Closing Shop

I'm just writing this post to close out the year.

Blogs are a strange thing...

I used to write when spirit moved me-

Then I found myself writing out of discipline.

I've been taking a break to get back to myself.

I am refraining from saying what I really feel...

which is a pattern I've started.

I want to write for myself again.

I don't think a blog is the place for that.

Best wishes for the New Year.

Passed Smog!

In California, when you own an old car, smog check is the lord looming over you with a certain sort of dread.

So when I had my smog check today and I PASSED, I was more than ecstatic-I went to Trader Joe's and bought champagne to celebrate.

The death of my last Volvo was when I spent over eight hundred dollars and it still didn't pass smog. I retired her to the state and took the check to buy another Volvo-a '93, but this is the year they stopped making the 240, the only car I've owned since college...so I don't know what I am going to do when this car doesn't pass smog because they just don't make Volvos like they used to. I am so old saying that.

But I have at least two more years. Hooray!

I called chemo to tell him the good news.

He didn't answer.

He sent me an email and said he was sorry he wasn't home.

There's a certain anxiety in owning an old car. Like the certain anxiety in our cancer ridden relationship.

But there's also relief when you realize there's a little life left in it.

The Day My Sister Died

Fourteen years ago, my sister was killed in a car accident.

I wouldn't find out until the next day.

Go Away

My high school English teacher had a tumor in her chest and it went away completely with radiation. I knew she had cancer, but I didn't know those details. When she visited my best friend's mother who had cancer at the time, she gave her hope that she could beat it and live for her children.

That was over twenty years ago. I am still talking with her today. She asked about his chemo and radiation.

So I wrote him the story in an email.

He wrote, "im glad to hear the tumor went away with rad. if i shoot u with rad will u go completely away??? i hope your friend has a full recovery. once i get better then i guess u can give her 100 % of your healing vibes. its a ruff road so hopefully she can stay positive and hopeful."

He makes me laugh.

I was playing with my friend's iphone tarot card application while she was in the bathroom today. I was dealt the sun card.

I think about the sun radiating its light.

"Here comes the sun, here comes the sun, and I say it's all right."

Feeds

A hand is put out for Gazelle to feed from.

Phone Conversations

I asked him today if his tumor had shrunk from the radiation. He said according to the X-Rays, it had.

Years ago, the end of the affair came when we were talking every day. He said it was too much like a relationship.

I called and left a message for him after talking with my best friend's mom. I hadn't talked to her since her heart surgery two months ago. She told me how while she was in the coma, she said she was ready to go...for God to take her. And then she was sent back. She thought she was at a party. The nurse had to tell her she was in intensive care at the hospital. Everything is swollen from the lymphedema. After a battle with inserting a catheder, she is bleeding from her crotch and it may need to be cauterized. Meanwhile, her husband is complaining about the price of her latte from Starbucks.

I could barely leave a coherent message for him—I kept crying. I can't explain why I was so emotional. Maybe it was just my period. Maybe it is because I feel such a deep connection after speaking with her, and I am afraid of losing the people I love.

He said he was calling back just to make sure I was alright after hearing the message that he couldn't really make out, but knew I was crying.

I didn't really know what to say to him. So we talked about Tiger Woods. He said I needed to find a rich man to turn out like Tiger Woods and then steal all his money. He thinks his wife should leave him. Only poor women need to stay with a man that cheats because they have kids to support and can't do it by themselves. I said, "But what if she loves him?"

Years ago, I used to love the show Cheaters on Saturday night. I found out he watched it too. I think it said something about how we spent our Saturday nights.

He asked if I thought I could turn out Tiger Woods. I said I wasn't his type.

He admitted that I turned him out for a split second.

I miss those phone conversations we used to have—the ones where he would tell me about his day and make jokes as I told him about mine. The ones that ended the affair because it was too much like a relationship.

Hello Kitty Replacement

About four years ago, my passenger’s window of my ’87 Volvo was smashed while parked on the street overnight in Venice.

It was my own fault, really. I had done the ole cover up stuff with a sweater on the seat trick, but I wasn’t fooling anyone. An empty Hello Kitty purse, my navy hat, my bag with my student anthologies, and my Thomas Guide were taken. I felt so violated.

I had almost driven off with my coffee cup on the roof of my car, I was so in shock. Someone had stopped me to tell me it was on the roof.

I told my students about the robbery when I arrived at school. One of my students said to me, “At least you have a hat to steal.” I pondered this.

What upset me the most, were the student anthologies. I couldn’t replace this one drawing that was an original in my copy. The student had drawn a skeleton, an ode, little pieces of class which she would take away.

So when I was on my way to dinner for our last blog class, I passed by a Sanrio store. I couldn’t not go in, as I was fifteen minutes early and had time to spare.

There was a pink cheetah furry purse. It’s almost Christmas! I haven’t had a new purse for over a year! I’m still not over the loss of the Hello Kitty theft! It had a matching wallet. Well now, you can’t get the purse without the matching wallet. Then, I had to ask, “Does it have a matching pen?” Another five dollars. The thirty dollar purse turned into a sixty dollar purse.

It’s amazing to me how material I can be. But these material things somehow have more meaning than just their material value. I had just had a fight with my mother over money—Christmas gifts between my angry lesbian sister and I. When I was young, my mother and I would go to the mall. I would lose time looking at the small selection of Hello Kitty paraphernalia, a world unto itself. When I arrived home, there was a message on my machine from my mother saying how much she loved me.

Now this new Hello Kitty purse has its own story, found on the day I was leaving my blog classmates, purchased by a professional pursuing her Master’s Degree.

Student Set Up

A ninth grade boy said he wanted to hook me up with someone so that I would "loosen up" and not be so strict.

Thinking he wanted to hook me up with one of his relatives from prison, I gave him a list of criteria...like college.

He came back with a student teacher. He was so convinced that if I would just go out with this student teacher, I would be happy.

I said, "Reggie, I will be happy when you do your work."

Thanksgiving

The thing I love about Thanksgiving break is that it is this time warp break of food and friends.

My first Thanksgiving away from my family was with friends in New York City, and I have never gone back. I was quoting Victoria Principal from VH-1 Behind the Music with, "I told Andy to choose drugs, or to choose me...and he chose drugs!" Everyone was laughing and I finally realized why people enjoy the holidays.

It's like the day stretches out, getting fatter with each bite of turkey and taste of stuffing. It's a holiday high, lasting a few days.

Then the reality starts hitting that you have to go to work on Monday.

But then begins the countdown until Christmas and the ball dropping.

So for someone who grew up dreading putting up the Christmas tree, the holidays have been transformed into palm trees with friends.

And for that, I am grateful.

Dying Roots

My grandma told me she was dying.

And it has made me reconsider dying my roots.

I have been thinking about how I came to Hollywood, to escape the small town in Michigan.

Just like Norma Jeane and Madonna.

Only I ended up trapped in South Central, not in pictures.

My grandma wants me to make amends with my father.

But I still don't want to go home for the holidays.

I always feel like I failed in my career.

But the other day I was driving...and I thought about the girl so full of life that wanted to get the hell out of Michigan.

And I did.

So maybe I didn't fail afterall.

My Big Ass Diamond

I had to buy it. Not for the body wash, but for that fake diamond gaudy keychain. What brilliant marketing.

I absolutely love it.

My keychain has history.

My sister gave me my first keychain when I was sixteen with engraved coins from the Space Needle, "You are my sunshine." After she died, I went to the Space Needle and added, "You're here in my heart, like the sun coming out" from the Kate Bush song.

I added the "This Is It" ribbon to to the keychain for her and my best friend.

And now, I've added this huge diamond made in China because although it is so cliche and antithetical to my beliefs, I like it. I like how it represents a rich man like my fake hair represents a Hollywood starlet. Everyone wants a rich man, but I want more than just that, just like I am more than my blonde hair, just like the key chain is more than just a ring for my keys.

I want it all.

And I have it all. Right here at my fingertips.

Et tu, Brute?

That is what I remember my tenth grade English teacher explaining to me when I asked her if she liked Julius Caesar.

We just watched the BBC version today in class. The Calpurnia dream isn't nearly as dramatic as the Charlton Heston version. I like it when she screams and runs to tell Caesar her premonition.

You know how sometimes you just sit there and ponder something when you see it again in a new way? That is how I was when they bathed their hands in Caesar's blood.

The smart students with the higher test scores listen and read along with the text. The others complain it is too hard.

Napping

I am a big believer in napping.

It just makes everything better. More bearable.

Sometimes I just have to think of my life between naps.

I get up in the morning, tell myself I just have to make it through the day and then I can come home and nap.

It’s a mind trick.

My mother taught me to look forward to things.

Good thing my addiction is to naps and not crack.

Grades

She wonders now that it is not part of the grade, if she will keep writing.

She has been working on grades all day.

Students that realize after ten weeks, twenty assignments, that they don't want to fail.

Her own obsessive compulsive high school nature to be the best and claw her way to the top is still writing her daily post.

Wondering why grades matter, why it matters if someone reads this, why it matters if she posts this...

Ratings on readers of blogs, or ratings on a singles' site picture, or how we measure up...

as if any of it really matters.

Different Beans

At the beginning of the year, I called my grandmother on the phone during class to prove to my student, Jose, that we had Native American blood in our background. “Don’t let the blonde hair fool you—it’s out of a box!” I said.

My great-great grandmother was part of the Polawadamee tribe. I remember when I was in kindergarten, we had to paint this plaster of a Native American woman. I didn’t know any Native American roots at that age…in fact, I didn’t even believe my father when he told my boyfriend that we had Native American in our lineage.

My English teacher in high school wanted us to “Cherish our heritage!” I had no idea what that meant. I didn’t want to admit that we were German because who wants to be responsible for persecuting the Jews? As a child, we had Finn Power t-shirts, but Finnish is not as exotic as Swedish.

The only comment my Dominican has ever made on my facebook page is “your roots are showing.”

He was referring to the dark roots of my blonde hair, but I quipped back with “You mean my Native American roots?”

He says that the bath mat is “the white man’s invention.” He never used one growing up.

He gave me a can of baked beans because “white people eat baked beans.”

My grandma makes the best baked beans. When he was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, I sent her the poem I wrote about him giving me baked beans. She said, “I am sorry to hear about your Dominican boyfriend,” even though I used the phrase, “the guy I’ve been seeing on and off since 2002.” She doesn’t understand that he is not my boyfriend. She doesn’t understand that we just eat different beans.

Screen Saver

He has a red sports car as a screen saver on his computer.

I told him, “You are just like one of my students.”

I’m thinking now maybe I should teach them Great Expectations if he couldn’t put it down.

He used to tell me how he never thought about going to college—that if it weren’t for Angel, his friend who said he was good at math and told him to take classes, that he never would have gotten a degree.

His mother wouldn’t approve of him being with a white woman. My mother knows this. When I told my mother that he has his engineering degree, my mother said, “What white woman would want him? I’ve never heard of an engineer with no job.”

“He’s an actor, Mom.”

He told me he can’t wait to get back to work. We met catering. We were working for a cheap company that didn’t serve us dinner. He swept the filet mignon for the guests from the proofer for me. I was “too good” following the rules to do it for myself—I didn’t want to get in trouble. But it was very romantic how he did it for me. He had a fuck you attitude about the whole establishment, that they owed us dinner. I did too, but I was too chicken to act on it.

He made me feel better about my week just be being him. My French friend says I always talk about him “happily smiling.”

He used to work at the same school where my girlfriend that just bought the condo works. She is white and is dating a Latino.

I had this fantasy during Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. I mean, all those people play the cancer card…why not him? Once, I told him I had this fantasy that his career would take off—he’d have this huge house and I could live in the guest house. He said to me, “Why would you live in the guest house? Why not the main house?”

I’ve been thinking about his screen saver.

Saver.

I hope he gets his red sports car.

I hope my students do too.

Burned Bird

He answered the phone.

I think this may be the first time he has answered the phone in months. He must be feeling better.

I was on my way home from my girlfriend who had just bought a condo in Glendale. He used to live in Glendale.

“Living in Glendale was the worst year of my life.” He said.

I questioned, “Worse than this year with chemo?”

He thought for a minute, “Just as bad. I didn’t have air conditioning. The walk to the car nearly did me in—it was an oven.”

I told him about my week. How the student plagiarized, the girl came to class high…he said, “What, that’s just growing up.”

He told me he starts radiation this week. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…who said that?” He asked.

“Charles Dickens.” But I go over to his computer and look it up just to be sure. He tells me I’m addicted to the computer and that it’s a very white thing to do.

Then he tells me how much he loved Great Expectations. “I couldn’t put it down. I read it freshman year of high school.” He continued to give me an entire plot summary. He never ceases to surprise me. So he doesn’t know Sylvia Plath, but he does know Charles Dickens.

He lit the candle while I was in the bathroom. When I came out, it was almost gone.

“It’s a cheap candle. How much did you spend on it? Did you break more than two dollars on it?”

He’s always talking about how cheap I am.

“What did the bird say when it flew over K-Mart?”

“Cheap, cheap.”

Focusing on the Good

One of my ninth grade girls asked to go to the bathroom today. She came back high. It was her birthday. She had a little balloon and gift bag on the floor next to her desk. I pulled her outside and she admitted that there were girls smoking in the bathroom, but that she didn’t do it. I told her I had called school police yesterday on a boy, but I didn’t want to do that to her on her birthday…but not to come back to my class high ever again.

It just made me so sad that a ninth grade girl is smoking pot on her birthday. When I was in ninth grade, I was writing autobiographies, played Miss Hannigan in Annie, obsessed over school projects. I wasn’t smoking weed in the bathroom at school.

But maybe I was just different.

I wasn’t living in poverty. I didn’t have to deal with gang mentality on a daily basis. I didn’t feel the need to escape.

I was having severe abdominal pain the other day from stress. I don’t know how much longer I can do this.

I had all my students write persuasive essays about why I should keep up the blogging project after students were downloading weed as screensavers and women in evocative poses with their legs spread.

Most of the students are good. They argued that they never get to use computers, that their typing is getting better, and that it was cool to have their writing online to show others. They said it wasn’t fair for them to be punished for a few students’ “dumb” behavior. They made commitments to make sure their neighbors were on task.

So I must keep focusing on the good. Because they do deserve it.

Put Me Down Like Old Yeller

I have such a headache.

That is my post.

I can’t even begin to tell you about my day. The ninth grade boy that posted a blog in MY name and to top it off, it was plagiarized from another student. Parent conference, the administrator doesn’t show up. The other ninth grade boy that showed me a picture of MY name loves marijuana after he left the class and came back smelling of some kind of smoke. Call school police because the deans aren’t answering the phone in their office. Document, document. Right now I hate my life teaching in the inner-city.

I feel like shutting down the whole blog project. It started because our school has no computer lab in which to take the students. Since most students don’t have computers and printers, how are they supposed to type their papers??? I hate the system.

And I was out of aspirin.

I just woke up my neighbor to borrow some.

Now I am going to bed.

But I am obsessing and hope I can sleep.

Happy for Hands

Since I had the day off for Veteran’s Day, I watched Oprah. She had the woman on who was defaced by a chimp. Literally. A chimpanzee attacked Charla and ripped off her face. She was left with only a thumb.

Every day, even if she doesn’t feel like it, she goes for a walk. Oprah used her humor to say that she, herself, really has no right to complain about exercising, if Charla can maintain such a disposition.

Oprah had said how many people would just cash in their chips, (I may be using my own metaphor here, but you know what I mean…not literally cashing in chips in Vegas, but figuratively giving up to the pie in the sky.) I, myself, don’t think I could go on under the circumstances of Charla’s health. But she does have a daughter. And I always say we never know what we are made of until we are put in the situation.

Then I read about the soccer player that committed suicide by throwing himself in front of a train. His wife explained that he was afraid their adopted daughter would be taken away from them if the public found out about his illness. Their biological daughter died three years ago from heart problems when she was two-years-old.

Meanwhile, I am supposed to be focusing on all the good things in life. Maybe I should stop reading the news and watching Oprah. Maybe I should start my own list.

Thank god for these hands that can type this—that they were not mauled off by a chimpanzee.

I am praying for the widow who has now lost her husband in addition to her daughter.

Black Bird

Whispered Between Women whispered, “What happened to Chemo Guy?”

“I shot him, a black bird killed off with a BB gun,” I stated simply.

But it is not so simple.

I had written a poem for him in Korea called “Blonde Bird.” When I was there, I emailed it to him. I said something about flittering my wings in his mind, trying to land closer to the nest, becoming more than just the bleach blonde bimbo in the distance…that perhaps one day he’d put out his palm for this humming bird to feed on his nectar for longer than the flash of a camera.

So when I went to give him the blonde wax shaped bird candle I had brought back from Korea for him, I thought he would be moved by the symbolism—how he had been in my thoughts like the candle I was lighting for him in my mind every night.

He looked at it and said, “A yellow duck. I don’t get it.”

And I wasn’t surprised. I didn’t even try to explain. I think I said, “The blonde bird poem…oh, nevermind.”

The next day I got the email from him, “i dont understand u. u like being around me but i dont like being around u. dont know how ellse to say it. we are very different people . just leave it at that.”

I thought, “Fuck you. Drop dead.” But I didn’t write that back. Because my friend said he’s going through chemo and he doesn’t know what he’s saying.

But he doesn’t know a blonde bird from a yellow duck.

And that’s why it is easier to kill him off. It makes the death a little less painful.

Shitting Blood

But is constipation just the beginning? I read an article where this woman’s vagina fell out! Ignorance is bliss, which is why my parents never took us to doctors growing up. The old fear of the unknown…if you don’t know it, why fear it? But once you start reading, you can never go back. The article stated, “In addition to a uterine prolapse, Allison Henry also suffered rectocele - a condition wherein the rectum pushes into the back walls of the vagina. ‘That explained why I had been constipated for months,’ she says.” Oh my god! Rectocele! Here I was thinking the worst thing that could happen was that I could be allergic to the man’s sperm whom I wanted to conceive a child with—but no, it gets much worse…I could have my inners become my outers! Allison said she had to keep her sense of humor about it all—that and a good dose of anti-depressants. I thought Dr. Schultz was the dope…but if I’m dealing with all that, a few herbs aren’t going to be all I need to get through.

The last time I spoke to my best friend was Christmas Day 2007. I was in the car, about to go have Christmas dinner at a colleague’s. I remember we were reminiscing, laughing about all the Christmas’ we had spent together. When he had to poo really badly back when we were hanging out as teens, he used to make this gesture with his hands, where the finger was tipping the hole, about to come out. It was so disgusting and funny. You never know the last time you are going to speak to someone in their thirties before they die. He told me he was shitting blood. I think I laughed in horror with him, our dark humor trying to find some light. I know I told him he needed to see the doctor. “What does your sister say?” I asked. He hadn’t told her. He died the following week.

Hemorrhoids!

I used to say, “I’ve got to take a shit.”

My mother would quip back, “You better leave one instead.”

There are few things better than a good shit—the relief, the sense of accomplishment, the load left that makes one feel ever so much lighter than before.

But when one is constipated, it is no laughing matter.

I had just turned thirty when the childhood joy of shitting became my “what is happening to my body??! It’s just not working right anymore” nightmare.

I used to ask as a child, “Does your poop sink or float?” This was a rather odd thing to ask new visitors to our home, but I thought it was the perfect break the ice, get to know you question.

So when it felt like I was shitting bricks, I knew I had to break the silence. I began asking around.

I thought, best to begin with the older crowd…because old people are always telling you what is going wrong with their body or who went to the doctor and found out they had diverticulosis. So my sixty-five-year-old friend tells me to buy some stool softner from the drug store and in the background, his wife yells, “Tell her to get some Preparation H.”

Preparation H!!? Oh my god. I remember those commercials from growing up in the eighties. Does this mean I have hemorrhoids? What even is a hemorrhoid? I remember the woman in the commercial with a pained look on her face and some animated drawing talking about pain and inflammation. The word was horrifying and the fact that it was shrouded in mystery could only mean it was so bad, that no one could even say it on tv.

Alas, today we live in 2009, when we have porn on the internet and pictures of hemorrhoids with the click of a mouse! But who wants to see small veins around the rectum and anus that have become varicose-dilated and swollen. It was disturbing enough when I saw the blood in my underwear that was not from my beautiful Aunt Flo, but from my sensitive bleeding butt crying red tracks…what is wrong with this picture??! This is only supposed to happen after a hot, rough night of anal sex with your latin lover…not from your virgin hole that has never seen so much as a finger. Do porn stars have this problem? If so, they never seem to talk about it. Although that might be a downer between takes. Chloe talked about her yeast infections in a documentary. I love her candor. But no mention of hemorrhoids. Looks like my life as a porn star really is over now.

I don’t believe in drugs. I even try to limit my intake of Aleve during that time of the month. So I look to alternative medicine. I run in the circles. So I confide in my dear friend the troubles of my delicate little anus. I am not alone! He has these problems too! He tells me to go to Dr. Schulze’s in the Marina and purchase Intestinal Formula #1. (Herbal Formulae That Work! is right on the bottle.) He assures me that will take care of the problem.

I waste no time. Bowel movements that can’t get out are a pressure cooker waiting to go off…I mean, it all has to go somewhere, sometime.

Thank you Dr. Schulze. Within a day, the floodgates are open. The intestines are moving. The dam is broken.

Sky Happy

I was in this musical when I was in second grade where I was a duck. It was my very first play called Sky Happy. It was about Rock and Rhonda, a couple that wanted to fly. I hadn’t thought of it for years, but saw the film Amelia today.

I was in another play called Chamber Music by Arthur Kopit in high school about women in a mental institution. One believed she was Amelia Earhart.

I like how Ms. Earhart was such a feminist—keeping her name, making a career for herself, having a progressive marriage for the time. The official website has all these quotes from her, including, "Anticipation, I suppose, sometimes exceeds realization." Sounds to me, like she was an addict of the air.

Vagina Headlines

AOL news is freaking me out.

Last night there was a woman who was allergic to her husband’s sperm—she formed blisters inside her vagina and everything.

Tonight it is a woman whose vagina fell out.

Let’s see, and there was the gang rape at the high school.

Oh, and the Cleveland house of horror where the man had bodies in his house decaying that he had raped and murdered.

Everyone already knows about the shooting slaughter at the military base by the psychiatrist. But I digress, because that isn't directly related to vaginas.

Yes, this was a lovely week of news.

Where are the warm, fuzzy stories?

Blonde Bird

Someone asked me today why I dye my hair blonde. I don’t even know if I can answer that question.

My hair is yellow. I dye it myself with Clairol Born Blonde, but since I am naturally a brunette, it comes out orange, gold and yellow hues (perhaps even stripes.) I really don’t know what I’m doing, but I’m too cheap to pay to have it done. My dear friend has even said to me, “Treat yourself.” This is her polite way of voicing her disapproval.

It happened accidentally. I used to have short hair, pixie short. My hairdresser at the time highlighted it as a gift for my birthday. She assured me that I could do the same thing with a box from Rite-Aid. I, of course, was trepidatious at the time. I had only done semi-permanent. Blonde was a world of its own.

But I took her belief in myself and found the courage to paint my hair in chunky bits just like she did. I was hooked. With short hair, there is a certain freedom, because if you fuck it up too badly, you just cut it off and start over. But I began to like the texture the bleach gave to my fine, silky hair. It was easier to spike with molding mud.

When I moved to California, I started growing my hair out because I grew bored of the same short cut flipping back from red, to plum, to magenta, to blonde highlights. I kept dying it blonde because this was new for me. I had had long brunette hair, but never longer blonde hair. Now I even lived at the beach!

But this stereotype also horrified me. I hate the Beach Boys “California Girls” song. David Lee Roth’s cover growing up was this bizarre male fantasy to a young feminist that was completely foreign to a girl in Michigan. His voice in this song grated on my nerves. The jumping around in striped spandex was one thing, but the women in bikinis lined up on the boardwalk with him weaving in between them—too much cheesy objectification…did people actually find this entertaining?

Furthermore, I didn’t like Marilyn Monroe (until I read more about her pill addiction and misery, that is.) I just didn’t get the whole here are my boobs and blonde hair in the wind manipulating the males with my sexuality. I was more of a brain girl. The granola, Birkenstock wearing, worked her way through college at Greenpeace kind of girl.

But I do love Madonna. So when I read Bell Hooks' essay desecrating Madonna, I thought twice about my own blonde ambition. My black professor had said that I enjoyed the attention from men when stereotyped into “the blonde.” When, in fact, such objectification and projection only made me sad. Didn’t they know that I was more than that? I was valedictorian, graduated University of Michigan with honors, and thought the government was responsible for the assassination of the Black Panthers?

I still don’t know why I stay a blonde. The shampoo I have to use in order for it not to look like complete straw costs an arm and a leg—that alone should be the impetus for au naturel.

But part of me thinks it is the adolescent rebel in me. An associate said in her condescending, critical way, “Why blonde? Why don’t you go back to your natural color? Dark hair with light, blue eyes is exotic.”

To this, I wanted to utter a, “FUCK YOU. Did I ask for your opinion behind your fake tits and nose job?” But I would never say that to someone.

Because if her fake tits and nose job make her feel good, where is it my place to judge?

I like the dichotomy of the blonde bird with the big brain. I like to make people keep guessing. Just like I like to keep searching for the why of my dye.

How much is a parking space really worth?

I have been living in Venice Beach for over five years. I have never had parking. This was okay when I was in my twenties. Now that I’m in my thirties, it’s getting old.

I’ve always carried my groceries blocks. When I was living in Queens, I was fifteen blocks from the subway. I carried many things many blocks many times. I was much thinner then.

Someone in our apartment building has moved out and for roughly $4,500 more a year or $400 more a month, I could go from a studio to a one bedroom with parking.

But the thought of actually moving exhausts me—even if it is only downstairs.

Plus, I HATE my neighbor. He belts out “Man in the Mirror” at the top of his strained vocal register and it is offensive to MJ’s memory. He is slaughtering the song. I want to take a hatchet to his head. Our building is not a rehearsal studio. Rent a space.

I fear I have become old and bitter.

I should be in a house. Old and bitter people live in houses.

But I live in an area where one has to be a millionaire to afford a house! Why is life so cruel? Then I think about the children born into brothels in India and know I have no right to complain.

But I’d still like a parking space. And a father to my children. As long as I’m making the list, I might as well check it twice. I’ve not been naughty, but nice. Eh, it depends on who you’re asking. As Samantha Fox sings, “Naughty Girls Need Love too.” I bet she has a parking space.

Average is so Prosaic

When I was on Match.com, I met a guy who told me my body type was average. I was horrified. Average is so close to prosaic. Me, ordinary? Never. I had put down slender. It then dawned on me that I still saw myself as the skinny, little girl I had been growing up.

My sister (the angry lesbian one, not the dead one) asked me when I was five-years-old if I would be her model for a school project. She was very coaxing and social worker like about the whole matter. She had me take these shirtless pictures and then used them for a project on anorexia! Had I known better, I could have sued her for child porn.

So I began asking around, am I not proportionate? Do I not qualify as slender any more? My guy friend said, “Average is good. A few extra pounds is not.”

I was so hurt when people would call my mom fat when I was little. She used to tell me she was thin as a little girl. I was offended when a girl in elementary called my dad bald. We were supposed to be friends and here she was throwing around these words with negative connotations. I ended up hearing some sexual escapade of that same girl a few years later and thinking, hmm, I thought she was supposed to be smart in math.

I had to come to terms with the fact that my body image did not fit my perception. It’s kind of like when a boy said I was the flattest girl in seventh grade. I still see myself as not having breasts, even though I measure a double D at Victoria’s Secret (or so they say...I think their sizes are inflated.) It must be all that weight I gained during the years.

I am the perfect size for “Put the lotion in the basket!”

That is a disturbing, yet darkly funny thought.

Pot Pie

It seems like the highlight of my life the past few days, has been marked by food.

I convinced my friend to go to Souplantation on Monday night football because they were serving Chicken Pot Pie Soup.

Oh my god.

Better than sex.

I love November.

Trader Joe’s starts stocking their Fondue in a box. The guy at the check out asked if you needed a fondue pot. “Just a saucepan!” I exclaimed, as if I were Betty Crocker, not the domestic disaster my friends know me to be.

Did I mention the amazing acorn squash I had last night? Delicious. My friend and I were discussing what makes some acorn squashes sweet and succulent, and others not. We couldn’t figure it out. But I have discovered cooking the squash seeds. At first, I felt like I was doing something scandalous, a pioneer on the home front. I wondered if there was some poisonous reason that people never ate squash seeds. I think the squash seeds were sold out to the pumpkin seeds for no good reason. I am speaking out on behalf of squash seeds everywhere! Why are they discriminated against and pumpkin seeds get all the packaging? Taste the same cooked in the oven!

What is amazing to me is how you can eat the exact same thing and it can taste completely different depending on where your taste buds are at. (There’s that ending the sentence with a preposition violation, but how else do you say the same thing with the same umph!?) In that sense, eating and fucking are very much alike, because sex can feel totally different depending on your mood too. What you’re craving one night, might not hit the spot the next.

Believe it or not, you can get Chicken Pot Pied out.

Sooner or later though, you’re always hungry again.

Hungry for some ice cream?

My dead gay best friend told me I should throw a brick through this guy’s window right onto his bed—and to make sure he was in it. We laughed. That’s what I miss most about him—we both had such dark suicidal/homicidal humor that most people just don’t think is funny.

One time, we were in line at the grocery store when we were both in high school. There was a woman in front of us with a gallon of ice cream. So I said in a goofy, silly voice, “Hungry for some ice cream?” She didn’t think it was funny. At all.

She said to my best friend, “Your girlfriend needs to learn some manners.” This, of course, just made us laugh harder because he was gay. I’m sure reading this, you probably aren’t laughing like we were, but I just miss him so much. I appreciate you humoring me.

The last time I saw him, he wouldn’t let me see his apartment. He said it was a mess. I thought of that today. I thought about the fact that he had shame about it, that at the time, I didn’t understand that. I was just mad he wouldn’t let me see his apartment.

No one mentions Michael Jackson’s addiction. But I think it should be talked about. I was mad at the man that gave him the overdose. I’m sure the doctor did as he was manipulated by an addict to do—but he should be held accountable. I thought about the doctor’s fear of losing his job, but what about the fear of being prosecuted for homicide?

My best friend’s sister didn’t tell anyone how he died. I think it was an opportunity to talk about addiction. I think it was an opportunity to take the shame out of it.

I dreamt about the guy who we joked about throwing a brick through his window. He is still alive and on facebook. I wish my best friend were so I could tell him and we could laugh about it.

This Is It

It is so tragic that This Is It was It. I was in Korea during the funeral of Michael Jackson and didn’t really register the loss until I saw the film today.

I have been feeling particularly lonely this past week. Perhaps it is because Day of the Dead is approaching. Perhaps it is because my dead gay best friend’s birthday is approaching. Perhaps it is because grief is a vortex that never stops spinning, no matter how much time passes.

When Thriller came out, my sister and I videotaped it off of Friday Night Videos. We watched it over and over again. I talked about it at show and tell in third grade, acting out the part where he chopped down the tree with his hand. Michael Jackson inspired me in that moment to become a performer, entertaining my peers, making them laugh.

My sister bought a vinyl red jacket from K-Mart and used electrical tape to trim it so that she would have the Thriller jacket. When his death was announced, I thought about that jacket for the first time in years, just like I thought about the video, how we watched it together. I thought about his family losing their brother, their son, their father.

The concert would have been amazing. The clips are artistic genius. The dancers popping up like toast out of the stage, the ghouls flying through the audience, the songs that have been part of our history growing up.

I am just one of the masses pissing in the ocean trying to put down words for something that has no words. He was different. He made being different okay in a small town in Michigan.

He made a vinyl jacket from K-Mart cool and a memory dear to my heart just by having a good heart.

Test Taking Strategies!

I thought I would give the students a treat today by showing them a Princeton Review Test Taking Strategy dvd—they told me they would rather read silently. They were not nearly as excited to crack the state assessments as I was.

Meanwhile, there was the strong aroma of marijuana outside my door this morning. Apparently, the high of learning isn’t enough for them.

We were told at a meeting that there were twenty percent of our ninth graders that were failing their classes. Considering most of the students are testing below basic in the state scores, this seemed quite low to me. But in education, is the rally cry of “No Child Left Behind!” Yet, statistics show that only twenty percent of students attend college, six percent grad school. As we looked at the data, the question, “Does our teaching even matter?” occurred to us.

On the other hand, I am a terrible test taker. If my intelligence was measure by standardized tests, my education would be doomed. Yet, I tested gifted as a child after my kindergarten teacher didn’t recommend me for the gifted program and my mother went down to the school, insisting I be tested. Where would I be today without my parent advocate?

In order to succeed at a system such as the model we have for testing and education, one has to buy into the system. A major systemic problem is that the students don’t buy into these tests, the teachers don’t buy into these tests, and the politicians have interests other than society’s well-being invested in such testing.

Bush had stock in Open Court, the system of books he mandated for elementary schools. In the name of education, some people became rich while others are still in need of light bulbs and toilet tissue.

Angels' Night

Detroit Public Schools are asking people to donate light bulbs and toilet paper because they are bankrupt.

There is an entire section dedicated to Devil’s Night arson in Detroit on Wikipedia. I had no idea. I’m from Michigan. In fact, I was living in Ann Arbor, MI during the height of the arson 44 miles away. I guess that makes me part of the University bubble. As part of my studies, I was going into prisons and working with at risk youth. I learned about the Bloods and the Crips, but no one was talking about the arson.

My mother is from Detroit. Her father was a tool and dye maker. He had an eighth grade education and came from a family of fifteen children. He was able to do well for himself. But that was many years ago.

In my hometown, Habitat for Humanity is actually tearing homes down.

I feel like an old fart, but what is happening here?

Never fear, Angels’ Night is here! Detroit organized and now crime is down around town.

Now if they can just get their public schools together. If we could all just get our public schools together. If people cared that students didn’t have light bulbs and toilet paper here in the United States. So much for Brown Vs. Board of Education and progress…

Put in another Tape

I viewed the trailer for The Road, knew it wasn’t going to be a film I would enjoy, but sat through it anyway because I was already at the DGA and it was the next film showing after A Serious Man.

There was one scene that was so disturbing. SPOILER! But you shouldn’t see this movie anyway, so keep reading. He opens the cellar of a stranger’s house that is locked, and all these half bloodied missing limbs of tortured bodies start coming toward him and his child. The fact that I am even writing about this is giving the scene too much energy when, to begin with, it never even should have been in my subconscious.

Someone once said to me, if you are thinking of something negative, it’s like watching a bad movie. Why don’t you take out the tape and just put in another tape? Whoever said that must have had more control over their subconscious than I do.

When I was living in NYC, a guy walked out of Hannibal at the part where he eats a brain. He said he just didn’t need to see that. Ten years later, I now understand that.

Life is just too short for bad movies and quasi friends. I had dinner with a sort of friend. Let me just say, if it is not a good friend, your food doesn’t taste as good. I sat there thinking it would have been better if I had eaten alone.

Artist=Crazy

When I was in New York City living the life of a performing artist, my father said to me, “Well, if it doesn’t work out, you can always be an ordinary person.” These were sage, wise words. It sort of lifted the burden.

My healer used to say to me that I needed to learn to just “be.” I said I didn’t want to “be,” I wanted to “be somebody.” He assured me that I already was somebody and I just needed to be.

So I was always torn between enjoying my time lounging in my bed versus my scramble to be productive and change the world. Lounging in my bed won out. Changing the world just seemed like an overwhelming task.

I was always looking for the point, the deeper meaning in things. I am constantly asking the question, “What am I doing with my life?”

My tenth grade English teacher told me that adolescents that tried drugs and then decided not to do them were more well-adjusted than those that never had. I had always viewed drugs as an escape. While discussing what I was doing with my life with my sister in college, I asked if smoking pot would help to alleviate the looming larger questions of life. She advised me that the questions would still be there. So again, I figured what’s the point then.

I didn’t want to be the crazy artist. I wanted the well-balanced life. My friend said that should be my gimmick. The kooky girl trying to fit in. I just ended that sentence with a preposition. But fuck it. I’m an artistic rebel.

Setting Lassie Free

There was a dog trapped in the wire cage fencing surrounding the inner machinations of the electrical system in our underground parking lot at school the other day.

I kept hearing wailing and whining while I was in my parked car. I thought someone left their dog in their car. I went to investigate. The dog actually stopped wailing every time I was close. It is dark in our underground parking lot. But finally, I saw the scraggly thing, face in the corner of the cage with its muzzle to the ground. I was horrified.

It is one thing to see a child in the inner city without breakfast or clean clothes, but it is another thing to see a dog caged in the underground parking lot. One just doesn’t see stray dogs on campus, let alone trapped.

I didn’t understand how the dog got into the cage. Images of serial killers and their abusive ways with animals raced through my head.

Then I did what any sane person would do. I looked to see how to open the gate. It wasn’t locked. So I let Lassie free.

Word had it that someone had called animal control.

Maybe it would have been better to have animal control deal with it. But I couldn’t bear to hear the howling for one second more.

Painting Toenails

When I was sixteen, a woman told me to do my nails on a Sunday to relax, pamper myself. I was a bit horrified at this. It was just so trite, so against being a feminist. But a part of me has come to realize it is the little things that keep me from coming undone.

Like trimming my nails, painting my toenails, having my eyebrows tweezed, shaving my legs—these are the maintenance details that keep the car running. It’s ridiculous really. Because it is not like eating, sleeping, exercising. No, these things are the details. The waxing of the car—and I never wax my car. I’m lucky if I wash my car. But I’ve noticed I feel better when my car is washed.

Just like I know I’d feel better if my apartment were clean. But on my day off, I’d so much rather lie in bed and watch a documentary than dust or wash around the edge of my sink. Even though I know when I do, I feel refreshed. I don’t know how people lived before running water and electricity. I would have never made it on the plantation.

I always picture myself as the one that runs into the electrical barbed wire at the concentration camps. But maybe we never know what we are made of until we are tested. I hope I am never tested like that. Which is why I am grateful that I can paint my toenails on a Sunday while watching Desperate Housewives.

Roaches

Years ago, when we first started our affair, I used to write these angry rants and make him listen to them. I wanted him to know exactly how I felt when he pissed me off and I wanted to make him hear me out. He used to tell me he was just sitting through it to get to the sex.

I was living in Koreatown. He would come over and see the roaches scamper across the counter. He used to say, “When you gonna get out of the ghetto livin' with roaches?” Then one day after I had read a piece to him, he stopped, looked at me, and said, “You know, maybe you will have a book one day…maybe all these diaries someone will want to read…you may make money from it.”

I stopped by to see him and he had just given himself a shot in the stomach. He told me how the woman at the front desk had messed up his chemo appointments and they wanted to hospitalize him for three days. He had to argue with the doctor that he had his chemo two weeks ago and he had his calendar to prove it.

I told him I was doing a reading in his neighborhood next week. He smiled and said I better have changed his name. He said he wasn’t going out in crowds because he didn’t want to get H1N1.

I asked him why he wouldn’t let me take him to chemo. He said he didn’t want to string me in anymore than I already was. I told him I was afraid he was dying. He said that they told him that he would look back on this with fond memories after it was all over and he had to get back to the daily grind.

He said he wanted half of my book sales. I told him it was my story. I was selling it as fiction.

He said, “What, you gonna make him Puerto Rican instead of Dominican? It’s too similar. I’ll see you with my attorney in court.”

I said, “You are a roach that is gonna live forever.”

Is Cutting Hair Having An Affair?

My friend just asked me to cut his hair. He was painting today and hit his head on the ceiling and now he looks like he’s eighty-five with the white paint all over his head.

We were on our way to dinner, both of us bargaining for what we wanted. I wanted to go to Cheesecake Factory. He wanted his hair cut, but I was too hungry to argue. I said, “Throw a hat on, we can deal with it after dinner.”

He said the paint was poisoning him, seeping into his brain with each moment we sat there. He wanted me to cut his hair in my bathroom. I said, “Not my place, yours.”

He said, “What, you don’t want all that nigga hair in your bathroom?” He laughed, but I could hardly believe he said that.

I said, “Cutting hair is an intimate act. Maybe you should ask your girlfriend.”

He joked, “What, we can watch lesbian porn documentaries, but we have to draw the line at a hair cut?”

“I ain’t your woman.” I used his line back at him and we laughed.

I hate finding someone new to cut my hair. Because it is like having sex with someone—there’s this whole process of getting to know the person and trusting them with your hair.

The Fight for Night

An interesting phenomenon happened today at school.

I had given the students options to read about the Montgomery boycotts, Vietnam, Farewell to Manzanar, Night, or an immigration story from the Dominican Republic. Most of the students in the class read Night. When it came time to choose which one they wanted to be in groups for literature circles, there was fighting as to who was to report out on Night. Everyone was yelling out how they wanted to cover the concentration camps!

When a colleague first told me she was teaching Night, I commented, “Don’t you get depressed rereading, living through that book again?” She commented how the students kind of really got into the morbid, dark side of the suffering.

I am too haunted by the suffering. I pulled an image from the camps, but have decided not to post it because it is too horrifying to constantly look at on here. The night I posted the sounding the shofar image, I had a dream that I was taken off to the camps.

I always talk to people about how we cannot be ostriches, hiding our heads in the sand. I think everyone should read Night, know about Darfur, and experience life in the inner-city.

Yet, I realize, there is part of me that also is drawn to the depressed side of suffering. Perhaps it is shared suffering that relieves it. Or perhaps it is a masochistic side that enjoys it. I wonder what it would be like to just be diluted with bliss.

The Elephant in the Room

40,000 to 100,000 muscles in an elephant’s trunk—sensitive enough to pick up a blade of grass, and strong enough to rip the branch right off the tree. Now that’s my kind of animal.

I’ve been thinking about the elephant. How it is known for its intelligence, how Dumbo didn’t fit in and then used his ears to fly.

I have been working on overcoming obstacles and manifesting abundance. My healer in New York told me about Ganesh one session, showed me him from his altar, and then gave it to me. It had to be one of the most abundant moments in my life, with the water works and everything. I was so moved.

The Banksy exhibit in Los Angeles stayed with me for years. There was a live elephant painted to the wallpaper to represent poverty, the elephant in the room that nobody talks about or sees.

I like how the elephant can shake hands with its trunk, smell with its trunk, drink with its trunk, swing with its trunk—it’s this multi-purpose appendage depending on the occasion.

What about the woman from the circus balancing on the trunk of an elephant? So strangely beautiful, yet strangely disturbing.

My Bed is My Beach

When I first started meditating in high school, they used to suggest some place calm to go—like the beach. But I used to always picture my bed. There was no place that I’d rather be. I had inherited my great grandmother’s bed with a slump in the middle of the mattress, but it was still my bed and I longed for its comfort.

When I moved to Venice beach, I was even more grateful for my bed because of all the homeless people at the beach that didn’t have a bed. Sure, it’s ideal to live at the beach…unless the beach is your bed. The sun is great for a certain period of time, but if there is no place to take refuge, then the sun is the flaming devil, the sizzling cloud waiting to strike....sssszzzzzzzzzzzz!! Burn! My futon was fifteen years old, but it was my sanctuary, the first purchase my boyfriend made for us when we lived together one summer in college.

When my beau and I stayed at the W Hotel, however, it was as if I had an affair on that futon and could never go back. I had tasted a good night’s sleep like never before. I invested in the W bed, and have never looked back. The plush top, the 825 coil count, the Primaloft Duvet—they don’t call it the Heavenly bed for nothing.

I bought new sheets for my bed at Target. I had to cut cost corners somewhere. The lime green, teal, and brown polka dots make me happy. My luxury bed is my lover every night of the week. I am always satisfied in the morning.

When I stayed in Korea, on their hard box spring beds, I counted the days until I would be back in my own bed. I realize my bed is the SUV of beds. I see myself as living simply, but the bed is my downfall of consumer capitalism. I make no apologies for this lush landscape.

Gazelle's Drawer

The Rolling Stone cover of John Lennon and Yoko Ono was the last picture taken of him because the day of the shoot he was shot. Yoko said, “Why wasn’t I told that John will be taken away from me soon after, without even a chance for me to say goodbye?” I love the naked vulnerability of the male prototype curled into the strength of his woman. I love how strong she has been throughout all the years and the pain.

He commented on my picture of my sister—he must have just known it was her because I don’t remember introducing him to her in photos. He said he used to keep a picture of Angel who died in a drawer, but threw it out because every time he looked at it he got depressed.

I was shocked that he threw out the picture. I was holding onto every little thing when my sister died and couldn’t imagine throwing out a picture of her.

I started thinking about him and his drawer. A guy in high school used to say that his ex-girlfriend would always have a closet in his heart because she was there when his dad shot himself.

We have all our defenses heightened after we fuck. He says I’m his booty call and I tell him I’m just using him to get over my last dating disaster. It’s like our drawers are down and we’re naked and then we realize we’re walking down the street without any clothes on, so we shut the drawer really fast, smashing the others fingers to feel just enough pain so we don’t get too comfortable.

But sometimes I want to crawl into his drawer. Kind of like I wanted to crawl into the satin casket with my sister. It’s dangerous and sad and comforting and temporary and eternal and not mine but sometimes it feels like mine too and I just want to curl up next to them and go to sleep.

I was thinking about his story about when he told the kid on the PE field not to kick the basketball. It made me think of Castaway and Wilson. Maybe he saw his heart in the ball because he cared and didn’t want it kicked around. He said something about the ball getting welts. Maybe our hearts have been kicked around and they have these warped welts.

And I think about how I don’t want the game to end with him. How I really like the drawer slamming and the kicking of the ball. How I can hear the buzzer telling me the time is running, but how I want to find that moment in the game where slow motion occurs as you throw the ball to the basket, and it circles around the hoop, and for that split second, you don’t know if it is going to make it or not.

We have never taken a picture together. He says, “Out of sight, out of mind.” I wonder if I opened his drawer wide enough, if I could put my picture in there so that even if he threw it out, it would still have made that eternal print in his drawer.

Gazelle's Curse

The Saiga antelope horns are ground for their medicinal power as an aphrodisiac, and have been hunted to nearly extinction. Horns are thought to confine spirits. Or to be spiritual weapons. I wish I could out run these ghosts behind my horns. The sounding the shofar-who will blow these horns?

The Millionaire Myth

When I was seven, I saw Annie. Today, I realized that we feed children this myth that even orphans can be adopted by millionaires, hang from roofs, and live happily ever after.

Then I went to see Capitalism. I grew up right near Flint, Michigan, so Michael Moore’s truths ring very true for me. Who can forget “Rabbits—Pets or Meat” from Roger and Me? A few years ago, I thought I could be productive in my obsessing, and try to become a millionaire! Just like all the Robert Allan advertisements promise. But I found it was a lot of work. Plus, Michael Moore pointed out in his book that maybe if Americans weren’t led by the millionaire myth, then maybe we would all be content being comfortable and middle class.

The Fall of the Virgin Bed

“I’m having surgery on Friday. I have a mass in my chest. They need to biopsy it.” He finally returned my calls. After months of not speaking, he had been coming up in my mind over and over again. I had been calling him and texting him with no response. He left a voicemail while I was teaching right before Memorial Day Weekend. This was how I found out.

I had left a mean message on his voicemail on Valentine’s day, after he wouldn’t pick up the phone. I said, “We were never friends—friends return calls!” I was so mad that I wanted his heart to explode in his chest. Actually, the last time we were together, I was afraid he was going to have a heart attack on top of me. Freaked me out. I put my hand on his chest, felt his shortness of breath.

He made a joke as he was telling me they didn’t know what it was. “I kept wondering, why am I so tired after fuckin’ you?” I was stunned, but it all made sense. I had felt he was sick. I felt hung over the day after we were together, an energetic, empathetic symptom I had dismissed.

“Do you want to rendezvous before Friday?” I was afraid there’d be complications with the surgery, that he’d be out of commission for good, that I may never see him again.

“My place or yours?” He asked.

“You’re the one having surgery—whatever’s best for you.” I was trying to be accommodating.

“I’ll come over after traffic dies down around eight,” he said before he hung up.

I had never had sex in my new bed. It was my virgin bed. I had kept it that way for nine months. We had even had sex on the floor because I didn’t want to have sex in my bed unless it was my boyfriend who spent the night and went to breakfast with me the next morning. He had made the comment, “What, the bed is just for special people?”

But tonight was special. He played the cancer card.

He said he needed people to make him laugh, to stay strong. But when he came in and hugged me, there was no usual little pat of distance, we just sort of sunk into each other, like we were sinking into the news. Usually when we made love, there was a potpourri of porn talk. But things were different that night. At one point, my denial and defenses crumbled and I started crying. He said, "What's wrong?"

I covered it with, “I’m doing my tantric breathing.” He always made jokes about my tantric breath during sex.

But as we continued, I said, “Don’t leave me.” As if fucking me and fighting for his life were actually intertwined.

There is a comfort when we fight. Neither of us is getting too close for comfort. When he says something particularly mean or hurtful, I can rationalize he’s an asshole and be mad at him all over again.

But when there is silence, I worry. It is the silence that scares me.

Grading Essays

When I was growing up, I spent the night at my girlfriend’s house and we played Barbies, watched Nightmare on Elm Street, and looked at the penises in her father’s Hustler magazines. I thought we were living on the edge. Alas, by the standards of my students, my Middle of America upbringing is very tame.

I just asked my students to write an essay about violence. When I was young, we had the comedy, Throw Mama From The Train. You remember, Billy Crystal? My student wrote about how robbers took over the bus that his Grandmother was on in Mexico City, took her purse and jewelry, and threw her off it at 60 miles an hour.

A ninth grade girl was transferred in my class after she went off and started swearing at another teacher. I started to read her essay about spending the night at a friend’s house. The friend’s father comes home, drunk and starts beating the mother. Apparently, he does this every Friday night. Her and her friend are told to lock themselves in the bathroom. The mother grabs a black box, runs up the stairs with a bloody, broken nose, and shoots the father in the legs. The girl writes, “I’ve seen dead bodies before, but there was blood all over.” She goes on to say, “I learned you can only push someone so far until they explode.”

I’m realizing I should have given them the funny story assignment—you know, where they tell me all the warm, fuzzy things about growing up in South Central Los Angeles.

A Christmas Story

So before he was diagnosed with cancer, we were having sex on Christmas and he called me, "White Bitch." Yes, I'm dreaming of a white Christmas.

I said, "What did you say?"

He started back peddling with, "I was just talking dirty...I didn't mean to ruin the mood."

But I think I said something like, "Tell me how much you love this white bitch.” Then I told the story all over town because it is FUNNY once you get over the shock and offense of it all. I think we broke through a barrier because I had been reading him part of the short story about him and how his mother doesn't want him to be with a white woman—how white people eat baked beans, like I did growing up at my Grandma's, how we are trying to figure out why we keep fucking after all these years. Is it jungle fever?

We had this moment where he was complaining about how it's always tit for tat with me. I said, “I'm not good at relationships.”

He said, “Me either.” He gave me a bottle of champagne that he took from catering a party. He asked, "What did you get me for Christmas?"

I said, "Nothing, what did you want?"

He said, “Something from the heart.”

I feel like I've given him my heart, so why does he want something from my heart?

Then we had this conversation about socks, how he needed socks or something…I can’t even remember the context. I said, “I’ll get you some socks from the beach.”

He complained, “They're cheap. No, I’ll get my own socks from Target, they're better.”

When my sister’s husband died, I got boxes of stuff. In one, was a necklace of a naked man and a woman entwined in an embrace.

So the next time him and I were together, I told him this story about socks, my heart, and how I was lying in bed one night when I realized I wanted to give him the necklace because he was the best sex I’ve ever had. He said, “Thanks for the story. I’ve heard it. It’s from the heart. Keep the necklace, because I’ll lose it.”

So when my healer gave me these “KAMA FOOTRA, the socks you won’t want to take off in bed!” that she was gifted from someone because they weren’t her style, I thought it was like God giving me the perfect gift for him.

Maybe after he puts on his underwear in case he has to run out, he can put on his socks too.

Filling My Gills

We used to swim in the rain as children. It was magical really—the drops as they fell on the water, the thunder, the lightning. It doesn’t sound like a good idea, as I write it, but I had my heart on swimming today even though it rained.

My friend who has her Masters in public health from UCLA advised me to get the swine flu shot. Almost in horror she gasped, “You work around all those kids…you are bound to get it…we are all bound to get it.”

A counselor at a meeting today was talking about the student’s attendance. She said, “Those kids that were standing out in the rain today are going to be sick tomorrow.”

So I agonized. I did use a lot of Kleenexes today—maybe I shouldn’t go swimming, my hair wet for class walking through the rain. Is there even a connection about rain making you sick? Or is it an LA thing, where the world stops when it rains!

When I found out my gay best friend died it was pouring that night I went for my walk. I listened to Diana Ross and Sheriff’s “When I’m With You” for the entire hour or more I walked in the rain. It didn’t even bother me that my tennis shoes were skwishing water with each step. It seemed fitting that I should be drenched. I was between worlds, my legs moving, my heart half in bardo.

As I dove into the water this afternoon, I was escaping the animal world for a moment, filling my gills. Steam was coming off the surface of the water. The pool is always warmer than the air when it rains—a big, hot bath. I am between worlds, the water world beneath me, the clouded sky above me. Moving in the amniotic fluid of the womb, swimming with my sister in the rain again, breathing out the day under water, popping my head up for breath, continuing my day as I walk with my wet hair in the rain.

Like a Fish Needs a Bicycle

When I first saw the bicycles unlocked around the campus at USC, I was very confused. I thought, are these University bikes that everyone can ride and that’s why they aren’t locked? I mean, we are in the inner-city of Los Angeles. In New York City, the man at the bike shop sold me this twenty pound thick chain to wear around my waist because the U lock wasn’t strong enough.

I asked a man walking through campus what the deal was. He said, “These are rich kids. They have their bike stolen, they just buy another. What’s a hundred bucks to them? Nothing.”

When my sister was in high school, she purchased a ten-speed from K-Mart on sale with money from her paper route. She painted it red and bought yellow foamy pad for the handle bars. Someone made fun of it, that it was a Ronald McDonald bike. She was so very hurt. The irony is, one summer night, she and her best friend rode their bikes to McDonalds for ice cream. She leaned hers against the glass window with the painted golden arch so she could sit at a table against the window and see her bike. She saw a man ride off with it.

She was traumatized. My parents yelled at her, that it was her fault for not locking it up, even though it was her money that bought it. I just remember shame. Her heavy shame, sorrow, and beating herself up over the lost bike.

My car window was smashed on the street in Venice by my apartment. My hat, school bag with student anthologies, and Thomas guide were stolen. I guess the criminal wanted to know where to drive to next? I went in to teach that day, grieving my hat. My favorite hat! Who steals a person’s hat? My inner-city student said to me, “At least you have a hat to steal.”

When I was living in NYC, I had a wool hat, with a round rim, that everyone referred to as a condom ready to roll down. I LOST that hat. Tragic. I just wrote a boy from junior high on facebook that took my friend's flower in eighth grade. He asked her if she had a "hat." I didn't know about those kinds of hats.

I was too busy pondering, "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle."

Memo to My Dead Gay Friend

Remember that time in high school when we were lying on the floor in the den—I straddled you with my legs and did the move from Basic Instinct? We laughed so hard it hurt. I thought about that the other day and laughed out loud. You said you never saw me as being sexual until that moment. The ironic thing being, I was totally making fun of that over-the-top Hollywood scene in my over-the-top comedic way with a gay man.

When I called to tell you about my sister, I said, “Well, you won’t have to get the Frappuccino mix, she’s dead.” Today, I wondered if maybe you two are drinking Frappuccinos together and laughing.

I was feeling like there’s no way out of class structure and poverty. So I went to church. The youth group performed “He Lives In You.” I felt God was giving me a gift, a sign, because you put “He Lives In You” by Diana Ross on my mix CD. It was like we were in high school at an assembly. The youth group raised $10,000 selling their CDs for money for education in Ethiopia. It made me cry. I bought their CD. I left with a little more hope and inspiration.

I miss laughing with you.

Letter to My Lymphoma Latin Lover

Remember when I said I loved you and you said that’s the problem? Maybe the problem would be if you loved me back.

I love your back. Sometimes I feel like I’ve got your back. I wrote about pressing my body against your back and never heard back. And I know you want me to get off your back. But what if I won’t back down like the Tom Petty song. What if I stand my ground?

I wanted to sleep over when I got back.

But you fought me off to get off your back and even though I won’t back down, you say you have to cut me loose. Oh, here we go back…

With my back up against the wall, I am barking back.

Write back.

SOMA Festival

Going to a black box theatre is like going home for me. It is my church. It is where I have prayed for many years of my life. It takes me back to college, to New York City, to LA…it reminds me I am an artist even if I became a teacher.

Somatic movement is fascinating to me. So few people are even familiar with the term. Somatic education is the study of the body using modalities such as Alexander technique, The Feldenkrais Method, Rolfing, and/or Continuum Movement. Different practitioners will define it differently, I’m sure. But it has changed my life.

I was watching a performance tonight at the SOMA Festival. To feel the resonance of another’s movement in your own body is so powerful. It is the power of empathy washing through your tissues in micro-movements. When I would read the brochures and see the pictures of Continuum, I didn’t get it. One night, I woke up in the middle of the night. It was almost like my dead sister, who was a dancer, led me to the brochure and told me to attend the workshop. The founder of the work was a professional dancer. The work brings me back to me. Witnessing the performances brings me back to my sister.

Tonight, I saw a dancer who was in Paul Taylor's Dance Company for ten years. As she did a duet, it was so incredible to witness wave motion between two people coupling like DNA. Words fall short. Videos don’t do it justice. Some things, you just have to be there.

Eating a Lamb Chop

I was never raised eating lamb. Silence of the Lambs was my favorite film in sixth grade. I was so moved by the theme of the film—how she just wanted to save one screaming lamb from the slaughter. I was vegetarian from age sixteen to twenty-four. While I was catering in New York City, I saw a sheet of filet mignon being thrown in the trash and I thought, “Who am I saving?” It was then and there I started eating lamb.

I had thrown a lamb chop in the oven this morning to eat at lunch. I went to the school cafeteria where my teacher’s assistant was sitting. I asked if I could join her. She said how fancy a lamb chop seemed. I thought to myself—the ironic thing is, a plastic knife and fork isn’t going to cut it to eat this lamb chop. I am going to have to eat it like a turkey leg. Very barbaric and primitive when you are sitting with your teacher’s assistant for the first time for a meal.

As I tore into the flesh of my chop, I daintily tried to ask her how the tutoring went with our special ed students. One of the young men lost both of his parents this past year and takes care of his younger brother. He is a conscientious student, a football player, and yet, a bit of a lost lamb.

There is still that part of me that wants to save one lamb. There is now a part of me that has a taste for the finer cut. But my teeth tear into it without the proper knife and fork, creating my own etiquette for how to eat a lamb chop.