The Judith Blue Stories: #1. The Contessa

Junior saw her the first day of the seminar on the plays of Harold Pinter, and made sure to get a seat directly across from her. Junior was the English Department's only Woodrow Wilson Scholar. He also had a special grant from the Creative Writing Department, so he didn't really need to work. He could be a TA, but why? It cut into his free time. He had a William Morris agent--had since he was eighteen. First story he wrote got published in a collection of the Best Short Fiction, 1966. He's been trying to find a better place to sleep. He doesn't worry about the deadline for a collection of stories, he writes fast. But he does need a place to flop. He also needs some blow.

Junior doesn't have to say a word in this seminar. The famous playwright is teaching. They drink beer together in the afternoon. They laugh together at the foolish things these Mormon kids say in class. They dish babes. The famous playwright has a new lover every semester. He's been married to the same woman almost thirty years. Imagine that. He has a son he doesn't talk about much. The famous playwright likes to gamble.  Junior knows way too much to worry about his grade in the famous playwright's class.

Junior starts to think of the beauty across from him two nights a week for three hours a night as The Contessa. He starts referring to her as The Contessa. Pretty soon other men are calling her The Contessa. She is the most vocal and confident of the students even through she's auditing the seminar. She is always prepared and perfectly willing to take on the Mormon grad students. The Contessa makes it easy on the famous Playwright. He only has to get her started and she runs the seminar for him. Soon there is a regular Tuesday night beer drinking group that takes the seminar into the late night. She is often there, sitting beside the famous playwright. Her name is Judith, but he finds himself still talking about her when she isn't there, as The Contessa. Judith doesn't seem to see him. He wonders if she's this semester's lover. He also finds out that Judith is married.

One early afternoon Junior pops his head into the famous professor's office on his way out for an afternoon of shooting smack. But his famous friend invites him to go have lunch with him, "My treat," he says. Junior is disappointed that his high will have to be postponed, but smiles and says, "Sure, thanks."

Strangely the famous playwright takes them downtown to a nice little hole in the wall restaurant called, "The Beanery." It's packed. They stand outside and chain smoke, waiting for a table to open up. It takes almost twenty minutes. But once seated he sees The Contessa walking toward them smiling, with menus in hand. Her hair is twisted into a loose chignon at the nape of her gorgeous neck. She is tall, willowy, graceful.  She has pale olive skin, dark hair; she has big almond shaped hazel eyes She's wearing a long skirt and sandals with straps that wrap around her ankles. She has beautiful feet. Is she wearing a bra or not? He's not sure, and so makes a study of watching her across the room. She is flawless and usually a bit aloof, yet now, oddly warm. When she approaches a table she smiles, she seems patient, bends over a menu to point things out. She makes notes, smiles, turns away, and the smile is gone. What remains is a fierce, strong, beautiful woman in rapid, meaningful, fluid motion. Focus is what you see when she's not smiling. She comes back to take their order and calls them by name, "Junior, Henry, who let you boys out?" The famous playwright beams and says, "It's like a visit to Greece, and then having Melina Mercouri wait on you at a small cafe." She smiles and says, "I think more Anna Magnani, but then, who am I?" Junior blurts out, "You're The Contessa." She looks at him then and says, "Junior have you decided what you want?" He leers at her and says, "I'll have a Rose Tattoo." She turns and says over the shoulder, "Play amongst yourselves, and when you're ready to order food, let me know." The smile is gone.

 Junior starts hanging out at the Beanery. She is not playful when he's with Whitlock. She smiles perfunctorily and takes their order. States plainly that she gets paid to work here and can't hang out and chit chat with them. Whitlock has a part time dishwashing job at The Beanery and deals drugs a little on the side. Whitlock has heard Junior call her The Contessa, but when Whitlock says it, it becomes The Cuntessa. So now, around the Beanery, she's called The Cuntessa by all the male help. One day when he and Whitlock come in for lunch, she walks to the table to take their order, Whitlock says, "Hi, Cuntessa," and she turns to look Junior straight in the eye and say, 'Thanks Junior, you little prick. Whadda you assholes want?" She smiles without any warmth at all. Junior tips her a twenty on a five dollar lunch.

Junior takes over Whitlock's job suddenly. Now he's working Whitlock's shifts and trading shifts with the other dishwasher to work all Judith's shifts. He does a much better job washing dishes than Whitlock did. He buses her tables and resets them, too. 

Sonnets start to appear on the Beanery bulletin board. It's in a public area, and is used mostly as a notice board of rooms for rent, dogs lost, cars for sale. That kind of thing. But when the poems start appearing addressed to The Contessa, she knows who wrote them, and as soon as they appear she takes them down, reads them, and tears them up.

One night in August they were closing up The Beanery, when Junior asks the cook, who has just finished the last order of the night, "Want to take a little break downstairs? I've got smack or blow." Kirby doesn't hesitate, "How much, man?" "My treat." And Kirby is gone for a half an hour. Which leaves Junior and The Contessa alone for fifteen minutes once the last customer is gone and the door closed and locked. So Junior asks her "What do you like?"

"What do you mean what do I like? What kind of a question is that!"
"I brought you a present, and wanted to know what you preferred, heroin or coke?"
"Presumptive, aren't you?"
"I see you step out back to smoke your joints. I know you're no virgin."
"What the fuck do you think you know about me!" This is not so much a question, as an accusation, almost shouted. When Kirby opens the basement door he asks, "Is it safe to come upstairs? Judith shouts, "Why the hell wouldn't it be, Kirby! And don't you ever call me The Cuntessa again! My goddamned name is Judith. Do you both understand? If I ever hear another male employee of this place call me The Cuntessa or Contessa, I'll get both your asses fired."

It was a week before she came back to work. She and her husband, Jack, had gone camping. She didn't seem like the camping type. Junior asked and was told she was taking a scheduled vacation. But still he worked two shifts--almost eighty hours a week. He gave up going to classes. He slept in the basement of The Beanery.  This first job in his life was now paying for the blow he was doing in the basement.  And his coke supply was making him one very meticulous and fast dishwasher.

Junior was built like Judith. They were about the same height; he weighed a little more, but not much. Junior had a mane of curly black hair that he usually kept in a pony tail when he worked. His face was angular. He had hazel eyes like Judith's, nice eyebrows, too. But his beard grew fast and very black, so even though he shaved every day, the lower half of his face always had a bluish cast to it. He was slight and pale skinned.

When Judith returned to work, he gifted her with an ounce of pretty good pot. She took the gift and said, "Thanks Junior, is this an apology?"
"What did I do I need to apologize for?"
"You got every man in town to start calling me Contessa. I hate it. I want it to stop."
"Didn't you ever see the movie The Barefoot Contessa?"
"Yes. So what?"
"Just take it as a compliment. Ava Gardner is the star, and it's a great story. I think it might have won some Oscars. Anyway, I think you look like Ava Gardner, and you have beautiful feet. It just came to me in a flash of inspiration."
"What are your intentions, with all the flattery and the gifts of drugs, the poems, the busing my tables, the working two shifts to work with me? See, I did notice. But what is it you want?"
"I thought fathers were supposed to ask that question."
"Well, since I'm married, I have to ask this question myself. Or would you rather I have Jack ask you?"
"I want to spend the rest of my life with you."
"And what are your prospects, young man?"
"I'm a talented writer, and I have a William Morris Agent."
"Bring me a story. I want to find out how talented you are."
"At your service.  And as long as your sampling my talents, I have others."  She lifts one eyebrow and slits her eyes at him and she turns to walk out the backdoor.

The next day Junior arrives with a story. It's called The Gates of Oxford.
Judith reads it on her break as she smokes a joint. It's funny in a dark kind of way. She thinks the main character is based on Junior, but the character is married to a real nut case, and she wants to know if Junior has been married.

When she comes up from the basement where she was smoking her joint and reading, Junior is in the dish room working like crazy getting ready for the lunch rush. As Judith gets to the dish room, Junior turns and says, "Well?"

"I have some questions." Junior puts his hands on his hips and sings, "I'm a little teapot short and stout, just tip me over and pour me out." He does the whole routine with the gestures and coyness of a kid performing for a grown up. She is delighted with this bit of childish spontaneity. She laughs and then says, "Well for starters, what would you call your style."
"Autobiographical Realism."
"That's a real literary style?"
"Yup."
"Are you married?"
"Not anymore."
"Did the cat live?"
"Nope."
"Was that your child?"
"Nope. She informally adopted the baby from an Indian girl who was going to jail."
"So, she stole the kid."
"Pretty much."
"And you went along with this program?"
"Well... I guess."
"What does, I guess mean?"
"It means, I guess I loved her, so I guess it didn't matter what she did. She was a speed freak. That didn't bother me either."
"Are you ethically challenged?"
"Not when it comes to love."
"Then why are you no longer with this crazy woman?"
"She left me for another man."

Later that afternoon, Judith's husband and three of his drinking buddies show up at The Beanery, and they're drunk on home brew and irritably hungry. She and Junior haven't set the tables for dinner yet, and are just getting ready to start when this quartet of drunks arrives and loudly demands service. Benny, a friend of her husband's, who spends more time at her house than she does, and never fails to piss all over the bathroom, shouts, "Where's The Contessa?" All four men have a fit of sniggering that isn't quite under control when Judith arrives with the menus and the cutlery. Jack demands water. There are no glasses on the table, and just as she turns to get glasses, Junior comes up behind her with glasses and a pitcher of ice water on a tray for the table. "Oooh, what have we got here, a waiter?" This from Paul, who is almost too drunk to talk. Junior ignores the taunt and goes about his business. Then he disappears into the dish room.  Judith says, "You boys have the menu memorized, what do you want to eat?" Jack orders an omelet. This will piss Kirby off, and ruin his end of shift buzz. The other three order sandwiches and fries.

When Judith walks into the kitchen, Kirby is already bitching. He's cleaned up and is planning on leaving the second the evening shift comes on, which was due to happen in ten minutes. "Fuck! Man!"
"I didn't invite them Kirby. I'm not exactly thrilled myself."

When she takes the rowdy group of drunks their late lunch or early supper, they grouse about how long it took to get their food. Benny says, nastily, "Tardiness doesn't help get you a big fat tip."
"Benny, you cheap bastard, since when have you ever tipped?" Judith turns from the table and heads for the back door to await her replacement and have a smoke.

As she passes through the dish room, she says to Junior, "Sorry for the assholes." Then she pushes the back door open, and heads outside to suck down a quick cigarette. Her lighter doesn't work. "Shit!" She turns to head back inside as the door opens and Junior comes out to join her for a cigarette. He has kitchen matches in his apron. He whips one out and strikes it with his thumb nail close to the end of her cigarette.  It explodes in her face and the burning tip hits her open, startled eye. She drops her unlit cigarette and puts both hands to her eye. It burns wickedly. He is horrified and tries to get her hands away from her eye so he can see it, but it hurts too much, and her eye is streaming tears. "We need to get you to an emergency room."
"That would be a good idea, but I can't see to drive."
"I'll drive. Got your keys?"
"No, they're in my purse in the basement. Grab my coat, too."

He's back in seconds with her coat and her bag and they head to her old Chevy sedan in the parking lot behind The Beanery. He opens the passenger door for her, and she gets in. He rounds the front of the car and is seated behind the steering wheel in a couple of seconds. She's still rummaging around in her bag for her keys. She grabs the wad of keys and finds the Chevy's ignition key. She hands the keys to Junior and puts her head back against the head rest. He can't find the keyhole. She grabs them out of his hand and inserts the key in its slot. He turns the key and the car lurches forward and dies. She say, "Put the clutch in, and try it again." He says, "I don't know how to drive a stick shift."

"Fuck. Get out and go back inside and tell Jack I injured my eye. Tell him I did it with an exploding kitchen match. I'll be home later. And then just ignore those assholes, they never tip anyway."

Holy Cross is close, and it's a hospital where her grandfather used to be Chief of Staff. She drives mostly one handed, with the other hand covering her injured eye. She comes to a stop in a parking slot outside the emergency room. When she gets inside, the waiting room is empty. This is a good sign that she won't have to wait long. When she checks in, she drops her grandfather's name. She only has to wait a half hour. They check her eye, rinse it over and over, then put some ointment in it, put a patch over it, and write her a prescription for more ointment. She thanks them and heads out to the parking lot. Jack is leaning against her car. "Well, how's your eye?"
"Not too bad. I have a prescription. Will you take me by the pharmacy to fill it?"
"Sure, I'll drive you. Benny dropped me off."
"Why does Benny have to treat me like shit?"
"Benny likes you, you know that. He's just teasing."
"Benny's an asshole."
"Well, I'm not that crazy about some of your friends, either."
"My friends don't spend all their time at our house, pissing all over the bathroom. Next time Benny pisses all over, I'm banning him from using our toilet."
"Where's he going to piss?"
"In the gutter, for all I care. Maybe he should piss before he gets to our place, and not stay so damn long."
"You're sure being a bitch."
" My eye hurts. My feet hurt too. I'm tired, and you knew I was a bitch when you married me. And just for the record, I don't like being called the Cuntessa or the Contessa, so tell your fucking friends to knock it off."
"What bug crawled up your ass?"
"Maybe you and your friends and your drunkenness, have crawled up my ass, as you so poetically put it."

Judith uses the burned eye as an excuse to stay home a day and sleep. She sleeps a deep cottony sleep round the clock.  A sleep like she imagines death. A nothing. A nowhere. She knows this absence of feeling. She has finally detached and drifted off. In her dreamless sleep, she has come to the understanding that she can take no more. Next time she wakes to pee, she eats some yogurt and a slice of toast, sips a cup of tea. Then she starts packing. When she has the essentials in her two bags, she takes them to her car and locks them in the trunk.

Next day is payday at The Beanery. She goes in and works her shift as if nothing has changed. Junior is already there. He asks how she is and she says, "I'm fed up, that's how I am."
"What are you fed up with?"
"Are you shitting me?"
"What?"
"Well, for starters, my asshole husband and his posse of drunks, this place, this town. I'm leaving tonight after my shift."
"What do you mean, leaving?"
"I'm packed and leaving, at 4:00. And keep your damn mouth shut about it." She pushes past him and down the stairs into the basement, puts her crap in her locker and heads upstairs with her apron.

After her shift, when she thinks Junior and Kirby are downstairs getting hammered, she calmly walks to her car.  She decides to head north toward the Idaho border. She figures she'll stop for the night in some small Idaho town and then make her decision whether to head East or West.
 

©2009 Peggy Pendleton

Tom's Oldest Son

(In order to understand this post you will need to read the comments from my last post, Crazy Heart)

I first saw Tom's oldest son when he was an infant.  Tom and his first wife were living on the Avenues in Salt Lake in a lovely old house that Tom was remodeling.  Tom's first wife and I had been friends in Junior High and High School.  We had  much in common, but the most striking thing we had in common was bad daddies who used us for their sexual pleasure.  Odd isn't it that two of the first women in Tom's early life had that in common?  We were smart girls, talented girls, pretty girls.  We were very barely holding it together to keep our craziness from being our undoing.  She was a dancer and a very talented one.  So Tom's oldest son got his father's musical genes and his mother's musical genes.  Is madness passed in the blood?  It depends on the madness.  I'm guessing not in this case.  But what might have been passed to Tom's oldest son is great sorrow that his father left him (when he was still a very young boy) and his mother in a small northern California town to go to LA and make is fortune as a Rock n Roll musician.  I call that abandonment.  I don't know what Tom calls it.

Tom moved into an apartment building in LA next door to Pamela Courson's sister.  Pamela was Jim Morrison's wife.  That's a pretty good contact for an ambitious rock n roll musician looking to make his fortune and a name for himself.  Tom told me that he fell in love with her and in very short order had built a door in a wall to make their apartments adjoining.  He was pretty handy with all his tools.

Remember that during all this time he was still married to his first son's mother and they were still living in a little town north of San Francisco, waiting for Tom to come home or send for them.  Who knows what anyone wanted, expected, imagined, longed for, but Pamela's sister got pregnant.  Jim Morrison got dead, then Pamela got dead, and Tom divorced his old wife to marry a new, pregnant wife.  So Tom's oldest son might very well have begun to feel like "the forgotten one" very early in his life. 

That second child of Tom's was a daughter.  Then there was another pregnancy and another son was born.  Were any of these children planned?  Maybe by Tom's second wife.  I don't know.  I know the first pregnancy was not planned.  They were nineteen when Tom's first son was born.  They were unmarried until the boy was born.  Tom proposed in the hospital where his first boy was born, just after the birth.  I don't know the exact details of any of this.  I only know what Tom told me.  But I can see damage in children.  I can recognize the psychic wounds of children who feel used and/or abandoned.  So can certain kinds of men.

By the time Tom and I were together again in the early '80s living in Tom's house up Emigration  Canyon,  he was divorced from his second wife and I was divorcing my third husband.  He had summer and Christmas holiday visitation with his two youngest children, a six year old girl who seemed very sullen and sad, a girl who read obsessively (a girl I recognized, since I had been that kind of girl) and a four year old boy (a robust and good natured little boy).  We took them to baseball games in the summer and skiing in the winter.  And most nights Tom went off to honkytonks to play Country Western music and I stayed with the kids.

There were a few years when Tom's oldest son joined us during ski season.  He was a delight.  He was so smart and funny and talented.  He did bring his own pot.  He always offered to share a joint with me when we were outside away from the little kids and Tom.  Did I wrestle with myself over the inappropriateness of smoking dope with Tom's teenaged son?  Probably not enough.  Was I a good role model or mother substitute for any of Tom's children while they were visiting us?  Probably not. But I was kind to them.  I did love them.  I still love them more than I ever loved Tom. I had made the choice early in my life that I was not going to have children of my own.  I didn't want to pass the crazy on.  I didn't want to be tied to a man because I'd carried his child to term.  My parents were crazy.  They'd done terrible things to me.  How could I know how to be a good parent?  How would I know who the bad men were?  They all seemed pretty bad to me, in one way or another.

There was the occasional year when Tom didn't exercise his parental rights to visitation.  But not only did he not see his kids, he didn't call them or write them or send them Christmas presents.  This seemed cruel and selfish in a way I couldn't comprehend.  Whatever Tom wanted, Tom got for Tom.  New skis?  Sure, why not. A new and better guitar?  You bet.  A Christmas card or call for his kids?  Not a chance.  I told him how I believed this neglect might make his children feel.  I'd felt that way.  My mother and my biological father divorced when I was five.  I never saw or heard from him again.  No birthday card, no Christmas call, nothing, ever.  I hardened my heart against the man who had no use for me.  I know how a father's neglect and abandonment affects a daughter.  I can only imagine how it affects a son.

Will Tom hate me for writing this?  Probably.  He will have rewritten his memory of his personal history.  Don't we all do that?  He will have forgotten certain details.  Like I forgot the detail of having his oldest son drive me home from Park City after one of Tom's gigs and my needing to pee befor we made it back to the house.  It made a very bad impression on Tom's oldest son to have this woman, this drunken woman pissing on her shoes as she squatted beside the car.  I was taking antidepressants even that long ago, and my nightly antidepressant knocked me out.  That would have been the "sleeping pill" he remembers me taking.  Did I force him to smoke pot with me?  If he believes I did, I must have.  We did smoke pot, but I don't recall ever having to talk him into it. Was my behavior appalling?  If Toms children remember it that way, then it was appalling.  And I'm very sorry I wasn't a better person, a better role model, a better example of how grown-ups behave.

Crazy Heart

Nick took me to see Crazy Heart last week. It was a weekday matinee, the only time I'll go to a movie. I like the empty theater at a midweek midday matinee. Nick and I usually talk politics, but for some reason neither of us had much to say. Politics is making me sad these days. I feel very sorry for our President. The country is weary. War weary, sad and losing heart along with the good job and the new house. No one can afford to get sick. Even if you have insurance, you can't afford to use it. I'm almost afraid to talk politics for fear I'll just breakdown in tears. I was in the mood for a good movie, a distraction from one reality to take me into another reality.

But Crazy Heart took me into the one of the saddest failures of my life; it took me back to the days of living with and loving Tom. When I first met him, when we were teenage kids, he was just learning to play the bass. He was into Jazz then. But when we got together in midlife, after our divorces, he was playing Country/Western music which I didn't entirely appreciate since I was still into Jazz. When I first knew him he played an acoustic bass. When we were in midlife, he was playing electric bass and guitar. I'm not a big fan of amplified, electrified instruments. But I fell hard again for Tom and since I had run from him the first go round when we were kids, I maintained in midlife that I didn't want to be a couple, I just wanted us to have fun. But when you've always been in love with the man and he gives you the key to his house, it's hard not to become a couple.

When the band he was playing in rehearsed, they did it mostly at Tom's house and I was there. I don't know why so many musicians are hard drinkers, which seems to lead them into all sorts of other bad behavior, but in the bands Tom played with, that seemed to be pretty universal.

Tom's two youngest children were age four and six. They were lovely kids and I did enjoy their visits when it was his turn to have them. And because Tom always had gigs during the holidays and on New Years Eve it was I who took care of making Christmas away from their mother and their real home as much like a real Christmas as possible, with a tree and shopping trips and presents under the tree and hot chocolate and popcorn at night watching a rented movie. I was home with them when he was gone every night playing in some honkytonk or toilet in BFE. And I quickly grew to love his kids. And I grew to see him as a neglectful and insensitive father. He became a man who drank too much almost all the time. I know he had his reasons. I know they all did.

And in truth, I was much too crazy to really work out the other problems in our life together. I knew the root cause of my craziness, but Tom didn't want to hear about it, wanted me to get over it and move on without having to talk about it and the way the present reminded me of the past.

Crazy Heart reminded me of the past and the only man I really ever tried to love. Crazy Heart was a little too close to home, a little too real. And near the end of the movie I wanted to get up and run. I wanted to flee my past again, like I did when things got too bad with Tom. I used to decide in an instant that I couldn't take it anymore and throw all my things in garbage bags and leave without a word. The only real sound I made was when my tires were squealing out of the driveway and I was headed down the canyon road away from Tom and his insensitivity to my needs.

So when the movie ended I was ready to cut and run; before the credits even rolled I was trying to exit the darkened theater as fast as I could and I fell in the dark, hard. I didn't really hurt myself, but it all hurt, and I couldn't hold back the tears. And even now, even all this time later, I still can't think of Tom without getting a lump in my throat and fighting back tears.

Play it Miles

And for those great lyrics, Sting does it very nicely.

Dreams

For years after my psychosis and hospitalization I was on a cocktail of anti-psychotics which made me unable to dream.  I would drop into sleep like a stone in a still pond and sink without a ripple.  For all those years of antipsychotics I was dreamless and depressed.  It took years to convince my new Shrink to let me go back on an antidepressant that would allow me to dream.  Why did I miss dreaming so much?  Because I never had nightmares.

When I was a child I had recurring nightmares.  I had good reasons.  And if I'd been seeing a shrink then, my dreams would have provided clues to the living nightmare of my young life.  But once I moved out of my parents house my dreams got good and I looked forward to dreaming.  I lived a better life in my dreams than I did in my real life. I took my good dreams for granted.  It was only during times of deep depression, when I was so depressed I couldn't read that I might have dreamed but couldn't remember my dreams.  Then, during the terrible years of caring for my horrible mother, as I began to disintegrate, I had my one and only psychosis, so far, knock wood.

Last night I had my first nightmare since childhood.  I dreamed I was in the main house with a man who, in the dream, was a friend. I have no idea in real life who he was, but in my dream we were close friends.  We were sitting in the kitchen talking and he left the table to retrieve something from his jacket in the hall closet.  I heard the voices of two other men and then a sound like a mellon splatting, as if hit with a baseball bat or dropped from a height onto concrete.  It was a sickening sound, and I knew that it was my friend's head that had made the terrible splat sound.  It was immediately clear to me that I was the next victim.  I raced for the stairs and locked myself in the upstairs bathroom, the only room in the house with a solid door and a good lock.  I could hear the men looking for me.  I had no way to call for help so I tried to squeeze out of the bathroom window onto the steep tile roof.  This is when I woke up.

It was cold in the house.  I always turn the heat very low at night.  I sleep better in a cool room.  It was early (7:30) for me.  I know the dream woke me up. Marly was snuggled against my back. She made a soft whiney sound when I got up.  I went to the bathroom, turned the heat up, and then got coffee.  Cyrus watches my moves when I get up, and only when my coffee cup is in my hand and I'm heading back to my side of the bed does he haul himself out of his bed and lumber to the door.

Yesterday my doctor asked me about my eating habits.  I was in for my once monthly clotting factor test.  Testing my clotting factor takes seconds but we always talk for at least half an hour, often about politics.  Well, among other things, politics is depressing me, I've become a shitty blogger, and now that the novel is out there in the world and on it's own, I have nothing to do but start working on something new.  And I got nothin'!  I'm uninspired.  I feel empty.  And the life I've led has left me with few friends and the few I've kept, are dying or dead.  How odd it is that I'm outliving the few women I've kept close. I never saw that coming.  Never imagined I'd live this long.  And until recently I was delighted with the small life I've created.  I keep thinking I've grieved for Zelita, but her absence has left a tattered hole in the fabric of my little life.  And nothing can mend it or fill it or make it all better.

I have plenty that needs to be done.  My house needs a good cleaning. The winter ravaged yard needs a bit of raking~debris falls from the trees during storms and now litters the walkways.  But all I want to do is go back to sleep and dream a different life.

Exhaustion

Last week was too jam packed and way too stressful for me.  Every day I had something to do that meant I had to pull myself together and get out there in the world.  I'm not crazy about "out there in the world" and no matter how simple the trip seems, interaction with strangers and some friends is loaded with possible emotional land-mines.  By Thursday I was depleted but had made arrangements to take Susan to CostCo.  I have a lot of nerve complaining about doing anything with Susan and calling it tiring and stressful.  She's delightful, but she has MS and it's getting really bad.  Moving around out in the world requires so much more attention and so much more effort for her; I'm ashamed to admit that I was spent when I got home, needing a long nap that I didn't allow myself to take.

Friday morning, way too early, my new tenant (the male one) called me.  After I struggled to consciousness and got to the phone, he'd hung up.  I used caller ID to call him back.  He had pocket dialed me.  It was the fault of the new phone.  He was sorry.  But I couldn't go back to sleep.  So Friday began cranky and sleep deprived. Friday was the day I was supposed to finish the rewrite of my novel and get ready to enter it in the ABNA contest on Sunday.  My brain was useless and angry that I was attempting to make it function at all.  No use arguing with your brain.  It makes the whole show run.  Best pay attention to what the brain is saying.  So I limped along doing a bit of this and a bit of that.  But real writing was out of the question.  That left Saturday.

Fortunately Saturday saved my ass.  I wrote and edited all day.  I finally got the whole book put together again in an entirely new way.  It was exhausting.  I skimped on meals and ignored my personal hygiene.  Fortunately the dogs only care about what they eat; they certainly don't mind me smelling like me and not soap, so no harm, no foul.  I did get to sleep at a decent hour and got up pretty early Sunday morning when Ms M dropped off Roscoe (we're working on a custody arrangement).

I read the book through again Sunday morning taking breaks to skim through the Sunday news shows (which I tape).  I still hate David Gregory.  Then Sunday afternoon I put myself through the hoops of the entry forms, and despite the fact the my San Francisco friend Phillip was on call, I did it all by myself.  I was jubilant.  Then I was depressed.  I sailed up to the ceiling and then I hit the floor.  I tried to watch the Super Bowl.  I was rooting for the Saints, but when the Colts scored twice early on, my energy sagged even lower.  It felt like the aftermath of a huge sugar high.  And then I realized I hadn't eaten anything.  I fixed myself a bowl of oatmeal.  Meh.

The Saints won; that should have made me feel better but it just made me feel less bad.  I cooked a boring dinner.  I watched Big Love.  Meh.  Still I couldn't go to sleep.

So today, I'm going to do a little housework, take a hot shower, and then I'm going to read and nap the rest of the day away.  Pretty exciting, no?

Chameleon

I've been told over my long life as a model and small time actress that I looked like one famous woman or another.  When I was young it was Capucine, Audrey Hepburn, and, I'm horrified to say, the young Joan Crawford.  The sales women on the couture floor at I Magnins told me that.  I was a favorite of theirs just for that one reason.  Most of the time they sat around gossiping about their socialite clients and the young Joan Crawford who had once been a regular, or so they said.  When I wasn't actually modeling all the little black dresses for some San Francisco matron with a party to attend, I was lounging around in my bra and girdle and hose in my own little fitting room.  It was a strange job in many ways but it financed my trip to Italy, so who's complaining.  But the old broads on the couture floor called me The Chameleon because I had the ability to inhabit a dress and a fur and make them irresistible to the aging socialite who imagined she looked exactly like me and in so doing she looked exactly like the young Joan Crawford or Audrey Hepburn or Capucine.  This was 1964.  Already I hated the comparison, but if the old broads love me because of my resemblance to a once beautiful actress, well who was I to object.

I've also been told I looked like Anne Bancroft, Susan Sarandon and oddly enough, Dianne Keaton.  I like the comparison to Anne Bancroft and Susan Sarandon best since I admired Anne Bancroft a lot and I still love Susan Sarandon.  But do any of these famous women look like each other?  They all have broad shoulders and strong features, but that's about it.  So this must make me a bit of a chamileon.  And for a bit part actress that wasn't a bad quality.

Raging Grannies Versus CBS

Proof Sheets

This photo shoot was done in my mid-fifties by a photographer who did a lot of fashion shoots and liked my ability to work quickly, do my own hair and make up and never complain about the crap I had to wear. Apparently I was the only one to wear the dress naked underneath.

He'd found a black stretch lace dress at a secondhand store and wanted to see how it looked on fifty women of disperarte ages and sizes.  The shoot was for an art exhibit.  And these are just proof sheets, since the session was done before everyone had made the switch to digital.  This is one of two proof sheets I still posess.

I've just cut my hair like this again.

The New Kids

My new tenants arrive tomorrow.  Since the first of Feb is Monday, I'm letting the new kids move in early, so today Ms M and I cleaned the house she's lived in for the past five years.  It was the hardest physical work I've done in ages.  We moved furniture (the house is mostly furnished) cleaned almost all the blinds (that took a long time and is a tedious job).  We washed windows, cleaned floors, scrubbed the bathroom and all the hard stuff in the kitchen.  My hands are like sandpaper and my back aches but I'm glad the house is ready for the new kids.

The new kids are both writers.  She's getting her PhD in creative writing and is a poet.  He's a playwright and will get an MFA.  They met in Americorps.  How adorable is that?  They both have jobs in different parts of Social Services network.  They love our handsome President and don't give me a blank stare when I talk politics.  That's pretty damn adorable.  Can you tell?  I like the new kids.  They have two dogs, one small (pug mix) one medium (an Ossie mix) whose names are Olive and BeaBea.  Isn't that sweet?

So tomorrow at noon begins a new chapter in the life of this property; my big house gets a new family.  And Roscoe gets dropped off Sunday when his mama goes to work.  We're working out the details of an adoption to make both their lives easier.  Even that's adorable.

Hitler Responds to the IPad

The State Of The Union

The State Of The Union address last night was the best political speech in my memory.  We've all become used to great speeches from President Obama, so I'm sure there will be a lot of "Ho-hum,  so what.  Yes, he can give a good speech, but we're still fucked."  Well, yes we are, but whose fault is that?  Not his.  If you're a Republican, look in the mirror.  If you voted for George W Bush you can thank yourself for our current wows.  It will probably take a generation to fix the mess we're in.  But with this smart, thoughtful, amazingly good natured and horribly burdened man at the helm, we may begin to dig our way out of this very deep hole.

Seems that every big speech now comes with some right wing asshat shouting or mouthing something revoltingly stupid.  Who knew the Justices of the Supreme Court needed to get the memo that that sort of thing just isn't done in a State Of The Union Address?  Samuel Alito is the latest moron to break with the tradition of respectul behavior at these speeches, mouthing the words "Not True," when the President was speaking about the danger inherent in the latest SCOTUS ruling granting corporations the same rights as individuals.  Apparently if the POTUS is African American the rules of decorum don't apply for the Italian American Justices of SCOTUS.

Roscoe When You Come Back...

Alas Ms M Has Left the House

It's true I'm sad to say
Alas Ms M has left the house
Sadder still she took fair Roscoe with her
He of golden hair, who came each morning
Weeping at my door at dawn to crawl upon my bed
I'd wake and stagger to the door to let him in, then sleep
The warm safe dreamy sleep of a satisfied Woman.
To wake late, to feed him with the others, to listen
To him moan with satisfaction at his pleasure in the meal.
He's been my daily guard and great companion.  He stayed
With me in salad days through Geeky's autumn death
He was a comfort then.

I'll wonder how she's doing when she stops dropping in
To smoke my pot and then her cigarettes.
There are so few people who'll let a girl get by with that.
I know she's using me.  I'm used to it. This is a trial for her.
It's true I love her but
She doesn't know it yet as she steps back
Into her future full of ambivalence
And dread the hopes, and fears to dream
She needs that weighty warm and living presence
In her bed.  But here's the rub. Roscoe hates to be alone.
Alone he'll be, and howl and weep incessantly

And when he's weeping I'll wake to sob along.
He needs his pack.  We're his responsibility
We're always here, waiting, glad to see his proud superiority
His handsome legs, trotting front to back he covers miles.
To waste away alone to satisfy a selfish girl.
At every step he'll make her life a trial
The neighbors will complain about the howl
She'll have to move and move again
And in his pain he'll tear her life to shreds
As it was in their beginning,
Before they landed here.

©2010 Peggy Pendleton

Barack Obama (played by Hitler)

I'm sorry, but it made me laugh.  It's been a hard couple of weeks. Leave your insults in the comment box.  I got called a cunt by a good Christian woman last night on twitter in front of 15,000 of my closest friends.  And for half an hour or more she flung invective at me.  Granted, I was asking for it.  But when her last insult was "Jesus loves you, but you're still an asshole," I knew I'd hit the all time low or the motherload, depending on your point of view.  Then this dropped into my twitter stream...

She Roams

My mother never really died.  It seems
She now roams freely in my mind waiting for the slightest self-doubt
Then she speaks to me in my own voice.  "Stupid cow, I always hated you."
She tells me I have no gifts or talents, no brains no guts
"Failure!  Idiot Failure!"  "All that potential, my good looks"
"Brains wasted on you." "I never loved anyone." You know what I mean."
"You always gave yourself so easily." 

"Embarrassment!"  She screams this in my sleep
Contaminates my day with the echo of that word
"They all loved me best" she says, "even your boyfriends..."
The implication hangs there...
"Ask him, you know who I mean.  He'll lie to you." 
"You're a patsy, you know that?" "You always were."
" I should have given you away."
She spits this last in my face in a thin burning stream
That shoots from her mouth like a serpent's tongue

©2010 Peggy Pendleton

Haiti

The disaster in Haiti is bringing out the best and the worst in us all.  Millions of us have donated money, in most cases $10 at a time.  For others a $1,000,000 at a time.  If you watched 60 Minutes last night you saw an image straight out of the Holocost: there were trucks lined up and a big earth mover machine with a giant scoop scooping bodies and dumping them in the trucks, bodies bloated and stacked like cordwood blocking the roadways, bodies left so long in the sun they looked like blowup dolls overinflated to bursting.  No one could get used to that.  No one could do that work and shrug it off. These are the images of a lifetime of nightmares.  Will any of the people who survived the earthquake ever sleep a peaceful night again?  Will the man in the earthmover whose job it is to scoop bodies and drop them into dump trucks ever have another peaceful moment without the scent and sight of such horror invading his mind like a cancer? Will the people who survived the January 12th earthquake and the seven days since without a drop of water or a morsel of food ever forgive the rest of the world?  We have rushed in with search teams and dogs.  We have transported food and water and doctors and medical supplies and soldiers to keep the peace while desperate survivors fight to get the first drops of water in a week and then the water runs out leaving weakened starving people who have waited almost patiently at the end of the line with nothing but desperation, fear, rage.  How many days can one go without water?  Seven days if there are no other bodily traumas.  It's been seven days.

I've heard news people refer to the Haitians who have broken into buildings searching for food or water or shelter as looters.  There is no looting in Haiti.  There is only the desperate need to survive.  Can you imagine yourself in similar circumstances?

There are no roads in Haiti in good repair.  There is destruction everywhere.  There is no power, no hospital, no government, no infrastructure, no police, no safe place to sleep, no rest, nothing but waiting and fear, nothing but the body's need for water, nothing but helpless rage.  There is no looting in Haiti.

Little Girl, Big Girl

Can you see the little girl in the woman?  Can you always?  I think in my case you can.  The little girl is too prefect. The little girl wears her sadness like an old dress.  The woman wears her wounds like a shield.

I Remember Life

Life’s first feelings were pain, then fear
A lump of nerve and muscle, soft little bones
The spot of skull not closed, the brain so
Temptingly near the finger probing for any weak spot to injure
That’s all you need to know about my family

Lust and skin hunger trade entry for simple human kindness
Trained to be an object of desire, the model femme fatale
A cast out human child too pretty to live in the eyes of her mother’s gaze
Too tempting for a father to resist, too smart for her own good
Gone to other eyes in other places, other women to mistrust

I tried everything to act normal, needing every drug known
To man to calm the rage just under the perfect skin, to dull
The crazy glitter just behind the big doe eyes, pain just under
The surface of every waking moment, sleep this girls best friend
Forever to have them poke and prod my soft spots at their pleasure

Not allowed to object to my complete objectification I become
Female impersonator always on the rag in bitch heat barking mad
Looney psycho freak fuck dump truck, I have lived life low and
High on everything but life, turned off dropping out all but dead, not for trying
Failed eventually at everything but aborting my own spawn, did not love my fellow
Man but not for wanting, yet I have lived far longer than I thought possible

Now an alien even to myself I offer thrills to no one
Can go unnoticed, unrecognized even to myself. Why this life lived so
Passionately punishing myself for every sin committed against
A woman like me everywhere in any age at all stages of life and time
An object still, she’s a nice old lady with her dog, all the rest at long last dead

©2008 Peggy Pendleton

Inversion

To breathe and not to stay indoors to wear a mask
And feel the fool, that crazy woman
Wears a doctor's mask and wonders
Why does that mother take her baby out
To stroll within the shallow stroller
14 degrees Fahreheit, windchill 6?  She walks
Without hurry, in deliberation, without expression, in air
Too toxic to breathe.  We're having an inversion
(The baby's face is pale blue in the weak light)
She looks depressed
Like the rest of us.

Even on a good day, early spring, full sun
I'd rather keep out of sight,
Where once I was a curiosity
Always in the garden with an old dog
Lying in the sun, ears pivoting like
Periscope, sentry, even dreaming
Children like me.  So do dogs

©2010 Peggy Pendleton

This Is who I Was In My Fifties

I have known so many young women who dreaded turning 30, then 35.  I know women for whom 40 means the end of youth, the end of beauty, the end of all good things.  I know women who think 50 is really old.  But this is me in my mid fifties and these were some of the best years of my life.  I was more successful as a model in my 50s than I was in my 20s.  I was in demand as an actor in my 50s.  The only thing that brought that all to an end was my mother's vascular dementia.  Taking care of her aged me in a way that all the years leading up to 57 hadn't.  Taking care of my mother in her final horrible years damaged me in a way that all of life up to that point hadn't.  I'm now finally just about recovered.  But I want you to know, you lovely younger women, that your 50's just might be the very best years of your life, so do not dread them.

I was a woman who always claimed to be a bit older than I actually was.  I wanted to be thirty.  I thought people would take me seriously when I was thirty. I thought being older than I actually was would bring me credibility and gravitas.  I hated being treated like an object, like a brainless twit because others couldn't see past the pretty face.  And I had the kind of looks that made me seem ageless.  That's no longer true. And I take a certain comfort in the fact that I can move among you nearly invisible now.  I no longer lie about my age.

Feeling Fluish

Yesterday I felt like crap. I thought I had a too-much-fun hangover.  Friday night I was up late on twitter talking books and writing and all things literary.  There was no alcohol involved, but there was smoking.  Now today, after behaving myself yesterday I should feel better but I don't.  If anything I feel worse.  I don't remember looking in a mirror yesterday but I did get a glimpse of myself today in passing and it was shocking.  I'm almost a ghastly green and have big dark circles under my eyes.

It doesn't help that Cyrus refused to eat his breakfast this morning. Then to make matters worse he refused to take his pills no matter how I hid them or disguised them.  And just as his last terrible sore bloomed and then healed a new one is blooming on the side of his nose. He can barely walk, his arthritis and joints are so bad.  Maybe all I feel is empathy and maybe I'm not that sick. 

The air in Salt Lake is toxic now.  We are having an "inversion" where a cold layer of air is stangnating below a warm high.  If you're up in the mountains skiing you're warmer than we are down here in the valley floor.  Weak sun barely warms the sunroom in the late morning and it's hovering in the very low single digits at night.  Ice on trails is not melting with daily trafic on it by the dogs. I'm wearing layers of clothing.  Craving hot baths rather than showers, but feel guilty about the amount of water a hot bath takes compared to a quck shower.  Still my bones crave the heat, the soaking.

I have a busy week ahead and urgently feel the need to re-edit the second and third chapters of the novel.  I may enter the Amazon Breakthrough Novel contest again this year, but I won't kill myself if I just can't meet the deadline.  I'm showing the front house this week and have appointments and dates every day.

Cleaning House (part 1)

I have this odd feeling of Deja vu today.  I'm getting ready to start thinking about cleaning house and finally getting organized.  I do this thinking thing often and don't make much progress, so perhaps the sensation I feel seems so like a real experience, but is merely the repetition of one more day of procrastination.  I did make a bit of progress yesterday.  I purged my paper files from my too-huge four-drawer file cabinet that stands hulking at the back of my walk-in closet.  That resulted in a trash bag full of paper with either my name and address on it, or my social security number and/or medical information.  Then, whilel I was watching The Daily Show and Colbert, I separated my name from those papers.  Now I have two piles of papers to dispose of: those with no identifying markers and those with.  I'll toss the one bag in the recycle bin and shred the other.  So far, so good.  It did amaze me to find Vet records (for my long dead cat) from my days in Santa Barbara with my Cliff Drive address on them.  And it also amazes me to realize that it's still hard to part with evidence that I once lived on Cliff Drive in Santa Barbara.  I wish I still did.  Salt Lake is not my favorite place, especially this time of year.

My plan is to go through all the crowded storage areas in my tiny cottage.  This means getting rid of old crap so I can make room for my favorite crap, thus making it appear I have less crap, since it will now be in storage spaces and out of sight.  This is how I unclutter my space.  I know it's just an illusion, but I think I'll feel better once it's done.  I live in a space that's only 450 sq feet and I have five stuffed book cases taking up a lot of room.  That will never change, but I need to weed out the books I'm not likely to reread and iether move them to the big house or take them to the book exchange for future credits.  That way I can take the books in baskets scattered around the floor space and put them in book cases.  I think this is a version or robbing Peter to pay Paul.  I'm fully aware that this phenomonon is in operation throughout my life.  Paul is happy but Peter is about to start squawking.

I should take pictures of this process, but it's a little embarrassing to put my clutter on full display.  So I'll just leave you with this little gem ~ my bookcases.  Soon, I'll take you in the closet with me.

Hard Times and Property Taxes

My little world is about to undergoe some big changes.  I have a house that I've been renting to a young friend of mine.  (I live in the "cottage" at the back of the property where I have a gated driveway and my own parking space.) Up until now she's never had trouble finding a room-mate, but she's getting ready to make a big move to go to school out of state, so if she lived with her family for a few months before making that move she'll save money. And I'll be able to rent the whole house and make more money.  Sounds like a win/win doesn't it?  But because I live on the same (very big for an urban lot) property, I need to find the right person to rent it to. I'm not everybody's cup of tea.  The fact that I'm a bit of a misanthrope doesn't help.

I've spent most of my adult life trying to be as little like my heinous mother as humanly possible.  My mother was ungenerous in the extreem.  She was a tightwad and never ever gave anything away.  Even "gifts" came with a price tag or a trade off.  So I have spent my life erring on the side of generosity at the expense of my fiscal well-being.  It is time to grow up and stop living my life in reaction to a dead woman.  It's time to start thinking in terms of what's best for me for a change.  It's time for me to make enough money on this property to be able to pay my property taxes on time.

It's also time to finish the novel and put it to bed somewhere else.  I'm ready to move forward.  I'm ready to stop dreaming about the life I want and start working to make it happen.  I figure I just might have fifteen or twenty years to make at least one of my dreams come true if I work real hard right now.

The Narcissist Has Moved

I've been writing and rewriting one novel for twenty years or more.  It's had at least five titles and has progressed over time from tattered scribbled yellow legal pads to typewriter to a word processor.  Then haltingly through three PCs to my Imac.  I have, in the past two years completely rewritten it on the blog, in full view, stumbling and fumbling my way through the puzzle that is an American family in extremis in a particular time and place.  It is personal.  And based on the comments so far, it is far too universal.  I began from one angle and then deconstructed it, peeling away to find ever greater complexity.  Now I've compressed the story, distilling it.  I began to focus in on a specific period of time, smaller, more intimate than the sixty something years of underlying history.

A month or a week ago I wrote a new chapter.  It was, like all lost writing, the best I'd ever done.  I know it has to be here somewhere, but I can't find it.  This loss was so shocking I began to move the book to Word to finish this incarnation.  So what you see here has now undergone another transformation as a Word project.  The title this time is The Narcissist.  I know that the last two or three chapters of the book are it's best.  I need to make the first three as good.  So for awhile, I'll be scarce here.  If you see me on Twitter tell me to get back to work.

PS  If you're reading the version of The Narcissist here, keep in mind that the comments you see refer to an earlier incarnation, when I was writing this family's history as a first person narrative on a very linear path.  And the book is thirty chapters long.  I think I have ten or fifteen up here.  But I always appreciate comments.  Without you this is all done in a vacuum and isn't half as fun.

The Writing Life

I know I said this last year as well, but this IS the year I'm going to get published and in order to get published I have to submit something.  I did submit a few things last year, but in late November and early December so even if any of that finds its way into publication it won't be for a while.

I have finished the rewrite on Maggy, which is now The Narcissist, but that doesn't mean I'm through editing.  When you've worked on a book for twenty years or so, it's hard to come to the absolute end point with it unless someone else takes it away from you.  The rewrite I just finished was a drastic reworking of the material into a new form.  The whole story is now told as if it were being remembered in present time and in therapy, so there are millions of tense changes.  I will be editing to find missed tense changes.

I've been doing the last two hundred pages of rewrite on Word.  I had an unfortunate accident on Blogger.  I wrote a whole new chapter and was delighted with it.  The whole chapter was dialogue.  I saved it and went to bed.  When I woke up the next morning it was gone.  So I will not do my fiction writing on blogger anymore.  Phillip tells me it must be here somewhere, since blogger autosaves all the time.  I know that's true, but...  Where the hell did that chapter go?

So, for anyone reading The Narcissist on the blog, it's incomplete and unedited.  But once I have it finished to my satisfaction I'll probably repost it.  In the meantime there are several chapters from Maggy that have been dropped from The Narcissist.  This means I have work that can be turned into short story material.

I hope you all had a lovely New Years Eve and are now embarked on a lazy New Year's Day.  I went to the best New Year's Eve party ever.  I spent last night partying on Twitter.  It was so much fun.

Don't forget to eat blackeyed peas and cornbread today.  It's for good luck in the new year.  Besides, it's good for you.

Happy New Year!

New Year's Eve Ruminations

The year started with such promise: A new president and one I worked hard to elect, and a new majority in Congress, sadly none of them from Utah.  Yes, there was all the horrendous economic news, but we knew that at the very tail end of the eight horrible Bush years.  So, no matter how bad the job market is, you only have GWBush to blame for that.  It will be a slow slog to get out of that one, espeicially if the Republicans stonewall repowering the country with new Green jobs.  The party of NO seems to want us all to suffer a few years longer so they can blame the suffering on President Obama. I hope we're not so stupid as to let them get away with that one.

Sadly for me this year will be defined by the loss of my friend, Zelita.  Everything about her illness and death was shocking.  So I remain in a state of sad shock. I'm not the sort of woman to have scads of friends and losing my closest friend leaves a hole in my life that will leave the grament of my dialy life in tatters.  Her death has left me feeling old and frail, as if at any moment, I could be the next to go.  I've always assumed I'd die young.  But now I'm old.  How did that happen?

But on the good news side, my only male friend, Nick is taking me to see the new Clooney move next week, and my friend Tracy, who lives three houses up the street, is taking me to lunch at one of our favorite Mexican Diners next week.  I am not without friends.  And then there are those of you who've been stopping by for the past couple of years and though I may never see you in real life, I count you as my friends.

We've had a gawd awful month of sub-freezing temperatures and inversions creating dangerous air quality in Salt Lake, but today is gorgeous.  It snowed all night and all day yesterday, but this morning is sunny and air is clear again.

But the best news of all for me is that I've finished writing the novel, which I've re-titled The Narcissist.  I did a major rewrite.  Now I just need to do a readthrough to see if it's clean and free of typos or odd tense changes.  Then it's on to writing a query letter.  So, all in all, I'm starting the new year hopeful, and that's amazing in itself.

Happy New Year to all of you.

Snarly Marly Taking the Morning Sun

This is where Marly hangs out right after having her breakfast. Every morning that's sunny this is where you'll find Miss Marly

Dog Love

Roscoe loves groming Cyrus.  Cyrus rarely leaves his bed so Roscoe leans over my bed and gives the top of Cyrus' head a good lick.  Cyrus seems to greatly enjoy these sessions.  Who am I to judge?  Love knows no gender.

Marly and Her Boyfriend

Wrapping Up the Holidays

It's been a very trying holiday season.  My best friend died just before Thanksgiving.  It was very hard to find anything to be thankful for.

I lost a tenant the last day of November, so December has been a month of scarcity. If I'm going to be able to finish paying property taxes and utilities this next month, I'm going to have to get a loan.  And the weather has been dreadful.  The temperatures have remained below 25 degrees for our highs most of the past month.  We are sitting in a bowl of worsening air quality each day the temperatures stay that low.  We are close to 0 degrees every night.  It's too cold to walk dogs and the air is dangerous to breathe.  The elderly (that would be me) and those with chronic conditions (that would also be me) are warned to stay indoors.  The dogs and I are getting cabin fever. 

Today I have to make a grocery run or the dogs will be out of food.  So like it or not, I have to scrape ice off my car and hope to hell it starts, and like it or not, I have to scrape up some money for dog food.  Fortunately when times were not quite so dire I put some things in the freezer.  I'm slowly emptying it out.  I qualify for food stamps, but haven't the energy or gumption to jump through the hoops necessary to actually get them.  Maybe I can talk someone into helping me navagate the food stamp paperwork, the standing in line, the having to tell my hard luck story.  It's awful being down and out.  Well, maybe not "out" quite yet.  I'm pissed off about so many things I can do nothing about, but I have been able to use this time to write.

I have visited a few of you over the last few days and found that most of you are making the best of difficult times.  Maybe I'll learn something new this year that will make coping one of the tools in my skill set. 

And Cyrus is just maintaining.  He keeps getting abscesses but I'm just keeping him on antibiotics so they don't get quite so horrifying.  Aside from the abscesses he still has a good apatite and still manages to haul himself out of bed to go outside at least three times a day.  But Cyrus's days are numbered.  I see that.  I just don't want to think about it.

The one bright sopt in this bleak picture is the novel.  I have embarked on rewriting the novel in a whole new way and it's working.  I can see the finish line and I think I'll be ready to begin grappling with a query letter sometime in January.

Suzanne Horne, Bipolar Artist, Killed Herself Last Christmas Eve, 12/24/08

This is Suzanne Horne
I did not know Suzanne, but she gave me two awards. I didn't deserve them. She was so beautiful. Her site, Liquid Illusion, was stunningly gorgeous. It was sumptuous. Languid. Lovely. I could have been kinder, more generous, encouraging, but I did not know... And I think I should have.

I have been visiting her vacant, abandoned site obsessively this evening. I go back to look at her loveliness over and over. She was a poet, but I didn't comment often. I admired her, but I did not tell her enough. I know I couldn't have saved her, but I could have been kinder. I could have been generous with my words. She was a very talented photographer. She deserved more of life than this. She killed herself on Christmas Eve. A woman in her prime. Only forty two.

These are her words

Because:
If I have been a bad girl..........
It may well have depended on the situation at hand.
If I have acted out in a bad way......
I'm sure you know the conditions I was forced to act under.
If I was sneaky........
You'll know I had no choice in the matter.
(No rules in love and war, right?)
If I had bad thoughts dancing in my head.........
like really bad thoughts.....
you'll notice I didn't act upon those.
I just allowed them to dance for awhile.
If I was naughty.............
I was good at it.
No complaints.
Just requests for more.
If I seemed cruel and heartless...........
I just evened the score!
If you see me dressed somewhat like you on Christmas Eve.......
Please take no personal offense.
Consider it a "treat" for someone who has been REALLY good.
Oh, and if you saw me dip the cat's feet in red paint and toss her onto the trampoline.....
Well, you've got me there!
Love,
Liquid

These are the words of Suzanne Horne, Liquid Illusion

In Memory of Suzanne Horn, Liquid Illusion

Suzanne was a blogger who wrote lovely poetry and was a photographer with an incredible eye.  She was beautiful.  She had children.  She was bipolar, and like so many of us, had a hard time dealing with Christmas.  She killed herself Christmas Eve last year.  It was about this time last year I found out about Suzanne's death, so it's now I think about her, like a lovely melody I can't quite name, or a line of poetry I can't quite place.  I will always think of her during the holidays, and like many of you, I'll always wonder if there was something I could have said or done that could have kept her with us.

The Thrill Is Gone, But I'm Still Editing

One of these days I'll be through with this god damned book. But until that time, unless I really need to get something off my chest, I'll be back at Word trying to put this book to bed. I lost one chapter writing on blogger so, for now, I'm elsewhere. Then I'll be agonizing about a query letter or a cover letter or a bit of biographical information. That's when it will really get hard.

Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas

A Little Xmas Message For Utah

The Xmas Depression

I'm sleeping twelve hours a night, if you call the hours between 8:00 and noon part of the night. I hate Xmas and more so this year than most. I lost my best friend November 18th. I have another friend who has MS and needs help with errands. My old dog Cyrus has had a series of abscesses on his muzzle that scare me and make me think he isn't long for this world. Now he's on a mega dose of antibiotics that might keep the next abscess at bay as it heals the last one. I'm typing with my fingers crossed.

I've lost a tenant and Ms M and I are having a hard time finding a replacement. This has cut my income in half for December, but nobody told my creditors my income isn't what it used to be. I'm living $500 dollars beneath the poverty level. I qualify for food stamps but I'm too depressed to make the effort to jump through the bureaucratic hoops to get them. Filling out forms seems to be one of the things my brain is no longer able to do without a helper. Waiting in line with other depressed and poor people is more than I can handle right now. I'm old in a way that shocks me. My body tells me so every early AM when I have to get out of bed and hobble to the bathroom. I walk like the very old, shuffling along with every joint aching.

I've always hated Xmas. It was the one holiday my atheist parents seemed to take special pleasure in fucking up for me. I always think of the Charlie Brown cartoons where Lucy holds the football for Charlie to kick and then pulls the football away at the last second when I think of the way my mother dealt with Xmas wishes. She would insist on my naming the thing I wanted. Early on it required dictating a letter to Santa, and I would wake to find that Santa felt the thing I wanted wasn't possible that year. No tricycle this year. No doll, no Teddy bear, no, no, no. There was always a reason Santa wouldn't make my wish come true, and it had nothing to do with my being bad. Santa had philosophical reasons for denying my wishes. By the time I was six I found out there was no Santa, Easter Bunny or Tooth Fairy, and it was my mother who wanted to make sure I got the point that my dreams would never come true as long as she was in charge of fulfilling wishes. But for god's sake do not neglect thanking her profusely and with convincing sincerity for the new underwear or the new winter coat, whatever it was I needed. This was where I got my acting chops. I learned to fake gratitude. I learned to fake a lot of things. And I began to dread all events that required gift giving and I never trusted hope.

This kind of conditioning lasts. It sets up a biochemical event in the brain. All relationships become substitutes for the one who made it a tradition to hurt, disappoint, and require fake gratitude. Now receiving gifts just makes me feel unworthy and guilty or sad. I have, over the years, begged friends to please, please, please not give me Xmas gifts. Perhaps I am depriving them of an opportunity to express their joy in the season, but I feel nothing but guilt that I haven't matched or surpassed their impulse to give. And frankly, Xmas the retail holiday, just makes me tired. I've worked in retail sales. Believe me, there is no other holiday that's harder on sales people who are trying to help you desperate hordes shopping at the last minute to find one perfect gift for Xmas. It's not their fault you waited until all the good stuff is gone.

We were a middle class family. Poverty wasn't ever the reason wishes weren't granted. It was my mother's own brand of tough love. It was her belief that granting wishes spoiled the child. In reality it was the perfect way to make every celebratory event something to dread. So here we are sixty years later and this well-learned dread still grips me. Merry Xmas. Just don't expect a gift.

Bad Mothers

I saw the movie Precious this past Thursday with Nick. I came out of the theatre sobbing and when I calmed down enough to tell Nick that yes, the performances were stunning and powerful, but it was my resemblance to Precious, the wounded child, that made me so sad, my experience of childhood in an upper middle class white family of extremely attractive people, where I was a sexual object at six for my mother's husband, my adoptive father, son of a well known surgeon, member of the Country Club, where no one saw the pain, the isolation, the destruction going on in full view of everyone. Nothing ever disturbed my families picture perfect outward appearance, but my parents pathology certainly did create madness in me. They did pass it on. I was not impregnated by my father, but if I had been, my grandfather would have quietly made that little problem go away. It was an educational opportunity that got me out of my family home when I was seventeen, a bit like Precious, only I got to skip my senior year of high school and go to the University of Utah and live in the dorms. Otherwise I'd have probably been a run-away living on the streets of San Francisco.

A lot of men think the stories of my childhood are hyperbolic and too lurid to be believable. I promise you that when I was in group therapy in Santa Barbara in a group of fifteen women who all had been sexually abused as children, some of us had children who had also been sexually abused, we were all white. Some of us were the well educated progeny of well off parents, but the cost to each of us had been sanity, safety, any sence of security, a profound saddness, and a series of suicide attempts. Many of these women had lives far more brutal than mine, yet we all felt worthless.

I'm writing a novel about the life of one such woman. You know what they say: write about what you know. So that's what I'm doing. If writing my story makes only one woman feel less alone, I'll feel like a success.

A woman I greatly admire, Melissa Harris Lacewell, has written an article for The Nation called Bad Black Mothers. I think it's important to our understanding of each other that we pay close attention to all these stories. The one thing they all have in common is the bad or absent father who is never mentioned, never blamed for the aftermath, never suffers the real consequences for the destruction he causes. No, we as a society blame the mother and/or the child. More of our famous Family Values.

Family Values

Every time I hear someone on the Right claim that their political party is all about “Family Values,” I want to scream, “Whose Family?” Certainly not mine. Family Values is “Christian” code for “Exclusion.” Like “Pro-Life” is code for “Anti-Choice.” Embedded in the code of “Family Values” is the idea that there is only one “right” kind of family.

Since the 1950’s the family has undergone radical change. We are mobile and very often live far from extended families. There are now blended families, which have evolved over the past fifty some years, and now children may have more than one “mother” or “father.” Children today may have more than two sets of grandparents. They may have aunts and uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews from marriages that ended in divorce and began anew with new marriages to people who already had children from their past marriages. It is a little like the polygamist marriages so common in Mormonism. After awhile it becomes difficult to sort out who is a cousin or an aunt or a niece to whom. And so it seems to me that “Family Values” is a meaningless term, merely code for “no marriage benefits for gay couples.” I don’t know a single family today, with it’s multiple marriages, and all the children raised in these temporary marriages, that does not have at least one gay child within it. This fact implies that we don’t love all our children equally. That some of our children do not deserve the legal rights and privileges that our other children deserve. And this is a Christian value? If it is, then Christianity has undergone the same kind of radical shift in “values” that is apparent in all families.

Fundamentalist Christians believe the word of God, as set down in the Bible, is absolutely the “Truth.” If this line of thinking is taken to it’s logical conclusion, we would be stoning adulterers, we would be literally taking an eye for an eye. I would be able to say to any “Christian” who complains about the content of our mass media, “If thine eyes offend thee, pluck them out,” and would have a reasonable expectation that there would be a lot of one eyed “Christians” walking around out there. Women are exhorted from almost every pulpit in the land to “obey” their husbands, who are the moral authority, the rulers of their families. They seem to believe that it is their right (these old white men) to take away my rights as well a the legal rights of every female and gay person. They are about to strip our reproductive rights in the guise of Healthcare Reform. The Stupak Amendment and the Nelson Amendment are designed to make it impossible for women to make the choice to terminate a pregnancy. This has been a legal right since Roe versus Wade. If they succeed in taking away my rights as a woman, then they can take away your rights as an African American, and your rights as a Latin American, and your rights as a………. Where will this end? It will end in fascism. We will have no rights at all.

Al Frankin Schools Senator Thune on Healthcare Reform

Who Are We

Identity is a complex process of often painful evolution. But we have developed over the short span of eight years an identity, as a nation in a world of other nations, as bullies and thugs. That is a big part of the Bush Legacy. Thank you Carl Rove, thank you Vice President Chenney, thank you Donald Rumsfeld, John Ashcroft, Condoleezza Rice, and Alberto Gonzales. I could go on and on with the kudos, but if you’d been paying the slightest attention over the eight long Bush years, you know the cast of characters. Second raters, one and all. Mean and greedy. It’s hard for me to believe that these people all had reasonable credentials—good schools, a history of public service, business, law. What happened along the way that made them all so cynical and mean and greedy? What was in it for them besides wealth? Is wealth enough of an incentive to work so hard to wreck a country? Did they plan the economic collapse when it seemed a woman or a black man would be taking over to lead the sinking ship of state? Was the banking collapse a well improvised explosive devise planted to sabotage and guarantee failure for their successor? And did Dick Chenney always plan to stick around and needle the next administration?

We are learning things about ourselves and our government that are horrifying to me. That C Street has been doing its subversive secret work since the 1930s directing the legislative agenda of Congressmen, both Democrat and Republican, is only now becoming widely known. That we became torturers and that conservatives (both Republican and Democrat) believe this is a good thing is profoundly depressing. That lobbyists for corporate America are driving the agenda and funding the conservatives of both parties to stop reform of our Healthcare and Financial Industries and just might well succeed, and indeed have succeeded in keeping reform from happening at all, makes me want to leave this country and live in a country less enamored of greed and repression, less invested in fundamentalist religious doctrines, less willing to strip women of rights long ago fought for and won.

The Christmas Nazi

Mom met Andrew in 1981 when he came to pick me up for our blind date. Her pronouncement on him later that night, after he'd delivered me to my door was, "What an arrogant son-of-a-bitch."

The first time he came to pick me up, when his kids were visiting for that first summer, she made a point of saying, "Good thing you've got girls. I can't stand little boys." Thank God, he'd left the girls in the car. We were utterly speechless, and simply left. The girls liked me, and after dinner and the movie, the girls invited me to come home with them and sleep over. I accepted. When I called Mom from Andrew's to tell her not to worry, I was sleeping over, she said, "I thought you were both very rude to me when you left. You didn't even say goodbye."
"I guess we didn't know what to say to your comment about little boys. Andrew does have a son. He lives with his mother, Andrew's first wife."
"That doesn't explain anything."
"Sorry. I'll see you sometime tomorrow."
"What time?"
"Don't worry about it. I have a key."

She complained as time went on and I spent more and more time living with Andrew and the girls, about our never giving her an invitation--like his family got. So next time we had a family get together she was included. She walked up to Andrew's youngest brother Curt and asked, "Have you ever had sex with an animal? I'm taking an informal survey, and want to know if it feels any different than sex with a human." Curt, who was an investment banker, newly married with a pregnant wife, stared expressionlessly at her face and then said, perfectly deadpan, "No, have you?" When Mom was out on the deck, feeding peanuts to the squirrels with the grandparents and the girls, Curt looked at Andrew and cocked one eyebrow. Then he raised his glass to Andrew and said, "Good luck. You're going to need it."

When I was invited to my first family Christmas Eve celebration hosted by Curt and his wife Amy, I was conflicted. It was my mother's family's tradition to celebrate Christmas very late on Christmas Eve. Sleeping in on Christmas day was the motivation for that ritual I'm sure. But I felt guilty about telling my mother I was choosing to spend the night with Andrew's family. I asked him if he thought Curt would mind inviting her.

"Do you think she can behave herself? There might be little boys there."
"I'll ask her to be nice."
"Won't that be like waving a cape in front of a bull? My father's a Republican and I'll bet she knows it."
"I'll tell her she can't talk politics."
"In your dreams."
"It's Christmas for Christ's sake. How can I abandon her? Please."
"Merry Christmas."

The Hoffman Christmas tradition was a crab-leg feast. The house was beautifully decorated. There was a big traditional tree, a fire in the fireplace, and one of the grandchildren (a boy) was banging out Silent Night on the piano. Andrew's older sister and her husband were there with their teenaged son. Helen, Curt's pregnant wife's family was in attendance. It was a big party. Their large dining room table was close quarters.

There were lots of plates and hot pots of melted butter, many wine glasses. Baskets of bread at both ends of the table, red sauce here and there, a huge salad bowl. But the thing that dominated the table were the two huge platters heaping with big steaming crab legs. I had never seen so many at one time. Chairs were crammed so tight around the table there would be no elbowroom.

Mom was seated between Andrew's mother, Marta, and his sister-in-law, Helen. We were across the table. Andrew's father was at one end and his brother, Curt, the host of the party, was at the other. Right there we had the possibility that Mom would start some sort of patriarchal diatribe concerning the archaic seating that placed men in those arbitrary positions. But Mom looked innocent and was behaving herself, so far. I began to breath again.

There was a lot of chatter as people began to pass platters and baskets. Wine bottles went the rounds and toasts were made. My mother raised her glass (I held my breath) but she only thanked everyone for inviting her. Again I could breathe. I was beginning to shiver and tried to concentrate on eating. I love sweet crabmeat dipped in melted butter.

Things went along pretty well and the meal was almost over. There was still dessert and coffee, but I was beginning to relax. I even left the room to help the older children clear dinner dishes from the table in preparation for dessert and exchange dirty wine glasses for coffee cups and brandy snifters. But by the time I got back to the table, Andrew's mother was leaning away from my mother and saying to Henry, her husband , "What is she talking about? Is this all right for the children to hear? I mean, isn't she talking about artificial insemination?" The last sentence is delivered in a loud stage whisper but I was just setting Harvey's coffee cup in front of him and I couldn't help overhearing. Oh shit. I'm in trouble now. She's off and running and there will be no stopping her.

I look down the table scanning for damage. Mom has her arm around Helen's brother's chair, leaning in front of Andrew's youngest daughter who is six. Mom is tugging on the sleeve of the the other brother-in-law sitting next to Andrew's oldest daughter who is nine. Helen's brother looks puzzled, but not horrified. But the man next to him is getting red in the face. I can hear Mom when she leans in front of Helen's brother to continue her conversation with the red-faced man. "You're a lawyer, you must at least have a legal opinion if you can't form an ethical or political opinion." Wap! The sound of the gauntlet being thrown.

"Mother, what are you talking about?"
"Artificial insemination. There was a very interesting article in Ms. Magazine this month. It's about the moral question concerning the rights of the children of sperm donors to know their genetic heritage versus the right to privacy of the donor."
"It's Christmas, and there are children at the table. Could we talk about something else, please?" "No one else is complaining. Who are you, the Christmas Nazi?" As I was about to respond, she turned back to the red-faced man and said, "Well?!"

Andrew's father, Harvey, stood and called for less conversation and said, "Could we please sing some carols? How about Deck the Halls?" Mom rolled her eyes and then pinned me with a withering look. I had spoiled her fun.

She never got another invitation to Curt's Christmas party.

When it came up the next year I told her why she hadn't been included. "You insisted on discussing a controversial topic that's inappropriate for children. We were eating dinner and artificial insemination seemed tasteless. Nobody wanted to talk about it. You were trying to start an argument. I don't understand why you'd want to do that, but it was embarrassing to me."

"Oh, so now I embarrass you. That's rich. They were so boring, so stuffy and dull. I was just trying to keep from dying of boredom. Well, if that's where you want to spend Christmas Eve, go. I'll have more fun alone. I won't have to spend the evening with the Christmas Nazi"

Love Ridden

A Few Words In Defense of Our Country

January 2007 performance. Features full lyrics. Abridged lyrics ran as a New York Times Op-Ed piece on 1/24/07

I Got Nothin', But Bob Cesca's Got Awesome

Bob Cesca's Awesome Blog is awesome and this post is called "Guns, Butter, and Suck."
Do yourself a favor and go read it.

It's Prostate, Not Prostrate

Men have quite complicated plumbing. Some men get breast cancer. Yes, I know. It seems so unfair that your flabby little man boobs can have all the same bad things happen to them as your wife/girlfriend's lovely plump breasts, but bad things can happen to man boobs too. Then think of all the complicated parts of a penis. What about your prostate? Ignore your throbbing prostate and you may end up prostrate. How are your Seminal Vesicles? I capitalize that because if those puppies go south you'll be in a world of hurt. I know. I was married to a man who had seminal vesicle problems. He was constantly in the hospital in agonizing pain. Men have a trickier relationship with their colons than women, statistically speaking, and they tend to wait longer than women to go to a doctor when they do have problems. Men are touchy about their nether-regions and not in a good way. I've known a lot of men and they all had a horror of having their bummy holes looked at. Just saying.

Cyrus Has a Big Problem

This is the second of these sores. The first one was almost this big and you can now see it closer to his nose, as a small red spot. It's opening up a bit with the constant licking and rubbing. I started treating this one earlier than the first and had made progress, ran out of antibiotics as the holiday happened. Started this round the day after Thanksgiving, only now it's a bigger dose. There is no way to keep a dog from licking his lips, so it's impossible to keep this sore clean and dry. So far neither of these sores has dulled his apatite. His bowel seems normal. I'm about at my wit's end.

He does not want to let me clean it or take its picture. So, this is a blurry and badly lit picture, but you can see how deep it is and how big in diameter--bigger than a quarter for sure.