males, they are so tempestuous with the dealings of their limbs and eyeballs. I've got the tempest inside. Could someone please show me a rock into which I may crash repeatedly until my ship shatters and I become one with the ocean? Ha ha. Ha. That's so Danielle Steel. But how to be one's own tempest AND rock? AND deal with the monthly shedding?! AND mascara?!! Jesus Christ.

It's no wonder that when a woman commits murder, it's in some totally freakin nutto flippo way, like, she drowns her seven babies and one neighbor kid in a bathtub filled with Mr. Bubble, or, she stabs some guy's eyeballs out with scissors, and then cuts his nuts off, and then cuts out his kidneys and makes a baked artichoke-kidney dip out of them, and eats the dip with sesame crackers, and then pukes it out all over him, OR, she sprinkles powdered sugar and arsenic on the warm cakey doughnuts she serves to her children every morning for breakfast until their livers fail (Flowers in the Attic, anyone?). Men just shoot guns or punch people to death. Boring!

I'm not a lesbian. Not that there's anything wrong with not being one. The aforementioned prayers were really half-thoughts made in desperation after being treated like a doll for too long (just because I'm a little bit pretty? How about some originality already?). In fact, I'm rather missing the out of town male counterpart. I mean, goddam it. (Hi honey! Hope the New England states are as warm and comforting as the hot god-vessel of my being!)

It's 18% at most, really.

But none of this has anything to do with the switch I've flipped.

In my days as a writerly poet type, the words for a thing came with careful effort. Even so, those of you who knew me when will probably agree that I really cranked out a few killers. But only a few, and far between. And the association between a thing and its words was never instantaneous. And so my poetry was eaten of worms, and gave up the ghost.

The switch I've flipped is a qualitative change in the visual part of my little ol' brain. The visual cortex, I believe, is what the kids call it these days. For a year and a half, I've been taking art/design classes, working the vis-legs. Sometime recently, the dam broke, and now the image associations just keep coming. They're gushing, in fact, like some kind of niagara color falls. I feel five again, but also seventy-five, and drawing is less daunting and more satisfying, and the layers of light and shadow are more easily separated, and color is as satisfying as a deep tissue massage. And ISN'T THIS EXCITING?! Something happened. I got some muscle. Like when your brain steeps in a new language long enough to speak it fluently. So now I need to speak. So please stop reading this.

Now.

I SAW A DEAD PERSON ON THE WAY TO WORK THIS MORNING

Yeah. I did. I think I did. The HP had just arrived. It was a fresh accident between a Volvo 850 wagon (my dream car) and a Chrysler LeBaron convertible (top down), both early 90s models, both white. Both had spun into the brush on the right shoulder. The Volvo driver was sitting with one leg hanging out the open door, looking heavenward, thanking whomever that he or she once had the keen foresight to purchase a Volvo. The driver of the Chrysler was bent sharply across the passenger door, belly up, head stuck somewhere in the passenger space, legs outside unseen. I could see only the sky-blue dress shirt clothing a male-looking torso with a highly unnatural crook where it bent right in the middle. Anyone bent that way has to be dead, I thought. But then I chastised myself for being such a pessimist. I'm working hard to get away from this. So, surely the person could be not only alive but also well, since he could have possibly been on his way to work as a contortionist for Cirque du Soleil, so he was obviously very flexible and would not have been injured by such a stretch. Or, better yet, the person was not even injured but had survived the wreck unscathed and with enough optimism to get out of the car, close the door behind him, and walk all the way around to the passenger side to do a preventative homeopathic backbend. That was probably it. Yeah. The more I thought about it, there was just no way some poor sucker had met his end while driving to the stupid job he hated driving to every day. No way, man. And besides, what kind of a person would keep a job he hated? A person caught up in irrational fears and avoidant excuses. And there was just no way a person like that would also drive a Chrysler LeBaron convertible, absolutely not. So obviously the man was driving to a job he really loved, and considering the vibrancy of that sky-blue shirt, he probably really was a contortionist for Cirque du Soleil, or at least an Artistic Director or something. Or maybe a costume technician. Which is probably why his own shirt was just a plain button-up, without a tie. I'll bet a tie would get caught in the sewing machine, so the poor guy had to opt out of ties, against his aesthetic constitution, which obviously would have called for classic colors, like white, with bold lines. Never paisleys. But even as a Costume Technician, he could observe the performers working out during rehearsals, which is how he learned stretches like the backbend he was now demonstrating over the passenger side door. God, he loved his job so much, he couldn't wait to get well and get there.

Funny thing. On the way home today, after the office holiday lunch (fun!), a couple of ultrasounds (not work-related), and a holiday party with a bunch of people I haven't seen since high school (glad no one's harboring old grudges!), all of which congealed into a hell of a weird day, I drove north on the 5 to LA. There was traffic the whole way, at midnight. But just before I hit the 10 West, everyone slammed on their brakes to watch an enormous meteorite, hurling itself toward the god-only-knows, with all the enthusiasm of young lady rushing to her computer to crank out a whimsical blog entry as if it would make any god damned difference at all in the goddam goddam world.

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYBODY

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Mushroom_cloud_sequence.jpg

http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/

http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Wallpaper.html

After a Night Out in FABULOUS Los Feliz, California!

People disgust me.

More and more lately, I try to remind myself that I am one of them-- like, kindred, brethren, etc. But then I do something like drive to the Whole Foods on 3rd and Fairfax for some Wild Root Kombucha and Silk Vanillamazing Iced Soy Milk (you know, to make a Kombucha float, of course), and the whole thing forces me to recall just how disgusting people are. While I'm there, browsing the Kombucha, spinning all the bottles around to get a look at the ingredients, some lady runs her cart into me and asks, "Are you going to get any more of the gluten-free fire-pesto tortellini?" She's holding a tub of cream-free sour cream, shoving it at me, like this thing SHOULD be the gluten-free fire-pesto tortellini except that something has gone really wrong with it, and she's looking at me with a look that tells me she has not mistaken me for her friend or lover but in fact believes I am an employee of the Whole Foods market. It's the entitled look people develop after long periods of unchecked obsessive compulsive ingredient control. It's a look that prefers curry without turmeric.

"hhhh I don't work here," I tell her without apology, and I wonder what kind of idiot she must be to mistake ME for a Whole Foods employee. I mean, I'm wearing my hair in messy braids, a worn old print T, cut-off shorts, cowboy boots, sparkle lavender eyeshadow, and a floppy knit beret to top it off. Does that sound like the kind of thing a Whole Foods grocer would wear?! Where are we? Greenwich Village?! Are they giving away free love at the sample tables now?! Are we all moistening up with essential oil of avocado nuts?! Do I look like I scrub my face with reconstituted hemp soil? NO THANK YOU. I use triple-milled rice husks, for your information, like a decent human being!

Oh, silly me. And we're not even to Los Feliz, yet.

But now we are. We are at Tiger Lily, on a Monday, for a free night of comedy, with free parking oh my god can you fucking believe it. And everyone there is gorgeous. Even the ugly people have perfect skin, probably buffed with avocado nuts, and wear stylish clothing, by which I mean beat up old crap with tight jeans and bulky hardware and Ferragamos to boot. Everyone is healthy and smooth like children who have never worried about consolidation or fertility. Everyone drinks some kind of vodka that is probably not technically vodka, or they drink Pabst, or some beer nobody's heard of. They're all keeping an ear out for their next MySpace motto.

The comics hit and miss. The first one calls me on stage for something that's supposed to be funny and I am accidentally just a teeny bit funnier than her bit. There are too many of these comic folk, and I am trapped at a table up front in the spotlight for two hours. There are shit-talky jokes about fat, black, female, rape, etc., and I suspect these could elicit a titter only here, only here in fabulous Los Feliz, only in the young fashionable mostly white not quite working class, where everyone understands the superlative importance of probiotic strains and protein to carb ratios.

And as for sweet little old me, I sat there sipping my Tiger beer, wearing a modest vintage geometric print sweater and some victorian-future red boots, yawning at the unfunny, and musing about my next blog entry, like a perfectly decent human being.

Letter to Mike Smith

Dear Mike Smith,

I'm tired of you ruining my fun. Since 1995, you've been ruining my fun. Now, I'm old enough to know that, really, I'm the one responsible for my own fun-having or not-having, but I am still human, and I have a memory, and I exist in an emotional landscape built brick by brick each day since the first day I inhaled atmosphere. Sometime between then and now, I met you.

I adored you--nerdy, clownish, smart as a whip--a real wise ass. You were fearless, and funny. Everything you did made me laugh and laugh and laugh, and still that's all I ever want to do. I remember the little wart on your thumb, and your pretty, pretty hands. I talked to my girlfriends about you-- should I? Does he? I flirted with you, stared across the classroom at you, and played that game the way fourteen-year-olds do (innocently, and with fervor). You were a handsome older man (seventeen), with big brown eyes and big ideas, and I fantasized about what it would be like if you kissed me. One day, you did.

You asked me to go out with you. We went. At the end of the night, you kissed me. My first. You shoved your tongue down my throat in a way I hope you've grown out of. Your mouth tasted like Silly Putty. I liked it. And we went out again and again. And again. You brought silly toys to school for me. We rolled around on your mother's couch and made fun of her Christmas decorations. And.

I was fourteen. Did I mention that? And.

Then you asked someone else to the Winter Formal dance.
At lunch, I stood with a group of my girls. A friend asked me, "Did you hear...?" I hadn't. Imagine.

I called you that night to politely inquire. She was your long standing, heretofore unrequited crush. You still liked her. You wanted her. You wanted to make her jealous. You had only gone out with me to make her jealous. You told me. I tried hard, but my fourteen-year-old voice cracked when I said, "Well, I guess I'll see ya later." You laughed into the phone and hung up.

And so was born a tiny little voice, tiny but audible, and sinister as hell. And this tiny little voice has wondered aloud, at every instance of reciprocal affection: "Does he really...?" Responding to every I love you, you're sweet, you're beautiful, this tiny little voice speaks doubt: He doesn't really mean that, he's just [insert paranoid explanation for feigned affection here].

Do you see what I mean, Mike Smith? You were my first little romance, and you were insincere and cruel. (That laugh was cruel.)

But is it really your fault, Mike Smith? We were adolescents, and adolescents are hateful idiots, I know. And is it your fault you lived with a mostly absent mother? Is it your fault your father left when you were a child? Can you be blamed for your hurting little self? No. But in your carelessness, Mike Smith, you injected that tiny little voice into my soft young brain, and it took root. It had no reason not to, no comparison to argue with it. Of course, there have been others since then. But you were the formative experience. You shaped this realm of possibility.

And now, today, when my love who is great and kind calls to ask if I could join him for lunch, the tiny little voice speaks thoughts completely fucking ridiculous. Like, "he's just asking to see me now so that he won't have to see me over the weekend." Or, "he doesn't mean it when he says 'I love you;' he just says that so I'll hang around." The tiny little voice says, in essence, the person doesn't truly care for me; the person is just using me for some selfish purpose. These thoughts don't make sense. Anyone can see that.

The fear generalized became this: I can't trust. Ever. The specific root fear was this: If I was so naive that I could unwittingly be a pawn, and if someone could be so unkind as to use me in this way, couldn't it happen again? The answer is no, of course. The rational answer is no. No, because I am not fourteen years old. No, because I am more thoughtful, observant, wiser. No, because I am not dating seventeen-year-olds or people with emotional problems. No, because sociopathic behavior is actually uncommon amongst adults. No for so many reasons. Yet that tiny little voice has survived. And why? For a few reasons. This experience of you was, for me, at that time in my little teenage-old life, an emotional trauma: shocking, humiliating, unexpected, and out of my control. It didn't matter that you were going to a high school dance with someone else. What mattered, what hurt, was that you, with malicious forethought and without remorse, abused me, my time and my affections, for your own purposes, in a way that socially humiliated me. So many firsts! Did I mention I was fourteen years old? And this experience of trauma was then associated with the common and constant human experience of courting and mating, an experience which naturally would and did recur. And the tiny little voice, with each new gentleman in my life, was revived.

And now that I realize the source and nature of this voice, I have to murder it. So that's what I'm doing. This letter is an axe through the roots of a terrible constricting weed, a sledgehammer to everything in your careless seventeen-year-old skull.

I am not speaking to the you now, not the you living somewhere in New York, but to the you I knew in 1995. I couldn't be speaking to the now you. I don't even know you. I do know that you happened to be directly involved in some bad luck I had about 12 years ago. And I'm sure you've had some bad luck of your own. There is trauma in little things. We cannot avoid it.

This is all very funny, really. Look. I wrote a letter.

Love,
N.

MMmmrrrrrrrrrhhhhhhhhm

Last night (a.k.a. Halloween) I had the horrible pleasure of finding myself as an acting confederate "Hell Dweller" at the Hollywood Hell House. I was the girl with no mouth. (Stupidly, I did not take any photographs of my award-winning self-applied makeup, but after being effectively mouthless underneath a layer of latex and wax for 6 smelly hours, I wanted to tear that thing off right quick. SO no photos for you. But imagine it: instead of a mouth, a smear of scar tissue, nose to chin, cheek to cheek. I TOTALLY won the unspoken contest for scariest hell dweller ever.)

But about HELL HOUSES. Holy shit.

If you know me, you know I couldn't dream of passing up an invitation to appear as a Hell Dweller somewhere. Little did I know I would be supporting a regime of evangelical Christian terrorism!

[4 people, upon entering a room.]
"Mmm, something smells great in here, like something from Origins."
"It smells like ass in here."
"It smells better than it used to."
"Yeah, it does kinda' smell like mentholated, herbal ass."

"You have something sticking out of your butt."
"Oh? Shoot. It's supposed to be poking out of my asshole."

"Has anyone seen my penis? I can't find my penis."
"I think it's on the shelf above the coke cans."

"I made the blood unsweetened so the bums won't find it and eat it." [Someone later corrected me to point out that I had misheard the word 'bugs', but I like my version better.]

"The intestines are illuminated, and you can play jumprope with them now."

"This blood is the shit."

"Everyone?! This knife is real."

It was an exercise in listening. And in nose-breathing. And in fighting the power, MENTALLY.

Satan told me I have excellent timing.

Experimental Anger Confused Bad Feeling Bit

don't stomp on people. don't be a person who stomps on people. don't be a person who stomps on peoples beings and space simply because you don't understand your own. be ok with not understanding. be ok with not knowing things. listen, for christ's sake. could you just listen sometimes? then you will be able to know some things. if knowing is possible. and then you will feel better. and then you might stop this compulsive stomping.

everyone wants to be the best. at something. anything. people are obsessed with being the best. but being the best is not real. being unique is best.

go fuck yourself. would you just go fuck yourself? just go do that. and stop using the rest of us to heal your psychic wounds. go fuck your wounds.

sometimes i hate men. i do. perhaps all the time, mildly. mildly, a misandrist. but the root is envy--painful envy for the easy emotionless simplicity of their affections. for their inner stasis and the outward energy it provokes. for their freedom in urination.

one of my greatest achievements: overcoming an unhealthy aversion to hurting people when necessary. this saves everyone time and energy.

don't be a coward. don't lie because you are a coward. don't be a liar, you coward.

i don't share anger enough. so often it seems pointless, achieving no purpose. but sometimes the expression is purpose enough. sometimes i want to throw dishes, and what i do instead is nothing. i should probably throw dishes.

people are dogs.

[to be continued]

Goorillas in the Missed: Abort Mission

The little girl came back today. She sauntered in to the goorilla habitat, as if she had always belonged. She stood and watched the goorillas from a distance. The goorillas were gathered around a wide pit in the ground, at least 6 feet wide, and they were just staring into it. Just squatting and staring. I noticed one of the goorillas was missing. Of course, none seemed to mind. Silently, the others squatted and peered down into the pit, without a twitch of their hairs nor a sputtering of their sloppy lips to indicate any response to the thing.

After gaining a better vantage point, I could see that the missing goorilla was standing IN the pit, looking up at the others, blankly. Was this some kind of game?, I wondered. Or a ritualistic pleasure? A pit orgy? They all just sat there, not moving, not speaking, and certainly not suggesting any course of action to in any way alter the condition of one goorilla being in the pit. I did not know who created this pit. I would have been surprised if the goorillas had managed it, perfectly circular and so deep as to contain a standing goorilla (not slouching as usual). Such a pit was the result of forethought and imagination. It seemed to have required tools, not merely for digging but for measurement, and a dexterity nearly human. ...Oh. The girl. Of course.

As soon as I had thought it, the girl appeared behind one of the squatting goorillas and pushed him into the pit! He fell like a tranquilized circus bear. Now there were two goorillas in the pit. The goorillas still squatting remained transfixed as the girl walked around and pushed each one into the pit. Three, four, five, six--they all toppled in. She had merely to nudge them with one fingertip, so weak was their posture. Now all the goorillas were in this pit. Slowly, they stood, and, being now imprisoned as a result of their own inattention, were forced to acknowledge the girl. They stared up at her.

She, with a voice soft as a lamb's but clear as a siren, spoke these words:

There is no sin greater than cowardice,
no virtue greater than love;
but if your hands and eyes are able,
apathy is crime enough
to turn a great thing to dust.
To waste, to waste: Your soul,
having no use, exits.
What is the sound of one soul exiting?
No sound. But an internal clock
of quickly ticking thoughts
counts your passage
through a hall of open doors.
Silence won't stay time, and
closed doors make a house darker.
Forgotten, you have,
to giggle, you must,
or turn your spine
to jellied dust;
to play is to enter every door,
pretending there are no monsters.

But you're still a beast, with guts and heart
and an astounding capacity for fear
or greatness,
and whose shit still smells like shit, and
who'll smell even worse when you're dead,
like everyone else

and two plus seven is usually nine but it's a whole lot more written out in honey to be licked off the body of a beautiful woman. THAT's LOGIC.
And IF YOU'RE GOING TO JUST LOCK ALL YOUR DOORS AND WINDOWS AND SIT THERE WHILE THE WORLD BURNS OR TURNS INTO DISNEYLAND (same difference), YOU MIGHT AS WELL GO RIGHT NOW AND SHOVE YOUR HEADS INTO YOUR TELEVISIONS WHILE THE JUICE IS -ON-, YOU SHIT-EATING PUSSY BITCH SHIT-FUCKERS.

One by one, in a terrific smattering of bone and skin, the goorilla's heads exploded. Their bodies collapsed like empty clothing.

From a hiding place around the corner, the girl retrieved a shovel and a red child's wagon filled with dirt. Shovel by shovel, she buried the remains of the goorillas. Each time her wagon ran out, she pulled it away to her hidden dirtpile, and returned with a wagonful to begin shoveling again.

Soon, the goorillas were completely buried. The girl patted the ground with her shovel and smoothed it until there was little evidence of anything having ever been there at all. She placed her shovel across the wagon's rails and returned to the site of the pit. Standing at the center, above the goorilla remains, she squatted, and peed.

When she was through, the girl took her wagon by its handle, and with her shovel in the other hand, she walked away.

And that was my time with the goorillas.

I never learned an explanation for their shit orgies or the abundance of shit which enabled them, but I suppose some things cannot be explained. They are the way they are.

Love-ish Letter for the Millenial Gen?

What does it mean? What does it mean? This dopaminergic endorphin tide that swells in my cells. It makes me feel good. It forms my tongue and lips into shapes pronouncing "I Love You." But love is out of style, and so I should say something else. I want to ski on Saturn's rings with you. You are a tuft of baby anteater hair. When we are together, my fingertips emit pink laser beams strong enough to reach the moon. Octopus tentacles. Colorized photographs. Borax. Yes, these are more true, because we know love is not a real thing. It does not exist. It is a name for many things which can all be explained in terms of behavioral psychology, commerce, and biochemistry. These are real. We can take photographs of them and mark itemized transactions into ledger reports and data spreadsheets. We can see and touch them.

I should never say 'I Love You' and am horrified to admit to having done so on many occasions until now. I have been irresponsible, paying little mind to the myriad possible meanings behind this silly utterance, so multipliciously meaningful as to be meaningless. Like an expletive, it could mean anything at any time. And I have used it to express an overwhelming goosey feeling in my stomach, one that, I should acknowledge, if I am going to be completely honest with myself, could be nerves, gas, painful lust, or indigestion approaching the brink of diarrhea (a common likelihood considering the abundance of artificial ingredients and preservatives in our diet). And so it seems, to say 'I Love You' is to say nothing at all.

So, I guess I don't love you, and can't possibly.

But that isn't it either. Perhaps I know too much. I know too much. Yet, I can never know you. Isn't that right?

I JUST WANT TO HAVE SEX WITH YOU EVERY DAY!

Or...there is a feeling I can't understand, and don't need bother explaining, and it makes me want to be nearest you all the time.

Well...most of the time.

Goorillas in the Missed, Day 18

For a long time, I was not able to discern sexes amongst the goorillas. There are six of them. Their body shapes are all similarly paunchy, saggy, and dimpled. They all have the same amount of hair, sparsely located in the same places. None have visible genitalia, which made me guess all were female, yet all behaved in a confused, half-careless way, which seemed male. But then, today, I was the lucky, or unlucky, witness what I believe to be Goorilla copulation.

At daybreak, I watched a pair of goorillas waking from sleep. They tossed and turned next to each other, rubbing their eyes, wiping crusted drool from the corners of their poorly drawn mouths. One goorilla rolled onto all fours and began to nudge the other with its head. The resting goorilla arose and rolled itself onto all fours. I wish I could forget what happened next.

The first goorilla, whom I will now call the female, moved around behind the other, whom I will call male. The pair were now both on all fours, one in front of the other. The female, from behind, began head-butting the rear end of the male. Harder and harder, again and again, she rammed her head as hard as she could into the bare, wrinkled bottom of the male. She groaned with the force of each thrust as, slowly, her head began to make...well, headway. Her head was entering the male through his rectal opening. She became more and more excited, grunting and panting until, in the final stages, her entire head plunged deeply in and out of the male. I won't tell you what it sounded like. If I did, you would no longer be able to enjoy chewing your food.

The male's groans sounded increasingly panic-stricken until finally he screamed and rose up, arching his back to reveal the ejaculating genital. In size and appearance, it was strikingly similar to a fire Chee-toh. As the male screamed in what seemed abject fear, his minutia dribbled forth a bubbling black substance, which spilled onto the ground as the female withdrew her head from behind.

The male, looking down at the bubbling black goo, screamed again and ran away to hide from it. The female sniffed the ground, then rubbed one of her fingers in the small puddle until her finger was coated. She then inserted her finger into what I presumed to be her genital space. She repeated this procedure until the puddle had been exhausted. I could hear the male whimpering from his hiding spot.

I thought there must be a better way, but I surely wasn't going to teach them.

Goorillas in the Missed: the bellies of the beasts

I have called these creatures "Gorillas" until now, only because their size and shape approximates the gorilla body. But they are not gorillas. I don't know what they are.

Their skin hangs from them in fatty folds, red with splotched vessels. Their fur is pale and patchy, and thin where it appears at all. Their bellies bulge asymmetrically--there could be three or four bellies in there. Certainly they eat enough to suggest this is so. When they move, their arms and shoulders swing all ways, slack, and their jaws wobble with each step (although their feet don't step so much as flop). Every part attached to them looks as if waiting for its chance to flee.

I mentioned earlier that I thought I had observed one grooming itself. This behavior is not in fact grooming, but is, I believe, an attempt at conflict avoidance. I have noticed that, except during the shit orgies, there is no evidence of emotional outburst or conflict. But there is plenty of senseless antagonism and violence. Their response to hostile acts is peculiar. If offended or upset, one will retreat to a private place, out of sight of the others. There, it will comb its fingers through a patch of its own hair, repeatedly, with both hands when possible, forcefully, and for hours, until in some cases the skin is swollen or bleeding. This is the behavior I mistook for grooming. For example, the other day one of the creatures had cut its leg somehow. The gash appeared fairly wide, and the creature was obviously in pain. In their usual fashion, the others took no notice, and they were gearing up for the next shit orgy. When the first load was dropped, the injured one received a smearing embrace, and feces was rubbed into the open wound. But the creature did not communicate its pain; it did nothing to stop the embracer from continuing to rub shit into the gash. Instead, when it had an opportunity, it retreated to a quiet corner, and with its right hand began to comb its fingers through the barely noticeable hair on its left arm, combing over and over again, until the skin was raised and raw. The shit orgy went on without it.

I noticed similar behavior when, the other morning, one of the creatures inexplicably destroyed the bed-nest of another. The victim, upon discovering its ruined bed, found a private place where it sat and combed a small patch of its leg hair, persisting even when blood ran onto the ground.

I have yet to figure out what contributes to their voluminous feces.

Gorillas in the Missed. Day 4.

I awoke from a nap to the sounds of grunting and snorting. The creatures were engaged in some kind of shit orgy. There was fecal matter everywhere, and the creatures rubbed it on themselves and each other, moaning with pleasure. One would squat in position to evacuate, and another would stand behind it to catch the feces with its hands. The receiver would then rub the feces all over itself and run around to the others, embracing and rubbing to spread the shit on the others' faces and bodies. When one squatted, the others would jump and grunt excitedly. The activity was clumsy and hurried. Once, when one of them was receiving a particularly heavy load, it lifted the pile up to its face and shoved it in its own mouth and up its nose. The others became enraged with jealousy. They ran to the selfish one and scooped the feces off of its head and out of its mouth, then shoved it up their own noses and mouths. A new method had been discovered. The selfish one lost a tooth in all this, but that did not stop it from continuing to eat. Again and again, it shoveled dung in and on its face, until its entire head appeared made of shit. All of them followed suit, and their exaltations continued for at least 7 consecutive hours. I don't know how these creatures could possibly be so full of waste material. When it was over, they collapsed and slept the sleep of babes.

Gorillas in the Missed, Day 3

Never in my darkest imagination could I have guessed the heartlessness of these creatures. Today, as the sun came up and shone in broken rays through their habitat, a small human child stumbled through, screaming and clutching her stomach. She had been stabbed. She screamed as much, and I could see the blood on her torso. The wounds were not deep, but the child was scared and suffering. She cried sounds that transcended species. The creatures looked but did nothing. When the child, in desperation, dropped to the ground and thrashed in pain, the creatures stepped over her, expressionless. Perplexed by their indifference, the girl stopped crying. She sat up and stared, incredulous, as I was, at these animals. She stood and walked over to where one sat (presumably) grooming itself. The creature ignored the girl. With one rigid finger, she poked it in the chest. The creature, without looking, swatted the girl across the face, flinging her onto the ground with such force as to momentarily knock the wind out of her. The girl caught her breath and stood up. She looked at the creature. She stared as if her stare could touch some inner part of the beast. Without moving, the creature pissed itself, and remained sitting in the puddle of its own urine. The girl's expression changed to one of sympathetic disgust. She smiled at the creature, and ran away.

Gorillas in the Missed: Day 2

Today, one of the creatures looked at me. It met my stare, and for a moment I saw that its pupils were so constricted as to be nearly closed, like the period at the end of a sentence. Yet the surrounding space was dim.

Gorillas in the Missed

Day 1:

The animals avert their eyes and grow quiet when I enter their habitat. They fear me, no doubt, having sensed my potential for god only knows. The dust barely stirs here. I am the unpredictable creature in what seems a normally banal environment. I cannot yet tell if the quiet results from pervasive fear (I know not of what) or from oblivion. They do make sounds, but I cannot discern any linguistic patterns. Their animal noises consist of nervous twittering and snorting, with jolting neck movements that resemble human uncertainty, as if their beings are constantly undecided on the matter of whether or not to be.

Madwoman in the Attic: SCRUBBED, IN A SENSE

Hello dear readers. I have so much appreciation for your careful readings and thoughtful comments. With your support, the blood is once again circulating through my Broca's Area. If you don't know what that means, look it up.

For a while following my graduate studies (i.e. systematized creative death/ getting my mind 'right'), my great cranial storyteller had fallen into a grand canyon of trout-faced quiet, and the river had run dry. But now, NOW, the words are trickling in and up, like tar bubbles filled with the toxic farts of poorly digested dinosaurs. And YOU, dear readers -- I have you to thank. All two of you. Thank you.

To accommodate my renewed writerly vigor, I have added a room to the house: SCRUBBED, IN A SENSE. Here, you will find works under construction, goofball musings, and half-spun yarns still on the wheel. Much content has already been moved up into this attic. In the main parlor, Scrubbed Innocence, you can find the more gleaming, polished pieces which I have deemed worthy of showing off to visitors.

Welcome to my home(s). Please come again.

A Brief Stop at El Club on El Dia to Remember (for Ruthie and Ray-mundo)

The other night, a friend invited me to a graduation party (shall we say) at a downtown joint that’s uber-hip, by which I mean it demands an exhorbitant cover charge. I wasn’t in the mood for party talk (i.e. horse shit), having spent the earlier part of the evening engaged in playful sincerity with some lovely lady friends of mine. But the guest list for this haughty hoo-ha included a beloved friend who I had been missing for a long while. And also I was wearing a hot dress and feeling really hot and thought it might be fun to strut my hotness for a minute. I feel I should take advantage of these moments while I can, while my face is teen-smooth and my rear still perks. Of course, Pride is one of the seven deadly sins. But I don’t believe in sin.

I do believe in finding the free parking lot, even though it is seven blocks from my destination.

I do not believe in a cover charge, and when I discovered it, I was prepared to give a heartfelt ‘sorry’ to the guest of honor and march myself right back out the door. BUT then some A-hole who’s been trying to get in my pants for the last 3 years came out of the line and dropped a bill on my behalf. I couldn’t muster an excuse. I went in to the dim hole, full of dim bulbs and grim futures.

I smiled. I acted interested. I drank water.

One of the party-goers happened to be an old associate of mine—not the kind I had ever seen nude, but the kind I had worked with on some artistic extravaganza. Let’s call him Meat Gooberie. Meat hit on me shamelessly in a way I found condescending and unoriginal. He was amazed and fascinated by every god damn thing I said. He touched my arm and whispered in my ear, and I shivered like someone trying to sleep in a house with a loose snake. He flashed his teeth and laughed the playboy laugh. I had to roll my eyes. I rolled them so frequently, it must have appeared for some length of time as though only the whites were showing. This apparently just turned him on. He kept talking to me. Meat spits a lot when he talks. I got so much spit in my eyes, I have surely contracted all his varieties of HPV.

I finally wriggled away from the snake and attempted a French Leave. If you have not yet discovered the beauty of the French Leave, it is this:

Originally, the custom (in the 18th c. prevalent in France and sometimes imitated in England) of going away from a reception, etc. without taking leave of the host or hostess. Hence, jocularly, to take French leave is to go away, or do anything, without permission or notice. (OED, 2nd Ed., 1989.)

I exercise the French Leave whenever possible. Party goodbyes are a waste of time—no one remembers them anyway. But if someone recalls not remembering your exit, they will naturally conclude that they were too intoxicated or absorbed in the delights of the moment to take notice of your exit. SO, the French Leave has the side effect of bestowing upon the remaining guests the retrospective impression that they were having a better time than they may actually have been. Alas, my French leave was thwarted by someone holding a drink for me. I sucked it down in five minutes flat and took leave Scrubbed Innocence style, which is to say, ‘fuck this, I’m leaving.’

I gave hugs. I said “I have to go.”

Eventually, I landed in front of a fire pit, smoking a cigar and drinking wine and talking with a fine young gentleman about Chinese hookers and fire and the ethics of reproductive rights and the culture of illusorily invincible individuality and the moribund art of conversation, an art we were resurrecting right then, deliciously so, and with ease. There, next to the fire, I felt a kind of dopaminergic endorphin tide swell in my cells, and it hasn’t yet ebbed. I’m sure there is a scientific name for it, but I haven’t found it yet.

Randall's Lizard Brain Got Tired

Last night, I learned that Randall had cut his own wrists. He cut his wrists so deeply and intently, and with determination so great that in one arm he severed his own tendons and ligaments. The surgeons spent hours sewing Randall’s arm together, but his brain will need work that only Randall can do.

We all have hard work ahead. All the time. We are all workers working, for money, for love, for food on the table, for a new blue dress made of brushed cotton, for the car payment, for the mother-of-pearl earrings, the new apartment, the iTunes library, for status and personality, for six-packs and sex, for other people who constantly need things from us. And it is all too much. Because there are too many of us, and with every traffic jam and fast food line, every MySpace profile and YouTube video, (and every blog?), it is harder and harder and impossibly harder still to consider ourselves unique and special and alive. Sometimes, we forget.

I first met Randall and his wife in December 2005 at a small holiday hoo-ha at the home of a mutual friend. We had a few in common. Through the following spring and summer, dinners and weddings and barbeques brought us all together again and again, and we shared a healthy handful of beers and smokes and memorable good times. There was plenty of friend-love to go around. Through it all, I spent more time talking to Randall’s wife than to him, for no particular reason except maybe that she and I are female, kindred spirits (read: hot tarts). But the few times I shared an individual conversation with Randall were memorable. He was so attentive and present in conversation. He listened in a way that has gone out of fashion in our metropolitan uber-cool west coast culture. He really listened and responded.

And yet I don’t really know Randall. He could be a genius. He could be a prig. He could be stubborn, sensitive, or wise. He could be practically perfect in every way. He could have a record of felony convictions. He could be an award winning concert pianist. He is probably all of these things, because all of us are all things and always changing and here one moment and there the next, and things are happening all around us and we can only respond to so much at once, and there is so much, and we are so much but have only so much to give. We go. We breathe. We break. We go. People ebb and flow. I hardly know Randall, but I remember him because he unknowingly made me realize something important.


In the living room, fifteen of us lounged after a wild and drunken wedding. We had spent the day sweating in nuptial patience, and the evening in a blur of candlelight, champagne, and heat stroke. Finally off our dancing feet, we all wanted another beer, but for a moment we couldn’t move from the sofas. It was June, and hot. The living room carpet was littered with our uncomfortable shoes and little handbags. Randall’s wife had settled down into a floor cushion and began to remove the bobby pins from her hair. She was one of the bridesmaids, and her updo had been thus stuck with the requisite thousand bobby pins. Slowly and painfully, she plucked the first few from her hair. Randall saw her and came from across the room to sit behind her. He took her hands and put them in her lap, then kissed her neck and dug his fingers into her hair. Searching for the pins hidden in her blonde, he found them and gently slid them out, one by one—at least a hundred of them, I’m sure. When he was certain the last pin had been removed, he massaged her head and neck, sore from the tightness of her hairdo. All this kindness, without a word spoken.

There we were, a bunch of drunk kids, still wearing our cocktail dresses and loosened ties, lounging and sweating and gearing up for the next round, and there I was having some kind of ridiculous epiphany about life and ...love? Maybe. I didn’t know anything about the greater context of this moment for Randall and his wife. I didn’t know what kind of arguments they’d had earlier in the week, or what they thought about when they lay in bed the night before. I was in the moment, there, watching him take down her hair. THAT is kindness, I thought. It’s what I’ve been missing. It’s what I want: kindness.

I watched, thinking. One year earlier, I had left a husband—a man who would have never showed me thoughtful kindness like that, not in all our years. I may be exaggerating the memory of my situation, but that’s how memory works. It is biased, and it persists. And while a realization about the significance of kindness may seem commonplace for most, it was for me, right then, enormous. I had forgotten what kindness could be like between two people. I had gone without it for a long time.

A simple thing: I witnessed Randall in a moment of kindness, and it made a positive impact on my life. Is that sentimental cheese? I don’t care. It’s true. Consider this reality: I AM A HUMAN BEING. I HAVE EMOTIONS. And I certainly don’t want this to be some kind of god-bless-Randall-now-that-he’s-hit-the-shit. Randall will be whatever he will be, with or without this. But what I’m telling you right now is that it just so happens that Randall was part of a significant moment in my little life. He also happens to have made some severe lacerations in his arms earlier this week. And I happened to have been lately preoccupied with articulating something about fear and love and brain juices. That’s all.


We’re all so afraid to give up the catbird seat. Afraid to cry. Afraid to say ‘I love you.’ Afraid to admit we’ve been hurt. You know-- it's usual. We keep it all hidden, between the lines of our MySpace comments, underneath our make-up, muffled by our cell phone ring tones, until all we can do is scream as we bleed it out or fuck it away in mutual numb-fucks. The fucks get boring, eventually, I would imagine, but blood is always there inside, waiting to make an impact, like it always does.

He has attempted before, I learned last night. I don’t know how. Maybe there was blood, or maybe just a stomach pump. It is probably the sort of thing he and his family don’t talk about or don’t want other people to know, but someone told me, and now I know, and what it tells me about Randall is that he is a thinker. I don’t know what he is thinking, but I’m pretty sure he’s thinking hard, all the time.

Randall’s wife once spoke to me about his eloquence in speaking and writing. Whenever a birthday or holiday comes around, she said, Randall’s always the one to write the card greetings or love notes because he always knows the perfect thing to say and the perfect way to say it. If Randall is a thinker AND a writer, he must, of course, have a highly developed Neo-Cortex. It is the part of his brain receiving and producing words and infusing language into every other part of his brain. And the threads of language and logic and reason may be a little more tightly woven in Randall’s brain than they are for most other people. And this means that Randall, like other especially intelligent people, probably lives with constant, pervasive anxiety, however subtle it may be.

Anxiety stems from a little part of your brain called the amygdala. The amygdala is not a princess from star wars. It is a pair of almond-shaped clusters of neurons responsible for memory, emotions, and fear. The amygdalae are the home of your basic flight or fight responses. When you see fire, your amygdalae send whispers throughout your brain: don’t get burned. When you are walking alone in the dark, and you hear footsteps behind you, your amygdala sends the jolt: walk faster. When your credit card balance crosses that average $15K mark, your amygdala is the first to say, oh, shit. Always it sings: don’t do this, or you might get hurt; watch out for that—it could kill you; whatever you do, don’t die.

Periodically, my sister calls me and asks, “How are you? Have you been wanting to die lately?” She knows I get world-sad sometimes. I tell her no, and she’ll say “Good, cuz that would be pussy bullshit.” I understand her thinking. Some people are too afraid of what might happen next, and this subtle fear, to some degree, underlies a person’s drive to opt out of life. But the decision to make an exit requires a critical moment in which fear is silenced. Every suicide thinker is different, sure, but there is always a threshold that must be crossed. I believe it is not a descent into insurmountable fear. I believe it occurs when your fear gets exhausted and quits. (Or when you use Paxil, but that’s an essay for another day.)

The amygdala lives in a part of your brain sometimes called The Reptilian Complex. I call it the lizard brain. All sentient creatures experience rage, fear, and the fight-or-flight response in the component parts of the lizard brain. And all human beings experience logic, abstraction, and language in the Neo-Cortex. We are part lizard, part linguist, and these parts battle for blood and money, respectively. In the human world, which is, ahem, fucked as it ever was, but increasingly technological (symbolic), our little lizard brains must grow tired of the slow, dull, but insidious anxiety sustained by the mild bloodless threats of the everyday.

Sometimes, for some people, without any bears or swordfights to shock our lizard brains, it can become difficult to feel alive. And I imagine there are few things more enlivening than the sign of your own frayed tendons and open veins spilling blood onto your skin and down to the floor in bright red splashes.

Sometimes, people just need a little reminder. Sometimes they need a faster motorcycle, or a barfight. Sometimes they need an affair, or a child. Sometimes they need to take up bear photography. Sometimes I want a vacation from everything, but just for a little while, and then I want to come back.

I’m 27 years old. I deal with the usual batch of twenty-something bullshit. I don’t like my job. I have a hefty student debt, an average credit balance, and I live month to month. I eat rice for dinner a lot of nights. I’m single, and I date men, and so I pray every night that I’ll wake up a lesbian. My friends are becoming professionals or alcoholics. I’m an artist, and trying to make a living out of it. I’m intelligent and capable, and so I generally expect too much of myself. I will re-read this essay and notice the poor transitions and clunky sentences and oversimplified claims and weak vocabulary, and it will be a few months before I can notice any music in it or appreciate the simple fact that I was motivated to write it. I’m 27 years old, and sometimes the shit feels difficult. But COME ON. I’m writing an essay about death and life. I’m sitting in front of my fucking laptop, listening to iTunes, musing about someone else’s suicide attempt. Am I a lucky son-of-a-bitch, or what?

I am not trivializing Randall’s experience. The thoughts you have read here are my own. And knowing as little as I do about Randall and his life, all I can genuinely imagine about him is that his little lizard brain got tired. I hope it is awake now. I hope kindness flows in his veins; the world can’t afford to lose another drop.

HOLY GOD: A MAN WASHED MY DISHES

A man offered to wash my dishes. Without prompting, he offered to wash my dishes.

A MAN OFFERED TO WASH MY DISHES. All of them. And he did.

A MAN WASHED MY DISHES! And his work was swift and thorough. And he sang a little song while he worked.

HE WASHED MY DISHES. All of them.

Could he have known this was my secret dream? Could he have known he was the first to grant my secret wish, a wish I had wished to the universe as fervently as if wishing were worth anything at all? He did it. He washed my dishes, thus securing his place in my personal history of unforgettable people, and, it is likely, earning the unending respect and adoration of my mother, to be realized should they ever meet, which may or may not occur, considering that, according to my hard-fought though regrettably persistent cynicism, our coalescence is likely to be, as it seems are all things contemporary, a flash in the pan. But oh, how he would scrub that pan!

Stars, when you shine, you know how I feel. Scent of the pine, you know how I feel. It's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new life... for me... And that fresh pine scent has ultra-grease-cutting action, yet it's mild on the delicate skin of your hands! Or his.

A man washed my dishes.

Flowers are easy, and they die. Candy gives you diabetes. Jewelry, schmewelry. Sex, hex. All pale to a dip in that dirty dishwater every now and again. A drink from a clean cup feels wetter on the lips!

Only a handful of men have really used my dishes, if you know what I mean. Now and then, a passerby might drink from one of my cups, but I don't offer my spoons and bowls to just anyone. And this is not because I attribute any special significance to cutlery and flatware (that would be ridiculous!), but because often times my attention span for people has expired before they've even made it two steps into the kitchen. As as a lot, people are endlessly fascinating to me. Social pathology CAN be fun! Individually, however, they can play only as long as their imaginations are wide, and, as it turns out, a lot of people enjoy the comfort of walls. A lot of people live in imaginations smaller than my kitchen. But the words "impossible" and "unrealistic" are not allowed there! Laughter is required in all rooms of the house, and playful banter makes any chore a lark (Spoonful of Sugar, anyone?). So does nudity, or costumes.

A man washed my dishes. And he wore a silver apron.

The members of the kitchen club, in any case, have now been rendered a despicable lot. (The kitchen club? That was stupid. Cross that out.) The historical roster of kitchen visitors has been cleared but for one name: the name of the man who washed my dishes, without prompting (!), completely and thoroughly, and then wiped the counters and the stove, and then took me to bed.

It is almost as miraculous a feat as building a tower. Very close.

Old People Still Make Love

Mimi will turn 83 tomorrow. "Only seven away from 90, and hopefully a hell of a lot closer to death," as she puts it. Lordy me, I love her.

Last night, I ate dinner with Mimi and Sister. I don't remember what we ate-- food is so common in this blunderful country, it’s hard to distinguish between meals. But I do remember the conversation.

Sister announces she’s watched a new reality TV show called “Old People Still Make Love.” She says, “Yeah, Mimi, so I guess I know what really goes on at that Harmony Park place of yours. Bingo, pot lucks, long, slow, ointment rubs. Ain’t nuthin’ wroooonnnnnnnggggg, with a little bump and griiiiiind. Or should I say, Ain’t nuthin’ wrooooonnnnnngggg with a little—Ow! I got a charley horse in my leg!—jiggle it for a minute, would ya?—bump ‘n’ griiiind. “

“You know, kid, you’d be surprised at what you could learn from people who are older than you.”

“What, like how to handle a Viagra wand?”

“Well, trust me kid, no one needs Viagra as long as I’m around. Maybe that’s somethin’ you’ve already dealt with yourself though, huh?”

“I think we’re doing just fine here,” Sister says, patting her preggie belly.

Mimi chews her bread and butter, then says with a full mouth, “We old folks are pretty good at what we do, after all these years. We got some moves you couldn’t even dream up! And I got plenty o’ kindlin’ in here. I just need somebody with a matchstick to come light it up!”

“Have you considered using the date rape drug?”

“Don’t be vulgar,” Mimi says. This is her trademark saying.

“I know, Mimi—maybe you could drop some of the date rape drug into the punch before your next Bingo match. Then you could walk around collecting from everyone’s pockets while they’re passed out with their noses mashed into G-42, or whatever. “

“You know, that’s not a bad idea. Where could I get some of that stuff?”

“I don’t know, ask Scrubbed Innocence. “

“And why, may I ask, do you know?” Mimi says, turning to me.

My sister is referring to a time when, during my first ever visit to San Francisco, I was quite nearly a victim of a gray-haired woman named Donna. My friends had smuggled my 20-year-old self into a club in the Castro. We were getting the dance floor going, and Donna joined us. We liked her because she was a fun old hippie lady. She liked me. Probably because I was young and pretty and danced with wild abandon. And also because I was obviously too naïve to ever imagine that a 60-ish-year-old woman could have secret plans for me. She bought me a drink—I asked for a vanilla Stoli and coke (so 20-year-old).

The last thing I remember was leaving the bar with my friends, and Donna pulling on my arm, saying “Scrubbed Innocence, I really think you should stay here. Please stay here! I think you should stay!”

I didn’t stay. Yet I shudder.

I relay the story to Mimi. She sighs, not surprised, and says, “Honey, if I saw you dancing, I’d probably do the same thing.”

I remember now—it was pot roast, with mashed potatoes and spinach salad.

Three Hundred and Thirty-Three Things I'm Thankful For on This Thanksgiving

Things I am thankful for. Yes.

1. My living body
2. Tampons
3. Divorce
4. Tammy Wynette
5. The feminist movement, for making divorce and Tammy Wynette OK
6. All the people who make me laugh
7. Pinot Grigio (for now)
8. Parents who love their children
9. Clutter
10. The handle grips on bicycle handlebars
11. Mustard Seeds
12. Equestrian police officers
13. Junior Mints
14. Cotton underwear WITH ELASTIC BANDS!
15. Nudity
16. "I Heart..." phrases
17. Spinal fluid
18. Running shoes
19. Geniuses
20. That asshole who invented killer bees, for showing us how stupid we really are
21. Dichroic glass
22. Whirling Dirvishes
23. Salvador Dali
24. Questions
25. Answers
26. The Wizard of Oz
27. Bubbles!
28. Photographic Technology
29. Kites
30. The letter V (it feels so good to say)
31. MySpace (tough to admit, but just think about all the passive aggression and vain satisfaction we would miss out on!)
32. Goat cheese
33. Humor, American and otherwise
34. X-ray
35. Gary Carter, Orthopedic Technician
36. Lambskin Condoms
37. Percussion instruments
38. Optical cable
39. Grandmothers
40. The Bedazzler
41. Paper
42. Colors
43. Water
44. Fire
45. Poetic justice
46. The DJ
47. Incubators
48. Ativan
49. Marshmallows
50. A woman's right to choose (before the third trimester, at least)

51. Apollo
52. Dionysus
53. Melody
54. Potassium
55. Sodium
56. Ecstasy (spiritual, etc.)
57. Hops
58. Barley
59. Malt
60. Wheat
61. You get the idea
62. Beer
63. Beer
64. Beer
63. Guttural laughter
64. Pirates
65. Astrology
66. Poofball fungi
67. Walt Disney
68. Coat hangers
69. Surprises
70. Minutae
71. Peep shows
72. The VFW Halls of America
73. The coagulative properties of blood
74. Sunglasses
75. Writers
76. Especially Roald Dahl
77. Decisions
78. Beds
79. Skin
80. Lullabies
81. The sounds of the piano
82. Teachers
83. Yin
84. Yang, I guess
85. Rubber cement
86. Grass
87. Self-adhesive envelopes
86. Optical illusions
87. Tits
88. Extra anything
89. Worms, all varieties except intestinal parasites
90. File drawers
91. Springs
92. Hot chocolate
93. Coin purses
94. Statues
95. Gay marriage
96. Curly hair
97. Extremism
98. Non-violent resistance
99. Cranberry Juice
100. New York City

101. Fingernails
102. Jellyfish
103. Monistat 7
104. Chemistry
105. Indoor plumbing
106. Sisters
107. The Art of Noise
108. Small towns
109. Genuine kindness
110. Hookers (the world would be much less peaceful without them)
111. Bread
112. Renewable fuels
113. Biodiesel
114. Stanley Kubrick
115. Dreams
116. Buttons
117. Coyote, the Geology Museum Docent in Boise, ID
118. The printing press
119. Automatic billing
120. Memory
121. German witch balls
122. Naps
123. Trees
124. Stephen Colbert's speech at the 2006 White House Press Correspondent's Dinner
125. YouTube
126. People who don't care what other people think of them
127. The vomit reflex
128. Pooper scoopers
129. Gospel
130. Dancing
131. Pillows
132. Windowscreens
133. Soap
134. High hopes
135. Mourning Doves
136. Voices
137. Moments where everything comes into focus and the future seems a little less difficult, for a moment
138. Optimists
139. Cynics (trust no one, love thyself)
140. Jack o'lanterns
141. Synchronized swimming
142. I Love Lucy
143. Tim Burton
144. Big ideas
145. Loose change
146. Microscopes
147. Ol' Blue Eyes
148. Target
149. Heat waves
150. Dopamine

151. The past
152. Trains
153. Bellies
154. Mascara
155. Animal (the Muppet)
156. Plankton
157. Bioilluminescence
158. The wheel
159. Maria
160. Big Sur
161. Panthers
162. Forgiveness
163. Scotch Tape
164. Goofballs
165. Cutlery
166. Hydroelectric power
167. Illustration
168. Good luck
169. Morning glories
170. Fireworks
171. Clay
172. Bicycles
173. Language
174. The Internet
175. Death
176. Pre-natal care
177. Slinky, it's slinky, for fun it's a wonderful toy...
178. wool-cashmere blends
179. NatraCare organic unbleached cotton feminine products
180. Wernicke's area
181. Oil pastels
182. That Russian surfer shoe-repairman in Manhattan
183. Band-aids
184. The Smurfs
185. Nate Dogg
186. Batteries
187. Al Gore
188. Pliers
189. That homeless guy who had a house-on-wheels set up on his bicycle, with an elevated, carpeted seat for his cat
190. My teeth, tongue, lips, and jaw
191. Clowns, all sorts
192. Structural integrity
193. Floodlights
194. Ibuprofen
195. Teeter-totters
196. Drinky poos
197. Qwerty
198. Common decency
199. Poodle butts
200. Mnemonic devices

201. High School, mostly
202. Brau-burners
203. Crawdads
204. Petran Bridges, hospitality staff at the clubhouse of the Audubon Park golf course in New Orleans, LA
205. Mushroom spore-prints
206. The Royal Barracks
207. My sofa
208. Crankpots
209. Clove cigarettes
210. Red
211. Brazilian BBQ
212. The hero's journey
213. Chalkboards
214. Vibrations
215. My Sony Ericsson w600i
216. People who don't spit in public
217. Cloudscapes
218. My kidneys
219. Ctrl + Alt + Delete
220. Wikipedia
221. Homeostasis
222. Freebies
223. Peacocks
224. KCRW
225. Baseball
226. Men's butts
227. Day hikes
228. Nature boys
229. Upside down-ness
230. Public transportation
231. Girls who dress nice and pretty
232. Erasers
234. Crash test dummies
235. Foresight
236. Sex
237. Sneakers
238. Nighttime
239. Eyes, especially brown ones
240. Giggles
241. Vitamins
242. The parts that make you say "oh my god"
243. The infinitesimal reflective room
244. Jumbo's
245. Vantha
246. The Yellow Pages
247. Castles
248. Clarity
249. People who buy art
250. Crank calls

251. Electric light bulbs
252. Aerobic respiration
253. Pliable joints
254. Vacation
255. Brazen women
256. Dirt
257. That new-fangled magic clamp wine bottle opener
258. Touch
259. Vinegar baths
260. Candles that smell like Christmas
261. Playing hookey
262. Crap fashion
263. Museums, sometimes
264. Tomato soup with grilled cheese sandwiches
265. Teacups
266. Convection ovens
267. People who "let you in"
268. Michael Jackson
269. "Save Picture As"
270. Green leafy vegetables
271. Tor House
272. Paved roads
273. People who like and/or collect unicorns and fairies
274. Origami!
275. Pornogami!
276. Courtesy clerks
277. Extra extra sharp cheddar cheese
278. Yerts
279. Beaded handbags
280. Honesty, used with discretion
281. The Pacific Nautilus
282. The new suture-glue
283. Advantage
284. Umbrellas
285. Digital media
286. Shoes
287. Storytellers
288. Post-Its
289. Meows and Kerowrs
290. Toothpaste
291. Chopsticks
292. Rolley Coasters
293. This mess we're in
294. Orange
295. A sign which reads "Please advise us if you desire the use of Nitrous Oxide!"
296. Spaghetti strainers
297. Water filtration systems
298. Chuck E's Sketch Book
299. Postcards
300. Desire

301. Dance Fever
302. National Parks
303. Magic
304. Soft things
305. Jiminey Cricket
306. The crash
307. Rebirth
308. Myth
309. Persistence
310. Really, really good food
311. That guy at the courthouse
312. Smart-aleck remarks
313. Nature television
314. Wrecking balls
315. The now
316. the word "cooter"
317. Square One
318. The Electric Company
319. School House Rock
320. Sesame Street
321. 3-2-1 Contact
322. The girl next door who sings at the top of her lungs, badly
323. People who give gifts for no reason
324. Mathematics
325. Freaks
326. Inline skates
327. Poets
328. Crossword puzzles
329. Dill pickles without pebbles in them
330. Edible panties
331. Black licorice
332. Overtures
333. You

Gary Carter

Gary Carter restored my faith in humanity. Or was it Gary Corker? Coleman? No. Carman. Castille. Gary. Gary the Orthopedic Technician who is also a percussionist who gave me the foot immobilizer and was NICE when he absolutely didn't need to be. I'm sending my thanks out into the universe this way, into a space where only about 27 people will read it, and probably none of them are Gary Carter Coleman Castille, Orthopedic Technician.

Self Portrait as Android thinking Visible Thoughts

Right Through The Very Heart Of It...

It's been 09 days since I returned from my first ever trip to NY, NY. Thanks to Baker for his hospitality (and thanks to Lenox Hill Hospital). Nine whole days and I'm only just now getting my act together to say some stuff about it. I'm sure you've all been dying to know.

All I can come up with is this:

It's like the time just after the peak of the rave, when the psychological "yes, everything" feeling is subdued and the physical "must keep smoking" feeling has taken over, and you still feel good but know you've got to push and rush and work a little to keep it going, and you don't_even_care that there's an unattractive couple performing clumsy oral sex to the right of you and an extremely ugly person wretching to the left of you, because, for some reason you don't have time to wonder about, it just feels so good to keep breathing and watching and touching and going.

The only difference is that in NYC, everyone is pretty. Even the ugly ones. (Well, that and the fact that I'm not the least bit afraid to admit I went there, whereas the "rave" comparison is just a bit shameful. Old memories, people. Real old. But anyway, it's the analogy that counts.)

P. S. Next time, I'm staying.

Survey Space

More Survey Space
Twenty-one Questions
ONE. Spell your name without vowels.
None of your beeswax.
TWO.Are you single?:
I'm not pregnant, if that's what you mean.
THREE.How many pair of jeans do you own?:
Many. I have a nice bootay.
FOUR.What color do you wear most?:
orange.
FIVE.Least favorite color?:
Navy bleu.
SIX.Last song you heard?:
The Dresden Dolls: Sing.
SEVEN.Where do you wish you were?
I can't tell you, but it involves sweat. [Anna Morph, regarding your comment, did you know that my great uncle was a mayor of Palermo? Perhaps you can channel his spirit. I know how you have a thing for dead people, and I'm sure he spoke the language of love... do Sicilians speak any other language?]
EIGHT.Are you happy with your life right now?
Yes and no. I'm happy with everything from my skin and inward, but the surrounding space could use a controlled burn, and then a rising from the ashes.
NINE.Anyone ever said you resemble a celebrity?
I used to get Claire Danes a lot, when I had red hair.
TEN.What is your favorite time in school?:
The time when the teacher does a banana dance and a sock puppet show.
ELEVENDo you shop at stores like Hollister, Abercrombie & ae?
I don't even know what these stores are. I hate shopping for clothes. I wish I never ever had to do it. I am SO grateful whenever people give me garments of any sort, and I will wear anything I am given, for these kind souls have saved me from what I consider one of the most torturous experiences of being female. There is NOTHing more annoying than trying to fit into some standard-sized piece of cloth and having an 18-year-old OC brat looking over your shoulder in the mirror going "OH that looks so KEY-OOT on you, ohmygod, it looks really GRAYt." You know what I think would look great? The look on my face if I never had to go clothes-shopping ever again. OR the look on that OC Brat's face when I say, "Yeah, it looks really nice how my aureolas peek out over this awesome neckline... what, you don't know what an aureola is???"
TWELVE.How do you make money?
I charge people twenty-five cents each time they look at me.
FOURTEEN.When do/did you start Summer Break?:
Huh?
FIFTEENAre you missing someone right now?:
um, yeah.
SIXTEEN.One word to describe you.
Supercalifragilisticexpialifuckindocious.
SEVENTEEN.Favorite pair of shoes?
A sweet pair of crushed-turquoise-velvet Chuck Taylor low-tops, which I wore almost every day from the age of 14-16. If you knew me then, you probably knew and touched my crushed blue Chucks, because I was always encouraging people to pet them, but you never had them up next to your ears, because I was so pure and virginal then. The shoes became too old and threadbare eventually, so at age 16 I traded them to Elizabeth Crummett in exchange for her Doc Martens, which I gave to Goodwill last year.
EIGHTEEN.Do you own big sunglasses?:
Just got some last week for purposes of incognito public transit.
NINETEEN.What would you rather be doing right now?
Curling up in a warm armpit.
TWENTY.What should you be doing right now?Whatever I want.
TWENTY-ONE.Do you have a crush on anyone?:
No, but there's someone I'd like to lift my leg to and piss on. There's someone whose eyeballs I would like to pluck and eat with a fork. There's someone who makes me want to bite my fingertips off and whose pheromonal scent makes my loins gush like they were age 15. There's someone whose existence lately often compels me to shout (silently, to myself), "Hey Mister-Hot-Funny-Fuck-Me-In-the-Morning-and-Joke-with-Me-at-Night-While-the-World-Bakes-In-A-Nuclear-Oven-and-Are-You-Going-To-Eat-That-Or-Can-I-Just-Lick-It-Off-Your-Face?-And-Please-Let-Me-Tear-Out-Your-Brains-And-Shove-Them-Up-My-Nostrils-and-In-My-Mouth-and-Down-My-Throat-Until-The-Gray-Brain-Stuff-Touches-Me-'There'... ...COULD YOU PLEASE _NOT_ turn out to be just another fuck?" ...Is that the same as having a crush? I don't really know.
Hi Mom.

Gross and Fun Cuts and Body Parts

This is an interview created by myself and conducted with myself. I invite you to copy and paste with your own responses as a comment.

What was the cause of your favorite scar?
I have a weird dot on my forehead from chickenpox at age 9. My mom bought be a Peaches 'n' Cream Barbie to make me feel better, so the scar reminds me of P'n'C.

What was the last thing you injected into your flesh?
Probably a Tetanus shot after I accidentally cut myself with a sword.

Why did you last bleed?
why do you think?

Have you ever chipped your tooth on someone elses body jewelry?
No. My own, once.

Who was the last person you punched, and why?
I think it was my 8-year-old nephew. We were boxing.

Recall the last person who hurt you. How did you hurt them back (or fantasize about hurting them)?
I can't tell you because it is probably illegal. I will tell you that it involves a broomstick and rock salt. It does NOT involve any orifices. Honestly.

What percentage of your brain is damaged by lesions resulting from drug use?
Nine.
Thousand.

Have you ever carved Slayer into your forearm?
No, but one of my elementary school classmates did.

When was your last visit to the dentist?
About a year ago. I know, I'm disgusting.

What was the reason for your visit?
I chipped one of my molars on a little rock that was hiding inside a dill pickle.

Which anaesthetic was used?
Just the dulling smog of Southern California.

Are you missing any body parts or organs?
I'm missing approximately 13 percent of my left kidney. I guess it's still kindof there, but it's been scarred into uselessness.

Have you ever incurred a major incision as a result of drunkenness?
No.

Have you ever inflicted a major incision upon someone else, as a result of drunkenness?
No. But looking back, I wish I had.

What was the cause of the most painful sensation youve ever had?
It's a toss-up: Having a camera inserted up my urethra and into my bladder, OR the pain of the infection that necessitated the bladder cam.

How did you cope?
I told the doctor "FUCK! GET THAT FUCKING THING OUT OF ME!" And when he didn't, I said, "FUCK!!! THAT HURTS!". I coped with the infection pain by whining all the time.

When was the last time you got burned with a cigarette?
Probably when I was at some rave, in my youth.

When was the last time you got burned?
About a month ago. Luckily, it was a flame easily extinguished.

Have you ever cried so hard that your eyeballs came out of your head and your optical nerves got tangled up in your hair?
Yes. Oh heavens yes. And all my teeth fell out into my lap.

Which species do you hope will become endangered next?
Either our own, or the killer bee. One of us has got to go.

Would you rather spend $3.11 on a gallon of gas or a Café Mocha?
oh my GOD a mocha is NOT as good as a trip to the hills. i sound like a hillbilly. i think i am one. that's fine.

Do you have real IBS?
I'm clean and green. IBS isn't a real disease, anyway. IBS means you eat crap and are a stress case, and you need to see a nutritionist and a therapist instead of taking prilosec or whatever the heck.

Do you honestly believe that IBS is a condition resulting from factors other than stress and a diet of shit-food?
oh. see?!

Have you ever been jabbed in the face, in your adult life?
Spiritually, yes.

What steps are you taking now to prepare for your adult onset diabetes?
I'm getting acquainted with the sugar free menu at Hof's Hut. Also, I'm experimenting with yellow shades of nailpolish.

Please describe a cut or bruise that you have currently.
I went skating for a lot of hours the other week, and some weird plastic part of my skate dug into my skin and rubbed it right off.

Please describe your favorite nurse (real or wished for).
Massage slave. Male. Has sandy-velvety singing voice, which can be employed while massaging, on occasion. Wears nice shoes. Has perfectly groomed hands. Will respond instantly when I ask for a cup of soup or a Big Stick.

The 8th Great Conference of the International Association of Obituary Writers, Part II

If you've never heard of Las Vegas, New Mexico, it's because there's absolutely nothing there to hear of. One is challenged to find a grocery store in this town. Just because a particular convention regards death does not mean the conferees favor dead towns. I wonder why anyone would schedule a conference in LV, NM. But then again, I don't.

Conference Coordinator and IAOW founder, Carolyn Gilbert, is, in my fictional fantasy, the old-money wife of, for example, a Texas oil barron who never struck oil but who held a hefty life insurance policy, which was bestowed upon Carolyn after she clandestinely murdered him, and without making a single chip in her bright red nail polish. She flaunts "federal judges" and "attorneys" as her drinking buddies, and claims as an occupational title "public policy consultant." Which I suppose means that she gets blitzed and banged with policy makers. But behind her five pounds of glimmery eye shadow and mascara-- five pounds on each eye-- she's got the eyes of a snake. A cold-hearted, greedy, libertarian, Satanic snake. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with Libertarians or Satanists (one and the same, no?), but I don't want any crossing my flower bed, if you know what I mean.

Carolyn speaks with a sexy Texan drawl; words like "elite" and "professional" are her favorites. At profile, her personage is shaped like a capital 'P.' P is probably her cup size. It is also the first letter in Proud, and she sure is, even at the ripe age of 65-ish. She reminds me of my grandmother, except I don't like her.

Don't be fooled by any hint of Southern hospitality. Carolyn's way is Southern hook-line-and-sinker. And ObitsCon '06 was a sorry excuse for a professional/literary conference. I shouldn't care; I crashed it. Showed up, then skipped out without paying the registration fee: $250.00. This amount would have been appropriate for a conference held over the course of three or four days (rather than two), in a town offering attractions and amenities other than the clouds (a grocery store would have been nice), and taking place in a space larger than a 12 x 20 brick room (multiple rooms, even).

**As un unrelated side note: right now, I am watching a man edge his lawn. He is wearing brown slacks, a yellow dress shirt, and a glitter-blue motorcycle helmet.

Two hundred and fifty dollars is what one might pay for attendance at, say, the Modern Language Association Annual Convention, held in a major city, attended by thousands of people, and offering hundreds of different panels. I have revealed the depths of my dorkish snobbery, I know, and I wonder why I keep going on about this when, as I said, I DID NOT pay the conference fee. But really, I think writing and literature and death and obituaries are important topics, and I wonder why these people bother coming to such a small conference with a painful dearth of significant content, when they could clearly participate in larger events more beneficial to their work and livelihood.

I didn't pay. I didn't even pay for airfare. I don't like this paragraph. It's uninteresting. But what is VERY interesting is the way the ink is flowing onto this yellow paper. It's very wet. And it makes an audible sound. You don't know because you're reading this on a screen, which is unfortunate, and which reminds me of one of m y purposes in life, which is to remind everyone that there are few sounds more exciting than a human throat so close that you could smell its attached armpit.

**As a somewhat related side note, I would like to say that I really DO love the smell of a freshly sweaty male armpit. Temples are nice, too. I encourage women to spend more time with their noses in said armpits. And actually, you may never need Xanax or Lorazepam (or any of the -pams) as long as you have a good, sexy armpit to sniff. It's true. Here, look: http://www.upenn.edu/researchatpenn/article.php?608&sci

I'm tired now.

The 8th Great Conference of the International Association of Obituary Writers, Part I

A series of odd coincidences went something like this:

One morning the alarm radio came on and kept playing because I kept ignoring it. Some of the words made sense in my sleeping head-- something about death and dying and a conference of obituary writers. These words woke me up.

* As an unrelated side note: I encourage everyone to stop using ketchup in packets. Ketchup packets ARE -THE- inconvenient truth.

So anyway, I opened my eyes and had a listen to the morning NPR report. There was going to be a conference of the international association of obituary writers. And I had to go.That day at work, I Googled the thing, but the first hit was for a book-- Marilyn Johnson's "The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries." My campus library didn't have it, which meant I would have to wait at least three days for the thing to come by mail.

In the meantime, I found the IAOW homepage. The conference was 2 months away. For a week or so, this great idea got lost in the shuffle of laundry and cat food, and then the notice from the library came: "The Dead Beat has arrived and is waiting for you."At work the next day, I stopped off at the library to pick it up. When I came back to the office, there was a pink message slip, scrawled by our student assistant, waiting on my desk:"The obituary writer from the Press-Telegram called. She would like to speak with you about writing an obituary."

I wish more pink message slips gave me the chills. This one sent an unequivocal message: the universe was speaking to me.

[You're probably wondering and so I'll tell you. The obituarist called to inquire about my department's relationship to a recently deceased, prominent community art patron.]

When the universe speaks, I listen. And so I would go to the conference in fabulous Las Vegas... New Mexico.

June arrived.

My travelling mate was the artist occasionally known as Nix. If you've never met Nix, just imagine a person you can't possibly imagine. It took about three years for our "friendship" to progress from conversations held exclusively in barnyard animal noises to meaningful exchanges in Modern English. And now he is one of those really great male friends who I can be open with about pee or menstrual blood even though we don't have sex or even touch at all for that matter. Those are the best kinds of boyfriends. Handshakes are the extent of our physical intimacy. It is unfortunate for me that I require sex for mental health. Everyone I know who is "asexual" is so much happier than everyone else I know. Asexuals and Down's syndrome people are the happiest people on this planet. Orgasms are disgusting, if you think about it. Orgasms and crotches are just sick.

Importantly, I would not have been able to attend the conference were it not for Nix and some air-travel-related favor somebody owed him. I wouldn't be surprised if he had mafia relations. But in any case I knew I could count on him to monitor me while I was totally ripped on Ativan for the duration of our flights.

I remember very little of anything that occurs while I am under the influence of Ativan, but at LEAST I can sit on the plane without having a panic attack. I do remember the first thing that happened to me at the airport.

Mike S. (another handshake boyfriend) dropped me off, and I wheeled my junk into the lobby to fill out the NINE nametags which must, as ritual, adorn each piece of luggage I carry. This time, I had only one piece. I grabbed 9 tags. With both hands, I rummaged in my purse for a pen. Everything in the purse felt very wet and sticky. This is normal for some girls, I know, but not for me.

I pulled out my hands to find them completely covered with... fine Italian chocolate. One little Italian chocolate had melted and enveloped every item in my purse and now my fingers, too. With one clean knuckle, I wiggled the phone out of its chocolate-less pocket and onto the counter. I used my chin to dial Nix, who was waiting for me somewhere in the terminal.

"Nix, help! I need HELP!" I cried into the phone. "I can't do anything right now!" I noticed that my dramatic speech was turning a few heads, so I just held up my hands and whined, "I'm covered in chocolate!"

I felt no shame, only the childlike ease of an inactive amygdala. On the line, Nix asked something like "So?" or "For whom?" or "Is that a side effect of your medication?"

Before he found me, an innocent bystander found sometissues and helped me clean myself. She gave me only one tissue, and when I asked her for a few more, she gave me ONE. I guess she's wise to conserve now in preparation for the upcoming economic meltdown/Kleenex extinction.

I don't remember the flights to Albuquerque. When we arrived, the available rental car was a sparkle cherry red PT Cruiser convertible, which I was far too intoxicated to drive.

TO BE CONTINUED...

The Universe

I hate the universe.

A friend told me recently that he found this phrase scrawled on one of the desks in his junior high classroom. That's a lot of hate for a pre-teen.

My friend said, as to the author, "Oh sure, you hate the universe-- but you couldn't give it a bug bite if you wanted to."

Even so, I hate the universe. Don't ask why, because "why" is a question which is part of the universe, and today I hate the universe.

ChernoMap

Chernobyl Investigation Ongoing

My mother says that I probably don't remember because I was 6 years old, but I think her explanation is just a cop out and a pathetic attempt to avoid digging in the garage for her old calendars, which I know she has saved. The fact that I was age 6 is nearly meaningless. Of primary importance is the fact that the Challenger explosion awakened me to the delicious world of disaster. I was thrilled with the smoke and fumes and thoughts of exploded people. Three months later, I'm sure I would have been morbidly drawn to a television offering nuclear billows and radiation burns.

Another possible theory is that our family was on a camping trip, or that my mother and father were then on their Love Boat cruise and had shipped my sisters and me off to a relatives house, where we, presumably, were entertained with arts and crafts rather than television.

The investigation continues...

Chernobyl Radiation Cloud Drift

Where Was I On...? (The Chernobyl Investigation Begins)

The Chernobyl disaster occurred at 01:23 a.m. (local time) on April 26, 1986 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Pripyat, Ukraine. It is regarded as the worst accident in the history of nuclear power.

At 1:23am the chain reaction in the reactor became out of control, creating explosions and a fireball which blew off the reactor's heavy steel and concrete lid. Because there was no containment building, a plume of radioactive fallout drifted over parts of the western Soviet Union, Eastern and Western Europe, Scandinavia, the British Isles, and eastern North America. Large areas of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia were badly contaminated, resulting in the evacuation and resettlement of over 336,000 people. About 60f the radioactive fallout landed in Belarus according to official post-Sovietic data [1]. According to the 2006 TORCH report, half of the radioactive fallout landed outside those three Soviet republics [2] [3]. The disaster released over 400 times more radiation than the atomic bomb of Hiroshima.

The Chernobyl accident killed more than 30 people immediately, and as a result of the high radiation levels in the surrounding 20-mile radius, 135,00 people had to be evacuated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_accident


So why is it, then, that I have no recollection of this event when it occurred?

In April 1986, I was six years old. I was in Mrs. Schlossers first/second grade combination class. Just three months earlier, my classmates and I had settled our little 5-or-6-or-7-year-old butts into our little plastic seats to watch a rocketship launch off into space. It launched. Then it exploded into bits. Most of us, having eyeballs and brains that were not fully formed, didn't know that the launching rocketship was not supposed to burst into bits. We were babies. We didn't have a rocket-launch cognitive schema: we didnt know how it was supposed to go. Mrs. Schlosser did. And, of course, many of the students understood the concept that something bursting into smithereens was, in general, not a good thing.

A kid named Roger cried out Jesus Christ! prompting Mrs. Schlosser to drop her hand from her gasping mouth and recollect her role as disciplinarian. Admittedly, I was heavily entrenched in tra-la-la land and really had no idea what I had just seen.

Mrs. Schlosser quickly switched off the television and tried to protect our young bubbling brain-custards with some ineffectual transition like, "Well, Im not sure what happened, but lets get back to Social Studies." She was a saint. Saint Gloria. I wonder if she is still alive, or if she had any relatives in eastern Europe who were affected by Strontium-90 poisoning following the Chernobyl disaster.

I remember the Challenger mishap. I do not remember Chernobyl, and I want to know why. It can't be as simple as having lost those brain cells during my early college bouts with intoxicant abuse. I am going to investigate this matter: where was I on the eve of Chernobyl? First stop: Mom. Stay tuned.

Bleeding Chernobyl Flash Map

Watch this, it's eerie.
http://www.irsn.fr/vf/05_inf/05_inf_1dossiers/05_inf_17_tchernobyl/film_nuage_web.html

What I Saw (The Mallards)

During my lunchtime furlough the other day, I walked out to a courtyard around the corner from my office. My office is right next to a large pond/fountain. A pondtain. And so, the courtyard is also around the corner from the pondtain. I stopped in the courtyard for a moment, deciding whether or not I wanted to have gross but convenient coffee or delicious but 15-minutes-away coffee with my lunch. While I pondered, I was nearly broadsided by a small flock of mallards: three males, one female.

The female was leading the brigade. Not exactly, though. The males, as it turned out, were in hot pursuit. In mid flight, one of the males caught the lady on the neck with his beak. Down she went-- down to the dirty godforsaken floor of eternal subjugation. Aggressor #1 pinned her flat on her stomach, then moved to the side as Aggressor #2 flanked her other side. She struggled with her wings, but numbers 1 and 2 stayed close, so her wings couldn't spread, and kept their beaks tight around her neck, pinning her head against the ground. Aggressor #3, with his eyes on the prize, climbed on from behind.

I looked around. There were at least twenty people in the near vicinity, and all of them strangely impervious to the fact that there was a live gang rape going on in the center of the courtyard. Maybe everyone else is just accustomed to gang rape in their living rooms, but not me. Now, if there were horses involved, fine, but as it were the ducks didn't awaken any fond memories for me.

So King Mallard goes to town while his accomplices maintain the choke holds. From what I could tell, "going to town," for this ducky young buck, entailed all of two insertions at most. But the number is not important. What's important is that this rapist ceremony was dually reproductive AND nuptial. That's right. Lady and Rapist were now married. Aggressors #1 and #2 flew off, and the lady stayed with her man to enjoy a daytime walk pecking bugs out of the planter. I watched them for about 10 more minutes. They didn't stray more than 2 feet from each other. In keeping with the traditions of American romance, gang rape led to a promising committal love.

I wondered how similar Lady Mallard's plight was to my own. Now, I'm AT LEAST as attractive as that slutty duck, but I don't have any gang-aggressors pinning down MY wings. No-- instead, I have what amounts to a bunch of puppies humping my legs. And as lovely lady-bird, will my eventual capture necessarily be by force? And would I mind it? I guess it would all depend on the resultant number of insertions.

KOSUGAI Super Chewy Kiwi Gummy

Today I was chewing on a Kosugai Super Juicy Kiwi Gummy. I sucked on it for a bit, and nibbled some teeth marks into it which gave it a fun texture. I noticed that it felt like a piece of a tongue. I don’t know why, but I imagined that it was the tongue of my ex-fuck (who turned out to be a real motherfucking fuck of a fuck… you get the idea). I imagined that I was now tossing around in my mouth a piece of his tongue, which I had torn out at some previous unimagined point, and now he was somewhere in the stupid world, tongueless and (importantly) speechless. And you know, tongue never tasted so good.

Build Me A Tower

Men sometimes open doors for me. They pick up the tab. They **** me right, or not, and mostly pay attention when I talk. Occasionally, one might give me a mix CD or a funny little book. One might take out the trash for me or wash my dishes, or take me on a trip to a museum. The best ones give me a massage. But, I now see, these men are all pathetic excuses for men.

In my perusal of American poetry, I ran into the poems of Robinson Jeffers. (Yes, this is a bit of a dork rant.) Anyhow, I liked the stuff and was compelled to take a whole seminar course on RJ. And somehow, after a while, I ended up on a tour of the author’s home in Carmel, CA. He doesn’t live there anymore… or anywhere at all. No one lives there now except rocks and spirits.
The house, called “Tor House,” is a historic landmark, located on the rocky Carmel coast. The property looks out onto the big beautiful green blue grey ocean and is surrounded by pine and eucalyptus trees, most of them planted by Jeffers himself, or his wife Una. It is also surrounded by obnoxiously gaudy billionaire homes, but you must ignore those. And Tor House isn’t just a plain old house. Much of it was built by Jeffers’s own hands. This guy walked down the hill to the beach and dragged each enormous granite stone, with the strength of only his body, back up the hill to be placed in a wall or mantle of his home. And the home is all gorgeous wood and stone. In many spaces in the walls or walkways, you’ll find a ‘special’ stone—a ceramic trinket or unique stone piece representing some special place or memory—placed in with all the granite others.

The whole house is one great sculpture. On the wooden beams are painted little phrases or messages, and occasionally you’ll find something interesting carved into the wood or mortar. Wherever you look, there’s some secret little art-bit to be found. If you give half a shit about artistry and craftsmanship, you would just die over the persistent work it took to personalize and beautify every square inch of this home.

So Jeffers lived there with his wife and sons. He and wife Una had a famously tumultuous relationship, and if you really cared to know about it, you could find their love letters on a library shelf in various collections. They survived infidelity and all the rest and called each other Sweetheart and Darling to the very end.

To commemorate one of Una’s birthdays, or some other special occasion, or maybe just her existence, Robin gave her a unique gift. He did not buy her a Lexus convertible or a ticket to the Madonna concert. He didn’t get her a box of candy with flowers and a Hallmark card. He skipped the candles and romantic comedy rental (I’m about the throw up thinking about all these things). He didn’t make her a mix CD or do the dishes for her. He didn’t take her out to dinner at her favorite fucking restaurant. Do you know what he did instead? HE BUILT HER A FUCKING TOWER. A tower! Here, look at it: http://www.torhouse.org/history.htm or http://www.jeffers.org/archive/jeffers/image3.html

Standing in the garden at Tor House, staring up at Hawk Tower, I realized how low my standards had become. I mean, I’m completely impressed when a guy says “Excuse me” after he belches. I’m blown away when a guy can prepare a meal for himself (like pasta, or a quesadilla, you know). I’m touched when one remembers something I said the day before. But now, now, this tower leaves all in the granite dust. All those piddly little favors and paltry words are as ocean mist wafting ineffectually over the granite stones of A FUCKING THREE STOREY TOWER.

I don’t think I’m asking too much, here. All I ask of any mate is that he or she is a brilliant genius who can make me laugh until I throw up AND who can build me a tower. It need not be granite and obeliskine. I’ll accept variations in style and structure, absolutely.

Really though, that tower spoke eras. In a very unfunny yet exultant way, my little stone heart was touched. It really is the thought that counts, and that tower took 4 years and a thousand stones of thought. It sure ain’t the same as a trip to Tower Records.

Mimi is In the Hospital

Mimi is in the hospital. My grandma. The tartiest tart to ever eat Almond Roca or Ferraro Rocher (you can roll up the wrappers into ‘golden nuggets and string ‘em on a necklace… did you ever think o’ that, kid?!).

Mimi can be a real bitch at times. She has an unwavering sense of entitlement, yet she isn’t a woman of any great social status. She has never been rich—in fact, she’s been through 4 husbands and managed to end up with only government pennies. I can only imagine that the source of her snobbish attitude is her beauty—as a younger woman, Mildred was ssssssssmokin’ hot. So I’m sure most people, men especially, treated her in a certain worshipful way, which she became accustomed to. Her sex was her power. But now that she’s old and falling apart, and looks pretty much like everyone else, she ain’t so special anymore. If you don’t know her, that is.

Even some of us who do know her get red in the face over her demands and criticisms. She is a perfectionist, and highly creative, always seeking new, better, and more interesting ways of doing things. And when she discovers these ways, she freely suggests to everyone that they SHOULD do it this way, too. Her way. And with her brightly lipsticked mouth, she is constantly telling everyone what’s wrong with everything. Unfortunately for Mimi, almost no one is interested in hearing this. Not the manager at every single store or restaurant we’ve ever been in. Not the pharmacist. Not the head nurse in the ICU. Not her doctor. Not her neighbor. Not her daughters. Not the Bingo announcer at the Senior Center. Not interested.

I’m a little bit interested in her commentary, not because I plan to do anything about it, but because it’s funny. I empathize because I’m a perfectionist, too. A few years ago, I took a psychological assessment as part of a class project, and I learned that I am an SOP and OOP: Self-Oriented Perfectionist and Other-Oriented Perfectionist. In recent years, I think I’ve made progress in diminishing the OOP. That’s what Mimi is, certainly. A big, brazen OOP. I’m glad I know Mimi. If I didn’t, I would probably turn out like her.

She really is one of the funniest people I know. She is a master of the cynical quip and the familial jab. For example, one night we all gathered at my mother’s house for dinner. My sister and Mimi and I were in the living room, relaxing and chatting a bit. My sister was massaging her hand, as if injured.

“My knuckles hurt so bad,” she complained.

Without a beat, Mimi replied, “Well maybe you should stop draggin’ ‘em when you walk.”

So she’s in the hospital, first because she had a pacemaker installed, and still because she will have her gall bladder removed, after they figure out what to do with the aneurysm in her stomach.

Considering her age (86, we’re pretty sure, although she says 80-ish), Mimi is remarkably alert. Her quips and jabs have become no less sharp with age. She listens and communicates more clearly than almost everyone I know. And I love talking with her. She also has a knack for “gussying up.” You know, adding glitter and glamour to things. Everything. Hats. Furniture. Her shower curtain. Her trash can. Pencils. Earrings. Checkbook covers. And so on. Her whole existence sparkles with rhinestones. She IS the Bedazzler. I strive to resemble her in this way, but I hope I remain significantly less indulgent (in all things).

Mimi LOVES desserts and fine candies. Especially Ferraro Rocher and Almond Roca. Any bearer of a lovely box of candies will instantly earn her favor. And so we do this for her, in spite of her abuse. But when Mimi isn’t around, there is talk of making “Cat-Roca” out of cat turds and litter dust. Would she notice the difference before she took the first bite? We wonder.

Where A Kid Can Be A Kid

hate nothing more than washing dishes. If I’m enjoying survival, I get around to the dishes about once every 1.5 weeks. This is atrocious. It is also a horribly boring topic, but read on, read on. Last night I got to ‘em, and as I rustled around in the clutter, plumes of mold spores rose up into the air. I had some pretty good colonies going in there, probably worthy of donation to the university. My sister uses Styrofoam or paper or plastic dishware instead of doing dishes. I find it mostly tacky and environmentally criminal, but if I had a husband and a kid and their friends to take care of, I’d probably become a tacky polluter, too.

Do any of you ever look up a word when you don’t know the meaning of it? Here, this is easy: www.m-w.com.

But none of this is the point. The point is that last weekend I joined my sister, brother-in-law, nephew, and nephew-friend, for a trip to Chuck-the-Rat’s, as I contemptfully call that grimiest of grime-holes—Chuck E. Cheese’s.

The smell upon entering was one of instant diarrhea, and you may interpret “instant” in both the immediate and powder-mixed-with-water senses. I wrapped my scarf around my head and face, attempting to filter out some of the sick wafts, but the smell of pissed pants and pink eye can permeate ANY material. Probably even a latex condom, an object with which most Chuck-going parents are completely unfamiliar.

The essence of Chuck E.’s is fecal and viral, but what’s worse is the effect of this place on the children. Nephew and nephew-pal, upon exiting the Kid-Check line (where they were branded with a number and bar code that no one will ever later check), ran out into the pizza-flavored shit-world and into an aggressive, ticket-seeking existence.

Here, in this pre-libidinal hunt, my Nephew adopts a constant expression of disproportionate concern. He becomes oblivious to anything that does not offer flashing lights, anthropomorphized animals, and a narrow slit dispensing tickets. He is angered by anyone trying to communicate with him.

His buddy, who (in spite of little-boy dirty fingernails and the occasional nose-pick) is normally the sweetest and most fun cute-bug on the block, here became a total dickhead male of the adult variety. He refused to play anything with any of us. Whatever the stupid game, if we were playing it, he wouldn’t. Eventually, we resorted to physical force and dragged him into the booth of Chuck E.’s Sketch Book.

Chuck E.’s Sketch Book is where I spend the entirety of my time at the Rat’s-Nest, when on the rare occasion I am forced to go there. The Sketch Book is basically a photo booth, but (regrettably) without a curtain. It produces only one 5x7 “photo,” instead of a strip of 4, and the photo is stylized as if it were sketched by Chuck’s very own claw. You can watch the artist at work on the video display. If it’s not too noisy, you can hear the comments Chuck makes as he sketches you: “Hold still, now!” “Uh-oh!” (erase, erase, erase). “Wow, you look GREAT!”

I sat in this booth for approximately 2 hours. One photo costs only one token, and by the end of the night, I had 35 lovely custom sketches. Sketches of my face, right eyeball, profile, hair, lips, and bum. Sketches of me and my sister in myriad poses, some as moviestars, some as a pair of corpses. Sketches of my sisters feet and throat. Sketches of her and her huzzy tonguing. Sketches of Nephew and, finally, Nephew-friend, making little boy gross-out faces.
The auto-focus on this thing is immaculate. You can put your nostril right up to the glass, and Chuck will promptly sketch it, precise and clear. The eyeball sketches were pretty compelling artworks, I must say.

After I had used all my tokens, I wandered around the place, now accustomed to the diarrhea smell, saying under my breath things like, “goddam it can we get the fuck out of here please,” and “oh sweet jesus fucking Christ, get your hand outta your damn diaper!” I remembered a vignette I read in “Fast Food Nation” about a Chuck E. Cheese employee who had ‘gone postal’ during peak pizza time at a Rat-Hole in the Midwest. The police arrived to find thirty-some dead bodies, blood everywhere, and ‘Chuck E. and The Gang’ in full swing. I considered committing such a massacre myself, but thought better of it when I realized that it would just make the stench worse.

I walked right up to the stage, probably as close as I have ever come to those horror puppets. I stared at Chuck and the band, fantasizing about which songs they would play if I were their band manager. Instead of incessant covers of Coldplay and Britney, I would have them lip-sync to Stevie Nicks’ “Edge of Seventeen,” over and over again. Nothing else. Or if they weren’t lip-syncing, then Fiona Apple would appear live as a special guest performer, and SHE would sing “Edge of Seventeen.” And by the way, why hasn’t she sung this yet? I haven’t even listened to Fiona Apple since Tidal, but I would start up again if she sang “Edge of Seventeen.”

We left, finally, with a coating of shit-essence and kid-sweat all over us. But all in all, I guess it was better than washing dishes.

Consider that as a new approach to life. Most things are “better than washing dishes.”

I Heart Egomaniacs

They are filled to the teeth with planet-sized jokes and eye-widening quips. They are usually very pretty, with nice stems. It doesn’t matter how they do their hair, they’re always smoking’, they are le sex de la sex. Likely to notice comma splices? Not so sure. But they notice enough to create a captivating opinion on every subject. Even their apathy is compelling. Why?

I can’t resist. Egomaniacs, if they are social, are so FUNNY. God, they’re so funny. And I’m a sucker for a laugh. I’ll do anything for someone who can make me laugh. I’ll shave my head. I’ll wear a mask. I’ll keep cooking dinner for years upon years in spite of world-hate and yin-exhaustion. Regarding humor as a religion leaves me with some wrathful gods, to be sure.

I grew up with so many people trying so hard to be normal, which is why I prefer people who would possibly WANT me to shave my head or wear a mask.

I would probably allow a true egomaniac to pee on me. And then I would try to poke his eyeballs out, because he is probably the most terrible asshole motherfuck when he is not being a sweet bear or peeing on me.

No one’s ever peed on me before, except in the shower. Really, I probably wouldn’t like it. And now that I’m really imagining it, I guess it would all depend on what the person had to eat and drink that day.

Last Weekend at the Red Vic

Last weekend, I stopped into a theater called The Red Vic in San Francisco. They were showing "Disco Dolls: Hot Skin," a feature-length porno, IN DEEP SKIN 3-D. You're so jealous, aren't you? Just so you don’t feel too left out, here’s a synopsis, with just a bit of commentary.

The main characters were named "Chick," "Emmanuelle," and "Harry Balls." Chick's problem was that he couldn't keep it up for Emmanuelle, and she was the only one he wanted to keep it up for. She was upset because she was only getting her "90 percent", that is, just the clitoral orgasm, and she wanted her "extra 10 percent." But I ask, what's EXTRA about the 10% that makes 100? Anyway, they were both seeing a therapist who looked exactly like Saddam Hussein and spoke with a badly exaggerated Austrian accent.

Harry Balls had a huge dilemma, which was that “Laura” found some important document stuck underneath his baby grand piano. And what would you do if you found a scrap of paper stuck to the bottom of a piano? You would promptly eat it, of course, which Laura naturally did. Harry had to then figure out how to retrieve this “important document” (the nature of which was never revealed). He was forgetting (silly man!) the natural course of the human digestive tract. Of course! Laura eventually shat out the aforementioned document, and it emerged completely unscathed but for some soiling. Harry Balls’s new problem was that his important document was covered with “poo poo.” Unfortunately, this problem was never resolved.

John Holmes was featured as an extra. He shot one right at the audience, which would have been worth it if the 3-D effect had worked at all. Instead, the 3-D glasses just made everything look blue, and the double-image/“shadow” could not be eliminated no matter which way I turned my glasses or how far I moved them down the tip of my nose. Instead of enjoying money shot after money shot, I was trying to get the image, any image, into some kind of focus.

Memorable dialogue:
Emmanuelle: “Lately, I just can’t see anything past the tip of my nose.”
Harry Balls: “The only thing past the tip of your nose is MY dick!”

Running gag:
Somebody: “blah blah blah… Harry Balls.”
Somebody Else: “Harry Balls WHO?”
Everybody: “Whoever he wants!”

Interesting Fact:
Emmanuelle wore the same dress throughout the entire movie, even though the plot happened over the course of weeks.

Audience Demographics:Approximately 40 people. Mostly twenty-thirty-somethings, mostly couples or small groups of friends. All prone to giggling. Three lone men. Two were twenty-thirty-somethings, both wearing large overcoats. The other was a seventy-eighty-something, sitting to my rear left. Whenever I turned to talk to my friend, I could see him. He was rubbing his dick for the ENTIRE 90-minute movie. No joke.

A Steak Through My Heart

Last night on the way home from work, I had the sudden realization that I NEEDED to eat a steak. Immediately. Or I would die. And it had to be at least one inch thick.

I swung into the grocery store (like an ape or something?) and grabbed the best looking slab I could find. A 0.6 lb. porterhouse, bone in.

Whenever I want steak, I want something resembling a “slab” of flesh. It must look like I just tore it off the beast, a little rough around the edges, with chunks of fat hanging off of it. Are you vegetarian? I’m not sorry. I have canines for a reason. And yes, I read Fast Food Nation. I know about the beef industry. I haven’t been to McDonald’s since, and I don’t eat ground beef from anywhere but the 49ers Tavern (best burgers ever). I usually don’t eat beef from anywhere but there or Green Field Churrascaria (on PCH & Anaheim in Long Beach—a juicy flesh feast, a MUST for any carnivore). Anyhow, I like a good bloody slab now and then.

So, at the market, I found my slab and tossed it into the basket. I selected some fresh green beans, for balance, you know. And a bag of red potatoes. Doesn’t this all sound sweet and cute?

I got home, starving, and tore the wrapping from the steak. I seasoned it with garlic powder, pepper, salt, and thyme. And with each shake of the seasoning, I became more and more depressed by the whole stupid thing. The slab, the garlic, the bone, myself. The act of seasoning a steak, which I alone would eat, was more than I could bear at the time. In fact, I could imagine nothing more depressing than eating a hearty steak dinner by oneself. I wondered, how many people in the world do this sort of thing most nights, for most of their lives? I just wondered.
And you know, it would not have been depressing, not at all, if I had been making pasta or Top Ramen, or a quesadilla or something.

I realize that I don’t especially like eating dinner alone. It is something I have done rarely in my life, having grown up with two sisters, then living in the dorms, and then sharing dinner with a mate for 5 years. Since June 2005, and only since then, I eat dinner mostly with myself.
I am NOT saying that I would rather eat dinner with some stupid asshole than eat alone. No, my dinner table is not JerkSpace. But I think I would rather eat with friends or family, at home, at the table, mine or theirs.

So I am inviting all one or two of you who are reading this to join me anytime for dinner. It won’t be a grand affair, just dinner with company. I can’t promise that my house will be sparkling, but it will be decent. If you give me a day’s notice, the house will sparkle. I’m also inviting myself to dinner at the home of anyone who isn’t a jerk. You know who you are.

I take that back… part of it, anyway. I WOULD make dinner for a stupid asshole or jerk if that person would in turn pay back my student loans.

I skipped the green beans and potatoes (too depressing). I ate the steak. It was perfectly medium rare, but, as it turned out, the very last bite was all gristle.