I Wish I Was An Elephant

I forgot that sadness has a place in poetry,
despite despair's clear handwriting
on the dingy walls of art.

I forgot that angry was a product of pain,
despite the rage I can wield like a weapon.

I forgot about love being found and not borne,
despite remembering the kind white softness of my mother's hands,
and the earnest spittle of my father's goodnight kiss.

I forgot how art can heal,
could only stare at the ragged hole rejection left.

Attention, Wells Fargo; Even Your Employees Get It

I recently had some medical problems I had to take off work for, not to mention pay for out of pocket.  I'm moving to Nashville at the end of the month, so time and money are very important.  As me and my boyfriend were doing our finances for the move, and the weeks after, I decided I'd try to get an economic hardship forbearance on my student loan($315/month, serviced by Wells Fargo) for the month of November.  I figured that unemployment would be a decent economic hardship.  Turns out I was wrong.

Wells Fargo has changed their forbearance/deferment policies at least 3 times since they've taken over my Wachovia private loans.  The policy changes have included losing any sort of deferment for a private loan, and only one forbearance is allowed per year, no matter your employment status.  I took a forbearance in April, because my shitty job was only scheduling me 3 times a week(at 8.50/hour-- FUCK YOU MAX BRENNER).

I wasn't intending to get upset at the lady.  Dealing with student loan servicers over the past 5 years has taught me that you get much more done when you are nice to a person over the phone.  They are working for a living just like me, and more often than not, are not evil hardasses.  The lady I spoke today was very kind, though maybe not the most well-informed, as I told her about my recent injury.  She checked my account, and regretfully informed me that I had no more forbearance time until next year.  My father co-signed on my loans, so Wells Fargo is much less understanding about my personal circumstances.  To them, the co-signer is one more way to get paid.

I didn't mean to get upset, to cry, but my voice shook as I thanked her for her time.  She apologized, sounding almost on the verge of tears herself.  "You could consolidate, but you already have a better interest rate than you'd get right now.  They have to do something, because these kids can't pay these loans, not right out of college, not anymore.  The money's just not there, the jobs aren't there.  It's just not there."  She sighed sadly, "I'm sorry, honey."   Her unexpected sympathy made me tear up more, so I agreed with her that it was very hard.  She apologized for not being able to help me and we hung up.

My parents helped me get these loans, because few 19 year olds look good enough on paper to guarantee a $50,000 student loan.  I love my parents, and while we've had some rough patches, I respect what they've done for me.  However, if I were the only signer on this loan, and had the choice, I'd default on the fucker as soon as humanly possible.  Wells Fargo has been bailed out by the federal government and is BIGGER than it was BEFORE the stock market crash.  I'm 25 years old, uninsured, a waitress, and about to relocate and there is NOTHING that Wells Fargo can do for me about a $315 student loan payment?  I get emails from them, offering me $25,000 if I switch to paperless statements.  Why can I not get any help?

I urge you, if you have a private student loan from the big four (Wells Fargo, Citigroup, JPMorganChase, or Bank of America):  Default on the fucker.  Take your money out of their banks.  Protect yourself from their corrosive, insidious greed.

On the same topic, I've got two credit cards.  One, a Capital One card,I got when I turned 18.  The other pays for the computer I'm using now.  I've been making more money than I used to at work, and have been paying over the minimum balance on both credit cards.  Next thing I know, my mailbox is deluged with offers not only from Capital One("We see that you've been doing a great job!  Have another credit card!") but from Bank of America, Citibank, Orchard Bank and any number of other shadow companies all under the same big four financiers.  They don't stop, because people still take these credit cards.  When you're under $50,000 of credit card debt, another $500 at 25% interest doesn't seem to be that big of a deal.  They don't stop, because they don't care.

What I'm saying isn't news to anyone, that much is clear from the widespread Occupy protests that have reverberated around the world.  However, the tone of these protests seems a little precious to me, a little too self-aware and immersed in the meta-aesthetic of the Internet.  This doesn't faze a corporation whose government not only saved it from failing, but bolsters it still, and gives it the same rights as a human being, but without the same responsibility of paying taxes.   I'm not sure what the outcome of this movement will be, but I'm certain that until the gap between the poor and the rich is, if not closed, lessened, the discontent and anger that permeates this country will bring everyone- the Big Banks, the little protesters, your parents, your nextdoor neighbor- to their knees.

Stay strong.  And, if anything, Occupy Your Own Mind.  Form a real opinion and make it heard.

The Getaway #2

"My hands," Nadeena's voice was raspy with crying and exhaustion.  "No, my fingernails, they're still so goddamn dirty."
Eli's heart twisted like a churn through something hard and nearly dried at that.  A tear ran silently down his face as he, deliberately now, stared out the windshield into the grey sheets of rain.  He threw his head to the side slightly and blinked it away impatiently.  She could cry, wail and carry on, but he had to be made of stone.  One of them had to, or they were completely and utterly fucked.

Nadeena moaned a little and took a deep, hiccupping breath.
"Okay, we have to stop somewhere and get some goddamned... baby wipes, or something."  She shook her head at this, a laugh mixing in to a sob.  "And a Dr. Pepper."

Eli laughed despite himself, and the situation, and the rain.  "Yeah, I guess we should.  I guess we fuckin' should."  He laughed again, louder, suddenly filled with warmth and gratitude for the circumstances that brought them together, damned as they were.

"I wiped my nose on your sleeve," Nadeena giggled a little.
"Okay.  Phew.  Okay, baby.  I think we're nearly out of these mountains.  Canton should have a place.  We need gas, too."
"You go in and pay.  I'll pump gas.  Can't be paying for baby wipes with blood all over me."  She laughed once more, abruptly, ironically, and straightened up off of Eli's arm.
"After that, we gotta drive east.  All night.  Hell, even maybe to South Carolina.  Myrtle Beach, maybe.  Beach sound good, baby?"
"Yeah, that sounds pretty good.  Baby."

They lapsed into silence as the cartoonish curving of the mountain highway began to straighten out, and the lights illuminating the road began to strobe regularly through the cab of the truck.

"Canton, 2 miles."  Eli absently read the sign aloud, but Nadeena didn't stir.  She had fallen into a deep nap, face against her own shoulder.

"Nadeena, Nadeena baby, wake up.  Do you still want a Dr. Pepper?"

Nadeena awoke instantly with an uncanny alertness.  "Yeah.  And chips."

Eli cracked a smile at that and made a right into a brightly lit gas station.

"Don't forget the wipes, babe."  Nadeena kissed him and nuzzled the roughness of his cheek.  He turned his face to kiss her fully on the mouth.  He couldn't help himself and brought his hand up into her hair, pulling her up into him.  He wanted her now, he felt his heart beat in his hands are he ran his fingers through her curls.  She rose up and gripped the back of his head.  She pulled away for a brief, painful second.
"Drive over under that tree, baby."  And her hand was slipped under the band of his boxers.

They made love like warring tribes that night.  It was brief and brutal, and any illusion of secrecy was destroyed by the squeaking of the pick-up truck's axles, and the slow hoot of Nadeena, releasing the clock's spring of tension that had been winding for the last 36 hours.  She lay her head back against the fogged window and grinned at him, lighting a cigarette.
"Now we both need baby wipes."  She watched him pull up his jeans and thrilled a little in the coolness of the leather seat against her naked thigh.

The gas station was empty, save for the attendant, who had very little reaction when the door's bell jingled at Eli's entrance.

He could smell Nadeena all over himself, but smelling like pussy was better than smelling like blood.  Or gore.

As Eli headed towards the drink cooler, he felt the hairs on his neck go up suddenly.  There was someone in here looking for him, he knew it.

Hands shaking, he looked blindly at the colorful soda bottles and shut the door without taking anything.  The shelf at the end of the aisle had a shelf of bug spray.  He grabbed a can and bit his lip.  He sprung around he corner of the aisle and immediately knocked over a life-sized cut-out of Dale Earnhart, Jr., holding a Mountain Dew can.

The clerk looked up slowly from the glossy magazine he was sleeping over.  Eli opened his mouth to form an explanation, but nothing came out.  He shrugged, the bug spray can still in his hand.  Shaking his head, he replaced the can where he found it.  He got their snacks and some water, pausing briefly before the small condom selection.  He grinned and pocketed a box of three.

Baby wipes, sodas and food.  He put down a twenty.  "Whatever's left, put it on pump-number-three."

uncensored

It’s not that sweeping, declarative, whole, beautiful sentences that I wrote last summer are gone. Just disappeared.  It’s that I have less to write sentences about, less sub- and un-conscious desires to ferret out of not just my tangled synapses, but those of a man who became my mutual muse, secret passion, and ultimately, the love of my life.  Love, easy love, is not that conducive to good writing.  Want, now there’s something to write about.  Unrequitedness, desire under tables and through notebook pages.  These things beg for pen to paper, like lips to lips, like hands running illicitly and so strangely innocent over hands.  Now, I have some worry that my shine may have worn off, that he may no longer be quite so charmed(in a morbid way) by my bouts of depression, my fits of rage, my manic mornings of giggling and product.  The ins and outs of me and what I mean to him.  The stringy cosmic stuff that bound us together from even earlier than we knew.  No, not after this long.  Not after this much.  Distance is a terrible sort of numbing useless pain.  Something you can only write about for so long; longing and loneliness for someone who is undoubtedly yours.  Unsympathetic.  Whiny. 

I want to cut large swaths through the teeming crowds of people who live here.  Their fears and loves and losses and triumphs and frustration and release all batter at the thin thin wall of my skullskullskull.  The skull that contains the litany of disappointments and failures, not-quites and not-yets and all of the things that I just couldn’t get my shit together and do.  The show I didn’t write, the poetry I drunkenly recited, the boys I fragrantly fucked and was never, ever loved by.  The embarrassments, the entanglements, the tragedies and the stubbed toes.  The lost nights to whiskey, wine, coke, weed, dick.  The times I woke up on trains, the mornings I woke up in boy-beds, aching and cramped.  The nerves I let hang raw in black-box theaters across Lower Manhattan, expecting to get as much back as I put into it.  The always-present need for money interfering in my everything.  The friends who can’t find the time to read my play.  The unreturned phone-calls and dishonored promises.  The cut-rate headshots, the re-definition of myself, the striving for a commercial “look”, the commercials I never wanted to do.  The auditions I knew I nailed, and never heard from again.  The lack of feedback.  The lack of validation.  The city I came to to search for both of those animals, like unicorns or Yeti.  Something mythical and if photographed, disputable. 

This city is constantly masturbating, is constantly mutilating, constantly throwing itself against the bordering rivers and the heaving, breathing industry that encapsulates it.  There are hundreds of thousands of protesters downtown right now, and they are being beaten.   Shoved.  The city anthropomorphized into batons and uniformed thugs.  I should go down there, but I won’t, probably.  I don’t want get arrested.  I don’t want to get hurt.  I am not brave in that way, not right now.  Not as a nearly 26 year old woman with a future and a little house and a wonderful man waiting for me down South.  I peel the posters, postcards and pictures off the wall.  Smile as I sit on my loft bed, remembering living with Holly.  Remembering the struggles I’ve gone through just to live here, just for the privilege of remaining on this island.  In the middle of it.  Nothing more.  Everything else is struggle, as well.  Leaving the house is akin to jumping into a pit of howling, screaming monkeys and hoping they won’t notice me.  The cold has come back, the wind too.  I yell and hiss at the wind, cursing it for chilling me right down to the middle of my heart.  I’m ready for more moderate weather, and a more moderate life. 

The double-dutch competition that is New York City has finally tired me out, but at least I’m escaping without tangled ropes and burnt ankles.

Autumnus Amor #1

Like a man
who lost his hat but sees it
Fall looms.

Laugh in the dark.

I honestly never feel more powerful than when I must, absolutely must, stop the flow of blood from my vagina.
It reminds me that my basic choices in life are to fuck or kill.  Fuck or kill.  This is applicable in many different situations, more than you might think.
New manager?  Total misogynist shithead?  Fuck or kill.
Asshole kid on the corner hissing at you?  Fuck or kill.
Manuscript staring you in the face?  Fuck or kill.
Money's low?  Fuck or kill.
Boyfriend's late?  Fuck or kill.
Mouse problem?  Fuck or kill.
Dishes dirty?  Fuck or kill.

It's one or the other, and it's your choice, no matter what.  Laugh in the dark.  We're the line between living and dying, and never is that more clear than once a month, for a week.  The proof is in the panties.  Take your power and dig your fingers deep into the loamy depths of femininity.  Your feminine side isn't pink, it's a deep, inviting, passionate, undeniable red.

My body is stupid like a dog.

My body is stupid like a dog.
It is pacing this room that was ours,
baying occasionally, to keep up appearances,
and expecting you back any second, or twelve hours from now-
whatever an hour might be, to the inside of my thigh.

And even though my too-well-knowing brain,
has wrung countless tears out of my eyes,
there is a sort of sad dumb optimism,
in the curve of my shoulder,
in the arch of my foot,
in the bow of my lips,
that you're just around the corner-
whatever a corner might be, to the inside of my thigh.

The numb havoc of separation and the torrential downpour of waiting,
course through my synapses,
and my young dumb body lies, relaxed, maybe happy even,
in a sort of slack-jawed, canine anticipation
of your inevitable return to my bed-
whatever a bed might be, to the inside of my thigh.

The Getaway

"Straight lines, baby, straight lines."

Sweat beaded at Eli's temples as he clutched Nadeena's small hand in his.  He tried to keep eye contact with her and not steer the small pick-up into a dividing wall.  Whenever his eyes flicked towards the highway, he squeezed her hand that much tighter.

"Here, straight lines in straight rows, baby."  He cooed this at her and rubbed his thumb over her knuckle.  Nadeena breathed a little easier each time he did it.

He murmured this incantation a few more times, barely heard over the spattering of the flat Appalachian raindrops against the windshield.  He wasn't trying to compete with the rain.  Nadeena pressed her head against his shoulder and hiccuped a last watery sob.

"My hands." Nadeena's voice was raspy with crying and exhaustion.  "No, my fingernails, are still so goddamn dirty."

Two Public Masturbators, One Night

So, reading Today A Man Touched Me On The Subway And So I Hit Him has driven me to write about my own experiences with street harassment, in the hopes that I can empower other women to fight back against the cat-calling, the kissy and hissing noises, and the disgusting comments.

My most vehement recent memory of this disgusting behavior actually occurred in early April, before it was very hot.  I was at a burlesque show, hanging out and drinking.  After the main performances, several performers took the stage to do a little go-go dancing and make some money.  The bar began to empty out, and I headed to the bathroom.  I turned the corner and saw a man standing half in, half out of the bathroom.  I was a few shots of whiskey in, but I knew something was both not right and instantly recognizable about the situation: the man was jerking off in public, hoping to get caught.  Perhaps he assumed that, because the girls were dancing and seductive on stage, they were equally as accessible and accommodating off stage.  Whatever the reason, I was appalled.  What vile behavior.  What a disgusting breach of decorum at a show where the idea was to celebrate sexuality and the women who embodied it.  I used a separate bathroom, hurriedly, and when I came out, the perv had closed the door.  I ran to tell my friend Peter, who's a huge planet of a man.  Of course, the perv had hidden himself, and Peter didn't find him.  10 minutes later, a performer went to the bathroom and came back in a panic; the pervert was out again.  Once more, he hid himself before Peter found him.  By this point, all the performers knew what was going on and we had crowded into a single booth together.  The perv came out of the bathroom and, astonishingly, tried to come sit with us.  I felt a visceral revulsion as he sat next to me.  He tried to chat us all up and he smelled like fear and sweat.  No one wanted to talk to him, and we tried to ignore him.  Eventually, he got up and moved to another booth... only to start jerking off in plain sight.  This, of course, was the last straw, and both Peter and the DJ told the guy to get the fuck out.  He left without any trouble, but the night was over.  Everyone felt scandalized, and more importantly, unsafe.  We said our goodbyes, and I made my way to the subway station.  Stunningly, this evening of sexual predation wasn't over.

I dozed off on my long ride uptown.  The train was deserted, so I stretched out a line of seats and leaned my head against the wall.  A few stops later, I was awoken by a strange feeling.  I rubbed my eyes and saw a man, sitting across from me, jerking off to my sleeping body!  What the fuck?!  I was in shock, grabbed my bag and moved to the end of the car, where a single woman was sitting.  I immediately told her what the guy was doing, and she grimaced in disgust.  "It's late," she said, "All the perverts are out."

What sort of sick sub-conscious permission is there for things like this to happen and exist?  Seriously?  Masturbating in public?  To a sleeping woman?  To a performing woman?  This is terrifying.  This is disgusting, and terribly, makes me feel like I did something to deserve it, when I most certainly did not.  None of the performers at the burlesque show did; burlesque is the opposite of deviance and predation, it's a celebration of women and sex.  But they were made to feel as if they could not express themselves and remain safe from sexual predators. I was made to feel like I couldn't ride the subway and be safe from some man pleasuring himself while looking at me!  What if I hadn't woken up when I did?  What if the pervert had been allowed to finish, just me and him on that subway car?  What if I'd been drunker, completely passed out?  This behavior is unacceptable and stupefyingly scary.  This is what cat-calling, hissing, and kissy noises implies: That a woman is an object made to stimulate and satisfy a man, any man, any time he wants, no matter the woman's comfort level or mental state.  This is why street harassment is inappropriate and contributes to an atmosphere of fear, where I question whether I should wear shorts or a skirt for my own comfort and desire to express myself.  We have to fight back.  Throw the middle finger up, brush your shoulder off and keep walking.  Let the assholes know we have brains and hearts and are not there to stimulate their misogynist fantasies.  Fuck up the paradigm of misogyny that fuels street harassment.

Wine&Advil

I feel like I'm one hundred fucking years old.
I can't sustain a single emotion for longer than 15 minutes.
I can't take a piss without bleeding and moaning.
I can't eat a meal without cramping and hating.
I can't drink a glass of wine without tearing up like a fucking 15-year-old reading lovenotes passed a grade before.
"Do not take more than 4 tablets a day." I, and every other woman on the planet with a gasping, wheezing uterus laugh in your face.  I'm 8 down, and two glasses of wine to go.
Phases of the moon drag me fast-forward through phases of life 'til I'm hobbled and bent, tear-stained and unloved, making deals with God(or more likely, Satan) for a demise hastened, but more bloody than ever.

Pink Collar #1

I bent over, my bareness unfolded behind me.  I heard his low murmur of appreciation and was glad he couldn't see my face: The relaxation that flooded through me was so profound and consuming, my tongue lolled out of my mouth for a moment.  I knew what he was seeing, that perfect pulled-tight pocket of promise I held taut between my thighs, cocooned by my lace panties.  I fell a little bit more into the pillow underneath me.  His whispers were more frequent.  I barely moved, but I dripped.  And I slid, and I rocked, and I hissed.  I didn't need to be fast, or funny, or accurate, or cool.  All I needed to be was now.

A flash of light, and a crinkle of stiff paper.  A fiver.  I patted it and smiled myopically at the blur of face behind it.  I turned around and bent over, my face angled over my shoulder, but not looking at Him.  They were all Him.  The big Him.  It wasn't Dad, or God.  It was bigger than either of those.  It was Him at His most opposite of Her.  The ultimate point to prove.  The heat of the spotlight blazed cruel against my skin, but I felt only the freedom.  The release of any thought process other than Look at this.  And now look at this.  You like this, and this, and that of me.  This concave to your convex, this ball to your hinge. Look and lust and lasciviate because I make you.  The only approval I need is already winding and grinding my everyday organ.  Now, you look.  You look and you want.  

Sleep Without Aid: A Brave New World

Dream #1:
I take my dad and my brother to where I used to work, at Max Brenner: Chocolate By The Bald Man.  They are not happy with me, because I ditched the last shift without giving notice.  They don't want me to be there, and chase me and, suddenly a group of super-heroes or secret-agents up and down the stairs and through the air vents, ending abruptly as we jumped, impossibly, from a 4th floor landing to the ground.

Dream #2:  Hanging out with my boys back in Tennessee.  We're playing music and washing dishes, somehow simultaneously.  My best friend, Andrew, is asleep up in a loft bed.  We're washing dishes and taking cool pieces of furniture as we see fit.  We're really rocking out until someone notices Andrew stirring, and we hurry to the living room.  Andrew gets up anyway and screams at some unknown person blasting ghetto rap into his window.  My brother and I leave the house, walking through our old neighborhood, where we come upon a house that my mom foreclosed on(this exact house never existed, but she has foreclosed on a house in the past).  The house is in the same shape as when she left, as if she just got up and moved on.  At this point, my mom's in the room but I'm talking about her as if she's not; "So she just left it this way?  With all this furniture and everything?  Why didn't she just stay here?  She could have figured something out!"  Mom's crying.  I tell my brother that I want the furniture, and would he, if I paid for gas, help me bring a bunch of it back to NYC.  He tears up and shakes his head no very slowly.  I tear up as well.

Dream #3:  After a night of drinking, I end up at a cabin where snow is coming down interminably.  The sister of a guy I used to sleep with(and absolutely adored, incongruent with how he felt about me) is hanging out there, with a few other hipsters that I'm hopelessly not cool enough to talk to.  I feel uncomfortable, and I drink.  Then, the guy comes down, and speaks to me as if he's never seen me before in his life, and yet, propositions me.  "Hey, do you wanna come up to my room with me?"  I laugh and I say, "John, it's me, Sara.  We used to fuck on the regular about a year and a half ago."  The whole time I'm torn between wanting to sleep with him, and wanting to stay faithful to the man I'm with now, who I love.  I resign myself, in the dream, to sleeping with him, to cheating with cognizance.  But John's drunk, and I stay in that area between sleep and awake, waiting for him to make a move, and he passes out.  I, in the dream, am groggy in the morning, like I am usually after sleeping with someone(very little sleeping usually happens, even post-coitally), and I bitchily say I can't believe he fell asleep on me, with me wanting to fuck him so badly.

A Dollar in the Jar is Worth Two in the Bush

So, I went down South for a few days this past weekend, and while watching a massive amount of cable TV, I noticed something both appalling in scope and discouraging in banality.

There's a reality show on VH1 called "Saddle Ranch", that takes place in a mechanical bull restaurant in Los Angeles.  The show follows the inherent drama of the restaurant business.  The symbiotic relationship of show business and serving jobs makes that level of inherent drama extraordinarily high and unbelievably nasty.  The "characters" include all the shot girls, bartenders, and servers that are employed at the restaurant.  And let me say right now, I've been in the restaurant business for over 5 years, as a server, bartender and barista, so the show holds a certain amount of bemusement for me.

The episode I saw has a segment about one of the guy's birthday party.  The guy dates a girl who also works at Saddle Ranch.  The guy's friends, in an inspired move, ordered him a stripper for his birthday party.  Pretty standard, right?  Nothing weird there.  So, cut to the party.  His girlfriend isn't there, but her girls are there.  That's strange, but it's reality TV, so, fine, right?  Fine.

Now, the stripper is dancing.  The boyfriend is sitting and receiving a lapdance from the stripper.  The stripper.  As in, her job is to strip.  She's getting paid to strip and dance up on this guy. The closed-captioning articulates the fervent whispers of the apparently already shit-canned bitch posse:  "Throw the beer at her, Cassie, throw the beer at her."  Cassie is a friend of the girlfriend, not even the girlfriend herself, and is getting visibly more and more upset with what's happening, despite the fact that this woman has been hired to do this job, and is not in some random slutty chick at a bar, trying to move in on her friend's man.  The whispering continues, and finally, Cassie throws a whole plastic cup of beer onto the stripper's back.  Check it out:



This is infuriating for a few of reasons:
1.  The woman is essentially doing her job.  The girl, Cassie, who for all intents and purposes, assaulted her, is a shot girl for Saddle Ranch.  A shot girl.  I know shot girls, I've taken drinks off of shot girls.  I know what they do, and I know how they make their tips.  Anyone who's ever been a bartender or a server knows that you get tipped more, more often, the more effort you put into your appearance and how heavily you (appropriately)flirt with your customers.  Nothing the stripper was doing was outside of her job description or in any way inappropriate.
2.  Cassie, the beer-thrower, feels completely justified and proud of what she did.  As if someone's honor was being threatened or as if she performed a service for her friend.  She doesn't see how closely her job and the stripper's are related, nor will she ever understand how her attack on the stripper was fueled by jealousy, not loyalty.
3.  I'm sure that the level of security varies from agency to agency, but generally, when you go to work, you expect a certain level of safety.  Such as, you aren't going to get attacked by jealous, angry women when you show up or have your costume(that you bought out of pocket) ruined by a trashy bitch's "retaliation" for her bruised sensibility.

We are all just trying to make our rent and pay our bills.  Judging a woman for taking control of her sexuality in a way that is lucrative and sustainable is to be in denial of the ways one uses sex as a tool on a regular basis in most food-service jobs across the world.

In short, I hope there's a re-match, at the Saddle Ranch, so that stripper gets to put a hurtin' on that judgmental wannabe biatch while she's trying to do her job.

Easter

Easter is tiny, multi-colored ovum and bruised feelings, the little one's first exposure to life's dumb cruelties: "Why can't I find an egg?  Why did she find more eggs than I did?  Who the fuck hid these eggs?!"

At least, as a child, you still get candy after that sort of crushing disappointment.  Small pastel promises of sugar, smushed open-handed into your puffy little face, smearing a sticky sweet rainbow into your drying tears.  Somewhere, skittering along the back of your still developing sense of self, you're still wondering, "Why couldn't I find the eggs?  She found so many more, what's wrong with me??"

Skinned knuckles and knees from following the leader of the pack, picking through her abandoned possibilities.

The Knife Doesn't Know Its Sharp

The knife doesn't know its sharp.  It doesn't.  Trust me.  From the most malevolent curve of dagger to the serrated smile of saw, the knife, for all its expressive appeal, does not know its sharp.

The knife is small, but keen, and probably expensive.  I clatter it to the countertop after slicing my apple, and it spins on the stainless steel fulcrum of its bolster.  Losing its centrifugal force abruptly, jutting straight out from the counter, seeming insolent in its outright danger to anything that may saunter by.  Brushed metal, honed to somewhat of an edge, and quite a bit of a point, with the wrong sharpener and lots of enthusiasm.  Sharp.  Aching into the air with all the priapic promise of a lover's cock.  I grab it by its base and set it right again; the vibration sung by the metal remains in the air, half a second still.

I think, "How dangerous, how irresponsible!", chastising the knife.  But, the knife doesn't know.

What happens if the knife knows?

The Killer

Evan Reilly flipped the gilt pages of the King James with the thumb of his right hand. Something about cheap motels you could see from the highway prompted the owners of such motels, for the most part, to allocate a great deal of their budgets for a quality Bible in each room. Perhaps it was to offset the guaranteed damnation of the standard $25 hourly rate. Evan did not know, nor, at this particular moment, care.

He dropped the hefty tome back into its bedside abode and shut the drawer. Looked out the front window to the windshield of his '93 Pontiac hatchback. His crucifix air freshener hung down, perfectly still and functional, proclaiming his love for Jesus to the world. He thought of his trunk and what it hid there; two very important things. The first was a black trash bag covering two cardboard boxes of Bibles, each identical to the one he'd just let fall from his hand.

The musty smell of the things(and not his religious zeal) was what clinched his decision to disseminate them among roadside hotels throughout America. He'd long been intoxicated by the smell of libraries and bookstores.

It was as if untapped knowledge had a smell, or the words, laying unread and uncherished yet, burned fragrant with fevers of desire. Evan wasn't sure, but he thought that if words lusted for anything, it was to be comprehended, in their entirety. He hated to cuckold them, leaving them unsated between covers. He'd lost count of how many times he'd come to at the tap of a friendly librarian, or a not so friendly security guard, having curled up in a faraway corner with a book.

The second very important thing was a woman. It was a book that brought them together.

It was early evening in Columbus, Ohio, and Evan had stopped at the first place he'd seen in an hour on interstate 71, hopeful for a bathroom and possibly a beer: Der WienerenSingerHaus. Ever since Kentucky, he'd seen nothing but der Wienerschnitzel and Bier Hauses out the window, and his stomach growled at the thought of a sausage the size of his arm and a sudsy stein of beer before he bedded down for the night in yet another sleazy motel. Der WienerenSingerHaus specialized in both sausages and beer, as well as nightly karaoke, and the interior décor was proof of their dedication to both; braided blonde frauleins carried trays of steaming kraut and schnitzel to eager tables, and the sound system boomed the Top 40 above the heads of frenzied wienerhounds.

He'd eaten his wienerschnitzel and was nursing his beer through another chapter of The Universe in a Nutshell when a small, blonde woman began noisily setting up a speaker and a microphone at the far end of the room, underneath the karaoke screens. Evan was wearied by her very appearance; her hair sprung from her head at odd angles and ripped fishnets in a multitude of colors covered all four limbs. She muttered to herself as she routed the cable from the speaker to a pedal and then through the microphone.

The wiry squeal of a hot mic quieted the dining room for a brief second, as the blonde cupped the mic to her face like a lover. She affected a silky alto purr into the microphone.

"Excuse me, everyone, put your wieners down please." She paused and waited. The clank and murmur of restaurant bustle resumed without much change. Evan resumed reading, shaking his head at another roadside oddity.

"Excuse me, Achtung!" The tiny woman had marched up to Evan and pulled his book out of his hands. "No reading during my sets, sorry, house rules." She regarded the cover of the book and barked out a laugh.

"Stephen Hawking, huh? Pretty heavy stuff. They made me try to read this shit in college, but I just paid my roommate off." She looked at him, gauging his reaction. Evan was stunned and awkward in the face of such brazenness.

"I— please give me my book back."

She looked from him to the book and back again. "Why should I?"

"Uh, because it's mine."

"Oh yeah? Well, this restaurant is mine, at least for the next 15 minutes, and you have to listen to me."

"Fine, okay, but please give me back my book."

"What's your name?"

"Uh, Evan."

"Well, 'uh-Evan', my name's Kelly, but you can call me Killy." Once again, she waited for his reaction. "You know, like 'Kelly' but kind of like 'Billy' and also like 'Killer', cuz I fuckin' kill on stage.  And off.  Y'know.  I mean, not literally, or whatever, but I do." Every time she said the word 'kill', the upper left part of Evan's lip twitched.

She turned and tossed the book without looking. It hit Evan's chest and he caught it in a fluster. Kelly(bastardizing the name to 'Killy' made his sphincter clench)lurched spastically back to her mic stand and wrapped her leg around like a stripper.

"Attention, wiener-eaters of all shapes and sizes. Your entertainment has arrived. You, sir, put the wiener down. Yes, sir, I love wieners too. In fact, this first song is about how much I like wieners, so listen up."

As her set wore on, Evan began to piece together what exactly was going on; performance art. She was a performance artist. He'd only read about them in books, and never thought he'd see one out here, in the boondocks of Ohio, but here she was. He could feel her attention gripping him like a dog grips a particularly savory piece of gristle. 

She introduced the second song by tying her microphone cord around her neck like a noose, held the loose end up with her right hand and stuck her tongue out, dead. 

"This song," she sighed, "is about love."

She "vomited" a handful of glitter at him and kicked over the other chair at his table during a particularly passionate aria of absurdity. At one point, she encased herself, microphone and all, in a cocoon of some stretchy pink fabric, moaning and hooting. Finally, her set ended and as she busied herself with untangling the cables from her feather boa, Evan settled his bill and stealthily left Der WienerenSingenhaus, just as a second, unsolicited, beer was being placed on his table by a smiling, Nordic waitress.

He was adjusting his rearview mirror when a frantic pounding on the passenger side window startled him. Kelly. Cigarette held with her teeth, gestured angrily with the mic stand in her left hand, and a clutch of evilly colored cables in her right.

"Hey, man! Come on, I buy you a drink and you walk out on me?"

Evan attempted, at first, to ignore her, and then pretend he couldn't hear her. However, he forgot that the passenger side door was unlocked; Kelly figured that out rather quickly. She chucked her cables and her purse into the bucket seat and nearly took out Evan's right eye with the mic stand as she attempted to swing it into the back seat.

"Where you going, man? Any chance you're headed towards Toledo?"

"Uh, I'm going the opposite way." This was, in fact, completely untrue.

"That's completely untrue," Kelly snarled a bit as she clicked her seatbelt into place. "But, since I'm already here, let's go."

Evan looked from Kelly to his hands gripping the steering wheel at 10 and 2. His lip curled as she flicked her lighter over and over again, trying to relight her cigarette. This was why he rarely went on dates; the tiny things women did, from the compulsion to fill silence with voice to the overpowering scent of the various things they sprayed and rubbed on themselves to attract mates, aggravated him.

"So," Kelly breathed out cigarette smoke and propped her feet up on the dashboard. "Where we headed?" 

Evan started the car and, without thinking, reached behind the passenger seat as he backed the car out of the parking space.

"Hey man, gettin' kinda fresh, aren't you?" She didn't move, despite her protestation, and rolled down the window a crack to ash her cigarette. "What kind of tunes do you listen to, Evan? Since you obviously didn't like my set that much. Classical, something like that? I sing opera, too, want to hear that?" She began to run up and down a high-pitched scale, gesturing dramatically with her hands.

Evan narrowed his eyes as he pulled onto the highway. "Stop that."

Kelly, delighted that she'd gotten his attention, only squealed higher, until she collapsed into a pile of coughing giggles.

"Not your style, okay man, got it. Let's see…" She began rifling through her purse, and Evan began pulling off to the side of the road, near a dense grove of trees.

"How about Queen? You have a tape deck?" Evan put the car in park.

"Sweet, Freddie Mercury is my-"

Evan grabbed her by the hair and slammed her head into the dashboard, silencing her. He sat for a moment, as her body slumped forward, and breathed easy for the first time in an hour. He pulled the trunk lever and got out. As he hefted her tiny body over his shoulder, he noticed she was still breathing. He'd decide what to do about that once he got a good night's sleep and had some time to pray about it. Until then, she would nap, rather uncomfortably, in the trunk of his car.

Women were chatty, expendable creatures, as far as he could tell. Having captured one he felt accomplished, masculine. Like a hunter, though more like the misanthropic panther than a good little caveman. As he drove to the nearest Super Great motel, he hummed to himself; the sudden absence of that little blonde shock of energy restored a feeling of profound calm inside the hatchback. All of this is what brought him to the present moment, gazing out peacefully into the cool summer evening, at his decently quiet hatchback, which had abruptly begun to produce thick black smoke from the trunk.

Evan bolted out of his room and let the door slam behind him. He fumbled with his keys and scratched up the paint job around the keyhole to the trunk. He flung it open and immediately covered his face with his shirt. The plumes of smoke belched out of the backside of the car as a hacking, soot-covered Kelly jumped out and lurched away from the vehicle."You piece of fucking shit, I'm going to fucking kill you, I swear to God!" Evan realized he'd stupidly slung her into the trunk, enormous purse and all. She held a tangle of keys and keychain in her hand like a weapon as she shook it at him, enraged as she double over in a paroxysm of coughing.

"Yeah, I set all your goddamn Bibles on fire, how do ya like that shit, motherfucker?!" Kelly savagely continued to scream through the coughing. She flung her purse to the ground and charged for him, the keys aimed directly at his eyes. Before she could latch onto him, he grabbed her by the wrists and held her at arm's length. Evan was, for the first time all evening, and indeed, his entire life,, legitimately scared of, and aroused by, a woman.

"Kelly—"

"Shut the fuck up, I'm going to fuckin' kill you!"

"Killy!" Evan braced against the fishnet flurry of her attacking limbs. "Killy! Will you marry me?"

Kelly softened in his grip immediately and looked at him in the eyes, a tender look coming over her face. She bit her lip, which quivered a bit. A big, eyeliner-laced tear trembled over the edge of her lashes.

"Oh, Evan…" She leaned in towards him, mouth angled for a kiss. Evan closed his eyes and murmured with a pervasive happiness which quickly turned into a hapless gurgle as Kelly plunged the sharpest key she had into the side of Evan's neck.

Evan turned towards the wound with a surprised whimper. He noticed that his state of physical arousal had increased his heart rate, and therefore was losing blood from his carotid artery at an expedient rate. He twitched, even after he was clinically dead.

Kelly coughed and with a final kick to his corpse, gathered her things and headed inside to find a payphone.

"Told ya they called me 'Killy' for a reason. Psycho."

How to Eat Poor and Gluten-Free in NYC

1. Find Trader Joe's.  There's one on 14th Street in Union Square, and one on 72nd and Broadway.  
2. Don't be vegan or vegetarian.  If you're gluten-free AND either one of these things, my method won't work for you.  Also, women need iron, so lady veggies, stop encouraging your own anemia!
3. Like to and be able to use a skillet and a chopping/slicing knife.  A stove/oven helps as well.  

The Shopping List

• Garlic - Get a sleeve of 5 or 6 cloves.  You'll use this over and over again for a period of months, don't be shy.  And don't tell me you don't like garlic, garlic is what makes things taste good. 
• Onions - Again, get a sack of 5 or 6.  Onions keep for months, and the same rules apply as for garlic; God gave us onions to make meat delicious.
• Rock salt and black pepper - Imperative to making anything you cook something you want to cook again.  
• Ground beef, 80/20, $2/lb.  When you're poor, FAT is your FRIEND.  Use for burgers, meatballs, stir-fry, tacos, chilis. 
• Bacon - Get a pound or two.  The most expensive item you'll most likely buy.  Bacon is hands-down amazing, and  incredibly versatile.  You can eat it for breakfast, lunch or dinner, and it's full of protein and fat that'll keep you going throughout the day. 
• Eggs - I recommend brown eggs, but any are fine.  Protein-rich and delicious in a variety of different ways(scrambled, sunny-side-upside-down, fried hard, omelet with veggies!), eggs make a fantastic breakfast(especially paired with the bacon!) that'll stick with you.  You can also add eggs to stir-fry, dressings, and burgers to add body and flavor.
• Butter - Get a four pack of butter.  Stay away from the fucking margarine, please.  
• Olive oil - Where butter is too... buttery, use olive oil.  Extra virgin has a light flavor when used to sautee and is a delicious base for any dressing.  My favorite is salt and pepper, chopped garlic, and a couple dashes of hot sauce whisked togetheron a spinach and carrot salad.  Get those greens, son.
• Veggies - Any sort will do.  My favorites are mushrooms, jalepenos and broccoli. 
• Rice/ rice pasta:  A bag of rice pasta at Trader Joe's is substantially less expensive than anywhere else; $2 a bag.  I recommend a couple bags, it'll keep for months, just like normal pasta.  Cook with salt and olive oil, and play around with the different sauces possible with all the ingredients you've already bought!  
• Potatoes - This is your main source of gluten-free starch; I prefer hashbrowns to any other, and sweet potato fries(as long as they aren't coated in wheat flour; check the ingredient list), but there's a ton of variations. 
• Cheese - Cheese gets expensive too, but it's worth it for all the flavor it adds to your dishes.  I like sharp cheddar.  Cheese in a block is cheaper than already sliced, but pre-sliced is easier to save.  Use your discretion as to how often you get cheesy.  I try to every single day.  
• Juices/Coffee - Don't fool yourself; Minute Maid juice ain't juice.  Splurge on some pomegranate or even just some real OJ(not from concentrate) to get your vitamins and round out any meal-- Water makes you feel like a prisoner to your poverty!
• Chocolate - Just a little, so you don't feel deprived. 

All this will probably cost you somewhere around $35 and feed you for at least 5 days.  Granted, I'm little, and have perfected the art of Drinking Coffee Until 3pm, but alot of these items are things you have to buy once every couple months, not every single shopping trip, and will keep you able to make simple, delicious food that you want to eat, so you aren't tempted to drop $30 on takeout or a restaurant.  

Being poor in NYC is hard as hell.  Rent, MetroCards, laundry, student loans, credit card bills, medical bills, everything adds up, and seemingly hits at the worst times.  I've learned, through four stupid years here, that you can have sustainable, yummy cooking at home with a little ingenuity and ample use of spices.  I think a common idea is that things like olive oil, salt and pepper, garlic and other spices are luxuries, when in fact they are absolutely necessary to sustainability!  Poor food doesn't have to be gross or unpalatable, and in fact, it's cheaper in the long run when it's delicious!  

Happy cooking, my impoverished artiste friends!

Photosynthesis Can Go Fuck Itself, I Guess(or, Winter In New York)

The sky is impassive,
the sun the same mean one
that batters the desert,
but the clouds here
are exclusively ours.

Freeze, freeze, more freeze.
It thaws, I hear a bird chirp
and then croak.
The subway burps me out,
pissy, overdressed,
and I,
swaddled,
(or I feel as though I am)
waddle,
navigating deceptive largesses
of the city's stinking sub-zero pule.

But if I didn't,
if I instead lay under a mold of blankets,
hand in my panties,
tears running down my cheeks
like spores in
stop-motion
fast-forward,
hair dirty with self-neglect
slash
cry for help,
I would only decompose further,
and the sky would cease to matter,
at all.

Groundhog Day

(or so she says, when she pulls it out and then puts it back in again.)

Midwinter Licks

Here, I am stumped.  This winter has forsaken me, and while I am even now climbing, it's only to get out of the hole I fell into.  For the last three months of 2010, I had the hands-down worst bartending job in New York City.  The owner was abusive, and drug dealers hung out, doing their jobs.  I worked my ass off at this job, and made very, very little money.  I worked 10 hour shifts and left with $71.  And suffered verbal and psychological abuse from my boss, as well as the physical toll it took on me.  I had panic attacks anytime my boss called me, and had heart palpitations literally every single morning before I came into work.  One night, four days before Christmas, my boss came in, shitcanned, berated me for having a bloody nose(I had paper in my nose, and despite the fact that the place was deserted and I was closing, he hated this), and when I asked him why he was such a hateful shitbag, told me that if I didn't like it, I could leave.  

"There's the door," he slurred at me, so fucking wasted on well vodka and sodas that his right eye crossed and he was having trouble keeping his fat head aloft.  "Oh, you're not gonna leave?  Whatcha doin'?  You now gonna leave?  Are you gonna cry?  Are you gonna be a baby?"

He mocked me for not quitting.  Four days before Christmas.  A couple days after this, he waited until it was just he and I alone in the bar(easy, considering the place was almost always deserted in the daytime), and told me that if I wanted to stick shit in my nose, I could work somewhere else. I've never witnessed such moronic, sadistic nonsense, much less been subject to actual insults and sneers from the man whose restaurant I basically ran 4 days a week.  I will never, ever understand intentionally making people hate you, much less people who work for you.

I started drinking at work because it was easy.  It was at hand, and my only possible weapon in the face of merciless enemies.  My body felt horrible all the time, and was usually too exhausted from the massive workload followed by a depressingly low payoff.  I should have quit sooner, but I managed to wait until I secured a new job.  Since then, the last three months have seemed like a bad dream.  And I've been assessing the damage of working a job where pretty much no one liked me, mainly because I didn't think that the place was cool, or in any way enviable.  Spending the entire solar day with people who just don't care for me and my kind of... well, anything, really took a toll on my self-esteem.  Especially when things happened like, for instance, someone Googling me and finding this blog, reading it and mocking it in front of people.  It's hard to feel secure in my art when I have people, even dead-end shit-for-brains like people who would even do something like that, take advantage of the vulnerability that art(and this blog) offers.  

It's been hard to write.  To clear my head.  I've just been enjoying the really pathetic pleasure of making a livable wage at a place where there aren't sociopaths to scream at me about nothing and harangue me over petty, insignificant nuances.  I feel stupid for leaving my previous job in the first place, since obviously that was the worst choice.  I jumped from frying pan to fire with misguided glee.  Is this what they mean when they say you have to forgive yourself?  I felt so unsafe and unwell, but I subliminated it to make money that never really materialized.  It hurt.  Alot.  To give up literal and figurative safety in exchange for money. 

The lack of money brought to a head a situation with my dad that made me realize I'm truly alone in this city.  When I have to defend my buying of groceries and credit score from my father instead of being supported and helped by him, it's time to say goodbye.  It's time to make some waves for myself.  

I want to visit Pompeii.  And I want to be a famous writer.  There are more important things than money, and if the people who you think will have your back, your family, are no better than creditors, then I suppose it's time to get into business for myself.  I will never, ever live the way I have for the past three months, under constant anxiety and strain, for money.  Never again.