Outside my window
"A lone man rides by on a one-wheeled unicycle. He steers with his hands on either side of the wheel, or maybe that's just him hanging on."
Sherry LaCourte looks over at me with a bland inquisitiveness, ever so slightly raising one perfectly groomed auburn eyebrow.
"I push my whole body against the window until my breasts are flattened and my nose aches from the cold."
I look to my left as I'm talking, pausing between "breasts" and "flattened" for dramatic effect.
"And you think this has something to do with your mother's breast cancer?" Sherry asks, curious.
I scowl. The last thing in the world I want to do is talk about what's actually happening. The room smells like stale wool.
"I thought you were a Jungian," I say, not without a sting in my voice.
Goddamn I hate therapists is what I'm thinking, but instead of saying it out loud and dealing with the whole trite "transference" thing, I scratch the back of my left calf with the top of my faux alligator cowboy boot, greener than any swamp I've ever seen.
"Juniper..." she starts to explain something to me sounding exactly like my mother but with slightly less noticeable exasperation. Still I can feel it there.
I play with a tiny piece of gravel I find with my right hand as I run my fingers along the textured surface of the love seat. Psychologists never have couches, contrary to popular belief. Too hard to get their patients out the door.
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Sunday, July 29, 2012
The Daily Write: My recipe (July 29, 2012. 12 minutes)
My recipe
You need a Teflon pan. A block of Tillamook cheddar cheese. A grater. A stove. Heat up the pan. Grate the cheese. Put it on the hot pan and watch it melt and bubble. Cook it longer than you think you should and soon you'll be able to pull the whole thing up off the pan and eat it. If you want something sweet and there's nothing in the house, you can mash up soft butter with brown sugar. It almost tastes like cookie dough.
If you want to shock your friends, you can pull out your mom's boyfriend's daughter's placenta from the freezer and ask them to guess what it is. When they figure out it's not frozen berries, you can tell them and watch them react in wide-eyed shock. It's fun.
There's never much to eat in the house. We usually have orange juice made from a can. It sucks when the can is still frozen and we're out of juice and need it. Then we have to run it under warm water a long time, or pry it out until the hunk of frozen orange citrus plops into the bottom of the green plastic pitcher we keep in the fridge. Then use a wooden spoon to mash it around with water until it turns into juice. It's really annoying and you can't get all the chunks out.
One time I was really hungry and I wanted beef stew so I opened a can of Dinty Moore but I couldn't wait to heat it up. I grabbed a piece of potato right out of the can and put it in my mouth. Only it turned out it was cow fat and not a potato and I couldn't get the horrible globs of fat from coating the inside of my whole mouth.
Once a week my mom would take me and the twins to King's Table for the all you can eat buffet. They had turkey and meatloaf and macaroni n' cheese. Plus mashed potatoes and gravy. I would stop in the chocolate shop first and get sugar free candy. The twins would make huge soft serve sundaes all by themselves. It was fun.
I worked in my friend Lori's mom's sandwich shop for a while. I didn't get paid. It was just something to do when I was skipping school. Only I thought it would be cool to give people extra of everything, seeing as I was always hungry. So I made the ham two inches high and then piled on extra cheese and mayo. No one seemed to like it. Some even complained. I got fired.
Lynne was on welfare and had a lot of mouths to feed. She knew how to stretch a food stamp dollar. She made really yummy casseroles. I always wanted to stay at her house when it was dinner time but she always wanted me to leave. I tried to get myself invited, but I guess that would have cost more than she had and besides, I usually wanted thirds.
Me and Kristi used to go to the mini-mart gas station and get Jo Jos, wedges of crispy chicken-fried potatoes with ranch dressing for dip. If I weren't allergic to gluten now, I'd go get some Jo Jo's from Safeway cause I like them that much.
My dad's specialty when I was little was barbecue steak. Only when I was six and had just moved in with him after he picked us up from our grandma's apartment in Oregon, he was on some kind of a steak diet and when he cooked them under the broiler, they always caught fire. That was scary. But not as bad as the time he reached his hand into the pantry to get something and instead pulled his arm out holding a snake and screaming. Also, one time the Nutter Butters on top of the fridge got infested with wormy larvae. I never liked peanut butter after that.
You need a Teflon pan. A block of Tillamook cheddar cheese. A grater. A stove. Heat up the pan. Grate the cheese. Put it on the hot pan and watch it melt and bubble. Cook it longer than you think you should and soon you'll be able to pull the whole thing up off the pan and eat it. If you want something sweet and there's nothing in the house, you can mash up soft butter with brown sugar. It almost tastes like cookie dough.
If you want to shock your friends, you can pull out your mom's boyfriend's daughter's placenta from the freezer and ask them to guess what it is. When they figure out it's not frozen berries, you can tell them and watch them react in wide-eyed shock. It's fun.
There's never much to eat in the house. We usually have orange juice made from a can. It sucks when the can is still frozen and we're out of juice and need it. Then we have to run it under warm water a long time, or pry it out until the hunk of frozen orange citrus plops into the bottom of the green plastic pitcher we keep in the fridge. Then use a wooden spoon to mash it around with water until it turns into juice. It's really annoying and you can't get all the chunks out.
One time I was really hungry and I wanted beef stew so I opened a can of Dinty Moore but I couldn't wait to heat it up. I grabbed a piece of potato right out of the can and put it in my mouth. Only it turned out it was cow fat and not a potato and I couldn't get the horrible globs of fat from coating the inside of my whole mouth.
Once a week my mom would take me and the twins to King's Table for the all you can eat buffet. They had turkey and meatloaf and macaroni n' cheese. Plus mashed potatoes and gravy. I would stop in the chocolate shop first and get sugar free candy. The twins would make huge soft serve sundaes all by themselves. It was fun.
I worked in my friend Lori's mom's sandwich shop for a while. I didn't get paid. It was just something to do when I was skipping school. Only I thought it would be cool to give people extra of everything, seeing as I was always hungry. So I made the ham two inches high and then piled on extra cheese and mayo. No one seemed to like it. Some even complained. I got fired.
Lynne was on welfare and had a lot of mouths to feed. She knew how to stretch a food stamp dollar. She made really yummy casseroles. I always wanted to stay at her house when it was dinner time but she always wanted me to leave. I tried to get myself invited, but I guess that would have cost more than she had and besides, I usually wanted thirds.
Me and Kristi used to go to the mini-mart gas station and get Jo Jos, wedges of crispy chicken-fried potatoes with ranch dressing for dip. If I weren't allergic to gluten now, I'd go get some Jo Jo's from Safeway cause I like them that much.
My dad's specialty when I was little was barbecue steak. Only when I was six and had just moved in with him after he picked us up from our grandma's apartment in Oregon, he was on some kind of a steak diet and when he cooked them under the broiler, they always caught fire. That was scary. But not as bad as the time he reached his hand into the pantry to get something and instead pulled his arm out holding a snake and screaming. Also, one time the Nutter Butters on top of the fridge got infested with wormy larvae. I never liked peanut butter after that.
The Daily Write: A bottle. (July 28, 2012, 12 minutes and then some)
He smashed the bottle into the middle of out midnight birthday cake.
Jealous I guess. It's true that he never seemed to like me, although I
was only 9, and not yet the adult who would have got in his face
about the drinking and aggressiveness toward my mother.
For her part, she took a stance of stone faced nonchalance. Always one to downplay the difficult, she didn't seem to notice or care about his constant, drunken yelling. And she bailed him out of detox more times than you can imagine.
I don't know what finally broke them up. Him with his fortified wine and malt liquor in crumbled brown paper bags. Her with her brood of children, none of them his. But this was long before that, and long before we kept our address a secret so he wouldn't find us and pound on the door drunkenly demanding to come in while I huddled over the phone in my attic room, mom and brothers by me, begging the cops to hurry.
He never seemed to regret ruining my life. Imagine that for a minute. A girl who only sees her mother a couple times a year comes to visit for the summer. She is with her brother, a year and a half younger, and their twin baby brothers. Mother sleeps on a bed in the living room with him. The kids sleep four in the tiny bedroom at the back of the apartment - two bigger kids on bunks, the babies first in their own drawers and then a shared crib. They cry a lot - at least to the girl's sensitive ears. They scream and wail and make rapid fire baby decisions about whose attention they need most and how soon.
He doesn't notice or he doesn't care. He loves the babies when he's in the mood for them. Calls them his guys. Smiles at them. But most of the time, he's more focused on the mother and her hairy armpits, "Cut that fucking arm hair!" he bellows at her as she tries to feed one baby, change the other and deal with her oversensitive daughter. Her middle son, who really isn't old enough to be out on his own, has opted to trek by himself down the long train tracks on a solo adventure that fills his older sister with worry and panic.
Maybe he hated the girl because she and her mother were so much alike. Maybe he hated being observed by both of them.Whatever it was, he made sure their special mother/daughter midnight cake which straddled both birthdays, was ruined. By a beer bottle.
For her part, she took a stance of stone faced nonchalance. Always one to downplay the difficult, she didn't seem to notice or care about his constant, drunken yelling. And she bailed him out of detox more times than you can imagine.
I don't know what finally broke them up. Him with his fortified wine and malt liquor in crumbled brown paper bags. Her with her brood of children, none of them his. But this was long before that, and long before we kept our address a secret so he wouldn't find us and pound on the door drunkenly demanding to come in while I huddled over the phone in my attic room, mom and brothers by me, begging the cops to hurry.
He never seemed to regret ruining my life. Imagine that for a minute. A girl who only sees her mother a couple times a year comes to visit for the summer. She is with her brother, a year and a half younger, and their twin baby brothers. Mother sleeps on a bed in the living room with him. The kids sleep four in the tiny bedroom at the back of the apartment - two bigger kids on bunks, the babies first in their own drawers and then a shared crib. They cry a lot - at least to the girl's sensitive ears. They scream and wail and make rapid fire baby decisions about whose attention they need most and how soon.
He doesn't notice or he doesn't care. He loves the babies when he's in the mood for them. Calls them his guys. Smiles at them. But most of the time, he's more focused on the mother and her hairy armpits, "Cut that fucking arm hair!" he bellows at her as she tries to feed one baby, change the other and deal with her oversensitive daughter. Her middle son, who really isn't old enough to be out on his own, has opted to trek by himself down the long train tracks on a solo adventure that fills his older sister with worry and panic.
Maybe he hated the girl because she and her mother were so much alike. Maybe he hated being observed by both of them.Whatever it was, he made sure their special mother/daughter midnight cake which straddled both birthdays, was ruined. By a beer bottle.
Friday, July 27, 2012
The Daily Write: The sky (July 26, 2012. 10 minutes)
The sky
The ocean, right in front of her face but completely invisible. This is why she is afraid of going blind. This is why she is claustrophobic. There is a gut clenching, heart palpitating, shallow breathing horror that comes from being two feet from the rolling waves and yet unable to see them because the air is so thick with fog it could fill a mug.
There is nothing to be done. She can't wave her arms. She can't blow it away with her mouth or a fan. She can't turn around three times and click her heels until the blue comes back. No. She has only three choices:
1) Walk toward the place where she knows the waves are, dipping her feet in to assure herself that even without vision, one can know the ocean
2) Turn around and search out any visible marker possible in the tulle fog, running up the sandy path lined with sweet carnations growing on either side
3) Stay still, eyes closed, and pretend that she is making it happen. That she only need open her eyes and all balance (or at least the horizon) will be restored.
Crackling camp fire smoke smells sweet and dry. The sand cradles her feet like the hot wax of an expensive pedicure. The invisible waves roll toward her, one after the other, like cars rushing past on a busy freeway overpass.
But the sky is nowhere to be found. Unless she imagines herself at cruising altitude, among the clouds.
A bird.
A plane.
The ocean, right in front of her face but completely invisible. This is why she is afraid of going blind. This is why she is claustrophobic. There is a gut clenching, heart palpitating, shallow breathing horror that comes from being two feet from the rolling waves and yet unable to see them because the air is so thick with fog it could fill a mug.
There is nothing to be done. She can't wave her arms. She can't blow it away with her mouth or a fan. She can't turn around three times and click her heels until the blue comes back. No. She has only three choices:
1) Walk toward the place where she knows the waves are, dipping her feet in to assure herself that even without vision, one can know the ocean
2) Turn around and search out any visible marker possible in the tulle fog, running up the sandy path lined with sweet carnations growing on either side
3) Stay still, eyes closed, and pretend that she is making it happen. That she only need open her eyes and all balance (or at least the horizon) will be restored.
Crackling camp fire smoke smells sweet and dry. The sand cradles her feet like the hot wax of an expensive pedicure. The invisible waves roll toward her, one after the other, like cars rushing past on a busy freeway overpass.
But the sky is nowhere to be found. Unless she imagines herself at cruising altitude, among the clouds.
A bird.
A plane.
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
The Daily Write: A child frightened by something (July 25, 2012. 18 minutes)
There were no mistakes. Not when she was talking on the beige push
button phone and pulled the extra-long coiled cord over to the stove
where she was making Hamburger Helper and it caught on fire in the gas
flames. Not when she bumped into the unfinished wooden planter with a
mirror she made in wood shop, and knocked it over. Not when she spilled
her milk.
Her father, a therapist without a license, practicing in a
town full of rich and repressed drunks, told her so.
If she broke a glass, or misplaced a book, or scraped the bar of Irish Spring soap on the faucet to get a hair off of it until it was concave in the middle, or cut herself slicing beef steak tomatoes for the nightly iceberg lettuce salad, it was because she had ulterior motives. She dreaded the confrontation. So much so that she would rush into his shack, a brown room lined with plywood shelves, tables and counters piled high with radio gear, electronics, a soldering iron, wire, and tools, to tell him. It was worse to be found out later, woken from sleep and required to admit what she had done.
She hated talking. She hated waiting just inside the doorway, waiting for him to stop tapping, dah-di-dah-di-di-dah-di-dit, before he faced her for the confession. She shifted from foot to foot, twisted her tangled brown hair, stared at the intricate white meerschaum pipe on a shelf. It had belonged to her grandfather, a surgeon, now dead. Next to that some kind of fungus carved into a country scene, something he had done on a fishing trip. Someday these things would go to her brother, and she would inherit the old red and white china with ugly scenes of English cottage life.
"I have something to tell you," she would whisper while he stared at her, dark eyes hardly blinking, hands crossed over his chest with his fingers interlaced, tapping, analytical.
"Yes. What is it?" His voice was soft and low, but it did not comfort her in the least.
"I," she started to breathe too fast.
"I," she couldn't concentrate. She just wanted it to be over.
"I burned the telephone cord."
He raised one heavy black eyebrow. He squinted his eyes. He demanded to know how it happened. And then why.
"Why do you think you did that?"
She almost put herself in the corner to stare at the textured plaster painted over with misleadingly cheerful yellow to think about it until she came up with an acceptable answer.
"I guess I wasn't paying attention."
He looked dissatisfied. And worse, disappointed.
"That's not good enough. Why weren't you paying attention?"
Why? Why couldn't he just yell and get it over with, or send her to her room? Why did she have to stand there under his judgmental gaze until she could figure out what awful internal motivation had made her act out?
She wanted to scream. Instead she stood there, being watched, as she searched her mind trying to come up with a reason.
If she broke a glass, or misplaced a book, or scraped the bar of Irish Spring soap on the faucet to get a hair off of it until it was concave in the middle, or cut herself slicing beef steak tomatoes for the nightly iceberg lettuce salad, it was because she had ulterior motives. She dreaded the confrontation. So much so that she would rush into his shack, a brown room lined with plywood shelves, tables and counters piled high with radio gear, electronics, a soldering iron, wire, and tools, to tell him. It was worse to be found out later, woken from sleep and required to admit what she had done.
She hated talking. She hated waiting just inside the doorway, waiting for him to stop tapping, dah-di-dah-di-di-dah-di-dit, before he faced her for the confession. She shifted from foot to foot, twisted her tangled brown hair, stared at the intricate white meerschaum pipe on a shelf. It had belonged to her grandfather, a surgeon, now dead. Next to that some kind of fungus carved into a country scene, something he had done on a fishing trip. Someday these things would go to her brother, and she would inherit the old red and white china with ugly scenes of English cottage life.
"I have something to tell you," she would whisper while he stared at her, dark eyes hardly blinking, hands crossed over his chest with his fingers interlaced, tapping, analytical.
"Yes. What is it?" His voice was soft and low, but it did not comfort her in the least.
"I," she started to breathe too fast.
"I," she couldn't concentrate. She just wanted it to be over.
"I burned the telephone cord."
He raised one heavy black eyebrow. He squinted his eyes. He demanded to know how it happened. And then why.
"Why do you think you did that?"
She almost put herself in the corner to stare at the textured plaster painted over with misleadingly cheerful yellow to think about it until she came up with an acceptable answer.
"I guess I wasn't paying attention."
He looked dissatisfied. And worse, disappointed.
"That's not good enough. Why weren't you paying attention?"
Why? Why couldn't he just yell and get it over with, or send her to her room? Why did she have to stand there under his judgmental gaze until she could figure out what awful internal motivation had made her act out?
She wanted to scream. Instead she stood there, being watched, as she searched her mind trying to come up with a reason.
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
The Daily Write: The Smell of Sadness (July 24, 2012. 12 minutes)
The smell of sadness
John wet his pants, every day. A tall and lanky geek, he had red hair, freckles and very pale skin. He was nice enough, except the smell of urine was so overwhelmingly pungent and sour that it was hard not to gag. This must've been before they had adult diapers. It was also before the word "oarder" was commonly understood. OCD too. These terms were private back then in the 70s. They either weren't known, or weren't used outside the context of a psychiatrist's office and the DSM.
I'm not sure why my dad let us go to Fred's house. Fred was John's father. And father to Mary and Frankie. Mary was a year or two older than me, but my friend. Frankie was my age and a friend of my younger brother. Fred, I guess, was a Ham radio operator like my dad. Otherwise, I can't imagine what they would have had in common.
Seems to me like my dad was in hiding back then. He never fessed up to being a Jew. It was bad enough that he was a therapist in a tiny bedroom community of old and new money. It was bad enough he got paid by the county and didn't come with his own inheritance. So maybe, in that strange state of WASP-wannbeness, my dad was perfectly comfortable being friends with a man whose house was so full of junk you had to cut a path through to get to the bathroom. And I guess we all pretended to ignore the pee smell, even if we found ourselves involuntarily breathing through the mouth to avoid the embarrassment of being caught noticing.
Poor John. He must've been miserable. Mary and Frankie too. I have no idea what happened to their mother. That's another thing we had in common with them - motherless children living with our single dads in an era when few couples were divorced and fathers raising kids alone was unheard of. So maybe the dads, however ill fitting they were as friends, were sticking together, a sort of male feminist embodiment of what happens when the mother isn't the primary caregiver.
I lost touch with Mary and Frankie and I was never friends with John, although it wasn't because he smelled. He was a lot older, and a guy, and an introvert. I heard Frankie changed his name, Mary disappeared and the house burnt down. Which I guess, when all is said and done, is maybe the best outcome you could hope for. As long as no one got hurt.
John wet his pants, every day. A tall and lanky geek, he had red hair, freckles and very pale skin. He was nice enough, except the smell of urine was so overwhelmingly pungent and sour that it was hard not to gag. This must've been before they had adult diapers. It was also before the word "oarder" was commonly understood. OCD too. These terms were private back then in the 70s. They either weren't known, or weren't used outside the context of a psychiatrist's office and the DSM.
I'm not sure why my dad let us go to Fred's house. Fred was John's father. And father to Mary and Frankie. Mary was a year or two older than me, but my friend. Frankie was my age and a friend of my younger brother. Fred, I guess, was a Ham radio operator like my dad. Otherwise, I can't imagine what they would have had in common.
Seems to me like my dad was in hiding back then. He never fessed up to being a Jew. It was bad enough that he was a therapist in a tiny bedroom community of old and new money. It was bad enough he got paid by the county and didn't come with his own inheritance. So maybe, in that strange state of WASP-wannbeness, my dad was perfectly comfortable being friends with a man whose house was so full of junk you had to cut a path through to get to the bathroom. And I guess we all pretended to ignore the pee smell, even if we found ourselves involuntarily breathing through the mouth to avoid the embarrassment of being caught noticing.
Poor John. He must've been miserable. Mary and Frankie too. I have no idea what happened to their mother. That's another thing we had in common with them - motherless children living with our single dads in an era when few couples were divorced and fathers raising kids alone was unheard of. So maybe the dads, however ill fitting they were as friends, were sticking together, a sort of male feminist embodiment of what happens when the mother isn't the primary caregiver.
I lost touch with Mary and Frankie and I was never friends with John, although it wasn't because he smelled. He was a lot older, and a guy, and an introvert. I heard Frankie changed his name, Mary disappeared and the house burnt down. Which I guess, when all is said and done, is maybe the best outcome you could hope for. As long as no one got hurt.
Monday, July 23, 2012
The Daily Write: No moon, but urgent stars. (July 22, 2012. 9 minutes)
No moon, but urgent stars
As big as the wall. And the wall was big. Museum wall. Giant wall. A wall you would only find in an over sized space meant to hold over sized objects.
On the wall, the painting. As big as the wall. Oil maybe. Thick. Dark. Luminescent.
At the bottom of the painting, a man. Silhouette in white like gauze or the silk of a moth. He lays on a line. Ground, presumably. Or consciousness. History. The stuff of life. Physicality.
We see him from the side. His profile. Nose. He is on the line. Reality. Resting. Looking up at the sky. Close.
Sky dark. Sky bright with illuminated stars. Cosmic bursts. Suns. Solar flares. Infinity.
The man, a body, a soul. He is surrounded by stars. The darkness is lit. A million billion tiny brilliant lights. Star dust. Imagination.
Ephemeral yet grounded. He is looking up at the stars. As big as a wall.
There is no edge. Not the end of the frame. Not the completion of the painting.
He is clothed by stars. Encapsulated. Floating. Illuminated. Luminescent.
If you could capture the sky and yet allow it to be expansive, unencumbered, unconstrained. This is that.
He is rising into the stars. A pillow. A feather. A body.
The dark is light. Full of celestial bodies. Bodies. Bodies.
As big as a wall.
As big as the wall. And the wall was big. Museum wall. Giant wall. A wall you would only find in an over sized space meant to hold over sized objects.
On the wall, the painting. As big as the wall. Oil maybe. Thick. Dark. Luminescent.
At the bottom of the painting, a man. Silhouette in white like gauze or the silk of a moth. He lays on a line. Ground, presumably. Or consciousness. History. The stuff of life. Physicality.
We see him from the side. His profile. Nose. He is on the line. Reality. Resting. Looking up at the sky. Close.
Sky dark. Sky bright with illuminated stars. Cosmic bursts. Suns. Solar flares. Infinity.
The man, a body, a soul. He is surrounded by stars. The darkness is lit. A million billion tiny brilliant lights. Star dust. Imagination.
Ephemeral yet grounded. He is looking up at the stars. As big as a wall.
There is no edge. Not the end of the frame. Not the completion of the painting.
He is clothed by stars. Encapsulated. Floating. Illuminated. Luminescent.
If you could capture the sky and yet allow it to be expansive, unencumbered, unconstrained. This is that.
He is rising into the stars. A pillow. A feather. A body.
The dark is light. Full of celestial bodies. Bodies. Bodies.
As big as a wall.
Saturday, July 21, 2012
The Daily Write: Disgusting (July 21, 2012. 12 minutes)
Note: I write for 12 minutes from a prompt as part of a daily writing practice. I don't edit the pieces (except maybe for typos). This one talks about a performance I did in Toronto in 1999 called Intake. Intake was complete, the writing below is not. That's how prompts work. I've decided to publish my writing in this manner to keep me inspired to keep going. I plan to come back to many of these pieces and write more.
 | |
| Intake |
Disgusting
I decided to go for my Jungian shadow side. You know, the one that is always lurking just under my surface telling me what a lazy, stupid and ugly pig I am. The one that screams at me from the automatic search I have feeding my email from google each night on "overweight Americans." I figure it's better to go after the negativity than be surprised by it. I think this has always been my tactic. I'm that person who will tell everyone goodbye before I drive from Richmond to San Jose, on the chance that I be killed in a horrible car accident. I'm the one who will call herself a fat pig and then roll around in mud with mini marshmallows in my mouth if I think it will do the trick.
I am not sure exactly what attracts me to extremes. Perhaps it was a lifetime of being looked at, through, down upon. Perhaps it was going between parents, relatives, entire worlds. I'm insatiable for experience and always afraid to die. I spend hours thinking about being beautiful or wishing I was more of whatever I think that might be, and the rest of the time fighting the beauty paradigm. I will pose in one cute outfit after another and then take self-portraits as ugly as I can make them.
I once conceived of a performance art piece where I would collect my own feces in glass jars during a 24 hour period and display them after eating in public to create the shit. My hypothesis being that fat people defecate more and in larger quantities than thin people, and enjoy the release, and that this is part of our shame. Either that or it's the Irritable Bowel Syndrome.
I never did that performance. It was more than even I could take. And I wasn't sure what the point was except for maybe extreme masochism. And sadism too for that matter. I've always been one for punishing my audience. I need them to feel the weight of their own projections. If anything, I suppose performance art is an act of vengeance.
 | |||||
| Pork Baby |
I used raw meat in performance - the first time as a window of festering innards from which the viewer would gaze into the gallery where I performed obsessive activities for 24 hours. The second time I had swaddled a pork roast and put it in a cradle - a rotting thing of grotesque proportions. I guiltily ignored my pork baby for the rest of the piece, afraid of contracting a disease.
Photos by Paul Couillard
---
JENNY STRAUSS's performance INTAKE was presented in Toronto as part of TIME TIME TIME, a 12-month series of durational performance art works by artists from the UK, US and Canada.
TIME TIME TIME presented works ranging from 12 hours to several days. Ritual, endurance, attention span, community-building, altering states of consciousness, boundaries between public and private, narrative, linearity and transformation were explored in the series by artists presenting their compelling, urgent visions of ourselves and our world at the end of the 20th Century.
Friday, July 20, 2012
The Daily Write: On the table (July 20, 2012. 15 minutes)
On the table
I'll be going soon. To Queer family camp. It's an annual voyage. A gay pilgrimage. A time to feel totally and completely safe, whole, home. Except last year I had lost some weight when I went and was given all sorts of unasked for kudos (secretly enjoying them, I'm ashamed to admit). This year I have gained some weight so I will go through that awkward terrible time when people are saying hello for the first time in a year, and this time they won't tell me how good I look.
It's a mind fuck being fat, losing a little, gaining it back. It was a mind fuck when I was 17 and lost 100 pounds in eight months, only then I milked it for all it was worth and actually, far more. Turns out it wasn't worth that much, all those months of self-induced, society sanctioned torture. The desperation for food, the dreams of chewing, the smell of the blender engine burning oil five times a day as I stuffed it full of doctor-prescribed protein powder, water, ice and natural flavorings from tiny brown bottles kept in a tall cupboard to the left of the gas stove.
I remember the fake wood grain of the Formica counter top under the blender, the nearly construction orange of the paint on the wooden cabinet door next to my head. We didn't have an automatic ice maker; I kept plastic trays of water well stocked in the freezer behind me, twisting the tray over the sink, five times a day.
Five times a day I poured the frothy concoction with a chocolate powder base into a tall glass and savored it like it was gooey pizza or popcorn. I wished it to be savory, a mouth sensation I completely missed out on during those hungry months of starvation. 550 calories a day, plus 10 packs of sugar free chewing gum, 1.5 calories per slice.
I banished myself in the hot hills of Northern California, in the house of my dad, with my teenage brother. In Oregon they waited. I never told them how much I weighed. Not since the beginning. Not since the last meal of Chicken Kiev and rice. Not since 233. Every week I was weighed by Dr. Kamarath's nurse, counseled by the bearded and smarmy Dr. Diner, and spoken with by the mousy nutritionist whose name and face I can barely remember. She was training us how to eat. As if you can tell a starving girl such things.
It's easy to agree to fist sized portions of steamed vegetables and skinless chicken when all you are putting into your mouth every day is liquefied powder and ice. This teaches you nothing about how to eat. And for that matter, you never had a problem knowing how to eat in the first place.
I held back my progress, pouring over cooking magazines and books, working at a Burger King, a Danish Bakery. I kept it a secret for the coming out, my 18th birthday party and my mom's 40th. It would be the first time I was seen as "the new me." Of course, I didn't realize that I would feel practically invisible in those days to come, when the only thing I could think about or focus on was what they thought of my new body.
It's been like this for years, only the changes are far more subtle now. I ebb and flow between 270 and 245 pounds. Except on those occasions when I have been pregnant and given birth. I always weigh less then, on accounting of the complications, the diabetes, the need for extreme and tortured self-control, and last time, the 9 day fever and abdominal infection.
Each time I was complimented on how great I looked after - younger, vibrant, healthy. I tried not to listen. I tried to take it with a grain of salt. And here's why. It feels too good. And the good feeling never lasts. With all my work to accept that being fat is my gift to the world, it's the way I am uniquely me, it is also a truly guilty pleasure, the kind that is tempered by the knowledge that I will become fat again, and that the compliments will stop. Just like that.
I'll be going soon. To Queer family camp. It's an annual voyage. A gay pilgrimage. A time to feel totally and completely safe, whole, home. Except last year I had lost some weight when I went and was given all sorts of unasked for kudos (secretly enjoying them, I'm ashamed to admit). This year I have gained some weight so I will go through that awkward terrible time when people are saying hello for the first time in a year, and this time they won't tell me how good I look.
It's a mind fuck being fat, losing a little, gaining it back. It was a mind fuck when I was 17 and lost 100 pounds in eight months, only then I milked it for all it was worth and actually, far more. Turns out it wasn't worth that much, all those months of self-induced, society sanctioned torture. The desperation for food, the dreams of chewing, the smell of the blender engine burning oil five times a day as I stuffed it full of doctor-prescribed protein powder, water, ice and natural flavorings from tiny brown bottles kept in a tall cupboard to the left of the gas stove.
I remember the fake wood grain of the Formica counter top under the blender, the nearly construction orange of the paint on the wooden cabinet door next to my head. We didn't have an automatic ice maker; I kept plastic trays of water well stocked in the freezer behind me, twisting the tray over the sink, five times a day.
Five times a day I poured the frothy concoction with a chocolate powder base into a tall glass and savored it like it was gooey pizza or popcorn. I wished it to be savory, a mouth sensation I completely missed out on during those hungry months of starvation. 550 calories a day, plus 10 packs of sugar free chewing gum, 1.5 calories per slice.
I banished myself in the hot hills of Northern California, in the house of my dad, with my teenage brother. In Oregon they waited. I never told them how much I weighed. Not since the beginning. Not since the last meal of Chicken Kiev and rice. Not since 233. Every week I was weighed by Dr. Kamarath's nurse, counseled by the bearded and smarmy Dr. Diner, and spoken with by the mousy nutritionist whose name and face I can barely remember. She was training us how to eat. As if you can tell a starving girl such things.
It's easy to agree to fist sized portions of steamed vegetables and skinless chicken when all you are putting into your mouth every day is liquefied powder and ice. This teaches you nothing about how to eat. And for that matter, you never had a problem knowing how to eat in the first place.
I held back my progress, pouring over cooking magazines and books, working at a Burger King, a Danish Bakery. I kept it a secret for the coming out, my 18th birthday party and my mom's 40th. It would be the first time I was seen as "the new me." Of course, I didn't realize that I would feel practically invisible in those days to come, when the only thing I could think about or focus on was what they thought of my new body.
It's been like this for years, only the changes are far more subtle now. I ebb and flow between 270 and 245 pounds. Except on those occasions when I have been pregnant and given birth. I always weigh less then, on accounting of the complications, the diabetes, the need for extreme and tortured self-control, and last time, the 9 day fever and abdominal infection.
Each time I was complimented on how great I looked after - younger, vibrant, healthy. I tried not to listen. I tried to take it with a grain of salt. And here's why. It feels too good. And the good feeling never lasts. With all my work to accept that being fat is my gift to the world, it's the way I am uniquely me, it is also a truly guilty pleasure, the kind that is tempered by the knowledge that I will become fat again, and that the compliments will stop. Just like that.
Thursday, July 19, 2012
My First Bat Mitzvah: Part 1 (July 19, 2012)
My First Bat Mitzvah: Part 1
When I was 15 I got invited to a bat mitzvah in State College, PA. I had been kicked out of high school and was rather aimless in between volunteering for NARAL where the highlight of my work was not studying election district maps, but secretly taping a right-to-life rally at the capitol, and taking a highly embarrassing human sexuality class at the community college (which I didn't pass). So, I begged my dad for money to buy a $99 Trailways bus ticket and called to tell my friend and her rather unhappy mom that I was coming. Apparently, as I figured out far later, the etiquette when receiving an across-the-country invitation was to send a gift, not take the bus across country and show up on the family's doorstep.
I didn't know from bat mitvahs or anything Jewish really. I didn't realize I was Jewish until I was about 11, the summer the same friends lived in the family student housing at the UofO where my mom was in school. Thinking back on it, they were probably Sephardic Jews, but this was a subtlety I didn't understand until much later in life, after I went through my obsessive Holocaust phase in college, reading everything I could get my hands on and pouring over the graphic novel Maus.
It was the summer we all lived in student housing in the mid-1970s that I first remember going to temple. The rabbi was liberal and the temple was welcoming to me, my mom and my loud band of rogue brothers. They let me open the ark and approach the Bima, something l was not allowed to do when my father became Bar Mitzvah on his 61st birthday at his conservative synagogue which didn't recognize me as a Jew. But then, neither did he.
I yearned for order and religion as a teenager. I wanted something to hang on to. My aunt's guru drew me in, but I wasn't allowed to be initiated as a follower until I was 21, and by that time, I had come out as a lesbian and feminist with some grasp of the problem of colonialism and could hardly imagine following a man from a different country in a religion that was not my own.
It seemed like the right thing to go across the country on the bus. Four days and four nights - through Eastern Oregon, Idaho, Colorado and the rest of the Northern route to Pennsylvania, land of the Amish and, as I realize now, Joe Paterno. I had a friend french braid my long brown hair and I wore my prized Manhattan Transfer "Mecca for Moderns" concert t-shirt. Plus my regulation drawstring balloon pants and flat Chinese slippers. I brought tapes to listen to in my Walkman with the over-the-head earphones: Soft Cell, Manhattan Transfer, Berlin and Bruce Springsteen.
I found Salt Lake City to be truly strange. I didn't know much about Mormons but I found anyone who was hyper religious and conservative to be both fascinating and somewhat horrifying. I wanted to go into their giant white temple, but found out I wasn't allowed. Being Jewish, however, had nothing to do with it.
My bus arrived in Chicago at midnight. The bus station was urban, located under giant freeway overpasses that made it seem even darker than it was in the wee hours of the morning. I spent my time sitting in a plastic bucket seat with a tiny attached black and white TV, trying to get reception and keep it going with quarters in the dirty slot next to my hand.
Somewhere between one flat state and another, I sat next to an old woman with a red wig and bright blue eyeshadow. She wore gold chains and a huge watch on her tiny, wrinkled frame. As she clutched her leatherette purse next to me and dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief, she told me about her life as a rich lady in the glamorous location of Garden City, Long Island. She said she had a lot of money but liked to take the bus to see "how the people lived." I didn't quite believe her, but on the other hand, couldn't figure out why she'd be lying to me.
We sat in the front, to the right of the driver, the seats right next to the barrier above the stairs facing the huge plate glass windows. During the Midwest storms with lighting cutting across the sky and beautiful black clouds the likes of which I had never seen, the giant wipers would pull across the windows with a rhythm almost as mesmerizing as the spring-loaded sound of the turn signals.
By the time I got to State College I was tired, hungry and sick of my music. But I felt worldly, having seen more than most 15 year olds I knew. But it was also when I realized that having a needy teenage house guest was not a welcome turn of events for my friend's mom, as stressed out as I had ever seen a woman.
To be continued...
When I was 15 I got invited to a bat mitzvah in State College, PA. I had been kicked out of high school and was rather aimless in between volunteering for NARAL where the highlight of my work was not studying election district maps, but secretly taping a right-to-life rally at the capitol, and taking a highly embarrassing human sexuality class at the community college (which I didn't pass). So, I begged my dad for money to buy a $99 Trailways bus ticket and called to tell my friend and her rather unhappy mom that I was coming. Apparently, as I figured out far later, the etiquette when receiving an across-the-country invitation was to send a gift, not take the bus across country and show up on the family's doorstep.
I didn't know from bat mitvahs or anything Jewish really. I didn't realize I was Jewish until I was about 11, the summer the same friends lived in the family student housing at the UofO where my mom was in school. Thinking back on it, they were probably Sephardic Jews, but this was a subtlety I didn't understand until much later in life, after I went through my obsessive Holocaust phase in college, reading everything I could get my hands on and pouring over the graphic novel Maus.
It was the summer we all lived in student housing in the mid-1970s that I first remember going to temple. The rabbi was liberal and the temple was welcoming to me, my mom and my loud band of rogue brothers. They let me open the ark and approach the Bima, something l was not allowed to do when my father became Bar Mitzvah on his 61st birthday at his conservative synagogue which didn't recognize me as a Jew. But then, neither did he.
I yearned for order and religion as a teenager. I wanted something to hang on to. My aunt's guru drew me in, but I wasn't allowed to be initiated as a follower until I was 21, and by that time, I had come out as a lesbian and feminist with some grasp of the problem of colonialism and could hardly imagine following a man from a different country in a religion that was not my own.
It seemed like the right thing to go across the country on the bus. Four days and four nights - through Eastern Oregon, Idaho, Colorado and the rest of the Northern route to Pennsylvania, land of the Amish and, as I realize now, Joe Paterno. I had a friend french braid my long brown hair and I wore my prized Manhattan Transfer "Mecca for Moderns" concert t-shirt. Plus my regulation drawstring balloon pants and flat Chinese slippers. I brought tapes to listen to in my Walkman with the over-the-head earphones: Soft Cell, Manhattan Transfer, Berlin and Bruce Springsteen.
I found Salt Lake City to be truly strange. I didn't know much about Mormons but I found anyone who was hyper religious and conservative to be both fascinating and somewhat horrifying. I wanted to go into their giant white temple, but found out I wasn't allowed. Being Jewish, however, had nothing to do with it.
My bus arrived in Chicago at midnight. The bus station was urban, located under giant freeway overpasses that made it seem even darker than it was in the wee hours of the morning. I spent my time sitting in a plastic bucket seat with a tiny attached black and white TV, trying to get reception and keep it going with quarters in the dirty slot next to my hand.
Somewhere between one flat state and another, I sat next to an old woman with a red wig and bright blue eyeshadow. She wore gold chains and a huge watch on her tiny, wrinkled frame. As she clutched her leatherette purse next to me and dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief, she told me about her life as a rich lady in the glamorous location of Garden City, Long Island. She said she had a lot of money but liked to take the bus to see "how the people lived." I didn't quite believe her, but on the other hand, couldn't figure out why she'd be lying to me.
We sat in the front, to the right of the driver, the seats right next to the barrier above the stairs facing the huge plate glass windows. During the Midwest storms with lighting cutting across the sky and beautiful black clouds the likes of which I had never seen, the giant wipers would pull across the windows with a rhythm almost as mesmerizing as the spring-loaded sound of the turn signals.
By the time I got to State College I was tired, hungry and sick of my music. But I felt worldly, having seen more than most 15 year olds I knew. But it was also when I realized that having a needy teenage house guest was not a welcome turn of events for my friend's mom, as stressed out as I had ever seen a woman.
To be continued...
The Daily Write: Chopped (July 19, 2012. 12 minutes)
Chopped
"Only paupers walk barefoot," to which I should have replied, "Only paupers are nannies for the nouveau riche." Instead, I seethed in the kitchen, washing his precious wooden salad bowl without soap as I had been instructed after "nearly ruining it," and thought about how much money it would take for me to get out of this awful situation.
"When you're done, please be sure to shine the drain like I showed you," Connie said cheerfully, but with a slicing edge to her smile that made me feel like I was in the presence of the wicked step-mother. Not that either one was my parent, but at 19, I wasn't as old as I pretended to be, and they lived like the adult I imagined I'd become, albeit, I'd be nice.
Connie had also shown me how to vacuum her entry way rug so that the pile looked like a backgammon board, neat long triangles head to end, across the expensive oriental piece. I felt rich in the entry way, knowing as I did that there were three real fur coats in the closet to my left and leather jackets behind the expanse of louvered wooden doors in front of me.
To the right one walked through the kitchen, breakfast nook and towards the informal living room and parents' wing of the ranch-cum-Japanese house in the hills. That side of the sprawling house also held the custom wine "cellar" remodeled out of a former maid's closet. And, of course, the bathroom closest to the laundry room and kitchen. That was where Connie forced me to assist her in holding down her precious Himalayan kittens to wash and then blow dry.
Their bedroom was as big as 1/2 the double wide I had been living in previously and had two separate "his" and "hers" dressing rooms that were joined by a long bathroom containing two sinks, two toilets (well, one was a bidet) and a huge sunken tub that no one ever used.
But this was not my wing of the house. I lived on the other side, past the untouched formal dining room and living room, on the same branch as the guest bedroom with its endless supply of left over hotel shampoos, slippers, shower caps and first class airplane shaving kits, and, of course, the child's room. Pink and white, delightful and spacious. The exact opposite of the child herself, who could not have been less warm.
Because I was transient, I took all my belongings with me from job to job. This probably surprised my employers, who expected maybe a girl with one suitcase and a few coats. But I wasn't simply looking for work, I was looking for a home. I did not realize how disturbing my bigness would be to any one of the families for which I worked. I didn't understand that I was not to have come from a life with things. I was not to be complicated or needy. Nor was I to argue or sigh. The fact that I washed the wooden bowl with dish detergent, walked barefoot and parked my behemoth of a beaten up Cutlass Supreme in their sloped driveway made it all wrong from the moment they returned from Vail, where they had been when I moved in over Christmas.
"Only paupers walk barefoot," to which I should have replied, "Only paupers are nannies for the nouveau riche." Instead, I seethed in the kitchen, washing his precious wooden salad bowl without soap as I had been instructed after "nearly ruining it," and thought about how much money it would take for me to get out of this awful situation.
"When you're done, please be sure to shine the drain like I showed you," Connie said cheerfully, but with a slicing edge to her smile that made me feel like I was in the presence of the wicked step-mother. Not that either one was my parent, but at 19, I wasn't as old as I pretended to be, and they lived like the adult I imagined I'd become, albeit, I'd be nice.
Connie had also shown me how to vacuum her entry way rug so that the pile looked like a backgammon board, neat long triangles head to end, across the expensive oriental piece. I felt rich in the entry way, knowing as I did that there were three real fur coats in the closet to my left and leather jackets behind the expanse of louvered wooden doors in front of me.
To the right one walked through the kitchen, breakfast nook and towards the informal living room and parents' wing of the ranch-cum-Japanese house in the hills. That side of the sprawling house also held the custom wine "cellar" remodeled out of a former maid's closet. And, of course, the bathroom closest to the laundry room and kitchen. That was where Connie forced me to assist her in holding down her precious Himalayan kittens to wash and then blow dry.
Their bedroom was as big as 1/2 the double wide I had been living in previously and had two separate "his" and "hers" dressing rooms that were joined by a long bathroom containing two sinks, two toilets (well, one was a bidet) and a huge sunken tub that no one ever used.
But this was not my wing of the house. I lived on the other side, past the untouched formal dining room and living room, on the same branch as the guest bedroom with its endless supply of left over hotel shampoos, slippers, shower caps and first class airplane shaving kits, and, of course, the child's room. Pink and white, delightful and spacious. The exact opposite of the child herself, who could not have been less warm.
Because I was transient, I took all my belongings with me from job to job. This probably surprised my employers, who expected maybe a girl with one suitcase and a few coats. But I wasn't simply looking for work, I was looking for a home. I did not realize how disturbing my bigness would be to any one of the families for which I worked. I didn't understand that I was not to have come from a life with things. I was not to be complicated or needy. Nor was I to argue or sigh. The fact that I washed the wooden bowl with dish detergent, walked barefoot and parked my behemoth of a beaten up Cutlass Supreme in their sloped driveway made it all wrong from the moment they returned from Vail, where they had been when I moved in over Christmas.
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
The Daily Write: A jealous woman (February 10, 2012. 12 minutes)
A jealous woman
Rose plotted her move, trying to figure out the exact right timing. Lucky she had always been a math whiz, because she had some wicked variables to consider - the least of which was not her own purple walker. There were legs akimbo and too stiff to move out of her way quickly enough, passed out residents drooling into the aisle, and then those eager beaver old ladies in their mid-70s who really thought that had a chance. Ha! Not if she had anything to do with it. She was determined, and if she had to, she'd get thorny about it.
In a stroke of genius, she realized that June's bottom teeth were in her velour-ensconced lap. Poor June, she didn't even know they'd fallen out. But this was no time for sympathy, Rose leaned over to point out Earl's rather unfortunate comb-over and as she whispered into June's ear, grabbed the teeth with her once-smooth hand, pretended not to see her own bruised thin skin and age spots and then stood up. Balancing on her walker, she raised her hand to wave to Jackie and casually threw the teeth onto the stage right.
She hadn't meant to hit Sharon straight in the jumpsuit, but some things couldn't be avoided. So when Sharon screamed, Wink looked around bewildered and caught her eye, Rose gave an exaggerated wink and pushed her walker past the other old ladies until she was at the edge of the stage. While Sharon tried to find the owner of the errant dentes, Rose made her move, inviting Mr. Martindale off the stage and showing him a quick escape route.
Rose plotted her move, trying to figure out the exact right timing. Lucky she had always been a math whiz, because she had some wicked variables to consider - the least of which was not her own purple walker. There were legs akimbo and too stiff to move out of her way quickly enough, passed out residents drooling into the aisle, and then those eager beaver old ladies in their mid-70s who really thought that had a chance. Ha! Not if she had anything to do with it. She was determined, and if she had to, she'd get thorny about it.
In a stroke of genius, she realized that June's bottom teeth were in her velour-ensconced lap. Poor June, she didn't even know they'd fallen out. But this was no time for sympathy, Rose leaned over to point out Earl's rather unfortunate comb-over and as she whispered into June's ear, grabbed the teeth with her once-smooth hand, pretended not to see her own bruised thin skin and age spots and then stood up. Balancing on her walker, she raised her hand to wave to Jackie and casually threw the teeth onto the stage right.
She hadn't meant to hit Sharon straight in the jumpsuit, but some things couldn't be avoided. So when Sharon screamed, Wink looked around bewildered and caught her eye, Rose gave an exaggerated wink and pushed her walker past the other old ladies until she was at the edge of the stage. While Sharon tried to find the owner of the errant dentes, Rose made her move, inviting Mr. Martindale off the stage and showing him a quick escape route.
The Daily Write: At the funeral (February 23, 2012. 12 minutes)
At the funeral
He looked so wicked laying down like that, a little smirk on his over-tan face, and that goddamn pink carnation in his lapel. Only Judy, who had been put in charge of the famous funerals, would do something so tacky. Rose rolled her eyes while looking down at him, and then after looking over each shoulder, kicked that son-of-a-bitch right in the coffin. Finally, she was having an adventure and he had to go expire like every other bland mouthed ex-playboy she had ever fooled around with.
Old gray head was clearing his throat next to her, trying to signal that is was his turn to look upon the once beautiful, now very stiff Wink Martindale. His breath smelled like sour moth balls but that couldn't hide his obvious affection for dead old Wink.
"You didn't miss a thing Richard, he was all talk and no bang, if you know what I mean," Rose whispered with the scratchy voice of an ex showgirl. Or at least, that's how she liked to think of herself. She straightened her slacks and moved her walker toward Wink's feet. Assuming they were still there. You could never tell with only half the container open. What was so wrong with feet anyway, she wondered? She knew quite a few men who couldn't get enough of hers, at least back in the day.
Judy, who swished when she walked, like a cheap motel shower curtain, bumped into Rose while she edged in to talk to the Peabody. Rose could never figure out what the deal was between them except, she figured, that Judy was trying to get a discount on a plot with a view.
"Oh," giggled the 81 year old, "I'm so sorry Rosie," she said as disingenuously as she could possibly manage without making Peabody doubt her intentions.
"Oh hell Wink," she muttered. "See what you left me with? What will I do for fun now?"
He looked so wicked laying down like that, a little smirk on his over-tan face, and that goddamn pink carnation in his lapel. Only Judy, who had been put in charge of the famous funerals, would do something so tacky. Rose rolled her eyes while looking down at him, and then after looking over each shoulder, kicked that son-of-a-bitch right in the coffin. Finally, she was having an adventure and he had to go expire like every other bland mouthed ex-playboy she had ever fooled around with.
Old gray head was clearing his throat next to her, trying to signal that is was his turn to look upon the once beautiful, now very stiff Wink Martindale. His breath smelled like sour moth balls but that couldn't hide his obvious affection for dead old Wink.
"You didn't miss a thing Richard, he was all talk and no bang, if you know what I mean," Rose whispered with the scratchy voice of an ex showgirl. Or at least, that's how she liked to think of herself. She straightened her slacks and moved her walker toward Wink's feet. Assuming they were still there. You could never tell with only half the container open. What was so wrong with feet anyway, she wondered? She knew quite a few men who couldn't get enough of hers, at least back in the day.
Judy, who swished when she walked, like a cheap motel shower curtain, bumped into Rose while she edged in to talk to the Peabody. Rose could never figure out what the deal was between them except, she figured, that Judy was trying to get a discount on a plot with a view.
"Oh," giggled the 81 year old, "I'm so sorry Rosie," she said as disingenuously as she could possibly manage without making Peabody doubt her intentions.
"Oh hell Wink," she muttered. "See what you left me with? What will I do for fun now?"
The Daily Write: What they're saying (February 26, 2012. 12 minutes)
What they're saying
She had to get away from these idiots. At one time they had been lovable, but with Wink's passing, they had all become bona fide crazies - accusing her of driving him to his death. Could she help it if she was an attractive woman with a flair for the dramatic? Fact was, she hadn't forgotten who she was, and the rest of them seemed to. They acted as if they were their maladies, as if they hadn't lived scintillating lives. What was it about wrinkles and the loss of your pubes that turned people into such dolts, Rose wondered.
Why she ever let Norma talk her into moving here in the first place started to loom large in her mind. She thought she'd have some good company for Bridge and maybe even the occasional game of poker. Instead, they just sat around, waiting for something exciting to happen, like bored 13-year-olds.
"Get down from there Rosie!" Hank called up, sending him into a coughing fit that practically doubled him over. She looked down, surveying the top of his age-spotted head.
"Why should I Hank? There's nothing better about being on the ground than there is up here!" She grabbed another rung of the ladder and pulled herself to sitting on the ledge. Still got it! She thought, so glad she had once dabbled in championship weight lifting. She had quit just before it got really serious, never being fond of needles.
From her vantage point, the purple walker gleamed like a jewel next to dull old Hank.
"You know Hank," she yelled down, "it's not bad up here, you ought to give it a try. Come join old Rosie for a smoke."
A preposterous idea given that Hank was sporting an oxygen tank, but she liked to think about him back before he lost half a lung and she still had both boobs. They could have had some fun together.
She heard a scream that was so startling she almost toppled off the edge.
Norma.
"Rosie!!! What are you doing up there? Get down this instant before I call in the heavy artillery." Norma's mouth looked like a tunnel, or the gaping beak of a ferociously hungry bird.
"Norma - you really ought to keep your mouth closed, honey, it does not look good from up here," Rose shouted down, cackling at the image she had in her head of the two old birds. "I don't know what the fuss is about anyway," she said.
She had to get away from these idiots. At one time they had been lovable, but with Wink's passing, they had all become bona fide crazies - accusing her of driving him to his death. Could she help it if she was an attractive woman with a flair for the dramatic? Fact was, she hadn't forgotten who she was, and the rest of them seemed to. They acted as if they were their maladies, as if they hadn't lived scintillating lives. What was it about wrinkles and the loss of your pubes that turned people into such dolts, Rose wondered.
Why she ever let Norma talk her into moving here in the first place started to loom large in her mind. She thought she'd have some good company for Bridge and maybe even the occasional game of poker. Instead, they just sat around, waiting for something exciting to happen, like bored 13-year-olds.
"Get down from there Rosie!" Hank called up, sending him into a coughing fit that practically doubled him over. She looked down, surveying the top of his age-spotted head.
"Why should I Hank? There's nothing better about being on the ground than there is up here!" She grabbed another rung of the ladder and pulled herself to sitting on the ledge. Still got it! She thought, so glad she had once dabbled in championship weight lifting. She had quit just before it got really serious, never being fond of needles.
From her vantage point, the purple walker gleamed like a jewel next to dull old Hank.
"You know Hank," she yelled down, "it's not bad up here, you ought to give it a try. Come join old Rosie for a smoke."
A preposterous idea given that Hank was sporting an oxygen tank, but she liked to think about him back before he lost half a lung and she still had both boobs. They could have had some fun together.
She heard a scream that was so startling she almost toppled off the edge.
Norma.
"Rosie!!! What are you doing up there? Get down this instant before I call in the heavy artillery." Norma's mouth looked like a tunnel, or the gaping beak of a ferociously hungry bird.
"Norma - you really ought to keep your mouth closed, honey, it does not look good from up here," Rose shouted down, cackling at the image she had in her head of the two old birds. "I don't know what the fuss is about anyway," she said.
The Daily Write: Photo #4 (February 27, 2012. 12 minutes).
Photo #4
She watched the door on the roof waiting for a hunky fireman to come through and rescue her. She was no fool. If she couldn't have that over tanned ego that now lay under six feet of over manicured soil, she could at least get herself distracted by a hunk of hot fireman flesh.
Unfortunately, it was not a stud in uniform that burst through the creaky door, but old Norma, huffing like she was about to blow two or three houses down.
Rose could not hide her disappointment. Norma, for her part, made a show of being hurt by the lack of warm welcome.
"Well honestly Rosie, I never! I came all the way up," she stopped to catch her breath, and this is the thanks I get?
"Oh take a breath Norma can come on and sit down," Rose dangled her feet over the ledge, imagining that old Hank was trying to get a look up her skirt. Only, she realized, she was wearing stretch jeans. It was that moment that she decided she was going to invest in a new cocktail dress. She couldn't take another day of being so goddamn unglamorous!
Norma galumphed over, dragging her body like it was dead weight and practically fell over on Rose trying to sit down. In fact, Rose was pretty sure she had a new bruise on her think skinned shoulder thanks to Norma's death grip.
"Now Rose," Norma said in a loving, if exasperated voice, "what on earth are you doing up here? Poor old Henry's about to come undone down there."
Rose thought about it for a minute. She pursed her lips together and twisted her mouth to one side like she had done since she was a toddler.
"I don't exactly know Norma. I just can't stand not to have adventures anymore I guess."
Norma nodded, sighed, and for once didn't say anything back.
"You know what I was thinking?" said Rose.
Norma looked at her with raised dyed on eyebrows where Rose supposed she once might have had actual hair.
"I think it's high time we got ourselves to Burning Man." And on cue, that's when the door burst open again.
She watched the door on the roof waiting for a hunky fireman to come through and rescue her. She was no fool. If she couldn't have that over tanned ego that now lay under six feet of over manicured soil, she could at least get herself distracted by a hunk of hot fireman flesh.
Unfortunately, it was not a stud in uniform that burst through the creaky door, but old Norma, huffing like she was about to blow two or three houses down.
Rose could not hide her disappointment. Norma, for her part, made a show of being hurt by the lack of warm welcome.
"Well honestly Rosie, I never! I came all the way up," she stopped to catch her breath, and this is the thanks I get?
"Oh take a breath Norma can come on and sit down," Rose dangled her feet over the ledge, imagining that old Hank was trying to get a look up her skirt. Only, she realized, she was wearing stretch jeans. It was that moment that she decided she was going to invest in a new cocktail dress. She couldn't take another day of being so goddamn unglamorous!
Norma galumphed over, dragging her body like it was dead weight and practically fell over on Rose trying to sit down. In fact, Rose was pretty sure she had a new bruise on her think skinned shoulder thanks to Norma's death grip.
"Now Rose," Norma said in a loving, if exasperated voice, "what on earth are you doing up here? Poor old Henry's about to come undone down there."
Rose thought about it for a minute. She pursed her lips together and twisted her mouth to one side like she had done since she was a toddler.
"I don't exactly know Norma. I just can't stand not to have adventures anymore I guess."
Norma nodded, sighed, and for once didn't say anything back.
"You know what I was thinking?" said Rose.
Norma looked at her with raised dyed on eyebrows where Rose supposed she once might have had actual hair.
"I think it's high time we got ourselves to Burning Man." And on cue, that's when the door burst open again.
The Daily Write: The Oscars (February 28, 2012. 12 minutes)
The Oscars
Pushing her way back to her apartment, Rose reflected on the many men she had known.
In her day, she was quite the catch, not that she was easily caught,
not even by the strangely coincidental string of Oscars. Oscar
Villanueva. Oscar DeLaurentis. Oscar Tom (two first names, she couldn't
decide if it was endearing or just plain creepy), and Oscar Madison.
That she couldn't think of them without a package of pink hot dogs
popping into her mind was either a sign that the dementia had finally
set in, or that she hadn't lost her dirty mind. Or maybe both. She
chuckled to herself and took a corner, almost cutting off Henry's son
Jasper who, unlike his free loving name, was as dull and clean cut as
you could get. Accountant. Or Banker. No life in that one.
"Oh, I'm sorry ma'am, I was just looking for my father." Rose
smiled as the alternative to punching him in the face. If there was one
name she couldn't obliged being called, "ma'am" was it.
"Who's that again?" she asked, feigning forgetfulness. She thought
it might get rid of him faster, god knows she didn't suffer bores well.
And age had not made her kinder, nor more patient. If anything, it had
done just the opposite. She was closer to death, and she needed to get
on with living!
"Henry Smith. Ah, but don't worry about it, I'll go ask the staff."
He muttered something else under his Scope-i-fied breath and walked
away stiffly.
Rose got to her doorstep and almost took a spill when her gleaming
purple walker got caught on a package left on the front mat. It took her
about a minute to decide it was worth leaning down, especially after
the day's earlier exertion, but curiosity got the better of her. Not to
mention the scent of roses. Or was it fresia? As long as no one left her
those godawful lillys with their bodacious boudoir perfume. She could
think of a lot better ways to scent up a space. Which reminded her, John
hadn't come around this week with her stash. Damn middle aged twit!
The orange and pink flowers were wrapped in a flyer - smudged, but
once she opened it, very clearly not just something someone found laying
around. The wooden effigy, geometric and centered on the light green
page made her heart jump (well, either it was that or she was due for a
pacemaker). The Man. Had someone been reading her mind?
She went inside and got on the phone with a travel agent, leaving the flowers in the sink in her haste.
"Hello, can you make me a reservation at Burning Man?"
The Daily Write: A sweater (February 29, 2012. 12 minutes)
A sweater
Linda. Clearly. It was all her fault. If she hadn't come to visit
the week before last, she wouldn't have gone through Rose's closet and
taken the only good sweater she had. But Linda was like that, even when
she was a tiny girl. If there was something to be had - a trinket,
earrings maybe - or a nice scarf, or the keys to the car - didn't
matter, Linda would figure a way to ask for it so that Rose couldn't
resist. And then later, kaboom! the anger would hit.
"Rosie!" Norma bellowed. "What are you doing in there? We need to get going."
Rose gave a slow turn of the neck toward the doorway, looking at
the nothingness between her and Norma with disdain. It was the kind of
move she admired in female movie stars, but like so many things in life,
she had missed her own chance at fame.
"I'll be right there," she yelled too loudly back in Norma's
direction. Still she figured her chances of actually having been heard
were 50/50. Plus, Norma was rummaging around her kitchen, looking for
the hidden Snackwells. Rose had to get more and more creative about
where to hide the cookies. Norma couldn't resist sugar, even if it was
made out of isotopes and partial strands of piglet DNA.
A crash shattered her melancholy revelry.
"Norma? Are you okay?" She pushed herself out into the hall only to
find Norma's meaty left ankle sticking up next to the fridge like a
disembodied plump mannequin. Rose couldn't imagine how the rest of
Norma's body must've been twisted to put her leg like that and was half
tempted to get the camera to document the moment, but Norma groaned and
she decided against it.
"For the love of Christ, Norma! What happened?"
She rounded the corner to see Norma looking up at her dazed and
sheepish, the box of Devil's Food Snackwells next to her smooshed face.
"Rosie? Rosie - I don't know what happened. Help me up. Or get Frank."
Rose rolled her eyes - all these women and their reliance on men.
Playthings, nothing more. Not meant for serious work, not useful for
paying bills, not worth calling in an emergency, that was for damn sure.
She let go of her purple walker and leaned down to help Norma up.
Problem was though, Norma's leg didn't want to seem to come untwisted.
Could it really be a two 911 day?
But then, what was the point really? Linda had her good sweater.
The Daily Write: Stick to your guns (March 3, 2012. 12 minutes)
Stick to your guns
She told me she lost 15 pounds in a month
Her doctor congratulated her
She felt brave and worthy enough to ask for sex again
Her husband complied
She wanted my approval, a head nod
Smiles and "how did you do its?" and
Aren't you lucky?
It is not virtuous
Self, meet loathing
Sex, meet restrained contempt
What happens next?
What happens next
I am compelled to ask
Without saying it in so many words
Do you wish my lips were on you?
She says I'll be stuck in middle management
Forever
Because I am too sloppy
Sloppy means fat and curly-headed and loud
With a tattoo
She says that men are linear
It's all about a woman's fuckability quotient
Am I fuckable?
It's the age old question
The tri-athlete next to us
He seems to take a real interest
Ask me questions like he was a woman
I like to talk, to answer
But the prudent thing is to ask him
Why?
Why do you, sir
Want to know about me?
I look him up and down
Decide he is fuckable
Wonder what he thinks of my potential
I've never been with a man
Not really, I say, to those who ask for details
Not like "going all the way"
I'm curious
But I would have to suspend
my own disbelief
my own disdain
I want to win the fuckability wars
I want to be desired
But instead, I stick to my guns
And wear obscene lipstick
A red's red
Fuckable?
She confesses her wish
Non-monogamy
And chicks
You've got the wrong woman I think
I don't give
I only take
I don't like girls like you
Give me macho or fey
My two extremes
I almost always leave unsatisfied
She told me she lost 15 pounds in a month
Her doctor congratulated her
She felt brave and worthy enough to ask for sex again
Her husband complied
She wanted my approval, a head nod
Smiles and "how did you do its?" and
Aren't you lucky?
It is not virtuous
Self, meet loathing
Sex, meet restrained contempt
What happens next?
What happens next
I am compelled to ask
Without saying it in so many words
Do you wish my lips were on you?
She says I'll be stuck in middle management
Forever
Because I am too sloppy
Sloppy means fat and curly-headed and loud
With a tattoo
She says that men are linear
It's all about a woman's fuckability quotient
Am I fuckable?
It's the age old question
The tri-athlete next to us
He seems to take a real interest
Ask me questions like he was a woman
I like to talk, to answer
But the prudent thing is to ask him
Why?
Why do you, sir
Want to know about me?
I look him up and down
Decide he is fuckable
Wonder what he thinks of my potential
I've never been with a man
Not really, I say, to those who ask for details
Not like "going all the way"
I'm curious
But I would have to suspend
my own disbelief
my own disdain
I want to win the fuckability wars
I want to be desired
But instead, I stick to my guns
And wear obscene lipstick
A red's red
Fuckable?
She confesses her wish
Non-monogamy
And chicks
You've got the wrong woman I think
I don't give
I only take
I don't like girls like you
Give me macho or fey
My two extremes
I almost always leave unsatisfied
The Daily Write: Singing (March 6, 2012. 12 minutes)
Singing
Gretchen and me. On the porch. At a house of mid-80s hippies. Olympia. Inside, the air thick with the smoke of childhood. Barely steamed kale on the stove, drenched in squeezed lemons and their seeds. Sara licks her fingers and holds a leaf up over my open mouth. Baby bird. Open throat. Her brown hair like a tuft. Her smile sweet like the grassy smell of her deeply colored Ecuadorean wool sweater. She is tea on a wood stove. A black iron kettle. Coals. She laughs as I eat, the kale in my mouth rough and chewy and stingingly sour.
On the porch in the cold night we sing rounds of goddess songs. Gretchen teaches, and we go with it, singing simply for the pleasure of making noise, looking at each other open mouthed and happy, playing with tones in the electrified air.
I will go on many adventures with her. We will dance half naked in the pouring rain at night, in a parking lot, at school. We will hunt for little people and fairies in magic land out in the country. We will traipse on dark roads through blustery nights to find a long house that never appears. We will tell tales by a wood stove in a tiny wooden a-frame on Hood Canal.
Gretchen will always wear purple. She will always laugh and talk in a tiny, beautifully seductive voice. I will always imagine a world of spirits and sorcerers in her presence. Together we will sing and become more than the sum or our parts. She from the edge of Mount St. Helens. Me from everywhere from San Francisco north. We of the redwoods and evergreens and sweet grasses and fairies. Friends.
Gretchen and me. On the porch. At a house of mid-80s hippies. Olympia. Inside, the air thick with the smoke of childhood. Barely steamed kale on the stove, drenched in squeezed lemons and their seeds. Sara licks her fingers and holds a leaf up over my open mouth. Baby bird. Open throat. Her brown hair like a tuft. Her smile sweet like the grassy smell of her deeply colored Ecuadorean wool sweater. She is tea on a wood stove. A black iron kettle. Coals. She laughs as I eat, the kale in my mouth rough and chewy and stingingly sour.
On the porch in the cold night we sing rounds of goddess songs. Gretchen teaches, and we go with it, singing simply for the pleasure of making noise, looking at each other open mouthed and happy, playing with tones in the electrified air.
I will go on many adventures with her. We will dance half naked in the pouring rain at night, in a parking lot, at school. We will hunt for little people and fairies in magic land out in the country. We will traipse on dark roads through blustery nights to find a long house that never appears. We will tell tales by a wood stove in a tiny wooden a-frame on Hood Canal.
Gretchen will always wear purple. She will always laugh and talk in a tiny, beautifully seductive voice. I will always imagine a world of spirits and sorcerers in her presence. Together we will sing and become more than the sum or our parts. She from the edge of Mount St. Helens. Me from everywhere from San Francisco north. We of the redwoods and evergreens and sweet grasses and fairies. Friends.
The Daily Write: Choose your spot (March 13, 2012. 12 minutes)
Choose your spot
It was never simply a matter of choice. Not even in preschool. And certainly not by the time she got to second grade, before she met her best friend. First there was the problem of her lunch. She brought it in a metal lunchbox with a thermos that clunked around the sides. If she wasn't careful, the pearlescent inside glass would break and float around her milk, ruining it.
The cool kids bought lunch from the cafeteria ladies. Warm meatloaf with salty good gravy, or noodles with sauce. Foods that made her mouth water and her mind wander. She was lucky if she had dry tuna and dehydrated apples in a tiny bag with the Weight Watchers logo on the outside. Could she have been any more conspicuous? No, not likely.
Other kids got chocolate milk in cartons and Twinkies if they weren't buying what the school made. And there she was, sitting off at some awful table, looking longingly at the popular girls while they ate oozing mashed potatoes and lunchroom cookies. Her bruised Red Delicious apple was anything but and she just wanted lunchtime to be over.
Peter started putting away the huge folding tables with dark wood-grain vinyl tops. It was loud - he undid the brakes, pushed one side up until the other started rising into a teepee of metal and then linked the two sides together at the bottom before rolling them over to store at the side of the room. She was getting ready to pack up her measly rations, more dissatisfied than usual because Vicki wouldn't trade her anything and she couldn't stand one more day of tuna, when she heard giggling and whispering from the popular table. She looked over and all the girls were talking excitedly - and motioning to her to join them.
She looked behind her wondering who they meant, and realized they really did want her. She came over and they whispered more and more, hiding something behind cupped hands on the table.
"What is it?" Jenny asked.
Sarah and Martha and even Vicki were smiling and motioning for her to come in closer for a look. She tried to see, but couldn't. They kept gesturing and so as they sat on one side of the table, the one closest to the cafeteria service doors, she leaned over the other side, her back to the outside wall where the tables and Peter Gregory were. She tried to see between Sarah's fingers into the shadows. What she was hiding in there Jenny had no idea, but it must've been something wonderful.
They told her to lean in closer and so she did. But still not close enough, she had to practically climb over the table until she was bent in half looking to see what it was that caused such excitement. That was when she heard the laughing. Behind her. Lots of it. From what sounded like many other children. She craned her neck around and the whole rest of her class was lined up, pointing at her and gawking. Her face flushed and she heard her heart beating heavily in her chest. She looked back at the girls and they were laughing too.
"Your panties! They can see your panties!" Martha said, and they broke into new peals of laughter.
It was never simply a matter of choice. Not even in preschool. And certainly not by the time she got to second grade, before she met her best friend. First there was the problem of her lunch. She brought it in a metal lunchbox with a thermos that clunked around the sides. If she wasn't careful, the pearlescent inside glass would break and float around her milk, ruining it.
The cool kids bought lunch from the cafeteria ladies. Warm meatloaf with salty good gravy, or noodles with sauce. Foods that made her mouth water and her mind wander. She was lucky if she had dry tuna and dehydrated apples in a tiny bag with the Weight Watchers logo on the outside. Could she have been any more conspicuous? No, not likely.
Other kids got chocolate milk in cartons and Twinkies if they weren't buying what the school made. And there she was, sitting off at some awful table, looking longingly at the popular girls while they ate oozing mashed potatoes and lunchroom cookies. Her bruised Red Delicious apple was anything but and she just wanted lunchtime to be over.
Peter started putting away the huge folding tables with dark wood-grain vinyl tops. It was loud - he undid the brakes, pushed one side up until the other started rising into a teepee of metal and then linked the two sides together at the bottom before rolling them over to store at the side of the room. She was getting ready to pack up her measly rations, more dissatisfied than usual because Vicki wouldn't trade her anything and she couldn't stand one more day of tuna, when she heard giggling and whispering from the popular table. She looked over and all the girls were talking excitedly - and motioning to her to join them.
She looked behind her wondering who they meant, and realized they really did want her. She came over and they whispered more and more, hiding something behind cupped hands on the table.
"What is it?" Jenny asked.
Sarah and Martha and even Vicki were smiling and motioning for her to come in closer for a look. She tried to see, but couldn't. They kept gesturing and so as they sat on one side of the table, the one closest to the cafeteria service doors, she leaned over the other side, her back to the outside wall where the tables and Peter Gregory were. She tried to see between Sarah's fingers into the shadows. What she was hiding in there Jenny had no idea, but it must've been something wonderful.
They told her to lean in closer and so she did. But still not close enough, she had to practically climb over the table until she was bent in half looking to see what it was that caused such excitement. That was when she heard the laughing. Behind her. Lots of it. From what sounded like many other children. She craned her neck around and the whole rest of her class was lined up, pointing at her and gawking. Her face flushed and she heard her heart beating heavily in her chest. She looked back at the girls and they were laughing too.
"Your panties! They can see your panties!" Martha said, and they broke into new peals of laughter.
The Daily Write: It took me to a different world (March 14, 2012. 12 minutes)
It took me to a different world
"I actually couldn't breathe."
Enola looked at her with one eyebrow raised.
"No seriously!"
She tapped her long thin fingers against the glass coffee table and kicked one foot against the upholstered skirt of the couch. It always amazed her that hotels would risk fabric, couches. They must've have had to replace them often, and now with the return of the bed beds, fumigate. She shuddered involuntarily.
"It was like my whole body just stopped for a minute, except," she took a deep breath to accentuate the drama of the moment, "my eyes."
"Your eyes? Girl, what are you talking about?" Enola had always been dubious. But that was part of why Faye loved her. Although, yeah, sometimes it got on her nerves.
The bartender cum waiter brought them drink menus.
"What can I get you ladies tonight?" he said, rather cloyingly thought Faye. She loved great service but disdained fake good. It was almost worse than downright bad. At least then you knew what you were getting. This guy though, she thought, as she sized him up, was a back stabber.
Enola, who was terrible to service people, told him they had no idea and the table needed to be wiped down and didn't they have any nuts? Faye couldn't stand that particular side of her friend, but by now she was used to it, if not immune.
"Look, I know it sounds ridiculous. I can hear myself talking," Faye said, getting slightly heated under the collar and thus, evoking her long faded Georgia accent.
"Mmm hmm, well, at least you know." Enola flipped through the multi page drink menu searching for the perfect and quite mythical, cocktail. She could never ever decide what she wanted to drink and nothing was ever quite right.
"Just order a cranberry with soda and Grey Goose and call it a day Enola, you know how you are." Faye laughed and continued with her story, not needing to look at the menu at all. She never did. She, unlike her friend, was decisive and regular. She always got the same drink before dinner, and knew which wines to order with which courses.
Enola looked annoyed. She both did and didn't appreciate being known so well. "Oh alright," she gave up. "Go on, tell me all about how Ms. Foster made you feel in that alien movie." She feigned interest as she looked Faye right in the eyes, which only made Faye break out in something between giggles and exasperation.
"I actually couldn't breathe."
Enola looked at her with one eyebrow raised.
"No seriously!"
She tapped her long thin fingers against the glass coffee table and kicked one foot against the upholstered skirt of the couch. It always amazed her that hotels would risk fabric, couches. They must've have had to replace them often, and now with the return of the bed beds, fumigate. She shuddered involuntarily.
"It was like my whole body just stopped for a minute, except," she took a deep breath to accentuate the drama of the moment, "my eyes."
"Your eyes? Girl, what are you talking about?" Enola had always been dubious. But that was part of why Faye loved her. Although, yeah, sometimes it got on her nerves.
The bartender cum waiter brought them drink menus.
"What can I get you ladies tonight?" he said, rather cloyingly thought Faye. She loved great service but disdained fake good. It was almost worse than downright bad. At least then you knew what you were getting. This guy though, she thought, as she sized him up, was a back stabber.
Enola, who was terrible to service people, told him they had no idea and the table needed to be wiped down and didn't they have any nuts? Faye couldn't stand that particular side of her friend, but by now she was used to it, if not immune.
"Look, I know it sounds ridiculous. I can hear myself talking," Faye said, getting slightly heated under the collar and thus, evoking her long faded Georgia accent.
"Mmm hmm, well, at least you know." Enola flipped through the multi page drink menu searching for the perfect and quite mythical, cocktail. She could never ever decide what she wanted to drink and nothing was ever quite right.
"Just order a cranberry with soda and Grey Goose and call it a day Enola, you know how you are." Faye laughed and continued with her story, not needing to look at the menu at all. She never did. She, unlike her friend, was decisive and regular. She always got the same drink before dinner, and knew which wines to order with which courses.
Enola looked annoyed. She both did and didn't appreciate being known so well. "Oh alright," she gave up. "Go on, tell me all about how Ms. Foster made you feel in that alien movie." She feigned interest as she looked Faye right in the eyes, which only made Faye break out in something between giggles and exasperation.
The Daily Write: Someone you remember from high school (March 15, 2012. 12 minutes)
Someone you remember from high school
Charlie. A biker with dark hair, a thick mustache and beautiful,
wide smile. He was an "independent" from Chico who had recently moved to
my town when I met him. Like so many of the circumstances in those
years before I turned 15, I don't remember exactly how we hooked up.
Hook up in the old fashioned way - not the modern, overt connotation.
Because Charlie, was, if anything, a gentleman. Yes, he worked in a porn
store. Yes, he rode a hog and wore leather. Yes, he wouldn't fuck me,
no matter how badly I wanted it. Although, he did screw my best friend
at the time, Tracey. I was hurt and traumatized. But of course, looking
back, I realize how kind he was to me - he protected me when he could
have taken advantage. I thought it was because I wasn't pretty. That's
what you think when a guy says he's "flattered" by your crush. I think
though that he knew under my tough-girl persona, I was innocent and
pure. Meaning, I believed in the power of good and I didn't get how bad
things could really get.
Tracey, for her part, got hurt by his big cock. She said it was
huge and it made her walk funny for the next few days. He must've done
some damage. I didn't want to feel vindicated, but of course, I did. And
I still longed for him, even if I couldn't really picture what that
longing come to fruition would mean.
Before I confessed my crush and Tracey went turncoat on me, I went
to visit Charlie at work. He was way up at the top of Commercial street,
at the aforementioned porn shop. I had never been anywhere like that. I
wasn't old enough and I didn't really have an interest in hanging out
around lecherous winos and pervs. But, Charlie - god, he was such a
hunk. He was probably only 20 at the time, but he seemed years older,
sophisticated, macho, kind, in control - all qualities I craved (still
do if truth be told). So, I dolled myself up with my full coat of
foundation from my forehead to my collar bone, blush, melted eyeliner
applied on the wet inside skin of my eyelid under the lashes, blue
eyeshadow, Mabelline, and Bonnie Bell lip gloss. Plus I set my hair with
two containers of hot rollers and finished it off with a curling iron. I
hated the smell of burning hair, but it was a necessary evil. I put on
my Famolare molded rubber wedge sandals, bell bottom jeans, t-shirt and
unicorn necklace, topped off the whole look with a silk flower on one
side of my head and took off on the long walk up the busy street to
visit Charlie.
Between us, Tracey and I probably smoked a pack of cigarettes
walking up with the loud traffic zooming by in time with the traffic
lights - loud and bright and then quiet for a minute before the next
group of cars came. We went by the cemetery which gave me the creeps but
was also familiar - I mean, where else do you think stoners went to get
high when the cops were cruising the bottom of the park and no one was
home at Charlie's house?
We passed the Circle K where the old man let us drink beer in the
backroom so he could drool all over us, and the gas station where I
sometimes hung out with the country-music loving attendant listening to
Eddie Rabbit on the 8-track.
Seems like I hung out at almost every establishment on that
street - and that was only the right side going up the hill toward the
freeway. Come down the other side and you'd go by Carrow's where me and
my friends Danny and Lori ordered extra crispy fries with a side of
barbecue sauce and coffee that got refilled all night long. We scrounged
together enough money for smokes and the fries and coffee and sat there
till morning talking about sex and drugs and people we knew.
The Daily Write: Marylou walks around her block with a greyhound and a cigarette. (March 16, 2012. 12 minutes).
Marylou walks around her block with a greyhound and a cigarette
What's another word for outcast? One that actually has meaning these days when everyone is an outsider and we're all peering in through the looking glass, or iPhone 4 camera.What is the allure of self portraiture in the post-modern world where cattle are part of the assembly line, Whole Foods gets it vegetables from China and China to the average non Chinese American is the dirty secret we all adore, and abhor. We like our goods cheap, we hate the Chinese for exporting everything they make to us with our insatiable appetites and desire for documentation.
These words are bandied about: disenfranchised, hopeless, bullied, dismal. As a mother, it gives me not a minimal amount of pain to think of what world I've born my children into. I wonder if there will be any polar bears left in 20 years. I like them on film, would damn sure not want to run into one on the tundra, or a floating hunk of former glacier in a salty bay poisoned by oil and a giant patch of polyurethane.
I'm a hypocrite, add that to the pile of words building up around my ears like toxic waste. I think of myself as left of the left, but I want my house protected from the bad guys. I believe in recycling and upcycling and bicycling but I sometimes throw all the old plastic yogurt containers in the garbage because I just do not have the energy to wash them out first. I haven't ridden a bike since I was 15. I'm afraid of falling off, getting hit, or having a sore tush.
I used to think hair could win the war - with the right curl, or smooth flip (more likely), a girl could get practically anything she wanted. Only I've seen those girls face crowds in their swim suits, and there's nothing self assured going on there. They are fakers and outsiders too. Even as they snap their own pics endlessly and post them to Instagram for the "Top Hot Shots" of the day. We hate to be ignored and we hate to really be seen. I guess that's the allure of a Target or Walmart. You can lose yourself among the piles of merchandise - with a mission (not aimless), next to people, but not really seen - everyone's too busy trying to get the best deal while pretending that their purchasing habits don't make them beholden to the 16 hour work days of child laborers in a country they can't imagine as anything more than a caricature.
What's another word for outcast? One that actually has meaning these days when everyone is an outsider and we're all peering in through the looking glass, or iPhone 4 camera.What is the allure of self portraiture in the post-modern world where cattle are part of the assembly line, Whole Foods gets it vegetables from China and China to the average non Chinese American is the dirty secret we all adore, and abhor. We like our goods cheap, we hate the Chinese for exporting everything they make to us with our insatiable appetites and desire for documentation.
These words are bandied about: disenfranchised, hopeless, bullied, dismal. As a mother, it gives me not a minimal amount of pain to think of what world I've born my children into. I wonder if there will be any polar bears left in 20 years. I like them on film, would damn sure not want to run into one on the tundra, or a floating hunk of former glacier in a salty bay poisoned by oil and a giant patch of polyurethane.
I'm a hypocrite, add that to the pile of words building up around my ears like toxic waste. I think of myself as left of the left, but I want my house protected from the bad guys. I believe in recycling and upcycling and bicycling but I sometimes throw all the old plastic yogurt containers in the garbage because I just do not have the energy to wash them out first. I haven't ridden a bike since I was 15. I'm afraid of falling off, getting hit, or having a sore tush.
I used to think hair could win the war - with the right curl, or smooth flip (more likely), a girl could get practically anything she wanted. Only I've seen those girls face crowds in their swim suits, and there's nothing self assured going on there. They are fakers and outsiders too. Even as they snap their own pics endlessly and post them to Instagram for the "Top Hot Shots" of the day. We hate to be ignored and we hate to really be seen. I guess that's the allure of a Target or Walmart. You can lose yourself among the piles of merchandise - with a mission (not aimless), next to people, but not really seen - everyone's too busy trying to get the best deal while pretending that their purchasing habits don't make them beholden to the 16 hour work days of child laborers in a country they can't imagine as anything more than a caricature.
The Daily Write: Behind the Curtains (July 18, 2012. 12 minutes)
Behind the Camera
When someone tells you they can read your mind, be afraid. When they want to read your sacred rose, step away. When they can channel your past lives through "The Jesus Entity," put away your wallet. When you have the chance to meet Ramtha in person, or rather, in the embodiment of JZ Knight, pass it up and go to Wolf Haven instead.
If you are going to get your chart done, tell the reader that it is unacceptable to tell you they "see nothing" after 50. Believe me, you will spend the rest of your life, whatever little is left, waiting to die or lose your memory in 2015.
If you are going to have a drunken woman, ostensibly the mother of your thieving friend, read your palm, for god's sake, do not take stock in the things she says - especially that bit about how having a mole on one palm is okay, but if you get on on the other, it's all over. And don't sit around waiting for one of your twin brothers to bite it before he's 21. Especially after they turn 38.
If your dad tells you the photo you sent him of your daughter was "garbage" and they didn't keep it, ignore him. Do not take anything personally, especially the things that are exactly that.
And if you decide that you can finally overcome your fear of meditation, then please don't mistrust every entity you encounter on "the other side." They can't all be bad. Wait. Reverse that. They are all bad. You can't be sure who to trust. Not in the real world (however fake it might be, Maya and all) or in the internal world.
You might laugh it all off, but you are haunted. Don't lie. Don't pretend it's all okay. When you can't trust your insides or your outsides and you fear people getting into your head and looking at all your thoughts it gets a little too close for comfort. Like this: turn on your computer camera. Go ahead. I'll wait.
Is it on?
Okay, now break the light that turns green or red to alert you the camera is on.
Place some Skype calls.
Chat on IM.
Go to sleep. Get up in the morning. Get on the computer. Remember, your camera is on. Only, you're not connected to anyone. Are you? Are you sure? You can't really know. Go get some duct tape out of your drawer and put the tape over the camera. Now call yourself from another computer to see if any light or image comes through.
Are you safe now? Do you feel you have privacy? Are you sure.
Damn. I can't get the guru out of my head. It's bringing me down.
When someone tells you they can read your mind, be afraid. When they want to read your sacred rose, step away. When they can channel your past lives through "The Jesus Entity," put away your wallet. When you have the chance to meet Ramtha in person, or rather, in the embodiment of JZ Knight, pass it up and go to Wolf Haven instead.
If you are going to get your chart done, tell the reader that it is unacceptable to tell you they "see nothing" after 50. Believe me, you will spend the rest of your life, whatever little is left, waiting to die or lose your memory in 2015.
If you are going to have a drunken woman, ostensibly the mother of your thieving friend, read your palm, for god's sake, do not take stock in the things she says - especially that bit about how having a mole on one palm is okay, but if you get on on the other, it's all over. And don't sit around waiting for one of your twin brothers to bite it before he's 21. Especially after they turn 38.
If your dad tells you the photo you sent him of your daughter was "garbage" and they didn't keep it, ignore him. Do not take anything personally, especially the things that are exactly that.
And if you decide that you can finally overcome your fear of meditation, then please don't mistrust every entity you encounter on "the other side." They can't all be bad. Wait. Reverse that. They are all bad. You can't be sure who to trust. Not in the real world (however fake it might be, Maya and all) or in the internal world.
You might laugh it all off, but you are haunted. Don't lie. Don't pretend it's all okay. When you can't trust your insides or your outsides and you fear people getting into your head and looking at all your thoughts it gets a little too close for comfort. Like this: turn on your computer camera. Go ahead. I'll wait.
Is it on?
Okay, now break the light that turns green or red to alert you the camera is on.
Place some Skype calls.
Chat on IM.
Go to sleep. Get up in the morning. Get on the computer. Remember, your camera is on. Only, you're not connected to anyone. Are you? Are you sure? You can't really know. Go get some duct tape out of your drawer and put the tape over the camera. Now call yourself from another computer to see if any light or image comes through.
Are you safe now? Do you feel you have privacy? Are you sure.
Damn. I can't get the guru out of my head. It's bringing me down.
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
The Daily Write: The Plan (July 17, 2012. 12 minutes of mostly raw writing)
The Plan
I was going to list every memory I've been meaning to write about, including the ones that pop into my head at oh dark thirty when the cows are still sleeping and the grass is only just beginning to gather dew. The roosters, on the other hand, are wide awake, about to torture the world when it would rather be sleeping, or making memory lists.
I feel compelled to write it all down before I forget or lose my mind, or get so lost in my memories I dismiss the present. I'm a Jew like that. There are many ways I'm not a Jew. Well, actually, not many at all. Except for that little matter of bloodlines. A paternalistic religion except for the mother thing. Annoying when it all comes down to me through the fathers, "on both sides" my inner child reminds me.
I have done these things, although they weren't part of the plan:
-Rebirthing
-est
-The Experience
-Intensive Journal Writing
-Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain
-Volunteering in Werner Erhard's kitchen (est again)
-The 6 day (more est)
-Peace walks with Tibetan monks
-Skin modification
-Contact Improv
-Performance Art
-Solo performance
-Self-revealing writing
-Naked street performance
-Anti-war protesting
I've had the following things read:
-My palms
-My handwriting
-My cards
-My aura
-My eyeballs
-My knees
-My astrological chart
-My Mayan astrological chart
-My Chinese astrological chart
-My past lives
-My numerology
I like to say I'm a believer. I believe in everything. I believe that what you believe may come to pass for a time when you die, until we all revert to the sameness. Sameness sounds banal. Purgatoryish. Purgatory sounds like living in moderation. Living in moderation makes me have difficulty breathing. I'm an extremist who likes boundaries. I'm a risk taker who needs safety.
Let's be honest. The plan was to grow up to be famous. A singer. A beauty. A dancer. An actress. A model. Being short, fat and loud mouthed somehow never quite fit in with the plan but that didn't stop me from believing. I'm going to be 47 next month. When do you give up on your dreams? Is there a certain age when you throw in the towel and admit defeat?
My favorite humorists are Louis C.K., Margaret Cho and Shalom Auslander. I like to laugh. But you know, I sort of like to cry too. It's a release. I've had less release the older I become. Does this mean all the stress is building up inside me like an unfurled tsunami? Am I going to die young(ish) because I didn't get famous, didn't let it out, didn't resolve, or god forbid (if you believe in that sort of thing), didn't follow The Plan?
I was going to list every memory I've been meaning to write about, including the ones that pop into my head at oh dark thirty when the cows are still sleeping and the grass is only just beginning to gather dew. The roosters, on the other hand, are wide awake, about to torture the world when it would rather be sleeping, or making memory lists.
I feel compelled to write it all down before I forget or lose my mind, or get so lost in my memories I dismiss the present. I'm a Jew like that. There are many ways I'm not a Jew. Well, actually, not many at all. Except for that little matter of bloodlines. A paternalistic religion except for the mother thing. Annoying when it all comes down to me through the fathers, "on both sides" my inner child reminds me.
I have done these things, although they weren't part of the plan:
-Rebirthing
-est
-The Experience
-Intensive Journal Writing
-Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain
-Volunteering in Werner Erhard's kitchen (est again)
-The 6 day (more est)
-Peace walks with Tibetan monks
-Skin modification
-Contact Improv
-Performance Art
-Solo performance
-Self-revealing writing
-Naked street performance
-Anti-war protesting
I've had the following things read:
-My palms
-My handwriting
-My cards
-My aura
-My eyeballs
-My knees
-My astrological chart
-My Mayan astrological chart
-My Chinese astrological chart
-My past lives
-My numerology
I like to say I'm a believer. I believe in everything. I believe that what you believe may come to pass for a time when you die, until we all revert to the sameness. Sameness sounds banal. Purgatoryish. Purgatory sounds like living in moderation. Living in moderation makes me have difficulty breathing. I'm an extremist who likes boundaries. I'm a risk taker who needs safety.
Let's be honest. The plan was to grow up to be famous. A singer. A beauty. A dancer. An actress. A model. Being short, fat and loud mouthed somehow never quite fit in with the plan but that didn't stop me from believing. I'm going to be 47 next month. When do you give up on your dreams? Is there a certain age when you throw in the towel and admit defeat?
My favorite humorists are Louis C.K., Margaret Cho and Shalom Auslander. I like to laugh. But you know, I sort of like to cry too. It's a release. I've had less release the older I become. Does this mean all the stress is building up inside me like an unfurled tsunami? Am I going to die young(ish) because I didn't get famous, didn't let it out, didn't resolve, or god forbid (if you believe in that sort of thing), didn't follow The Plan?
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