Milk, White, Dark

I : Love Won’t Tear Us Apart. If It Did, It Would Save Me a Lot of Calls to Customer Service.

There are days filled with low-level panic and pervasive despair. I transverse the hours via scurry. I'm an existential Indiana Jones, running across the rotting boards of my old life, praying that I reach terra firma before they crumble out from under me. Getting my cell phone company to split our "family" plan into two separate lines is a Kafkaesque exercise in futility. The prospect of arranging every last vestige of my married life into two discrete piles is overwhelming. While sitting in the wreckage is depressing, simultaneously building and demolishing seems flat-out impossible. The Impending Ex and his girlfriend are buying new furniture. Every time I visit, there’s a new table, new decoration, new celebration of a new life. I go to IKEA and find myself unable to buy so much as a shelf, because something supported by wall anchors implies permanence and such a concept is unthinkable. So I wind up eating Swedish meatballs and staring at couples who've got a lot more faith in themselves and in particle board than I ever remember having. There are days like that.

II : Love is a Tower of Strength in Me

And then there are days like this.

My futon is an ideal landing place for stage falls. It's firm yet yielding, of moderate height and so ugly that its inadvertent destruction would fill me will IKEA-bound glee. When I'm feeling very happy and very dramatic, I'll take a face-first dive onto it. After crashing into the cushions, I press my face against the polyester velveteen and close my eyes. I pretend that I have the very essence of warmth and contentment pinned underneath me, and I can't get up, lest it die, disappear or flutter off into a shady corner. Instead, I let it melt against my skin, light up my bloodstream like fiber-optic cable, assimilate me into the vast cosmic repository of all that which is good.

I'm extraordinarily fortunate. My life is filled with a number of people who are wise, kind and compassionate; people who, to my amazement and delight, actually seem to like me. They feed me. They look out for me. They let me flop on their futons. We tickle each others' kids, share secrets embarrassing and profound. Being with them makes me like who I am. The cynicism and self-protective stance fall away. I am inundated with goodness; in turn, I try to disseminate as much of it as I can. Sans irony, sans defensiveness, I know what I'd like to be. An open door. An available lap. A safe haven of kindness, small gestures and esoteric cooking tips. When things are bad, scary or falling apart in the middle of the night, the first phone number which comes to mind.

On days like this, I am swept up in the arms of a momentarily-benevolent universe.

III : Love Is Bad For the Teeth of the Soul

For a limited time only (from thisverysecond until all that remains are desiccated petals and half-chewed caramels), and burning only a fraction of the karma which has so richly entitled me to do so, I intend to be an insufferable little bitch about it, I reserve the right to refuse any comfort, advice, platonic hugs, positive prognostication or radiant gems of staggering insight from anyone, anywhere, who spends these dim and icy days warmed by anything more personal than a massive gas bill, who hovers above the stretcher in a protective fog of hindsight and iodine fumes and murmurs, “I know how it feels”, who takes their coffee with the plentiful half-and-half of comfort and companionship rather than the self-loathing Sweet ‘n Low of really, truly wanting to be able to fulfill all of one’s own needs, and failing to do so time and again, and there is no quantity of Altoids large enough to eradicate that particular taste, there is no peanut butter-filled heart succulent enough to negate the fact that it is charity candy, and there is most certainly no one whose opinion I’d like unless they, like I, spent the past month sleeping on the couch without being entirely sure why, and finally, after moving the bed into a snug corner on a whim, realized that it was the confinement, that a sleeping area with walls and borders felt better, and wondered why that might be, and then, curled up tightly, a serif comma printed on a queen-sized mattress, realized: oh, yeah. Right.

New UmamiMami Post : "Massacre"

Part celebration. Part disintegration. But hopefully a bit more fun than gorging on heart-shaped foodstuffs, schmaltzy radio and bitterness.

Project : "Hurty Laundry"

Some people save things. Some people save things compulsively. Me? I'm a discarder. You name it, odds are I've dispatched it to Goodwill or the local landfill. Paper, clothing, rotten nectarines, masonry debris, cassette tapes, several dozen pairs of old-lady underpants (long story), magazines... I'm never so happy as when I'm flinging something into a Hefty bag and out of my life. Perhaps it's my genetic lineage... my ancestors were Jewish and Russian, two groups for whom "fleeing in the dead of night" might as well be an Olympic sport. While I have no reason to believe I'm in danger of being rousted from my futon by nefarious parties... damn it, if it DOES happen, I won't take long to pack.

True story: until recently, I didn't own a can opener. I avoided canned goods when I could. If unable to obtain a desired foodstuff in any other format (cream of coconut, I'm looking at YOUR saturated-fatty ass), I gamely attacked the can with the tiny, military-style opener on the side of my Swiss Army knife.

There are two notable exceptions to my "More Stark(e) than Philippe" policy: the sentimental and the scientific.

While my Crema Tropicale-splattered kitchen tells one story, my shelves tell quite another.

I've got the tiny stuffed giraffe my mother put in my crib before I was born. I've got the London Fog trenchcoat my father wore as a teenager. I've got the loose-leaf notes I kept during the weeks following J.Q.'s birth ("3:00 AM: 3 oz. milk. WHOOOOO! ROCK ON, BABY!"). I've got how-tos, textbooks, MLA citation guides and my own well-thumbed copy of the Merck Manual (which I should really replace with a little laminated card reading "STOP WORRYING. IT IS PROBABLY JUST GAS").

Emotion and information. In a minimalist existence, these two invariably get a free pass.

Nothing illustrates this as well as my crammed-to-bursting Sent Mail folder. It's like an archaeological dig through my heart.

The breakdown of my marriage led to some of my proudest moments, as well as some of my absolute worst. Faithful corespondent that I am, almost all of them were immediately adjectived up and fired off. Collectively, they're like "Jul In Review": a horrible, wonderful, hilarious, agonizing and enlightening synopsis of... well, ME, both with my soon-to-be ex and by myself.

There are dozens of messages that make me cringe. That's why I saved them, I think. If something makes me squirm with embarrassment or shame, it's a good sign that I need to confront it, rather than ditching it by the side of the information superhighway like a rusty muffler.

I'm sharing them because snooping through someone else's e-mail is a blast.

No! (Well, partially.)

I'm sharing them to confront them, and because they're freakishly fascinating. I like the idea of excavating the dark, intimate and seldom-shared and holding it up to the sunlight. Seeing if it will blanch or melt or spontaneously combust... or if I will.

In the words of the prophet, it's all the same, only the names (and identifying details) have been changed. As the soon-to-be ex, the OtherWoman and I still have to consort with one another for a few hours each week (and have managed to do so rather peacefully), please refrain from ripping them respective new ones. What's done is done.

That being said... go ahead... take a peek inside.

Better or Verse - "Brand-New Effervescent Action"

Nothing is as sweet as this moment
caught improbably between the teeth like a bullet.

To mentally calculate the odds of such a thing ending well
is about as wise
respectful
appropriate
and advisable
as biting down.

The properly appreciative state
(and I don't know how to achieve this, but I'm trying nonetheless)
Is one of unconscious, reflexive grace
Drunk, giggling and balancing on a moving El Camino's hood
The Roadrunner, post- cliff edge
But pre- looking down.

The rare Metaphorical Luna Moth
(cue the turquoise and crystals and incense)
Would be the perfect spirit guide
Antennae unfurled, gratefully receiving
Vibrations, visions, glowing pollen specks
Happy little twitches that haven't happened quite yet.

The moon is bright. Breath crystallized. Her hair spread across a fresh-chalked goal line.
The lake's blood-warm. Sky melted Creamsicle. World saturated in liquefied sun.
You do not think about the harshly bright awkwardness of the next morning.
You do not think about driving back to Providence on sopping wet upholstery.
You just jump in.

Either You Give Blood Or We Take It

Ed. Note: Dewey Billem Fivehundredbucksperhour & Howe's blood drives have sometimes had pretty poor turn-outs. I imagine this is due to the hectic, demanding nature of The Law. Either that or I work with a bunch of soulless bastards. Regardless, the e-mails announcing our quarterly exsanguination sessions have gotten somewhat, ah, "terse" as of late...

Do you know how many people in the tri-state area are in desperate need of your gift of blood?

Don't even pretend like you don't. You've gotten our e-mails. Or are you also going to feign unfamiliarity with a little concept known as "read receipt"?

So, yeah: we totally need some blood up in this joint, homes. So cough it up.

No, not literally. Unless you've got tuberculosis. And you'll notice that question 17-C on the donation questionnaire specifically addresses that particular malady.

Or at least you WOULD notice, if you bothered to show up to donate.

We offered cookies. Multiple varieties of cookies. Did chocolate chip, snickerdoodle or oatmeal-raisin coerce you into opening up a vein? Of course not.

We offered a selection of juices wide enough to make the local Stop 'n Shop's produce department manager gouge his own eyes out in shame. Perhaps with a sharpened plantain. But were any sufficiently succulent to lure you and your precious corpuscles down to conference room 813? Nooooo.

We hung posters with poignant black-and-white photos of children, all of whom needed donated blood at one point in their lives. Did these posters tug at your heartstrings? The heartstrings are connected to the artery-strings, you know. Which are, via the wonder of capillaries, connected to the vein-strings. Which are connected to a needle, a few feet of sterile tubing and a baggie. What's that? They're not?

Excuse me while I feign surprise.

Or perhaps your chest cavity does not contain a heart, merely a cruel and chilly lump of granite. Perhaps you were utterly unmoved by the photo of Baby Johnny, whose life was saved by two units of O-neg. Yeah. We can just imagine you, walking by the poster we hung above the office microwave. "Screw you, Baby Johnny!", you scoff, "You're not getting a single leukocyte outta ME!" And then you surreptitiously eat a coworker's Lean Cuisine.

You monster.

We're sick of you and your sanguinary stinginess. It's time for radical action.

Either you give blood, or we take it.

Right now, at a Red Cross compound in an undisclosed-yet-heavily-guarded location, we're building the future. And it is quick with an iodine swab.

Our first group of highly-trained phleboto-ninjas will be unleashed upon the world in mere weeks. And when they are, you - and your red cells - had better watch out.

Equally at ease in an ill-fitting lab coat or a traditional shinobi shozoku, the phleboto-ninja is versatile. He is fast as the rushing stream, agile as the cat on the prowl. In the time it takes most allied health technicians to ask, "Yo, Rick, we got any more #16s?", the phleboto-ninga can locate a suitable vein, prep the skin surface, deftly insert a needle AND single-handedly dispatch a cadre of armed attackers.

The phleboto-ninja's hands have been trained in modern venipuncture technique. His soul has been steeped in feudal Japanese tradition.

And make no mistake about it, he's going to drain your sorry ass.

The phlebotomist of the past said, "Okay, this may sting a bit." The phleboto-ninja says nothing. He does not betray his presence in such a blatant fashion. By the time you notice the sting, he will have vanished... along with a still-warm bag of your vital fluids. Within minutes, he will place his conquest within a ceremonial ice chest; it will then be reverently presented to his shogun/regional Red Cross collection center. And you will remain completely oblivious to his actions... that is, until you notice the freshly-applied sticker on your lapel: "BE NICE TO ME! I GAVE BLOOD TODAY (ALBEIT IN A TOTALLY INVOLUNTARY FASHION)".

It's your choice. You can take the noble path, conveniently available in conference room 813 from 8:00 AM - 1:00 PM. Or you can take the dishonorable one... sitting at your desk, munching on a snack cake, the gift of life hoarded in your miserly veins.

In the past, we would've told you to choke on your own Krimpet. But that was the past.

Go on, lick the butterscotch frosting of selfish decadence from your fingers. Go about your daily routine. We'll be watching... and waiting.

Will the strike come while you're in the elevator? Walking to the copier? Holding court at the water cooler? You'll never know. Oh, there will be a sting... the sting of your own greed being forcibly extracted. There will be a faint feeling of light-headedness, perhaps the ethereal whisper of jika-tabi on linoleum. At this point, you may wish to hit the vending machine for a can of fruit punch and some Chips Ahoy. Because whether or not you're aware of it, you've just become a hero.

UPDATED: MoHoHo

Now complete : the world's first (and god help us, LAST) set of Christmas cards based on Modernist design precepts. Clicking each card will take you to a Wikipedia page chock-full of further information. Clicking the little "Address" bar at the top of your screen, mashing keys randomly and then hitting "Enter" will no doubt take you to a less-dorky destination than your present one.

Sir Mix-a-Lot I'm Not

Following my last post, the fantabulous Doctor Mama quipped that I should send off some of my deeply silly old-school rhymes.

"How does one get a job writing rap lyrics?" I wondered, "Dear Sirs: The Inuit have over seventy words for snow. I myself have over eighty for desirable female buttocks."

"You should see if you COULD do eighty for the buttocks," replied Doc M. Because she's a sadist. "First do no harm"? Yeah, RIGHT. How about the irreparable harm my brain has suffered as a result of actually compiling such a list?

And so, without further ado: The Assified Eighty. I'm going to go lie down. On my stomach, of course.

Alright, okay, let's get this started, hon… here's eighty synonyms for buns
There are some Gentiles that like to call 'em hams
Keepin' Kosher? Then how 'bout servin' up two helpings of mac 'n DAMN!
And for dessert, a sweet, sweet bon bon
Or if that don't make ya moan, perhaps you'd be tempted by a double-dip without the cone?
If it's fly, it's called callipygian
Or if that's causin' confusion, do the medical thang and call it a sub-sacral protrusion
You can pound, you can thump, you can shimmy that rump
You can boom, you can zoom, you can float those balloons
If you're a shortie, young 'n whiny, you just call that thing a heinie
Sir Mix-a-Lot informed us that she gotta pack much back
Was he lookin' in a crystal ball with a big ol' crack?
Alone, he stood and shouted out about the juicy double
Today, everyone's runnin', hustlin', tryin' to pop that bubble
He knew it takes a special woman to wave that round thing in your face
Ain't nothin' knockin' her over when she got that solid base
It's like Epcot center, with a big ol' indent-er
It's soft and it's cute, like the Georgia state fruit
All over the world, makin' men go, "Whoa!": if you're a Latino, get a load of that culo
If G-d's chosen people happen to be the look-ahs, you better believe it'll be a tuchus
And 'though Brit-speak is damned hard to parse, we all understand when they're talkin' arse
Mad props to the English; they're versatile like that, god bless the queen and all hail the prat
Thought the UK was done? Not unless we mention bum
Firm or squishy, in thong or not, it's a double-shot of 80-proof hot
There's always room for Jell-O; that shit don't get old, so let's call it a jiggler cause it don't fit no mold
That thing's out of bounds, so talkin' 'bout sweetness, let's just call them mounds
If it's barrelin' right towards you, call it a caboose
It's small and it's playful? Well, then turn them puppies loose!
If you're into disco, you can shake your groove thing
Into hip-hop? Then check out them nuggets of bling
To get poetic, it's a dewdrop the male eye absorbs
Getting' celestial, they're a pair of high-gravity orbs
A small constellation that makes fellas swoon; although they're red-hot, they're still known as the moon
If you're staying on this planet, try the Southern hemisphere
Hell, go to Antarctica, so long as it's got rear
But take some provisions, perhaps in a can
Some rolls
and some muffins of hotness (not bran)
In the Alps? You can slide down those double-diamond slopes
Fly to Cali, get an taste of some flesh cantaloupes
It's over, it's done, time to head on homes, to your houses, your trailers, your geodesic domes
Squares are for squares; when a nice round booty appears
Just give up that key and we'll unlock them spheres
A'ight, okay, so fullerenes ain't quite the norm...
You can still build your mansion on an adipose platform
'Cause everybody's cravin' a nice, firm fundament
Straight-up sexy shelter, just like a two-room tent
Even lookin' towards the future, you gotta look at the behind
Goin' all Nostradamus on an apocalyptic hind
Gotta get down to the bottom of things
Get a handle on that sexy sack
Brace your eyes and groin for that dual-pronged attack
Cause she's got a moneymaker and is ready to shake 'er
Wigglin' that derriere from here to there
Puttin' some skin-tight clothes on them marshmallows
Gotta love the XX gender, from those headlights to that rear fender
Sleek and sexy, with all that junk in the trunk
It's a stone-cold, rock-solid gluteal chunk
It's the illustrious J. Lo's claim to fame
Even the WNBA girls got some back-court game
At the risk of soundin' crass, you gotta, gotta love that ass
Round or flat, narrow or wide, ain't nothin wrong with some backside
Ain't gotta be Secretary of the Interior, to go wild for the posterior
Ain't gotta be the Army, settin' off mortars, to wanna deploy troops to the hindquarters
On MST3K (if you need a reminder), those lil' robots called it a hinder
Funny, Girl, how it's called a fanny though without the Brice
And how mamas use tushie when tryin' to be nice
They're more than nice, they're golden, those squishy globes
Anatomically perfect, that's those dorsal lobes
Essentially, potentially pinchable cheeks
Scalable, impalable southernly peaks
Can't go wrong with butt
Or for those that it shocks, the tame, the clinical, the ol'-fashioned buttocks
You'd best have a seat
We're drawin' to an end
We're guessin' you learned a little 'bout Tag Team's best friend
Whoomp! There Is Is, so don't go turnin' tail
C'mon and run your fingers over the letter "C" in Braille
Golly, heck and gee, sir, there ain't nothin' like the keister
Time to sail, mateys, hope we helped you learn, 'bout the timber-shiverin' wonders of buoys astern

Psycho Killer - Pt. II

(For the first part of "How Our Intrepid Heroine Came To Live With a Self-Proclaimed Serial Killer, see Part I.)

I know what you're thinking. "My parents never would’ve let me move across the country to live with a man I'd just met! Online! Who claimed to have killed people!"

Guess what? My parents wouldn't have, either.

Their path to parenthood was long and hard-won. Your illustrious narrator, their first, arrived only after a decade of marriage, several years of fruitless "trying" and a few miracles of modern medicine. Although my sisters were born in rapid succession, my parents never lost their sense of awe and gratitude. As a result, they were deeply loving but also quite protective.

We watched PBS.

We drank 100% juice.

We didn't bike too far from home.

And we certainly didn't move to Georgia to cohabitate with self-proclaimed psychopaths.

---

Unfortunately for my parents (and their best intentions), I was an astonishingly willful child. From earliest toddlerhood, I ripped through life with white-knuckled determinism. Teenage narcissism intensified this trait; love-bordering-on-religious-fanaticism exploded it. Seventeen Year-Old Jul was not "challenging" or "difficult". Seventeen Year-Old Jul was a Category-5 hurricane: one did not attempt to control it or contain it so much as survive it.

My parents were painfully aware of how any attempts to divert my southbound trajectory would end. Using brute force would be tantamount to hugging an eel. The harder their embrace, the more likely I would be to squirm free, decamp to the nearest Greyhound station and vanish in a cloud of exhaust. Unwilling to risk losing all ties with their child, they were forced to assume the unenviable role of prisoners currying favor with their captor. The overall situation was wretched and unalterable. Via grudging cooperation, they hoped to maintain a small sliver of influence in their daughter’s life.

Of course, they were entirely unaware of David's scary little secret. Had they known, I have no doubt they would've liquidated their assets, hired a squad of deprogrammers and developed a sudden, uncharacteristic faith in an interventionist god.

---

In early January, with my parents' grudging consent, David traveled to Philadelphia to claim his intended bride. I still remember my first glimpse of him as he ascended the stairs at 30th Street Station. He was lithe and blonde, with bright, penetrating eyes… a cherub grown up and grown dark. We locked eyes, lit up, collided in a fervent embrace. I half-expected the entire cavernous structure to disintegrate around our shoulders, shaken apart to marble-dust and cigarette butts.

For years, I couldn't walk past that building without my breath catching and my eyes watering. The next time I form an intense, architecture-linked memory, I'll make damned sure it's with a yurt in Tibet.

We spent the car ride back to my parents' house gently entwining our fingers, staring at one another before grinning and looking away.

We spent that afternoon clumsily rolling around on my futon, marinating in cigarette smoke and sweat. It was here, less than eight hours after we'd met, that the first tiny chink appeared in a previously armor-clad illusion of love.

"Um, baby?” he said, running his fingers over my bare back, "Do you think that next time, you could maybe TRY to keep the same rhythm as me?"

Tears welled up in my eyes. The first seeds of what would become a veritable bumper crop of self-loathing began to sprout in my head. I'd disappointed my soulmate. I was a lousy lay. I wasn't worthy. "Uh... yeah. I'm sorry," I stammered, "I just haven't... y'know... done this a whole lot."

I'd done it so little, in fact, that I was still keeping a mental tally.

It was my ninth time.

If I'd known that the next three months of my life would make that unpleasant little exchange look like "She Walks in Beauty", would I have still gone? You know, I believe I would've. A flotilla of seizure-inducing warning signs wouldn't have altered my course. As is typical of the cocksure, the love-drunk, the inexperienced, I walked in idiocy.

---

Three days, eight hundred miles and a few dozen uppercuts to my self-worth later, we arrived Home: David's parents' finished basement. While I'd been aware that he still lived at home ("keeps the overhead low", he'd explained inscrutably), my first glimpse of the 15'x25' room where my beloved hung his hat was rather disheartening. It was a dim, low-ceilinged cell with Taco Bell wrappers and Dungeons & Dragons paraphernalia scattered over every free surface. The cheeriest touch was the scuffed checkerboard linoleum. "This?” I thought, as that first tiny chink began to grow, "THIS is where all the amoral adventures and shadowy plans for world domination take place? This glorified dorm room is where David the Mastermind spends his time?"

It certainly was. It was where I'd be spending 99% of mine, too.

---

Many women's first few weeks of motherhood are characterized by unimaginable exhaustion, slow-motion panic and a profound sense of isolation. There ceases to be any appreciable difference between 1:00 AM and 1:00 PM. The blinds stay perpetually drawn. A sharp delineation appears between Out There and In Here. The latter arena is so all-consuming - life measured in twenty-minute naps, number of diapers wet and dirtied, frantic calls to the pediatrician - that Out There might as well cease to exist.

I've been there. I've sobbed into a passport-sized diaper. I've lost twenty pounds in under a month because my sudden, graduate-level crash-course in Keeping Infant Alive simply didn't allow for meal breaks.

Georgia was worse.

David worked from home (read: did ten minutes' worth of maintenance on his father's website each month). As a result, he was able to set his own schedule. Ever the iconoclast, he chose the Circadian-altering, crazy-making third shift. We rose mid-afternoon and spent all night concocting impassioned plans to conquer the world, the e-commerce sector or the mall frogurt-stand clerk who skimped on toppings. While unskilled in almost every other area, David was phenomenally charismatic, Anton LaVey crossed with Tony Robbins. It was this slick, sinister enthusiasm which held everything together. Of course our midnight machinations were nothing more than a house of cards. Under dim incandescents, though, the illusion was just too dazzling to doubt.

In addition to being nocturnal, my betrothed was also something of an agoraphobic. Well, that's not strictly true. There were the bimonthly cigarette-replenishment trips, occasional forays to Waffle House for coffee and waitress-derision. There was one action-packed trip to Middle of Fucking Nowhere, Georgia which featured extensive firearm practice, Skoal-sampling and my first tattoo (a malformed mass of squiggles, applied by a burly gent who drank a Bud and told homophobic jokes the entire time). The majority of the time, however, David preferred to stay tucked away in our wood-paneled oubliette, orchestrating mayhem... or, as was more often the case, playing "Metal Gear: Solid" for 48 hours in a row.

"When did he find time to systematically slay thirteen Atlanta-area individuals?” I'd briefly ponder before chastising myself for lack of loyalty, "We haven't left this room in four days..."

After a month of subterranean cohabitation, tiny flaws had enlarged to gaping cracks. The mystique had gone musty. Little, needling jabs had escalated to full-on harpoonings, delivered at rapid clip... "Honey, your design is just way too amateurish for my new website." "We both need work before we can pitch this project to the local paper... my project-management skills aren't that great, and you're just not a very good writer." "Yeah, my parents... they don't really, you know, like you that much."

Cruel barb aside, I wouldn't have liked me very much, either. I was a shadowy, puffy-eyed presence, scurrying into the kitchen under cover of darkness to make David sandwiches. Of course I wasn't terribly conversational. The fantasy for which I'd abandoned my family, my schooling and my rationality was crumbling to bits in front of me. Small talk was for those not attempting to hold an entire world together with trembling hands and unevenly-sliced tomatoes. My feeble, oversudsed and undercooked stabs at domesticity made me resemble a smudged-eyeliner version of the Myra Gale character in "Great Balls of Fire!”… young, desperate to please and prone to dissolving in tears and wailing, "I don't know HOW to be a good wife, Jerry Lee!"

In the movie, Jerry Lee comforted his poor, distraught, underage sweetheart. In real life, David snapped, "Well, I guess next time you'll know that barbecue sauce doesn't go too well with cream cheese", while ordering a pizza.

---

Three months in, the facade had more or less disintegrated. "Tell me more about what it's like," I'd whisper in bed, desperately trying to push him back into an intriguing but ill-fitting mold. "Maybe later... tired... too intense," he'd mutter, drifting off. If David really was the ringleader of a nefarious, multi-state crime syndicate, he apparently performed his duties during the twenty minutes a day I was in the shower. If he’d killed anyone, the deed must’ve been done in the BP, the Waffle House or his own driveway, because he certainly didn’t venture anywhere else. The driveway did feature a large, discolored stain. I was pretty sure it was motor oil rather than the blood of an enemy, an inferior, a sheep righteously culled.

In less than ninety days, the contract was irrevocably breached. The bloom was off the rose. The rosebush had been weed-whacked down to a stump. I was unwilling to face the truth and incapable of stomping out, slamming the door and stepping into the daylight. This was my one and only future. I’d sold my morality and my soul for this vacation, and I was damned if it was going to be rained out.

"I am you," I'd whisper to myself during my protracted shower-cries, tracing our initials on steam-fogged glass, "I am you, I am you, I am you."

I'd lie beside him at night, tracing my fingers over his skin, trying to memorize his scent. Tears trickling down my face, sobbing silently so I didn’t wake him.

---

It ended abruptly. Just-like-that. In retrospect, it’s a wonder my sojourn lasted as long as it did. David was constantly in search of the new, the neuron-tickling, the Next Big Thing. He’d exhausted the possibilities of a fragile, fawning live-in acolyte well before April reared its blossom-bedecked head.

It was six AM. We’d stayed up all night, drinking warmish Jack ‘n Dew, alternately pawing one another and retreating to our separate computer chairs, damp and restless, tapping out our mutual dissatisfaction.

“I’m sending you home.” David turned to me, lapis eyes vivid. “First thing tomorrow.”

So this is shock, I thought as my face went cold and my hair prickled.

“You’re kidding,” I said, more accusation than question.

“This isn’t fun any more- ,” he began.

“I know, I know, babe,” I pleaded, “But I’m trying so hard, every day…”

“That’s not what I’m talking about,” said David. “I never really loved you. This was a game… a test to see how much you’d believe, how far you’d go. I gotta say, I'm proud... you took it all the way. And you were twisted enough to actually LIKE it. But you’re not me. You’re nothing like me, not even after three months of trying to be a fucking chameleon. It’s getting old.”

“Was ANY of it true?” I blurted, still glued in the same position, my eyes dry, wide and terrified.
“I’m not going to tell you. Maybe the whole thing was a game. Maybe it was all true, and because part of me does love you, I’m protecting you from me and my life. You’re never going to know. Ever.”

Just as I’d kept a 4” Gerber in my boot, David kept a loaded .22 on his desk. I looked at it, sitting under a burrito wrapper. My hands twitched ineffectually in my lap.

“Don’t even fucking think about it,” said David. “First, a .22 round would only piss me off, and then I’d have to kick your ass. Second… that’s not you. Can’t you tell that by now?”

“No,” I blubbered, tears finally coursing down my chilly face, “You can’t… I won’t… there’s no one else in the world like me…”

“There are PLENTY of people like you,” he said, the last word brimming with happy disgust. “Here’s the phone. Call your parents and tell them you’re flying home tomorrow morning.”

“No,” I blurted, inching my chair away, “Can’t…”

“Well, do whatever the fuck you’d like. I’ll call them. You’re still going home.”

I was free. I was catatonic. I was a 120-amp fuse, overloaded with emotional agony, waiting to break, waiting to blow, and yet inexplicably still sitting here, staring at a stranger with a thin smile and a United Airlines envelope in his hand.

---

The next few days are a pile of blurry snapshots. I remember sleeping with David twice that evening, trying to hold on to just a little of his sweat, his spit, him. Oddly, it wasn’t the worst sex I’ve ever had. I remember packing my beloved stuffed giraffe and birth certificate, leaving my platform sneakers and copy of “ANSWER Me!”. I remember being handed a twenty to buy a snack while in transit (unnecessary; I didn’t eat for nearly a week). I remember David’s father briskly shaking my hand, an impersonal farewell to an impersonal acquaintance. I remember stepping off the plane and seeing my father, remember how he walked up and held me tightly for what seemed like hours, didn’t say a word as I sobbed into his flannel shirt.

---

My sister Sarah claims that my capacity for emotional recovery is much like Wolverine’s healing factor. “Dude,” she’s marveled, “You get pistol-whipped by some totally awful trauma, and thirty seconds later, you’re peeling yourself off the ground, spitting out gravel and yelling, ‘Was that shit really necessary?’!”

This is not strictly accurate.

My first days home from Georgia were quite educational. I learned that while it’s possible to live on diet Coke, it’s not a great idea for your teeth or your psyche. I learned that crying yourself to sleep, crying intermittently through the night and crying before you open your eyes in the morning doesn’t leave a person particularly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. I learned that no matter how much you wish it would, a broken heart won’t kill you.

Most importantly, however, I learned how to fake it.

I didn’t want to wake up in the morning. I faked it.
I didn’t want to be conscious. Ever. I faked it.
I didn’t want to interact with my family. I faked it.
I didn’t want to eat or smile or put on a snappy little suit and interview for secretarial jobs. I faked it.

The only thing I really wanted to do was sit in front of the computer, chatting with David, eagerly lapping up my daily ration of emotional abuse, frantically trying to wheedle my way back into his heart. It would be another six months before his grip on my mind and spirit would begin to grow slack.

In the interim, I dated men I couldn’t stand. I saw silly, explosion-laden movies. I went to Friendly’s at three in the morning, scalded my innards with Buffalo wings and coffee, wrote bad, lovesick poems on napkins. I got my second tattoo, a stylized outline of David’s beloved silver ring, a heavy, hand-formed knot which had briefly served as my engagement ring.

And I faked it.

Living – no matter how forced and arbitrary and tiresome – is still not grieving. If you do enough of the former, it’ll eventually start to seem more pleasant and endurable than the latter. Eventually, despite yourself, you’ll utter one genuine laugh, enjoy a plate of homemade spaghetti, nod your head awkwardly to a good, bassy song.

At which point you’ll promptly burst into tears. But it’ll happen again… soon.

You don’t fake it ‘til you make it, exactly. You fake it until time inches forward, the world changes shape and the disingenuous existence you fashioned becomes Velveteen Rabbit-real.

You fake it ‘til it’s made FOR you.

---

It’s been seven years, five months and some-odd days since I returned home. Some very odd days, indeed, as well as some tremendously happy and fulfilling ones. I’ve never had that second tattoo removed; the memory, like the ink, is indelible. I no longer grieve for David. I harbor no delusions of finding the “one other person in the entire world” who shares my snarled strand of emotional DNA. It’s all mine and one-of-a-kind. But that experience – the scary, the sad, the humiliating – is part of it, too. I never want to forget.

I was seventeen. It doesn’t excuse, it doesn’t explain and it doesn’t change.

When I was seventeen, I let a dark, not-entirely-normal part of myself rage out of control. I fed it, nurtured it, flaunted it, and lured a monster to my doorstep. Not a psycho-killer, but someone capable of showing me what my worst, most hateful tendencies would look like in a few years unless I tried very, very hard keep them pinned beneath my boot heel. Who’s sicker – someone falsely claiming to be a killer, or someone genuinely drawn to that person?

The fault lies with me… because it is me. One doesn’t annihilate the dark half so much as work each day to keep it in remission.

I’m as kind and loving to my family, my friends and my son as I can possibly be. I devote myself fully to living a good, moral life because I know it’s a choice. I fight for it with every particle of my being. I surround that dark blotch on my soul with compassion, understanding, sympathetic words and helpful works. I fake like it doesn’t exist… and pretend - or hope - that someday, maybe it won’t.

Psycho Killer - Pt. I

I don't dedicate.
Nonetheless...
For C.

The New Jersey public school system, Stolichnaya, C-SPAN, the Unabomber, my abnormal psych professor, Sub Pop Records and ENIAC are all partially to blame.

But it's mainly on me. Or rather, the sixteen year-old version of me.

Now, maybe the sixteen year-old you was a delightful, upstanding young adult, starring in drama club productions, dishing up meals at the soup kitchen and never letting your boyfriend's hands bypass the orcas swimming across your Sierra Club t-shirt.

Sixteen Year-Old Jul, however, was a monstrous little bastard. I was poorly-informed, endlessly-opinionated, incredibly foul-mouthed (well, some things never change). I was chubby, shy and ensnared in an H.R. Giger painting's worth of orthodontia. I was also deep in the throes of Teenage Ebola: low self-esteem and enormous ego, battling for control within a single body, leaving the host in piss-poor shape for the duration.

I didn't have a boyfriend... but that was because teenage boys were malodorous, slack-jawed cretins. My teachers were liars, charlatans and entirely too fond of poly-blend separates. My parents were cruel oppressors with archaic views of freedom, personal responsibility and the difference between "clean dishes" and "dishes still encrusted with recognizable chunks of Stroganoff, so re-wash them again NOW, young lady".

I kept a 4" pocket knife tucked in one Doc Marten at all times, presumably as proof of my Junior Bad-Ass League membership. I'd practice flicking it open with one hand while alone in my bedroom, periodically losing my grip and spearing my Kermit the Frog pillow.

I should not have been left in charge of a goldfish bowl, let alone my own path to adulthood.

All of this elaborates, but doesn't explain. And it most definitely doesn't excuse.

---

Shortly after I turned seventeen, I made the biggest mistake of my life. In a somewhat off-kilter tribute to the Talking Heads, I'm going to call him David.

We met online in September.

By Halloween, we were deliriously in love.

By Thanksgiving, I'd made plans to leave college and move to Georgia to be with him.

Around the time of the first snowfall, I packed up my stuffed animals and broad collection of misanthropic literature, hopped in my father's dung-colored K-car and sputtered off towards my destiny.

Thing is, around Election Day, we'd had the following instant-message exchange.

David: You know, I've killed before.
Jul: Um... seriously?
David: I've never told anyone, obviously, but I know I can trust you. And I'm absolutely not joking.
Jul: Hmmmmn. Tell me more...

Not incredulity, not horror, not shock... "tell me more".

Psycho killer / qu'est-ce que c'est?

That's stuck with me, more than anything else which happened during that tumultuous, heartbreaking, life-shaping year. "Tell me more".

Fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa...

I've forgiven David. You already know where his story is headed (nowhere, fast, bottle of Depakote rattling alongside).

Someday, I may forgive myself.

---

The day of my sixteenth birthday, I woke up, chugged a diet Mountain Dew and dropped out of high school. Tired of being an awkward, geeky outcast, I planned to both reinvent myself and achieve my true potential at Scrub Pine Community College. The latter goal got off to a ripping start; my first semester GPA was a Rod Carew-like 4.0. However, I was still horrifically geeky.... and now, I was paying for the privilege of being ignored by my classmates. I sat alone in the dining hall each day, nibbling a homogeneous chicken patty and shooting daggers at my sheep-like inferiors. My romantic life was limited to a few clumsy liaisons with an aloof Lothario who disappeared for weeks on end and returned my breathy, "I'm so in love with you!", with a measured, "Well, I care for you as well, BUT...".

Things clearly hadn't gone the way I'd imagined. This chapped my pompous little ass to no end. How DARE life deviate from my meticulously-crafted plan? Had I been older and less insufferable, I could have reevaluated my options. Had I been humbler, I could've saved years of strife and reevaluated myself. I could've said hello to the early-education majors, rather than attempting to ignite their scrunchies with the force of my glare.

I was sixteen. It doesn't excuse, but it'll have to explain.

While watching a filmstrip in Abnormal Psychology class one afternoon, I decided that the explanation for my social difficulties was blindingly simple: I was afflicted with antisocial personality disorder... in other words, a sociopath.

I'll repeat: sixteen.

I'd received a copy of the DSM-IV as a birthday present several months earlier. Soon, the section devoted to ASPD had been burnished to a soft gleam by my eager little fingers. "This is SO ACCURATE!" I marveled, copying choice diagnostic criteria onto pastel index cards, "I DO fail to conform to social norms!" I carried this small stack of symptomology with me at all times, periodically pausing in 7-11 or the campus bookstore to leaf through them and murmur, "I HAVE rationalized having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another! Why, just yesterday I punched Junket because she stole my Dr Pepper-flavored lip gloss! If that doesn't indicate a lack of conscience, I don't know WHAT does!"

I applied a zestful, can-do spirit towards nurturing my newfound sociopathy. I spent hours analyzing the seminal hate-zine "ANSWER Me!" as though it were a misanthropic Dead Sea scroll. I located and downloaded the most graphic, disturbing images I could find (crime-scene snapshots, an infamous Steve Albini album cover) in an attempt to "desensitize" myself to them. I stared at my bright, bratty little sisters and exhausted but doting parents and tried (in vain, thankfully) to convince myself that I felt no emotion towards them whatsoever. It was an unsustainably strange way to live; had things gone differently, I'm sure I would have retired the close-range shotgun-blast photos and unsmiling facade within a few months.

Then I met David.

---

My first-ever website was a slow-loading monstrosity known as "Craven Chicky's Wicked Lair" (my screen name having been inspired by Craven Walker, inventor of the Lava Lamp). In addition to a 50MB WAV file of my sister belching punk rock lyrics, it also featured some half-decent (if painfully immature) writing. One day, I received an e-mail from "VitriolLad88", complimenting me on my angry teenage wordsmithery and asking if I'd be interested in chatting on instant messenger. Attention- and affection-starved, I installed ICQ and sent him a message less than five minutes later ("So, what's a nice boy like you doing on a worldwide interconnected computer network like this?").

Later that day, he and I exchanged ten minutes' worth of witty banter.

The next day, we chatted for several hours.

The day after that, the drug really took hold. We stayed up all night, exchanging flirtatious bon mots, deep-rooted secrets and shared hatred of the civilized world. At nine AM, I staggered off to school, exhausted but grinning. In between classes, I scurried to the computer lab to see if a particularly vitriolic lad had fired off any new correspondence.

Of course he'd sent a gorgeous e-mail. Of course it was five pages long.

---

David, you see, was manic-depressive, unmedicated by choice. Falling in love with a person in the grips of an active mania is sort of like riding a malfunctioning roller coaster. The experience is so fantastically exhilarating that it takes you a little too long to notice that something's wrong. By then, you're strapped in place, going ninety miles an hour and helpless to do anything but close your eyes and pray.

Youth is idiocy, enthusiasm is contagious and mistakes are inevitable. Within weeks, I was gone... catastrophically in love and deep under David's spell. Even when young and idealistic, I hadn't been terribly young or idealistic... no bacon-thwarted attempts at veganism, no circulating hand-scrawled petitions at the mall. My bond with this mysterious stranger living eight hundred miles away was the first thing I was absolutely, positively sure of. We spent every spare moment online, chatting, conspiring, marvelling that we'd found the one other soul in the world which perfectly matched our own. "The words 'I love you' don't even come close," wrote David one night, "I AM you... pure and simple." I was enraptured, a believer at last. Never before (and, to be brutally honest, never since) have I felt so adored and adoring, so inextricably tethered to a lover's heart. "I want to gather all the false love I've bestowed upon other women, stack it like cordwood and set it alight," he wrote, "I want to make a massive, towering pyre in honor of everyone and everything which made me who I am, which made me capable of loving you."

Oh, he was good.

David's top-secret sinister "revelation" was delivered at 3 AM, roughly a month after we'd met. It had much the same effect on our nascent bond as tempering does on steel. My love was a killer... because he could, because he was bigger, greater, more powerful than any of society's rules. And I? I was the one woman in the world who knew him, through and through. I was him. I wouldn't blanch at his actions, I would celebrate them. My convictions were now exponentially stronger and more solid than they'd been before. My high-school acquaintances were buying prom dresses and beaten-up cars. I was buying a mythology. I was a feverish, twisted mess, intoxicated by love and potential, enraged by everything else. One night, in response to my escalating verbal abuse, my mother pleaded, "Jul, your family can't TAKE this anymore! You never, ever stop hurting us. I just don't think you can continue to live in this house."

"I don't think so, either," I replied icily (even though my teeth were clenched and my nails gouging divots in my palms), "I'm moving to Georgia... and I'm getting married."

Several days earlier, in a move which had made my already-inflamed heart practically rupture, David had been referring to me as his "wife".

It was the brass ring. It was my whole world, my destiny.

It was, as it turned out, nothing as I'd imagined. But I'd find that out soon enough.

"WHAT?", exclaimed my mother, "With... with the guy you've been talking to on the computer? Are you insane?"

"You have no idea", I replied.

To Be Continued...

Anti-Bush

Hello, and welcome to Too Much Information Theater. I'm your host, Jul Thumbscrew. Over the next hour, we're going to delve into one of the deepest, innermost areas of the delightful Mystery Wrapped in an Enigma, Cloaked in Intrigue, Stuffed with Smoked Gouda and Rolled in Panko Crumbs which is Me. This is an area to which few individuals have been privy... and I've generally made them buy me a drink or two first.

Yeah, that's right. Having already exposed my contused, confused little heart to the entire modem-bearing world, I figured I might as well drop my pants.

Some women are capable of accepting - nay, loving - their bodies' natural, goddess-given state. For example, when viewed from the knee down, one of the teachers at J.Q.'s daycare resembles nothing so much as Robin Williams, if Robin developed a sudden affinity for floral capris and jangly little anklets. Point being, Ms. Doubtfire is unconcerned with societal standards of beauty, choosing instead to be comfortable in her own skin (her furry, furry skin).

She and I could not be more different.

I am ALL ABOUT the stupid societal standards of beauty. I exfoliate and epilate. I tone and condition. I attempt to make certain areas darker (my skin, skim-milky enough to make Casper the Friendly Ghost look like George Hamilton) and others lighter (my teeth, an unfortunate casualty of diet Coke addiction, along with "once-full change jar" and "ability to sit still for more than ten seconds without doing a twitchy, recumbent version of the Macarena"). I have purchased enough Biore strips to de-schwarzkopf Germany, despite the fact that those little fuckers have proven utterly ineffectual in removing anything but $6.75 from my wallet. But more time-consuming than the bleaching, more expensive than the burnishing, more painful than getting Noxzema in one's eyeball... is the hair removal.

Despite being minimally hirsute, I still react to the slightest emergence of fuzz with the balls-out hysterics of someone who has spied a palmetto bug scurrying up their Levi's - i.e. "EEEEAAAAGH! GET IT OFF! GET IT OFF!", frenzied swatting, etc. From the time I was a wee lass, I was ever-vigilant with the Lady Bic, determined to ensure that my own personal trichological territory never extended below my eyelashes. While it was fairly easy to keep my extremeties as smooth as David's chilly marble ass, other areas required a bit more ingenuity.

Specifically, THAT area. How to put this gently?

Instead of a 'fro down below, I have a Kojack down low, Jack.

I've got a nectarine in lieu of a peach.

My muffin, it has no streusel.

Yes, I could do this all day.

Keeping one's grassy knoll defoliated is more difficult than it might appear. It is a strange, squishy region, riddled with mysterious nooks and inscrutable crannies. Luckily for those of you who might wish to keep Down There delightfully bare, I have tried more or less every method available for de-lichening the ol' glacier, the results of which I am abundantly happy to share. Without further ado (or groan-inducing gynecological euphemism), I present:

Jul's Guide to Turning Your Lyle Lovett Into a Michael Stipe

1. Nair : don't bother. If the idea of slathering caustic goo all over your widget doesn't deter you, the whole "ignited German Shepard" smell which inevitably results oughta do the trick.



2. "Nads" and other goopy preparations which seem like they could also be used as a dessert topping: don't bother. Unless you are the nimble-fingered Zen fucking master of ripping those little cloth strips off, you'll be left with unwashable sugary goo all over your lady-region. At best, this will lead to painful "yanking" sensations when going about your daily routine; at worst, you'll have sucrose-crazed insects dive-bombing your gear all day long, like little exoskeleton-clad Van Halen groupies.
   



3. Shaving : somewhat of a mixed bag.
   
   Pros: quick, cheap, thorough.
   
   Cons: lightning-fast regrowth, which leads to either mandatory daily touch-ups or the singularly unappetizing "scruffy" look (trust me, it looks a LOT sexier on Jake Gyllenhaal than on your hoo-hoo). Ingrown hairs, which lead to scratching, clawing, redness and other agonies.
   
   If you do choose to shave, follow these handy tips:
   
• Exfoliate the hell out of that puppy beforehand. A Buff-Puff is nice. A loofah may be a bit extreme for non-BDSM folks. If you ARE a BDSM folk, then use a black, studded loofah, because that would be hilarious.
  



• Use the cheapest disposable razor money can buy - they tend to be irritating yet effective, like the Marine Corps drill seargants of the hair-removal world. Replace it every week.
  



• Use conditioner in lieu of shaving cream... preferrably the thickest, goopiest stuff you can find. If it's Slurpee-colored and sold in sixteen-ounce tubs at your local bodega, it'll do nicely.
  



• Moisturize every single day. MORE than that, even. Shit, squirt some Jergens down there while you're waiting in line at the DMV. Nothing is more effective at preventing bumps, ingrowns and other horrors.
  



4. Rip It! Rip It Good! Waxing, Tweezing, Epi-Lady... ing. This is my method of choice. It lasts a loooong time and is unlikely to lead to shaving-style dermatalogical disasters. There is, however, the unavoidable pain factor. This - like choosing to de-thatch one's cottage to begin with - is a very personal matter. Do you, like me, fancy yourself something of a pain bad-ass? Do you refuse to purchase "ouchless" Band-Aids on principle? Then this method might work well for you. Are you a more sensitive soul? Do you own an aloe vera plant solely for minor first-aid usage? Does it have a name? God, what a freaking wuss. Ahem... I mean, you might want to give this one a pass.

If you choose the Snatch Yourself Bald method, the following tips may help:

• They're not kidding when they say "hold skin taut". Hold it REALLY taut. Like, Mickey Rourke's face-type taut.
  



• Re: waxing. The Faster You Rip, The Better the Trip. Or, if you prefer: Rip Quick, Neat Trick. Rip Slow... um... To Hell You Will Momentarily Go? You Will Use a Turn of Phrase Much More Vulgar Than "Whoa!"? Run Outside and Dip Your Flaming Crotch in the Snow?
  



• Re: the Epilady. I am not sure if this contraption is incredibly cool or sadistically Kafka-esque. Either way, it's what I use to keep my own field fallow. It was also the inspiration for a new cocktail creation:
  
  "The Owie"

1. Fill sandwich-sized Ziplock bag with ice.
   
2. Top off with adult beverage of choice.
   
3. Bite corner off of bag, ingest beverage.
   
4. Deposit resultant sack of nicely-melty ice atop boo-boo.
   
   I don't think it's going to replace Tylenol 3 anytime soon, but for those of us committed to maintaining a bullrush-free Nile, it's a taste of sweet, sweet victory.

Tales Out of Camp - Pt. II

I have all sorts of notes compiled for a post about moving to Philadelphia, including such gems as "LIGHTBULBS, 10 PM: WHO DO I HAVE TO BLOW TO GET ONE IN THIS TOWN?", "GAS STATION MINI-MART: HAS HIBACHIS AND TEN DIFFERENT KINDS OF ROLLING PAPERS BUT NO LIGHTBULBS? WHAT UP W/THAT? IF YOU'RE STONED AND EATING A HOT DOG, YOU WON'T CARE THAT YOU'RE DOING IT IN THE DARK?!" and the delightful "NOT ONLY IS THIS NOT MY STREET, BUT THIS NEIGHBORHOOD SEEMS TO HAVE AN AWFUL LOT OF BAIL BONDSMEN!"

However.

Ever since my last post, it's been nothing but, "But what about the SWINGERS?", "Tell us about the swingers RIGHT NOW!", etc. I had no idea that my heavily-domesticated audience would be so enraptured by tales of debauchery. I may have found the most lucrative crossover market since Spanglish pop ("If you don't give me todo su amor, I'll kick your culo right out that door!"): gonzo journalism for the PB&J set. You're not quite ready for German scheisse porn, but you're going to poke your own eyeball out with a rubber-tipped spoon if you don't find a form of entertainment more titillating than "Goodnight Moon" (which I generally finish reading to my short-attention-spanned infant thusly: "Goodnight to the following: bears, chairs, bowl of gruel, disturbing anthropomorphic rabbits. Goodnight noises everywhere, including the ones YOU'RE going to make when mommy unceremoniously dumps you in your crib").

On with the show!

When we last left our intrepid ("intrepid" being a kind euphemism for "drunk") heroine, she was trekking across a darkened field in search of a rumored swingers' party. Her flagrantly silly imagination ran wild during her brief stroll... Jenna Jameson-esque nymphs being lashed to logs with vines, nudes prancing around a moonlit pond, pine cones being employed in ways the original tree definitely wouldn't condone. Upon reaching the campground's pool, however, those naughty-Narnian fantasies (perfect title, should any adult-movie producers wish to whiz on C.S. Lewis' grave: "The Layin', the Bitch and the Whore-Probe") were laid to waste even faster than her present use of the clunky third-person tense.

It was... professional. Slick. Completely, consummately competent.

There was a bar! A DJ! Inflatable pool sharks! Women in Gap bikinis sipping Cosmos!

At that moment, a part of my soul left my body, dissolved into the layer of steam blanketing the pool and floated lazily into the night.

For me, grown-up activities have always been the antithesis of diamonds: best when unpolished.

The first time Junket and I tried pot, we weren't aware of the availability of commercial rolling papers. As a result, our first-ever shared joint was approximately 8" long and bright orange as a result of being rolled on... origami paper. It's one of my favorite memories, and it's largely because of - rather than despite - the coughing, sputtering, and combustion of enough orange dye to mutate the next-door neighbors' DNA.

One of the best kisses of my life occurred mere moments after my co-osculator had consumed a Big Mac. I may be the last person in America who has never tried one of those delightfully caloric concoctions. I always figured there wasn't really any point; by the time I was done customizing it, I'd be left with nothing but a forlorn sesame-seed bun. When it comes to burgers, I'm a purist... no stupid lettuce, no briny-ass pickles, no reeking onions, no baptism by sauce, no matter how purportedly "special".

I remember that kiss, though - fast-food lights reflected in my boyfriend's glasses, his fingers hesitantly twining through my hair, the deep, gas-slurping thrum of the Ford Granada in which we were parked - better than any of the thousands of more ideal lip-locks I've experienced since.

Clearly, not everyone shares this view... hence the popularity of lab-created babes such as Pamela Anderson-Lee-Lee-Rock. But again, personally, the perfection's in the imperfections. And watching women with better hair than I'll ever have aquatically gyrate to "Can't Get You Out Of My Head" sucked all the eroticism out of that scene faster than a flotilla of expensive penis pumps.

"So... is this your first Eros Adventures event?" asked Raoul (note: all names and identifying details changed to protect the... um, not-so-innocent?). "Um... I guess?" I said. I was huddled in the shallow end, sipping the remnants of my rum 'n Gatorade and doing what I do best: no, not THAT, smart ass... observing. During the event's first hour, my observations were limited to the following:

- If these are enlightened, adventurous grown-ups, then why are they all standing on opposite sides of the pool like kids at a junior-high dance?

- Attention, women confronting post-childbirth "spread": while I'm truly happy if you can embrace your body's new contours, objectively speaking, you MIGHT not want to descend a waterslide nude at this point in your life. I'm just sayin'.

"So... whaddya think?" said Raoul. An older, less-intolerably-hammy version of Cuba Gooding Jr., he and his taciturn blonde girlfriend were frequent Eros Adventures attendees. "Uh... I kinda thought there'd be... y'know... more HAPPENING," I stammered. Apart from the occasional al fresco waterslider, the event was surprisingly tame. Couples clung together, rarely venturing apart to chat up their fellow attendees. "It's still early," said Raoul, "Things'll heat up!" "Say," he said, eyes lowered, "Those are some NICE breasts you have there. Mind if I... touch them?"

If my libido had been wounded by the earlier Ethel-Merman-meets-Kylie-Minogue acrobatics, Raoul's eerily polite request for a handful of tit flat-out killed it. It was the spirit of adventure (coupled with the unavoidable fact that my boobs are like the town bicycle's horn - everyone's had a squeeze!), however, which led me to say, "Sure, knock yourself out."

It was then, my mammary suspended in Raoul's respectful grip, that I had an epiphany.

"Actually, I have a confession to make," I said, more literate than I'd been all evening ("Um... waterslide... naked... chafing?"). "I'm a writer, and I'm here to learn more about your lifestyle."

"Really?" said Raoul, dropping my boob like an ignited potato. "Well, what do you want to know?"

As it turns out, rather than being disappointed that they wouldn't get to feast on my supple (um... jiggly? Squish-tastic?) young flesh, the swingers were delighted to discuss their lives, loves and pervy peccadilloes. It also turns out that - unlike casual group sex - I have a natural affinity for the writer's role. Never was I more comfortable than sitting back, watching the action (Raoul was right... while no slippery orgies broke out amongst the FunNoodles, I did get the dubious pleasure of seeing a man orally serviced to the Violent Femmes' "Blister in the Sun"... something tells me Gordon Gano would approve) and interrogating the participants about the interesting twists and lubed-up turns which their lives had taken to bring them to that particular moment. About that, I have to say this:

- While each of the people with whom I spoke had a fascinating back story, I have a feeling that any given individual off the street would’ve been just as interesting. In this culture, in these crazy, topsy-turvy, CrunchWrap-fueled times (note: I've got nothing against the CrunchWrap. It's got more angles than any other fast-foodstuff, so it's a-okay by me. I'm actually looking forward to the development of the CrunchDodecahedron in a decade or so), people rarely open up to one another. We miss this shared dialogue with our fellow humans... hence the popularity of alcohol (KY Jelly for the consciousness) and reality TV.

- Despite their free-lovin', self-confident ways, the swingers were some of the most uptight individuals I've ever met in terms of their raw hunger for acceptance. To a person, everyone with whom I spoke wanted nothing more than for popular society to stop ridiculing, lambasting and persecuting the polyamorous populace. Now, forgive me if I'm being insensitive, but I was unaware of any widespread malice towards those of the swingin’ persuasion. At very least, they don't face the daily challenges of, say [gays, Jews, blacks, the handicapped, immigrants]. I doubt very much that members of any truly marginalized population would take kindly to the swinger's heartfelt pleas for understanding.

Like all good (or at least perversely fascinating) things, my stint as pseudo-interviewer to the rurally wanton had to come to an end. While I was chatting with the adorable female bartender about her current husband, her former husband and the impossibility of utter honesty, a shirtless, Kris Kristofferson-ish man strode up to me.

"So... you're the writer?" he said in a not-entirely-friendly tone.

"Yup!", I chirped, oblivious.

"Well, GREAT!" snarled his companion, a stringy, Crypt Keeper-ish blonde. "Although I don't suppose it matters NOW... party's already over!"

True to her words, lip- (and other appendage) locked groups had begun drifting away from the pool, presumably for adventures of a differently-steamy nature.

"See, we're a little SENSITIVE to the media's portrayal of our way of life," said AngrySwinger, "Ever since our last meeting spot got shut down because a story in the local paper made everyone all hysterical."

"Why can't you people just leave us alone?" spat FuriousWife.

Not having the heart (or humility) to 'fess up that I only "wrote" for an audience of dozens and $4.79 a month in AdSense revenue, I sputtered, "Um... trust me, y'all don't have to worry about anything from me."

"Yeah, whatever," said FuriousWife, "Like I said, the party's OVER."

"My wife's just a little worried about what happened last time," said AngrySwinger apologetically, "We'd appreciate it if you didn't use any names or identifying details (note: I didn't... please don't kill me, swingers!)... maybe just say something positive about alternative lifestyles?"

"I think I can do that," I said, not wanting to be found dead in the woods with a Hitachi Magic Wand-shaped divot in the back of my skull. "You were all really nice, interesting people" (which is true, the fact that I found their gathering roughly as erotic as Sunday mass notwithstanding).

"Thanks," said AngrySwinger, "Time for us to get going now."

I took that as my queue to vacate the premises, which I did rapidly but happily, bounding across rocks and logs with giddy glee.

"Where the hell WERE you?" marveled my companions when I strolled back into camp. "You were gone for, like, THREE HOURS!"

"DUDE!" I yelled, "I... I... PISSED OFF A BUNCH OF SWINGERS! AND I NEED TO WRITE ABOUT IT, NOW!"

"It's four in the morning... you're INSANE," they said as I rolled up my sleeping bag and busted down my tent, intent on heading towards a keyboard as quickly as possible (which, after minor detours such as "caring for short-tempered short person" and "moving to Philadelphia", I did).

I s'pose, in addition to lovers and fighters, there is a third group in which people can be pigeonholed... writers. And while I may not have discovered how to have repeated, Mt. Vesuvius-caliber orgasms or vogue to "Get Down Tonight", I was rather happy to learn that I'm a minor, nonprofessional member of the Scribe Tribe. Swing THAT, suckers.

Tales Out of Camp - Pt. I

There are many lessons to be learned while immersed in nature. This goes a long way towards explaining the popularity of Tevas, s'mores and college students embarking upon Carlos Casteneda-ish psychedelic journeys, during which they attain an understanding that God and Nature are but two halves of the same golden entity, arcing eternally across space-time, only to later determine that, shit, they must've wandered away from the campsite and into the parking lot of the local McDonald's again.

It was armed with this knowledge (but neither peyote buttons nor hacky-sack) that I recently ventured into the forest primeval for a restorative camping trip.

Oh, who am I kidding? I pitched a tent on a field within walking distance of a 7-11 with the express purpose of running around in a wet bathing suit and eating Pop Tarts and rum for breakfast. The only mystical insights gleaned during the trip were along the lines of, "Is there any way to make floating in the pool even LESS strenuous?" (answer: suspend your Pop Tart-bloated frame upon enough foam pool toys to re-buoy the Titanic!) and "How can I avoid contracting salmonella while cooking chicken in an area without running water?" (after wiping hands on grass, tree, rocks, pants and unsuspecting co-camper's rain fly, abandon conventional food-safety measures and just slosh high-test beverages on hands often enough to hopefully eliminate any pathogens).

The trip was ostensibly centered around an Irish folk-music festival. While this fostered a gentle, communal atmosphere not present at, say, the Warped Tour, most attendees were more interested in arboreal alcoholism than music. The Gaelic theme mainly served as a not-unpleasant background note, somewhat like eating at Bennigan's, only with less melted cheese and chipotle-ranch sauce. Occasionally, we were roused from our midday naps and semi-cooked chicken-consumption by a particularly boisterous tune. I will now attempt to recall a representative sample in the most patently offensive manner possible:

"Laddies 'n lassies, please welcome the O'Blarnigans with their hit single, "Begorrah!"

[frantic fiddling]

"Begorrah! Begorrah! Begorrah! Begorrah!
Blimey, cor and crikey! Blood pudding, leprechauns!
Guinness, "The Commitments" and now 'n then car bombs!"

It's a good thing the whole IRA cease-fire occurred, otherwise I'd be a LITTLE hesitant to start up the Civic tomorrow.

After the sun had set and the last accordion had ceased bleating, we sprawled around a glowing lantern, smacking at mosquitoes, sipping truly horrendous drinks (including the perennial favorite, "Diet Coke and... y'know, something. Heavy on the something!") and shooting the breeze. As is typical with this oh-so-effete crowd, the discussion soon turned to sex... who was having it, where they were having it, were any kitchen implements involved? "Really? A POTATO masher?" Earlier in the day, rumors had surfaced that a group of swingers would be meeting in the vicinity later that evening. "Y'know... for SWINGING!" went the gleefully-repeated refrain (as opposed to swingers who congregate in order to analyze one another's investment portfolios, I suppose). "Dude, we TOTALLY need to go check it out!", said one excited fellow camper, "There's no single guys allowed, so I'll hafta find a chick to pretend to marry. Wouldn't THAT be a hell of a honeymoon?" Despite our shared juvenile titillation, no one could muster sufficient nerve to set down their drink and venture off in search of Alternative Lifestyles of the Rural 'n Shameless.

Except... me (att'n, family: feel free to continue reading. Only OTHER people's cottage-cheesy asses are featured in this tale).

I'm generally quite shy, the quintessential observer, what I like to refer to in my more purple-prose moments as a "social moth": at any given gathering, I cling to the wall and soak it all in.

Perhaps it was this interest in amateur sociology which led to what happened next. Perhaps it was an abundance of "something"-heavy libations.

I prefer, as always, to blame indie rock.

Earlier that week, I'd heard Pavement's "Spit on a Stranger" for the first time; to say I liked it would be a laughable understatement. It had lodged itself in my brain more firmly than the mutant offspring of "Don't Fear the Reaper" and the Kit-Kat jingle. I especially loved the lyric, "I see the sunshine in your eyes... I'll try the things you'll never try", delivered by Stephen Malkmus in a lilt so breathy, so god-awful PRETTY as to be capable of making a woman's panties disintegrate from ninety yards away.

I'll try the things you'll never try.

"That's IT, I'm goin' in," I proclaimed, pulling a skirt over my soggy bathing suit and setting out across the field.

TO BE CONTINUED...

I'm A Slut

The morning after, I am maddeningly itchy.

This is not itching of the embarrassing localized variety, the type which makes one wonder if the previous evening's rum 'n Coke-fueled bacchanalia also included a surprise sidecar of contagion.

This itch is all-encompassing. Tiny welts cover my skin. As soon as one has been clawed into submission, another is already screeching for attention.

I consider lolling naked in a wading pool full of calamine lotion.

I debate snorting a few crushed Benadryl through a sippy-cup straw.

In a moment of inspiration, I flop to the carpet and commence writhing, an ecstatic self-flagellant of the Church of the Itchy Fucking Proboscis.

In retrospect, I should have used bug spray. Lots of bug spray. I should have located an industrial drum of pure DEET and upended it over my head in honor of my triumphant BugBowl victory.

Bug spray. That, I realize, grinning and making carpet-angels with my itchy limbs, is my only regret.

---

Female sexuality is a razorblade-seeded apple, a cup of Jonestown Kool-Aid, a banana split with a scoop of vanilla, a scoop of chocolate and a scoop of Semtex.

In other words, sweet, sticky and explosive.

No one fucks in a vacuum. Much like Britney's parenting acumen (breaking news: Sean Preston, 25.3 pounds, carried in Snugli only weight-rated to 24 pounds!), the entire subject has been analyzed, politicized and proselytized into the ground.

No matter how private the act, you can rest assured that every sigh, heave, word muttered and scream uttered has been debated by experts and ordinary schmucks across the moral and political continuum. Culturally, we're much like a five year-old - simultaneously fascinated and repulsed by sex, not to mention utterly incapable of resisting the allure of a closed bedroom door. This carnal curiousity impacts every member of society (surprise, your blow job is on JumboTron!). However, it is women, the gender not possessed of a chromosome with a delightfully authoritative lower prong, who bear the brunt.

First and foremost, there's the "You Might As Well Suck Off the Washington Monument" conundrum. For many (but no means all) Third Wave women, sex is as rife with sinister implications as the avant-garde play which so often preceeds it (marginally-related note: am I the only person who has ever gotten some immediately following a viewing of "Boys Don't Cry"? "Wow, that was... um... wow." "Oh, yeah. Say, wanna do it?"). As delightful as your partner's penis may be individually, it is a member of a Penile-Industrial Complex which includes date rapists, ass-grabbers, men who've uttered the phrase, "She was asking for it", men who are firmly convinced that a female president would be outmatched, overwhelmed, prone to bawling during State of the Union addresses and, every twenty-eight days, threatening to deploy ICBMs to Switzerland unless they send over some fucking Nutella immediately.

And then, of course, there's Receptacle Theory. Sadly, this belief is not limited to conservative wingnuts who hunt squirrels with shoulder-mounted rocket launchers. It goes a little somethin' like this: One needn't look too closely to see a violent aspect to penetrative sex. Outside of some particularly festive fetishistic circles, the squishy, vulnerable penatradee role is typically filled by a female. Together, these two themes merge, mutate and lead to the notion that a woman's emotional nature is analogous to her physical one. You're a gash, a walking wound, tender and sensitive. You are the bagel, the doughnut, the torus of timidity. You are, and perhaps I should go have a snack before formulating any further metaphors, the slab of prime rib and not the rivet-handled knife. You don't take, you give. You don't invite, you consent. And in matters of power, politics and lustful grappling, you will never, ever have the upper hand.

What sane female, it's implied, would endure all that sticky debasement solely for her own gratification?

At worst you're a whore, lacking the requisite moral fiber to keep your virtue safe from unscrupulous men bearing love, comfort, flattery or high-test Columbian White.

At best you're an overly-indulgent mother, grudgingly allowing her mischievous boy to swipe a cookie from the jar without swatting his hand.

You just can't win.

Unless, of course, you can.

---

"You like that, you slut?", pants my companion for the evening. "You whore? You... you... fuckin'... prostitute?"

Well, as a matter of fact... yes.

Bemused, I wonder if he's consciously trying to be as misogynistic as possible. Is this a blow job or a piece of performance art? I consider asking if he'd like to pause and retrieve a thesaurus ("Harlot! Libertine! Hold on, gotta turn the page... wench!"). Uttered by the wrong individual, this derisive litany would be more than a bit disturbing. Coming from a slyly funny academic (whom I've personally seen reading "Horton Hears a Who" to a sleepy toddler), it's amusing and, strangely enough, incredibly arousing. If the heart works in mysterious ways, it's only taking cues from its southerly compatriot, the groin, who works in some truly mind-bending ones.

---

Sometimes, head is just head.

Sometimes, what's IN your head is more or less the only thing that matters.

Afterwards, the car's windows glowed and sparkled white, sodium-arc streetlights illuminating our accumulated frantic breath. I reclined, kicked my foot over the passenger's head rest, smiled, felt utterly, goofily alive.

Talk-show hosts, eyebrows contorted into permanent furrows of concern, love to discuss the myriad of misguided reasons why women sleep around. "Sometimes, it's peer pressure," they intone, "Sometimes, just wanting to be loved, supported, understood." Parents, educators and the federal government all devote an unholy amount of energy to keeping the legs of America's young ladies firmly closed. Casual sex is a dangerous, messy, potentially deadly enterprise; no place, it would seem, for a lady.

It can also be phenomenal. Sweet, sticky, explosive... and a superpower. If done right, flexing one's feminine wiles feels fantastic. It's like a slow, sultry yogic stretch. Education sharpens the mind, exercise sharpens the body, sexuality sharpens the spirit (as well as making one's neurons fizz and crackle like Pop Rocks). It's like being Cleopatra and the Sphinx, simultaneously.

---

We took a convoluted walk afterwards, traipsing across dew-soaked neighborhood lawns and darkened baseball fields. Plump, brazen mosquitos dive-bombed every inch of my bare skin. I can only be so mad at them, as each and every one of the poor bastards probably expired of alcohol poisoning shortly thereafter. At one point, the conversation turned to science, and when asked for my favorite scientist, I scrunched up my brow, wracked my slightly-pickled brain and finally shrieked, "Richard Feynman! Richard Fuckin' Feynman!"

---

Particle physics and perversion. Two extremes of the human experience. One muggy, mosquito-filled night.

I liked it. I liked it very much indeed.

Plan B

I took emergency birth control pills for the first time on the day my husband and I decided to separate.

The day before, I'd come home after work, J.Q. babbling and squirming in my arms, only to find a familiar little yellow tablet sitting in front of the toaster. "Ohhhh... fuck," I muttered, the blood draining from my face. While Mr. Thumbscrews and I had spent the last several months dealing with some truly hellacious marital problems, we'd managed to avoid descending into our own personal off-Broadway version of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?", and the mood in the household had remained civil. Extremely civil, in fact... sex, like binge-drinking or skydiving, was a fun way to escape the issues at hand (pun fully intended) for brief stretches of time. Unlike those other activities, sex had the added bonus of being mutually comforting and unlikely to result in either liver damage or slamming into the ground face-first at several hundred miles per hour (well, at least not the way WE do it... *snicker-chortle*).

Ahem. So... improbably enough, Mr. Thumbscrews and I had been engaging in a lot of the activity which that telltale tab of Jolivette was intended to render delightfully consequence-free. When not cavorting like avoidance-seeking bunnies, we'd been having long, serious talks, the latest of which had culminated in our mutual, bittersweet decision to separate - if not permanently, then at least for the foreseeable future.

We've been together since we were seventeen and nineteen, respectively. We spent our latter teens and early twenties working full-time, purchasing and remodeling our house, having, falling in love with and being run ragged by our baby. We viewed the typical twenty-something slacker lifestyle as a phase which individuals as clever as ourselves could conveniently side-step, shunning the extra sleep, music festivals and designer pharmaceuticals in lieu of a one-way ticket on Responsibility Railways.

A wise person (well, okay, it was ME, and if I'm so wise, how come I can't operate an electric can opener or an automatic transmission?) once said that it takes a truly smart individual to be a true asshole. Apparently, it also takes a truly smart individual to be a true idiot.

You can't bypass entire developmental phases sans consequence. You can't FORCE your life to conform to your dreams, no matter how hard you grip the wheel, no matter how adept you are at solving 3D shape-rotation puzzles.

It was only a matter of time before one of us cracked.

I'd experienced small but dramatic periods of existential terror throughout the years, subjecting my poor husband to week-long bouts of uncommunicative weepiness because I developed a crush on a coworker or became acutely aware, ambling through the housewares section of Target, that I'd had more silverware patterns than sexual partners. Mr. Thumbscrews, always as cool as a cucumber dipped in liquid nitrogen, never showed any signs of discontent. That is, until he fell in love with the receptionist at work.

"I know, it's so fucking cliched," he said as we sat next to one another in bed, holding hands and sobbing.

Month 1 was an all-you-can-weep buffet of emotional agony. I stopped eating, stopped smiling, spent the majority of my time staring hollow-eyed at my monitor at work or curled up on my living room floor, letting J.Q. gambol over my prone form as I wept and waited for my husband to return from the latest post-work discussion with OtherWoman. He refused to give her up, yet returned home to me every night. "He's trying to have his cake and eat it, too," sneered my friends, enraged at the betrayal. "I'm so damned confused," he said, stroking my face, "I feel like no matter what I do, I'm going to regret the other decision for the rest of my life."

Month 2 marked my fortuitous introduction to therapy and Paxil. I began to get better. Not just from the immediate emotional trauma of infidelity, but from... everything. With the help of a very subtle, very talented therapist (a practitioner of the "chatting and perpetually-full candy bowl" technique), I started to realize that a bevy of events had occurred over the course of my life which shaped who I became, and that not all of them - or even the majority of them - were positive. However, I didn't HAVE to be defined by my history; with work, I could choose who I wanted to be, regardless of the quantity or color of insults flung by elementary school classmates and sadistic ex-boyfriends (Craig C. : I hope failing second grade was the first in a dismal chain of events which led to your employment as a carcass-disposal technician at the local abbatoir. Josh K. : I no longer "hate the entire world"... mainly just YOU. Ha!).

Month 3 was a time of role-reversal. I thrived under stress and pressure, blossoming like a forced tulip. I worked and planned and drank and wrote and ran (and was immediately convinced that I had always been a runner, but was only now forcing my TastyKake-padded ass to embrace its true destiny). Mr. Thumbscrews, on the other hand, grew increasingly moody. While he had repeatedly pleaded for "just a little bit of time to think about things", more time seemed to result only in more irritability and confusion.

Month 4 has been sweet and sad... like living in mole sauce, to use a somewhat-clunky metaphor. Mr. Thumbscrews began taking an antidepressant of his own and, like me, immediately remarked, "If I EVER think about going off of this, please smack the shit out of me." I began sympathizing with the doubt and confusion he'd endured over the past several months, rather than just condemning his bad behavior (although I certainly haven't stopped thinking [and occasionally remarking] that he picked the single worst, most morally-reprehensible method of dealing with his feelings). I also - sans adulterous affair - began having many of the same doubts myself. Could I realistically spend the rest of my life plodding along in Suburbiaville, picking out interior trim colors and wondering what could've been?

I still don't know. My husband doesn't know, either. But it's become apparent that, as an unwise person once said, "It became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it." It seems unlikely that we'll drift back into the same shared orbit post-separation. However, returning to our former path of domesticity-by-brute-force would doom our relationship to death as surely as a dozen extramarital liaisons. While we were young and malleable, it was easy to convince ourselves that we fit together perfectly. Now that we've grown up and become (slightly) more wise, it's clear that we need to find out who we are individually before we can gauge whether we work as a couple.

We're still in love. I feel myself falling for my husband every single day... when he kisses my nose, brings me home ice cream, makes our son cackle like a tiny pink hyena. As the occasionally-wise Liz Phair once said, "You've never been no waste of my time, it's never been a drag." We're not miserable, nor are we irreparably broken. We're still talking hugging, doing things which necessitate emergency birth control (to tie up THAT particular plot thread: a Plan B prescription was obtained, its slick packaging admired, the two potent tablets taken at appropriate intervals. Let me add that Plan B apparently punishes you for forgetting your birth control by making you feel as though you're delivering a baby THROUGH YOUR FUCKING SKULL. However, it appears as though crisis/pregnancy has been averted). The thought of living without him breaks my heart. More and more often, though, it also excites me. We'll still be raising our little boy together (no matter where we are individually, we're both dedicated to J.Q. above all else). However, we'll be living and growing independently, finding our wings/stripes/other anthropomorphic-metaphoric personality traits. We'll be growing up in ways that our seven-year forced march through the bowels of suburbia never could have accomplished.

I'm going to live downtown, like I've always wanted (beyond the rudeness and persistent reek of urine, there IS a certain charm). I'm going to paint the walls whatever color I like and buy weird, modernist plush furniture for J.Q. to fling himself off of. We're going to go for walks in Rittenhouse, jog down West River Drive instead of past the cardboard box factory. I'm going to laugh and cry during the nights when J.Q. is ornery, I'm exhausted and I can't just hand him off to his father. I'm going to laugh and cry during the days when J.Q. is with his daddy, missing my son like mad but simultaneously atwitter with the possibilities inherent in being All. By. Myself.

It's going to be good.

Thumbscrews Research Labs Presents... Project T.A.M.P.

As previously discussed, I am insanely loyal to O.B. tampons. I've been employing these wonderful little wads of obstetrician-engineered excellence since the day after I Became a Woman, an event which occurred during "Headbanger's Ball". I missed a much-anticipated video while awkwardly inserting my inaugural Tampax (filched from my mother's stash); perhaps that's why I developed such a powerful disdain for the company's product (I've never been able to look at Matt Pinfield the same way again, either). However, I prefer to believe that day marked not only my entry into the Sorority of the Shedding Endometrium (fight song: "Don't mess with us, Kappa Kappa Psi, or we'll fling a clot into your eye! Don't give us crap, Delta Lambda Mu, just a heating pad and some Breyer's too!") but, while standing in the Feminine Protection aisle of Rite-Aid, the first test of my skills as a discerning consumer.

Did I pass? I'd like to think so. I recently realized, though, that neither that gawky, crampy thirteen year-old nor the adult iteration thereof had any logical basis for declaring O.B. the ultimate tampon (or "Champon", in the words of my O.B.-loving sister). Sure, they FELT better and more substantial than the competition, but I was unwilling to rely on subjective evidence alone. After all, plenty of people bought the Pontiac Aztek, despite the fact that it looks like what would happen if an armored car made sweet, sweet love to one of those "extreme" tents which cost $700 and can withstand rain, snow, sleet, hail, "no-see-ums" (Ed. Note: then HOW DO YOU KNOW WHAT THEY ARE? Perhaps they should be called "no-exist-ums", bug-namer-guys!) and a nuclear holocaust (with purchase of optional Nuclear Holocaust Fly, +$80).

Ahem. Back to the subject at hand (well, at OTHER PART, but I don't wanna blow my vulgarity wad too early. Oops!). I decided to conduct a series of rigorous, science-style tests to objectively determine the excellence (or suckitude) of my preferred 'pon.

And thus was born the Tampon Adequacy Measurement Project (T.A.M.P). O.B. "Champon" Super went head-to-head against Playtex "The Leading Brand" Super for five rounds of grueling competition. Which tampon reigned supreme? Click here to find out.

Verse Chorus Verse

I had to run through a heavy fog to catch my train this morning. Like everything else in my life, from pop songs to Cheerios, it made me think about us. I feel like I've been chasing you through the fog. I keep tripping over rocks and crashing into trees, but every so often you come achingly close. Even when I'm bruised, bleeding and covered in dirt, a glimpse of your shirt or a breath of your scent is enough to make me pick myself up and keep running after you. There are a million wrong reasons to keep going, but I believe that if I were driven by them, I would have fallen and stayed down a long time ago. I love you. I love you, I love you, I love you. I'm starting to see where people would go to war for this, perform acts grand and insane for this, pine away to a splinter in some picturesquely seedy European flophouse for this. I love you.

I come not to bury grief, but to praise it. Well, maybe just a little bit of burying. After all, I come from a proud line of Burying People. I still recall being awakened early one Sunday morning (cruelly roused from my girlish dreams of Trainspotting-era Ewan McGregor dipped in Magic Shell) to assist in digging a tiny grave for my younger sister's recently-expired pet cicada, Sting-Ass.

So let's try this praise shit for a little while. They let's whip out the Hefty bag, shovel and retrofitted cereal box tombstone and get crackin'.

Grief Benefit #1: I Wish I Could Eat Your Sugar-Coated Bacon When You Turn Black

I've always been to one degree or another overweight. While I've never carried enough excess ass-mass to qualify for my own Discovery Channel special, I've also never been particularly happy with my body. As it turns out, grief, like a tapeworm or a smack habit, is a fucked-up yet surprisingly effective panacea for pudginess. I haven't seen fat burn this quickly since that Underwriters Labs video "Why Your Turkey Fryer Will Kill You and Everything You Love". A harrowing anecdote: while at a bloggers' brunch recently, I invented a new dish: bacon topped with brown sugar-glazed walnuts. It looked greasily, intoxicatingly delicious. And yet I DID NOT FINISH IT. To quote Homer Simpson, "I've become everything that I hate!" I'll just have to console myself with my greatly de-maximized gluteus.

Grief Benefit #2: I Feel the Pain of Everyone... Then I Feel Nothing

You don't really realize how many day-to-day things annoy you... until they don't. When your life is consumed by one giant, fucked-up problem, ordinary troubles are instantly deflected, like Astroglide off the back of a particularly kinky duck. Diapers and onesies scattered all over my house, making it look like the set of a really awful sitcom called "Fraternity Baby"? So what? WaWa truck flipped over on the highway, disgorging 30,000 gallons of two-percent? Just more time to rest my head on the steering wheel and let Led Zeppelin soothe my troubles for seven and a half minutes at a stretch. Insane guy on the street ranting about how the Illuminati and community college adjunct professors are conspiring to destroy his liver? Fuck you... me and my liver have bigger problems than that. Which brings us to...

Grief Benefit #3: I Love You More Than I Did the Month Before

And I can see where it would be easy to love you a little bit too much. While actually filling my Ativan prescription would be cheaper ("I'm-so-sorry-you-have-to-go-through-this," mumbled my doctor, "This-might-help-take-the-edge-off"), red 16-ounce party cups have a certain cachet which my local dispensary has yet to match.

I've never been one to self-medicate, believing on some level that if I endured enough pain with enough stoicism, I would someday receive... oh, I don't know... a blue satin ribbon emblazoned with "#1 Bad-Ass"? The people's ovation and fame forever? I've shredded more Tylenol 3 prescriptions than I can count. I gave birth without employing anything stronger than hospital apple juice, my vocalizations of pain limited to a single, "This.. can't... continue." Yes, I always talk that way (and as it turned out, I was, like, a billion centimeters dilated and thus entirely correct).

But this? I need the edge taken off from time to time. And I'm amazed and delighted that something I can buy at the PLCB store actually works. I'd have thought for sure that I'd need to visit a terrifying back alley or a Kokopelli-infested shamanic healing center, but no... right there, next to the local chicken wing emporium, lies temporary solace. And tonic.

I can't keep going. Then you show up... and I can. The pessimist in me would say you weaken me, break my will, drain me of resolve. I don't buy that. If I'm going to continue, I need to believe it's because you replenish me, refill me, refuel me just as I'm sputtering to a halt. When I'm bone-weary, ground down to dust, I need to have faith in the the Cheese Principle: your face still makes me melt rather than crumble. And like anything involving cheese... hey, it can't be all bad.

Snatched Bug, Bugged... Oh, Never Mind.

We here at Thumbscrews Labs are leaders in the field of home biological research. It has not always been easy, this walk along the path of discovery, up the mountainside of knowledge, accompanied by the sherpas of Fresca and pretzel nuggets. We have had to confine our research to those times during which our husband was out in the garage, mitering joists or joisting miters or whatever, as he does not always appreciate the value of our work. Asking our researchers, "What the hell are you DOING?" or, "You are aware that the Cuisinart is only supposed to be used for FOOD, right?" would be akin to taking a whiz on the bright flame of scientific inquiry itself.

Nonetheless, we have soldiered on and made large strides in areas such as Laundry Pile Fortification and Forcible Snake Plant Extermination (while "do not water for six months" showed promise, "hurl in Dumpster" was ultimately more expeditious). We also authored the groundbreaking monograph "The Keystone Poop Phenomenon", which explored our junior lab assistant's habit of depositing a large, steaming pile of research in his Science Huggie mere seconds after his initial marble-sized contribution had been catalogued and filed.

Despite our previous triumphs, this has truly been the Labs' proudest week ever. The following two studies represent some of our finest work since the Ramen Noodle Electrolyte Balance Trials of 1999 (we found that supplementary diet soda is necessary to prevent lethargy, dehydration and uncontrollable verbal tics such as, "FUCK! I wish I could afford to eat something other that fucking Ramen!"). Bono can just charitable-work his little pleather-clad ass back to the Emerald Isle, because the Nobel committee is only going to be knocking on ONE door around here, and it ain't his.

Study #1: The Thwarted Ingestion and Subsequent Taxonomic Identification of Non-Indigenous Insects: A Case Study

This summer, our house was invaded by butt-ugly mystery bugs. They looked like a cross between a beetle and a leftover prop from "Max Max: Beyond Thunderdome". Their MO was to enter the house through any available crack (and our house, being older, has more crack than East St. Louis), buzz around for several days, scaring the ever-loving shit out of the human inhabitants, then plant themselves more or less permanently on the nearest light fixture. The penchants for immobility and sunbathing make me think of them as little tiny Floridian retirees. I imagined them conversing while clinging to the ceiling fan:

"Hiiiii, Dorothy! Your cephalothorax looks BEA-YOO-tiful! So how are the grand-pupa doing?"

Anyone who has ever had breakfast at Murray's would agree that this anthropomorphization makes them ESPECIALLY satisfying to squash ("Ex-CUSE me, big pink thing! I specifically ordered my aphids WITHOUT sour cream! Sour cream ALWAYS irritates my-" CRUNCH!).

Moving on, then. After a few months, we began referring to the mystery bugs as Triangles. While the Triangles were annoying, they were basically harmless, and it seemed preferable to perform the occasional hand-squishing rather than back a Dow Chemical tanker up to our house in an attempt to eradicate them. That is, until recently. While sitting at my desk last week, I received the following blood-curdling text-message from Grandma S. :

"JQ TRIED TO EAT A TRIANGLE!"

Aaaaaaaagh!

At that point, I was ready to hire rival Terminix/Orkin teams to reenact the last half of "Lord of the Rings: Return of the King" with their little spray wands in my living room. Before I could have my house flooded with carcinogenic goodness, however, I needed to Know the Enemy. As in so many cases (pizza-locating, trivia-verifying, fetish-naming), Google came to the rescue (there's a Giuseppe's two miles away, Sandy Koufax, frotteurism, and you should probably have that jacket dry-cleaned). The Triangles were actually called Brown Marmorated Stink Bugs (or, as I now refer to them, Brown Marmorated Son-of-a-Bitches). Originally from Asia, they've only recently showed up in the Eastern U.S. To which I must ask: why the hell did you bother coming over here, you polygonal assholes? Wouldn't it have made more sense to stay at home and infest pachinko machines and boxes of Pocky? Were there no infants in your native land capable of ingesting you? Actually, according to those periodic national education stats, probably not: they were all busy orchestrating major corporate mergers. I'm sure they could've managed, in between conference calls ("In regard to the Nikkei's fluctuations over the last quarter, AH GOO NA NA WAH BLPPPPPHT!"). I suppose I will be unsuccessful in using logic to make the B.M.S.Bs return to their own continent. Those Venn diagrams didn't work too damned well on kudzu, either.

Study #2: Self-Diagnosis of Frugality-Induced Gynecological Problems

I can be somewhat cheap. Not as cheap as someone close to me who once price-shopped for a HOME HIV TEST, but still, I like to save a buck. In that spirit, I stop by our local closeout store pretty often. So as not to incriminate anyone, I shall refer to them as "Gargantuan Lots". For the undiscriminating consumer (i.e. someone willing to forsake sour cream 'n onion Pringles for expired, tamarind-flavored Prangles), there are bargains aplenty. During a recent trip, I snagged a large quantity of baby wipes for an obscenely low price. Sure, they were scented - but who's nether regions couldn't be improved by a hint of jasmine? Sure, they were a laughably obscene off-brand ("Recto-Kleen" or "Antibac-Tushie" or something), but how hard could it BE to manufacture a baby wipe?

Notice how these rhetorical questions always have pretty sobering non-rhetorical answers? Well, you're waaaaay ahead of me.

Over the next several days, I went about my business, using the discount wipes for both my son's and my own southernly cleansing needs (you still wipe with PAPER? Why not just use a pine cone, savage?). However, I soon began to itch. Badly. Um... Down There. I was clawing at the front of my pants more often than a professional baseball roster. As befits the person for whom the term "Dumb Jul Story" was coined, I had NO idea why this was occurring for quite some time. I've always been a pinnacle of gynecological health. No ailments, no infections, everything so disgustingly dainty and well-made that it could be boxed and sold at Adult World (it must be my small karmic reward for the stringy hair and... *shudder*... back fat). A brief perusal of the Merck Manual proved fruitless (I wasn't quite sure what to look for, other than "Labial... Uh... Suckiness", which was sadly not included).

After several days of Down Under unrest and wondering whether or not incubi could transmit social diseases, I noticed that J.Q.'s itsy-bitsy gear was looking a little raw as well. As his romantic experience has been limited to seductively mouthing the binkie clip of a terrified-looking daycare classmate, it finally clicked: IT WAS THOSE STUPID WIPES! I immediately purchased a reputable brand of wipe for the family's anal ablutions, and within days, my Fertile Crescent was scourge-free. I considered returning the remaining wipes to Gargantuan Lots, but figured it was worth a minor financial loss to not have to tell Bob in Customer Service the tale of my blazing saddle. I am reminded, however, of how I used the male terror of Female Problems to get out of gym class for two years straight. I could very well wheedle my way into owning a Gargantuan Lots! And when I do, everyone's invited over to my place for Faygo and Prangles.

Gross Misuse of Company Property.... And I Do Mean "Gross"

Lucky corporate drone that I am, I sit within five feet of a mini-fridge and toaster oven. While a microwave is also available, it's over fifty back-breaking feet away, and I'm usually too busy/lazy/champing at the bit for some sodium benzoate to make the trek. Thusly, I have prepared all sorts of ludicrously inappropriate foodstuffs in Lil' Toasty. My lunch is usually like a distant planet: blazingly hot on one side and encrusted with ice on the other. Between that and the following story, you'd think I'd, I don't know, "learn my lesson", or perhaps "get severely reprimanded by building management". Thankfully, neither has occurred, and I plan to be jamming entire standing rib roasts into that poor beleaguered Oster for years to come.

How Not to Prepare a Lean Pocket:

1. Fire up toaster oven, insert Pocket. Reflect on the mass-produced soullessness of my lunch selection. Unable to decide whether purchasing an egg roll from the Truck of Questionable Sanitary Practices would be hipper and less like sucking-on-the- syphilitic-corporate-teat- of-Archer-Daniels-Midland, or merely more likely to cause projectile hurling.

2. Idly read Pocket's box. Note many warnings... "THIS PRODUCT MUST BE COOKED PRIOR TO EATING" [what, I can't just jam a stick in it and have a Pock-sicle?] and "DO NOT RE-USE CRISPING SLEEVE". Is anyone THAT cheap? Well... perhaps my late, great Aunt Shirley, famed for the classic, "No, no lunch for me... I'm SO stuffed from all the rolls I ate... and jammed in my purse, along with all the cutlery and that nice plastic ficus that was in the vestibule." Along with the many dire Pocket-related warnings, do NOT note toaster oven preparation instructions. Because there aren't any. Could this mean something? Nah, probably not.

3. Become concerned that Pocket is browning too much on one side. Now replace "concerned" with "panicked" and "browning" with "rapidly blackening".

4. Fold paper towel in half, attempt to use towel-clad hand to adjust level of rack in toaster oven... while oven is still operational. Whoops.

5. Become alarmed when paper towel touches heating element and catches on fire. LOTS of fire. While panicking, still find time to silently give thanks that I am no longer employed at Big-Ass Computer Facility, as they had an oft-deployed Halon system. Although having to periodically watch the "We Assure You, The Halon Gas Will Not Kill You" video was pretty amusing.

6. When blowing and waving fail to extinguish towel, fling towel to ground and stamp on it, leaving big ol' scorch mark on carpet [Ed. Note: which is still there. Some people get a star on the Walk of Fame. I get a blackened smudge on industrial low-pile acrylic).

7. Slouch off in shame to eat Lean Pocket (charred exterior, chilly center...yummy-yum) and pretend like nothing ever happened.

8. When unobservant coworker says, "Hey, something smells good in here!", tell them to shut up.

- J

P.S. One of Lean Pockets' many ingredients? "Yeast Food". Ew.

P.P.S. They also "Contain 10% Pepperoni". Since they're "Pepperoni Pizza"-flavored Lean Pockets, I'm not sure what the other 90% is. Based on my experience, I'm gonna say kerosene.

Orken, Bjorken, Buyin' a Ninety-Nine Cent Fork-en

Stephen Malkmus doesn't care for IKEA. That ain't especially news; show an indie rocker puppies frolicking under a rainbow and he'll somehow spin it into a wry riff on the soul-shattering ennui of the post-modern age. And it'll get stuck in your head for DAYS, too. "Scamper, clueless puppy, 'round that cold, cold 'bow / the Geneva convention has gotta go go go / Unilateral action, universal defeat / run away, little hound, to your Booda-Bone treat". Somebody give me a record deal!

As I just made abundantly clear, I'm NOT a rock star. I'm a boring-ass suburbanite (Have attended CSNY concert! Have ten cans of very slightly different shades of off-white paint in my garage! Have eaten Dippin' Dots, ice cream of the fucking FUTURE!). I'm allowed to like IKEA, and I do. I mean, they have a ball pit! You can get a hot dog and a soda there for a little over a buck (which leads me to believe their hot dogs are made with even lesser quality ingredients than the usual hooves and snouts... disobedient employees, maybe). You can get a cutting board for two bucks, a comforter for twenty, and a mattress for under a hundred (I'd caution against that one, though; it's kind of like sleeping on a soft, puffy chip 'n putt course). Best of all, however, are the product names. They're enamel-meltingly cute and have more umlauts than the entire lineup of Ozzfest. And while technically region-neutral, they seem EXTREMELY Scandinavian. So much so that, while reading "A Doll's House" for English Comp II, I found myself thinking, "Torvald... Torvald... isn't that my colander's name?"

And thus was born quite possibly the silliest thing I have ever done (and I've worn underwear on my head AND fenced with a baguette): the IKEA/Ibsen Quiz. Feel free to share your scores, but be warned... I BUILT the damned thing and I still only got fifteen right.

Dumb Jul Stories Flashback - God Bless You, Merry Idiot

For the past few years, I've attended Sam's company's Christmas party. Unlike my company's shindig (spouses not permitted to attend, drunken secretaries shrieking "I Will Survive"), their holiday get-together is usually pretty fun. Last year, the party featured a modified version of a Pollyanna called a "Yankee Swap". It works thusly: everyone brings in a relatively cheap wrapped present. All the presents are deposited in a pile, and everyone's name is put into a hat. When the first person's name is pulled from the hat, they get to choose a present and unwrap it. When the second person's name is pulled, they can choose to either take a new, wrapped present OR to steal the first person's present. Once a decent amount of presents have been opened, the stealing really takes off... during their turn, someone can steal YOUR present, you can then steal someone else's present, and so on. Since last year's Swap was a load of fun (most popular items? A dartboard and a pair of obscene salt 'n pepper shakers), Sam and I decided to participate once again.

Just like before, this year's Swap had several much-coveted gifts. A little video game console and a Lava Lamp were each "stolen" over a dozen times. The most popular item, however, was a Hello Kitty toaster (a marvel of Japanese technology, the toaster even seared a picture of Hello Kitty DIRECTLY ONTO YOUR BREAD). This toaster changed hands practically every round. I'd taken my turn quite early (I stole a Chia Pet shaped like Homer Simpson's head) and no one was interested in stealing it away from me. As a result, I never once possessed the elusive toaster. However, during the last person's turn, the tide changed. This guy had apparently had his eye on my Chia Pet for the entire Swap, and gleefully stole it from me. I could choose to take the last wrapped present (a boring little blue box). However, I could ALSO choose to steal the Hello Kitty toaster... and since an item can be stolen only once per round, that highly silly appliance would be mine FOR GOOD. I knew what I had to do.

I stepped forward through the noisy crowd and proclaimed, "Okay... who's hiding the toaster?"

Although the room was loud and boisterous, no one volunteered Hello Kitty. People were urging me to make a move, and one woman behind me said, "I think you have to take that last wrapped present." "Oh, no I don't," I said, "I can steal something, and I want to steal that toaster!" However, the toaster was nowhere to be found... until I turned around. Sitting on the couch, clutching the toaster, was the daughter of one of Sam's coworkers. The girl was about ten or twelve years old... and happened to be moderately mentally retarded. "Well, honey," said the girl's mom, "If she wants it, you have to give up the toaster." Did you ever have one of those moments when you REALLY need to use some common sense, but your common sense is apparently off in the bathroom reading "Field & Stream"? One of those moments when, in hindsight, the correct choice seemed obvious - "Don't run that red light", "Don't touch that hot stove", "Don't steal toys from retarded children" - and yet, at the time, you were still clueless?

In perhaps the Dumbest move of any Dumb Jul Story, I had one of those moments.

Yes. Although it fills me with shame (and giggling) to think of it, I actually REACHED OUT TO TAKE THE TOASTER. The girl looked sad and confused and began slowly pushing the toaster towards me. It was at that moment that my common sense returned from its little bathroom break and said, "Whoa! Wait just a damned minute here!" "Uh... uh... I can't take your toaster," I sputtered. "Awww!", went the room, their hearts warmed to see that Sam's wife wasn't a complete monster. In lieu of the toaster, I stole another popular item, a five-liter keg of Grolsch beer (amusingly, about the same size as my pregnant belly). The final wrapped present turned out to be a cheapie "Personal Massager" from Walgreen's. Had I stolen the toaster, I would have also inadvertently caused that poor girl to receive a thinly-disguised marital aid as her Yankee Swap gift. Oy gevalt!

Since this is a Christmas Dumb Jul Story, it needs to have a sappy Hallmark moral. So here goes: I hope my astounding idiocy has made everyone remember the true meaning of the season. Christmas isn't all about raging consumerism and eggnog-flavored cappuccino. It's about the precious things in life... things like compassion, sharing, caring for others... and not stealing toys from retarded children in front of all of your husband's coworkers.

Twelve Days of Disappointment: Part II

And today we continue to explore what would happen if my mother actually followed through on her traditional promise to "cut way, WAY back!" on the hysteria of Christmas each year. As a child, I found this terrifying. Now that I can buy my OWN damned Blacktron Legos and/or Pogo Ball, I find it hilarious.

1990: Nine Ladies Dancing
1995: Nine gentlemen groping.
2000: One assistant principal hyperventilating.
2005: A plastic champagne flute emblazoned "Archibald County Junior Prom '98: Go Archdukes!"

1990: Ten Lords A-leaping
1995: One Lord a-smiting.
2000: One Unitarian Lord a-honoring all religious views, except maybe Santeria and the more fanatical snake-taunting Baptists.
2005: One of those candles from Tienda Mexicano which feature extremely obscure religious iconography, like Jesus using His holy touch to de-worm a schnauzer.

1990: Eleven Pipers Piping
1995: Eleven pipers eating FunYuns and talking about how awesome it would be to backpack through Sri Lanka.
2000: A set of Cheech & Chong DVDs.
2005: A bottle of Visine and a Ho-Ho with the end bitten off.

1990: Twelve Drummers Drumming
1995: Twelve drummers experiencing "creative differences" with their lead singers.
2000: Twelve press releases such as, "The former drummer of Combyne Harvezzter is BACK with a new nuclear disarmament-themed solo album! Featuring the sure-to-be-hit single "Don't Enrich (Anything But My Heart)".
2005: A cassette of Led Zep 4 prone to the kind of catastrophic snags which make your tape deck appear to have vomited up a large helping of squid ink pasta.

Twelve Days of Disappointment: Part I

Each November, my mom suddenly proclaims, "I am cutting WAY back on Christmas this year! I REFUSE to deal with that debt and insanity and bayberry-scented bullshit for ONE MORE GODDAMN YEAR!" It's kind of a tradition in our family, like my sister Kate's birthday rap ("Boom, shalock-lock-boom, wiggety, wiggety wack! Here's a lot of presents, don't give any of them back!"). Despite mom's protestations, we've had exactly the same pleasant, low-key festivities every single year. After her most recent "stupid-fucking-Christmas-I- hate-it-so-bad-we're-just- going-to-exchange-simple-gifts- made-out-of-pine-cones- and-glitter-this-year" spiel, I began to wonder what Christmas would be like if she'd actually followed through on her threats... EVERY SINGLE YEAR.

1990: A Partridge in a Pear Tree
1995: A partridge on a half-inflated lawn Santa.
2000: A "reduced for quick sale" Cornish game hen.
2005: One of those pigeons who flies into the supermarket, cannot manage to find its way out and cheeps at you angrily while you're attempting to select a honeydew melon.

1990: Two Turtle Doves
1995: A box of chocolate turtles.
2000: A Whitman's sampler where every piece was previously poked to determine whether or not it was one of those stupid raspberry jells.
2005: Sixlets.

1990: Three French Hens
1995: Two Belgian hens.
2000: One Belgian cock.
2005: Jean-Claude Van Damme.

1990: Four Calling Birds
1995: Four voicemail-leaving birds.
2000: Four text-messaging birds ("SUET PRTY 2NITE... R U IN?!").
2005: Four birds who fly completely off-radar for months on end, then show up on your doorstep one night with a bunch of bug-ravaged 7-11 carnations and an erection.

1990: Five Gold Rings
1995: Four faux-chrome hubcaps.
2000: A spoiler which, while large enough to speed the ascent of the space shuttle, is intended for a Kia Spectra.
2005: A decal of Calvin peeing on Osama bin Laden.

1990: Six Geese A-laying
1995: Six geese a-enjoying a relaxing post-coital nibble of grass.
2000: A frustrated capon.
2005: A rubber chicken and a tube of K-Y.

1990: Seven Swans A-swimming
1995: A soggy featherbed.
2000: A biography of Gregory Peck.
2005: Half a blood-spattered seed bell.

1990: Eight Maids A-milking
1995: Eight maids taking a women's studies seminar at the local community college.
2000: Eight maids rethinking their role as subservient handmaidens in a patriarchal, lacto-centric farm culture.
2005: Eight husbands rolling their eyes, pouring Rice Dream over their Wheaties and wondering why the hell she couldn't have just taken up knitting instead.

More tidings of comfort and joy soon...

Dumb Jul Stories Flashback - Shitstorm: July '05

I had my grossest-ever moment as a mom last night.  We were wandering around Trader Joe's.  J.Q. was asleep in his Baby Bjorn (greatest and best of all baby-holsters... Bjorn is in tha Hjorn!).  While I was poking a package of frozen broccoli, kiddo let loose this earth-shaking fart (I was surprised he didn't rip through his carrier) and an awful stench filled the aisle.  "Oh, damn it," I said, "I guess I'll have to change you when we get back to the car."  Several minutes later, there was a sound very much like a cherry bomb being detonated in his diaper.  Background information:  before we ventured into frozen foods, I'd wrapped a blanket around his lower half (so that his onesie-clad legs wouldn't get cold).  Following the second explosion, in perhaps the dumbest Dumb Jul move EVER, I slid my hand under the blanket.  Why did I do that?!  WHY?  Did I want to see if the force of the blast had sheared off his little peach-shaped butt?  WHY AM I SO DUMB?

 

... in any event, when I retracted my hand, it was slathered in bright-yellow poop.  I am not ashamed to admit that I began shrieking like a banshee.  My frantic yowls drew Sam back from the ice cream section.  "Jesus Christ!" he said, "Take him out to the car and CHANGE him, Jul!  Here, take my keys... WITH YOUR OTHER HAND, DAMN IT!"  I stumbled outside, taking care to conceal my crap-slathered hand behind my back.  When we got to the car, I removed the kid's blanket and surveyed the damage.

 

Jul's hand:  coated in poop.

Blanket:  coated in poop.

Baby's entire leg:  coated in poop.

Baby's clothing:  coated in poop.

Exterior of diaper:  coated in poop.

 

Like a mere mortal gazing upon the face of god, my fragile psyche could not withstand such an awe-inspiring sight (Att'n, Yaweh:  if you do in fact exist, I am deeply sorry for analogizing Your Holiness to ten pounds of baby crap in a five-pound Huggie).  I began laughing hysterically.  Once I'd recovered my bearings, I stood there for several minutes, working out the logistics of the situation.  I couldn't put my poo-glazed infant directly on the car seat, I couldn't put him on his blanket (since it was also a casualty of Operation: Shit On Entire World) and I certainly couldn't just change him on the pavement.  If I'd had a moment's foresight before spiriting him from the store, I could've grabbed a paper bag (or perhaps a tarragon-rosemary flatbread) on which to rest his tiny ass.  Eventually, I wound up dumping out the contents of a Sears bag and using it as an impromptu changing pad.  While I was baby-wiping every surface within a five-foot radius, J.Q. woke up and began smiling and wriggling around, as if to say, "Hi, mommy!  Look at how cute I am!  You wouldn't ever think of leaving me in the Trader Joe's parking lot, running away to a different state and changing your name, would you?"

 

The aftermath:

 

Diaper and ten soiled wipes:  left in TJ's parking lot.  While I am deeply sorry for the Hawaiian shirt-clad schmuck who winds up finding it, 1.  They had no trash can, and 2.  Cleaning up the crap-tastrophe had already tested my sanity; driving home with it would have snapped my mind like a pretzel rod.

 

Baby:  relatively happy for duration of evening.  I suppose I'd feel pretty good, too, if I pooped out half of my body weight and someone else cleaned it up.

 

Jul:  slowly recovering from ordeal.