Writing...

Anyone do it in little fits of structure and structure and properly filling the space in tiny blocks and, again, little fits of, inspiration.  And think about the deadlines most when you're a depression case and hating yourself for being behind them and having an ulcer? "Process".  Call it that!

Today I am going to work on STARAMA - a revision is happening and it's really demanding and it has to be done, with discipline.

But it's snowing, and I was smoking a cigarette, and thinking.  So I'm blogging until I can get myself out the door to the cafe because that's where I decided I'll do revision work.  Oh man.

But just now out back I was thinking about my mother.  The link is coffee.

Now I'm really back, I am not going to the cafe.  It really snowed!  I thought it was a lot of hype but no.  So I have been drinking coffee and smoking and listening to Aretha.  I ate some raisin toast and drank two pots of coffee, and moved a houseplant inside to save its life.  It's dripping melted snow in the kitchen now. Facebook.

I went home for a night a few months ago for dinner at my mom's house with all of us and my mom's baby sister and her husband and two of their four daughters and my grandmother.  Grammy was about to leave for Florida, now to be her permanent residence, having been helped by my aunt with a General's precision to empty her house in Philadelphia. Grammy had been staying at my mom's for some matter of weeks and the story goes (per Ben) - three nights before leaving, she freaked out at my mother, upset these two sisters didn't even want to see eachother - around the corner from each other all summer.  It is confusing to me too.  It's troubling that Grammy doesn't seem to know what it is either.  Families can be mad it appears.  Anyway, my aunt is hyper intelligent and psychosexually a little - ha! funny.  One wonders what runs in one's family when it seems like a mystery to the matriarch too. I know Grammy acts grand and that's just how she describes Nanny as acting too.  We've got that quality running through us- we teach it down to the first daughter.  Around the women of the family, I think I probably get a bit hyper-analytical - frightened of the family thing... but also thrilled!  Who else can you actually tell family stories with where you, ha, tell the truth, drink a glass of wine, cry laughing that you people were allowed out in public - That is what it was like, fairly often, growing up with my mom and her, my, family.  I know there are other loud insane families out there but mine was really quite show stealing there for a while. In Boston Markets in Pennsylvania, in Malls in New Jersey, at Earnest Hemingway's historic home in Key West, in a town called Odell... Indiana?   Ridiculous scenes.

My favorite story is remembered by Amy and is called "WHERES MY COIN?!"  That's the Boston Market one. Ridiculous. 

My point is I have a great time as long as there's wine.  I do it for the kids I tell you... and myself.  If you're going to have an absurdly dysfunctional family that can't even reasonably leave the house much less go on vacation from when you're nine to seventeen, the reward is wine when you're older and your grandmother freaking out and insisting on seeing her progeny.  With all the bedbugs this summer, Grammy and I didn't even have martinis and steak, our big plan.  I'll do that for Christmas though.

So the point of this is not actually WHERES MY COIN... I told WHERES MY COIN when Ben was outside and I kept it down. I'm not a bitch.   My point was going to be something about else... I have been writing this with the loose idea of telling how when I was real little  my mother told me drinking coffee like I always wanted to do - would only drink milk with coffee in it- would stunt my growth. And took the opportunity walking in the city past a little person to tell me that's what she meant - if I kept drinking coffee, I'd would be a little person.  I told everyone that memory and my aunt, who I haven't seen in six years, since my Grandfather's funeral, turned to her daughters and said "Don't turn against me like that girls."  I just laughed.  I think that's a funny story about my mom!  

I took another break, you missed it. I'm waiting for Indian food.  The point was my mother being a weirdo and how when I tell nice stories about her, they're still weird. :-)

I watched Into the Woods last night on Netflix and that is he most psychodynamic musical ever made.  The Witch.  When she self immolates. You're all liars and thieves like his father like his son will be too oh why bother you'll just do what you do.  And the chords are ascending in some diminished seventh or do I know?  That is probably the best part of the best show.  

Oh sigh.  I have not revised my script, still today. I am listening to Into the Woods. I am considering buying a ticket to California for next weekend.  Just a hotel in Santa Barbera maybe. It's January weather in October.  Can you imagine? Stephen Sondheim. Stephen Sondheim.

So long story short, Friday, my roommate believes the small and apparently painful bites she has found on herself are bed bug bites… again.  This was the hardship of the summer and this time around, we simply have to address by removing books, and fabric to a reasonable degree, to plastic bags, and calling for a treatment – we can’t do what we did this summer again, either of us. She calls the landlord who hates us, he says we can break our lease, so tired is he of bedbug news, and I overhear her making her case that this isn’t anybody’s fault.   He, it seems, is saying the same thing he always says: “We’ve had that place for twenty-five years and we’ve never…” I yell out, “It has nothing to do with the last twenty five years!” He calls me later in the day (I am the “good cop”.  Honestly I am very kind and measured with every horrible fool I must deal with after my six years in Astoria.  It’s the easiest tactic for me.  I think I get screwed over sometimes for being “too nice” but I’d get fucked over as much trying to be “harder” and in a way I’d be fucked twice because I’d be trying to be something I’m not. I stand my ground- I don't back away from obvious sense, and reiterating it as many times as I must, but I don’t throw out the baby that I’m small and pretty and these landlords for the most part are old-country enough they can’t show me their dirty core motivations, or backtrack as soon as they do if I just make the right face. I know. I’m no fool. But I appreciate if we all stay on the social niceties page.  Without this face, I’d be a whole other person… something of a frightening idea. ) and an imbecile exterminator comes to really and truly drench our house and all our things in chemicals - “once and for all” as it were. My roomie gets the hell out to meet her guy, a new guy since the last time we went through this, but, ah not so unfamiliar. I am not fucking anyone right now so when we do these insanely toxic treatments, there’s no go-to place for me.  It’s not her responsibility.  I feel for her that she is the one experiencing these bites. But at any rate I find myself stranded in Astoria.  When I brave return to my house six hours after the treatment I find the air indoors wholly un-breathe-able, drink a bottle of wine outside and call D-------, to tell him I "actually have a big favor to ask": would he pick me up? Can I sleep at his house?  First my stepmom tells me to get a hotel room.  I appreciate the advice, but no.  “One of those websites for hostels or deals” – I mean, there must be a better way. (you know I love hotels, but to find a deal I'd have to internet search in the toxified house, take a train into manhattan- it was already 8:00pm. A hotel?)

Status updates you can’t post to facebook:  A diminished sex drive compared to say, my twenties, is a blessing and a joy.  Late in the summer I went on a “The last straw. That’s it.” okcupid date.  A lunatic whose clothes smelled musty, who I met late at night downtown, he was working the soundboard at “Under St Marks”. A group of Canadians, singers, comedians, had the place for the night. As I shimmied into the backmost aisle seat in the underground pit, I palmed my cell phone, and held it low under my chair.  He texted “Hi.”  I listened to the curly haired stand up comic on “stage” implying incest, screwing up his joke, riffing on his name, his uncle, incest again and texted my “date”, “have you seen ‘Fame?’”  He texted back, “No. Why?” I texted nothing.  He texted to come over to the booth which I did between acts. I whispered “Which dial is his monitor? I’m obsessed with monitors” He said “You just want to show off your knowledge.” I smiled.  Not the wittiest retort although true. When the show was done, I smoked out back with the Canadians. Ky, my date, commenced giving me massages (which could not relax me since I didn’t know yet if I wanted him touching me).  I spent the next few hours trying to relax, tensing to his advances, trying to relax enough to enjoy the adventures he sought for us, explaining that we wouldn’t be sleeping together over 2:00am coffee, then pressed against onlookers at a Doug E Fresh show(!) and then fleeing as Ky frowned.  The cab departs.  I realize I am not dating any more.

The realization I am not dating has yet to give me anything but pleasure in thinking it. 

Early in the summer, before I wasn’t dating, D------- took me to the beach in a rented car.  The trip was a great success, and at the time, I’d laid myself a gauntlet that a male person would bring me somewhere in a car with-God-as-my-witness-I’ll-never-go-hungry-again style.  After the beach, it was back to D-------’s house. (We dated a couple years ago but it ended when he yelled at me about his workday on the phone. There’s an old blog post about it!)  I had my period which, though bloody and messy, meant I was at least feeling like sex.  I blew his enormous penis.

Break.  That was a funny break-point. I’m in my made bed now, in my aired out bedroom, wanting to get to my point. 

That would be: that day, the idea of his huge cock and blowing it turned me on.  I know I blow his mind when I’m into it. How wouldn’t I?  As far as intercourse, well that’s oookay.  I come too fast and then have to sort of put up with the huge thing.  Sad to say, these are the facts. It’s a relief when the whole affair becomes too bloody. I’ve come and we can clean up and relax now.

So we try this again.  What a perfect thing right? He doesn’t drink, he has wheels, he loves to read, he isn’t asking for a girlfriend, he has an enormous appendage, he’s nice to women.  I travel out to his place in summer heat – an hour or more on the subway, what he calls “Prospect Heights” I insist is “Crown Heights”.  I’m hungry and upon arrival realize I don’t know what I’m doing there.  I don’t want to have sex.  Now I’m just at his house. We eat a little, he goes and buys me a bottle of wine and opens it with a drill, we eat, go to bed, and I tense to his touch, toss and turn with horrible dreams all night.  He is angry at me in my dreams for not having sex.  We have long conversations about what a confusing and unfair person I am.  When I wake up and push him away, then touch him lightly, feeling sorry for these pushes, I try to explain and he lets me dig a nonsense grave.  “It doesn’t feel natural.  It feels to me… today. It feels to me…. Now…. That I don’t know, it just isn’t right… just to be so reasonable about it – like I can’t do this. I can’t just kind of say ‘You’re here. You’re fine.  Lets have sex so we both get some’  Are you angry? Does that make sense to you?”

I think he was kind of angry or at least rejected-feeling.  I don’t know.  After I pushed him off again and explained how I was feeling, and I think told him that I wanted a boyfriend to be with, not a buddy, that I needed to feel… something, he had a Eureka moment “So none of that is my fault!” Me: That’s right. Yes.  It isn’t you at all.  We went for brunch and I played some jewel game on his iphone and it felt like being in a sexless relationship.  The kind I’ve nearly never had, always too busy having sexual connections that arrive at me feeling agonizingly in need or want, or fucked up relationships, always sexually strong, and then everything else smacks us, knocks two crazies out cold.  But I feel like an asshole who won’t touch his penis, no matter what I’ve said. And eventhough he seems totally fine having realized it’s not his fault.

Anyway, maybe you think this is a lot of writing all just to say “there’s no chemistry” or “you’re just not that into him”.  I feel like there’s an interesting thing to articulate though.

I called D------- last night and he was there for me.  He took me to a diner, he stopped at a bodega so I could get some Claritin. When we got to his house he vacuumed up all the cat hair and downloaded Real Time so we could watch it.  As we laid in bed after the show was finished, he touched my breast and I didn’t like it.  He went out to read on his couch so I could sleep and came back in around 5am and we only lightly cuddled, mostly just slept next to one another.  I was relieved. I didn’t want to have sex.  If I did, I would have felt like I was for all those reasons listed above.

I love my diminished sex drive of the past few months.  It’s serving me enormously well.  When’s the last time this blog went months without me really liking someone a.k.a, often a.k.a, having had a lot of sexual chemistry with him, and then feeling disappointed when he was pleased with that great sex time and that alone, or some other angst like that.  That last straw date and really feeling like it was the last straw was amazing.  I like how I feel.  It seems to me, yet, a shame, that if I ever was – and I think I once was, evidence suggests… - I now am not able to get myself going for someone just because, hey, that’s hot.  I especially feel a little sorry if he went out of his way to be so nice and is asking nothing of me.  Just wishes I wanted it.  Just feels me right there.  I can't fault him.  I'm the one who wants to just sleep in our separate spaces. I'm the one who feels that way.

In this long ass, poorly articulated attempt to articulate, I am saying:  oh me oh my- once I’d have sex with someone because they were nice to me.  It was not always a disaster wherein thereafter I was in love- it was sometimes but not always. But now that’s all done. 

When I have to explain how it’s all done, all my enthusiasm for your cock, I feel so defensive- as I attempt to explain I think it is as if I’m saying “Oh I have issues.   Yes I’m frigid- it’s my issues” and that is really not it at all. I just don’t want a nice man with an erection who went out of his way for me to feel rejected so it ends up couched that way.

I am so grateful that it hasn't turned out like so many told me it would (not so far) – that my thirties would be a time of aching sex drive.  That I’d just need dick DICK where ever it may be found!  Maybe it won’t last, but deprioritizing sex and particularly deprioritizing dating feels so right.  I don’t even know if I wish I’d found a great relationship instead, I am liking it so much.  All I can possibly do right now is think about myself, freak out about myself, worry about myself all the time.  I am open to love- which would be someone actually seeing and getting these machinations of my mind, and loving them.  But right now, unlike so many other times I’ve chronicled, I’m not even longing for it.  You see, I’ve given up my friends.  I’ve given up and it feels very good.

I couldn’t be a hooker for a place to sleep and I do sort of feel sad not to have given that fun and acceptance to the nice, good, kindly person who gave me that place to sleep.  But I cringe to the penis! And that feels good.  What a crazy blogpost.

I love you all so much my friends, you may not even know.  I love you more more more more more.

-Alexis

I didn't want to work on my shit

So I ordered a sushi feast.

Going to straight to hell.

Love,
Alexis

All day, all week

Please read my friend Kelly's blog post about when we went to Zucotti Park last week to see some Occupy Wall Street. Kelly, the straight bomb.

Having been last week, my contribution since has largely been talking to disapprovers while out and about, correcting their perception, media-backed, that the kids, (and Kelly, I too cannot help calling them kids.  It's something about idealism. Well I'm probably about to say it...) smell and are dirty and spoiled.  I try to appeal to the fact that I and whomever I'm speaking to live in New York so we know from horrible smells, and my olfactory was not in the least offended down there - they should really go see and smell for themselves.  I also tend to mention how much I feel for the "kids".  As with every generation, the media has consistently indulged a reduction of theirs to "they're apathetic, brainwashed by their computers, and now, if they're doing this spoiled".  But kids are supposed to be idealistic! I want to thank them. That's how I feel.  Do we want a whole country of people who, what? buckle down, buckle-down-and-you-should-too.  How ridiculous.  By how ridiculous I mean how unrealistic about humanity.

Today I have my third consultation for psychoanalysis - I guess we'll decide the schedule (at least four times a week!) and payment today.  I feel like I've had one realization already.

Let me tell you why I love New York this year, today.   NYU's free Health Clinic.  Many thoughts, share them in a sec.

Some details on my conversation with that guy Kelly talked about in her post.  He is what really worries me.  The movement itself should encounter division and problems myriad any minute now as movements must.  Their "consensus" thing is bound to, must, mutate, frighten, be frightening, etc.  But that is fine - that is natural - that is the discussion- that is the experiment.  But the gunman, the Charles Manson, the psycho who ruins everything and discredits by ruining. That's a thing.  This guy's delicate psyche gave me a real fright.

Kelly kicked off how he approached - wanting me to agree that the people near us playing some kind of game were "ridiculous".  Let me see if I can properly write our dialogue - which I'm usually so good at, but think I'll have difficulty with here because my heart was racing while I spoke to him.  It's funny because I'd been emailing with my brother and sister about OWS and Revolution before Kelly and I went down there and I had left off with them that I wanted to write them about the personal and the political. How a "movement" suddenly throws into view for you how much they do meet.  Like psychoanalysis, how it may bring a question of "who am I? How did I become me? Why do I have this ideal and not another? What do I want?"  I didn't write that email I had percolating.  But this conversation brought that thought "The political is personal. The personal is political" banging into my head- like "not only personal, the political can be psychological".  It was something about this man's psychology that made me feel in danger.

It's also hard to remember the conversation because the mode was one of cutting me off and then smugness.  It wasn't terribly sensible and I was in a decidedly defensive position - so it's hard to remember as a whole.

I suppose he was asking me why it was happening.  I think that's it.  And that was a hard one to answer cold off the top.  As he told me I couldn't answer him I managed to answer something about "the social contract."  Honestly, I was not beautifully articulate.  I think I said "That's a thing right.  There's a social contract."

"Well what's that?"

Me: Okay, let's see, well quite a few things.  Let me try an example.  Take social security.  It comes out of your paycheck your whole life.  That's a contract - that you're paying in so when you're older it'll be paid into for you.  If I live to be 65, it's worrying to think it won't be there for me.

An older woman, pretty older lady with painted nails and a warm sweater and lots of piled red hair, overheard and politely jumped in.  Apparently Social Security was exactly one of the issues that had her there.  She explained that she was older- she began to try to explain whatever her situation was with Social Security. But the man just interrupted her over and over to say "Are you finished yet?  Are you finished talking?  I'm not listening anymore- are you going to answer my question?"  This guy was so alarming I tell you. We asked him again to clarify his question. She began speaking again. He started in with "not answering my question" again.  She saw someone she knew who she had to talk to for some reason.  She seemed to be an occupier and when you see what's going on there, it is pretty obvious that one would actually need to talk to one's friends pretty often to find out - particularly this day - if you might need to move your stuff,  what the next step was to continue peaceful occupation etc.  It's a hive, you know.  So she, all politeness, excused herself to talk to her friend she had seen.  I mean, I saw her see this person and realize she needed to talk to her/him.  The man said, "She couldn't answer me. That's why she left."  And I said "No- I think she saw her friend.  Although the way you talk doesn't make people want to stay for more conversation."

This is what I'm talking about regarding psychological problems though.  What frightens me about this  person is the inability to see motivations other than that people are stupid and have no point, "can't answer my question".  I guess all I'm saying is that Kelly and I talked to a real sociopath.

The conversation we continued to have following this was wholly ridiculous so my enthusiasm to transcribe it is fading, was never very strong.  I don't have much joy in telling you how dumb this guy's questions which I kept on "not answering" were.  He made me agree that 20% of 1,000,000 is 200,000. (vis a vis the social contract.)  So, he questioned, if a person is making a million dollars and taxed at 20% and is putting in therefore 200 grand, should someone making 50,000 put in less?

I mean, no one who reads this blog is so stupid they don't know how stupid a question this is.  Me: "Well yeah, I'm fine with that.  I mean let's talk about 50,000.  Can they pay 18%?  I mean what's left over afterwards?  Capitalism isn't just taxes right?  Like, people have to be able to buy stuff?  If you tax 18% of 50,000 and leave the rest for the person to live on, can they still buy stuff after paying for wherever they live and eating regular meals, maybe going to the doctor?  You definitely want them to be able to buy some stuff."

Oh on and on we went, and on and on he scared me.  We talked about how a bad diagnosis could bankrupt you forever if you don't have insurance. Him: That's YOUR problem.  Me: Yes, yes it would be. (pause) Oh and yours.  It's actually also yours...

Obviously trying to talk about socialism was not productive. ;)

And it was when I said that what was happening seemed revolutionary to me that he was most scoffing and angry.  I asked if I could explain what I meant by that.  I tried to say something about how what it seemed people were asking was an actual re-examination of global capitalism as a system.  He said "You're delusional".  I said the conversation had to stop then.  Told him that's very disrespectful to me.  He agreed and apologized (my heart raced - frightening.)  I tried to remind him we had agreed on one thing.  He believed the banks should have been allowed to fail.  He believes recessions are a natural part of capitalism and capitalism should have been allowed to work to let the banks rebuild.

Anyay, this man is useless as a tool to understand anything about what is happening with Occupy Wall Street and what the most interesting parts of conversation are there.  I do keep thinking of him in relation to my revelation that the psyche, my own psyche, is interesting - incorporates trauma, incorporates other psyches battling I can't say what...

He's more to me an exemplar of how we live in ourselves with a past and with problems and with defenses and with reactions and with old wounds and with old joys and we can bury them or we can use them or we can do battle with them or or or.

More on the free clinic soon and how I am working unemployment my friends, working it. And how without me saying something, a person in his second month of medical school might have would up seeing my vagina, and my cervix. HILARIOUS.  My whole day at the clinic was a joy and worth telling you about, but my favorite part was telling the third year med student who was about to get her big chance to "swab 360" in my "OS",  "Thank you so much.  Cool.  But Sean can't be in here for that."

XOXO love
A

haha did you see my morning wake up poem?

haha So I am crazy.

yup my memories are like rats sent to stars.

ugh.  Well I sent a message to my college boyfriend, having been recollecting what a traumatized mess I was by the time he got to have me.  It wasn't the easiest because it's not like he wasn't sort of, well, difficult - far from a perfect love. And given just how many times I ended it, and it was always me, it makes all the sense in the world that we are not in touch at all.  After the first time I broke up with him he said he hoped I died in a car accident, and we still got back together!  College!

Not everyone's life is like this I bet.

But I'm finding a bit of a theme.

Or I at least have a few phrases.

One phrase: Living in the past.  Interesting phrase isn't it?

One theme:  Even if I hurt my ex loves only unintentionally, in reaction they've been willing to treat me with the most cruelty they could summon. I've never ended a serious realtionship, one  where we were saying "I love you" without the ending or the aftermath involving at best stark insensitivity (Jack - this was the least brutal, and me the least myself in a way - at 23?  I don't know - the early 20's elude my analysis.  I was more free/ less something, less psychicly heavy then than any other time) and at worst cruelty. My conclusion is kind of that men are weak.

One important true thing, the truest?: Love and anger and pain= the same object, the same thing.  Angry? It's another side of Love.  Hurting? Another side of Love. In Love? Be SOO Careful. And even if you are, the risk is just so huge.  I'm not saying not to go for it, young lovers whoever you are, I know your troubles are few, I know your troubles have the potential to be engulfing, and you should still try, but the odds are really stacked.

Back to living in the past.  I wrote a msg to my college boyfriend- just to say I'm thinking of him, understand from his end why we didn't keep in touch, don't expect to be in touch now and am not after that in sending him the msg, am sorry to the degree that I can be that the person I was may have, did in fact, cause him pain, and am glad we had each other when we did.  He said this in response:

Hi.

You know, I'm quite sincerely at a total loss for if, or how, to respond to this. But here I am, typing, I suppose.

I accept your words as they were intended and do genuinely appreciate the sentiment. Regardless of whatever else I've thought about you then or now, I don't believe that you ever acted with specifically hurtful intent.

And on my part, I certainly extend the blanket apology that I would to anyone I've crossed paths with for any general encounters with me between the ages 18-22 (I'll be charitable to myself here and leave the range at that).

My memory (in totality) is an absolute horror, and I've spent so long emotionally partitioning off what I did retain of that time that I don't have a lot of positive things left to reflect on. Neither do I doubt that they were there- it's just far from a deep well of pleasant or positive reminiscence for me. But for better or for worse, it has always been there. Take that for whatever you will.

As I said, I have little idea what else to share, but I do hope that doing this is in whatever way helpful for you, and also that it is unrelated to a 12-step program.

Best


So,  that's what's making me think of the phrase "living in the past".  Funny how it almost seems healthier to have the partitions up, and just be able to wholesale write off 4 years - "blanket apology" to those who knew you then, few memories of the entire time, than to remember it.

It's nice he got back to me.  I'm glad he's just trucking and there're no bad feelings and no one wants anyone's car crashing anymore.  Don't know why it matters -> maybe I live in the past.

XOXO time to make the donuts, send out a resume to Gawker to be their office assistant (how many of those are they gonna get? 60,000? Reformat this script.  I have a pretty amazing life. :-)  Later I get my second consultation and maybe we can talk about what it means to live in the past....)

XO
A

I think
twinkling red stars

I think we send our memories to them
our dreams
a globe of the Earth
with a blue whale half the size of iceland

Our heads touched by people
who touched them
literally
our hairs pressed down
our forheads brushed
our hair pressed down
our creepy parents caught in the act
our dark pursuers

send them
like rats
off to the stars

Let's do some blogging

A) I watched a movie called Lymelife and now I'm really badly in crazy love with Rory Culkin.  Those eyes, those lips.... the acting. oh, oh oh.  The character.... tortured teen.  I guess it's inappropriate but there's no denying, I dream of Rory Culkin. I want him. I love him.

B) Let's talk about crying.  I've had one therapy consultation so far but before I got there I did a little amateur delving into the past, hit a little trauma, and arrived at good old-fashioned sobbing.   This happened vis a vis my mother a couple years ago and vis a vis having my heart broken many many years ago, this time.  It's pretty complex, wasn't any old heart break, but I won't bother with the story too much here... I guess the pertinent fact is only that both things constitute what I've experienced of traumatic emotional situations.  Both times I seem to arrive at the uncontrollable crying from first thinking I can just, stylistically frankly, lay out what the trauma was, and tell the other person what it was and do so coolly, only to realize a few hours later that I'm feeling the same things I was feeling in the past which I had thought I could so cooly describe, effectively *get rid of* by remembering, laying out, sending away.

(This time as I walked home from errands at night, I was suddenly sobbing in the street, oh New York, I turned toward a building and just sobbed and sobbed and a woman - she is named Wanda, asked if I was alright. I pulled myself together.  We talked a long time.  

Wanda: Are you alright?

Me: Oh, yes. Yes I really am. (heaving breath) I really am.

Wanda:  Are you sure?

Me: Yeah, it's just a memory.  This isn't - yes, I'm really okay. I know it doesn't look like it.

Wanda: Well, where are you going? Can I walk with you?

Me: (actually composing myself somewhat) Yes.  I'm, um, well I'm sorry.  Thanks for stopping me.

Wanda: See these tears in my eyes?  I know what you're feeling.  I'm going through it too.

Me: I'm not even going though it -- this is like old stuff.  Is yours, is it a love thing? That's usually it.

Wanda commenced to tell me what she's going through, in the present [which makes her seem like less of a lunatic than me to me] which is horribly difficult. Part of her problem today involves seeing her ex's family at Church a lot so I told her I'm Jewish but maybe we can do some kind of volunteering together some time.  I hope we do it.  She suggested Thanksgiving, but I won't be around here then so, I don't know, please remind me to call Wanda. ) 

I came home to continue crying, got a hug from my roommate who is no stranger to needing therapy to deal with the past.  And thank God she was around to tell me not to drink, to just drink water, which I did and gradually stopped crying, watched some something or other and went to bed. I didn't cry myself to sleep... and YET. And yet my eyes in the morning when I had some place to be.  Puffed so they were barely possible to open.  I would like to tell my body that if it's going to be so inclined to gush tears, reduce me to sobs, and keep 'em coming, then it would really be nice if my face could fucking handle that.  But why even bother with the things you'd like to tell your body, right? Hello pine nuts? Hello pine nuts aren't poison but HISTAMINES actually might be hello? and etc. for everybody out there, and all that kind of stuff, yeah, right?

Then I go to therapy, or in this case just my consultation, and,  of course I wasn't done with this crying jag yet so at the least my therapist must think I do need the therapy... so that's good.  I told her how I almost thought in the weeks between writing my bio in order to get the consultation and the consultation that I became worried that she might think I was *too happy* to qualify.  Like just thinking about my life so much with the anticipation of therapy was making me feel so great that it would seem like I didn't really need it.  I told her this through tears. And then I told her about how I've always sort of had this problem that crying makes me feel like I'm crazy.  

I know just how this conversation goes because I've had it every time I've started therapy (not many times, but enough)  I'm always a sobbing mess by the time I've gotten myself to their office. I tell them, either "sorry" or "I have sort of a problem where crying like this makes me feel crazy."

and he/she says: What's crazy about crying?

And we could start right there if we wanted to, because I could tell her that when I'd cry growing up, my mother would say I was "emotionally disturbed" and look to psychologists for answers with what was wrong with me (which whenever I saw an actual psychologist was HER, but I'm digressing- not to mention seriously turning my blog into my issues with my mother, barf, but moving on...)

But we don't start there because I don't want to start there yet so I mention, through my tears, mopping up some more snot, that yeah yeah yeah, there are old reasons I feel that way but let's be serious- you don't want to feel out of control.   You don't want to be crying.  You're not supposed to be crying on the street.  And especially about a memory, right?  That is what we sometimes, in shorthand, call crazy behavior.  

I don't know why I'm blogging this besides that I sort of want to.

Crying has just been a thing that I don't usually do, well -- empathetically for great theater I do, totally controllably, but not usually, not since a long time ago (in high school I was often a sobbing mess), but, now, I don't usually and when I do cry for myself, it feels sudden and I do it uncontrollably, frighteningly, can't stop once it's started, start feeling crazy for doing it.  Crying.  I wanted to write about crying.

I've stopped crying and am feeling better now for what it's worth.  And it may be very worth noting that.  You know, for the next time.  It makes me feel crazy but I do stop. I can't stop it so should do it without the belaboring the feeling nuts about it.  It's sort of a one way trip, a deep dive and then a re-emergence.  I should probably eliminate to the degree that I can the part of the dive that's considering myself a total fucking lunatic but it also isn't too important to because I do stop. I guess I'm just saying that I should start to feel some safety about it.  The people you encounter don't think you're "crazy" - they just think you're crying.  You can't go out dancing or anything but you will live.  You're just crying, a lot. 

Am I saying anything here?

XOXO

C) When Hurricane Irene was coming I was doing a million things, a last push of compulsive anit bed-bug cleaning, rearranging all the furniture in the house, storm preparations, and finally sitting in bed eating bon bons, drinking Lindemans and watching Funny Face.  But I've been saving notes by my bed since then that I jotted down that I wanted to blog about the hurricane.  I was going to put them here, but I guess I'll just save them some more because, ha, there's nothing interesting about them not in the immediate.  Sort of an interesting blog writing experiment whose answer may disturb us who blog, no?

XOXO

Alexis

Yeah

God, that's the thing about remembering the worst hurts, going for it in a spirit of "getting somewhere with it" - when it really hits you, how long ago it all is makes you cry more, makes you laugh, makes you cry more. At least with me.  On the one hand you think - this is not immediate, so you're fine, phew.  Then just the fact that you're not fine, actually, clearly not, makes you feel Crazy.  What if someone asks you what's wrong?  And you have to say - it's nothing, it's fifteen years ago.  It feels like sanity would be to actually be healed.  To remember a moment you were abandoned and not fall apart.  That's why I'm going to serious therapy now. I have my first consultation tomorrow.  I suppose you're not healed ever of certain things, but there might just be an actual getting through it.  It would just feel better NOT TO HAVE TO.  I am putting a lot of faith in this therapeutic enterprise.  I hope it's wonderful and I discover some reserves of strength rather than just puddling out.  What will it be? how much puddling do you do before you're somewhere new.  I guess you appeal for support and just the presence of the therapist listening until you are at the least tired enough of torturing the wound to move on by default and that's kind of the point.  They aren't going anywhere.  Unless they die.  That's the thing.  It's unrealistic to ever expect certain pain to go away.  And it's horrible admitting that you're a person who is just always going to have to massage it and try to find some help dealing with it.

This is why I love/hate celebrity sex rehab with Dr. Drew.  I grotesquely feel sorry for those poor people who had such sexual trauma so young and are walking around in a haze of pain.  Because when they admit it, they basically have to admit it forever.  They were damaged and they always will be damaged.  Who wants to be damaged?  There's sort of not enough reward for it to be "fair".

But Life isn't fair.  They're not insane.  I'm not insane.  I'm just a stupid crazy person who can't tell my brain to stop looking for it to be fair.

I'm going to fall in love with  my female therapist about 6 minutes into treatment, I'm predicting.

Jesus Christ

You think you're so strong and the past behind you but just press it and... I don't know.  I'm always surprised.

5:40am Jolt awake with the idea I'll die and not exist.  I think in my dream it became realized that someone proposing sex with me had AIDS. In the dream I successfully avoided sex, but, instead of relief, I woke up with the sharp relief realization that I'm still going to die and death is a thing.  It was that thing where your mind says "and you won't be thinking any more.  No more of this".

Maybe that sharp relief, as in bas relief, no psychic relief at all, is why the AIDS plays of the 80's are so good.  Also being gay and theater. 

On that callous note, back to thinking about lovin' arms, not death, and sleeping some more while it's dark.

Holy God is this hilarious.

Let me just transcribe a bit here.

Classical music.
Geology professor.
He opens his ipad-shaped enough personal thing.
The avatar tells him:
Today's schedule (notably, Take Kathy to the airport by 2:00.)
3 messages: Your graduate research team in Guatemala, just checking in.
Robert Jordan a 2nd semester junior requesting a second extension on his term paper
And your mother reminding you about your father (Geology professor stops the speaking avatar/ secretary) "surprise birthday party" 

Then he gets his friend on the horn to do the lecture for him. --- "Contact Jill."
Flemson
"He was challenging Jill's projection on the amount of carbon dioxide being released to the atmosphere. I'd like to recheck his figures"
"Here's the rate"
 Guy: "MMMM hmmmm - and what happened?"

OH MY GOD. This is the funniest thing I've ever seen???? Do you remember 1987 now? hahaha oh what happened? First, (it's no longer first, but "first") let me say that I saw this of course because someone put it on facebook this morning - it was not distanced from a general sentiment that wow - the supposed year on the computer is 2011 and the new iphone and siri whatever came out today and Steve Jobs died. Steve Jobs isn't responsible for this particular projection of Apple's future though, because this is from when he wasn't there. Secondly, I don't give a good goddamn. (2001: A Space Odyssey has the most ipad-like looking thing of any pre i-pad existing representations of future technologies I've ever seen. I'm sure I'm objectively right about this) This thing this guy's got is RIDICULOUS. When it makes the joke during the conversation?!?! ("4:15pm") and THE GUY'S ATTITUDE!!!!!!!! I mean the vid is SORT OF predicting google type searching through a wireless technology. Yeah. Oh my god though. It is like an actual secretary ... and the way Herr Professor says "MMMMM hmmmmm.  And what happened?" And the classical music. I just want to repeat these things over and over. I believe you are all with me enough that I don't need to explain how hilarious this is. I'm stopping. I have work to do. But wow- I didn't know we were going to be such calm classical music listenting, geology professor consulting fools with actual 2 dimensional helper robots, flirting up "dinner" over "research" while rememebring to take our wives to the airport in our, c'mon, Rolls, now. OH MY GOD THIS THING.

This one I like because this year 1997/98 was so very tumultuous - the big one of big confrontation by the end. My senior year. I know it's Fall of my senior year from my tshirt and necklace and longer hair and watch and the yellow leaves through the kitchen window. - so I like this because this year was so tumultuous and things so remarkably bad between me and my mom that I don't remember what my relationship was like with the kids so much. But this picture shows me that Steph cracked me up and it seems like she liked to. I remember seeing my therapist after I'd moved out, before I went to college and telling him (he was very very good overall - I miss that guy and would shed some blood to have dinner with him these days [can you tell I'm having fierce life memory time?]but I can somehow never really get a number for him or figure out how to get in touch) I was worried for and wanted to be around for my siblings and he sort of shrugged it off. Fair enough - I got what he meant- I was going to college- was I really going to lose sleep over what was going on with these kids. But I do think I meant it. That's one of the really funny things about looking back at all the craziness and difficulties - I never can without also realizing, you change any of it, you don't get what you've got. Right? Life my friends. Anyway - this picture was a happy find. Steph and I both were like - oh look - we were friends! this is great!

My family bullshit scrapbook

Here is a picture of Madeline. She's at a dog show wearing a dog sweater and also a dog ponytail-holder. "Probably the best day of my life" -Madeline I thought I'd kick off with this.

This is from the day of my mother's wedding to my step-dad. That's my mom and her parents. This picture is hilarious because of my fake to the fakest smile. It was an extremely small ceremony and I was the only member of the wedding party, as it were. For the majority of the ceremony I covered my ears, which is well documented photographically. I also remember doing this. I was very grossed out by the vows. I remember the point where I covered my ears - they were saying something about "sharing bread". I had an aversion at his point in my life (I am five) to things being "mushy" and shared bread seemed LITERALLY mushy. As I told my sisters and brother when we looked at this, I think this is a case of me being five, and a whole day of ceremony/ celebration that was not about me. I knew not to actively misbehave but,flower girl or not, not about me, not too hot on the whole thing. Good thing I was still out of the loop on the whole moving to New Jersey thing.

Here's me and Grammy in Cape May. I sucked those fingers forever and I really don't know how I'd ever have learned left from right if it weren't for being compelled to suck on my left hand. I can still feel which hand it is. Freud? Freud and whoever has something to say about sides of the brain? Anyway, I am trying to distract my grandmother from the story at hand with this weirdo little doll. I am the same person I was when I was four!

What an independent child! This looks like creative bliss.

Me and grammy on the front porch. I was moved to rescue this photo because, ha, this is a great example of how I dressed as a teenager. I treasured that red velour thing.

This seems very quintessential as well. I will write more on it soon, expand this post. It got later than I meant it to before I could do this tonight. * The expansion. Everything about this photo is everything. Stephanie refers to herself at this and adjacent ages as "obese". She recently called me on what I have apparently *always* said to that which is "you are athletic". Funny. But that tweety bird bathing suit. That tweety bird bathing suit was what we were dealing with when trying to have anything but the worst thing when it came to attire. I mean, my mother only took me to shop at Kids R Us THROUGH 8th grade. Which is what my interesting style - well illustrated in this pic, was borne of. It was a happy revelation that I could make something of shorts and a white t-shirt and children's barrettes. Me and the mid nineties - we got along - I could work with what they were pitching. The pose Steph's doing, with the pursed lips and the hand doing that thing - this is a pose she affected for many pictures. I also don't think it's for nothing that she has put her arm around my mother who is looking off at the baby children. That's it folks. That is it. Amazing some photographs - I know that look of hers so well... nothing like the recognition you can acheive with a photograph. My mom - always sort of looking off disengaged with some thought. She likes to go away to where she goes like this. This is really her, man. this photo is amazing. The kids are so cute. I love how I'm just there in the middle of their mayhem looking at the camera. This is a truth photo my friends. I love it. And I love my teenage fashion if you didn't guess. I really do. Oh my, my youth. I don't feel older! XO

Status updates

you can't post to facebook: * Staining my pillows with tears. Hey friends! You wouldn't know it, but I find single and 30 and a "writer", I have to defend myself to my family every time I see them like I'm still a kid at home. And of course it is only because they are concerned about me! I am pretty sure I have an ulcer! Yeah, for real! I bet all of you who are married, or even in a good-looking relationship or hold a paying job that you can get behind do not have to do this! I think about this pretty often- how you're probably treated as adults by now, while I cry like crazy like I'm 16 after my family grills me and then grills me about why I don't seem to like the grilling! Maybe I can find somewhere to give me a residency to clean up this blog into sections and try to make it actually visitable by people, and like interactive sort of --- like buildable-upon by subject matter. But probably I can't and I'll be alone forever, unemployable, unmatriculated, and a source of concern to family members until their death or mine. I should soon start analysis and I know the analyst doesn't do much talking but we are going to have to talk about how to stop my family because I know they are trying to be nice and it's well intentioned. Believe me I know that. But it has to stop. I need to be treated like an adult. It kills me more than I realize. I seriously seem to have an ulcer, and I don't even know how upset I am until I am literally crying my eyes out (at least my lenses). It isn't fair. I can't answer for myself every time I see them.

Internet addiction

Delivery.com asks if I love my order so much I can't contain myself - do I want to share on facebook? I think about it because my order has Lox. Am I Jewish? I am as a matter of fact.

Yes

The altered-to-deadly-sexy version of Aaron Sorkin hitting on me in the kitchen of his theater in my dream last night complimented me on how well I opened a bottle of wine. Pretty much says it all. * Google is doing its very best to force me to link my gmail and yahoo accounts and I refuse on the basis of not trusting this kind of pressure. What about in an "emergency?" they ask.What if my email accounts weren't linked? Well, I wouldn't be able to get on the blog if I had gmail on. In an emergency, you might not have this blog.

I cut this straight off someone's Ok Cupid Profile

The most private thing I’m willing to admit There's not much I won't admit to...I stayed a virgin until marriage (yeah, that was a huge miscalculation) so I'm no all-star in the sack. And I don't work out. So if my tongue and modest penis don't do it for you, fuck someone else.

pinot noir

for all that you are

wine

every time

Time back in Pennington
The car with Stephanie
gearing up
to watch over this trainwreck
as we look forward through some forming tunnel vision
to eventualities
we turn, you should never define,

we exhume what's annoying
how annoying
to gird
to take care somehow anyway

and Ms. Medical Doctor
will be in it with me

and Ben
will do a year at Michigan
hopefully.
He cares about the family.

and I will make a movie in Italy with Madeline.

well

I wanted to be scanning photographs to here, then I'd long-caption; it's the proto-type for my book idea: "My family bullshit Scrapbook".

But I lost the install cd and the hp website is INCREDIBLY ANNOYING. Where is the actual download? Why won't it let me have it?

Do you know the Jil Scott song "One is the magic number"? What a song.

More soon.

Won't get therapy. Will talk to computer.

My family is like a song that’s never done singing. That’s what is written on the pad next to my bed right now. I think we’ve had bed bugs for a month here in Queens. I have a problem with my eye twitching if I think a stressful thought, and next up on the menu, in this feast of life, is go talk to the landlord about how it’s letting us out of the lease or legal action. Est-ce que tu have envy? A jalouse?

I’m back from running away to New Jersey after feeling my brain break in half, each hemisphere falling to one side, clunk. I’m sitting out back at 30th Drive now, which looks overgrown and abandoned. (“It looks like a junkyard.” Twitch twitch. That’s not true – it just looks abandoned.) The living room’s full of garbage bags I’ve started spraying quantities of Lysol into. I’ve put two coats of shitty paint on the wood that six weeks ago I hired someone off craiglist to encase my bedroom air conditioner in so that it juts into the bedroom. If I can break the lease, I still won’t be leaving til October 1st, so I might as well make the crooked pine wood sightly.

I asked if you envied me sarcastically, but man were my parents, my Dad and Carol, good to me when I needed them. They were instantly understanding, dispatching me to their home as soon as I cried uncle, and listening as I tried to reason my way back to sanity. My Dad made a London Broil before initiating the how-quickly-can-you-get-work conversation. I’ve said it before, and, let’s say, now, am really going to implement: I should write about my family!

To begin, (you can being anywhere in a song that doesn’t stop, you can begin with a verse from the side of the family that is so functional) I am like my Dad. I went out there on Saturday, after something bad happened. They were in Maine. They have everything, my parents, my Dad and Carol. They have this beautiful home and garden and pool, they have the three of us children and we all love eachother, and Carol’s huge fun famiily comes to visit often and she maintains her house as her very occupation and one of her great pleasures. My Dad works and likes it. He reads things, edits, makes decisions – he was the Chief Medical Officer of a big pharmeceutical company that got bought out and now he travels all over consulting. He understands shit really well but he’s a man so once he thinks he’s understood as much as he wants to, he may ask you a question and then ask you why you’re still talking about something you’ve already told him. When he was done driving back from Maine, getting his stuff out of the car, organizing his mail, and doing a little work, and came to talk to me, it was about 12:30 on Tuesday night. Him “Why are you telling me about this part again? You’ve told me this.” Me: “Well, because of what you asked… wait a sec, you asked… are you annoyed?” beat. “No.”

None of that is exactly how I’m like my Dad although in some ways maybe a little, but I mean, I’m not a Doctor, not a man, not an executive, don’t like some work I do, using my brain, and have my own family I provide a good safe happy life for.

But I do narrate everything I do in the task department and I realized Tuesday so does he. As he was trying to be ready to sit down to talk with me about how to get out of this existence I’m in, of endless compulsion and untenable maintenance, he narrated everything he was doing. At the supermarket the next day, we searched for corn that met three conditions, white, straight columns of kernals, and no dapples on the kernals. Everything is out loud. “Maybe if I can find a baby eggplant, then an eggplant. What else do we need? Eggs. They’re over here…” When we got back and I mentioned to them that I’d just discovered that my Dad and I both do this, Carol said she’d never notice my father do it, only me. But I know it is both of us – at least to each other. It was sort of amazing, us walking around the house, “I’m starving// Cottage Cheese// yes” Him “Oh but you’ve got to eat becaue we still have to go shopping, it’ll be two hours… and I have to// you like cottage cheese// good go get that and eat that.” Is this all obvious information to you, reader? I suppose I mean that it is something I am thankful for, to see that my Dad and I in a room together is two people riding some kind of very close frequency of thought. It isn’t genetic, but it is because he is my father. I’m grateful.

Are you gathering that from my father I perceive high expectations but reallly they come from me, really from a fairly natural comparison I’m doing. And how yet, how could I have become like my father in more ways than the way we think, sense of humour, and how we operate a little minutely with the intelligence sometimes and are compatible, given that I didn’t grow up in his house as much as my mother’s?

I mean there’s not a duck I have in a row right now. I have been trying to avoid my mother, her calls. I’m going to backtrack now.

(One day, I’ll try to go back to a long ago changing movement of this song, which would be my birth. What I’ve larned about my family before then is an earlier movement. Some nights I smoke pot and like to think so far back it’s the birth of the universe. Astronomers today think they know how to build a telescope that could let you watch that. So they say.)

Let’s say a year ago, though it may be more, My mother and I took a train together from her house into the city. Taking a train together has always been a very bad thing. Be prepared: I’m the same classic idiot in all conversation with my mother. Soprano Alto idiot – I sing idiot.

My mom: Well I think I am going to sell the house and get a one bedroom in Brooklyn.

Me: I thought you were looking in Philadelphia.

My mom: Oh well we thought or a place maybe in Philadelphia – I’ve just been getting a lot of acting work there. But now I am really thinking of like a one bedroom in Brooklyn.

Me: (laughs a little) Alright. So you sell the house in Pennington. Somehow. Sell all the stuff. (My mom and step-dad, whom I always call “Dad” when speaking to my mom, [but always call Carol, Carol] are what you might call light hoarders. Their pantry has food, but really a more apt word is “matter” in cardboard boxes from, literally, ten and twelve years ago, ordered from telemercials as part of a “diet”.) What happens to Dad? Where’s he gonna go?

My mom: He’s there.

Me: (this is not a very happy laugh I have) Don’t you think you’ve, don’t you think he’s kind of used to living in a house now. Don’t you think you’ll miss the space?

My mom: We’re moving. We don’t need that house anymore, and it isn’t going to get a lot of money. It won’t go that far in Brooklyn.

Me: (God’s own tragic idiot) I mean I get it, my Dad is moving to New York again…

My mom: Where?

Me: The Upper West Side. I haven’t seen it; I’m sure it’s nice. I mean… well, you know, you have to work within what you have and yeah, I bet you’re right, you’d have to sell the house to…

My mom: Your father has that kind of money? Is he selling his house?

Me: I mean that’s why I understand what you’re talking about… I mean that’s what they’re trying to balance. That house in
W--------- is beautiful. You know that. It would be nice if they didn’t have to right away sell it. (If I could program myself like a cyborg, I would weld my mouth shut when I’m with my mother and I’d need a complicated key to release and unseal.)

My mom: Well we don’t have that kind of money at all.

Me: Sorry to hear that. Let’s forget about my Dad. All I’m saying is I know that apartments in New York aren’t cheap. I spend my whole salary and more living here.

My mom: I’m just feeling so sorry for you.//

Me: Don’t be sorry for me// there’s no reason to be s…

My mom: So at Tishman Speyer you’re like, a secretary? Is that right?

Me: Yup that’s right. I mean I try to do applications to writing programs, and to write period. So then I can kind of feel it’s a means to an end.

My mom: You know I have to tell you, we can’t pay for you to go to a writing program.

Me: Well that’s a disappointment since, you know, I’ve heard you say that Grampy left money for his grandchildren’s education. I’d sort of hoped that I could be helped to pay for a graduate program. But if that’s true, then I guess I’ll do what everyone else does, you know, if I even get in.

My mom: If your father has so much money he’s moving to Manhattan… and you say it’s a nice place? A nice place on the Upper West Side? You know. We come from different values. Grampy paid for my graduate education.

Me: Well but , well Grampy was your step-father…

My mom: Alexis! Pop Pop didn’t have money like your father has. (I’m just loving what the people behind us on New Jersey transit get to be entertained with here)

Me: I’m just saying. Forget it, I mean I need to tell you//

My mom: I’m feeling so sad for you. What about his other children? He’s paying for….

Me: Stop feeling sorry for me. I need to tell you my Dad and I really get along and he’s always told me I should never feel like I can’t do something I’m sure I want to and should do, not to say need. I’ll never have to really worry. Most people don’t have that. And. the economy just crashed.

My mom: I know. We’ve lost everything. But now… Andrew?

Me: Mom. Mom – you’re really (sigh) Listen to me. You, uh, ought to know I’m the eldest, so it’s unclear what the younger children are doing, what graduate programs if graduate programs, but Andrew works. He lives in DC, he thinks about his future, and he works and he’s doing great. They paid for college and he paid a quarter of Rochester’s tuition for me, just like you did…

My Mom: I just know how much money he has and when I think of it I think….

Me – blah blah people my age, the economic times we’re in, this is how it’s done, you get loans, go into debt, I’ll probably rethink things a bit now that I know graduate school isn’t a paid for thing. Her – moving herself to tears over my neglect. Me, getting off the train reiterating that I’m not neglected. Her- not listening trying to figure out what train to take to her audition and I tell her. The next morning I write her an email saying she has to know I really love and appreciate my dad. Her reply email: “Good because I was really starting to feel sorry I chose him to be your father.” Me in reply to that “That’s my existence I think you’re talking about. Please relax.”

So, now, are you ready for more? I come to find out that aforementioned Pop Pop, who dies during a time period in which my mother tells me I was dead to her (per my understanding, now, today, there is a new girl in my body) while I was in college, left lots of money to my other three siblings on my mothers side. When Pop Pop died, my mother didn’t tell me. A neighbor called me and told me the news and that I should call my mother. My mother started going to psychics and mediums at this point to try to get messages from Pop Pop. At one point my grandmother, her mother, got her a session with Sylvia Brown as a gift to help with her grieving. I graduated and moved to LA and received some weird litigation about his money advising I waive any right to anything. I did so gladly. For what it’s worth, when I caled her at the neighbors intruction to tell her I’d heard about Pop Pop and was sorry, she told me that Pop Pop really thought I was spoiled, unfortunately. (Obviously these things my mother says to me are similar to things she said to me when I was little thing. If you know, reader, how cute I am, this should break your heart. [Oh how possibly pointless this telling is!])

SO – on a trail in Virginia, taking a hike before a five star meal at The Inn at Little Washington, to celebrate my brothers 25th birthday with my Dad’s family, my step mother asks how my relationship is with my mother and so I tell her this. She is horrified. Oh goodness – here, information: if you didn’t know, all my brothers and sisters are half brothers and sisters on one side or the other. I’m the only child my parents had before divorcing and remarrying.

The problem with this writing is here we come to kind of a point and songs with points… welll… so sue me. Ha ha.

So I tell my step mother on the trail about all this. That I am trying to break away from my mother as much as I can, that I can’t believe after thirty years, our relationship is still defined by how I’m not really her daughter unless we both regret my father.

While we are sitting on course three at a round table with our third or fourth wine pairing that night, Carol beside me to my right, my father to her’s, then Adrienne, Andrew, and Rebecca, his girlfriend, on my left…. we are talking about how when we were little kids we played a game with Dad called Roughhouse. Roughhouse began with roughhousing on the master bed. On this you jump continuously, and get roughhoused a bit, picked up and made dizzy and tossed back on sometimes. Once Andrew was big enough and I was about ten, and eleven, Roughhouse came to have objective and strategy. Continuous jumping on the bed stayed “home.” But the objective was to get out the door. All the being tossed around came with being prevented from the door. But also my father took the knob off the door one day. Also his old socks in the laundry might get shoved up your nose, also, you might be put into the dumped out hamper and dangled over the railing. Carol, of course, fled the scene when rough house began and of course said someone was going to get hurt. And then a rule was proposed that roughhousing wasn’t actually done UNTIL someone was hurt. At some point I know I told Andrew that how this all worked was that my father was “The Volcano” and that we were “warriors”.

As we recalled all this, Carol leaned in to me and said, “I’m so upset about what you told me earlier. When your mother talks about your father, I want you to remember this.” I said “Don’t you think I do?” I mean, I was remembering it all out loud right then.

When Carol was finished with a morning of housework and came to sit with me in the living room of the house in W------ this past Wednesday, she said “Are you talking to your mother? Why don’t you ask her to help you?”

And I had to tell her that as a matter of fact, as much as I’ve been trying not to, she had called the day before, when I was in W------- alone, waiting for them to return from Maine.

And now I’m at the top of page 6 single spaced, just got an email that STARAMA is a finalist for a play devlopment program, and must take the journey for wine.

Once I’m finished this song that never stops singing, I assure you, more than anything I want to tell you how keenly I’ve been thinking of the late nineties and being in high school in a time that is past.

So

I need: a textbook, characters

Time

Another reason The Civil War documentary is fascinating is the speed of the leaps in technology bringing us to today.

I am excited because I think I know where I'd like to start writing something new, a little, an inkling, and that is really really exciting. The pilot I sometimes talk about - I apparently have no desire to work on it. ( I still have to. I will.)

My tentative name for my new play is "death wish". That's the idea I think it's centered on and I want to set it in now and in Civil War Days. Ambitious is one of my good traits... we hope. ;-)

No, it is really exciting to have a big idea, barest thoughts of some kind of frame. And something I want to research. It's a relief- I was just starting to worry and be impatient for that.

What do I know about how people lived during the Civil War?

The World

I am watching the Ken Burns Civil War documentary on Netflix streaming. It makes you think.

This documentary has fascinated me completely any time I've watched it. I'm on Episode 3 now - Emancipation proclamation might arrive by the end of it? I'm not sure how far off it is.

Watching the lead-up to the War, "The Cause", secession, the beginning, Manassas, Shiloh this really grabs me: War is people killing one another. That is what it *is* right?

When it comes to the Civil War, before the first battles are fought, the men write that they are having the time of their lives. When they are learning to sleep in heavy dew while marching 25 miles and rubbing sticks together and whatnot, they feel more alive than ever.

Then they experience "the horrors of war" and they use this phrase "the horrors of war" because they know, as one must, that war is horrible, and this is the phrase used for it.

There are at least 12 reasons that this documentary is fascinating. But what gets me amazed early on is just war itself - we're at war now in a very very different way.

See.. I keep wanting to veer off in a hundred directions of comparison but I won't. What I'm trying to say is we still do this. We still have ideas all around and about war, and excitement by the meaning it could give dying, I think. But when we talk about it, if we talk about it, we let it, "War", become something else. It is people killing each other. It is "the horrors of war". Predictions for the civil war imagined it would be over very quickly. Well why would it be? Some things never change. When two sides fight against each other, killing, 'til one has to surrender and one must be called the victor, why would that ever end quickly and why would it be anything but horrifying bloodshed?

The Civil War also has you, or has me anyway, from the start because slavery was evil. Then you have people living in that world before telephones and so on. These people believed in God. So the stakes are so.... meaningful? I'm not doing so great at writing this.

I suppose I'm saying that the Civil War makes you think about Religion too. Makes you think about life and death and principles. And slavery. I'm not sure "we" could ever be done repairing for slavery if we wanted to and tried to. And the "we" is funny there because I'm an Eastern European Jew, but I'm also a white American... you see how I could go off in many directions here...? But you don't know why you were born you and not a slave, in America and not Bahrain, and so on. We'll never know that. We as in people. And I think also we, as in people, will never quite remember that to go to war is to court your death. That idea is just too exciting.

I could go on all day now about tragedy but I'm going to stop.

Lots of love,
Alexis

Sing it with me!

I Love Unemployment. (apologies to the Movement, but should be sung to tune of "We Shall Overcome")

They should do an interview segment with me on Fox News in the morning so heads can really get hot. Me: "I think I deserve this."

lol. at my own self. ha.

xo

is

following crazy dreams... ... Dude. Ah, I can't just write to this like a diary. Mostly it's raining, I'm on facebook too much. Happy, happy indulging in crazy and happy, but yet happier that Spring is going to come. Always slightly concerned... you know. :-) xo

The topic of the moment- porn, performance, gender, feminism

Lately my little brother is this disaster of inertia and litany of the world's ill. He would sort of like to live on a farm.

And lately I have been watching some great comedy online and reading magazines and papers. On youtube I went from exhaustive Doug Stanhope listening to Doug Stanhope & Alex Jones to Joe Rogan & Alex Jones to Joe Rogan.

Oddly enough, on the phone the other day my friend C said when it came to just getting money and attention for living your life (a concept I've since heard referred to as Nietzschian, but sub "as art" for money and attention - go figure) a reality show was probably the only way. And I replied "Yeah - the idea of ever doing that in any way went out the window for me when I saw Fear Factor." I had certainly forgotten the host of that show's name but it's Joe Rogan. And he's not the owner of Girls Gone Wild Corporation but he "hosted" a video at some point apparently. ("Host" in quotes because what a funny word for that. I can't but hear Joel Grey interject in "Wilkomen" "I... Am... Your... Host.") As did Doug Stanhope who mentions it and mentions it as something stupid he agreed to take the money for. They apparently hosted "The Man Show" together in the nineties. Well all I remember about that is bikini girls on a trampoline. That's all.

Maybe I'm making a short story long (I'm not.) The thing is this: I like Howard Stern. I think Doug Stanhope's fantastic. Joe Rogan is who I'm focused on though. Joe Rogan is a buff asshole. A Boston type. He tells people off like an asshole but he does so when he's technically in the right. As a feminist I really don't have a problem with being an asshole- see, this is actually my point whenever I get to it. One of my favorite blogs turned out to have a post called "That's Your Boyfriend: Joe Rogan": it's a joke because JR taped himself telling off a kid who like clockwork lingers around him when he's naked in the gym locker room and posted it. The idea being that there are hundreds of other ways to intervene in a creepy situation like that that don't involve making it public at all. I'm always willing to be a full disclosure person though and full disclosure- he is hot and he has cool things to say and he's so vain it's sick. That's the kind of thing that gives me a little sexual chemistry rush. So burn me on a pyre.... probably.

Here's what disappoints me:(The World. haha) I give people, male or female, license to be douchebags when they have something to say. I really love to hear intelligent people think uncensored. So Doug Stanhope and Joe Rogan on Alex Jones or Joe Rogan talking about what he experiences on hallucinogens, the epiphanies about consciousness- how dolphins totally have advanced consciousness (I think about this too!!) - that is all great. And all I want, all I want is for anything to come up on a google search of "Joe Rogan Feminism" is within 50 pages to get one thing other than an amateur video of him drunkenly telling off some feminist of renown(? who is she?) who approaches him oddly and has the arrogance only someone who moves in academia can. I mean you can guess what this video is and what are the comments are. "Femisits are morons Joe Rogan Rules he destroyed that bitch" blah blah.

The fact is, Joe Rogan is this cocky jerk who can talk about consciousness and believes as I do that if you were born into another persons circumstances, chemical and otherwise if there is an otherwise, you would be that person. Having heard him say this, I am unwilling to believe that he wouldn't be able off the top of his head to say something kind of interesting... you know, maybe, kind of, about Girls Gone Wild- what I mean is to think a little specifically on having a vagina circumstances. Why not? The discussion isn't there and that's where I'd like to see a change.

In my fantasy there is a woman with a talk show. She is savvy and as funny and interesting as a man. It's ridiculous that I have to qualify that. There are as many of these as each other on both sides. Of course. The woman could be a little arrogant as some (almost all) men who fit this description are or she could be a little more modest, self deprecating. That's a harder line to take. She could be comic and eviscerating but also have a pathos for terrible things and cruel fortune. She could attribute some of that pathos to being a woman. Or she could think otherwise. But she would have a platform to talk about ideas with other iconoclasts and she would bring feminism, bring attitudes about women and their circumstances into the conversation. Can you imagine?

I could write a play of my fantasy and that isn't much of a play. Obviously she has to be strung up or something at the end. That damned requirement of dramatic arc.

I did find a great blog when I was trying to find anybody's thoughts on pop culture and current based feminism. (It's called "Rage against the ManChine)This woman makes great points but she can't stand to watch Bill Maher, for example, given the way he looks right through women sometimes and has stuff to say about masculinity being lost that is so juvenile and offensive. It is profoundly annoying. She's right. Meanwhile, super annoyingly for me, it' a perspective i am willing to listen to sometimes - I'm that hungry for people to be out front with how they treat gender or how they seethe if they seethe, which is no way to go, but I'll even take it. I mean this is part of the inequality that is really rough. I'll listen to men be unfair about women. I want to hear what people really think. And I'm so used to a male perspective that I'll even laugh when a man gets something silly about women right understanding that perspective. I don't see the reverse happening often- or at all really in a public forum - not from heterosexual men.

Take Bill Maher's gripe about "pussification" - one of my favorite things I've heard from Camille Paglia is this great point that car mechanics treat her with an idea in mind somewhere that she's desirable, "feminine" for lack of a better word that makes her life better while her male peers unsex her and that sucks (obvious paraphrase). Right there with her. But she gets to be "divisive" in her community while Maher gets to be a public figure.

The last thing is that all the magazines now are on about porn and it affecting men's libidos. Oh so NOW we can talk about porn affecting us. It isn't "humorless" to obsess when you're a man and your dick is soft for sex!!!!! (p.s. I put "performance"in this post's title because Peggy Orenstien's new book apparently says that that's kind of what younger girls today are going for rather than experiencing sex for pleasure. So that's good that's out there. Thanks Peggy O.)

So now I am just testifying. :-) The porn thing is really interesting and somewhat horrifying. And what I am dreaming of is a forum where aside from asking about Climate Change and The War on Drugs and the hot topics for social onlookers, they're also asked, "So given that you hosted The Man Show, what do you think about that? What do you hear from women? Thoughts?" I know... it's too crazy to imagine.

XOXO
me

The bar

and Hugo.

I took myself to the bar the other night. I saw my friend Hugo. I'm really struck by him.

To just describe myself... to just do that... well I haven't had a group of friends in a long time. We could identify college as the last time, but even in college I felt that the fact that I did was only because of the set-up of college. When the last semester arrived, we in my group of friends spoke about not being able to call each other up and go to Blockbuster anymore. That did seem like it would be a transition, but I was excited to leave Rochester, not too concerned about the Blockbuster problem because I wanted to drive across the country and be free- I liked my friends but I wasn't in love with them. There was one night I suddenly cried a lot, timed wrong with the night my friends cried a lot. And I was sad driving back to NJ with all my things, especially as I'd had to say goodbye to my roommate, who was one I did love and would miss being so close to. It was nothing a shower didn't pretty much put to bed though- there was a lot of possibility ahead, Los Angeles, where a friend awaited, and sex: I was enthused about sex in LA. (and love, lest you be confused that I was ever any good at that differentiation)

The most important group of friends to me then was still from High School days though, a memory of a group, the friends I met at summer smart camp. This is still that group that I remember such a purity of love for, love that I knew even then I'd always be missing. For me, 14- 17 years old was the time when everything was right for the sensation of discovery, discovery of friendship and love- of delight that I thought people were interesting and wonderful and they thought I was too- which made it so special. It seems to me that in later parts of life, like now, some alcohol facilitates some "hanging out with people" being fun and funny and kind. It is not the same thing by any stretch, but when too isolated, I'll put on some clothes and go to the bar. It's best to bring a book or something because I do not have a best friend in Astoria who is single, available for impromptu bar outings. (sidenote: some people must have this and something about them must be different but I'm not interested enough to figure out what that is. It's obviously elemental and therefore irrelevant.) That this is where I live makes it acceptable however. Because I'd really feel a bit a fool - or it's just too outsize an effort to the casualness of the deisred effect, putting on clothes and makeup and going to sit at a bar alone in Manhattan to see what happens. It has to be Astoria.

The other important element of this discussion is I think that I've been living alone for 5 years, or maybe 6.

So about five years ago, I was in a shittier apartment, but still near the same bar I went to four nights ago. Then as now, I went there from time to time, alone. It's usually months between visits, then and now. But perhaps five years ago, there were probably months where I went more than twice, less than five times. I didn't feel "in" with the regulars and I think I did contemplate that thing from the sidenote above- as in, why can I not joke around with these hip bar people? Why am I not a bar regular up to speed with all these freinds? Not excessively though because even then the answer was who knows; I'm just not.

But anyway Hugo lives in Astoria. Hugo's a regular. Hugo's in some kind of pornographically named punk band he only speaks of to relentlessly denigrate . Hugo stops in a few times a night in between doing stuff with musicians and walking dogs.

Five years ago I was wasted and he walked me home to my shithole.

Four nights ago, I was sitting with my book and when Hugo sees me his look of recognition is *so nice*. He comes over and says hi, says goodbye before he goes, asks if i'll still be there in two hours. I was still there two hours later and he's not drinking these days, just drinking tea. But I sat with him and he seemed, well happy to see me. The point of this writing is that there's such uniqueness to this. The point is my struckness, to let you in on the point if you're confused. Hugo is a funny guy. We were talking about stuff. I asked if he ever wanted kids, knowing the answer, ready to laugh. He said "GOD no - at the most I might like to scotch tape two dogs together and dress them in children's clothes and sneak them into things." ? hahaha.

I said yeah, well, it's really nice to see you too and I like this bar because I don't have a go-to friend in Astoria so I just come here alone and it's always sort of okay, but I'm not a regular, I'm not a regular anywhere. Hugo was like "That's so true! I've never seen you any way but here alone!" He then said it was kind of awesome, that for all he knew I murder people by day. He asked if I don't really have female friends. I told him no not at all, I primarily have female friends, but they don't live here. We made plans to go to Macy's the next day.

I texted in the morning and no one wanted to go to Macy's but he texted back asking if I sing and then sending me this song "gee baby" to listen to and we texted back and forth about it and later I met him, which meant two days in a row, at the bar to drink tea. I only had a credit card: while I looked for it, he looked at me like what's-wrong-with-you and asked if I thought he couldn't buy me a tea. I wasn't trying to offend him of course. I'm sure he can afford to buy me the tea. It appears that actually, the concept of a friend has become so abstract and unreal that I feel, basically, a thousand times more awkward having a cup of tea with a funny friend than being hit on- as is, I think universally, what happens between me and a male at a bar any other given time. I mean not always hit on, but the gist of the possibility of a conversation, underlying it, me and any male, would be either that we're becoming attracted to each other in a way that's going to maybe mean sexual congress, or we're just wasting time with words for lack of any other place to put our attention, not becoming friends. We are not now or becoming friends. Except me and Hugo.

It's very cold here in New York this week. I asked Hugo to walk me home. He said yeah but could he get his headphones from his place first because he has this "attention span thing", he "can't stand to be quiet with his thoughts" such as he would be alone on the walk back. I laughed and said "Do you want to talk about that more?"

When we got here, I said he could come up if he liked, but he didn't, wanted to start an early day the next day. it was much the way he seemed totally reluctant to end up at my apartment extendedly when we first met five years ago when he walked my wasted ass home.

This morning he texted to ask if I've seen a certain werewolf movie. I have not and I (not he) suggested watching it sometime. My point is this is the uniquest thing I know. A male friend. I like it so much. And of course, if he continues to be the only non-sleaze in NYC I know who behaves this way, it'll be the most romantic thing I know as well.

It all reminds me of a zine KFR's first girlfriend made and sent me in high school before they broke up and etc. It was an illustrated guidebook of ways to get your crush to be more than a crush. Suggested things to say each got an illustrated page. The page I remember was "Wanna come over and watch Star Wars?"

My point is that at 30, one of the things that pleases me most in this world is being given the respect, for lack of a better word, I was given once by contemporary boys of 15, 16, and 17 years old. The lack of presumption, the absence of an obvious strategy, even strategy hinted at with irony - the irony doesn't change the unoriginality and unspecialness of what it implies.

When I graduated from college, adult hitting on seemed like it was going to be a pretty good time. From my vantage point now, it turns out I really just want to be asked if I wanna watch Star Wars more than anything.

love you,
Alexis

I am sick

and I have lost my little beanie dog. I don't understand it. I had him yesterday, but when i woke up to throw up last night I couldn't find him anywhere.

Moe on this soon.

I was doing better yesterday so went on a date. The guy was gay - like queer eye gay - with a lisp and wrist-y mannerisms and eye rolls. PERHAPS he prefers women EVEN SO but he's got a tough row to hoe because women do not prefer classic gay guys for boyfriends. It was lame. I had a glass on wine. At 5am, threw it up.

Contrary to how it may seem, I'm alright with life. :-)

XOXO
A