December

I suppose today should not go un-noted, though to me it's not that big a deal.



Five years ago today was the last time I did heroin. I'd been clean since shortly after that Thanksgiving (more out of shock than anything else; I'd lost my job and gotten an eviction notice the same day, and it had startled me into a brief reform). I was alone, in one of the merciful interludes between bouts of the disease that was CR, and heroin was one of the few things I knew how to do to pass the time--but I was tired of it. Not so much of heroin, but of the life I was living; there was no time for anything BUT heroin, for getting the money for it, finding it, using it, getting ready to start over again. And the last days of the year 1999 seemed like as good a time as any to change my ways.



I remember thinking "okay, this is it--one last time" and going into the bathroom of my studio apartment (so I wouldn't have to share my Very Last and Final Shot with Tim, who had a sort of "mi fix, su fix" worldview--and among junkies, that's only appealing if you're the "su" to someone else's "mi".) I also remember thinking afterwards that it wasn't very impressive--I suppose that makes sense, considering I was on 150 mg/day of methadone at the time, which would pretty much keep ANYONE's opiate receptors busy. And maybe that was a good thing; had it been a wildly-impressive shot, I might have found a good reason to keep going. It wouldn't have taken much to get me started again, really; sometimes I think it still wouldn't. My thoughts of heroin are inextricably linked with the one time in my life that I remember being truly happy, and in the absence of happiness like that, heroin has become a sort of shorthand for happiness. There are times I still think about doing it. I don't like the life I'm living now--though I can reliably say that most of that unhappiness really IS about my job. I am in a rut, and since to me "happiness"="not being in a rut" and in my memory, "heroin"="happiness", it follows that heroin means somehow not being in a rut. Which--and this is my saving grace--is a lie, a lie I can generally recognize.



It's only some days, riding on the train from home, that I look out the window and think to myself I'm not done with it yet, not really. I don't know if I'll ever act on that impulse--though I've promised myself that if I'm ever diagnosed with a terminal disease and not much time to live, I'm going to take up all my old bad habits with abandon--and in the meantime...well, it's all about finding things to fill up the hours, I guess. Not a very productive view of life, really, but I'm not one of those people who can eternally believe that there's some greater destiny for everyone. Doesn't mean I don't have to keep trying; it just means that I don't have to pretend to be optimistic about my chances. I've been luckier than most, I know--I'm still here, and at least I can remember when I was happy, which is more than most people will ever have.



I sound like I'm full of self-pity today, and really I'm not (although anyone asking me about my plans for New Years Eve will most likely get their head taken off). I just think too much about what might have been, in the glaring absence of anything nearly as good.



The problem with vacations, you see, is that eventually you have to go back to the things that made you need a vacation so badly in the first place. And even though it's only Thursday, I'm already on the world's biggest, earliest Monday bus.

Why I Hate People, Volume 33,592

Woman fired over makeup loses case

Items compiled from Tribune news services

Published December 29, 2004



SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA -- A casino had the right to fire a woman bartender who refused to wear makeup because the company required male workers to be equally well-groomed, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.



The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals tossed out Darlene Jespersen's sex-discrimination case against Harrah's Entertainment. The court said Harrah's requirement that male bartenders keep their hair short, nails trimmed and otherwise appear neatly groomed was roughly equivalent to the grooming demands made of its female workers.



The Reno casino fired Jespersen in August 2000 after 21 years of highly rated work. She maintained that wearing makeup should be a personal choice, unrelated to her job performance.

Clarification

Maybe my job is not the main obstacle in my path.



I have come to the conclusion: LJ has about as much use for a girlfriend as a duck has for a checkerboard.



And I am--and have been--in full bad-relationship defensive mode. Love scenes, love songs, anything that reminds me of when I was happier--I just avoid it.



I am very bad at leaving when there's nothing better immediately visible--which is exactly where I am right now. (Turns out Damian and his "girl" are actually married--poor guy.) I could always hook up with Terrence, but not only don't I trust him, I'm not even really attracted to him...though at the moment, my main qualification for being attracted to someone is "he isn't disgusted by me and doesn't consider me a nuisance".



See, what none of you can see, this being a written medium and all, is this: I am not an attractive woman, not in the traditional sense. I have known this about myself for quite a while; it hasn't gotten any better. I don't do the whole girly-girl thing--makeup, fussy clothes, cleavage, whatever--because it makes me uncomfortable. One of my bosses actually advanced the opinion to me that my choice of clothes demonstrates that I'm "uncomfortable with my femininity". Um, no; I'm uncomfortable with wearing any item of clothing that places my crotch at my knees, allows unnecessary drafts to blow into my nether regions, causes me to wobble when I walk, or precludes crawling under a desk to unplug something. I'm perfectly comfortable with my femininity--more than most, actually, which is something any man could find out, providing he was motivated enough to get past my "substandard" appearance.



And that's the problem. I haven't found anyone who WOULD look past it who'd also treat me decently--you know, take me out once in a while, not forget my birthday, talk to me spontaneously about something other than whether or not we're going to have enough money to make it through the month. (We won't even talk about the "we" in that sentence, nor the question of proportions--of how much each half of "we" contributes to the common welfare.) Most guys who'll go out with "ugly" women see it as a compromise--he sees it as I won't remind her how unattractive the world finds her, and in return she'll ignore that I belittle her, fuck around on her, take her money, whatever. Believe me--I've had that spelled out for me, courtesy of CR, who was the original case study in Men Who Date Ugly Women And The Women Who Tolerate Them.



And I'm tired of putting up a good front--for everyone else, for my friends, for myself. Some women blow their man's faults out of proportion and bitch about everything; if I blow anything out of proportion, it's his positives. I find myself defending him in my mind--oh, he's just tired, worried, broke--but that gets old, and I can't do it anymore. I just don't see any alternatives, short of putting myself in a position to become the Crazy Cat Lady, a position to which I'm sure every young girl aspires.

Okay, Question

My Christmas thought for the day:



What the hell is the deal with all these "nanny" shows? So now we need television to tell us how to raise our children? This is just a scary, scary thought.



Or is this more feminist backlash--"see, if you stayed HOME with your children, they wouldn't be such irredeemable heathens--but since you've chosen your CAREER..."



I had a conversation with my mom tonight on the ride home, prompted I guess by the presence of a couple of babies at our Christmas dinner, in which I explained to her the reasons she won't be getting any grandchildren. I'm too much of a cynic; I couldn't muster the comforting little warm-fuzzies necessary to raise well-adjusted human beings. I can't forget what I know. I can't pretend to believe in happily-ever-after, or even happily-for-more-than-a-few-minutes-ever-after. In short: I'm not having kids because I wouldn't be very good at it, and unlike quilting or golfing or skeet-shooting, if you're not good at parenting you can't just quit; if you're not good at parenting you leave generations of wreckage ever after.



"I never gave it a second thought," my mother said.



"Most people don't, I think," I told her.



For some reason, this has been one of the harder Christmases in recent memory. I am miserable in my own skin; I think I need to do something about my body because it's really, for the first time I can remember, actually making me feel bad about the rest of me. I see pictures of myself and I'm pretty much disgusted with what looks back at me. Even when I make an effort to look good, I don't look good--I look "good for ME."



Another big part of it is this: I have done nothing this year. Nothing. I've gotten up every day, gone to work, come home, gone to bed, and started over. On the weekends--I've done nothing. I am living only enough to keep living. I can even count on my fingers the number of times I've had sex in the past 365 days. And if I didn't remember a time when it was different--when I was different, when my life was different--I don't suppose it would bother me. But I do remember a time like that--and it's not something I can get back, even though it's the only thing I really want.



I'm giving my life as it stands another six months--there are some things coming up after the new year that may improve conditions, or may make them worse--but if it gets to be late May or early June and nothing has changed, I'm going to take drastic action--quit my job, maybe, just for a start. I see that as the major stumbling block in my life right now--though there are others in close second--and it's going to be the first thing to go, no matter what I have to do to get there.



I have other plans, of course--I'm a great one for plans, though weak on executions--and I will be working on them in the interim--but I will not live another year like this one. I can handle the mundane parts of life, but not when that's all there is.

Christmas Brinksmanship

And so, verily, there came a day when the lady of the house was called to go upon a journey, across the great city of Chicago, to the house of her mother for Christmas. And on that same day, the man of the house undertook also a journey, to the town of Maywood, there to serve half-ounces, and to smoke and drink with his comrades.



And while the lady of the house and the man of the house were making their respective journeys to their various places of Yuletide repose, upon there house there came a great blight, in the person of the Alarm Condition Of Unknown Origin. And the Angel of Brinks called unto the woman's cell phone, and said unto her: Gladys Cortez? We've received an alarm condition from your house and we just wanted to know if you wanted us to send the police, or...? And (thinking of the transactions taking place on her block, and wishing not to inconvenience the businessmen of her street) the woman said No, no, I don't think that's necessary, and called unto the man's cell-phone to send him forth from Maywood into the West Side, to ensure that the alarm had, as she suspected, been caused by one of the many livestock that lived in that house.



And lo, when the man reached the house, he called unto the woman's cell phone to report unto her that the front door of their house had been open, a little, when he got there. And the woman recollected that she had been seen by all the citizens of the block, carrying a package and a suitcase unto the car of her mother, shortly before receiving the call from the Angel of Brinks. And the man said Yeah, but it doesn't look like they had to force the door or anything...And the woman said Maybe I didn't slam the door hard enough on my way out. And there was much bickering and indecision, and nothing was resolved.



But behold, the Angels of Good Luck had been watching over the woman, and thus all their possessions were still in the house where they had left them, and the livestock had stayed indoors, washing their paws, away from the bitter and unnecessary cold. And the man reluctantly agreed to stay at the house that night, postponing his journey to the town of Maywood, to protect the house against the onslaught of desperate holiday crackheads. And lo, there was much rejoicing, and all the cherubim and seraphim settled in to smoke blunts and drink cognac, and all through the living room there was the sound of multitudes of thugs playing NBA Live.



Merry Christmas, everyone...

Human Race, Last-Place Finishers

Sometimes people just don't pass along the good shit that's been done for them.



These people, in my opinion, should be thwapped sharply in the ears and asked "What the fuck are you thinking?"



Tim called me Sunday--collect, as usual--to give me his latest report and to check in on his cats.



Oh, did I not mention that I still have the cats?? Or that Cassidy has apparently developed some sort of kitty mood-disorder, and--when he's not lying on his favorite blanket, which now has a three-inch mat of cat hair on it--has manifested his despair by crapping on the floor, repeatedly? Or that along with this emotional disturbance, he's also developed a case of the raging shits?? I didn't mention those things?? Well, you can damn well believe I mentioned them to Tim.



But I digress.



Among other things, he told me that he witnessed an acquaintance of his overdosing on heroin, on the open street, and did nothing because "you never know what the cops are gonna assume--they might think I gave it to him, or somethin."



This would be barely-forgiveable, but still within the realm of understandable human caution....were it not for the fact that once, several years ago, I called the paramedics to come pick HIS overdosing butt up off the floor of my apartment, at moderate risk to my own personal welfare, lease, and freedom. One of the main reasons I did it--though I don't even think the notion of NOT calling the paramedics ever even entered my mind--was that a couple of years before, -I- had been pulled out of an overdose by JP. You pass along the good things that people do for you--I've always believed that.



But maybe that's one of my more-naive beliefs, or something. And unlike Tim, this guy apparently didn't survive his OD. And it really kinda made me sick to hear Tim try to justify his inaction: "oh, I really didn't know the guy all that well," or "I had to be somewhere at a certain time, and if I stopped..."



Give me a fuckin' break, you know?



Regardless--when Tim comes to pick up his cats, I'm presenting him with a gift--a bucket of bleach and water, and a scrub brush. He is going to wash down every single fucking inch of that room. I am a nice person, and I am willing to help almost everyone I know...but I have my limits.

Things You Can Learn From Your Cat--Episode 1

On Eating:



For whatever reason, it's better to pick up the piece of turkey from the plate and carry it to the carpet before growling over it and eating it, than it would be to eat it straight from the plate or from the nearby tile floor.

Ho', Ho', Ho'.

In the true spirit of holiday time-wasting, I am sitting here at my desk in Place Where I Work, reading any website that crosses my path and listening to iTunes.



I came across an article in...what was that, the New York Times or something?...anyway, it doesn't matter. The article was about "Chrismukkah", which is, for fans of teenage soap operas at least, apparently the equivalent of Festivus. Not being an "O.C" fan, I personally could care less.



What _was_ entertaining to me was the Google ad box at the bottom. It included this sentiment, which--Governor Ahnuld aside--I can imagine might not be very popular in ANY blue state, let alone Cali:





Christmas is Adultery

Jesus Christ views Christmas as whoredom with false gods.

www.LetGodBeTrue.com



As for me...I wanna be the Christmas Whore.

Conditioning

I think I would be a much different person if only I lost the self-restraint that keeps me from throwing things when I really want to.



I was sitting watching TV today--or rather, listening to TV, since I was flipping around through the cable music channels all the way at the end of the list--and I realized: ten years ago I thought I would be someone, be doing some amazing important thing right now. And now I'm 34 years old, broke, lonely, trapped in a job that I despise, doing absolutely nothing of any importance at all...and I don't know what to do about it. I could change jobs, but it wouldn't change the root cause of why I hate this job--I'd still be at someone else's mercy, still dealing with someone else's whims and judgements. I could change relationships but it still wouldn't live up to my memories.



And sitting there, listening to Smashing Pumpkins, changing channels, I thought of all the waste and all the loss, all the time that's passed without making any progress, all the energy and money I've spent getting nowhere at all--becoming, in fact, something my ten-years-ago self would despise, something I despise even now...



My hand just itched to throw that remote through the wall--just whip it at something, just to hear the smash. Just to take revenge for one small moment, just to lash out against all that time and all that waste. And I couldn't even do that. Too much self-restraint; too many years of conditioning, short-circuiting my muscles. Too much "what's the point?"



I am so damn tired.

More Endless Fun With Public Transportation

You know those signs that say "Federal Time for Gun Crime"? The ones in three sections:



"Felons Who Carry This..." (with a picture of a gun below it)

"Say Goodbye to Them..." (picture of a happy little Hispanic family)

"And Go Here." (picture of a stereotypical penitentiary)



Today, I saw one with graffiti added:



"Felons Who Carry This...should go to war in Iraq! Law-abiding citizens should carry concealed!"

"Say Goodbye to Them..."

"And Go Here To WAR IN IRAQ!!"

Endless Fun With Public Transportation

So today, I'm sitting on the train. For nearly an hour, actually--there was some nebulous "delay" that left four El lines stranded throughout the downtown area.



But that's a whole 'nother story, and frankly I'm so sick of public transit that I can't even see straight--there's something else I'd rather discuss, anyway.



Scene: I'm listening to the radio while stranded as described. I flip stations pretty rapidly, but I tend to land pretty frequently on Q101--the local "alternative" mainstay for about twelve years now.



Like everything else in the last ten years or so, Q101 has gone completely to the dogs. The first step was when they hired Asscow--my nickname for Mr. M@nc0w Muller, the morning drive fuckstick whose name I will not type because I don't want any of his fucktard minion listeners to touch my blog--and then they started playing Metallica and calling it "alternative", and then they put the last nail in the coffin a few months ago by hiring three more fucktards for afternoon drive--"Woody, Tony, and Ravey". These three are the dregs of humanity and they totally contravene everything alternative music supposedly stood for in its heyday. Things they don't like are "queer" and "gay", women are manipulative fuck-toys judged solely on their looks, and--along with minorities--are regularly the butt of jokes.



Today, I stopped at Q101 and caught this treasure right here--an absolutely stunning example of Bush-era thinking:



The topic was a study showing that teens are having sex less than they used to--boys as well as girls--and claiming that it's because of the educational efforts in promoting abstinence. And I can quote the following sentence verbatim, because I wrote it down.



"See, little teenaged boys...they'll have sex with anything, as long as you LET them. See, THAT's where you get the win--you get the little GIRLS to say no, and then the boys won't be having any sex!"



This, disgustingly neoconservative sentiment though it was, wouldn't have been too jarring, coming from them--but then they led directly into the next song:



"Heart-Shaped Box", by Nirvana.



You know--that band who led off a revolution which, among its other good ideas, advanced the wild notion that women were PEOPLE, even in rock--and that it was perfectly all right to want what you want, even if that means you go against the prevailing tide. The same revolution that, just for a brief while, acknowledged that women were sexual beings and that was fine.



I get a little passionate about this. I was a beneficiary of that revolution and I am now contending with the aftereffects of the backlash against it. I allowed a man to revoke my sexual autonomy for almost four years because he had his own notions of what it meant to "be a man"--which involved the subjugation of all those who didn't fit that definition of "a man". I am still dealing with the effects of those four years, and unfortunately the guy I'm with now, though he's a wonderful man and makes me very happy, has no concept of what I have to get past, or how to help.



So when I see evidence of that old stupid Eisenhower-era thinking coming back into vogue, even among people who ought to know better--yeah, I'm gonna get pissed, even if it's just some lame, meaningless radio show.

That's Just Funny.

So what does it mean, I wonder. when a man who isn't yours starts putting in dinner requests?



The other day, while I was out at Mom's to do the Christmas baking, LJ called to let me know that Damien would be crashing in the spare room that night, and also that he had expressed an interest in "more of that spaghetti". (This is apparently in the aftermath of the last time he was here, with his brother, and I fed them both while waiting for LJ to show up.) So after baking five different kinds of cookies at Mom's, I went home and made a huge pot of command-performance spaghetti sauce, with meatballs.



I got home last night expecting to eat the leftovers for dinner...yeah, right. The pan which had been practically overflowing when last seen, was now sitting on the counter, emptied and washed.



If I hadn't been so damn hungry, I would have been charmed. (Okay...actually I was kinda charmed anyway.)

Filed Under "Um, WHAT?"

Someone actually queried the following and found their way to this blog:



"Kanye West is a gay pink mafia crew member."

Friends Don't Let Friends Make Waffles

So, feeling much better today, I decided tonight to fix myself one of those self-indulgent breakfast-for-dinner dinners that every child dreams of. I plugged in the waffle iron, beat milk and eggs in a bowl, and went for the flour.



I keep my flour in a big square Tupperware-type bin, just big enough to hold the contents of a five-pound bag. It sits--because I have no cabinets (don't ask)--on a shelf with the rest of my canned goods and staples.



I grabbed the bin by the lip, and somehow it got away from me. And somehow in the process of getting away from me, the lid came off. And--of course--the bin was brim-full. (These sort of things never seem to happen when the bin is 3/4 empty, do they.)



Did I mention that I was wearing a fleece sweatshirt and fleece slippers at the time?



I now look like the Cocaine Princess. And that's AFTER beating both the slippers and the shirt.



And we won't even discuss the condition of my kitchen--even AFTER sweeping, mopping, sponging, and blotting.



The waffles were good, though.

So This Is Getting Ridiculous

I am now sick for a record-setting FOURTH day.



I don't get sick like this. The last time I remember being sick like this was back in college. In fact, Firefly and I were BOTH sick, so we lay in our bunk-beds and whimpered pitifully (in that case, it was Incapacitating Death-Flu, not Lung-Hacking Malarial Plague or whateverthefuck this is) and begged our friends down the hall to take my car and bring back some ginger ale.



At the moment, I'd settle for Robitussin, even though THAT can set off a really entertaining pharmaceutical interaction. (Methadone + Robitussin= Gladys Gets Really Goofy and Then Sleeps For Thirteen Hours.) Instead I'm sitting here drinking gallons of hot tea and watching Seth Green on Sesame Street. And you know, Seth Green would be kinda hot, if he was taller.



Meanwhile, work has called five times, for issues as varied as "could you move those records?" to (ten minutes later) "have you moved those records yet?" and then "Where is Samuel's problem box?" (Samuel's problem box is approximately five feet to the left of where it was before. For some reason, this was a problem that merited forcing me to unglue my tonsils from the back of my trachea.)



There's nothing terribly delicious to eat here, either. One of those green-and-black, warm-blooded, fire-starting Popsicles would go down well right about now.

Free To A Good Home

Would anyone like a lung?



It's a lovely shade of pink. I think it's a right one, but I don't know if that's "right, facing ME" or "right, facing AWAY".



I just hacked it up about ten minutes ago, and now it looks lonesome.



Also, the cats are scaring it.



I'll throw in a free bag of Purina Lung Chow.

Wacky Shit You Probably Didn't Know About Popsicles

Okay. So here I am at Place Where I Work--yes, I'm blogging from work because...well, you'll see in a moment.



In the morning I have a set routine of things to read. Some of them are relevant to my job; others (coff--televisionwithoutpity) are not. Eric Zorn's Notebook is a little of each. And today he had a link to "20 Questions".



I ran through a few less-common items: an eggplant, sour cream, hydrogen peroxide, a mailing label--and then I tried a popsicle.



At the end of each session, it gives you the other questions it COULD have asked about the item, grouped under the heading of "uncommon knowledge about _______" Here's the results for "popsicle":



Uncommon Knowledge about a popsicle:



Is it green or black? I say Probably. (A BLACK popsicle? That kinda makes me WANT to eat the black jellybeans.)

Is it made of crystals? I say Probably.

Does it have lots of buttons? I say Yes. (And I say: WTF???)

Is it a carnivore? I say Probably. (That must be the dreaded Popasaurus Rex flavor. )

Does it have cash value? I say No.. (Except in the barter system of the Quiescently Frozen Land. There, it is more precious than gold.)

Does it bounce? I say Probably. (Um..... I know a bunch of four-year-olds who would say different.)

Does it hop? I say Probably. (Man, what are YOU smoking?)

Is it an insect? I say Probably. (Now, I know the purity standards for food are a little lax here in the States, but aren't you being a little excessive?)

Do you use it when it rains? I say Probably. (Let a popsicle be your umbrella...and you'll have sticky purple hair.)

Is it green? I say Yes.

Can it be measured? I say No. (So all you popsicle-measurers out there are shit outta luck.)

Does it have good vision? I say Probably. (If you can't see it, it can't see you.)

Is it very large? I say Probably. (Compared to one of those piddly little ice-cream sandwiches, perhaps.)

Is it a warm-blooded animal? I say Probably. (If it was warm-blooded, wouldn't it melt itself?)

Does it have lights on it? I say Yes. (So you can see it before it sees you, is my guess. Safety first!)

Can it be used to start fires? I say Yes. (I'd pay to watch that....)



THEN it gives a list of "similar objects". For "popsicle", these are its similar items:



a bottle of pop, a bloody mary, ice cream, gazpacho (cold soup), yogurt, a can of soda, lemonade, a milkshake, a TV dinner, a fajita, custard, lip gloss.



20 Questions also was kind enough to inform me that if I was inclined to try to stump it, "celeriac" would be a good item to choose. (Also, it doesn't seem to know what quinoa is.)

Spitting Out Body Parts, Part 2

So now I am sick.



Fortunately, THIS is just a nasty cold or something--I'm not congested or sneezing or anything, but I have a pretty good fever--and every time I take a deep breath I start coughing. It's like my airway seems to be annoyed...much like the rest of me.



This is what I get for eating his dinner, I guess. Because this morning, after coming home at 10 AM from wherever he was last night (the man never learns!), he came into the bedroom at 11:00 to let me know that he and his buddy were leaving.



"You that tired?" he said, when I failed to budge.



"Nah--I'm sick," I told him.



"Oh," he said. He paused for a moment to ponder. "You mean like, 'stay-away-from-me' sick?"



This is where thinking on my feet would be a really good trait to have--I feel like George Costanza. Because there were two perfectly good retorts here, neither of which I used:



1.) "No--as in 'be exceptionally nice to me and coddle me just a little bit' sick. Is that a kind of sick with which you're familiar, buttmunch??"



or



2.) "Oh, you mean there's a way you could actually manage to stay MORE away from me?"



This is where the whole machismo bit starts to wear a wee bit thin, boys and girls.



And yes, I'm feeling neglected and un-adored, but the main reason I'm cranky right now has nothing at all to do with LJ:



There's no way I could call off work tomorrow. Even if I felt like ass on a plate, I still have to go in, 100+-degree fever and all. And I can't begin to tell you how much I think that blows.

Don't Drink The Kool-Aid, Part 6

I love my man. Truly I do.



But whatever it is he drank last night, I would like to know its name...



...so I can avoid it like the plague.



That man was puking out BODY PARTS this afternoon, from the sound of things.



I did feel sympathy for him, truly I did...



...but I also ate his dinner.

(Hey, he wasn't gonna be needing it.)

Gladys C., Countercultural Attache

So, as I mentioned yesterday, we have some anti-Wiccan-ness going around the office.



And I swear, I was going to just drop the whole thing. But this morning Stella brought it up again, and finally I just couldn't take it anymore. She said something about "Wiccans or witches or whatever she is that wears all that black nail polish and pink hair..." and I finally couldn't keep my mouth shut.



"You know, it sounds like you're describing two different things. There's Wiccans, and then there's Goths--they're the ones with the black clothes and the music."



"What's the difference?" Stella asked. "Every time her mother mentions 'Wiccan', somewhere later in the same sentence she mentions 'Goth'. So aren't they the same?"



There were so many things wrong here that I wasn't even sure where to begin. But one thing is for sure: no WONDER Tracy has issues. If she's doing something that is upsetting her mother, and her mother doesn't even take the time to get her terminology straight before she ties her ass into a knot about it--yeah, obviously ol' Moms is really connected to her daughter's life, you know?



With that in mind, I began my first Counterculture 101 class.



"Wicca is a belief system or a religion. Goth is a lifestyle. Wicca has more to do with what you believe, and Goth has more to do with how you present yourself. Wiccans--REAL Wiccans, which is a necessary qualifier because so many people CLAIM to be Wiccan without having the slightest grasp of what Wicca supposedly really is--REAL Wiccans have a more positive outlook on life. Goths are more known for their despair, their depression, their unhappy outlook. It's very rare to find a true Wiccan who is also a Goth. They may dress alike, sorta, but their outlooks just don't mesh.



"Now, there are people who CLAIM to be Wiccans, but they're really what are more commonly perceived when you say somebody is a 'witch'. They're kinda the 'bad witch' vs. the Wiccan 'good witch', if you want to see it that way. They're more likely to have a darker outlook that would mesh better with Goth-ness."



"So do Wiccans believe in God?" Stella asked.



"They believe in a god--actually, goddess--but not 'THE' God."



She seemed slightly comforted by the fact that at least they believed in SOMETHING. "So they don't worship Satan or anything like that."



"No, not Wiccans. Wiccans are more into the earth-based beliefs--again, REAL Wiccans." I digressed here to tell her about the Trib article with the "parking-space Wiccan", and how it made Pepsi come out my nose. "Now, the so-called 'witches'--there are some of THEM who claim to worship Satan, yeah...not all, but some."



"Well," she said. "This is what I'm hearing...." And she went on to tell me the story: apparently this girl is involved with a boy who is a Goth, whose parents are ALSO Goths, and whose parents apparently spend all their time hanging out with their son and this girl.



Now, call it Goth, call it Wiccan, call it a commune, or call it Bob--something there just ain't right, if you ask me. Adults are adults; kids are kids. And at 15, kids should be making their break from adults. Something is DEFINITELY fishy about this whole situation--Wicca, Goth, and Marilyn Manson sound like the least of the problems in this picture.



The mom says the girl refuses to spend any time with anyone other than this family and the few other kids the boy's parents have sorta gathered this way. Tracy says they're "the only ones who accept her and understand her completely." Apparently there are two girls in this group who made suicide attempts, and apparently the parents of this boy were justifying the attempts--around the kids!--with the whole "it's a cold, cruel world, and you gotta do what you gotta do" theory. Meanwhile, Tracy is defending the Columbine killers in arguments, saying that she understands why they would do what they did; her grades are falling, and she says she doesn't care about anything else, even the things she used to enjoy.



Now, call me crazy, but does anyone else here think it sounds like maybe Tracy is depressed, and that all this darkness and despair is a symptom? But somehow everyone's blaming the depression on the people she's hanging around with, rather than considering that she's looking for acceptance and these are the people she's found--people who seem to accept her even though she isn't all cheery and perky?



And here's why that worries me. A lot of times, sketchy adults latch onto kids who ARE depressed, who are dealing with things too big for them to handle--kids who need someone to accept them--and with the acceptance comes an introduction to whatever skeevy stuff the adults are into. I'm wondering if that's what's going on here.



It sounds to me like the parents are either a) into something sketchy themselves--some weird coven-type fantasy where they're "recruiting" kids, for lack of a better term; or b) extremely immature themselves, and trying to be "cool" parents by manifesting the same attitudes they see their son manifesting. Or c)--and c) is what scares me for Tracy's sake--something even worse. Either way, as I said: something doesn't sound right.



I did mention to Stella, though, that the "telephone" effect may be in play here: Stella is getting her information from the mom, who's getting it second- or third-hand herself. So there may be other distortions here as well.



I don't even know this family. I just couldn't listen to the distortions anymore. People are so facile with their terminology, and it really fucks up any hope of tolerance when you're conflating the Earth Goddess with the so-called "Trenchcoat Mafia" (another Columbine myth, incidentally). If you're going to judge people, at least get a handle on what it is you're judging. For fuck's sake, that's why there's Google! Two million search results, and though you're claiming your kid is into this, you can't even be bothered to check a couple of them out?



As for Tracy...I'm starting to agree with Stella that there could be cause to worry here. Not that their worry will likely do any good, since it's entirely misdirected...the adults in her life seem to be worrying about the symptoms rather than the disease, which sounds less like "fringe beliefs" and more like "a textbook case of depression".



But at least I think I acquitted the Wiccans.

Lest Ye Be Judged

Man, the things we overlook for the sake of friendship.



I was waiting to go to lunch today with Stella, and when I walked by her office she was on the phone. The only thing I heard of the conversation as I breezed past on my way to the printer was: "Marilyn MANSON?? Oh, no."



The conversation must have lasted a good 45 minutes, and then Stella came into my office.



"What was THAT?" I asked her.



"Oh, one of my friend's nieces is in a cult," she said.



"What?" (I'm thinking Moonies, or those comet-worshipping guys from a few years back...)



"Yeah--she's wearing all these 'goth' clothes, and lots of black. and all kinds of piercings, and one of the kids she hangs out with worships the Columbine people....and they're all listening to Marilyn Manson..."



Thinks Gladys: Ooooookaaaaaaay.

Says Gladys: "Which clearly proves that someone didn't do their homework, since the Columbine kids didn't listen to Marilyn Manson..."



"Anyway, her mother's worried sick--and what in the world is (name of boarding school the girl attends)doing, anyway, not looking after her?"



Thinks Gladys: Oh, I dunno...maybe "not making mountains out of molehills"?

Says Gladys: "Yeah, that school puts a lot of emphasis on 'exploring your personality' and stuff like that...."



Further conversation on the way to lunch revealed the following "facts":



--Wicca is now "a cult".

--Piercings are "freakish."

--All Wiccans and/or Goths are doomed to be drug addicts who will never be accepted by society.

--It's bad to be on the fringes of society.

--People who haven't tried to kill themselves shouldn't hang out with people who have. Logically, this reduces to "people who have tried to kill themselves should keep to their own kind." (Particularly ironic since it's coming from an African-American woman.)

--She'll never get a job. Wiccans and Goths never get jobs.

--Wiccans and Goths never choose their lifestyle. They're all "sucked into that life".



Finally, standing at the counter, there was one too many negative Wiccan comments for poor lil' ol' Gladys to stand. (Now, you all have easy access to my stance on Wicca and suchlike--hey, if you believe it, that's your right, but to me it's a little too airy and happy and conveniently put-together to constitute the kind of real heavy-duty belief system I can get behind. But:)



"It's not a death sentence, you know. One of my best friends is a Wiccan."

"Yeah, but your friend has a job and everything, right?"

"Absolutely."

"So she waited til she was old enough to make her own choices. And she never hung around with a bunch of people who tried to commit suicide or anything."

"Actually, that was always HER department, not her friends. And she was a Wiccan from the time she was really young, even if she didn't have a name for it." Then as an afterthought: "And that WASN'T why she tried to kill herself, either."



Stella, by the way, was also half of the "blogging is a cry for help" conversation from several months ago. Damn, it must be nice to be one of the few normal people among all the nasty lil' freaks....



As for me, I'll happily spend my pierced, jobless, drug-addicted life out here on the fringes, being a drain on society. No, I'm not a Wiccan or a Goth--I'm something even worse, if anyone knew enough to appreciate it. I don't need a group of like-minded freaks to allow me to be who I am (though one like-minded freak would be nice)...and the best part of it all is, since there's no name for my particular belief system, there's nothing for anyone to stereotype, and so I can fly quite nicely under their radar.



Meanwhile, a shout-out to poor little Wiccan/Goth/Manson fan Tracy:



Don't drink the Kool-Aid.

Not even the organic vegan elixir-style Kool-Aid.

Not even if it's served in an enormous jewel-encrusted skull goblet.

My Poor Guy

Things I Learned Today:



A rotten tooth will turn even the sweetest, most even-tempered man into an evil old crank.



Also, you can't feed a 6'7" 280+ lb guy a can of Campbell's Chicken and Stars and expect him to be happy about it. Not even with Ritz crackers.



(He's just mad because Damian and his brother came over last night unexpectedly and ate all the spaghetti before he got home. Hey, they looked hungry. I'd feed every stray that came around, man or cat, if LJ didn't put his foot down. It's what I do. Besides, that's what he gets for eating all the turkey leftovers by himself--I only got one teeny lil' sammich out of it before my own personal plague of locusts descended. And if you think I was mad, Foof-cat was apoplectic--turkey is her favorite thing in the world. I'd watch my jugular, if I was LJ.)

The Monday Bus

Monday bus (mun'-dae bus, n., American English ca. 1996):

The feeling of misery and disbelief brought on by the realization that the weekend is over and one must return to work. Generally experienced beginning sometime early in the day on Sunday, but in rare cases symptoms have been known to appear as soon as Saturday afternoon. Particularly debilitating after a holiday weekend. I sat in front of the television all day Sunday, because I was already on the Monday bus.

Ambiguous Headline Department

From Yahoo! News Online:



U.N. anti-torture body slams U.K., Greece



I guess that would have been U.N Ambassador, Stone-Cold Steve Austin....

Obligatory Thanksgiving Post, Complete With Too Damn Much Info

Of course I'm thankful. Who wouldn't be?



I have a great guy, some amazing friends, a HOUSE!!!!, a couple of very-entertaining cats (and three loaves of bread with feet and whiskers); I have a mother who, though she drives me absofrickinlutely insane 95% of the time, is still alive and well enough to do so; I have a job which, though it causes the voices in my head to urge me toward violence, is stable and pays my bills--no mean feat in this economy. I have enough to eat and a roof over my head, and I'm not a Republican (as one of my former classmates phrased it at the reunion, "well, at least you've got THAT goin' for ya."). My brain still works, and my body still works (though not as well as my brain); and even though I loathe our current regime, I am still reasonably aware that I am the beneficiary of many things that didn't have to do with my personal effort in this world.



I've made a lot of stupid mistakes and survived them all, and learned from most of them. That, right there, is downright miraculous, to me.



But can I tell you something?



Absolutely CHIEF among things for which I am thankful today? Is this:





Last night, I finally got some!!!!!







Those of you who don't, can empathize; those of you who do, can remember how it was when you didn't. Now, stop trying to claw your eyes out to eradicate that image, and go eat your turkey. Or ToFurkey. Or lima beans, or whatever. Happy Thanksgiving, and enjoy!!!

ARGH!

It has now taken me fourteen hours to unfuck my computer.



I'll admit to being a dumbass--I went to a "free clipart" site, because I needed free clipart. It wasn't a popped-up site; I went to Google like a civilized individual and looked for "clip art".



I knew something was up when it asked me if I wanted to install something. Even when you click no, that generally doesn't help--by the time it asks, you've already been befucked.



After two safe-mode reboots, three runs through McAfee and about seventeen abortive runs through AdAware, which it kept crippling, I finally got the evil little fuckwad out of my computer.



*****



I'll be spending Thursday night at Mom's. This is a little TOO much family time, if you ask me--I would infinitely prefer to spend my Thursday night at home, in my bed, with my guy. I can't sleep at Mom's.



I'll have her ratty little dialup connection, though, so I'll be able to blog if the urge strikes.

We Interrupt Our Regularly Scheduled Snarky Bitchfest

It occurs to me that now might be a good time to say "Thanks."



When I started this blog I had no intention in the world of making it public. Too risky, I thought, and too self-indulgent--splattering my little personal issues all over everyone's eyeballs like spilled beer. Blogging? Not me--my preferred format was late-night ramblings in spiral notebooks. Or silence. The blog thing was just an experiment borne of being trapped at Mom's between the end of my lease and the closing date on my house.



I took it public because...well, why the hell not, you know? And I seriously had no intention of making it A Thing. But that's how bloggery happens: you write some stuff on your own, you post some comments here and there, and pretty soon people are reading, whether you expect them or not.



This past couple of weeks have been really validating for me as a writer (and as a person, too, a little.) One day I'm in messianic bitch-monster mode; the next day it's getting all accolade-y in here.



Thanks to Eric Zorn, who I KNOW I've dogged out a few times in this blog--hey, at least I'm not indifferent--for that really cool mention in the Notebook.

Thanks to Brian at Audience of 1 and Rich at CapitolFax, and the (late lamented?) Chillinois, for mentioning me in their blogs.

Thanks to Kevin at the CTA Tattler, who constantly posts even my most trivial CTA-based rantings.

Thanks to my cheering section: Barb, Katie, Ka, Jen, WorkingNob, Flash, Pisser, Yogagrl, Anonyboy, and all the various anonymi (except Troll-Boy)--for keeping my comments section active.

Thanks to Firefly for keeping me off the bus. (No, not "the bus"--the BUS. Oh, nevermind.)

Thanks to everyone who linked me, even though Google won't tell me who all of you are...All the names above come to mind, along with the Positively 18th guy and the Neighbor of the Hoors, and probably a hatful of others who I'm not remembering because it's the end of the day and 2/3 of my brain is concentrating on HOME!

And thanks to everybody who read but never commented, or who just breezed through, or who found me on an unrelated query and thought "hmmm..." (or whatever it is that people think when they stumble across something like this blog when they were only trying to find out what's worse than dopesickness, or stories about horny sisters, or naked pictures of the Karshner triplets. Sorry I couldn't help, guys--but I'm hoping you enjoyed the trip regardless.)



I'm starting to realize that yeah, maybe I could do more with this than I have been. "This" meaning....not sure. The blog, maybe, or my writing, or maybe my life. Or all three at once.



I owe all of you above-mentioned individuals and groups a debt of gratitude, for that realization alone. So: thanks, all of you.

Not To Belabor The Point, But...

...now I've seen everything.



I spent the night at Mom's last night, which was probably a good thing as I was drunk off my butt, really. I didn't sleep well; I never do, when I'm not in my own bed.



She woke up when I came in, and asked me who was there, how everyone looked, etc. And she said "I'm glad you went!"



This morning, I was telling her more; you know, who lives where, how many kids they have, all the dirt. And I told her that I'd spent the night debunking what has apparently become The Great Rumor: that I intentionally killed JP.



Now, I don't know what it's like to have a child, much less a child like me; but I think her reaction says everything there is to say about my mom, really, in terms of what she values most.



"Oh my god," she said. "They know? That's why everyone has been looking at me strangely for so long!! God, I wish you hadn't gone."



Let's look at this, shall we?



You have a child. That child dates someone you don't approve of, but who makes her very happy. That person dies under tragic circumstances. Your child is devastated.



Nearly ten years later, a grossly twisted version of the story surfaces--which casts your child as the culprit in her lover's death--and this rumor is repeated to her. Though she's now in a position where she can handle the existence of such a rumor with equanimity (at least out in public), you, as her mother, know that the past years have been really hard for her because of this loss and the amount of guilt she feels for her part in what happened.



Your immediate reaction:



Not "Wow--I'll bet that was hard to take."

Not "I'm proud of you for handling that so well."

Not "Are you okay?"



But "oh my god, what will everyone think of me?"



I'm seriously considering having myself spayed. My gene pool appears to be overflowing with insensitive, self-centered guppies.

20th Reunion Stats

Our Lady of Major Depression Grade School, Class of 1984



Number of people in my graduating class: 83

Number of people from that class who attended: 47

Number of people I totally failed to recognize: 8

Number of people who didn't attend who I actually wanted to see:8

Number of people whose names were mentioned in connection with the phrase "I heard __________ killed someone...": 3

Number of these people who were not me: 2 (Apparently a modified version of the JP story has made the rounds. Towards the end of the evening I took to walking up to people and announcing "I haven't killed anyone. Not yet, anyway.")

Number of times I uttered the phrase "It's really weird to see everyone..." : >10

Number of guys who were cuter than I remember: 1 (and he bought me a beer!)

Number of guys on whom I had a crush when I was 14 whose appearance now made me think "my god, what was I thinking?": 6

Number of people who haven't left the old neighborhood, or who left and then came back: at least 22

Number of people who look at least as good as I remember them: about 35

Number of kids among the responding grads: 68

Number of kids with trendy names among the responding grads: 68

Number of extremely-drunk-from-the-moment-they-walked-in classmates who attempted to climb me like a tree when they saw me: 1

Number of other people who this individual also attempted to climb like a tree: 46, plus a few stray spouses

Number of my classmates no longer living: 1

Number of my classmates who have endured a life-threatening illness: 1

Number of my classmates who I'm better off than: maybe 2

Number of my classmates who have gained more weight than me: maybe 5

Number of people whose smiles did not freeze when I told them where I lived: 1 (the cute guy who bought me the beer)

Number of times I was asked "So--and I'm only going to ask this because I have a couple of cocktails in me---tell me: do black men REALLY have bigger penises than white men?": 1

Number of times beer came out my nose in response to a question: 1

Number of people I embarrassed by telling the story of how they dry-humped a classmate on my front porch when we were 13: 1

Number of people who should have been embarrassed by some of the stuff they tried when they were 13: a bunch

Number of bitches who were bitches to me when they were 13 and appear to still bitches to this day: 2

Number of women who were bitches to me when they were 13 and appear to be bitches no longer: about 10

Number of women who were bitches to me when they were 13 and appear to have totally converted into completely nice, sensitive, self-evaluative people: 1, and I give her major props for it

Number of guys who were total jerks at 13 but who are actually sorta kinda reasonable people now: most of 'em, actually...but they're still not forgiven for spending 2 1/2 years trying to grab my tits

Number of people who, asked on their questionnaire to specify with whom they were secretly in love, answered my name: 0

Number of my actual friends who showed up: 2

Number of classmates who, after being contacted by the reunion committee, made several obscene phone calls to the committee members, outlining a list of people who were mean to them and questioning why in the hell they would possibly want to see these fools again, ever: 1

Number of people named in this person's tirade, about whom I secretly agreed with her: all of 'em

Number of people who asked after my mother: 11

Number of people who hugged me and claimed to be glad to see me, even though when we were in 8th grade, if I had been on fire, they wouldn't have spit on me to put it out: a whole bunch

Number of beers it took to drown out this hypocrisy: about three

Number of times I thought "Thank god for the urbanization of American culture, 'cuz if it wasn't for the hip-hop coming from the club downstairs, I'd feel like I was in an alien country": at least 5 or 6

Number of people who bitched about the aforementioned music and urged everyone to "move downstairs, on the other side--the band is playing the BoDeans!!!": more than I care to think about

Number of missed calls and text messages from LJ, who apparently lost his keys and is now unable to get into the house: 5

Number of times I was glad to be who I am and where I am, living my life and not theirs: more than anyone could imagine.

The Things I'll Do For A Good Blog Post....

Tonight I am going to my 20th grade-school reunion.



I don't want to go, entirely. But Emmy (one of my best friends from that school)is going, and she convinced me that it might be interesting. And, after all, she said--it's not like you HAVE to stay. You can leave, if you hate it.



Good point, I guess.



I never liked those people. I had my own little crew of friends, but mostly I was the fat unathletic smart girl who everyone teased. Now, 20 years later, I'm...



...the fat unathletic smart woman with no husband, no kids, a mediocre job, and questionable prospects.



What's worse: there's a memory here. (Of course, with me, it's stranger if there ISN'T a memory connected with something. Amnesia, I often think, would be a blessing for me.) The night of the 10th reunion was my first night with JP. I remember lying there afterwards, thinking if those assholes from 8th grade could see me now, they'd flip. Back then, I was absolutely sure that by the 20th reunion, I would be the most amazing thing there....me and JP, swooping in together, trailing fame and decadence behind us.



Instead, I'm going alone; borrowing my mom's car because the truck spent all last week in the shop and LJ needs to make up for lost income. I'll go out to Mom's, endure her fussing about my looks and my hair; the inevitable "You're wearing THAT?" conversation, and "Aren't you going to put on some makeup?" I'll end up spending the night at Mom's, instead of here, because she won't want to drive me home at that hour and won't let me take the bus. And so tonight, instead of being in the one place that might actually soothe me after a night of reminiscing about times mercifully past, I'll be in my little pink room, alone, wondering what might have been, if only things had turned out just a little different.



Or maybe I'll be in my little pink room chortling with glee because all the cheerleaders I didn't like have married all the football players who didn't like ME, and the girls are now fat and bitchy and the boys are all balding and defeated, and everyone but me works at Wal-Mart and has seven bucktoothed heathenish children to contend with.



Hey, a girl can dream, can't she?

Well Shut My Mouth.

In fact, shut my mouth, add a layer of duct tape, insert a nasogastric tube, and force-feed me a heaping helping of pureed crow.



From Eric Zorn's Notebook, 11/19/04:



A common criticism of Web logs is that they deal in banalities – the everyday occurrences in everyday lives -- and are therefore both self-indulgent and dull. Yet while some, perhaps many, are dull, it's not necessarily the subject matter.



The everyday occurrences in everyday lives can be fascinating. Ira Glass, the Chicago-based genius behind public radio's "This American Life" proves it nearly every week.



If you like that program, you may like "The Story of Why," a brutally honest, pseudonymously written blog by a West Garfield Park woman that I won't even try to describe and can't link directly to on orders from above due to concerns about strong language.



Look for "About Family" and "Anniversaries of Note."



Mr. Zorn, you have my thanks.

About Family

My mother put me out of her house when I was 24 years old.



When I say "put me out" that's exactly what I mean, though she denies it whenever the topic comes up, which isn't much anymore. My mother is a firm believer in detente; as long as I'm not openly doing something she disagrees with, we can get along. The minute I vary openly from her path, we are instantly in conflict.



Notice something in that last paragraph? Twice, the word: "openly".



My mother is fairly sure that LJ lives here. But she will not admit that she knows, and she repeatedly asks me "whose is that (stereo, tv, jacket, whatever)?" If I were to admit it, every phone conversation would become a guilt trip, every visit an argument. I have been through this before.



That was why she put me out. She claims I went willingly, but when it's 3:00 in the morning and someone says "you need to find somewhere else to live", the message is pretty clear. I packed all my CDs, some of my clothes, a few of my books, and I ended up at JP's mother's door. He was the reason I'd been put out--because I would not agree with my mother's ban on seeing him, because I'd seen him only that night and stayed out later than my mother thought I had a right to stay out--and he took me in. His family took me in. They treated me better than my own family.



A couple of days later, my mother came to the school where I worked and tried to get me to come home. No way, I said. JP and I spent the next three weeks sleeping on the floor of his old bedroom, and then we got a storefront apartment with a den for $400 a month in Wicker Park.



Ten months later I called her in the middle of the night--we hadn't talked in a month at least, and since I'd left our calls were brief and angry--and told her JP was dead. She said she'd come and get me; I said no, I had to go to the police station first, but I'd come back when I was done. She knew something was going wrong with me, but never imagined the truth of it.



For the next week I lay in my old room in the grip of heroin withdrawal. Physically it was just wildly uncomfortable--there was worse to come, with later habits--but the physical pain had the effect of keeping my mind off what had happened. I remember going to a hospital where my mother wanted to check me in for treatment, but I had no insurance and she wasn't willing to mortgage the house. It was a good choice, really. It wouldn't have worked, not in the long run. I remember going to JP's mother's house--where everything had started and everything had ended--and getting my clothes and our cats. I remember asking his mother if I could take some of his clothes--we had a shared wardrobe of flannel shirts and men's jeans, and I wanted some things that had special significance. Of course she said yes.



I remember his funeral, and the gathering afterwards. I remember the look on Justin's face when I told him the truth I'd been asked to keep secret: that it was heroin, not an asthma attack, that had killed JP. Justin was like his brother. He never spoke to me again.



Other than that, I remember nothing of that week.



A few months later, on my 26th birthday, the day before I planned to leave for North Carolina, my mother told me a story. She told me that she'd known there was something wrong with me--the things I was doing were so out of line for me--and she said that the morning of the day I'd called, she had gone to church as usual. After the mass was over, she said, she'd kneeled down at the front of the church and prayed for me to come home. "I prayed for a miracle," she told me, "and that night was the night you called."



That was the day I decided I would have nothing more to do with my mother's God.



When I moved into this house, my mother made a small request of me (as opposed to the larger request, implicit in all our conversations from the moment I'd announced my intentions: that I not move into this neighborhood, that I find some nice quiet suburban condo.) She asked that I ask for an unlisted phone number because, in her words, "I don't want my brother and sister to know about this." My cousins--even the ones I like, even the one or two who might understand--are told, if they ask, that I'm still living in my old Rogers Park apartment.



I am, no pun intended, the black sheep of the family. I was a source of division even when I was very small; my cousin April, born two weeks after me to my mother's oldest sister, had some learning issues, while I was testing off the charts and developing a very snarky sense of humor that the adults in my mother's family didn't understand, let alone appreciate. I was too much like my father, not enough like them.



I was also extraordinarily vulnerable--a "crybaby", as my cousins phrased it. It was easy for them to get under my skin. My mother saw it, but claimed it would help me "get a thicker skin" as she put it. Later she allowed as how she should have stopped it, maybe, but she was "trying to keep the peace". None of the other adults ever curbed their kids. I knew a lot about adults from a very young age--that they were hypocrites, mainly, and that many of them were weak.



I never understood entirely why my mother chose to have a child. Maybe because all the sibs had theirs already, or maybe to prove to her family once and for all that she was not, as her brother had once accused her of being, a lesbian. After all--35 years old and unmarried? In a CATHOLIC family? There simply MUST be something WRONG with her, right?



But once I was born, I think, I lost my novelty to her. I developed a personality--a sense of humor, an attitude, interests that were entirely unlike hers. I was a challenge because I was not another limb she could control--I was not an extra arm for her, or an extra foot, or whatever it was that would fill that space I was supposed to fill. I was a person, a strange, lonely little eccentric person with no defenses and a big vocabulary. I started out strange, and just got stranger.



Along the way I tried to make her happy. I tried to be good enough--smarter than all the rest, because if someone else got a better grade, what did it matter that my grade was good? An A didn't count if someone else got an A+. I tried to be the person she seemed to want, even if what she wanted was different from day to day.



When I was 10, just before Christmas, I had a crush on a boy who had a crush on my friend. I told my friend I'd write her a letter because I wanted to ask her how I could get this boy to like me. It was too dangerous to pass such things during school, so I sent it through the mail. When she replied, my mother asked me what it was. I haltingly tried to explain without explaining too much--and at some point, when she asked why I was talking to other people about these things and not her, I said something about "I didn't think you would understand."



She said "Thanks, pal," and walked down the basement stairs, and I knew I'd made a terrible mistake. I always knew when my mother was angry, and always did the same thing--chasing after her, pleading for forgiveness even when I didn't know exactly what it was I'd done.



I will never forget what happened next. I went down into the laundry room, poked my head in the door, and said "Mom?" The next words out of her mouth were "Get out of my sight, you ungrateful little brat!!!"



After the four-hour tirade about what a horrible, horrible, disloyal person I was, continuing til well after my dad was home--after that was over, she didn't speak to me for about four or five days. I can remember pleading with her, telling her she could take back all my Christmas presents if she'd just talk to me and forgive me.



Ten years old.



By the time I got to high school, I had learned that it was bad policy to be honest with her about anything real. I still tried from time to time, and always got the same results. I remember one time after I'd started seeing Chris, my first boyfriend. I was at a friend's house up north--by that time I had inherited my dad's car--and Chris had called me because he was having family problems and he really wanted to see me. I knew my mother wanted me to come home, so I drove all the way from Niles back out to the south side, to ask if I could go see Chris all the way back up north. I told her what the problem was and that he really wanted me to come over, but that I thought I would come home and check in like she'd asked.



She said no. "I don't want you putting that much wear and tear on my car." (She had her own car. But anything that could be used to control me instantly became "hers", even if she never used or needed it.) I learned it was better never to ask.



To this day, my mother complains that I never tell her anything, never ask her opinion; that if she asks me something about myself, or gives me any advice I haven't asked for, I just say "yes" to whatever it is, then go about things my own way. Once when she said "You never ask for my opinion," I told her "Maybe I would, if you wouldn't GIVE it so damn often!!"



When I was very young, there was a word that kept coming up around the dinner table at all the family gatherings. From my school friends, I knew it wasn't a good thing to call someone, but the connotation of it wasn't entirely clear. How could it be? The school, the block, the neighborhood, were all uniformly white. That Word was simultaneously the worst thing you could accuse someone of being, and the least relevant insult in the arsenal.



Generally it was my Uncle Bill, April's dad, who said the word most. Auntie Cyn, April, and Shelley used it a lot too, but Uncle Bill used it with a special venom. Uncle Bill, it was explained, was a cop, and he worked in one of the worst neighborhoods, so he knew about Those People.



If that was the case, I thought, what was Uncle Dave's excuse? He was a shipping manager. Or Aunt Linda? She just stayed at home. For that matter, what was my dad's excuse? He used it once in a great while, too. Mom told me it had something to do with his mother having to sell their house because They were moving in.



I heard the word, and as I grew older I started to understand a little bit of what they were talking about and why, but it always stayed on the surface, like a skim of grease. Their hatred never sunk in. I wonder sometimes if that wasn't just Fate making my path a little easier.



Because when I got to high school, I met some of Them. I had been strenuously warned about avoiding Those Boys, because they would all just LOVE to get themselves a white girl. (This was always said like we were some valuable trophy, something that would elevate Them above their allegedly pre-ordained lowly status.) But on my first day of school, I met Darius. He seemed harmless enough--more like me than most of the kids in my grade school, really. We were both geeky and loved science fiction. We liked most of the same music--Phil Collins, Genesis, etc. In fact, there was nothing dangerous about him at all. I wondered what the hell my family had been talking about all those years.



When we got to that stage teenagers get to, where they start with the parties and the gatherings and all that, every once in a while they would happen on the same day as a family event. So I would hang around long enough for dinner and dessert, and then I would leave. But of course, at that point, I was still in the average kid's predicament: no transportation. But Darius had a car. And not just any car--a really sweet car. (Okay, so it was his mom's. But it was still a car, and that's nothing to sneeze at when you're 15 and your parents won't let you get your permit yet.) So Darius would come to the house to pick me up.



You can imagine how well that went over with my family. And I'm sure what wasn't said behind my back was probably said to my mother's face--even though I made it clear that there was nothing going on between me and Darius. (Not then, anyway.) It was based on that assurance, along with her persistent belief that I wouldn't even THINK about getting serious with ANY boy, that allowed my mother to permit that friendship.



But when JP came along a few years later, and I left my husband, there was no spin control that could protect her from her family's wrath--if they knew. So she made sure they never found out. I was under strict orders never to say anything about what had really happened. I took that even further--I just stopped dealing with my mother's family. I never liked those people much, anyway. None of them know the central event of my life up til now; none of them know anything about it. None of them know anything about where I am now, or who I am, or who I'm with, or where I live, or why.



And so one day I will be really alone in this world. My dad has one surviving sibling, and most of the nieces and nephews have always lived out West, so I never knew them well. My mother's people don't know me anymore, and wouldn't want to know me if they did. I hear from my mother about things they said when they called, or when she saw them; they have only aged, not changed. All the cousins, my uncle informed my mom a few days before the election, would be voting Republican. He was horrified when my mother told him I would be voting for Kerry. "Well--I mean--you have to DO something about that!!!" he said. "You have to CONVERT her!"



We managed to laugh about it. My mother voted Bush too, but she's long since learned the folly of trying to talk politics with me. "You're just such a .....radical," she says, when I talk about how ill-served the people are in my neighborhood, or how much I'll hate it when the rich eventually claim this block and make it another Lincoln Park. We never talk about race at all, except if she thinks I need to be made to feel guilty about my way of life. "You're abandoning your race," she's said more than once, and I think Abandoning my race? My god, woman, I'm a freaking NASCAR fan. I still think the nadir of the entertainment world came the day Kurt Cobain shot himself. How much whiter can I be? But of course, that's not the point she's making. We never talk about the REAL standard of "abandonment", which has nothing to do with what I believe and everything to do with who I sleep next to.



Though she'll never accept my choice of who to fuck, she's starting to understand, maybe, that I'm serious about what I believe. She once said "Sometimes I think you just believe these things to make me upset." It would be easier for her if this was just a long-delayed adolescent rebellion; she would be able to call it "just a phase" and actually believe it herself. But I'm 34 years old, and there's precious little time for me to "grow out of it", the way she's always said. So instead we just don't talk about it. It is accepted as a given that LJ does not live here, because that's what I say, but she feels the need to ask anyway, because she knows.



And all the while, I'm sure she wonders what happened to that tractable little baby in the pictures, the one who couldn't stand to make her mother angry. She wonders, I'm sure, what went wrong; when I became this individual she doesn't know or understand.



I could tell her, if she asked--if I thought she'd listen.

The Strangest Thing Just Happened

I wanted to work on my novel. Typically, I forgot which of my seventy-x folders it's in, so I clicked on something called "writings".



In the folder was a file called "030604". That's definitely mine; I name my stuff by date, mostly, or with some variant thereof. So it was written on March 6th.



I opened the file.



I can say this: I have not been drunk nor high in the past year--not even remotely close. Certainly not to the level I used to be when this sort of thing would happen:



I have absolutely no recollection of writing this. None.



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

the fuck-you department is open for business

i only dress this way to piss her off

but this is nothing—

i walk down the street and no one knows me

no one knows that flames are shooting out my ears

no one sees that blood is running from my eyes

no one knows that I would take it down with me

burn it all

but flying under the anarchist radar

i hear them laugh at me

i hear them laugh

“lookit the loser” they say

“lookit the dyke”

the dyke walks past in her big green coat

on her way to her man

the dyke walks past in her baggy t-shirt

drunk on the memory of cum

the dyke walks past with her hair pulled back

dreaming of his dick



I know you think i am crazy.

The name of the game is “side-view mirror”

and i am the object:

closer,

farther,

larger,

smaller,

anything

other than

what i appear.

I think convex thoughts.

My reality is swollen in the middle, a bulging eye,

fading at the edges to a daydream

distorted by your flawed and careless sight.



You cannot see me

and it is better that way.

I build a vast hypocrite transparency,

just-hatched naivete

to conceal things I’ve always known;

my wide eyes

lashes batting

so you cannot see me seeing.

Wow, Tough Crowd

Okay, since apparently folks are coming here in droves from the CTA Tattler (one of my favoritemost blogs simply because of the hellacious amount of time I spend on public transit here in Chi), I have deleted last night's explosion of profanity. At least, for now. But Blogger better not eat any more emotionally-charged 45-minute posts, is all I have to say for Blogger, or I will call it things that haven't been identified yet.



About me--rather than making you read back a year and some months:



I'm Gladys. Okay, actually I'm NOT, but that's the name I'm operating under for blog purposes. My anonymity frees me to be 100% honest.



I'm 34, twice divorced, and I live in West Garfield Park, better known as "the 'hood". Seriously. I'm "the white lady with the big cat in the window." That's how I'm identified. (The big cat is White Cat, who has more fur than brain.) I bought a dilapidated house--how dilapidated, I had no way of knowing--back in October of last year, and I've been living there ever since, along with my guy, LJ, a freelance businessman whose business deals are not entirely of the legal persuasion. Similar transactions take place all along my block, 24 hours a day.



I am not afraid of this situation, for two reasons: 1. I am a former heroin addict (clean 5 years come New Years' Eve), and 2. I am not afraid of dying. In fact, I sorta look forward to it, in a passive sort of "well, I'm here now so I guess I oughta make the best of it" kind of way. The reasons behind that....well, I'll post the links when I get home, since my work Mac won't link.



Don't get me wrong: I love my life (though I hate, loathe, despise, abominate, detest, spit upon, and revile my job) but I've got some questions for the afterlife, and I'm not a patient girl.



I bought my house here because: a) it was cheap; b) it was available; and c) it was almost-exactly where I wanted to be. I just wasn't made for the quieter places, that's all.



Lately this blog has sorta devolved into bitching and messianic rantings; this is a direct effect of overwork, which has pushed me to feverish fantasies of Donald-Trumplike dominion over the City of Chicago. Basically I'm just sick of the people I work with and their total disrespect for me as a professional. Once I get out of that place, I'll be much more creative and well-adjusted.



It's not all gloom and doom around here. I have an odd sense of humor which almost no one (including my guy) gets. But I keep myself entertained. I'm a reality-show junkie, a NASCAR fiend (with all the loyalties and hatreds that entails) and I'll watch almost anything if you make it into a cartoon. I do all sorts of weird creative things--painting, drawing, crochet, quilting--none of it all that good, but hell, at least I'm doing SOMETHING. And I write. I've got one novel in progress now, along with another Thing That Could Be A Novel, if it would make up its mind to actually get written.



Links to any and all of the above-mentioned items will be posted tonight, if you're interested in coming back.



This is my first 100-visitor day. Kinda nice.

Calm Down, Gladys, It's Just Your Imagination.

I think we might have a little problem here, folks.



Just a teeny little one; just a teeny, tiny, harmless, there-may-be-some-sort-of-mutual-attraction-between-me-and-Damian kind of problem.



I may be imagining this--hence the title of this post. But last night I locked myself out of the house, and so I had to go get LJs keys and then let him in the house when he came home, trailing Damian behind him. And when Damian walked in the door, he immediately started telling me about something that had happened that day...and I could have sworn there was a moment of definite, electrically-charged eye contact in there.



This, if it actually happened, is--as I mentioned above--a little bit of a problem.

Just a teeny, tiny, harmless sort of oh-by-the-way-Damian-and-LJ-are-sorta-"business-associates"-if-you-get-my-drift-and-did-I-mention-they-both-carry-firearms? kind of problem.



What's worse--I am not entirely certain that LJ was oblivious to the tension. After a minute or two, he went into the kitchen and a minute after that, called Damian in; they spoke very quietly for a couple of minutes, and I know a minor business transaction was accomplished; however, I don't know what else was said. What I do know, though, is that Damian said something to LJ about getting his money to him next week, then turned around and walked out the door and didn't even glance at me, much less say goodbye. Which is highly suspect, in my book.



Now, before you pounce: I AM NOT GOING TO DO ANYTHING WITH THIS, even if it's there. However, if you must pounce, here's a good reason: The reason I'm not going to do anything has less to do with morals or right and wrong or treating people fairly, and more to do with this--I am NOT going to be responsible for a "situation". I've got enough dead men on my hands right now, thanks--I'm the only 34-year-old woman I know with a 17% mortality rate among her lovers. (One had nothing to do with me. The other you already know about.) I am not prepared for that statistic to rise any further. I don't know that it WOULD, even if the worst happened--I'm not prepared to trifle with the emotions of armed men, is all I'm saying. It rarely works out well for anyone.



Then I think, this is all in my mind, really--too much work, not enough sex, not enough sleep. This is my normal I-want-something-more-even-though-what-I've-got-is-good thing talking--it's just entirely wishful thinking on my part. And the weirdest part of this: LJ and I are doing really well, honestly! I think I'm just going into my old defensive mode--you know, the one where I chase off perfectly good guys for not being JP. Grasping at straws, tilting at windmills, pick your metaphor.



I think next time Damian comes by, I'm going to find an excuse to be conveniently asleep upstairs--door closed, earplugs in, blankets over my head.

First, Second, and Fuck Me

First: I have got to get out of that office. We are now running on a ten-business-day streak of "not home before 7 PM". Fortunately, Place Where I Work apparently has other vacancies in its other tech nodes, and fortunately more fortunately, they give priority to us folks who are already tethered there. I really really don't want to just crap on four years' seniority and some kickass dental benefits (thanks to dope and Pepsi, I've got a filling, a crown, or a cavity in every tooth in my mouth, so you know I'm all about the dental benefits.) I just can't work with Those Motherfucking Idiots anymore. (Who spends an hour getting trained on a new operating system and doesn't take notes? And what manager communicates--even implicitly--to her employees that they "don't have to bother" learning anything about their computers because "that's not their job"?)



Second: Is anyone else experiencing this weird sort of restless, pissed-off, ambitious angry exhausted fed-up creative-explosion-with-nowhere-to-go feeling?



Or is that just me?



Fuck Me: Did anyone else know that you could do this? (Okay. I would appreciate it greatly if all of you would momentarily ignore the difference between this plan and its current state of completion. Just for now. You can call me on it later--honest. Like, after this weekend, if I don't get any further.) Is CafePress the coolest thing in the world or WHAT???



I have such amazing plans and I don't know where to go with them. I need money and more importantly I need TIME.

Look Mommy! A Troll!!

To the anonymous commentor below--the one at eircom.net, 159.134.252.xxx, running WinXP, who read a whole 2 pages and spent a whole princely 5 minutes, 9 seconds here before telling me "This is such a bad blog" and "I advise you to make it somewhat more interesting" in the comments section of the post below?



First issue: Nobody sent for you.



You don't realize this, because you've decided 5 minutes is sufficient time to judge my life experience and my ability--but people like you make people like me giggle. You're an insignificant worm. I may also be an insignificant worm, but at least I recognize it. At least if I'm critical of someone here, I put myself behind it--I don't hide behind "Anonymous". "Anonymous" is the security blanket for the infants of the blog world.



Or, to phrase it more commonly: Punk, next time leave your name.



And while I'm thinking of it--let's see YOUR blog, chief.



Also? Blow me.



Buh-bye now.

Anniversaries of Note

A great big, hearty, juicy, extra-crispy FUCK YOU to my first husband on this, the thirteenth anniversary of our first date.



I know damn well what I did to you was wrong. But having said that: You're an ass. Googling me repeatedly and claiming you "just happened" to be looking up the names of tech contacts where I worked--or looking up "debt consolidation" and finding that post I'd written on the credit board. Did you "just happen" to tell your second wife that I was a Nirvana fan and she "just happened" to stumble across me on IM one night and start up a conversation about how influential Kurt was in her life?? Neither of you would understand Cobain if you had his whole psych write-up in your hands, you shallow shits. I was glad when you told me she'd fucked you over, written bad checks on your employer's account, and took off. At least it proved my judgement was correct.



Oh--by the way: JP wanted me to tell you this, a hundred million times over: That last time you fucked me before I left you?? Afterwards, I went into the bathroom and LAUGHED. I told JP about it afterwards and he just BEGGED me to tell you that, once I left. Compassion has always been my weakness. I knew I was going. I was on my way to places you couldn't even BEGIN to comprehend. You used to talk about how hardcore you were when you were a kid--man, you ain't shit. And whatever possessed you to do what you did afterwards--or rather, what you CLAIMED you did; I never could trust your self-aggrandiziing reports. In your mind you actually DID own that recording studio; in your mind I'm sure you DID know better than Victor about how he should run his business. I suppose it was mercy on the part of the universe that kept you from realizing that in both cases, you were nothing more than a flunky. But for you to come to me and claim that I should take you back because you found some bitch and got her to whip you--that now you "understood" me, "understood" what was between JP and I....



Let me tell you something. IF you even did that--which I still don't believe--even IF you did it a thousand times, you would still not have one infinitesimal SPECK of understanding of what JP and I had between us. You and your planned, orchestrated pose of rage--you know nothing. You know nothing of what we had. You know nothing of knives that bloom like flowers in the night. You know nothing of blades and scars and the comfort of a closed system where everyone understands themselves completely. You think some stranger in a catsuit and too much eyeliner can make you alive. You weakling.



You did so much stupid shit to me--uprooting me, quitting your job like a petulant child because you couldn't get me on the phone to ask me, taking and spending every dollar I earned on toys for yourself. After I left you kept my things--you even kept the things I had before I even MET you, all my college dishes, my grandmother's pots and pans and her persian rug. You let your mother hold them hostage for the money you owed her too; then you stopped paying your share of the bills that were in my name, claiming you had to "protect yourself". What did you have to protect? Everything was on MY credit. Whether or not I was paying them at the time, that was immaterial to you. It was your petty revenge. And then your false sympathy, your crocodile tears, your offers of money once JP was dead and out of your way. You were no different in your thinking than those fifth-grade boys so long ago--the ones who would cajole me to tell them who I had a crush on, claiming they knew and he liked me too, and then when I would admit it they would run and laugh and say it was all a joke. You and your offers of "help", rescinded because "your mother wouldn't let you at your money". Bullshit....you never meant it. You just wanted to hear that I was desperate enough to take your money--money you'd owed all along, might I add. And so you got your lame revenge on me--dangling the carrot then yanking it away. It was a small price, really, for the privilege of that year of life I'd had after I left you. I would have debased myself before anyone for that.



Contrary to what you believe, you were not the best thing that ever happened to me. And guess what? You aren't even the WORST thing that happened to me. You are just a mediocrity, a weak pathetic little man with an inflated sense of his own importance, and only once or twice a year do you even cross my mind.



I'm done with you--but I'm nowhere NEAR done with my life after you.

On Notice

I am this city's worst nightmare, and it doesn't even know it yet.



I sit on the train and all anyone sees is a fat white girl in jeans and a green coat a few sizes too big. They don't know that between my headphones, behind my vague expression, I am plotting their downfall. I have so many tools in my arsenal to silence their complacent sighs--my words, my art, my music, my rage--all the things I have allowed to languish for nine years, all the things I gave away in exchange for my last weapon: my ability to move undetected among them, my fly-under-the-radar strategy. They do not see; they cannot see. I absorb light, reflecting nothing back to them. I am just another lumpen soul on the train to wherever. They cannot see my radiance.



In part this was intentional. I have always delighted in my chameleon, indefinable nature. I walk down Pulaski near Madison and people see my pale skin and assume I must be listening to some soccer-mom radio station; they know exactly as much about me as the people who see me with LJ and assume I'm one of those low-self-esteem white girls who gravitate to a certain type of thug. They are, all of them, entirely wrong. And entirely right, as well. They are right because I sometimes allow their thoughts to become true; I allow them to define me. This, too, has been part of my strategy, and if they never know that I'm actually listening to the same stuff that comes bumping out of their car speakers in the middle of the night, or that I'm actually the most dangerous one in this house--well, then my mission is accomplished.



But there is also, in this silence, this fading quality, the effects of time and grief and fate. I have allowed myself to be silenced beyond what I would wish; I have allowed my attention and my energy to be absorbed without my consent. For four and a half years now I have gotten up every morning and gone to the same place, into the same room, with the same desk and the same view. Every day for fifty-two months now, I have been sucked into the same oppressive atmosphere, fed by the ego of the one in charge and her contempt for all of us below. I am one of the last survivors; of all the people who were there when I started other than the leaders, I am one of six. Four of the others are women over 50. I am the only one of my generation who has managed to survive this dysfunctional little family, in which I am the scapegoat middle child. They do not know that my work holds almost everything together, or that I have deliberately disguised this fact. And so they underestimate, they bully, they coerce. They do not understand the disarray into which I could plunge them at the first whiff of opportunity, or on a whim.



For nine years I have coccooned off my true self--physically, emotionally, and artistically. I could care less about the so-called professional realm; my experience has taught me that it's generally anything BUT professional. And yet it is THAT part of my life that is draining me.



I am not a materialist. I have everything I want right now--a house, and the money to pay the bills it generates. If I could, I would build everything I own with my own hands; lacking that, however, I have very few material desires. I cannot be sold to; I have almost no brand loyalty to speak of. And yet the very act of keeping the things I've so long fought to get demands that I subject myself to the whims of people who revel in their marionette-stringed power. The fight should have been enough, I think sometimes.



I am less a product of my culture than anyone I know--and more, as well. I wallow in the low-regarded forms of entertainment; among hipsters I am the object of scorn, and yet I am all they claim to embody--kitsch, openness, artistry, the willingness to be ridiculous. I've never yet met a hipster willing to be silly; they seem to aspire to an opulent irony, in which everyone can be ridiculed for comfortable complacency except them. I have, to a degree, been guilty of this sin. It is easy to be ironic when the wolf has been chased from the door.



Compared to what I'm living now, I would much prefer the wolf.



I am trapped. I know I am trapped, and I don't entirely understand why; their smoke and pettiness and egotism cloud my air and keep me from thinking clearly, from seeing the way out. That, perhaps, is part of their plan. I have reached my limit, and yet I stay. And it is this that makes me their worst nightmare.



There are some animals, you see, that are docile by design; it is only when you back them into a corner that instinct, claws, and teeth take over, and the unstoppable hunger for escape.



And once they achieve that escape, they can stalk and haunt your dreams.