SLACK LUST. VOL 13. i will never be the same again

LIFESTYLE: broken KATE PURDY

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 20:45:00 -0700

“What do lips do Veronica?”
        —Dr. Bostwick

“They bleed.”
        —Veronica

I stare at Veronica’s full, healthy lips that she probably never even thinks about, as she comes at mine with gauze. She presses. I feel pressure, but no pain – not since they shot me full of Novocain – or whatever it is they shoot lips with.

“This biopsy is long overdue; now we’ll know exactly what’s causing your lips to swell, form these pustules, and peel. And, we’ll finally know how to treat them,” Dr. Bostwick says. He turns to Veronica as he exits, “Have Dr. Blahblahblah at UCLA analyze that.”

Veronica’s eyes go wide, “Wow, he’s having Dr. Blahblahblah do it – that’s big – he’s the chief resident – or whatever (I’m paraphrasing).”

I drive back to work on the freeway with a stitch in my swollen lips – wailing and sobbing and feeling horrible for myself. I cry the way a kid cries when it’s been a long day and life has stopped making sense – a tantrum. I throw a tantrum, while driving 75 miles an hour on the 10 freeway.

Back at work I sneak into the ladies room to clean up my weird rash-y, swollen face. I try to smile – I don’t mean like I try to buck myself up – I mean I physically try – it hurts. I sigh and head into the writers’ room.

I work on a sitcom about 40-year-olds who drink wine and are mean to each other. Our writers’ room, like most, is a place where everyone enjoys hitting each other in the dick with a dry-erase marker. I don’t have a dick – strike one. I have a weird, sad mystery illness – strike two. And, I’m horribly depressed about it – strike three.

“Great news, they did a biopsy, so I’ll finally know what it is,” I say, adding a winced half-smile. They act enthusiastic, but it’s been months of things only getting worse for me physically and emotionally, and they’re tired of me.

I don’t blame them. I’m fucking exhausted of me.

Months ago, back before my lips broke, I was really happy. I lived in a world of delusion where I was awesome, and things like lips didn’t break.

I was so convinced of my own awesomeness that I pushed away people who I thought were less awesome and weak — this Included my older brother Matthew, a ski bum who’s way into Buddhism.

Matthew would always try to bring us close by reading from his Zen phrases pocket book, “’The journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.’ Huh, what do you think that means?”

“I don’t know, man. But, if it’s a thousand miles, sounds like you should book a ticket on Southwest.”

I was a bitch. A really, really happy, bitch.

The biopsy results come back:

“Dr. Blahblahblah thanks Dr. Bostwick for sending him such an interesting case…” It actually says that on the biopsy report – what a dick. He goes on to describe the results of the “leg” biopsy – typo – he made a god damn typo – it’s my god damn lips you motherfucker. What follows is three paragraphs of medical jargon that boils down to, “I have no idea what this thing is, bra.”

Fuck all of you. Fuck everyone. Nobody knows fucking anything. What’s the fucking point? FUUUUUUUCK!

Right about now my therapist would interject with, “Kate, you’re depressed, you’re focusing on the negative. Is there any positive here?”

“My bloodwork says I don’t have lupus. They don’t think I have cancer, but they don’t know for sure - when I press them, they can’t guarantee it. No one knows. No one has any idea. I wish I at least had diabetes. Then I could say, ‘See I’m sick – I’m really sick.’ And, I could wear a colored ribbon, and run a marathon, and maybe even get goddamn, fucking treatment.”

It’s hard to focus on the positive.

In desperation I turn to the Internet. If the doctors can’t figure this out I’ll just figure it out myself.

I find out there are other people out there with a similar thing. They say it’s called Exfolative Chelitis, which means the lips continuously peel in a never-ending cycle. Doctors don’t really know what it is, and there is no known treatment for it. It’s really just a symptom of a larger issue in your body. It could be caused by a vitamin deficiency, or an allergy, or physical trauma, or just a plain old mysterious skin disorder.

One woman has had it for 10 years, others for 4 or 5.

One professor lady takes pride in her fragile body, “The most creative people have delicate constitutions. It’s a blessing to be so sensitive and aware – my lips are like the tips of a grasshopper’s antennae.”

Wow, she has taught herself to focus on the positive. Know what might be just a tad bit better? If our lips worked.

There’s a grandmother who writes that she’s just made Christmas dinner for her family, and then her tongue spilt in half. She asks if anyone else has experienced this. She’d like to be able to talk and eat with her family this Christmas, but instead she’s sitting in front of her computer typing this desperate plea. Jesus Christ… I rise out of my self-pity long enough to weep for her.

Then, I click on the next link. Must. Solve. Lips.

One guy says he tried coconut oil and that worked.

Another says she stopped using anything with Sodium Lauryl Sulfate - that worked.

Another stopped eating chicken and eggs - worked.

They appear in my mind like skydivers whose chutes have opened; they float up and away while I continue to plummet.

A friend tells me to go to UCLA. She says teaching hospitals are on the cutting edge of treatment, they’ll be able to help.

UCLA Dermatologist: This is Rosacea.
Me: What is Rosacea?
UCLA Dermatologist: It’s a chronic inflammatory skin disorder.
Me: It effects the lips?
UCLA Dermatologist: Not usually, but it could.
Me: Why would it effect my lips when it doesn’t usually effect lips?
UCLA Dermatologist: Rosacea is poorly understood.
Me: My nostril was also swollen for a while.
UCLA Dermatologist: Well, I don’t know what that is. But, try taking an 8 – 12 week course of antibiotics – that should clear it up.
Me: Is it bacterial?
UCLA Dermatologist: The antibiotics work as an anti-inflammatory.
Me: Really? Why? How?
UCLA Dermatologist: We don’t really know.
Me: Huh…

I fill the prescription, but having taken several long courses of antibiotics through out my life to treat acne, and because I keep getting yeast infections, I wait to take them. I want more opinions. There’s got to be another way.

Another friend gets me an appointment with a fancy Beverly Hills dermatologist. This guy is the best — this is the guy all the movie stars go to. Even though he’s expensive, I don’t care. It hurts to talk, laugh, and eat. I’ll do anything. Just fix me.

He enters with his cell phone ringing - turns it off annoyed.

Fancy Derm: Ugh, Obama again. He’ll have to wait, I have a famous TV writer to see. Cougar Town, huh? (he turns to his nurse) That’s with Courteney and Busy. Yes. So, what can I do for you?
Me: My lips.
Fancy Derm: (he looks at me, then to his nurse) Tell Kinoche to get in here.

The nurse rushes out and returns with a woman wearing a white turban and a magnifying glass headset - the kind jewelers or welders wear. She flips down the headset. Her pupils look like black marbles through the thick lenses.

Kinoche: This is yeast.
Me: I was told I have Rosacea.
Kinoche: Yes, it’s yeast.
Me: I thought it was skin inflammation.
Kinoche: Yes, but do you know much about Rosacea?
Me: I know that it’s poorly understood.
Kinoche: Exactly, this is yeast.
Me: Huh…

She turns out to be his in-house esthetician and Eastern medicine guru. She recommends a diet of mostly vegetables and lots of supplements.

I bring up antibiotics. She says, “Absolutely not – you have Candida.”

Candida. Candida albicus. Fungus. Yeast.

I remember in college hearing about a woman who could only drink buttermilk because she had a system wide yeast overgrowth. I remember thinking, “What a poor jacked-up slut. Ha ha.”

Now, Western doctors don’t think Candida overgrowth is a real thing – well, they do, but those patients are almost dead – like they’re dying of AIDS and they’re going to be buried by Friday, so all kinds of shit is growing in them anyways. But, as long as your immune system is mostly functioning, “real” doctors don’t think you can have an overgrowth.

On the other hand, Eastern doctors are all about Candida. It’s their answer to any symptom: itchy skin, bloating, gas, nerve damage, feet falling asleep, insomnia, sensitivity to fragrances… all of this could be caused by Candida, which, raises its own suspicions.

So, Western doctors say take antibiotics. Eastern doctors say don’t take antibiotics. I don’t know what to believe. I fall deeper down my rabbit hole of despair. Ha ha.

I call my mom. I need help. That’s new for me. Needing help. Saying I need help.

My parents and my brother Matthew fly out to be with me. Matthew gives me a book by a Buddhist nun, and a heart shaped crystal. He points out that the crystal has a little crack, and says, “I figure it’s okay, because we’re all flawed in someway.”

I carry the crystal in my pocket, and I pour over the pages of the book. It helps me feel less alone.

For months I eat vegetables, and take fistfuls of supplements hoping something will help. I don’t see much improvement…

Every once in awhile I hold the bottle of antibiotics in my hand and contemplate…

Then, a friend with lupus tells me she seeing an Ayurvedic healer who has helped her. She refers me.

I feel a little silly seeing a healer, but I’ll try anything. Just fix me.

Marcela is from Columbia - the country not the University. When we meet she puts her finger on my pulse and listens. She says I have too much heat in my head and stomach. She’s going to bring down the heat, when she does the yeast will come down too.

Even though this sounds crazy, it also makes sense. The West says the problem is inflammation – heat. The East says the problem is yeast, and yeast thrive in an inflamed environment. But how do you bring down the heat without antibiotics (which make the yeast worse)?

Marcela recommends 7 – 11 days of Panchakarma – a 5,000 year old treatment that cleanses not only the physical body, but the emotional one, as well.

I don’t know what to expect, but what I find is life-changing.

Every morning Marcela takes my pulse to see what’s happening in my body. She asks questions like, “What’s going on with your ears today?” I’ll say, “Um, they’re ringing, and the sound kinda goes out every once in awhile.” She stares at me a beat while feeling my pulse, then says, “We’ll work on it.”

Then she’ll ask something like, “There’s a lot of sadness today. Why are you sad?” You tell her why. She feels your pulse again, and tells you it’s going to be okay. You believe her, because the pulse tells her. You’re telling her. And she just knows.

Once she’s decided on the treatment for the day, she picks out the appropriate mantra on her iPod and presses play.

Then, she starts the massage.

She and one of her helpers rub both sides of your body with oil in a synchronized massage-dance.

This massage-dance does more than unlock your muscles. It unlocks everything inside you.

Day 1, I sobbed and snotted, and felt like I’d been tossed out of the ocean.

Day 3, Marcela grew frustrated with the tension she felt when she touched me and asked, “Kate, were you mean? Did you say mean things with your lips?”

“Yes,” I cried.

“I need you to say beautiful things. I need you to say ‘Love, love, love, yes, yes, yes.’”

By Day 4, I had forgiven everyone in my life who had ever hurt me. I’d forgiven myself for anything I’d done to hurt myself. And, I’d prayed that everyone I’d ever hurt would forgive me.

On Day 5, I found God. I’d conceptually understood all that stuff people say about us all being connected by a life force greater than ourselves, but it turns out it’s true. I’m being serious. Seriously, serious.

Suddenly, a little rash and lip peeling didn’t seem like the most important thing in the world.

I mean, I don’t have lupus. I don’t have cancer. I don’t even have diabetes.

I’m incredibly fortunate.

Maybe the solution to an unsolvable problem is to stop seeing it as a problem (learned that on Day 10).

I called my brother, “I love you Matthew. I love you so much.”

“I love you, too Katy.”

I can’t believe I ever thought I didn’t love him. I can’t believe I thought he was weak. Real strength comes from allowing yourself to be weak. And, my hatred of weakness in others was really just fear of my own (Day 7).

As Pema Chodron, the Buddhist nun my brother introduced me to, says, “Weakness allows us to soften our hearts to others, and the challenge is to keep our hearts soft as we get strong again (I’m paraphrasing again, but I’m pretty sure that’s close).”

I hope, with Marcela’s help, that I continue to get stronger, but that my heart grows softer and softer.

What do lips do?

Maybe sometimes they break so they can heal.

Love, love, love, yes, yes, yes.

Kate Purdy writes for TV. She’s written on Cold Case, Mad TV, and Cougar Town.

**Names in this essay were changed to protect people, but several folks have asked for information on Marcela. I asked, and she said it would be okay to tell you her name is Martha Soffer. You can find out more about her work at suryaspa.com.

COMICS: oh, mel! JEANIE MILLER

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 20:45:00 -0700

Jeanie Miller, 32, from Portland, Oregon, spends her days pursuing a career in public librarianship, making geometric collages for http://foursidedfriends.com, and falling in love.

FAMILY ALBUM: dad and i KATIE WILLERT

Sat, 10 Mar 2012 15:03:00 -0800

My baby sister was born this past Thursday. From the photos I’ve seen of her, she’s adorable and fond of sleeping all the time. Lacey joins my brother Christopher, who is just shy of his second birthday. My Dad is 52 years old and beginning a brand new chapter of his life with these fantastic children.

I couldn’t be happier for him. Things haven’t always been easy for my dad and my stepmom, and when they moved to Oklahoma, I knew that it was for the best. They could live in a house with a yard and not have to worry all the time about bills. My dad would be writing for a newspaper and fulfilling the dream he’s had since going back to college later in life.

It’s amazing to see what difference 13 years makes.

When I was 10, I sat by my bedroom window one Saturday afternoon, waiting for my dad to pick me up. I got to see him every other weekend, and we always ended up doing all of the awesome things that my mom didn’t want to deal with—like going to Disneyland or eating at a restaurant (Kids are loud and sticky). The time came and went for him to pick me up, but I sat by my window with an uneasy patience. After a couple of hours and no Dad, my mom called around trying to find him.

No one could get a hold of him.

After a few days, we found out that he’d been arrested in Las Vegas on a DUI. At the time, I didn’t really get what that meant, but I did understand that it meant that he wouldn’t be able to come to my fifth grade graduation, and that it would be a while before I saw him on account of his suspended license.

And that was the day that our relationship changed forever.

People like to hold their parents apart from everyone else. It’s easy to think, “Well, that’s not really a person, it’s my dad”, as if parents have this ability to automatically stop making mistakes after their child is born. After that fateful Saturday, my dad stopped being that mystical “Dad” figure and became a person to me.

Now, please don’t misunderstand me. I love my dad. I love him a lot. It’s one of the strongest loves that I have ever experienced because it’s one that manages to continue on through not just the awesome times, but through a lot of really shitty times as well. He’s a man, a flawed one at that, but I’m flawed too. Deeply. I have his raging frustration and anger, but I also have his beautiful and silly humor.

I used to think that our relationship was out of the ordinary, that it was damaged in some way because the parental veil of illusion had been lifted long ago. But honestly, it makes me appreciate him that much more. The fact that he’s there for every moment with my brother and sister makes me supremely happy. In the end, my siblings and I will probably have two very different childhoods, but I wouldn’t ever trade mine for the world.

Katie Willert is an actress and comedienne living in Los Angeles. You can find her on Cracked.com either dissecting pop culture in After Hours or being all sorts of crazy in The Katie Willert Experience. Katie lives in a studio apartment with her boyfriend and three cats. She also enjoys pie.

JUSTINE BARRON’S SLOW-TRACKED LIFE (PART 3): how i learned to stop worrying and love trauma!

Sat, 10 Mar 2012 14:46:00 -0800

It happens that I lived through 9/11 fairly directly. I worked near there, and my job was involved in the 9/11 recovery effort. I didn’t lose anyone close to me, or get injured in the terrorist attacks. Tragedy is certainly relative. For, however much 9/11 affected me, I have
been through worse times. Like this past winter, when my computer broke.

December 22, 2011, New York City: The sun is setting on my first day in New York City. I flew in last night. I spent the day walking and stopping in coffee shops to write. I’m overjoyed: It’s as if I had just been let out of prison.

Like other people, I love New York, especially this time of year. I’m here for two weeks to walk, write and forget. I have a few things I need to forget. I’ve just lost my job and haven’t been paid in two months. It’s a long story, the result of which is a big sudden hole in my bank account. Also, I’ve been feeling sick and there’s a bunch of other abnormal things I’m trying to forget. The holidays are approaching, and my subconscious is in a mood I will call “apocalyptic.” But I have a good history of walking, writing and forgetting in New York.

This evening, I stop for some delicious dumpling soup off Broadway. I pull out my Netbook, an adorable and reliable machine that’s been by my side for two years. I attempt writing while eating soup.

FAIL. I splash soup on my computer which causes a zapping noise. The screen turns grey. No! Not my darling little Toshiba NB505, one of the smartest purchases of my life, which does everything a laptop does but at a fraction of the weight and price, with six more hours of battery life and none of the bugs. I’ve broken it.
I am suddenly alone in the world.

December 23, 2011: I sit and stare at my dead computer, emotionally spent. I’m also feeling sicker. Then, I put it away, take antibiotics and strategize on how to replace it. There will be dirt cheap Netbooks all over the city after Christmas, right? I’ll get another. It will be as if this never happened.

FAIL. I hunt for Netbooks online; I visit a dozen stores. It would appear that the entire city has sold out of mini-laptops and didn’t restock. Desperate and fixated, I search the manufacturer’s site. They’re only advertising computers at 13 or more inches. I come to the most obvious conclusion: It’s a conspiracy! The manufacturers can’t make any money on these perfect little computers, which are rendering bigger laptops obsolete, so they stopped making them. In their place, they’re peddling “lightweight” magic laptops for more than $800 and a world of tablets. I’m enraged. The anger helps me avoid the deep abiding grief (and my own culpability). My dead Netbook is irreplaceable. Everything keeps falling apart. Why me, World?

A Shot at (Shiny) Redemption

I pass Lincoln Center, too upset about this holocaust of Netbooks to enjoy my favorite landmark…and then it appears before me like a bright holy sanctuary of forgiveness:

“Come in,” it says. “Wash away your sins and play.” I enter and behold what can only be called a divine object, given how groovy it makes me feel:

That’s the solution! I’ll get an iPad! A savvy, lightweight (cute purple) investment. I can’t go back so I may as well move forward. A-ha. The universe has clearly been leading me in this direction.

I convince myself that I really need it. Never mind that I have an old computer at home that works, or that I have this hole in my bank account. Never mind the practical issues of the keyboard for writing or compatibility with the software I use. Never mind that I have an iPhone that pretty much does all of the same stuff. I definitely think I need it. Right now. Feelings this strong can’t be wrong.

I bounce all of this computer drama off of my sweet boyfriend who is in Long Island for the holidays. I can almost hear him say, “Well…” He won’t rain doubt on my parade, but he offers alternatives, such as cheaper tablets. My justifications intensify: If I buy a new iPad right now, then I can start working and it’ll pay for itself, right? Just think of the savings in back pain. Plus, it’s so cute and fun. Isn’t quality of life a kind of long-term investment?

December 25, 2011: I celebrate Christmas with my boyfriend’s extended family. It’s a wonderful day. I remember what life’s all about. Plus, his cousin lets me play with his iPad. Sigh. Soon, soon…

December 26, 2011: My boyfriend and I spend the day together in the city. We visit several major computer outlets while I make my final decision. It’s so romantic. We walk west on Chambers street, discussing the options, when I realize that we’re approaching Ground Zero.
Oh.

I’ve been so caught up with the computer drama, I forgot to feel what I usually feel when I’m near Ground Zero (a place I try to avoid). It’s a long story. Let’s back up, say, ten years…

9/11: A Day that Will Go Down in History on My To-Do List

September 11, 2001: It’s almost 9am. I’m taking the A train from Washington Heights to the World Trade Center stop. For the first time in months, maybe a year, I’m going to be on time.

I work for a large nonprofit organization as a grant writer in Lower Manhattan. The mission of the nonprofit is to help survivors of violence. They are careful not to call the survivors “victims.” I have learned to milk one word for money: “trauma.”

At Canal Street, a stop before the Trade Center, the train has paused for too long. Something feels wrong, so I exit there instead.

I notice floods of people walking away from the Trade Center and lines of people at pay phones. I notice a fire on a high level of both of the twin towers. I continue to walk downtown because it’s now 9:15, which means I can still be earlier than usual. I don’t stop to consider that it’s strange for there to be a fire in two separate buildings. I’m too fixated on being early.

I finally determine that work isn’t going to happen. I walk north, up Broadway, then I pick up the pace. People are walking faster and seem upset. The word on the street is that we are under attack—that is, America is under attack. Since I’m right there and not in front of a TV, I’m hearing the worst: Washington D.C. (where my parents live) has been bombed!

Within minutes I hear and see the towers collapse—one, then the other. There’s chaos on the streets. Even the police are scared and confused. The first thing I do, once I learn what’s happening, is pull out my to-do list. I write at the bottom: “TMPL.” That’s code for “temple.” If I get out of here alive, I will finally go to temple. I write it in code, with vowels missing, in case anyone reads my to-do list, in case I make it out alive. This puts my mind at ease.

I walk to 49th street where I stand next to a man covered head-to-toe in dust and debris. A police officer asks him: “Are you okay?” He nods. I think to myself, Hey, what about me? I’m not sure what I’m experiencing, but it feels like something. I wish I had some outward manifestation of it.

I walk all the way to 96th St., my longest city walk to date. Some things haven’t changed—I still like walking and blocking out reality.

9/11 is Very in My Face

October 1, 2001: I’ve been working for the last few weeks at the Family Assistance Center. I’ve been helping people with lost family members fill out “Missing Persons” certificates (nobody is ready to fill out “Death” certificates). I feel grateful for this opportunity—everyone wishes they could help, the Center feels like a safe haven in a city that keeps getting scarier, e.g., the threat of Anthrax streaming through every air duct. But I don’t feel prepared for this work. These “survivors” look at me in such a state of crisis and need. I haven’t watched enough Law and Order: SVU at this point to know how to respond to them.

October 10, 2001: Giuliani has asked everyone to “return to normalcy.” I try to return to normal, but there are challenges, including no phone or internet. Also, Chambers Street is a ghost town.. My favorite falafel place is covered in grey dust and boarded up. Men stand on the street corners wearing army fatigues and gas masks.

It’s also hard to ignore this very strong, distinctly sweet smell wafting through the windows from down the street. It’s the smell of burning steel and, it turns out later, asbestos and toxic things as well as thousands of burning bodies. I try not to think about that. I buy a Glade plug-in.

At work, I write about 9/11 all day—to help people who were working downtown and were affected by what they saw; social service workers who are traumatized by helping people in crisis; people who are “re-traumatized” by 9/11 because they had past trauma in their lives.

It’s very nice of my job to help all of these people. They didn’t offer to help any of us though, who fit some or all of these categories. In the years that follow, I will hear stories about coworkers affected in very intense ways.

September 11, 2002: It’s been a year. I’ve suppressed any confusing or strong negative feelings so deeply that they seem to have little bearing on my daily life. I write about 9/11 but don’t think about it. While the rest of the country wants to “never forget,” I’m happy that I’ve forgotten. It helps that I still avoid taking the train all the way to the WTC stop.

I’m having some trouble breathing, though, and a rash. It’s been steadily spreading over my body, and now it’s covering me. That air wasn’t as safe as the EPA promised. In time for the one-year anniversary of 9/11, I finally have an outward manifestation of what I experienced.

May 1, 2003: I’m celebrating my birthday at a beach-side bar in Miami. I’ve left New York City and have followed my parents to Miami where they’ve retired. Miami is a great place to forget about 9/11! The air is always clean. Life is fun and thoughtless. Work starts late and gets out early. There’s always enough tequila around to avoid worrying too much during hurricanes.

I still can’t handle 9/11 content. I quickly rush to change the channel when the talking heads discuss it or if there’s a disaster movie on. Tall buildings, planes, subways and even offices make me nervous. I visit New York every year, but I mostly stay above 14th street. I eat a lot when I’m downtown to calm my nerves. I exit the train and think “rice balls,” almost instinctively. Sometimes, I relax by researching 9/11 conspiracy theories online late into the night.

In Memoriam

December 26, 2011: Back to the present day, and this overwhelmingly tragic business of my broken Netbook. Sorry to leave you hanging…

My boyfriend and I are approaching Ground Zero, and I realize that I’m about to see the Freedom Tower for the first time. I’ve visited the city at least three times since they built it, but it hasn’t been on my to-do list. With my honey by my side and nothing left to lose, I decide I’m ready. I look up at it.

It’s too tall and pointy for comfort, but I can handle it. In fact, it’s not too bad.

We walk a little further and stop at an enclosed fence. There’s a big sign showing the future 9/11 memorial. There’s a graphic image of it. It consists of two open square-shaped reflective pools, formed out of the sunken impressions of where the towers used to be.

There are fountains of water running along the sides of each square hole and then falling into holes inside the holes—dark, seemingly bottomless holes.

No! This can’t be right. How could they…? Why would they…? Make it stop! I scream quietly
to myself. Cover the holes. Stop the water…it just keeps falling and falling…

I look around to see if other people are horrified too, as if we’re looking at children in bondage, or something else shocking on that level.

It takes a minute of just staring at this picture for the panic to die down. I realize that this isn’t the worst thing ever to happen to me. It’s just a picture of a very effective piece of art which is doing what it needs to do: It’s forcing me to remember, not the facts but the feelings—loss, losing control, falling. The memorial is aggressively pulling me into remembering all of it, not just 9/11, but everything before and since that I’ve wanted to forget. I understand why it took them ten years to build something here; it took me that long.

My boyfriend and I hold hands and walk to Battery Park City. He has a bus to catch back to Long Island. The sun is setting. The year is almost over. I have to say goodbye. We find a romantic spot and take in the most beautiful evening I can remember, right here:

As he holds me, I realize something, which I express to him aloud:

“I want to buy an iPad to fill the hole. It won’t fill the hole. I just have to feel it. I need to try to fix my Netbook, or just let it go. When I have a lot of money again, maybe I’ll get another computer.”

Epilogue: Resurrection

January 15, 2012: For only $150, I get my Netbook fixed! It’s a long story. I found this great guy on Yelp and… I won’t bore you with the details. I kinda already moved on.

Read Part 1 of “Justine Barron’s Slow-Tracked Life”

Read Part 2 of “Justine Barron’s Slow-Tracked Life”

Justine Barron writes, performs, and tells stories around Los Angeles. Her work includes award-winning film and television scripts and numerous personal essays and comedy shorts. She is a three-time Moth Storyslam winner and regularly performs her stories around town. She also performs with the improv comedy teams “Twig Storm” and “The Beatles(s).” Her comedic work is found online at www.justinebarron.com and twitter.com/justine_emma.

Image credits belong to Justine Barron and stock.xchng.

FAMILY ALBUM: grapefruit LISA NASH

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 16:04:00 -0800

In my parents’ yard there is a grapefruit tree. It grows by the southeast corner of the house. It’s huge, and obscenely generous. Every December it bears hundreds of grapefruit, maybe even a thousand, round and globe-like.

The tree appeared on its own one year when I was in middle school. Mom thought maybe one of us had spit out a seed while wandering through the yard. We guessed it was citrus, but we didn’t know. I hoped it was an orange tree. It finally bloomed when I was in high school, pushing out tiny green fruits at first, the right color, but too round to be limes. They grew and grew and lightened bit by bit. Finally in the fall, we could tell that they were grapefruit. The first taste that Christmas confirmed it.

There were a few fruits that first year, then more, and more, and more. Now my parents bear up under the weight of almost a thousand grapefruits a season. If they meet anyone new in the weeks between Thanksgiving and the Super Bowl, the first question on their lips is always heartbreakingly hopeful: Do you like grapefruit?

Whether you would see a yearly gift of a thousand grapefruit as a blessing or a curse depends on your views of grapefruit, I suppose. In my decade as a grapefruit pusher I have discovered that opinions run extreme when it comes to grapefruit: you either hate it, or you love it.

Caption: Thanksgiving, late 1940s. New York? Gramma is second from the right.

Blessings and curses arrive together all the time. When I was young it seemed like it was the sadness that came to chase the happiness down and ruin something good, like when my grandmother, the one grandparent I really knew and loved in my childhood, died about five hours before I won a full college scholarship. I remember sitting in the main office of Lincoln High School with the other recipient, staring in the beaming faces of the principal and her assistant.

Don’t you want to call anyone? Ms. Bunch asked me, pushing the phone across her desk at me. Dial nine first.

Dad picked up when I called home because he and my uncles were there planning the funeral. His voice choked, half from pride, he said, and half because they just really needed some good news. I felt sorry for myself then, at 18, thinking how I had missed out on being really happy because I was so sad about Gramma.

Caption: Three brothers: Paul, Jim and Ray (my dad) in my parents’ front yard

Six years later on my wedding day in a shower of holy water, I looked across the altar at my new husband and my best friends in the world in matching wine-red dresses; after we toasted and gave our speeches at the reception later that day, three of them barely spoke to me again, having outgrown me like an old shoe. Or perhaps I outgrew them.

Caption: Signing the shoe: Bridesmaids and me

When I was 32 weeks pregnant with our first child, my water broke as I got up to get dressed for work. Eleven hours later I was a new mother, exhausted and terrified but elated that he had survived.

The next year was a blessing and a nightmare, feeding him every two hours around the clock, worrying obsessively about germs and immunity, scrutinizing his every move for evidence of a delay in speech, movement, or emotion. Every night when I laid him down to sleep I was pretty sure he would die by the morning. You’re so lucky, friends would say. You never really had to be all that fat. And I could only smile blankly, exhausted.

Caption: My husband Ben and our tiny son, Chris

After he turned a year old, and I started sleeping at night again, I began to see that it wasn’t really that nightmares had to come with each good thing; rather, it seemed like something good came to follow every nightmare, if I just waited long enough.

This afternoon, my son, who is now a smart mischievous four-year-old, made his first joke. Holding a pointed potato chip between his fingers and flying it around the room, he looked at us and smiled. It’s a rocket chip, he said, and burst into giggles. If someone had told me about moments like these I might have had more courage in the early days when I was spending more time sterilizing tiny plastic widgets than sleeping. It’s funny how the hard things seem to fade in black and white, even the really hard things.

Caption: Chris and me picking grapefruit this Thanksgiving

There is only a six percent chance that a baby will be born premature for no apparent reason, but I bet the odds of having a surprise grapefruit tree in your parents’ yard is even smaller than that. Every year we bear our burden of the fruit in equal parts joy and dread. I like the mixed blessing of their fresh-squeezed juice, bright and bitter all at once.

Lisa Nash has lived in Tallahassee, Florida for her whole life. She almost got away in her early twenties, but she met her husband and discovered it was the perfect place to raise a family, so she stayed. She has her MA in Rhetoric and Composition from Florida State University, and works as an online teacher and tutor of college composition. She writes about the myths and rhetoric of American motherhood at her blog The Guilted Age, and is a regular contributor to Modestly Yours. Occasionally, she shaves her legs.

Image credits: Ray Colletti, Lisa Nash (Thanksgiving) and Miguel Jimenez (wedding).

JUSTINE BARRON’S SLOW-TRACKED LIFE (PART 2): i bought you! (please love me)

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 16:04:00 -0800

When I turned eight, I felt an urgent need to express myself in a loving way to another warm, living being. I begged my parents for a pet.

I may have been acting out. Some things in my life were changing fast, and I felt out of control. For instance, the year before I looked like this:

And suddenly, I looked like this:

Once a fresh-faced blond, now I had mousy brown hair and teeth spitting out of my mouth on a weekly basis.

To cope with the disappointments of growing older, I wanted a cute little pet to call my own. Most of my friends had them, but I was allergic to cats and dogs; I was missing out on all of that cuddling and attention.

We did have a parakeet, Connie. She let me touch her, for a week. But then we bought her a mirror, and she stopped letting anyone touch her and started smoking. (My mom smoked in her direction while watching TV.) Connie spent all day looking at herself, smoking and complaining. She seemed too much my mother’s pet to fulfill my needs.

So I picked out a cute little hamster with mousy brown hair like mine.

ENDOWMENT

Unfortunately, despite the physical match, my hamster and I failed to bond.

I may have screwed up with the naming. I don’t have that gift for naming; I’m not creative like that. Like, I had a pile of stuffed animals, but I named them according to species: Tiger, Bear, Seal-y. I gave them their true names, unlike my friends who slept with Princess Patty the Pig and Mr. Snuggles. I also assumed I was different from my friends in how I “loved” my stuffed animals: I used them for my evening sexual pleasures and then tossed them on the floor, where they spent the night. I felt guilty about this, as I’m sure some rapists do.

I’m saying, I had a complex that I might not be nurturing enough for a pet. And these insecurities seized upon me when I finally named my new hamster, after much tortured deliberation…Coco-Sweets.

What a terrible name! I hated it right away! I got stuck between two choices, and didn’t like either, so I put them together…It sounded like a cheap breakfast cereal. It embarrassed me to say it.

I really liked the hamster though, if not her name. She would stuff her cheeks with food and bury it across the cage. When stuffed, you could see the outline of the corn pieces in her bumpy cheeks. Sigh. It killed me with the cuteness and science of it all.

BONDAGE

Sadly, Coco-Sweets did not return any interest in me. Aside from hiding food, she spent all of her time focused on one thing only - running away from me. If I tried to hold her, she’d run from one arm to the other, jump to the nearest surface, and run away. If I directed her towards my face, say for a kiss, she’d flip around and run away.

Coco-Sweets spent her short life on this earth strategizing and executing one brilliant escape from captivity after another. She figured out how to escape from her first home, a square metal cage with a big wheel in the middle.

Instead of running in circles, Coco-Sweets would spend hours climbing the wheel from the outside, stretching out and balancing it steadily with her mighty little hamster thighs and then carefully opening the two locks on the top with her nose, in a circle, until she could pop open the lid and run away.

We piled books on top of her cage, but she’d balance on the wheel and move her hamster head back and forth until the books fell off, one by one, and then open the lock and run away. She’d conduct these escapes late at night and sleep all day in preparation - more rejection of our play time.

I tried to accommodate her needs. I got her in one of those clear hamster balls and let her “run free.” But Coco-Sweets (no fool) would hit the wall and just stop there, unwilling to put on the show of a happy pet.

We got her a larger home - an “environment” more than a cage, really - with multiple rooms connected by plastic tubes. I was even jealous of its size.

But Coco-Sweets (tough mistress) spent all of her time climbing a plastic tube, balancing herself against its slippery edges, and using her hamster nose to undo the lid (tightened by my strong father) and run away.

I was impressed. I told my friends that my hamster was clearly a genius, reflecting well upon her owner. I said that to cover up for my deeper feelings of resentment, frustration and worry.

I bought you! Why don’t you love me back? It’s your job!! You ungrateful…

MENTAL TORTURE

I purchased Coco-Sweets to gain a sense of control over my life, but instead she made me a ball of anxiety. Every morning, I would open the door to the den, filled with dread that she would be out of her cage. If she was, I would scream like a maniac.

Hamsters in cages are very cute; hamsters out of cages are rodents running around the house.

My parents would usually find her under the couch in the den (a scary place), but a few times, Coco-Sweets wasn’t there. I’d sit in school all day, worried and unable to concentrate. Once my mother showed up and poked her head in the classroom: “We found her! We found Coco-Sweets!” “Thanks!” I replied, then, whispering, “But don’t say her name out loud. It embarrasses me!” It turned out that Coco-Sweets had climbed sixteen stairs and was under my parents’ bed.

Once I brought Coco-Sweets to my friend’s house for a pet play date. I left her for awhile. When I came back to check on her, she was just climbing out of the top of the cage with my friend’s giant dog in the corner watching her, literally licking his lips.

Coco-Sweets became an everyday reminder of the worst-case scenario: death. It didn’t help that my brother would tease me by holding her over the garbage disposal.

HITTING BOTTOM

Then it happened: the worst-case scenario. In a reckless mood, I played with Coco-Sweets on the kitchen counter. I let her walk near the edge, and she fell - a skyscraper’s distance in hamster height - landing on the hard cold floor. I killed her, I thought. And regretted my whole life.

I picked her up, and she stood there, frozen in my arms. Then, gradually, she began to move, very, very slowly coming to life. She shook off the trauma, slowly walking towards my face, looking scared and vulnerable. She needed me. I kissed her.

In her nearly brain-dead state, Coco-Sweets and I finally had a moment. What a sweet little pet.

She recovered in an hour and was running again. What a relief.

FREEDOM (AT LAST)

Anyway, the school year ended, and my family and I took a trip to Europe, my first trip abroad. We left Coco-Sweets and Connie in the pet store where we bought them, and I left behind all of my angst and worry.

Europe was…beyond the very best. I saw Stonehenge and the Louvre.

I saw the Pompidou Center in Paris which blew my mind about what architecture could be with its tubing around the outside (It reminded me of Coco-Sweets’ home.). I went to Holland and saw boobies in the Red Light District and Anne Frank’s house and had profound, ineffable feelings about the social order. In Europe, my mind felt creative and happy for a change. I wasn’t obsessed with controlling everything.

We came back and went straight to the pet store. I was excited to see Coco-Sweets and start on a new, healthier, less codependent path together. They handed me my hamster, but her skin looked lighter. I mean, it wasn’t her. “Oh sorry, wrong pet. Ha. Oops!” They came back with another hamster, not her either. And another! It turned out that Coco-Sweets had died, and they were trying to pawn off another hamster on me.

I cried and yelled at them: Excuse me?! I might just be nine years old and not great at naming pets, but I’ve just come from the Red Light District, okay? Give me a little credit. I know my own hamster!

A year’s worth of frustration and tension poured out of me, newly liberated from my experience abroad. I protested in anger at their mistreatment of Coco-Sweets and their condescension towards me. They were speechless. My father shrugged.

I was angry and sad, but in my heart, I felt that Coco-Sweets was, like me, finally free. I pictured her escaping their entrapment, running away to the Giant Supermarket next door, and exploring the aisles as I had explored Europe.

I didn’t want a substitute hamster and never got another pet after that. A new me was born in Europe, the authentic me, who didn’t exploit animals by naming and controlling them. We may not have connected in life, but in her death, little Coco-Sweets, or “Hamster”, and I blazed a trail for the freedom and voice of the small, brown and oppressed.

Disclaimer: I haven’t owned another pet since, but I did kill about a dozen rats and mice while living in Manhattan.

Read Part 1 of “Justine Barron’s Slow-Tracked Life”

Image credits belong to Justine Barron and stock.xchng.

EDUCATION: they say one bad apple spoils the bunch CHRIS O'ROURKE

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 10:40:00 -0800

It was the summer before my first semester teaching college. I was on a train from Providence to Philly, sitting in the café car, which was in the older style, more conducive to conversations occurring spontaneously between commuters. This doesn’t happen much anymore for two reasons – technology and distance. At least that’s what I’ve been told by relatives who work for the railroad and hate modern technology. The ride through New England was as picturesque as any Rockwell painting. Just outside Stamford, I saw an old fisherman with his arms around a young boy looking into the horizon as they stood on a run-down pier. The train pulled into New York as the sun was setting. As we waited in the station, a tall gentleman asked me if anyone was sitting at my table. I only had another hour on the train so I could tolerate the lack of leg space under the table. Usually, I would just lie to the person and hoped they would move on.

The man was tall. He was thin too, not gaunt looking, but thin enough for his age. He dressed simply and well. Basically, his suit and tie looked new. Maybe he shopped at the same Target as me? I never found out. His face was friendly and clean shaven, he couldn’t grow a real beard if he tried. His hair was brown and combed to the left. He had the hair of an elementary school principal. The one thing that stuck out from his attire was the watch. He wore a calculator watch and I saw this watch from out under his cuff as he extended his right arm while he spoke on the phone.

The reason I noticed so much about this gentleman is that I just completed BBC’s Sherlock Holmes series. Holmes in one episode blurts out, “You see, but you do not observe!” I thought I would make this a hobby of mine on the train ride home. I was a little drunk so the accuracy of my observation is not entirely accurate.

“Can I see your watch?” I asked.

“Oh, this? Yeah, sure.” He handed me the calculator watch. It had Indiglo. It was breakthrough stuff in the early 90s. A blue glow would light the background of your watch when you hit a button— unlike watches in the 80s, which, if they came with a light, would only light a small portion of the background. I mentioned this to the man, pointing out that the watch wasn’t authentically retro. His reply to this information, head lowered- defeated, was “I know.”

“What’s your name?”

“Chris.”

“My name is Peter. Nice to meet you.”

“What do you do? Where you headed, I mean.”

“Oh, I’m on my way to D.C. Just finished up a conference in New York.”

“What for?”

“I’m in politics.”

“What do you mean? What’s politics? Are you a clerk? Fundraising?”

“Yeah. The last one. I was raising money. My organization was up in New York for a big fundraiser over the weekend. We’re a grassroots organization.”

“Oh. So the watch? What’s that about? It doesn’t really go with your whole thing.”

“Yeah, I know. It’s a reminder. It reminds me what I’m working for.”

“What?”

“The watch, the suit, I needed a watch to go with the suit. But the suit isn’t totally what I’m about. So I wanted a watch that would remind me that I’m working for the people. I got into this organization to work for the people. And the calculator watch reminds me about the people. What do you do?”

“I’m in education. Teacher. A teacher for hire.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s nothing. I just say teacher for hire as a joke cause I’m not certified. I teach at a community college.”

“I used to teach.”

The man paused. He was listening with a look of utter intent during our conversation and now he turned away. He placed his right hand over his mouth. The calculator watch appeared again from under the cuff of his pristine white shirt. At this moment there was only about a few other passengers in the car with us. It was unusually quiet for the route between New York to D.C., or in my case, Trenton. The man sat and looked across the aisle in the direction of the window opposite from us.

“How long you’ve been teaching?”

“Well, I’ve never really taught before, I’ve only subbed. I start in a couple of weeks. It will be good. I think—”

The man interrupted me. “I taught, and I taught for a long while. I was a good teacher. The best in my district and then when I went to the college level, I was even better.”

I didn’t know how to react to the man’s claim of being a great teacher. I was compelled to ask more. “Do you have any advice?”

“What do you want to know?”

“Anything.”

The man shifted his body to where his shoulders were now more square with mine. “Ok. I can tell you a lot of about teaching. More than you really need to know. But one thing I know is important, probably the most important thing, is understanding the human animal that is the modern student. Some people will try to talk to you about relating to the kids. That’s out the door. Don’t do that. Don’t try and relate to them. Once you graduated you were already out of touch with whatever level of schooling you just graduated from. You’ll lose ‘em if you try to do that.”

At this point I was finishing off my double of Jack and Pepsi. It was mostly melted ice.

He continued, “Now, making them think you’re trying to relate to them is a psychological technique that takes years of experience, a style of manipulation that you just can’t learn on one train ride. Forget that for your first year. Keep it simple.”

This was more than I wanted.

“‘Know the classroom’ is one I hear a lot and I’ve seen it online a bunch. This actually is a valuable skill. It will help you take the class by storm. See, let me just cut to the chase— what you need to do is have total and utter control over your classroom. I come from a long line of Irish cops. My grandfather beat his father, my father beat me, and we are all a bunch of control freaks. Crowd control has kind of been a thing in our family. I have pictures of my great-grandfather in riot gear from the 20’s. My dad passed the gear onto me after he died. But the point is, the modern student is one that must be controlled. Got me?”

I was slow to respond. Partially because I didn’t know what to say to this man who initially appeared so reserved and mostly because the alcohol had made me tired.

He continued, “When you want to rule a classroom, you’ve got to be able to identify all of the characters in the class. Your first year you’ve got to be like the head detective, like a real Sherlock. You’ve got to know them before they know you, and you’ve got to begin manipulating the shit out of them. Come up with names for them if you want, but get a hold of that classroom at any cost. Like on your first day. Get to know the classroom so show up about two hours early. Know how the blinds work. Where the chalk is. How to turn on the Smart Board. You probably won’t use much classroom technology the first day. Get to know them. Play a game or something that allows you to get as much information from them as possible. Find out things they don’t like and are possibly afraid of. Students will give you a lot of information on the first day. Most of them will be nervous. When you walk into the classroom identify the quiet kid and make sure you can separate him in your mind from the hot popular girls and the shy kid.”

“Isn’t the shy kid the same as the quiet kid?” I asked.

“No, the quiet kid has something to hide. The shy kid has something he wants to say but hasn’t got the confidence to say it. You can work him good. You don’t really have to worry about the shy kids as giving you any shit. The quiet kid I would always be a little more careful about. You can have a real Columbine on your hands there or Patty Hearst kind of situation.”

“What? He wants to be kidnapped?” I took another sip from my drink, it was going down faster than I cared for.

“No. But he wants to join in on things with you, like mocking the shy kid or making fun of the adult learner. The adult learners can be real problems at the college level cause they’re insecure about being back in school. They’ll go to the Dean on you so hopefully you don’t have any your first semester. Also, try to have sex with one of the hot popular girls because that will create tension between them, and there’ll always be two cause they travel in pairs. And the tension will help you …”

“I’m only in my first semester at the college.”

“Yeah, but you’ll see a lot of high school shit carries over especially in the first year. Those girls will think they’re still hot and popular. Don’t worry about the awkward dorks either. They’re so awkward and dorky that they’ll want you to like them. So they’re easy to control! Who else?”

“I don’t know. You tell me. You’re kind of going here.”

“If you don’t want the advice I can shut up.”

“No, keep going.”

“Keep going? That’s what I thought. You’ll have your jocks, even at a community college, you’ll have your jocks for sure. You’ll have to sacrifice the self-esteem of the dorky kids and nerdy chicks to win over the jocks. The jocks will love you if you dislike the same dorks as them and rip on the object of their sexual frustration for the next year which will be the attractive nerdy girl. Nerdy girl learned in high school not to like the jocks and now she’ll be coming into her own that first year of college. The jocks haven’t figured out why they hate her yet and it’s because they want to fuck her but they’re still operating on some weird high school dictum to hate all nerd - male or female. It’s weird. The shit really hasn’t changed since the 80s.”

“Who else do we have?”

“I really don’t know. I’m a little lost.”

“Oh, right, the angry kid. Angry kid and quiet kid could be the same student. It depends. They might switch roles throughout as well. Angry kid is usually filled up with a lot of ideas about college from his family. These students usually come from a conservative background politically or they’re Christians. They’re filled with stories of mythological liberalism or they just don’t like anyone else and they don’t know why, just that ‘everything will be different.’ Angry kid you just have to manage. Handle him and give him a passing grade if not higher. Or, if you’re going to fail him make sure he doesn’t know where your office is. Also, try to get the Dean on your side at some point before the semester ends, if she’s a fat Dean try to use food to win her over by midterm, I had this Dean once who was into fetish wear and I found out by looking at his computer when I was waiting in his office. And don’t forget how you dress and …”

The man went on and on. He talked about Arizona and his days as a teacher for juveniles in a remote desert town. He listed the reasons a teacher should carry a retractable baton at all times. He told stories of working in the inner city and a student pulling a knife on him. How he said to the kid, It’s always the knife with you wops, and then beat the kid in front of his classmates. The man wouldn’t stop talking. He just built more and more momentum from his own speech.

It was frightening me a little. He went on about games that teachers can play to pit three students against one. He had a nickname for this game that I forget now.

At my stop the man became silent. I didn’t know why, I was so engrossed by the utterly useless and horrible advice he was giving me I had lost track of time. He turned away from me and gestured toward the window. It was my stop. I grabbed my laptop bag, computer, and other things and rushed off the train. I tried to thank the man and looked back as I stumbled off the car. I got around to the window and tried to wave at the man from the platform but he had already turned and was facing the other direction.

When he’s not grading student essays, Chris O’Rourke is writing short stories and performing stand-up in the Philadelphia area. Other projects include: starting a surveillance company with his ex-cop dad. Follow him on Twitter.

**Photography Notes: Film stills and movie posters shown throughout this piece belong to the following (in chronological order): Teachers, Election, Half Nelson, Dangerous Minds, Class of 1984, Bad Teacher, The Breakfast Club, and American Teacher.

TRAVEL: 中国：有一个问题。(china: there’s a catch) REBECCA LEIB

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 10:23:00 -0800

Almost one month ago, I returned from a month long trip to China and I hope to never. Fucking. Go. Back. There. Again.

I think I should backtrack for you.

Pre-China was a rough year for me. My freelance jobs were waning and uncertain. My commercial agent dumped me. My writing wasn’t getting me anywhere. I had acquired a stalker. The car I had since I was 16 would periodically catch on fire. I broke up with this guy because he was a jerk, just as my psychic told me.

I mean, I HAD a psychic.

The year was crazy.

So, I decided to drop it all and visit my brother in China. He had been there a year, teaching aviation terminology at a college in Tianjin. I figured, this was the time— I’m basically unemployed, broke, and no pesky awesome love of my life is holding me back. So, why not? I loved to travel. I fancied myself a great traveler, one who was open to change, reconfiguration, and enlightenment. I would go to the Great Wall. I would interact with the people. I would try lots of foreign foods. I would learn, love and eat. And maybe pray. Just like that book that I never read, and won’t ever read. Because that book, like China, is shit.

I arrived in Beijing on the 4^th of July and with my fancy backpack and my Lonely Planet.

I was ready.

The first thing I realized was that China was hot. Really hot. When I landed in Beijing, it was approximately 94 degrees and smelled like hot garbage. Oh Rebecca, I thought, my dumb American olfactory senses aren’t used to how others live! Surely it’s just the initial shock of being in a foreign land. Then, I tried to catch a cab from the airport and realized quickly that there were NO LINES ANYWHERE IN CHINA. And I don’t mean no lines like, water park fun-time no lines, I mean strangers en masse pushing each other like cattle. Lines. The Chinese? They don’t believe in them. A line to catch a train? NO way. A line in a fast food restaurant? Why bother? Lines were for people who want to get where they’re going faster, and in an orderly fashion.

The Chinese were having NONE OF IT.

With more than a billion people in each city I visited, feeling the hot breath of a Chinese person on my neck or their shirtless bodies haphazardly pressed all up against mine became routine. Also, I had not gotten my period in two months, which irritated me.

OPEN your MIND, REBECCA, I thought to myself, as a Chinese person jammed their umbrella right into my collarbone, taking my cab and spilling open my carry-on bag. These people don’t have Facebook, or blogs! They barely have Fresca or free press! Your body is soft, sensitive, and American. HARDEN UP! Of course, I did.

Then, there was the food factor. Most of Chinese food is weird animal parts, deep fried and in gravies. I ate it with gusto, thinking that my palette was too narrow if I didn’t like what I was eating. Chinese food also wreaked havoc on my digestive system. I had the worse diarrhea you could EVER IMAGINE. THAT YOU COULD EVER FUCKING IMAGINE. I MEAN, near CONSTANT.

This is the point in the piece where shit gets REAL.

IT’S FINE, I told myself. Your. Body. Will. Get. Used. To. This. Just find the public bathroom, and shit n’ vomit in this HOLE, like everybody else. You see, eastern toilets are just holes in the ground, and its BYOT and S, which means bring your own soap and toilet paper. If you don’t have it, no worries. NOBODY does. NOBODY FUCKING DOES. The COLLECTIVE POPULATION OF CHINA DOES NOT WASH THEIR HANDS. NOBODY. AND DEFINITELY not that shirtless smoking dude who just served you your deep fried scorpions in orange gravy peach sauce.

Rebecca, I said to myself, it’s COOL. These people survived the Cultural Revolution. They have thousands of years of oppressive dynastic rule. You can handle a couple pieces of rabbit cat sate served to you by dirty Beijing fingers. GET USED TO IT.

By week two, spitting and shitting in public were other elements of China that I was “EXPERIENCING.” Mothers would hold their children over garbage cans in parks (and in corners, if there were no garbage cans) to let their kid piss or shit. At first, I thought, that’s weird— there are holes for such specific purposes, as I just mentioned. Because of all of the pollution and the food, which is high in fat and oil (the food, not the pollution), the Chinese people were oozing liquids CONSTANTLY. It was a normal day in China to see a kid shitting in the grand ballroom of a train station, or to be sitting on a jam packed train and feel the spit of the old man next to you as he hacked a fat loogie onto the floor of a bus, then wiping it around with his foot.

We were both ashamed.

I still didn’t have my period, either. But, luckily, according to fourteen Chinese pregnancy tests, I wasn’t pregnant.

Even the things that were supposed to be beautiful just seemed ugly, and I blamed my narrow American self. In Qi Yan, I saw The Terra Cotta Warriors. They are these statues— each one unique, built by thousands of craftsmen. They were recently excavated and are BREATHTAKING. These craftsmen made it their life’s mission to complete The Warriors, and after they did so, they were SYSTEMATICALLY SLAUGHTERED BY THEIR DICKHEAD 21-YEAR-OLD EMPEROR (as my tour guide proudly told me). I went to see the Pandas in Cheng du, who are in captivity because they BEAT THE SHIT OUT OF THEIR NEWBORNS, ALMOST KILLING THEM BEFORE THEY REACH MATURITY (Pandas should be extinct, my tour guide proudly told me!). In my brother’s city of residence, Tianjin, we saw the famous Tianjin opera. The theme: RAPE.

There was no tour guide to explain this to me. Loud and clear, CHINA!

I kept thinking about how I was a terrible human being. How I must not be appreciating all that this wide world had to offer. What was wrong with ME? I was also super anxious about, you know, MAYBE BEING PREGNANT. And if not, maybe the lasting and perhaps permanent damage China had wreaked on my reproductive system.

One of the last nights of the trip was a particularly long night of travel— we missed our flight because the Chinese airline just decided to CHANGE the time the plane was leaving, so we had to take a total roundabout way. We had booked a hostel, but the booking didn’t go through because the Internet wasn’t working, so we went to a shitty hotel with barely any walls and a bed that was a glorified mat. I was thirsty because the water in China is undrinkable and I was out of my bottled water. I was hungry, had been shitting up a storm, and just wanted to sleep. So, I got into bed and started drifting off… when I heard in the next room, a man spitting, just hacking up a storm.

I snapped.

I climbed on top of the bed and screamed at the top of my lungs: GUESS WHO WOULD LOVE TO GET THIS SHIT BED COVERED IN THEIR DISGUSTING, STICKY MENSTRUAL FLUIDS?!! GIVE UP? ME! ME!! I WOULD LOVE TO BLEED ALL OVER THIS GODDAMNED BED RIGHT FUCKING NOW. I WOULD LOVE TO HAVE UTERINE LINING AND THE BLOOD-ENGORGED EGGS FLOW THROUGH MY BODY, OUT OF MY THIGHS AND ALL OVER THIS BED— ALLOVER IT. DID YOU HEAR THAT? HAPPY FUN TRAILS HOTEL? DID YOU?!!

But rarely in this life do we get what we wish for.

My brother rushed into my room to calm me down and bring me clean water. And no, I did not menstruate all over the bed. The last part of the trip I combated my ethnocentrism with quiet resignation. I was ignorant. I was white. I was privileged. And, I was probably pregnant with a definitely unwanted child.

I was everything I hated in travelers, and in mothers. And yeah, as I read this I realize that I sound like a total dick.

Maybe I am a total dick.

BUT—

WHEN I GOT BACK ONTO SWEET, SWEET AMERICAN SOIL, TO MY DELIGHT I BLED ALMOST INSTANTANEOUSLY! I have never been so happy to buy tampons, like, ever. Even now, I think— man, I ’m pretty thankful for newspapers. And, good cuts of meat. And, my right to vote. And, for soap coming standard with western style toilets.

感谢，让我明白我妈的生活！我没有怀孕！(Thanks, China, for making me appreciate my shit, child-less life!)

Rebecca Leib was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin but currently resides in Los Angeles, California. She has her BFA in fine arts from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and MFA in writing from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is also an alumni of the Second City Conservatory, IO-West and UCB. Rebecca likes to teach, draw and perform and can be seen performing regularly at iO West, The Moth Storytelling Competition and UCB-LA. She has been published for art writing in Beautiful/Decay, Art Ltd., ArtNews, Artillery and writes pop culture pieces for TVgasm, Girls Talkin’ Smack and Gawker. She has a weekly column for the Los Angeles-based humor blog, http://www.saysomethingfunnybitch.com/ that you can check out, if you’d like.

**All photography in this piece is provided by Rebecca Leib or her brother— on location, in China.

ART: accepting constraints, the eames way STACY ELAINE DACHEUX

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 19:20:00 -0800

All I knew about the Eames was chairs: clean and sleek Mad Men chairs, 1970s Woody Allen psychotherapist chairs, molded plywood and leather chairs with a matching ottoman to boot, a knock-off of which is sitting in my living room, and rather comfortable. So, I was expecting to find a gallery of untouchable Herman Millers, seen below, glowingly alongside one another at the A+D Museum’s “Eames Words” exhibition …

I was wrong. The exhibition is not about pristine finished products, but process: an open notebook of potential or valuing the curious aesthetic of simple objects, identifying the ultimate power of use and constraint.

“Art is not a word Charles [Eames] liked or used.” Deborah Sussman, who spearheaded the project, explains. A quote by him on the wall supports this statement: “I don’t believe in this gifted few concept, just in people doing things they are really interested in doing. They have a way of getting good at whatever it is.”

Charles and Ray Eames did not just make chairs.

They were collaborators and lovers who moved to Los Angeles from Michigan while on their honeymoon. They were broke, but luckily— they were also creative: she an abstract painter who, like Lee Krasner, studied under Hans Hofman, and he, an architect/builder.

Both saw traveling as an adventure, stopping their car to pick up tumbleweeds along the way.

Once here, they lived in a modest apartment, with a spare room which doubled as a workspace, where they experimented with malleable plywood, to suit their design needs, such as splints for the military, and eventually the shape of chairs. But first, they hung the tumbleweeds inside their home, from the ceiling, for decoration, but more so, for inspiration and play.

Sussman notes the tumbleweeds above our heads in the museum.

The tone of the show is palpable: when art’s intention resides only inside a white-walled gallery, then it has lost its full identity. There is art in everyday objects, which also, when used to their fullest capacity, house history and/or passion, illuminating an otherwise empty plain space.

The items on display say it all. The Eames embraced materials: shape and form, boundaries— how we, as humans, are tethered to objects, in a primitively functional way, and how “art” can be our own intrinsic enjoyment of this tethering.

The above quote from Charles Eames resonates with me the most. Anytime you engage in materials, you engage in the pleasure of constraints. For example, an oil painting is only allowed to be an oil painting. A chair can only be a chair. Restriction narrows choice, but it also gives us the freedom to focus, allowing our thoughts to creatively flow through the fabric, in a distinctly unique way. Because performance or experiential art does not always necessitate materials to limit, we often see this idea of constraint expressed primarily through the use of rules in relation to the body.

Starting in 1991, Andrea Zittel constructed and wore “6-month uniforms” hoping an imposed restriction on dress would eliminate wasted time, allowing her to concentrate on other, more important, areas of her life. Zittel notes, “People say my work is all about control, but it’s not, really … I am always looking for the gray area between freedom—which can sometimes feel too open-ended and vast—and security—which may easily turn into confinement.”

In 1997, from December 8th to the 14th, Sophie Calle, in an attempt to embody Paul Auster’s fictional character that is based on the artist herself, restricted her diet to a monochromatic one. She ate only one single color each day. For instance, Saturday was dedicated to the consumption of pink foods and drinks.

In 2010, Marina Abramovic sat in MoMA’s atrium. With an empty chair across from her, she welcomed visitors to the table. Her piece, titled “The Artist is Present” demanded Abramovic to sit silently for the museum’s entire business hours, throughout the entire run of the show, totaling around 716 hours.

In Walter Isaacson’s biography, Steve Jobs calls his limited wardrobe of black turtlenecks and Levi jeans a “daily convenience” and “signature style”— emblematic of the Apple brand itself: simple design choice amidst a confusing array of information.

Like the tumbleweeds which the Eames picked up along the highway, some objects have the potential to conceptually emerge from their initial usefulness into decor or cultural artifact, while still maintaining a certain external integrity of shape and form.

It’s actually romantic— the medium as a constraint, the body as a medium of constraint, and how, as creative people, the Eames allowed these two constraints to meet … to service one another. This sounds really sexual, and maybe it should. Creative endeavors are intimate relationships with material and limitation, full of complex human needs and deficiencies.

Not too unlike Charles and Ray Eames, generations of other artists such as Calle, Abramovic, Zittel, and Jobs play with these boundaries in a similar way— as an unspoken contract: how we try and touch other people, comfortably or uncomfortably, and how we manage to hold this touching, these findings. Maybe Charles Eames explains it best when he says, “Eventually everything connects - people, ideas, objects. The quality of the connections is the key to quality per se.”

The Eames did not just make chairs. They made each day an artful discovery.

Catch “EAMES WORDS” at A+D before it closes on January 16, 2012.

Stacy Elaine Dacheux is a writer & artist. She lives in Los Angeles and co-edits Slack Lust with Paris Lia. In her spare time, she works on her novel and translates handwritten letters into abstract paintings.

***Photography notes: Eames chair image, Ray & Charles Eames holding hands image, Zittel’s dresses image, Calle’s monochromatic meals image, Abramovic’s image, and Steve Jobs’ image were found via an Internet search and collected into the piece to illustrate concepts. All rights to these images are reserved for the original photographers who took them. No profit is turned from its usage here. If you own one of these pieces and want it removed, please contact us and we will oblige. All other photographs were taken by Stacy Elaine Dacheux at the A+D Eames exhibit in Los Angeles, CA.

ON CALL: admissions of a phone sex operator REBECCA LEIB

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 18:52:00 -0800

In graduate school, I decided to take on an extra job as a phone sex operator. I had been assistant teaching, but the hours it afforded me were limited.

Now, there have been many parts of my life where I do something or take something on in order for it to be a “good story,” or for it to be “funny.” I admit, this is a character flaw of mine for two reasons:

It’s already inherently douchey. When you do something with the sole impetus that it will fuel something else in your life, you’re taking yourself out of the trajectory of the pure experience- making a distinct gesture of being above/better than. This “wink/nod” syndrome is typical of hipsters, teenage girls and self-righteous couples, particularly while they’re hanging out with single people.

If you’re too obsessed or involved with dissecting an experience, you’re no longer enjoying the experience itself. It is transformed into something lesser than, a cardboard cutout of itself. This is a large problem for me because enjoyment is not a major part of my life, though I take great pains to do things that would seem enjoyable to others like hiking, or taking on a hobby.

I am not the happiest person on the block.

I decided to try out phone sex because I liked sex, and I always have (and always will!) prefer working from home. The phone part I could learn to enjoy. Right? So I got myself a landline (which wasn’t so uncommon in 2005) and a cheap phone, and set to work on providing erotic services to voices from distant states.

I had one fifteen-minute orientation (for which I was paid 20 dollars) before I was to begin. It was with a southern woman named Noya, who was an administrator of the many sites I would be working for.

“It’s pretty sink or swim.” Noya chomped.

Her lips smacked a lot when she talked, like she had bubblegum in her mouth. Hey, maybe she did. She told me all about the payment process, which was a sliding scale. If you keep someone on the phone for less than two minutes, you get nothing. After that, you get more money after every ten-minute interval you keep them on the phone.

She would tell me a code before every call. The three first digits would be 800 or 900.

800 meant that it wasn’t supposed to be a “dirty” call, which I found ironic. The operators could not use explicit language (a guideline I violated within most of the 800 calls), but strange, puritanical codes. For example, if I wanted to talk about what I would do to a man’s penis, I would use a word like “member” or “rod.” As in, “I want to suck your member so hard it will shoot waves of pleasure.” When you talk about a vagina, you couldn’t even use words like pussy. You would have to use “kitty,” or “soft pocket.” As in, “Yum … I love it when you explore the depths of my soft pocket.”

For the 900 numbers, anything went.

“Anything,” Noya spat. “Oh yeah, except no necrophilia shit.”

That was pretty much my only rule— I couldn’t be involved in a conversation that alluded to or seemed about necrophilia. I was also told that I couldn’t participate in a conversation that involved being under 18 or incest, but those calls happened ALL THE TIME.

Within the 800/900 umbrella, I would also get two digit codes like these:

01: First Time caller
02: Regular caller

The first time callers were usually nervous and wanted you to talk more. They didn’t know what they wanted and these calls would be shorter (read: less money).

Then, even more specifically, a final number was added to indicate what the caller would like to talk about. Examples of these numbers were:

kink
extremely slutty
domination
oral
anal
voyeuristic
mature

I can only imagine the series of automated questions that farmed such preferences.

So, before a call, I’d get a robot voice telling me 9000202. This meant the caller wanted me to use explicit language, was a regular caller and was interested in anal.

Or, I’d get a robot voice telling me 8000107. This meant the caller did not want the use of mature language, was a first time caller and wanted sex with a mature person.

Sometimes, the person on the line would want to know about me, and I would have to lie to them. I’d tell them I was in sexy lingerie when I was really in sweatpants. I’d tell them I was in Tacoma, Washington or Vermont (because that sounds nice, doesn’t it)? When really, I was in a loft my parents bought me in Chicago. I would glance over stacks of pizza boxes, look out at my view of lake Michigan, and tell these people all the things that they wanted to hear (re: my firm ass, my body longing for their body, being so, so horny).

“Oh, yeah. I am so, so horny.” I would say. “So horny for you.”

They liked to hear that.

I was in graduate school for writing. I had a boyfriend who was a waiter at Smith & Wollensky’s. I had recently gone home for my father’s 55th birthday party. In the beginning, I liked the dynamic of having this strange, seedy identity to add to my relatively normal, actual identity.

Oddly enough, my boyfriend was cool with it, as long as I didn’t work while he was home, which wasn’t often. My cats were cool with it, too, because talking on the phone meant lots of attention and unattended water glasses. I kept telling myself how “fascinating” my job was, and how many stories I had. How I was pushing myself into a different realm of my own consciousness, and making money, to boot.

I was doing things! I was interesting.

I would concoct different personae for myself. Sometimes, with a 900027, I would be Melanie from Lexington, at home alone while my roommates were on dates with their boyfriends. Or, with a 800016, I’d be Devonne from Kenosha, Wisconsin, a sexy but broke woman trying to quench her thirst for sex while making some money on the side.

I realized that these identities were not so far from the truth, which made me feel like I wasn’t lying so much, but also made me feel like I wasn’t pushing it as far as I could. The experience, right? These were OTHER people that I was guiding into my life by way of a telephone line. These were the munchkins and I was Dorothy, and they were inaugurating my journey to the Emerald City of interesting personage!

But then, shit got old.

I didn’t realize that talking about sex becomes boring after a while. The lead-up (the 3-6 beginning questions you’d ask a caller to keep them on the line, ranging from their name, hometown, what they were wearing to if their “member” was hard) became rote, and my voice got so hoarse— sometimes, I’d have to have a stash of tea and lozenges ready for my shift.

I got sick of the men who would call and make me lie about my sweatpants. I got sick of the women who would call in wanting me to say I was bi-curious. I got sick of people wanting … DEMANDING … to know my real age, name, city and contact information. I got paid an average of 15 dollars an hour to play sexy, and sexy turned into boredom, then turned into anger.

I mean, the INTERNET existed in 2005. And, it was free.

I got an 8000104 who called in one day, just as I was at the crux of my annoyance.

“Hey.” I said. “Thanks for calling. You want a blow job?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I do.”

At that point, I was ignoring 800 or 900, just calling body parts what they were.

“Cool. I said. What are you wearing?”

“Uh…I don’t know.”

Nice, I thought. I get confused answers all the time, as if the guy couldn’t just look at himself and say what was on his body, the BUILT-IN answer. These questions were built-in mood setters, as long as everyone played along.

What a fucking dickhead, I thought.

“That’s cool. I’m in my boyfriend’s tee shirt and a thong.”

“Oh, that sound nice.” He said.

“Yeah,” I said. “And my boyfriend’s not home right now. And I’m feeling really horny.”

“Really?” He said.

“Oh yeah,” I said.

“Where’s your boyfriend?”

“He’s at work.”

“Where does he work?” The guy wanted to know.

“Uh- he works at a restaurant.”

“How old are you?”

“I’m 22.”

“Really?” He said. “You sound young. I thought you’d be older. But you sound young. Barely legal,” he joked.

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“Are you in school?” He asked.

“Yeah, I am.” I said. “But I’m so bored…I’m getting really horny….”

“For what?” He asked.

“Your cock in my mouth” I moaned hoarsely.

“No, what are you in school for?” He wanted to know.

“Oh- psychology…” I spat out, flummoxed.

“No,” the guy said. “I think that’s a lie.”

I suddenly got pissed. A lie? Did this guy want to phone fuck, or did he want to gab about my major? But then, I became un-pissed because Jesus, talking about sex was sort of enjoyable at this point, and I was being paid the longer I kept him on the line.

“No…” I said.

“That’s okay.” He said. “Did you know that I make a lot of money? And, I’m really in love with my wife.”

“Okay.” I said.

“I mean it.” He said. “Even though she cheated on me once. I really loved her … I love her. I talk to people sometimes, and I know when they’ve known love like me. I know love. I hope you know love, too, someday. I hope you know fortune. I hope it doesn’t fuck with you and you know what? I’m a little drunk … and that’s okay. We can talk. I can talk to another human being while kind of drunk. I can talk to another human. It makes me feel real … and you know what? I hope you know what it’s like to go through all sorts of fucking bullshit, and still be in love and still be making fucking money to talk to a stranger on the phone. I hope you do … ”

He searched for my name.

“Rebecca.” I said. I gave it to him.

OCCUPY: this little light of mine DYLAN HOCK

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 18:24:00 -0800

photo: melissa bodin / 2011

When the banks were bailed out a few years ago, I fucking lost it. Call me hot-headed, but I made up a series of three signs with slogans I don’t even remember— all slapped up in red paint— and hammered them into my front lawn. I lived in a shitty old house at the edge of the northern wealthy section of town, but it was the shitty old house my grandfather had died in and nearly all my friends and family had lived in at one time or another. For those reasons the house embodied many fond memories; it was the kind of place you always wanted to live in until you do.

Anyway, watching the government give up billions and trillions of taxpayer dollars to the very people who had screwed us in the first place, I fucking lost it. I lost my faith in dissent, in people, in the solidarity of mass protest … What could I do? I was just some guy with three wimpy signs in his yard— and it rained constantly, drooping the cardboard until you could no longer read my short stab at the government, blindly swiping at big business, mega-banks and the auto industry. And there were the airlines and a morbidly obese defense budget slaughtering people all over the world in the name of democracy and commerce to boot, too, but that was old hat by then— it’d been done for so long people didn’t know any different. It seemed like no one cared enough to scream and shout anymore. A dissenting voice to the Great Bail-Outs of the 21st century was nowhere to be found.

“We’re behind enemy lines, man!” I’d tell my wife. “Jesus… no one gives a shit! If this doesn’t get people in the streets, what the fuck will?” She’d shrug and we’d eat dinner with the kids. “Eat your fucking rice,” we’d say. “Good fucking beans.”

“SHIT, MOM!” my oldest son would yell. “THE GODDAMN BANKS ARE STEALING MY FUTURE! ASSHOLES!”

“No b-word at the dinner table,” my wife and I would scold him. “You know how we hate that fucking word.”

This is the caricaturized domestic life of a man who was not censored, who grew up memorizing late-night comedy routines on cable, who rolled and cried with bellyaches on the floor at George Carlin, Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy till his mother came home drunk from the bar and would lay down the most basic of life’s lessons— “Tell the truth,” she’d say. “Your life will be a lot easier.” So, I gave myself permission to express myself however the hell I pleased, like those funny people on cable, as long as I was honest, as long as it was the truth and sincere, and as long as the heart was involved.

photo: melissa bodin / 2011

A year floundered by and the world continued to stink, spin, and spew on down the line. Sure, there were puppies who found homes, bake sales were held. There’s a different colored ribbon for every f-ing cause under the sun. But anyway, a year went by, and in that time my wife and I purchased our first home.

“Put these fucking boxes in that room, and put those fucking boxes in this room,” we told the kids— even our toddler.

“DAMN IT, MOM! OUR GOD DAMN MORTGAGE IS FUCKED!” our eldest son yelled, storming off for the boxes, which our youngest echoed in tearing off his diaper, bending over and shaking his ass in the air.

Our mortgage was not fucked. It was quite fucking good, actually, but by then the media had crop-dusted so many Aqua Net politicians across the news, proclaiming and analyzing fault with the housing market, that our son began parroting all that b.s. back at us. “VARIABLE INTEREST RATES ARE STEALING OUR JOBS FOR CHRIST’S SAKE!” There was no real need to explain it all to an eight-year-old, but a good mortgage didn’t matter so much in the end anyway, either. He might as well have been right. Two years later, my wife lost one of her jobs, and the jobs we had left started providing less work. “THOSE DOUCHE BAGS ARE RUINING EDUCATION! CHILDREN ARE OUR FUTURE!” My oldest yelled again from behind the boxes, helping his little brother learn how to flip the bird—a prediction we agreed with long before.

By then, the whole country had its legs straight up in the air; my household’s income dropped by 75% soon after. “This shit is all over the world!” I’d shake my head at my wife.

“Yeah, it’s disgusting,” she’d agree, shaking her head, too.

photo: dylan hock / 2011

Then one afternoon, pissing away some time on the computer, avoiding discussions in my online classes and working on a novel that’s been ready for a final edit for months now, I came across the Occupy Wall St. movement.

“Some people are camping out in the middle of New York for a protest,” I told my wife. “In the fucking city.”

“Really?” she said. “What for?”

What for is old news now, but that afternoon I was still in my pajamas, still bleary-eyed and willing down a cup of coffee, waiting for it to shock the monkey back to the steering wheel, when this strange protest— this camping protest that had been going on for a little more than a week by then, with no immediate plans to stop— woke me right up, like I pissed myself ice-fishing or something— a sudden, exciting chill grabbed me and shook me around feverishly. “This shit is interesting!” I said, turning to find an empty room, my wife evidently somewhere else.

I’d been interested in counter-culture movements for years. It was always what I considered my passionate hobby reading— mostly 60’s revolutionary swag. I read a lot of books about (and by) a number of Black Panthers. I read a fair amount on the White Panthers, too, and a whole slew of bio books on different 60’s rock groups. I came across AIM at some point, and the Weather Underground, the Motherfuckers and the Yippies, which all came naturally after my earlier interest in the existential Beats, the Wobblies, the Diggers. My father is a musician and my mother’s a medicine woman; I’m Irish and Eastern Cherokee. My grandpa was a junk man and his brothers were hobos who used to fish for chickens from an old shack along the Flat River— I’m primed for this shit, and my wife knows it. Hell, I didn’t even mention Che Guevara, Martin, Malcolm, and Means … .

For three or four days and nights I couldn’t work, I couldn’t sleep. Every few minutes I was back on the computer rummaging around the Internet for more news and developments about the movement. “Holy fuck!” I’d blurt out now and then. After a while, my wife didn’t even respond. I had to come up with something else to get her attention. “Holy fuck!” no longer did it. I combed every social website I could think of looking for Occupy Wall St. news, marveling at how fast it spread, and how far! Hell, it had already reached New Zealand! People were talking! Online, that is; mostly online, and I followed. I made it my personal duty to help the various Occupy pages stay connected, shuffling through the various sites obsessively, doing anything I could to feel part of it, helping to spread the information and solidarity.

photo: dylan hock / 2011

And then BAM!— 700 people were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge. Watching the footage, my mouth fell open like a rockslide. I shook with a chill that went from my nuts to my chin and all down my spine. An involuntary grin pulled itself up from out of nowhere and put a gleam in my eyes— that wild spark that always makes my wife look at me as if my name is Willis, still pushing Different Strokes after all these years: she sees a scheme in my smile and deflects it with a prudent smirk that makes her squint her eyes slightly. “Look at this shit!” I told her, pulling her away from her own online classes.

“They arrested 700?” she said, “What the fuck?”

”They kept chanting, ‘THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING! THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING!’ and ‘SHAME! SHAME! SHAME!’ at the police! I have to go!” I told her. “You know me; I’ve talked about this for years! I have to go … It gave me chills just watching it. I have to do this!”

Then I said, “Holy fuck!” again, because I knew that this time I meant it. This time, I saw something I felt instinctually different about. The energy and approach of it all was too high. Liberty Park was constant high noon; it was a line in the sand. Camping out in front of the White House had been something I’d ranted about for years. “I should just take a fucking tent and go set it up right outside that damn place,” I’d say, coming out of the bathroom, tightening my bathrobe, running my hands through my hair, checking for thin spots. “What the fuck have people got to lose?” But camping out to take over Wall St. made even more sense than D.C. You’ve got to show up on the doorstep of power, and OWS had its finger on the bell from the beginning.

photo: melissa bodin / 2011

But, primed as I was for a more liberal outlook on life, I still gave myself a cushy excuse for inaction. My claim: I didn’t know where to start, how to get involved in a way that makes you feel like you’re making a difference, that you’re not just some asshole pissing away his time when he should be at home, showing the kids how to swear in new and interesting ways so they can really wow their friends on the playground and around the daycare. Those old Andrew Dice Clay rhymes don’t cut it anymore, trust me. Ya, hear? So, recognizing where and how-the-fuck to start can be a catalyst for major change in the way a guy like me lives his life. It can help lend enough direction to spark continuous action— a lifetime of it!

When I saw Occupy Wall St., I knew; I just knew, right from that first sleeping bag unrolled in the name of freedom and democracy— I was Occupy through and through. Suddenly, I had a location and a purpose. I had the interest, the motivation, and I begged, borrowed, and scrounged for the money to get to Liberty Park. The arrow had been released.

Before I left, I called up my cousin and said, “You want to go to New York for a protest?” and he said, “Why, hell yes!” He had to sell a deer rifle to do it. We left two days later, having assembled funds and donations from a handful of kind souls in the local community.

As we drove east on I-80, facing a good twelve hours of driving into the night, I wondered what would be in store for my cousin and I, whether we would be beaten, arrested, or both; whether we would get separated and whether we would be able to find our way back to each other; where we would sleep, use the bathroom and shower … Having gotten a late start, the sun was well above as the wheels spurned us forward. In my head was rock and roll; every movement I’d ever studied; every revolutionary I’d ever had the honor to meet and speak with, learn from; and the last protest I’d been a part of—the sky gray above the land, old WWII bombers circling and roaring in the rain, fake bombs bursting in the mud around me— the lone person who saw fit to call foul on celebrating Brig. Gen. Paul W. Tibbets’ presence at the local air festival in order to raise ticket sales— a festival that has since collapsed.

My sign read, “F the A BOMB!” and “THE A BOMB IS NOT CELEBRITY!” Both sides were printed over large orange mushroom clouds I’d painted days before, and stood out against the darkness like a sudden torch in the metallic gloom.

Dylan Hock is a mere speck— that voice in a flower, near the elephants. For more information on the movement, click on www.occupywallst.org or www.occupymuskegon.net.

MEMOIR: surviving JOSH PETERSON

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 15:20:00 -0800

PART I

My first job was at a movie theater in Nebraska. I was eighteen years old, a concessionist and had recently lost my virginity. Something was wrong with my penis. It hurt when I peed. It hurt when I rode bicycles. It hurt when I sneezed and made popcorn. I did not tell anyone about this pain. It frightened and humiliated me.

A lady ordered a large popcorn “with as much butter as possible.” She was middle-aged with a pleasing smile and sleepy eyes. A tall man with a coat draped over his shoulder stood next to her. I put as much butter as possible on her popcorn.

Minutes later, she returned to the concession counter, her bag of popcorn dripping butter. “The butter has stained my blouse,” “Get me the manager,” “What were you thinking?”

“You said as much as possible.”

“You’re a terrible concessionist,” she said.

“Good,” I said.

My manager came to the concessions area. He was a linebackery fellow with a walrus-brown mustache.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“He put too much butter on this. It went through the bag and got on my blouse.”

“She said as much as possible.”

The manager ordered me to the back room for restocking duty. He would talk to me later. “Let me take care of this,“ he said. I slunk off to the storage area, still terrified and now more humiliated.

I went to a doctor the next day. It was a yeast infection. The doctor prescribed lots of yogurt.

PART II

I worked for an inventory service. We would travel around the Midwest in vans and count stores’ merchandise. Sometimes we’d be on the road for two weeks at a time. There were trips to Saint Louis and Minneapolis. But usually we’d find ourselves in smaller towns like Ord, Nebraska, or Le Mars, Iowa.

The best thing about the job was the booze. I was nineteen, and my coworkers would buy liquor for me and the other minors. We’d stay up all night drinking in cheap motel rooms. Our parties were so rowdy that in Des Moines, we had been banned from every motel except one, the worst one.

In Winner, South Dakota, me and a guy who called himself Big Worm had been drinking for hours. Big Worm was a tall, balding, overweight, white guy, a few years older than me and a manager. He was also the best at inventory. We had drunkenly eaten at a Taco Johns. Big Worm and I became lost on the way back to the hotel. It was chilly out but not unpleasant. We drank forties.

We wandered into a neighborhood without sidewalks where the roads were no longer paved. There were no street lamps. Suddenly, a cacophony of barks and growls erupted from the dark. Out of an alley slipped a pack of dogs. They bounded towards us, snarling and yapping. Big Worm and I dropped our beers and ran. The dogs gave up after a few blocks. We found our way back.

PART III

I took a job at a malt shop. To this day, I can still make killer malts, but no one ever asks me to. The job stunk, and my manager wasn’t very good.

One day we ran low on vanilla, and I said to the manager:

“Hey, we are running low on vanilla. You should get some more vanilla.”

“OK,” she said. She didn’t mean it, though.

For those of you who don’t know, vanilla is the most important flavor of ice cream in a malt shop. It’s as important as hydrogen is to the sun.

We exhausted our vanilla supply by the weekend. People would come into the shop and ask for things we didn’t have.

“Can I have a banana split?”

“Yeah. But we’re out of vanilla. You’ll have to substitute a different flavor of ice cream.”

“Nevermind then.”

Or:

“Can I have a vanilla cone?”

“No. We are out of vanilla.”

All day long I answered questions about the vanilla and then dealt with the customers’ frustrations.

“Why don’t you have any vanilla?”

“When will you get more vanilla?”

“How can you run a malt shop without vanilla?”

An hour before the store was supposed to close, business lulled. I locked up the shop, but before I left I wrote a sign that said ALL DEAD HERE and put it on the door. Then I wrote a second sign that said TODOS LOS MUERTOS AQUI. That way everyone would understand.

The owner of the shop saw the signs the next morning and fired me. I’ll bet not one customer complained about the lack of me.

PART IV

When I worked at a comic book shop, I was a manager. I was the Magic the Gathering guy. This was never a dream of mine. I just sort of fell into it. A friend got me hired on. At that time, there wasn’t a Magic the Gathering guy there, so I decided to vie for the slot. No one opposed me and soon I was the official guy.

A scruffy-looking man in a long coat came into the store with a Latino and some blond lady. The scruffy-looking man wanted to sell me Magic cards. The cards weren’t very good, but there was a little money to be made in bulk sales, so I took what he had for about six bucks. I handed him the money, and he immediately gave it to the Latino who then left with the blond lady. The scruffy-looking man stayed. He just milled about.

A bunch of Magic players came in for the Sunday Magic tournament. I ran them. This process took several hours. Every time I left the game room, the scruffy-looking man was still hanging around.

When the games were over, it was time for me to go to work behind the counter. The scruffy man was still lingering about.

“I think that guy just took one of our figurines out of the case and tried to sell it to me,” my coworker said.

“Why didn’t you kick him out?”

My coworker shrugged. “It wasn’t worth anything.“

The owner of the shop and another manager had both seen the scruffy guy around. Apparently no one wanted to kick the guy out, probably on account of how scruffy he looked. The job fell to me.

“You have to leave,” I told him.

“Why?” he asked.

“I don’t have to tell you,” I said. “We have the right to refuse service to anyone.”

“You’re a racist,” he shouted.

“We’re both white,” I said.

“Come out into the parking lot and talk to me.”

“No. I’m at work. I don’t work in the parking lot.”

He left for a little bit, but then he came back in.

“Come outside,” he said. “Now.”

“I’ll call the police if you don’t leave. Get out of the parking lot. It’s private property.”

I picked up the phone, and he slouched in the doorway. I called the police and told them the situation. The guy went outside but continued to loiter.

A policewoman came and shooed him off. She spoke to me after.

“He had a South Dakota driver’s license. He was likely just some drifter.”

PART V

At some point, I lived in Los Angeles and had a real job. I worked as an editor for an internet start-up and made more money than anyone with a Fine Arts degree should. My brother and father came to visit me, and I was going to show off my new, expensive apartment and furniture to demonstrate how successful I’d become. When they arrived, I took them out for dinner and bought a couple hundred dollars’ worth of picture frames for all this art I had purchased. I desired for them to see that I was an adult, buying and doing adult things.

The next day, I lost my job. I went to work and found out that there was no more work. The company was done for. Everyone packed up their shit and left.

But my dad and brother were in town for a week.

PART VI

I worked as a freelance writer. When I started, I’d take almost any job on account of being poor. I wrote reviews for products and wrote articles about such things as laser eye surgery.

I answered an ad for an assistant writer position. It was only a few hours a week, but it paid well. I applied, and the guy asked me to come in and interview. He had this blog, and he wanted some help running it. I read the blog. It was about lawyer stuff.

The guy, a lawyer, was a slender, balding middle-aged man with slightly pockmarked cheeks. He looked clean and wore a crisp suit. When I arrived there, I told him that I read his blog.

“How?” he asked.

“It’s on the internet,” I said.

“I didn’t know that,” he said.

He told me that he wasn’t going to pay what he originally offered because I wasn’t as good as this other guy that he wanted to hire. I was second string. He also mentioned that he also wrote, and that I’d never be as good of a writer as him. But he looked forward to working with me anyway.

On my first day of work he asked me to think up some legal things for him to blog about, like the Duke Lacrosse Scandal or the Patriot Act. He talked about those things into a tape recorder. I transcribed what he said and put it on his blog.

“Do you want me to put your blog on the internet?” I asked.

“When it’s ready,” he said.

He offered to pay me in furniture or cash. My girlfriend at the time really wanted a dresser, and I asked if he had a dresser and he did. So he gave me his address. I pulled up to the biggest house that I had ever seen. He waited outside.

“Wow. This is some place,” I said.

“I don’t live here. Some old lady does. I live in the pool house. I’m going through a divorce.”

He lead us to a garage chocked full of furniture. He showed us the dresser. My girlfriend found it satisfactory.

OK,” he said. “Let me show you something first.” He pointed at a desk. “This is one of the Menendez brothers’ desk.” It looked just like a regular desk.

My girlfriend and I both touched it.

PART VII

Jobs were hard to find, so I applied to grad school in the South and was offered an assistantship teaching English Composition. The work was easy and then I won a fellowship. I didn’t have to teach but still got paid the same. I was a professional scholar and spent my time in bars.

As a scholar, one night I ate a pot brownie and drank a bunch of vodka. Then my friends and I went out. We played Jenga with some girls, but each time they built up the tower, I shoved it over and laughed. Everyone grew angry at me and moved to a different table. I barely noticed. I kept stacking up blocks and knocking them over.

____________________________

Josh Peterson is the Walton Fiction Fellow and an MFA student at the University of Arkansas. His work has appeared in FLATMANCROOKED, the New Ohio Review, the Saranac Review, Bull: Men’s Fiction and Permafrost. He has work forthcoming in Alligator Juniper.

____________________________

Image: didyk | iStockphoto

JUSTINE BARRON'S SLOW-TRACKED LIFE (PART I): how i sold my sex to buy my soul in miami

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 12:05:00 -0800

There are two main kinds of prostitution memoir stories: In the first kind, a sad vulnerable young girl with no self-esteem talks about numbing herself to a life of repetitive exploitation. In the second kind, a quirky young woman finds empowerment by getting paid for dominating men.

I don’t know where to put my story.

Let’s back up. Because before you can judge me (and I want you to judge me), you should understand what I was going through. For about a year, I wasn’t sure that I existed.

On the map, I had moved from New York City to Miami to be near family. While it was beautiful and relaxing, Miami felt like some kind of Twilight Zone: all the rules of life were flipped, and I seemed to disappear.

It began with a vague feeling. Then I started actively collecting evidence that I wasn’t making any mark on the world. I wasn’t there. People were closing doors in my face, cutting me off in lines and traffic, glazing over when I ordered tea, not checking me out, ever. (I wore too many clothes for Miami.)

Also, everyone in Miami spoke a different language than me, usually Spanish. But even when they spoke English, something wasn’t connecting. A typical conversation between my barista, an American, and me:

Me: Can I have an Earl Grey tea please?

Him: (Long pause) Who?

Me: Tea. Earl Grey?

Him: (Longer pause) Food?

Me: (Look of incomprehension and ennui)

That really happened, just like that. Enough conversations like that, everyday, and I was no longer sure that the problem was other people - that people in Miami were just dumb and whorish, as I initially judged. I was the common denominator. Maybe I was supposed to learn something in Miami, or pay for my sins of arrogance.

I WASN’T THERE: THE EVIDENCE

There was a lot of evidence that I didn’t actually exist. To wit: I dated this guy for a few months. I think we dated. We ate food together, we talked, we engaged in life-affirming activities. I do remember all of that. But if I really was there, in that relationship, then wouldn’t he have told me that another woman was having his baby more than a day before it happened?

I had a flashback over our whole relationship: him, showing me his drawings; him, taking me on the back of his scooter; him, ordering dinner for both of us; him, lecturing me about how hard it was to be a black man (he was half-Irish; he looked white). It was just like The Sixth Sense. Maybe I wasn’t actually there for any of it.

It was happening at work too. I had a job. I thought. I was a grant writer for a university. But it didn’t feel like a job. They didn’t have any room for me in the main offices, where everyone else worked, so they put me in a remote office on the second floor of the Student Center, at the end of an absurdly long hallway called the “handicapped wing,” because it had a bathroom designed for students with disabilities, which nobody ever used. My office had one big glass window, facing the hallway. So I was in a fishbowl, on display, for nobody.

They also didn’t have any real work for me. And that was because, the rumor was, they were busy interviewing other people for my job. It’s a long story, but nothing to do with my performance, because, if I had done a good job or a bad job, then I would have existed.

So with the move, the break-up, imminent job loss and hurricane season approaching and threatening to wipe out all traces of me and nobody would notice…. I sought therapy. I sat in that office, and I stated my life. I cried. I remember that. I remember the box of tissues. I remember writing checks while looking at pictures of his happy family.

But then I called him to let him know that I was going to be losing my job and my insurance would no longer cover his sessions at full price. I was upset and needed to talk about it. But he didn’t return my call. Or any of the other calls. Or respond to my email.

So, if your own therapist doesn’t return your calls, do you exist? It stopped even being depressing. It became a phenomenon.

CROSSING THE GREAT DIVIDE

There was another phenomenon happening. You know how dogs sniff around ghosts? For some reason, although no one was seeing me, men kept flashing me their dicks. It happened everywhere: the parking lot of Starbucks, on the beach, on a first date, even my massage therapist whipped it out. I swear. That happened.

It might have been my “I see dead people.” When you’re a ghost, you have another purpose. Although, that might have just been Miami.

So for awhile, I made my peace with not existing. I floated into work late and left early. I’d wear sweatpants and flip-flops and not wash my hair. Sometimes I’d take my “work” to the lounge area and watch Jerry Springer with the undergraduates. I’d pig out on those 99 cent bags of candy in cheap plastic from the convenience store to get through the afternoon, then crash and go back for more. It was as if I were revisiting my own body during its “Sophomore Slump.”

Then I’d go to my office and I’d sing, loudly. As it turned out, my fishbowl was soundproof.

I discovered this when I found out that there was another absurdly long corridor on the other end of the floor. At the end of it was another fishbowl office. And, in that office, sat my counterpart: an older woman — her office filled with files — slouched over her desk, crying. How many years had she been there? I wondered. How many years had she been crying?

Meanwhile, in my fishbowl, instead of crying, I discovered Pandora and created an epic playlist called “Songs that Cry Out to be Cried Out” filled with all of the power ballads that I’d secretly loved as a youth but was too cool to admit. I sang for hours in my “studio,” as I liked to call it. I got pretty good. I could hit Mariah notes.

Sometimes at work, I would also surf Craigslist personal ads. I wasn’t trying to meet anyone. I was just reaching out across the lonely divide. I even posted a fake “Missed Connections” ad once, as a prank. It read:

Starbucks, 12th and West. Me: tall, blond, with a puppy in my purse, in workout clothes. You: looked like you were making real estate deals. You seemed aggressive. Did we have a moment?

I had one significant reply:

It wasn’t me, but I wish it were. You sound great.

That was my summer fling.

I worked like this for months. The entire time, only one person walked by. I had just eaten one of those 99 cent bags of plump jelly beans with the crusty outer shell, aged to perfection and was blissed out on sugar, staring at an email probably marked “time-sensitive” until it went blurry, with my hand down my pants, rubbing my belly.

Maybe the tips of my fingers were a little lower than my belly. It was warm down there. It reminded me that I was human.

Then, a guy walked by. I almost sat up, but I realized that he was blind. Or, I think he was blind. He had on sunglasses and was carrying a cane. And, it was the handicapped wing. So he was probably blind.

But then he approached my fishbowl window and peered in, shading his eyes with his hand. I was confused, so I didn’t move. We “stared” at each other in a deadlock. Eventually, I sneered and stuck out my tongue at him, and he walked away.

I was a ghost, so it makes sense that a blind person would see me. That happened. Just like that.

I FINALLY GOT PAID FOR IT

Eventually, I got the email that the University was letting me go. They gave me two day’s notice, because two weeks is what you give to people who exist.

I was sad, so I paid the ex-boyfriend a depressing visit. Then, around 1:00 am, while I was driving home on the highway, a man drove up next to me in an SUV and started honking at me.

Him: Hey cutie! Pull over!

Me: What? No.

Him: Come on. I’m so horny!

Me: So?

Him: Please. I want to jerk off for you!

Me: Ew!

Him: Please! I’ll give you a hundred bucks.

Me: (Look of revelation)

I looked at him. He looked safe, like an aging jock. Are aging jocks safe? I can’t explain or justify it, but something clicked in my brain, and I decided that this was the best way to end the night.

We pulled off the highway. I stayed in my car. He got out of his car and dropped his pants.

Me: You’re going to pay me, right?

Him: Yes, let me see what you look like?

Me: No. Don’t come closer. I’m cute enough.

I said that. And he did it. I squinted. I’d seen enough unwanted dicks that year. But somehow, I couldn’t avoid seeing two things and they remain imprinted on my brain: the pointy end of his skinny dick and a shiny wedding band. And that felt like enough of a sacrifice to deserve to get paid.

He finished his business and then asked me if he could pay me 25 dollars instead. He was probably disappointed in the service I provided.

Me: You said a hundred! I will scream and honk my horn and call the police if you don’t pay me what you said!!

Him: Okay, I just don’t have it. I can give you thirty.

Me: Seventy-five or you’re in trouble.

Him: No shit, okay I have fifty.

Me: Fine. Give it to me.

And he paid me. And I drove home. And that sealed it: I was officially a sex worker. Well, it was Miami, you know. So “When in Rome…”

Let the judgment commence, please. Degrading and pathetic, you think? Not to mention risky and rape-baiting. You think I finally hit bottom?

I don’t see it that way. I see this encounter as a positive turning point. It validated me, literally. Sure, I was a discounted whore. But I had tangible value that I negotiated. I’m saying that becoming a sex worker, gave me a sense of self-worth. Literally.

I held onto that fifty bucks for awhile. After letting it air out the germs in my car, I hung it on my refrigerator and swore never to spend it, like that first dollar at business. And then I spent it a few weeks later, because I didn’t have a job.

I BECOME A REAL SOMEBODY

Things did get better after that. I negotiated a great a contract at my next job. I got my act together, gave up the junk (the cheap candy), and the whoring around. I bought a bikini and made friends with beach people. I started existing, Miami-style. I only posted one more fake Craigslist after that, another prank, this time in the racy section. It was simple:

i want to bite your dick off.

Well, wouldn’t you know it? I had dozens of responses, maybe fifty!

Men were falling in love with me, I kid you not. One man sent me a picture of himself at work, in front of filing cabinets. “You look like you have a clean dick,” I wrote back. I played around with them for a bit, until I realized that most of them were serious.

Ultimately, I’d figured something out about what it takes to really be seen, with seven words. It’s pretty simple in fact.

Justine Barron writes, performs, and tells stories around Los Angeles. Her work includes award-winning film and television scripts and numerous personal essays and comedy shorts. She is a three-time Moth Storyslam winner and regularly performs her stories around town. She also performs with the improv comedy teams “Twig Storm” and “The Beatles(s).” Her comedic work is found online at www.justinebarron.com and twitter.com/justine_emma.

Images by Justine Barron

CRAFT: a little podge. a little paper. ANNIE ROCCHIO

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 20:57:00 -0800

Perhaps we shouldn’t disregard the simplicity of childhood projects. Like that of paper mache! Stacy asked me to do a design/craft piece a while back. I thought about it long and hard and often….what was I going to do? Nothing stuck with me. But, due to my extraordinary ability to procrastinate and then plow through, I finally got an idea on Sunday morning. I was browsing through the plethora of design blogs I follow and ALAS! I came across an image of a beautiful paper mache bowl. That was it— this was the project I would take on!

What you need:

Newspaper
Mod podge
Scissors
Paint brushes
Vaseline
Bowls for a mold
Mixing container
Paint

1. Cut lots of newspaper into different sizes. Long pieces, short pieces, fat pieces, and skinny pieces.

2. Make a mixture of mod podge and water in a container big enough so that you can let the piece of newspaper swim around and become coated on both sides.

3. I used kitchen mixing bowls that came as a set so each bowl would have the same shape. Coat the bowls with Vaseline so that they can be easily removed after the paper mache process. Don’t worry, just throw em in the dishwasher after or get yourself some SOS sponges to clean them after.

4. Place a layer of newspaper around the bowl (the Vaseline with help the pieces stick). Paint some mod podge on to start the process. Keep layering the bowl with pieces of newspaper dipped in the glue mixture. I did about 6 layers.

5. I let the bowls dry for about 30 minutes and then pulled them out of the bowl. They were still a bit wet, but I wasn’t sure how easy it would be to get them out and how long it would take them to dry in the bowl. You can probably leave them in until completely dry. If you decide to take them out early, carefully pull the paper bowl away from the plastic bowl and shimmy it out carefully. The piece will still be malleable so you can get it to the shape you like. There will be a lot of petroleum jelly left on the bowls. This can easily be covered up with another layer of paper mache. I let my pieces dry overnight and throughout the day…just keep checking

6. I wanted a clean edge, so I cut off a small bit of the paper at the top. If your pieces are not all sticking together (like mine) you can try putting tape across the rim of the bowl. I don’t suggest masking tape, but something very sticky!

7. Pick your colors for your bowls. I wanted white on the outside of all three. For the inside I did gold, black, and attempted copper foil. That was interesting… and you are on your own for that one!

During this process, I got glue and paint all over myself and became impatient (something I believe comes along with procrastination?) waiting for the glue to dry and then the paint and then the paint again. I turned a pair of black leggings mostly white along the way and smoked a lot of cigarettes in between coats. (It’s okay, I quit every other week!) I feared the bowls wouldn’t turn out as beautiful as the photo I found.

Then I realized, isn’t that the beauty of art classes in elementary school? Every kid had has his or her own version of the project and every piece is its own masterpiece. Isn’t making a mess the beauty of working with podge, paint, and paper? The mess is a part of the fun. It’s why we try to make anything at all.

Annie Rocchio is a wardrobe stylist by day and an assortment of types by night— digging her hands into anything from crafting to cooking, or planting, traveling, redoing a hallway, and of course— buying unnecessary objects. These adventures are then blogged about on sunandglory. There isn’t just one hobby to conquer, there are many. Check out her work here.

**All photography used in this piece is courtesy of Annie Rocchio.

PREDICTIONS: after image REBECCA LEIB

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 20:57:00 -0800

As a late birthday present, my friend credited me for a free psychic reading. If you know me, you know I am a skeptic about these types of things. But, I took it.

An afterimage, according to Stephen L. Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde of the magazine Scientific American, is an image that continues to appear in one’s vision after the exposure to the original image has ceased. An afterimage occurs when neurons habituate and eventually cease responding to an unchanging stimulus. “Once neurons have adapted, it takes a while for them to reset to their previous, responsive state: it is during this period that we see illusory afterimages.”

This is often the explanation for why people see ghosts. This is also the reason why I will never see Audrey again.

I had the best intentions, for my 27th year, and I vowed to make the best of choices. Despite these efforts, painful relationships surfaced, my health deteriorated and work was hard to come by, if at all. My life felt like it was stalling, and I didn’t know why. Out of a painful mixture of exasperation, depression and curiosity, I finally got up to the nerve to cash in on my psychic gift. She only did phone readings, which I thought was both cheating and profoundly honest. She wouldn’t know me, in as much as you know someone through face-to-face contact. She wouldn’t be able to gauge my body cues, and her ability to interpret my vocal intonations would also be limited. What would she say? After weeks of apprehension, I was ready to test her abilities. I called from my bed. It was raining. I apologized immediately for taking up an hour of her time.

“I just feel weird about this.” I said.

“Don’t feel weird.” She said. “It’s free.”

Her name was Audrey. She started by telling me simple things: I had two brothers, yes. One was coming to Hollywood to live with me, yes. I was someone who liked to learn, yes. Though the reading started slow, specifics started surfacing, both surprising and non. Later, I grouped these specifics into five distinct categories.

Travel
Family life
Health
Career
Romance

Each of these categories had at least two distinct facets of prediction. Generalized, they were:

Every piece of information hurt more than the last. Was this a violation or an exposure? I admitted to Audrey that the parts that hurt most were about being alone. I thanked her politely and hung up.

That night, I found out that I did not get the contract to do Improv on a cruise ship. Disappointed, I met with the man I loved at a restaurant and I asked him to be my boyfriend. He said no. I left the restaurant trying to summon tears, as if to purge the knowledge that I had been gifted. I couldn’t cry, I just drove back to my apartment in silence.

The wheels were in motion, as they say.

I texted this to Audrey (to my delight, she was very responsive via text!) She told me to stay positive, as I was going to have an amazing time in China and besides, it was better to be single on a vacation, anyway. I thought that was pretty good advice as any, so I did as I was told.

All through my China trip, I looked feverishly for purple cloth, or a woman named Bagda. I opened myself up to being moved and I took lots of pictures. I did not have my period once on the whole trip- was this a sign that the profuse pre-trip bleeding was a miscarriage?

I called her twice while in China- and she told me that maybe things were changing and that timing was never her forte. She said that in the past- the timing was often off on her predictions, but names never were.

After I got back from China, I re-assessed her predictions. Red is did not come true, Blue is did. Purpley-pink is in-between, black is definitively undecided.

Three months later and after I severely injured my foot, I went back to my list and updated the predictions, as indicated by the slash.

Then, more things happened, and I desperately tried to figure out how they fit into my predictions. My cat got injured. I got fired from another job. My mother’s health worsened. Audrey was less reluctant to answer my texts and calls, but I really needed to know how these things fit in. I told her I would pay. She said she was busy. I needed to know. I needed to know.

I work in Glendale, and I had been sending her money to an address there. One day, I decided to stop by. I thought that it would be cool to meet face to face, but also I thought that we could just talk. I needed to talk. I went to her apartment in Glendale, a non-descript townhome on Victory Boulevard.

Audrey answered the door. At that moment, I realized that we had nothing to say to each other, and my shame broke like a fever. This was so fucking wrong. I felt profound humiliation for doing this to her, for bothering her, for obsessing. Months later, I still thought about those predictions. I still wanted my life to fit inside of them so badly. I looked at Audrey and she looked at me. Being the nice person that she is, she invited me in to sit down inside. I said no thank you, and that I was sorry, and then I left.

Audrey looked different than I expected.

**Top photo found via Internet search — no profit is turned by its usage. All rights are reserved to the original artist. If you own this image and would like proper credit, please email us. Likewise, if you want a piece removed, please email us as well and we will oblige.

BODY CRITICISM: lessons my mother taught me CODI FISCHER

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 20:57:00 -0800

NOSE

“If your nose turns out like your father’s, you’re going to have to get a nose job.” I was eleven years old, sitting at the dinner table with my family, and with those exact words my mother sent me on a downward spiral of self-hatred.

A nose job, what the heck is that?! Why do I need one?! What’s wrong with my dad’s nose?! WHERE’S A MIRROR?!! These questions raced through my head as my two younger brothers laughed at me. Never to be the last one in on a joke, I laughed it off, and quickly said “I have to pee!” and ran to the bathroom. Worried my nose looked like the Wicked Witch of the West, (keep in mind this was the only reference of a weird nose I would have had at age eleven). I turned on the lights, slammed the door shut and planted my face in front of the mirror, a process I still conduct everyday of my life. What can I say? It’s somewhat comforting.

As I stared at myself in the mirror, I couldn’t see what was wrong. My nose looked fine. Or did it? If my mom, the most beautiful woman in the world, said it, then it had to be true. I mean it’s my mom. Why would she make up some crazy story about my nose and getting some sort of job done on it? I stared closer into the mirror and examined my face like it was my fucking profession. That’s when it all started. I hated the way I looked. All aboard the self-hatred express! Toot! Toot!

BOOBS

I was sixteen when I found out what Victoria’s Secret was. BOOBS! You guys, the secret is boobs and you gotta check these things out! So there I was, in a store full of bras, boobs, and scented body sprays. I never felt more like a woman. My mother handed me a pink lacey little number with a tag attached that read “Push Up”. I didn’t realize it then, but the phrases “push up” and “padded” would become a permanent part of my vocabulary.

“If those things don’t come in by the time you’re eighteen we should get you a boob job,” my mother said to me as I showed her this new padded thing strapped to my chest. Nose job, boob job, JOBBY- JOB- JOB! At this point I hadn’t yet entered the work force and I was already exhausted by the thought of the word job.

BOOBS! What are they good for, absolutely nothing! J/K, I think they are for feeding babies and filling out cute tops or something. There I was, again, locked in a room with a mirror and a padded bra. Starring at myself, starring at my boobs, thinking about my mom’s boobs, which are huge, starring at my boobs, thinking about all my friends’ boobs. Where the hell are MY boobs?! I went through the rest of high school and most of college without ever taking off my bra for fear of being “found out”.

HEART

I think it’s time to stop and address something.

My mother isn’t this horrible judgmental monster that I’ve painted her to be. She’s actually a really great mom. She’s the first person to tell me she “loves me no matter what” and how beautiful I am, and that I shouldn’t wear so much make-up all the time. Or, if I’m feeling really, really down about myself because of not getting a gig or a boy dumping me or if I’m just having a stress-related breakout, she’s always there with a homemade macaroni and cheese to cheer me up. I’m mean, what else could a girl want?!

I can’t explain why she made these comments. I can’t explain why they affected me the way they did. I’ve thought about it at length, tried to make sense of it. Maybe it was her fear that people wouldn’t see me as this perfect person that she saw? Who knows? What I really know is this: My mother didn’t think I was this imperfect person. In fact, it was just the opposite. If I had a huge boil in the middle of my face and a hump on my back she would think I was last name Ever, first name Greatest.

HEAD

Here I am, twenty-eight years old and finally feel fine about myself. Not great, but fine. I’m working on it, and I don’t mean in the gym. Yes, it’s taken some time and humor to get over hating the way I look because my mom has a poor choice of words and terrible timing. But, the even sadder part of this is how critical my mother is on herself. She’s always asking me if she “looks fat in these shoes” or something like that. The answer is always NO. Not because I’m lying to make her feel better, but because it’s true. She’s more self-critical with herself than she is with me. Isn’t that true of all of us? We are our own persona frenemies. I could go on and on about the Itty Bitty Titty Committee jokes I make about myself and how Kate Hudson has been recently banned from said committee since she decided to go out and get a “job”. I have that classic “I’ll make fun of me before you can” standard of living. It sounds cliché, but it works. I know I’m not perfect, I know my mom isn’t perfect, but isn’t that more fun? The answer is always YES. It’s always more fun.

I’m not going to preach to you about self-love, and throwing away all of our Cosmo or Elle magazines, because I have a pile of them sitting next to me right now. And you shouldn’t try to throw away your mom, that’s just weird and she’ll probably climb out of the dumpster anyways. The best advice I can give is to just STOP WORRYING ABOUT IT. Oh, and being defiant seems to work, too. I’ve always done the exact opposite of what my mom tells me to do, so TAKE THAT MOM! My stubbornness has finally paid off! I can only hope that if I have a daughter I’ll be more like Beyonce and tell her how “fierce” she is. Which I’m sure will give her some sort of complex that she’ll write about years later.

Codi Fischer is a Los Angeles based writer. Her work can be seen on stage at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre as well as Web Soup on the G4 network. If you just can’t get enough of her wit and intellect you can always visit her blog wordsbycodi.tumblr.com.

**Above photo found via Internet search — no profit is turned by its usage. All rights are reserved to the original artist. If you own this image and would like proper credit, please email us. Likewise, if you want a piece removed, please email us as well and we will oblige.

LISTS: the spirit of giving according to google JOHN POSATKO

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 00:23:00 -0800

In looking for inspiration to write something about the upcoming holiday season, I decided to research the meaning of giving – who gives, what people give, why they give, how they give. (We’re due for a serious approach to the subject, I foolishly thought.) Considering, at times, it feels like we’re all living in a nightmare directed by David Cronenberg, I wanted to provide a counter-cultural perspective that hearkened back to the days of yore, when things were seemingly simpler and better. For this purpose, I went to a trusted source, a bastion of reliable data, a font of undisputed omniscience: Google.

I assumed the internet behemoth would surely have its finger on the pulse and enlighten me to the many ways people all around the world are charitable. Within five seconds, I realized my idealistic folly. What transpired in the course of trying to find the good in humanity was a confusing and revelatory exercise in discovering how weird people really are, how little I know about our culture, and what the Spirit of Giving means to the trolls of the ‘net’ at large. You’ve been warned.

1. What I typed: “what does it mean to give”

What Google auto-filled: “what does it mean to give someone a dutch oven”

My take:

This was the first question I typed, and with Google’s completion of my sentence went all my hopes and dreams of finding a lost world of innocence. Clearly there are way too many people threatening to “dutch oven” other people in this world. I’d venture to say it’s become America’s new pastime!

If you’re looking for a snapshot of the woes of living in the 21st Century, this is it. We need to get back to a time and place when people said things like, “I got you a bouquet of roses, dear,” not, “I got you a surprise, but you have to look under the blanket for it.” Chivalry is dead, kaput.

The other interpretation to this could mean that people are being told they were “dutch ovened”, when perhaps they weren’t. Perhaps they were simply “crop dusted” but told they were “dutch ovened” by their closest companion over Starbucks. Either way we’re doomed.

2. What I typed: “where do people give”

What Google auto-filled: “where do people give hickeys”

My take:

Given the response to #1 and this one, I’m thinking the internet query market may be completely dominated by teenagers, or dumb people. But if this is truly a man or woman preparing for the dance of courtship, can we pause for a minute and mourn the loss of spontaneity?

Whatever happened to hickeys just landing happenstance, regardless of pre-approved location scouting? “Hold on, I may have read on Google that the area right underneath your earlobe is an insufficient hickey-delivery area. I must confirm this with my iPhone. Excuse me while I turn off the John Mayer Pandora station in order to access the WiFi in your parents’ living room”.

3. What I typed: “where can I give”

What Google auto-filled: “where can I give up my dog”

My take:

Bad, people, bad! I suppose, however, this beats giving up your dog to an unknown location, such as the forest preserve next to the interstate. But seriously, step it up and keep the dog, even if he’s responsible for all the dutch-ovening in the household. He can’t help it.

4. What I typed: “where should I give”

What Google auto-filled: ”where should I give my tithe”

My take:

People actually continued to do this after 1893? Clearly I need to reevaluate my charitable output, which hovers around the centithing mark. I love this question, because it’s exactly what I would ask if I started regularly giving money to any organization these days. “Okay, so if I give it to the church, where does it go? Which guy? Can I get that guy’s home address? Okay, so I’m gonna need a receipt, and see some pictures of the items purchased, thanks.”

I really feel bad for the person who searched this because they clearly gave their tithe to Frank Jones down the street, just hoping he did something with it. Frank “I got the new hybrid Lexus with that dude’s tithe” Jones.

5. What I typed: “how can I give”

What Google auto-filled: “how can I give myself a fever”

My take:

Not only are people not giving things to other people (except unwanted dutch-ovening dogs), the things they’re giving to themselves are self-detrimental. “Hey, instead of giving you a hug, I’m going to give myself a serious illness so I don’t have to give effort at school! Gimme five!”

I would like to know exactly how one accomplishes this, because I’m going to do the opposite of that, always. Fevers are the worst, followed closely by fever dreams.

6. What I typed: “when can I give”

What Google auto-filled: “when can I give my baby water”

My take:

I was waiting for the first pregnancy-related search, and this one doesn’t disappoint. Search anything on Google and chances are there’s a pregnant woman who is wondering if it applies to her unborn child.

Are leaf blowers bad for my baby’s sense of hearing?

Does the Steelers’ Super Bowl win mean my baby will be left-handed?

Is NASA preparing for the launch of my baby?

This also proves to me that I know nothing about fathering, because I assumed water was essential for survival. “Honey, put down the milk! If a human doesn’t drink water for seven days straight he dies. I saw it on Bear Grylls!” And then my baby would be burping and crying and whatnot. This leads me to one of my favorite discussions: What did people do before Google? Answer: make mistakes constantly.

7. What I typed: “whom should I give”

What Google auto-filled: “whom should I give my love to”

My take:

Awwwwwww (unintentional but needed yawn)! The best part about this is that the only way to get Google to auto-fill something nice is to use proper grammar. Because if you don’t use proper grammar, you get this:

8. What I typed: “who should I give”

What Google auto-filled: “who should I give ed-e to”

My take:

I’m out of touch. I don’t have the foggiest what that is supposed to mean. It looks too much like a VD, so I’m not gonna even Google it, out of fear of what images the search will produce.

What did I learn from this experiment? One, you should approach the upcoming holiday season with grace and good grammar, lest you get a case of ed-e. Two, maybe the Spirit of Giving isn’t meant to be researched and dissected, after all. Mayhaps it’s like the theme of all great holiday claymation movies : we’ll never know until we’re old and wise and have 93 years of life experience to reference, after which we can ramble nonsensical eggnog-scented stories to our grandchildren, who will be none the wiser for listening to us. Three, whatever you do this holiday season, don’t give up your dog, because that’s just lame.

After reading this, I bet you’ll be encouraged to type your own queries to influence the results and shift them towards more wholesome concepts. Stop right there. It’s a losing battle, and if anything has been learned since the dawn of the internet, it’s this: You can’t fool a Google algorithm. It’s like they know us better than we know ourselves.

John Posatko writes anecdotal blogs and reviews. When he was two years old, he accidentally swallowed a cup of kerosene. You can follow him at http://throwingrocksatsquirrels.blogspot.com/.

Mary Posatko’s photography accompanies John’s piece above. She is an independent filmmaker based in Los Angeles. Her last film about the musician Levon Helm is slated for release this Fall. View more of her work at heavyindustryfilms.com.

MUSIC: a year in music (9) BLAKE WALKER

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 00:21:00 -0800

Come October there came the possibility of a new job. A friend of mine, Jennifer, kept teasing me, instant messaging on my lunch breaks to update about how things were going at the office where she worked. Apparently her workplace would go through phases where the workload seemed overwhelming and her boss was thinking of hiring someone new to help take it on. One day she would instant message me to tell me to get ready to interview, another day her boss had changed his mind and decided no new hires were necessary.

Around this time, a filmmaker friend of mine, Nate, had been in the process of making a spec pilot — a prototype for a new TV show that he could hopefully sell to a network. His advantage was that he was already receiving notes from someone at a network who had agreed to help produce it. Nate intended for me to play one of the leading roles.

He made sure to let me know multiple actors would be auditioning, but that would only be a formality. As cliche as it sounds, with everything going on I felt like I needed this, and I assumed the universe was paying attention..

When I did my audition for the role I made sure to have all the lines memorized and the scene rehearsed. I dressed toward the part.

After my initial audition, Nate called me. There were complications. His collaborator had issues not only with me, but with the overall tone of the piece. I was brought back to re-audition, this time with a more lighthearted, wickedly funny version of the scene I had already auditioned for. I prepared in kind.

A few days later, on a day I accidentally left my phone at home, I got an exacerbated message from Nate, letting me know that he was going to have to go with someone else. I called him back and thanked him, making sure to let him know not to feel bad. I also let him know that I was prepared for this possibility since he told me from the outset that he would have to audition multiple people. We hung up on good terms, and I pushed the “Not Ready” button on my phone at work so I could go for a walk around the eighth floor and try to decompress.

Before going back to my desk, I went and logged into email. I instant messaged Jennifer. She let me know her boss wasn’t hiring anybody at this time and not to expect that to change any time soon. I logged out of my email account, made my way back over to my desk and collected my strength to finish what remained of the day.

That evening I knew I owed myself a distraction. I went to the Arclight in Hollywood to see Jackass in 3-D. Thanks to a gift from my mom the previous Christmas, I had movie money for the Arclight for the entire year. The movie was awesomely disgusting and hilarious. It did the trick for a couple of hours to help give me a lift.

On my way out of the Cinerama Dome, I suddenly noticed throngs of young moviegoers lining both sides of Sunset awaiting the premiere of a new movie sequel to a low-budget film. It had been made on a shoestring and then miraculously experienced astronomical success seldom seen. I began making my way in the opposite direction of the masses, back toward the parking garage, head down, shoulders sunken.

As I was walking, I suddenly felt a hand wrap around my forearm, gently stopping me in my tracks. It was Kelly, one of my fellow college alumni. She was the star of the film. After she had been out in Los Angeles for a few years she answered an audition notice in LA Casting or Backstage West, a notice no different or promising than any other and she ended up booking the part.

After the film was made, through various trials and tribulations it got seen by the right people who saw its commercial potential and gave it the gift of distribution. Buttressed by an ingenious marketing campaign, it grossed millions of dollars. The little-film-that-could was now having its second big premiere as a powerful new franchise that couldn’t lose.

We stood there talking, me the slightly hardened and cynical version of my former self, her the same sweet-tempered and wide-eyed talent I remembered from school. As we shared brief anecdotes about mutual friends, her handlers who wore head sets and brandished clipboards gave me wary looks as they began to pull Kelly away towards the entrance to the red carpet. I gave Kelly one quick final hug and bid her farewell. She seemed to disappear into the eager crowd.

As I walked back to my car, the garage began to empty and the roar of the crowd lining the streets faded to a din. I got in my car and headed home to get ready for bed so I could be up for work the next day.

A week later at work I was called in for a special conference. My stomach sank. I figured this was the day I would be terminated. Terri, one of the overseers brought me in to one of the darkened conference rooms and let me know they would be expanding their internet presence there at the center and that I was one of 11 chosen operators to split my time between answering the phones and chatting with potential customers online. Basically, they were telling me I was smart enough to be given more responsibility, but I wouldn’t be making any more money than I was already making. At least I wasn’t being terminated so I thanked Terri, accepted the offer and went back to my desk.

At lunch I checked my email and got an instant message from Jennifer. She let me know two people had up and quit and wanted to know if I could come in for a job interview the very next day — my day off. I answered with a resounding “yes!” I logged out of email and looked around sneakily, as if I might be caught doing something I wasn’t supposed to do.

The next morning I shaved and dressed in my version of “professional.” I did my best impression of confident and calm. I told myself that if all else failed, at least I still had a job.

When I walked into what would hopefully be my future office, I saw Jennifer at her desk and she showed me towards her boss’s office. She had warned me that her boss was a huge music head, and for that reason alone he and I should have an easy time getting along.

After her boss closed the door behind me and I took a seat I noticed to the right there were large framed posters of Elvis, Bob Dylan and The Beatles. On his shelves were books upon books about songwriting, the history of rock ‘n’ roll and The Beatles. I discovered my potential boss and I shared a similarly blue sense of humor and I made the case that I wasn’t a complete imbecile.

He gave me the opportunity to sit with Jennifer at her desk so I could get a feel for the type of work being done as he shut his door. After 15 minutes or so he brought me back in and made me an offer. It was much more money than I was making and perhaps most importantly, I would have my weekends back. He brought me out into the middle of the office and announced my hiring to everyone.

Walking back to my car I felt lighter than air as I conceived of how I would make my formal exit at the call center. For courtesy’s sake, I figured I would at least finish out the week.

The next morning I waited until my manager got to her desk and then I pushed the “Not Ready” button. I walked over to ask her if I could have a word. I spoke softly as I let her know that I had taken another job. She asked me if this would be my last day and after a hair’s breath I said “yep.” As I got up from her desk it felt like angels were singing in my ear.

Though I wouldn’t be finishing out the week according to my original plan, I decided to finish out the day and thank my former fellow employees for the last nine months, all for the sake of diplomacy.

Sitting at my desk I rapped my fingers against the table in front of me. I decided to let my ex-girlfriend know I was leaving. I found her on instant message and plainly told her this was my last day. “Did you get another job,” she asked. “Yes,” I replied.

At the end of the day, after people kept joking by saying “I thought you’d be gone by now,” over and over, I just smiled, nodded and let them know that I wanted to make sure I said goodbye and thanked everybody.

As the sun still shown in the early afternoon I clocked out for the last time and walked to the elevators. Once I got in I stood there for a moment and took a breath. I pressed “7” and began to descend. The doors opened into the main lobby of the company suites.

I marched past the front desk into the cubicle jungle. Looking around to find who I was looking for I asked where she might be. Someone directed me exactly to her and I followed. She sat there with her back turned for a moment, focused on her computer screen. I gave her a light gentle touch on her back left shoulder blade. She turned around barely startled and looked up at me.

    “I just wanted to say goodbye before I go,” I said.
    “That’s good of you,” she replied.
    “Hey, there were good times, too,” I said.

We both laughed. I hugged her and we broke apart. I headed back to the elevator and she turned back to her computer screen.

The elevator landed on the first floor, the doors opened and I stepped out in the early shadows in the lobby cast by the afternoon sun. I walked down the ramp in the garage where I had always parked. Though I should be able to remember the music the way I remember so many other vivid details from that day, I have no idea what music played in my car when I turned on the ignition, but I know it was probably No Age, Twin Shadows or Sufjan Stevens — all perfectly wistful in contrast to the occasion.

Riding out with the twin buildings and the grotesque tourist mecca in my rearview mirror, I let the sad music play and danced in my head because it was going to be Halloween weekend. I was leaving something mind numbingly soul-sucking for something much better, and perhaps mostly because I was finally leaving and letting things go.

Read Part 1 of “A Year in Music: My Ex and Yeasayer”

Read Part 2 of “A Year in Music: Teen Dream and Heartland”

Read Part 3 of “A Year in Music: Hot Chip, Local Natives and Emperor X”

Read Part 4 of “A Year in Music: Gorillaz and Joanna Newsom”

Read Part 5 of “A Year in Music: Coachella”

Read Part 6 of “A Year in Music: Animal Collective and Ariel Pink”

Read Part 7 of “A Year in Music: Arcade Fire”

Read Part 8 of “A Year in Music: The Walkmen”

Blake Walker is an actor/writer/musician from Texas relocated to Los Angeles, CA. He is a sometimes performer with the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, drummer and composer in the band, The Etiquette, and he can be found on the internet doing video sketches with his sketch group Extreme Tambourine. Blake also co-hosted the podcast Bit Parade.

HUMOR: my hair piece TRACY THORPE

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 17:21:00 -0700

In the 1980’s, when most of you were busy being born, I was a few years into a difficult marriage. I will spare you the gory details, but suffice it to say, I was in a constant state of stress and upheaval.

One morning, when I went to part my nearly waist-length long, glorious hair, I discovered in the mirror that I had a shiny bald spot right smack dab in the middle of the top of my head. It was a little bigger than the size of a quarter. There was no slow hair loss or thinning out that happened beforehand to give me any sort of warning. I just woke up to find this very shiny and completely bald— spot.

This was before the Internet; so, I couldn’t just Google “giant bald spot on top of head” … and meanwhile I had to get to work.

So, I fashioned some swoopy hairdo to cover it and got out the door. Luckily, as I mentioned, it WAS the 80’s, so having some swoopy thing on the top of your head, in a weird way— worked.

I asked everyone at my job if they had ever heard of anything like that … no one had. Not that this stopped anyone from theorizing on what it could be:

“Our horses used to get ‘hot spots’ which were a lot like that.”

and

“Maybe you have lice and you didn’t know you had lice and they have actually eaten a patch of your hair away?”

and

“My cousin had trichotillomania, are you maybe pulling your own hair out?”

and

“Perhaps, it’s a delayed reaction to that perm you got last year?”

When I got home that night, I called my dad and asked if he had any idea what it might be; he too, mentioned “hot spots” that the farm dogs used to get (Believe me, being compared to horses and dogs were the least of my problems!). I then perused my encyclopedias, which back in the olden days, were like the Internet, only in book form.

But, I found nothing. Nada.

At the time, we were financially struggling and without health insurance; so, unable to run to the doctor, I tried to persevere and just got more creative with my hairdos.

But, the spot continued to grow.

In fact, at one point I woke up and it was practically a full blown Dom Deloise. So, I finally broke down and went to a Dr. Cornblatt who had an office in downtown Chicago. Since I worked near there, I was able to go after work one day.

Dr. Cornblatt was a cartoon of a man. He looked like Jerry Lewis when he was playing one of his “special” characters, with shiny black hair and thick black glasses. And, he had a funny, cartoon voice to match. He took one look at it and declared that it was “Alopecia!”

At least now I had a name for it, but I had so many questions about it, like how I got it, how long I would have it and would my hair ever grow back? He explained that it was brought on by an unusual amount of stress and likened it to your scalp rejecting your hair follicles much like your stomach rejects the stomach lining when you have an ulcer. And he suggested that I start out by trying to relax (MUCH easier said then done when you have a bald spot on the top of your head that has begun to grow!).

I couldn’t imagine being able to relax when every time I looked in the mirror it seemed to cover more area.

At this point, I had gone to get a layered cut, so that I could do a comb over, ala Donald Trump. Which, as you can imagine, was an awesome choice to have while waiting for the bus in the windy city. It would blow up and reveal my shiny bald spot underneath much like a man wearing a toupee in a 1930’s Slapstick.

Dr. Cornblatt went on to explain that there are two strains of Alopecia, Alopecia Areata and Alopecia Universalis. I asked him to explain the difference and he said Alopecia Areata just affects one area and that after time, would usually, eventually grow back (which appeared to be what I had) and that Alopecia Universalis was a much more aggressive strain, and it meant that your body would reject every single hair that it had: every eyelash, every eyebrow hair, e-v-e-r-y single hair-on-your- body.

But, before I could even sigh relief that I had the lesser of the two, he imparted the great news that Alopecia Areata could easily turn into Universalis and there was no way to tell if it was going to, until it was actually happening.

Again, presumably from the look of horror on my face, Dr. Cornblatt reminded me that I “needed to relax and stay calm.” He also informed me that he would like to try a treatment with me that entailed me going into his office every Monday to get 20 shots of cortisone in the top of my head.

Now, if that sounds painful to you, then THAT is the understatement of the century. I am talking about a huge needle full of cortisone being shot into the top of my scalp every week.

I can’t even tell you the doom and gloom that would wash over me on Sunday nights knowing that Monday was coming. I have always suffered a little from the Sunday night blues anyway, I’m sure it was a hold over from my schooldays and dreading Mondays, but never like I did for those 9 months in the mid 1980’s.

I would just sob knowing I had to go the next day for those painful skull shots. And, after 9 months of it, I didn’t have so much as peach fuzz.

I will always wonder if the fear and worry that overcame me every weekend knowing that Monday was coming didn’t counteract any possible success the shots might have had, or if Dr. Cornblatt was just a quack.

At the insistence of my ex-husband, I went for a second opinion (See he wasn’t ALL bad— although, I think his request had more to do with him then me; it couldn’t have been easy being married to a cue-ball who would fall into the deepest depression every Sunday night!). But anyway, I went to the Evanston hospital dermatology department off of someone’s recommendation, and there I was met with the most gorgeous, like “TV doctor handsome” doctor. Sadly, I can’t even remember his name because I have that affliction that when someone is VERY attractive I don’t hear a word that they say; I think its called shallowness.

But anyway, Dr. Handsome poo-pooed the idea that I was made to suffer through those weekly shots (so, he was my hero too!) and handed me some cream. He told me to put it on my head twice a day, come back in a week, and he’d see the progress. If that didn’t work, we’d try something else.

I think it was his calming ways or the fact that I didn’t have to dread Mondays anymore, or yeah, maybe even the salve (goddamnit!)— Who knows? All I know is that within a week, I was starting to feel peach fuzz, and then, a month later, I had a little flat top— and then, eventually, it softened and fell in line with the rest of my layered look.

Within 7 months, I was completely back to normal, and remained that way for the 20+ years since … until last January.

After the fire in my apartment building that resulted in a 2 month battle with my landlords from hell, which then resulted in half the eyelashes on my right eye falling out. But FINALLY, after months of staring at it in the mirror - like waiting for a pot to boil, or an ice cube to freeze, I am starting to see a little fuzz.

And now, I’m just trying to stay calm.

Tracy Thorpe is a writer/actor who originally hails from Chicago where she was a long time resident company member of The Second City Theater. She now lives in Los Angeles. Her recent television and film work includes Charlie Wilson’s War, I Hate Valentine’s Day and Curb Your Enthusiasm.

***Cue ball photo found via Internet search — no profit is turned by its usage. All rights are reserved to the original artist. If you own this image and would like proper credit, please email us. Likewise, if you want a piece removed, please email us as well and we will oblige.

LIFESTYLE: on shaving & motherhood LISA NASH

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 17:21:00 -0700

Growing up in Florida, shaving was serious business. Florida girls know how to show some skin. In fact, during certain parts of the year, it is downright dangerous to cover up – when it gets to 107 in the shade, you ought to at least be showing some ankle or a bit of underarm.

In Mrs. Parrish’s 10th grade Spanish class I sat behind a girl whose ballet dancer legs were always silky smooth. It fascinated me because mine never were – I was forgetful about shaving and even when I did, I was not very good at it. I could conjugate Spanish verbs like I was born to do it, but I always had random straggling patches of leg hair poking out from my kneecaps and the backs of my ankles.

Now, at 30, my ambivalence about shaving has grown. My free time dwindles with each new child, and I resent the time it takes to maintain legs as smooth as those of a Barbie doll, when none of the rest of me looks like a Barbie anymore anyway. I’m not against shaving but I’ve become a de facto non-shaver; I shave when I have time, and I don’t when I don’t, which means that I hardly ever do.

Jen, a fellow mother at my son’s preschool, has two children and her own cloth diaper business. She talked with me about her decision to stop shaving her legs and underarms. For her, the connection between free time and shaving was clear:

The way I see it, I can either spend my precious time shaving and being in a hurry, or I can do some extra stretches in the morning, get into mamahood, and get some breakfast going.

I understand what she means. When I worked in a professional setting before I had children, getting ready in the morning meant doing my hair and makeup and matching my socks, but now it’s about arranging my mind for the gentle chaos of the day ahead.

It is perhaps ironic, or at the very least interesting, that women shaving their legs and underarms came into popularity when women began to have more of a public life, and to wear shorter sleeves and shorter skirts, from the early 20th century through the 1940s. In this sense, maybe shaving was a beginning sign of freedom for women. The higher the hemlines rose from the 1940s onward, the more important shaving became.

Within second-wave feminism, body hair removal was called into question as a burdensome ritual imposed on women in order to shame them about the natural state of their bodies. While current feminists might argue both against and in favor of body hair removal, the contemporary emphasis seems to be on the individual woman’s choice to shave or not to shave.

Women who freely choose not to shave now often report a sense of pride in their bodies, which not shaving helps them to express in a real, tangible way. After not shaving one winter, when spring came, Jen found herself unexpectedly “disappointed to shave it off.” She explains:

I was intrigued by how it was growing out. This was a part of me I never knew. I never knew what color my leg hair was at this length or my armpit hair. It was becoming a part of my ‘natural’ self I was becoming quite in love with.

So, perhaps women begin to feel ambivalent about leg shaving after having children for the same reason we laugh at ads for stretch mark cream and Velcro belts meant to fight the spread of our post-baby hips.

In my own experience, going through childbirth awakened a new respect for my body and all that it can accomplish. Shame in my imperfection is slowly replaced with pride in my body and its battle scars, and a natural growing respect for fellow mothers. We might not be as perfect as we once were, but we’ve earned our imperfections. And perhaps, by now, we have earned our hairy legs.