Not hungover, amazingly enough.

I love you guys.

sixteen
blonde
thin
young

(thought we only had each other
so we held on)

called her friend
this judgmental
cruel
harsh
insensitive harpy

made me pay for rides to school
left me drunk on the bathroom floor
tattled to watch the beatings
ditched me for “better” friends
shared my secrets for a laugh
berated me in public
didn’t invite me to parties

twenty-one
still young
thin
blonde

I left no wiser
but married to a man just like her

(she was all I knew
so I held on)

three marriages mine
three children hers
miles and decades

who is this

40-ish
blonde
heavyset
old

woman who disapproves
criticizes the height of my heels
tells me I drink too much
asks loudly why I have no companion
says she doesn’t like my black hair
black dress
black shoes
black everything
“you always looked better in blue”

I meet her tired eyes
void of derision I say
“I changed because the darkness won”
no satisfaction in my voice
no discomfort in my tone
no pity from my front row seat
to a middle-aged unraveling

“you look evil”

I shrug
“maybe I am”
and I smile that smile
a cultivated, perfected web that
instantly ensnares her husband
and every other man at the table

(I’m all she has?
she’s held on?)

angry, she stops talking to this

jet black-haired
sexy
strong
powerful
beautiful
evil woman

now no more than
a familiar stranger who
sits across from her
at the reunion

***

Another piece from last term’s creative writing course.

Besides the nearly constant changes in the user interface, the one thing I’ve learned to dislike most about Facebook is comments on updates. Not just the comments on my own profile, but nearly everyone’s.

It’s because I’ve noticed most of the comments are completely self-centered, which I realize is kind of the point of Facebook updates: One person posts how they feel or what they’re doing and other people mention how they also feel or what they’re doing. What I can’t stand is the “oh, this SO relates to me” responses.

For example, if one friend posts they had a great time at a concert the night before, someone else almost always comments about their own experience at said show, or how the band/artist was better last time, or something completely unrelated to how the original updater thinks or feels. Another: If someone mentions the morning coffee at the office is good, someone will more-than-likely comment about the coffee at their own office, or once again tell the story about that one time they found a fish in the percolator.

I realize we’re all trying to connect to each other in a virtual world and there are times when such comments are appropriate. For instance, if a friend mentions a sister has been diagnosed with cancer, it’s probably perfectly okay to mention that a relative of yours dealt with it and you’re “here for them” if they want or need to talk. However - and I have seen this happen online - mentioning that your prized pooch dealt with teat cancer is an awful response at such a time. “Duchess” isn’t a person and your friend isn’t a dog, so to compare the two is rude, self-centered, and will (hopefully-if-the-other-person-has-any-huevos-whatsoever) cost you a friendship.

I am myself an offender. I’ve started many a comment on someone’s update, realized I was making it all about myself, and opted not to say anything at all. I do so because I learned a long time ago that people want to know you’re interested in them, not vice-versa. That is while my experiences are interesting to me, other people prefer to hear “Wow, sounds like you had a great time at the show! Was it crowded / did you get backstage / did the band do an encore?” Very few people anymore understand you get the job the very minute during the interview you ask, “Is that your family in that picture? Oh, you all look so happy! Was that taken on vacation?”

It’s called relating to others and it’s getting to be a lost art. There are articles in Newsweek and an entire book about the level of narcissism we suffer from each other these days. I find this sad, because there is an entire generation (related to Tom Wolfe’s Me Decade, perhaps?) who doesn’t understand how important a strategy it is to success in life. You get more of what you want - what you need - from others the microsecond you grasp this truth:

Just like you, it’s all about them.

If you’re the least bit unsure if you’re a comment offender like the one I describe, I highly recommend Dale Carnegie’s classic tome How to Win Friends and Influence People and Emily Post’s Etiquette (which you can download for free here). Combined, these references have all the answers to how relating to others on their terms will … well, help you win friends and influence people.

Of course, feel free to not take the advice. After all, it is all about you.

This savior has left the building.

Last Wednesday, I went out to dinner (Kinga). Last Friday, I went out to lunch (Viet’s). Saturday, out to lunch (Wild Mountain Smokehouse), then on Sunday out to brunch (Hamburger Mary’s).

The carbohydrate intake - after keeping it at about 20 carbs per day for nearly a year - disrupted my sleep, gave me energy rushes followed by sugar crashes, and keep my heartburn at Tums level (which is low, really; Pepcid level is medium and Prilosec or Tagamet is high).

I also gained 6 pounds in 5 days.

I’m not advocating the low-carb thing to everyone, but after this week, I know for a fact it works for me.

And it’s worth the sleep.

My love and I are pretty private people. Not to say that we don’t share or otherwise discuss our lives, but you can bet that if you’ve been invited to the house, you have been deemed special. In fact, we don’t even like for other people to know where we live.

Of those we do like enough to invite over, only two have been inside our door in the past month, and one of those visits was specifically to help me file our receipts for tax time. I like our friends, it’s just that when we have the time for visits, we rarely have the stomach. There are many factors involved here, but the biggest is simply that we are two exceedingly private individuals who prefer our personal space to having people around. When we want to socialize, we go out - to other people’s homes, to clubs, to places where humans gather.

So what happens when I don’t get my space? I feel cramped. I get cranky. I close up into a little ball of hate. I escape on the flimsiest of excuses and I rant to close friends about tiny stresses that really amount to absolutely nothing at all. In other words, I turn into a raving lunatic of a bitch. I hide it the best I can; diplomacy and continuing any sort of relationship sometimes requires it. But my love and my girlfriend have both been on the receiving end of my most recent rants and really, that’s unfair. I mean I don’t listen to other people when they start whining to the degree I have the last few days.

To keep this from happening again, I will propose a pact with the non-husband in which we stipulate that no one, no matter how close and how much they are loved, be allowed to stay with us for over 7 days.

Really, it’s just in their best interests.

Captain Jack knows whereof I speak.

I’m going to take my homework on the road today, probably to a local coffee spot with good wi-fi access. Maybe - just maybe - I’ll have time or inclination to write another post here. There are a lot of ideas in my head which need fleshing out.

Speaking of which, the writing group I mentioned here previously should commence in April, unless someone else wants to take the reins (I’ve got too much on my plate before next month). The perfect location should have coffee and beer as options, and enough room for us to sit near each other on a relatively slow night. I’m thinking Sundays or Mondays, just to keep the rest of the week open to our other social forays.

And yes, artists will also be welcome to join. The point is to do something rather than just talk about doing it, though there will probably be a fair amount of discussion, too.

As long as we all agree that not every lull in conversation needs to be filled, we should get along nicely.

Talk is cheap.

Go:

That is nerdery at its finest.

The song isn’t bad, either.

In July 1997, as the female leather titleholder for New Mexico, I ran for the International Ms. Leather title. The contest that year was held in San Diego, California, and since my parents lived but two hours away in the suburbs of Los Angeles, I called my mother and asked if she - and perhaps my father - would like to attend.

To this day I’m surprised and awed at her answer. My parents, like most, lived their lives in a “don’t ask / don’t tell” world. The quirks, addictions, and proclivities of their own children were more easily tolerated if they were ignored. My sister lived at home through a good chunk of her meth addiction; one of my brothers didn’t feel he could come out of the closet until long after he’d moved out and built a life for himself. The other brother is so private he discusses nothing, not a word, about his personal life to any of us. So it goes, so it goes.

Yet I don’t kid myself that my mother, if not my father, knew of my lifestyle long before I gave her the invitation to see it with her own eyes. We had never actually broached the subject before that phone call, but I wanted to ask her to come to the show for several reasons, the most important being that she’d been very ill for a couple of years already. My sister and I even joked that we’d have to get an extra ticket for Mom’s oxygen tank.

“Are you sure you want us there?”

“Yes, Mom.”

“Then I guess we’ll make plans.”

My cousin and sister made the plans and all four trekked down to see me take second runner-up - that’s third place for those not fluent in pageant-speak - in the contest. I have a lot of great memories of that weekend and made some lifelong (thus far) friendships, but what sticks with me most isn’t about the event weekend at all; it’s two massive life moments that took place later.

The first happened later the same week as the contest, when I stopped at my parent’s house on road trip back to Albuquerque. I was with my father, who was smoking on the front porch. He had not said one word about the contest, his experiences at the show, or the trip to San Diego. We were alone and, on the way back into the house, he simply said:

“If there were groups like yours around years ago, I’m not sure where your mother and I would be right now.”

For me, it was the one and only time he ever acknowledged that he and I might have something more in common than obstinacy and misanthropy. I think his words were half pride in my accomplishment and half despair at how differently his own life could have turned out, had he taken another path. I don’t know for sure because he never said another word about it, not even on his death bed in 2008.

The second moment occurred just after my mother passed away in December of 1997. If you do the math, that’s just five months after the contest weekend and, about a month after her funeral, something struck me: She knew it wouldn’t be long. The women in my family are incredibly intuitive about these things. That’s why she came to San Diego and that’s why she wanted the entire family - aunts, uncles, cousins - at Thanksgiving that year.

What does that mean to me, exactly? Only that her willingness to see me onstage in full leather, flogger proudly flagged on the left, speaking to a packed audience about alternative sexualities and freedom of expression was her final gift to me. It said that finally, she knew who I was and whatever that turned out to be was fine with her.

There is no greater love of a parent for his or her children than acceptance. Not resignation, not nagging to change, not simple tolerance, but full love and acceptance in the knowledge your son or daughter is genuinely happy. Believe me, I know how lucky I am to have had it in my lifetime. My love, my partner-in-crime, The Maestro, he’s damned fortunate to have it, too.

Now go hug your mom or dad or both.

I mean it.

… and there are four young girls giving me water from a vine leaf … just dropping it onto my tongue.

Adored this song since it was released in 1993. Plus, I just heard it on Sanctuary Radio, which makes me love the station even more.

As if that were even possible.

The only part I dislike about living such a busy life is not having the time to clean my house. I refuse to hire someone else to do it, either, because they just won’t do it … well, right.

My condition, which is a bit obsessive-compulsive disorder and a bit perfectionism, is a direct result of watching my mother clean as I was growing up. I learned the good lessons of course, like how doing a job right the first time is more efficient than having to repeat it. Unfortunately, I also internalized the “cleaning toot,” as she used to call it; that is, once I’ve started, I can’t stop until the whole house is done.

What this means is if I don’t have the time to do the entire house, I just let it rot. It also means that when a special occasion arises - our Halloween cocktail party last October, or when my mother-in-love comes for a visit - I need to call in help to get the house in order. Lucky for me, I have amazing friends who volunteer their time and effort to the cause, but the simple fact is I need to make a cleaning schedule for myself and stick to it. I mean, it’s not that I don’t love spending time with my friends, but I think we’d all be a lot happier if our time were spent at happy hour or a hockey game rather than cleaning toilets and sweeping floors. So, henceforth:

Monday - living/dining room
Tuesday - kitchen
Wednesday - bedrooms
Thursday - library/my office
Friday - one of the three bathrooms

You’ve probably noticed laundry isn’t on the list. This is because the luckiest moment of my life was meeting a man who does his own laundry. Yeah, go ahead and picture it … it’s kind of like porn for women, am I right?

He even picks up his own underwear.