Too Cute to be Straight?

First off, I would like to say that I have a really hard time spelling the word "February." I constantly want to spell it "Februrary." And every once in a while my brain does so much of that "You know there's that 'r' in there you always fuck up," that I actually spell it "Februruary." I also have problems with the words, colonel (big thanks to colonel colonel for teaching me to spell it correctly), restaurant, exercise, conscientious, and vacuum. Needless to say, I'm very excited (another word I tend to spell wrong) that this month is about to end. I'm tired of writing the word and misspelling it.



Does anyone remember when Jerry Falwell proclaimed that Tinky Winky, one of the Teletubbies, was gay? Now, there are many things that could be discussed here, such as the fact that Tinky Winky is fictional, and that Tinky Winky doesn't have any genitals and that Tinky Winky appears to have the same kind of affection for both the male and female Teletubbies, who appear to be rather androgynous anyway-- but instead I want to talk about all of this "exposing children to evil."

Falwell said that because Tinky Winky carries a purse (or "magic bag" or whatever you want to call it), is purple, and has his antenna shaped like a triangle, that these "subtle depictions" are "no doubt intentional." He went on to say in statements, that, "As a Christian, I feel that role modeling the gay lifestyle is damaging to the moral lives of children."



If anyone understands being gay in the most purest terms, it's probably children!

When I was younger I lived in San Francisco, California. I had two friends who were a year or two older than me, who lived together. They were best friends who got to live together. I thought that was the coolest damn thing in the world. When I asked how they got to do that, they explained that their dads were best friends, and when their moms divorced their dads, their dads moved in together. It made sense to me, just fine. Rent is cheaper that way, after all, right? Plus their house smelled amazing and their dads looked like Darryl Hall and John Oates, and there was nothing cooler than that, to me.

One night I spent the night at their house. They sat me down and told me that they had something very important to tell me. The looks on their faces were pretty serious and so I nodded and my eyes bulged. They said, "Our dads are gay." I really had no idea what that meant, but it sounded really important, so I tried to play it off cool.

"Oh, yeah, really?" (see how cool I was?)

"You don't know what that means, do you?" One of them asked me.

"Uh huhhh... I do." (I didn't, and they could tell, so they proceeded to explain.)

"They live together because they want to live together. They love each other," the other explained.

And here I thought that was the coolest thing in the world. Because their moms didn't love their dads anymore, they loved each other. Now that I'm older, I'm pretty sure that the moms left once they found out the dads loved each other, but at the time it seemed so simple. So logical.

"Everyone needs a best friend," I said to them.

"They have sex," one of them spat out. I could tell that they had lost plenty of friendships over this, and they were ready for me to leave, too.

"Well, duh. That's what grown-ups do when they love each other," I said. "I do have cable, you know."

And that was all I thought about it. I don't think that their dads "damaged" my "moral life" in any way.

Children don't assume people are "evil." It's when they see their parents suck their teeth and shake their heads that they wonder what's different about those people. People just love to snicker and giggle about making puppets and children's icons have these "secret sexual lives." They turn Mr. Roger's Neighborhood into the Jerry Springer Show. Every time someone sees my Sesame Street books or my Grover cup some asshole has to start in with the, "You know Bert and Ernie are gaaaaaay, right?" You know what? Bert and Ernie live together because they are best friends. They're fucking puppets! They were seven years old! Maybe Bert was ten. Tops. Don't even give me the argument that they had adult voices, because when you were little, you didn't even give that a second thought.

Pooh is a bear and Piglet is a pig. They are also about six years old. Christopher Robin, who was the one making up the stories, was ten. They aren't giving each other blow jobs on the Hundred Acre Wood. They're fucking toys!

Why are all these freaks trying to ruin my childhood memories with sexual images?

Just let the children's shows do their jobs. Let them educate the youth. That's what they have degrees for.

Children start by looking at people just like they see themselves. Then they start to compare. It's when their parents tell them something is wrong that they question whether or not they should like someone.

I have a feeling I'm preaching to the choir, here, but for fuck's sake, is anyone else tired of this? Just people stretching for any kind of conspiracy theory that leads to the boycott of yet another thing that could possibly bring joy into a child's life! They have to make their own decisions, sometime. They have to learn about the world and people in it. Wouldn't it be simpler to have your child see a man in a gay pride parade and say, "Is that man carrying a purse like you do, Mommy?" And when you say yes he says, "Oh, just like Tinky Winky!" And that's it. There's no need to explain fetishes or gender issues until the child is older and can understand such a complex discussion. Everyone. Is. Different.

I started reading Stephen King books when I was eight. I read Lord of the Flies at ten. If you had kept me sheltered, I would never have been as intelligent and literate as I am. Because when does the sheltering stop?

Kids just want someone there to answer their questions. They are able to rationalize all sorts of things. But who knows? Maybe if Prince had seen Tinky Winky sooner he wouldn't wear so much purple. Getting my Prince cassette taken from me as a child for asking why Nikki* was masturbating with a magazine, and "wouldn't that hurt?" is a different story for a different time.


*couldn't find the song, so I could only link to lyrics, but I'm sure most of you know it)

Whisper it in my Ear

I'm not quite sure how to word this post, which is very rarely a problem for me. Usually my problem is having so many different ways to say something, that I struggle with which way sounds the best, or which way people will be able to relate to. So I'm going to keep this post fairly short and sweet. I only want to ask a simple question, that might not be all that simple to answer.

If you had to choose a song. One song. A song to sum up you. A song to sum up your life. Your theme song per-say. What would that song be? I'd love to hear what song and why.

Freebird, by Lynyrd Skynyrd is mine.



Wow...I think this is the shortest post I've ever written...



P.S. I know nothing about Final Fantasy, but this was one of the few decent, clear videos with a high quality version of the song.

I didn't Escape. I Have a Day pass!

I used to have this really cool boyfriend. When I say cool, I mean, willing to experiment. Not only willing to experiment, but willing to do pretty much what I asked for or needed.

I'm not quite sure what made my our hearts desire this special book I'm about to tell you about, but we ended up with it, anyway. The first page of the book warns that if you're absolutely satisfied in your love life, than then this book wasn't for you. I wish I had known that a little earlier, but since the book was sealed when I bought it, there was no going back.



The book came with a series of sealed envelopes. Half of the envelopes "For Her Eyes Only" and the other half "For His Eyes Only." You're supposed to sit together and pick an envelope every week to later be opened in private. This was you knew at some point during the week, you'd be surprised with some random, romantic, sex act.

My first envelope was called "Fantasies of the Orient" and involved honey and tea. Strictly following the instructions, I made a pot of green tea with a hint of ginseng (supposed to be an aphrodisiac?), draped a black blanket over our futon, and made my boyfriend take off all of his clothes. Acting like I wasn't allowed to utter a word, I pushed him back on to the blanket, poured honey on the inside of his leg, and the proceeded to lick it off. Then I was supposed to put the tea into my mouth and let it hit his skin through my lips as I kissed him. Yes, it's as hard and complicated as it sounds. First I scalded his neck and then I burned the inside of his elbow. Soon my tongue was aching terribly from the near boiling liquid, but since I wasn't allowed to speak, I just quietly sobbed on his stomach as I got sick from too much honey, and I couldn't eat anything for the next two days or so.

We decided it was just a bunk envelope and admittedly, as well as embarrassingly, tried again. The next envelope was called "Treasure Trail" (shut up) and it instructed me to cut out paper outlines of my feet to make a trail from the door to my chosen "hiding place," where I was supposed to "pounce" on my "mate."

Just a quick note: the only time you ever hear hear a boyfriend, girlfriend, husband or wife, described as a "mate" is when you're reading some kind of sex-help book, or listening to Doctor Ruth on the radio. Mate has to be one of the most un-fucking-sexy words. Besides tuna. Well, tuna, and uvula. Those are the three unsexiest words. But the last two are hardly found tucked away neatly in the pages of Cosmo or Playboy, now are they?

While making the little cutouts, the little voice inside of me muttered, What the hell are you doing here? How old are you? I used my special glitter crayons to make the feet sparkle and say funny things. It really does take a long time to trace, cut, and color little cutesy feet to tape all the way from your front door to your hiding spot. Plus the card said I should make them go in and out of several rooms in the house...We had a two bedroom apartment, so I had the feet go into the bathroom, out of the bathroom, into one of the bedrooms (a storage room/office), out of that room, up the wall and around the corner on the ceiling, down into the closet. Just a little Lionel Ritchie in there to get him motivated.


So I'm sitting in the closet, waiting for my dumb, damn darling, boyfriend to get home from work, and I'm thinking, Fuck, I hope he doesn't go out for a drink after work or something. He better just come home on time. I wonder what kind of idiot I look like in here. Ow. Shit. I'm sitting on a high heel. (Maybe I should be wearing these.) I'm thirsty. Maybe I'll just run and grab something to drink. No, no. I can't go out there, because what if he comes home and sees that I'm standing in a trail of my own damn glittery toes? This just isn't sexy. This. Isn't. Even. Cute. This, my friends, was solitary confinement.


He did come home. Late. Of course. And apparently he didn't even notice the new sparkly trail of feet installed on our almost white carpeting. I heard him call out,"Hello? Baby? Where are you?" I didn't know if I was supposed to answer or not. The book didn't leave me instructions for when if he missed the giant clues that were as bright as those flashing arrows that led to strip joints. Shouldn't these special circumstances for stupid special couples such as us, be covered? I heard the refrigerator door open and close. The TV snapped on and the sounds of a basketball game filled the apartment. Unbelievable. He wasn't even going to notice. What if in three or four hours he finally decided to do something about it? What would I do if he called the police to file a missing person report or something, and they came in, followed the purple paper trail, and found me asleep in the closet cradling a tin of Altoids, and an empty bottle of water, wearing nothing but my panties?

I panicked a little, making noises that were a combination of whimpers and shrieks until I heard him get off of the couch. When he finally found me, seven minutes and 37 seconds later, he looked at me with a face that read,"Hello. Did you get lost or something? Do I need to call a psychiatric ward ambulance? Do you still understand English?" Then he smirked and laughed through his nose, before bursting into full-on laughter, and then it hit me that this book was making a complete and utter moron out of me.

His assignment that week focused on kissing. That was fun.

I pulled out my third assignment. I was supposed to make a sex game creating two sets of cards. One with body parts listed on them and the other with verbs. I tried all week, but I just kept wondering what would happen if he pulled the two cards that said "Thrust!" and "Ear!"

I absolutely refused to do my next assignment as well, where I had to "innocently" take him to a miniature golf course (because we put-put all the time?). I was supposed to go to the bathroom, take off my panties, wrap them around the golf ball, and hand them to him. Can you imagine that?!? I'm sure he'd say,"Uh...S, what the hell...?"(in a nice loud tone) And everyone would look up to see my panties on hole nine. Besides, there are fucking kids on these mini golf courses, mostly due to the fact that miniature golf is supposed to be for eight and nine year olds.

The only thing I liked about this book was while planning the fucking ridiculous things, I thought about my boyfriend. I liked thinking that week that there was going to be some kind of special surprise for me. But in general, the two of us could be a hell of a lot more creative than that book, which still sits in my bedroom by the way. Mocking me. Feeling like a dork is a really, really bad way to spice up your sex life. And come on, do you really want me showing my naked ass to innocent children, golfing? Put, put, put.

Happy Valentines Day, kiddies!

Infinite X's and O's,

Simply Curious Girl

Whistle While you Work

If you're one of my friends who was so worried I found some kind of rabbit hole or accidentally wandered off the face of this earth that you decided to give me a call or send an email recently, then you know the question, "What are you up to?" is met with a list of large, looming complaints that all overlap while having absolutely nothing to do with each other. You might also note that it seems I've been giving this same, impossible-sounding list since sometime in December. That is because it is the same large, seemingly impossible list of complaints, but now the complaints are really really real, and I'm not a hypochondriac, I swear. Hi. I love you. I miss you. I cannot see you right now. I see my mom, sister, my laptop screen, the lady that gives me my Methadone dose first thing every morning, and the guy in Jamba Juice who I believe is starting to know me by name.

Anyway, this pity time has caused me to develop Writer's Ear.

Writer's Ear is a constant hazard of my life as a writer, and I should have known I was headed right towards it, but I've been too icky to notice I wasn't taking the best care of my head. But last night it was undeniable -- Writer's Ear. My right ear aches, deep inside, like I'm developing an ear infection. Now, I haven't had an ear infection since I was little. I used to get them all the time. All the time. At least once a month I had strep throat or tonsillitis, and usually that came with a monster ear infection that would leave blood on my pillow and cause the most monstrous nightmares where giant ants were throwing enormous bricks off a building. The bricks would shatter and it would feel like my eardrums were bleeding. This was because my eardrums were bleeding.

I've later learned that those kinds of ear infections are pretty common for children growing up in a house with second-hand smoke. Both my parents smoked inside when I was little, and it's funny that we just thought I was a sickly kid. I'm on my back, ears bleeding, asthma racking my lungs, and my parents were like, "You need to calm down. You're stressed about school and friends and it's making you sick." No lie: even our dog had asthma. I got older and was home less often, and once Dad had lung cancer, at his place they started smoking outside. That last sentence wasn't a joke, by the way. It's the sad fucking truth. Including the part where all of us smoke outside. Together. As a family. And it's one of the few things we all do as a family. Still.

But this is supposed to be a funny story about Writer's Ear. So uh, ignore that last little brain spasm of a paragraph.

So I'm not living in a house filled with smoke, and I'm not seven, so the fact that my inner ear was hurting and popping whenever I yawned was troublesome to me. And then I realized it was probably due to my headphones. I've been wearing headphones for I don't know how many hours a day, and sometimes I'm walking and sometimes I'm writing or reading, but for a good part of my day I'm plugging my head shut with little buds that play loud loud music. I push them into my head while I'm at coffee shops because the cappuccino machine is loud and the constant pulse of techno they play there is even louder. So every day I mash these little buds into my ears.

And then, in the morning, I go walking. Well, when I'm not vomiting. Because since I've been sick, all I do is vomit. So now I'm mashing the buds into my ears so they don't fall out, and I'm mashing them as I walk faster, which means I'm sweating, which means I'm pushing sweat into my ear canal and then plugging it up. I've made an ear terrarium, and I'm wondering why my ear might have developed an infection? I'm not so smart sometimes.

Writer's Ear has other side effects, which include getting so focused on whatever it is you've been writing all day that you zone out of conversations, end up taking showers that last close to half an hour, and can't do anything without pulling a pen and the back of an envelope out of your purse to jot down sixteen things you thought about in the time it took for you to get from your house to the clinic which is 15 minutes away, driving.

Writer's Ear is more annoying to the rest of the people in your life than yourself, because you are constantly:

A) Distant.
B) Distracted.
C) Bitching about your ear hurting.
D) Talking about iPod headphones.

I've switched to the headphones that don't go inside my ears, which are too big for my head and don't block out sound the way I'd like, but I think I need to give the inside of my right ear some time to dry out. I can deal with it right now, while I'm sitting here at home and sitting still and writing, but it was a pain in the ass this morning, when I was trying to actually get things done. And I can't really stop walking, you see, because I don't have a driver's license and I'm at constant war with Office Ass even though I don't work in an office.

I am battling Office Ass with everything that I am. This is also a condition that makes others suffer because it makes you:

A) Hate yourself.
B) Tell everybody you hate yourself.
C) Feel extreme guilt about every calorie consumed.
D) Apologize for wearing clothes.
E) Constantly fluctuate between indulging and punishing yourself.
F) Constantly discuss the waves of guilt that involve the size of your own ass.
G) Forget that others really don't want to spend their day telling you how not fat you are, when you know for a fact that you are and they are all liars.
H) Lose all of your friends. (see A-G)

I do a pretty good job avoiding most of the junky food my house has to offer. I've ordered every soup and salad combo Santa Cruz County has to offer. But I have a hard time resisting some of the Starbucks treats when they're right in front of me, beckoning. "You'll come up with the best blog posts if you have just a taste of sugar. With pumpkin. And chocolate."

I was recently complaining about Office Ass to my friend Elizabeth. "You don't look fat," she says. "But. Are you snacking in between meals?"

There isn't a word to describe how guilty I sounded when I responded, "Kinda."

Elizabeth summons her inner Dr. Phil. "Look. You're working hard, and you've been sick and you're detoxing. You can try not to eat, but you're still walking some, and you look fine, and you won't always feel like this and then you'll lose anything you gained in like a week when you go back to normal living. So what if you gain a couple of pounds. You're sick. Skinny is not always more fun. Quit beating yourself up about it."

Still.

Office Ass is a concern of more and more people as the holidays end. The other night I was with a group of people discussing Weight Watchers, and more specifically, what the hell a POINT was. This conversation, I should mention, was led by a heterosexual man. Sympathetic women were trying to soothe him as he basically admitted he was fucking starving and hated life, but dammit if he wasn't going to stick to his alloted points. One of them found the entire points thing fascinating. "How many points is a bag of Doritos? Wow! How many points in, like, a pint of Ben and Jerry's? Holy crap." A couple of years ago I tried to explain the maddening reality of my best friend's metabolism, which allows her to have Guinness and ice cream for a midnight snack without even a single calorie hanging around to cling to her body. (It's maddening! Maddening, I tell you!)

OK. I don't have a lot more to say today. I'm actually supposed to be writing a review for some hotel in Pennsylvania for peanuts, that I've never actually been to, but hey, at least it's money, and it keeps my mind off of how fucking sick I am. But this is another place where I'm supposed to write, to check in to say I'm okay. It is, in many ways, the only way some of my friends have proof I'm alive. So hi. All of this which is to say, I'm fine. I'm a dork, but I'm fine. And thanks for the emails, and checking in on me, even though I've been neglecting this blog and neglecting so many of you that seem to care so much about me, but I'm just so fucking sick and haven't held ANYTHING down for over a week. Again, I'm rambling! Hopefully, soon enough my writing will be back up to par and I'll stop being so annoying. I know I'm boring you all lately. I'm even boring me.

It's a nice day for a....white wedding

OK. That's it. I'm not drinking an energy boost drink EVER AGAIN.

I have a nice energy boost and everything, what with all the chemicals they put in that thing, but the nightmares that I have at night are simply terrible! I had my first Red Bull the other night and slept horribly. I kept dreaming that someone was chasing me and trying to kill me. My sister said she woke me up about three times that night because I was kicking and yelling.

I thought briefly about the Red Bull, but then decided it was just me being really tired that caused the dreams.

Well, last night being that most of the day I was pretty lethargic and sick, I had another energy drink because I was feeling really tired and I had the worst dream last night.

It was one of those dreams where you wake up going, "Oh, man. It's just a dream."

OK. So in the dream I'm getting married to this guy I know and like who shall remain unnamed for the time being until something between us changes. But for some reason this wedding was just sort of thrown together. I don't even think I'm wearing a bridal gown. There's all sorts of people there that I know, but they all look miserable-- like I've called them to a meeting. We have to wait in line for the couple before us to get married so that I can, and then when it's time, we're married before I even know what's happening. There's like, no ceremony at all. Then the photographer is pulling on my arm, "Hey, I forgot to take any pictures, so could you guys all stand in the center here and pretend you're having a good time?"

So we're all fake dancing in the center of this room where there's all these overturned chairs and tables and it's a mess and I see my reflection and I look like shit. I start trying to cheer all of my friends up, but they don't want to talk to each other, so some of them have moved on to other rooms and some are hiding and some are just getting drunk. I try to go out the front but someone stops me and says that my mother is out there getting the cake ready and getting my presents together.

I was really mad because some of my best friends didn't show up, but people who I think are only nice to me in person but are evil behind my back all were there, trying to kiss my cheek and tell me how happy they were for me.

I go to try and cheer someone else up, who for some reason is sitting on a wall with a couple of people I knew from high school and she tells me that I'm not going to get any cake if I don't hurry.

She was right. The cake was all gone. The presents were in a jumbled pile by the door and quite a mess.

I walked outside and sat in the grass. There were some Star Wars action figures there, so I picked them up and started playing with them like dolls. I made a little box-chair and was pretending that the Star Wars guys had gone to a strip club and the girl action figures were dancing for them. People were walking by and staring, but I didn't give a shit. I started rolling in the grass and creating this whole world for my action figure dolls just like I did when I was a kid. Some guy came up to me and told me that he didn't know what to get me for my wedding gift because I never registered anywhere and he had no idea what I would like. That's when it all hit me. I was married, I had no wedding presents that were any good, and I couldn't remember the ceremony. Then I sort of woke up in the dream and realized that I was in the bed alone. I was very upset that the last thing I remembered about my wedding night was playing with Star Wars action figures.

I went to my computer and sat down to write a blog entry and I thought to myself, "What am I going to tell everyone? They are expecting me to type 'Well, I'm a taken woman, now. Everything was beautiful. All went just as planned. Off to Cancun!' But instead I want to write, 'Could someone tell me what the fuck happened? Why did I spend my wedding night alone?'"

I went and found the guy I married, who was sleeping alone in a bed. He looked like he had been out drinking all night long. I woke him up. "Hey," I said, shaking his leg, "What happened last night? I never saw you?"

"Well, you were asleep," he said, "I didn't want to wake you."

"I just remembered we never planned a honeymoon."

"Well, you needed this wedding so badly, I guess it never occurred to you that we could use this ceremony as a chance to better our lives together."

"We didn't get any presents. We got one thing that looked like it wasn't an ash tray, and it's a battery charger."

"We didn't get any money."

"We don't have anything to do now. I don't even really remember it."

"That's fucking great."

"I just feel like maybe you are mad at me," I said to him.

"Really? Why do you think that?"

"Well, I just feel like maybe you didn't want to get married to me and you were doing it to be nice and now you hate me. I think you think we made a mistake."

Then his face somehow morphed into David Spade's: "Oh. You think?"

And I woke up yelling.

I've had wedding nightmares before. Once I dreamt that I was sitting around watching the sunset, and for some reason I knew that I had taken LSD, and since I've never taken LSD in my life I was curious as to what it would do to me. I was able to sit in the air and lean back like I was in a rocking chair and watch the sunset. When it was all over, I walked home feeling really safe-- until I accidentally walked onto a highway, and the concrete sides were too high and I thought I was going to be killed. When I made it home there was a huge party in my driveway and everyone was hugging me and telling me how beautiful I was. I asked my mother what everyone was talking about and she said, "Your wedding, silly."

I looked down at my hand and I had a ring there. The boyfriend that I had at the time really wanted to get married and I didn't, and in this dream he had drugged me, planned and went through a wedding. That's when I knew it was time to get out of the relationship. I was so upset that I had missed my wedding.

Anyway, I'm feeling a little bit better. I know I dropped a bombshell in my last post, but I really needed to lighten up my page a little bit. I don't want this blog to become one of those blogs I avoid and I don't want it not to be any different. I'm still feeling pretty yucky, but that's because I now have pneumonia on top of being on Methadone now. Actually, they've pretty much stabilized my dose which means that I'm not feeling symptoms of withdrawal at all, but the pneumonia is making up for it. Tonight is going to be one of my better nights. I can just feel it. Well, as long as I don't wake up in a Billy Idol video.

No more Red Bull. I mean it.

Oh, one last thing, if you've had the attention span to get this far into my post, I found this shit this morning and it scared me. So if Red Bull isn't giving me nightmares, I believe this has a fair shot. I tried to post the video but can only hyper link it.