When what one really needs is their own personal Paris Hilton punching bag

emma says fuck tuesday

I try to keep my work kvetching to a minimum here, work kvetching if you are not the kvetcher is tedious at best, but this warrants a long and sustained howl of derision.

I had to go to a training session today, for "champions". Lemme tell you something employer, "champion" is fine if you are in kindergarten, or you are special olympian, but do not subject a room full of capable adults to 8 hours of condescension unless you want a fucking eye rolling mutiny.

And yet, shockingly, there were several assiduous note takers, there were hands raised, there was fucking willing participation in this moronic nonsense. When called upon to speak I found it difficult to contain the acid in my voice and the snark in posture. That said, I guess I am not a "champion", I was the covert subversive in a field of grazing sheep.

All this left emma deeply demoralized, with a watermelon sized headache and a great need of a supersized martini (which she had at the Pied Piper, with the Maxfield Parish mural and the chex mix, nothing as dissolute as an empty hotel bar at five o'clock) and since it so fun to beat the shit out of oneself, when one does not possess their own personal Paris Hilton punching bad, one proceeds to systematically literally and physically take oneself down.

Shout out to Paris - um, sorry, I am sure you are really a nice girl and all, and Tina Brown paid you a high complement when she referred to you as an otherworldly stork, or some such nonsense, frankly I think you look like a praying mantis, but I would still like to kick your teeth in for having nothing of substance but your great big piles of your great grandaddy's money.

So emma went for some pho, and that kinda, sorta helped. Excepting that the couple next to her was on a second or third date and the young lady was so obviously painfully smitten and shrill that emma was tempted to put a friendly arm about her shoulder and whisper in her ear to ramp it down a notch.

But then we are in mood to generally rain on anyones parade. We are behind in correspondence, we are hating our job, we are thumbing our nose at the stack of bills awaiting signed checks, we are in denial about our looming tax bill, we are distressed at the passing of Alistair Cook, and will miss Letter from America on the BBC, right along with our good friend Bob Edwards.

We sent a pissy email to the fuckwits at NPR for disrupting our morning ritual.

Also, after the martini had assuaged our frayed nerves and we thought it safe to board muni for the ponderous Bus Ride home. We read the New Yorker article about AJ Liebling, was beautifully written by David Remnick, and was duly inspirational, and I really want to read more of him. But, and here it is, I also found it dispiriting. No, correction, I was envious of a man who is thirty years dead, envious of his facility with words, envious of the gracious ode that Remnick wrote for him. Which is simply silliness, silliness that I cannot staunch or disregard. Then again, if I were truly brave I would not be lurking in the anonymous and legion netherworld of the blog.

(little ironies, how come, ever since Rufus wrote that song 11:11, every time I look at the clock it is 11:11)

which must mean that is bath time, time to shed my hairshirt and time to meditate on all of that good fortune that belongs to me, and perhaps take BOB for a quickie ride before dreaming.

Weather, balmy

funny how fast things can run away from you, all of the anecdotes you intended to chronicle, an evening out, now fading to obscurity, an insult now forgotten, a phone call missed and meant to be returned.

I sit here in the lamp light with the windows open to the passing cars and the occaisional sunday night pedestrian, and think and think, where does one begin to tell a tale... if one is not a weaver of such, if one does not naturally spin the silken threads, if one is not a spider. Then one will leave it to a walk home on a balmy Sunday night.

I leave P&M's at ten, we have spent the day together, I am a newly sparkling blond. The last vestiges of my last love have been bleached and leeched from my hair, I cannot wait to show my gay boyfriends.

We are at a garden party in Noe Valley and all of the gay boyfriends are there, and I adore them for doting on me and I dote right back, and they are concerned for my sex life and I am grateful, C and J have promised to escort me to a sex club, and I am willing to be escorted.

I am walking home, nay wading home through the night blooming jasmine, the night air is laden with blossoms, there are cherry trees and camillias, there are tender green shoots unfurling under the auspice of a quarter moon, and the stars are like so many diamonds in a Cartier necklace that should only grace my neck.

Friday night, m and I are at deluxe, I am crying, I am crying for my loneliness, we buy some more vodka and I teach him how to waltz.

saturday is spent sleeping off friday's vast ocean of a hang over.

Sunday afternoon, a mourning dove alights on the roof of J and B's house, we marvel at their good fortune. The pansies resemble butterflies to which we pose the question, which came first, the pansy or the butterfly (insert subtext here)

my nails are chipped, my bed is made, my goose is cooked. The traffic is a lullaby, the flowers are intoxicating, the ice is melting. The sun was on my face, the sun is on my face, I am missing R.

I have had the great fortune, or greater misfortune, depending on the state of my heart, to have loved four men.

The first one was all of my seventeen year old ardor for whom I privately pined for years, the second I married for a time, the second was my mentor, and the third came to me when I expected him least and granted me my freedom.

I met D when I was twenty-two and still in school at State. He was lanky and coltish and wore big yellow glasses and I thought, for sure, he was gay.

It was film class, I remember announcing the class, something utterly precious to the fact that I was interested in the anthropology of pornography, yada yada yada, as I recall, I believed in what I said and I had clearly piqued his interest.

He used to sit in the back of the class with a brown haired girl that I thought was too cool for school, I suspected, after I figured out that he was most likely not gay, that he was having an affair with Miss TCFS.

somehow we collided, I think because he asked me to appear in one of his films and I very gamely followed him a steep hill in Marin to have fifty pound angel wings strapped to my person.

I was a year back from France, with a year of city living under my belt, I distinctly (and since my parents were still paying my rent I could afford to do so) recall uttering as my mantra, the world is my oyster, I shall not want. And lo, I was so very, very wrong, on so many counts, for I did end up wanting, and my oyster was nothing but the shimmering, irridescent illusion of the insides of a pedestrian pier mussel...

And then there was D and I, and we were in love.

Emma is intervening.

how do you recount eight years, of a life shared. Nail it to a few sturdy anecdotes and gloss over the fuck ups on both sides and certain things that are too painful and too private to put out to the world. Things that are unsaid and now one divorce and several years later are the tenuous, silken threads that bind.

what I don't understand is how a person could be convince, or consumed by something that tricks them into thinking that love is dead.

Love doesn't die. I am quite certain that the love I felt for these three was true, and true it remains, it has shifted from steadfast mountains to malleable dunes, but it is there, and it endures.

Doesn't mean I would take them back, it simply means that after the wounds scarred over and all the scabs had fallen away, I looked to my coursing blood and found their traces were indelibly a part of me. And to make peace with hurts and betrayals, and peace within myself, that I should have loved them, and maybe not have been loved in return, but that I did love, that is enough.

That is enough.

platitudes, vicissitudes, platypus, narcissus

or - which one of these kids is doing his own thing, which those of us of a certain age can attribute that little ditty to the Electric Company

We had meant, in all earnestness, to launch into a screed this evening into the Misdoings of Our Feckless Leader.

Alas, tonight was laundry night, and for those of you not in the know the laundry mat is in close proximity to Our Favorite Margarita Spot, now you do. And I am certain that you can surmise the rest. Ending up, quite accidentally, tipsy on a Monday night was not part of our master plan, but so it is and there it went.

my point, goddamit, I've lost my point again.

So not having television and all, sometimes one is forced to invent entertainment. Tonight, having laundered all of our knickers save the pair we are wearing, we decided, for shits and giggles to count them, we have fifty-four pair of clean knickers residing in our "panty drawer"

I would postulate that of those 54 pair about 25 are in full time circulation, then there are the granny panties (not hardly, wouldn't be caught dead, more like slightly ratty granny thongs) in reserve for when Aunt Flo comes a visitin' and then there are the special cases.
Those that are only trotted out with the matching set.
Those that are "slimmers" ie really big pants one wears when one has only the slimmest chance in hell of getting laid.
And those that for various and often extremely peculiar reasons we hold on to for sentimental reasons. I do not doubt that I might be the only freak out there who does this, afterall, I do not "scrapbook" and contrary to the filthy minded among you, to which I cop a card carrying membership, these elder statesmen panties are not affiliated with a sexual encounter or even a flirtation.

I still have the only two items I ever shoplifted, an old, old moldering tube of metallic peach shaded lip gloss (can we just say, oh soooo wrong) and a pair of silk "french styled" panties. I felt so poorly about stealing that I actually purchased three times the value of that which I thieved. I was fifteen, and my partners in crime ragged on me mercilessly.

the bottoms of the matching set I bought circa 1988, valentine's day to be precise, before I had any clear idea of how to buy a proper bra for my, then, burgeoning bosoms (crikey, shoot me for ever having written bosom, whaddam I, my grandma) anyways it was a red velvet number and only the bottoms survive.

the bottoms to the first proper matching set I bought in Aix-en-Provence in 1991, a cute little floral number. Was properly fitted, the works, spent (what seemed at the time) a fortune. Of course, I hadn't learned laundering techiniques and within a matter of weeks the bra was one shade and the panties were another...

Now we have it down to a science, and when we were at saks on sunday we were prepared to drop a dime. helas. we have specific demands of our undergarments, they should not in any way resemble your granny's bra, they should never mould a breast into a missile silo, they should not have any padding (that's nice and all, but we really don't need it)

We like a rounded demi cup and that is hard to find.

We read that there is an atelier in Paris that makes custom bras, as soon as we have won the lottery we are going to be fitted. shitfire, if I had six hundred extra sheckels lying about it would be an honor to have some lovely french lady of a certain age custom fit my glorious assets.

so, much for politics, in the end, it is the undergarment that makes the man, or the woman.

sketches, not of spain

the ballet is lovely. the girl with the red hands is dancing. balanchine's birthday and too many encores. tulle floats. structure, bodies entwined.

my mother doesn't know how I take my coffee.

there are nancy boys on the tennis courts, I hit a few zingers.

there is white asparagus at the farmer's market.

sweet peas are vibrant, oysters are sweetly briney, the muscadet is crisp, the bay is lolling against the piers.

there are too many dorothy's and too many brick roads to follow at the sing along wizard of oz.

somewhere over the rainbow makes me weep.

my mother exclaims that I shoudln't date players, but I should take my vitamins, just in case I should find myself knocked up... and she has nothing against brown babies... she is desperate for a grandchild.

more tennis.

lake street, overcast yet warm. half dead balls, an accidental backhand, the perfect rally.

sharing a bed with your mother. keeps you up at night, at one point I roused myself for fear that I was having a dirty dream. she was snoring, thank heavens.

shopping, I say buy, she holds back. I thought she might have been suffiently lubricated after two glasses of wine at lunch, it was just her tongue and not her pocketbook...

so on my own, I managed two shades of lipstick, three pairs of knickers and one pair of superfly pumas.

this evenings tv quotes.

on sixty minutes, david clark, former terrorism czar, they will admit that they were wrong when hell freezes over.

on the simpsons, come and suckle daddy's sugar ball.

on the sopranos, T to uncle june, don't you love me?

post green beer blues

Emma noticed that there was a bright, white, burning heat in her heart this morning. Yellow fin tuna thrashing on the line, glossy blue sea sheen, a heart caught and flailing, dying eye wildly searching a fixed point.

girl, take a deep breath
can't, apartment too smoky

You know when your brain is too full of words and they are so compounded that they have melded into a great, big sticky mess of syllables and unfinished, unvarnished thoughts.

I had thought that I might write a bit on how it is that I find myself so very lonely today. I thought I might wax poetic, thought I might string my words like pearls, thought I might wreath myself in a shamrock garland. Insulate myself against the loneliness with all of my pretty, pretty words. Fend it off with my shield of snark, lance it with my self deprecation, club it with my metaphorical indifference.

Still it comes on in stealth, whispering nothing sweet to the nape of my neck, takes me in it's ghostly arms and plies me to sleep, troubling my dreams, haunting my face in the mirror, slipping a bony hand around my warm heart, troubling my wardrobe and rattling my thoughts.

get thee from me, thou devil, my loneliness

hovering round my head, covering my empty bed

you make my heart ache, so

you tell me, while I am standing with my two dearest friends, celebrating their tenth anniversary, you tell me this shall not be yours, this you shall not have.

you tell me, when the most stoic of frenchmen pays me the highest compliment, you whisper in my ear - always admired and never loved, and this ache ricochets through my body like a fucking berserk pin ball. S has M, they go home together, I offer to drop them in the cab.

On the last day of the heat wave in San Francisco, it is St. Patrick's day. Emma is in a cab with the windows down. Star jasmine in rampant bloom has permeated the liquid blue of the evening. All is nascent save my heart. Emma is reeling, the cab, the city lights, the velocity of the breeze carries her homeward to her bed, where later she will dream of brightly colored fish in the deep, blue sea.

As to that vaunted St. Patty's day screed....
.... not happening

the most important piece of newis related to Further Weather Inanities - who am I kidding, I need to get some sleep...

so I was totally wrong about the Ides of March, I think that I thought it was March 7th, but a cursory scroll through the wonderment that is Google, yields the truth... Ides of March = 3/15

oops

From the Romans to the Irish with Asterix inbetween, today is the green goddess drunk fest known as St. Patricks day.
Shades of green
puce
puke
vermillion
chartruce
forest
emerald
sea green
that seventies shade of avocado
mint green

green beer green which I will assiduously avoid.

We are going to Claude, and I am thinking that tiny bubbles are in order, as it still very, very hot, but who the hell needs a reason to drink champagne.

so as an advance warning, I amy need to write a bubble induced screed later on...

technologically inept

I still can't quite figure out how I manage to double post from home, nor make links and link my email. - shout out to DW in Teh-has, if you have any clues they would be mightily appreciated.

But first more weather inanities.
Hot, hot hot, hot. By San Francisco standards, that I (oh who the fuck cares)
walking down Haight in shirt sleaves, marvelling at the spelling of sleaves, it is hot, moon is absent, sky is low-slung and careless...
I could pursue that image and I think I shall, picture a sky low slung and careless, like a thong peeking from a pair of jeans, think Britney Spears, think a line of bar stools and the wide, welcoming "M" of thongs, remember the old Nair commercials, who wears short, shorts. And then give it up.

I was on my way to dinner with FLFF. We had a rather fine time, and as always there is a first for everything. As it happened he decided that he must have the faux lame nehru jacket that our server was wearing. Persian's perogative, he got it, at an easy %400 mark up. I made the comment that it was the first time I had dined and taken the servers shirt...

And that I am writing at this hour is a pretty clear indication that I did not get a proper "tucking in"

But in the balls out department. I did leave a VM for lovely MS.

In world news our good Gallic friends make the claim that they have come close to nearly capturing nutty OBL. The Spanish have dropped us, mud is flying, and, hello, it is 76 degrees in the middle of March.

I am wracking my brainicle for some lovely words, but they just won't come.

I need a dance partner.

Si, senior, I would love to tango, oh you meant that my hair is tangled? Mea culpa, mea culpa.

blog, blog, flippity blob blog blah

Emma is feeling a little ( a lot ) disconsolate.

But first the weather. Again and unseasonably warm March Sunday. We might launch into a diatribe about global warming, but we are not complaining and beside we have not the energy to diatribe, and we thinks that our stupid CD player has just bit tge dust...

reason # 114 why it is sometimes useful to have a mean about the premises, they can tinker with shit that I find confounding. Too many red, yellow and green wires...

but I digress

We cut our hair short, short and we are having a bit of buyers remorse, then again. We are more than willing to attribute it to the our raging hormones - we are in the midst of laying our little egg, and just cuz a body needs to advertise, we have sprouted the Worlds Largest Pimple next to our nose.

Emma was not so fortunate to sample any sweet, sweet manflesh over the weekend, but on Friday we did manage to land a phone number which we may or may not have the balls to call... A. recommended that we ice the monstrosity, and currently we are at our desk with an icecube pooling down our cheek. We feel a little silly.

but that is that, and so it goes, from whence it came. And there it goes, there it goes.

we must be tired for our eye is twitching

Weekend wrap up:
Friday m and I stay up past our bed times. I flirt shamelessly with Lovely MS, get a number, take a taxi before I make an ass of myself. Tonight M reassures me that I did not paw the poor bastard, but concedes that he may not have an untainted recollection.

Saturday: My head hurts less than it ought too when I open my eyes. Jeff calls and wants to train. Golden Gate park, brilliant sunshine, Jeff inflicts some serious smack down on us. After we have rolled in the dirt with a hang over as bright as the sun in the cloudless sky, after he as contorted our limbs, and nailed us with a wooden swords we would like nothing better than to slug the sonofabitch... But it is fun and makes us feel very strong.

When we get home we are covered in grime, and suspect that we will wake up very, very bruised. Bus to the ferry building to catch a boat to Sausalito. The sun is up, the ferry rides the swells, there are swells on the boat, there is a hodgepodge of language, there is a really tall man blocking my sun. I didn't even reach for my book, just sat still as statuary, sun on my face, sun on my face.

Something about being on the bay, being at eyelevel with all of our landmarks, bridges and buildings and mountains and islands and a lone tree.

Eleven years later and I still hold my breath.

A and K and I hang out in Tiburon, margaritas at twilight at Guaymas. I get hunger pains, I get hunger pains for R. The missing comes on tangibly and I have to go outside to look across the bay to where he is, where he is somewhere between the pitch of the water and the sprinkling of the lights.

your loves never leave you. flit about the conciousness like so many humingbirds, dazzling green, lightening quick, flash of passion, flash of peach.

Sunday: I am bruised. Both shoulders and a purple line down my back. My hips sport a vermillion hue. My hormones have gone completely apeshit and I decide that I hate my new short, short hair. My left ovary has tied itself into a precise knot and i would real,y like to rip somebody's (anybody's) throat out. Instead I will take a hot bath, with ice on my nose... And hope that The Worlds Largest Pimple will subside by morning.

And dream of kisses, mouths and skin on skin and more skin on skin...

Emma bids farewell and fecund dreams.

emma has spent too much of her day perusing the internet, reading the various accounts of wrong doings by Feckless Leader and his coterie of evil-doers that she has become positively Napoleonic. In the sense that I feel like a powerless squawking banty cock.
(minus the dangly bits, of course)

And so Friday Evening beckons with the promise of twilight and booze. And I can't promise that I won't,
a. come home drunk
b. come home drunk with (seemingly, at the time) stellar idea that I must share with the world
c . come home drunk, pour myself a drink, and attempt to share said stellar idea with the world
d. come home drunk, have drink in hand, have lit cigarette in hand, have put on either maudlin middle period Jacques Brel, or the Goose is Cooked song that I can't seem to extract from my brainicle.
e. come home drunk, all of the above, and set about transcribing said stellar idea, all rococco style, florrid language, flourish and the works with catsup, punctuated by song lyrics in French, like some precious artsy fartsy fuckwit.
I can't promise that it won't happen...

Then again, I could get lucky and come home drunk with some delightful manflesh...
mmm... manflesh...

that sacred golden amber that is tequila...

I am in the habit of frequenting several establishments in my neighborhood, confirmed old bachelor that I am, I rotate them judiciously.

One of my haunts is called Sweet Heat, they have good tacos and even better margaritas.

It was seventy-six degrees when I left work for the gym, and I diligently went about adding mass to my muscles and felt that all that grunting merited a refreshing margarita.

the bartender is Lisa, she is good to me (because I am a really, really good tipper) but tonight she poured quite a nice Patron silver shot, twice, in addition to my two tasty supersized margies....

ne me quitte pas

And there were two soused Scottsmen shouting at each other at an insufferable decibel level. Why do they shout so?

There was VH1, muted playing I love the eighties - laisse moi devenir, l'ombre de ton ombre- (is there no greater lyric as to the great abandonment, let me be the shade of your shade, submission, love...)

where was I.

Oh, I love the eighties, where do they get those people who pronounce so authoratively over my formulative decade, and how much do they pay them, and why again, do Scottsmen shout so?

And why don't I keep a bottle of tequila at home, well my fine feathered friend, that answer in astoundingly simple.

and then again, some day my prince will come, and he will have the same velvet tonsils as Jacques Brel and he will sing to me, quand Isabelle chante, plus rien ne bouge...

speaking of, I am reflecting about broads.

I took the high road, following my own fucked up advice. I sent out emails to Mysharona and to FLFF, recusing myself wrapped in my happy cloak of self deprication.
As P says (and I concur with only the lightest pinch of vitriol) let the drunk and the drama queen have one another.

I need September, I need to be in France. I need the persistence of the mistral, I need a too salty Mediterranean, I need a belly laugh, I need a bar-tabac and gauloise and the ambiance scented by 75 years of Pastis 51, I need the dry scrub brush, I need a good moss overrun, crumbling fountain. I need my girlfriends.

(I need to listen to that Outkast song about my goose being cooked), cuz my love goose is most definitely cooked.

Oh my fine, tequilaed feathered friend, I am afraid the bath tub beckons, and you are going to publish this unintelligible mess and regret it in the morning.

----

and a minor gripe, but am I the only one who finds bloggers spell check completely ineffectual?

Emma B has taken BOB out of the closet, is running a bath, and is looking forward to her dreams. she hopes that she flies in her sleep.

words to stave off atrophy

words, birds, herds
bling, sing, bling
misanthrope, pissant pope
killing, schilling, milling, wilding
brain train strain
groin, coin, loin
rabbit habit (ha ha!)
sex hex
fun in the sun with a hun looking down a barrel of a gun
awning donning dawning yawning yonder ponder dandy dander flounder in Flanders
Lapland, lap dance, lap top, lap dog, lap ho, laps run, hand job, blow job, lapse in judgment.
get hitched, get ditched
dire, fire, mire
hear near tears
bulwark, bull market, bull shit
boredom, whoredom, martyrdom
merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily
life is but a dream...

On broads

(for P)

this is gonna require some Ella.

My grandma Jane is the first broad of my acquaintance. Gin swillin, golf playing, diamond wearing faux red head Jane. Jane who left her two sons, my blessed papa, by the side of the interstate in Texas, drove forty miles to turn around to collect her two sobbing, repentant offspring.

Jane who drove the caddy into the side of the house because the "driveway shrank" after a night out at the country club.

Jane who was happily married to Bill for sixty years, the man she lost her virginity to, but who can talk dirty like the best of them.

P pays me high complement when she calls me a broad, and in essence that is what I am.

But mind you, a broad is no floozy, a broad is a lady (a lady with the tongue of a guttersnipe, and wit of as asp)

Broads. The woman swaying like Jane Russel in heels, who can belch like a trucker in the correct company.

And a side note on heels - ladies, ladies, I see far to many of you tripping in your cheap shoes. Lemme impart a trick. Heel, toe, heel, toe. The hips are walking's natural metronome, let your feet set the beat (heel, toe, heel, toe) and your hips are the counter note. rhythm, not dissonance.

As an example, I am wearing this little gray skirt tonight. Cut perfectly to my knees. Ladies, unless you are a twig or a hooker, never wear a skirt cut more than three inches above the knees. And some designer had the bright idea to cut a sort of train into the back of the skirt, which accentuates the shimmy. The skirt shimmies. I was walking down California (heel, toe) and I could see the effect of the skirt, swish, swish, heel toe, swish, swish.

Broads never underestimate the power of the correct garment. Reveal a tasty morsel, never play your hand.

Broads are unabashed, fiercely loyal to other broads. Broads have no need of backstabbling, petty squabbles. Broads, like crows, have an affiniity to baubles, broads like their liquor and can hold it. broads don't cause scenes, they more often than not mediate them.

Broads are closet romantics. You fuck with a fellow broad and you are in deep shit.

side bar to P.
never had the priviledge of having a broad, brotherinarms, thank you.

Emma's panties are in a right fucking twist.

... but first the weather. Global warming anyone, extreme climate change? It is as warm as it ever gets in San Francisco, positively balmy, and it is one day past the ides of March, we ought to be shrugging on our woolens rather than donning our summer skirts and open toes sandals (crikey, our feet need a good sloughing and a polish) My windows are open to the usual Haight street cacophony, there are mercifully no screamers.

... and a domestic complaint, why is my cd player only playing selective cd's? I really want to hear, because I am in that kind of mood, the Magnolia soundtrack, so I can get good and fucking moridbund, and smoke loads of cigarettes in the tub.

... and now the rest.
I must make a sputterence, FUUUCCCKKK! fuck. fuck. fuck.
fucking fuckfuckfuck.

Whilst I was mooning over the snow in Tahoe, Mysharona and FLFF went on two dates. In an email exchange she was evasive so I called her on it. Turns out that she likes him and who the fuck knows what he thinks. Suffice it to say that they have a date for the movies this week and I have not heard hide nor hair from him.

So comes the awkward phone conversation, full of pregnant pauses and a lot of I don't know what to says. I am trying to suck it up, while freely admitting to a sick green twinge of jealousy and hurt feelings. I say she should follow her heart, and I would never ask her not to see him.

what I didn't tell her is that she violated my code. According to my code, one never pursues a girlfriend's crush, even when being pursued by said crush.

I don't whether to laugh or cry, I think I might do a little of both.

wasn't I just writing about high school, is this not soooo high school? Do you ever really transcend seventeen, it that easily wounded seventeen year old girl forever hovering in the heart strings, plucking and strumming?

The truth is I don't really want to suck it up, I want to cause a scene. Swallow several gallons of vodka and drunk dial FLFF in hysterics. Ask the really important questions like, what's she got that I don't have? My boobs are bigger, you worthless fuck!!!!

Of course this not Emma's M.O., we keep to the high road despite our misgivings, besides I have an interview tomorrow and it would not due to show up in full hang-over regalia.

Tant fucking pis.

And so we will write an open letter to our cher mayor Gavin Newsom.

Dear Mayor Newsom,

I am writing you on behalf of my great love and constant companion B.O.B. You see, I would like a license to marry.

I realize that it is a bit unorthodox to want to marry an battery operated dildo, a non human entity or henceforth a NHE, but I figured since you granted the marriage option to all of our gay friends, and since Rick Santorum is already apoplectic, I figured you may want to push the envelope and give the man the most severe case of hemorrhoids imaginable by granting my permission to wed my dearest B.O.B.

You see, having had my fair share of man flesh and the trouble that goes with all of that skin and viscera and hair you might want to give me everlasting peace (and orgasms!) that B.O.B. provides me.

We needn't be a drain on the state, since our union will bear no issue. I promise to keep him in double A batteries for the remainder of his life. We will need no food stamps, as B.O.B has no mouth to feed (kisses, fodder for all of those tepid suckers out there, I say cut to the everlovin' chase)

I bought him a ring, a cock ring, though I must return it to Good Vibrations, as it turns out that B.O.B has no balls, but he does he have these fantastic bunny ears... bunny ears...

pardon the reverie, dear mayor, I was waxing ecstatic over the honeymoon, 10 days on the beach, me sunsoaked and mai tai sated, while he pines for me from the back of the closet, wouldn't want the housekeeper getting ideas...

Really an ideal marriage, no fights, no diplomacy, no troublesome in-laws.

I do hope you will consider my request in all earnestness.

Sincerely,

Emma B.

ps: I am not scathlingly bitter, I am not choking back the bile.

There is blighted blue on the ridge and the sun is blinding, and I have found my sunglasses and I am late and I have to pee.

and Juice gave me the wrong number and Enterprise didn't have a car, and for heavens sakes I ate mother fucking burgerking in the snow...

And there is the valet parker from new zealand, and there is the mountain, and there are ski booted feet, and the clomp, clomp, and snow is cold. We forget, until we reach an ungloved hand into a a waiting snowbank, to lob a friendly snowball at an unsuspecting friend.

And there are sunburned boys sipping beers... everywhere!

And the girls and I, friends, minus a tiff here and there, since we were seven, having facials, lolling in the sauna.

Then there is paella at K's. There are nearly 11 small children and they make an astonishing lot of noise. There is also sangia and a full moon, and it is bright as cold, white daylight. Blue white, white blue.

There is a hen party plopped down in the stairwell, children abed, husbands in front of the TV. Only KE is without children, and LR is recently widowed. I have an ex-husband and no children, I think I am a closet pariah...

but there we are in the stairwell, yearbooks between us. quotes.
you made out with him
yeah
so did I
did you make out with him
no you didn't
yes I did
ew
oh he's totally hot now
I made out with him
I wish I did
I had sex with him in his bronco
you were such a ho
collective giggles
more sangria

highschool.

john cale said that the best thing about growing up in a small town is you know your going to leave. And I did.
But these women that I have known forever are my deep, deep roots. My childhood, my adolescence. And it is a grand thing to know them, and to carry them still.

I forget, how much those mountains and that desert air are a part of me. I had forgotten what snow tastes like. Juice and I were snow tasting, a decided mix of pine and dirt, quite palatable, crisp on the tongue.

I forgot to put on sunblock, but I frankly don't care.

ATTENTION, semi drunken posting

red lipstick impressions.

from my vista, I am at eyeline with the chandeliers, blue light, blue ice, from me to the stage.

and this big, big voice, fills the auditorium, and with it in a slow wave of memories. me at 17, losing my shirt in the mosh pit at the red hot chili peppers, losing my cookies in the safeway parking lot, before the earthquake.

sundry shows between
and then

Rufus, hitting on my then husband backstage, and my intense discomfort until this great big nasally voice fills and fills and all is forgiven.

since then, there have been other times and other venues.

Tonight from the balcony, blue, blue electric blue chandeliers. That voice.
Tonight from the balcony, they are bobbing and swaying or standing stock still. There are voices rising, between the music, there are snatches of conversation, there is the missed connection. There are the songs that are sung, and those unsung. There is Emma dancing.

there is Emma dancing, lyrics on her lips, music in her hips. There is P in tears, there is M with his arms about her shoulders. They have each other, we have nothing but the promise of a snatch of a song. So Emma and I dance, we are all swizzle, we marvel at the flexibility of our joints.

And for the first time we don't cry.

"Now I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?
It goes like this
The fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew her
She tied you
To a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

You say I took the name in vain
I don't even know the name
But if I did, well really, what's it to you?
There's a blaze of light
In every word
It doesn't matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you
And even though
It all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Halleluja"


and don't let anyone tell you any different, there are angels in the strangest places. In a smoky beam of light, in the voice of a poncey queen, in the riddle of a lover, in a hand stamp, an empty glass.

in an empty bed, a hard place, an idling taxi, a whiff of a stranger who said that my earrings caught the light.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Captain

Rufus sings "halleluja" and it makes us happy.

As it turns out, I don't regret having sent the email.

I do regret the looming headache that threatens to dampen my fun this evening. Sing along with Rufus!
- Why am I always on a plane or a fast train
- what is this world my parents gave me, always
travelling but not in love...

bare in mind that I don't have the lyrics in front of my and I am a notorious skewer of lyrics, or Mondegreens, as Jon Carroll calls them. Liar, Liar pencil fire, anyone?

a copy of an email that I will probably regret sending...

F-

some ruminations

there is always a patch of dry rot, manifesting in a bone, a dessicated stretch of heart. A dry old ghost rattling on the cerebellum. If viscera is pinkly pliant and muscle is wetly taught, a body combats the dusty cancer as best it can, be it with love or meditation, or frequent dousing in fortified alcohols, with running in one spot as fast as you can, with sex.

behind the house where I grew up, where the garden ceded to the forest, there was this patch of ripped up forest where my brother and I would hunt for snakes. Dry rot smells of sun and dust, mulch of bug, frightened snake.

I don't find my life to be all that fraught with danger, mostly I find it staid. I find myself ruled by the dual houses of pragmatism and romanticism, the romantic wants and wants, yearns, pines for adventure. The pragmatic tends to quash such headiness, confining my romantic wanderings to the great sea of my clawfoot tub and the dark ocean of my imagination.

TGV to hell, it'll be a quick trip.
(though you don't strike me as the type to burn for all of eternity, I see more a mischevious imp, strumming the theme to Deliverence on a harp, while perched on Cloud Nine.)

Away has to await September. Then to South of France for days of rose and gauloises, for a wedding.

The Mountain air is the breath of my childhood, snow sears fingers and toes and nose. And I am going to be with friends from childhood, I have known most of these girls since I was seven. I love them, we have long and storied histories (and a few rivalries) but they are ALL married with kids now. I am to spend the weekend with eleven small children...

that it freaks me out makes me quite sure that I am not prepared to be anybodies mother.

My dotty Grandmother, Alzheimers addled, has a penchant for rhinestones, mean spirited old crow crone. I would forsake a rhinestone jacket for myself, as I have forsaken EVER following the Urban Cowboy look. Plus, my girls and I are ever mindful of not resembling a two dollar hooker. Diamonds, however, are a wholly different animal.

Basics.
Life is.
I love my family and I love my friends.
I have shelter and it is likely that I will never go hungry.

Point me towards the center and I will show you the Void.

Please wish D. a happy 40th, they say that forty is the new thirty, but I can wait.

~

work schmirk.

Now on day four Without Sleep, so it is little wonder that all I would really like to do is fling myself to the floor and have a gigantic weeping temper tantrum, kick and scream and flail myself into a deep, deeply satisfying nap. Perhaps in the pocket of sunshine in the conference room. Oh to be five again.

Almost bath time

There are two marvelous features to my teeny little abode.
The first is my little heater that could. The second is my clawfoot tub.

The little (gas) heater that could dispels the chilling pacific humidity in mock five seconds, I have several friends that are astounded when they walk into my own personal tropics.

Having grown up in a house on Red Dog road, shaded by pine trees and wreathed in dog wood, it was always, always fucking cold in that house. Though I am still, tremendously in awe of the silence of snow, and city girl that I am now, I miss the sound of the great trees groaning against the yoke of the wind.

Been a bath junkie for as long as I can remember. Mme. Berelofagun detests the idea of literally stewing in your own juices, whereas I find it an apt metaphor. Once upon a time in a land called France, I had a tub that overlooked a valley of vineyards, to les Alpes Maritimes, when a storm would gather itself unto itself I would light towards the tub, to watch the lightening and feel the thunder, while scenting the ozone through the open window.

good baths, those.

I was sixteen then, and now I bumble, in heels, towards my jesus year of 33. Because I am a year of the pig child (1971) I always find myself celebrating an odd birthday on an even year, and, naturally, vice versa. I have high hopes for this year, despite all of the deaths thus far, and for christ sakes it is only March. I have a hopeful suspicion that all will coalesce...

coalescence, now that is a lovely word.

effervescence, evanescence, comeuppance.

And yet I find myself playing the fool's game with FLFF. I cajole myself, or rather, Emma cajoles, our body is in play, but our heart is in lock down.

For full disclosure, we trotted out the girls on sunday for the Oscar party and the accomplished their intended effect. We took FLFF home, we have his sweater to prove it, he worked us into a fluster, and then he left (again, lord, help us for the oh so dizzy tizzy)

is this what it is to be a single woman in the city, have the roles been so reversed that women are now suffering from the equivalent of... I dasn't say it...

to hear only some half assed, albeit, sincere, speech about respect and its ilk, yada yada, yada...

of course my ex-husband proffers - well that could be true, and then maybe he was just saying that... Thanks D. you've done wonders for my ailing ego, no wonder we're divorced...

Ah well, there are always dreams to be had in the bath tub, there is always the uncertainty of the future. There is always great loves to be contemplated for the dreamers. And of course, there is always the gym...

Emma is going to sing Cole Porter in the bath tub now.

Should we talk about the weather

no we shouldn't, but we shall.

Spring sprung yesterday, thought twice about it today and tucked back into rain. This has had a devistating effect on our mood (that and insomnia, and in between the insomnia horrible nightmares about an End of Days scenario with our fucking Feckless Leader)

(just remembering the dream leaves me unsettled - think good thoughts - hmmm, bunny rabbits! hmmm, George Clooney!)

that's better.

crikey, words are not coming, and I was hoping to carefully phrase what happened on Sunday with FLFF. Perhaps I will try later...

Emma is sorry to report that she did not win an oscar for her most recent wailings, but she did say things that were salacious and naughty and she made herself blush when she reread her rant from the stone cold side of sobriety.

Emma has declared a ban on drunkenly writing, or writing drunkenly... Isn't there some kind of bloggy cop, trolling (scrolling?) for offenders. A blogging DUI will result in a fine and a flogging, or a fine flogging.

Oh stop.

Can't help it, sun is out, I am itching to go and play!