Redirector

On this, the occasion of my 143rd post, I'd like to take the opportunity to say... FREEBIRD!

I'd ALWAYS like to take that opportunity, though. Even that time I saw the Philadelphia Orchestra. Especially that time.

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Talkin' 'Bout a Resolution

It’s a new year.

The ball has dropped, the dust has settled, the drunkenly fumbled pigs-in-blankets have been scarfed up by opportunistic terriers.

So... what are you going to do?

Notice I didn't ask what you're not going to do. Negative resolutions are terribly monotonous. Yes, yes, yes... you're not going to drink as much, smoke as much, cram quite as many queso-slathered chimichangas down the ol' gullet.

You're definitely not going to take any more sheep tranquilizers, even if the young lady proffering them seems really cool, even if she attends Veterinary Science classes at Vo-Tech on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

These are fine goals, noble goals, goals which will last for, oh, a week or so... maybe two, if Enchilada Enclave gets shut down for health code violations. But they're not what I want to know about.

Sometimes, life's like dodgeball... high-velocity projectiles come hurtling at you from all angles; all you can do is react quickly and remain upright. Other times, though, it's more like tennis. Sure, you've got to whack problems back over the net. But you also have the chance to be proactive. To set your sights, lift your racket and send your aspirations flying... ideally, straight into the crotch of your opponent, who in this particular metaphor represents Forces Conspiring to Quash Your Precious Dreams. Few things are as satisfying as giving one's goals an emphatic smack towards fruition. In 2008, let's do exactly that.

What positive changes do you want to see in your life this year? And - more importantly - how do you plan to enact them?

C'mon. Take control. Hustle.. or, as it's the Year of the Rat, scurry. Cast the XBox controller of complacency from your hands! Free the pulsating phallus of self-determination from your pants! Um... figuratively, that is. Wouldn't want to start the Year of the Rat with the Public Indecency Charge of the Idiot.

I'll get the party started.

---

Proactive Resolution #1 : The Internal Loofah (finish entire 31-serving box of Grape-Nuts and thereby achieve colonic excellence).

Irregularity and ADD go together like vodka and cranberry juice. The bright cheeriness of the latter manages to mask the harsh unpleasantness of the former… to a point. It wasn’t until several people had marveled at my erratic eliminatory habits than I realized that I might Have a Problem.

Other Person: [makes comment regarding a recent excretion]
Jul: “Yeah… um… I don’t… you know… do that so often.”
Other Person: “… so when WAS the last time you went?”
Jul: “I don’t really remember.”
Other Person: “How can you not remember? Was it yesterday? Last week? The Regan administration?”
Jul, Defensively: “Shut up! I went once! It was boring! I decided to do other stuff instead!”

(Note: what, you don’t discuss bowel movements with your loves ones? Perhaps you discuss Sir John Gielgud’s interpretation of Chekhov’s later works? Guess what? JOHN GIELGUD POOPED, TOO! So did Ingmar Bergman, Jean-Luc Godard and Tom Stoppard. Andy Warhol didn’t poop; he extracted individual-sized boxes of Quisp from a portal in his abdomen. But I digress.)

Enter Grape-Nuts.

They’re cheap. They’re somewhat palatable. They are jam-packed with vitamins and protein and sweet, sweet fiber.

I have eaten my way through six cups of Grape-y goodness thus far. So how has southbound traffic been moving? Well… I’m not sure. More quickly than before, but I can’t help but feel as though SOMETHING bigger should be happening. You know that scene in movies where a bomb has been dropped into a lake but hasn’t exploded? Everyone’s sitting on the edge of their seat, waiting for the rumble, the muffled boom, the thousands of dead fish bobbing to the surface? Yeah. Same here. Regardless, I resolve to make my way to the bottom of the box.

---

Proactive Resolution #2 : ‘Cause I’m as Free as a Bird, Now (A Somewhat Tame Bird, One With a 401(K) and a Pantry Full of Trader Joe’s Foodstuffs. What, I Can’t Be Subversive And Still Eat Smoky Peach Salsa?) - more solo travel.

Sure, joint vacations are lovely. It’s wonderful to have a dining companion, an activity partner, an alternate source of cash should street urchins steal your fanny pack. But I’ll always have a soft spot for solitary trips. For me, they’ve always been suffused with a certain breathless joy. How can you not grin while running through O’Hare with a week’s worth of clothing in your backpack and a ticket to somewhere Brand! New! And! EXCITING! in your sweaty little hand?

I want that smile on my face again before the year is through.

---

Proactive Resolution #3 : We Regret to Inform You That You Suck (growing a pair of [figurative] testes and submitting my work for publication).

I’m afraid of falling. I’m afraid of singing in front of other people. I’m afraid of click beetles (shut up, they can forcibly propel themselves ALL UP IN YOUR GRILL). I’m afraid of Suze Orman, who I am convinced is part raccoon and will one day be arrested for foraging for hot stock tips in a Wall Street dumpster.

But I’m really… really… REALLY afraid of trying to get published.

It’s not the rejection that scares me. It’s the process itself. Sending off something I’d written would require a degree of faith in my talent which I’ve thus far been unable to muster. The idea makes me squirm, moreso than falling into a room full of click beetles while belting out “Ave Maria”.

That’s precisely why I need to do it. Well, that and the whole “lifelong ambition” thing. I never wanted to be a teacher or an astronaut or a godforsaken princess. I was writing my own stories when I was five. When I was fifteen, I was skipping gym class, sitting in the bleachers and attempting channel Alan Ginsberg on the back of my Earth Science notebook.

I write. It’s what I do, and it’s what I’m going to do.

How about YOU?...

Gimme Fiction: "But You're Down In Marietta" (Pt. II)

[Click here for Pt. I... ]

Southern tap water was a lousy beverage but an excellent truth serum. Dee had slipped two ice cubes in a glass, waved it under the faucet and placed it in front of him. Jimmy hadn't stopped talking since.

"... so I hadn't been thinking about it much, not really. Helping Chuck down at the shop. Fixing up the Challenger. Getting lit up when I could, wishing I was when I couldn't. But I just sort of had this... feeling... like when the tag on a new shirt won't stop scratching, scratching, scratching at the back of your neck? Except I couldn't just, you know, snip it out with fingernail clippers. Because it felt like everything just... sucked. Ever get that feeling?"

"Actually, I've been very happy lately," said Dee, atonal, unwilling to meet his eyes. She paced the little wood-paneled kitchen. She shuffled the collection of shot glasses on the corner shelf. She washed the same fork once, twice, three times before flinging it into the dish rack. Each small nicety - an extra ice cube, a potholder to tuck beneath his swollen wrist - was delivered silently and grudgingly. Her brain had tried and failed to thwart her body's kindnesses and was more than a bit pissed off at the fact. The uncharacteristic quiet was a coping mechanism. Jimmy had seen it hundreds of times. She slammed the doors shut, flung the windows closed, defied the twister to implode her rather than carry her away.

He'd never known what to say. It was perversely comforting to see that this hadn't changed. Not with tears, not with time, not with their freshly altered existences… his slow disintegration, her eagerness to remount the marital steed which had not only thrown but trampled the shit out of both of them. It'd been a year and change since he'd seen her face. The days melted away, however, the second he opened his mouth and said exactly the wrong thing.

"I'm not here to, you know, fuck up your little domestic bliss situation, Dee," he began, "I'm sure you and Darrell and your two Cuisinarts are real happy – "

"He's Derek. They're KitchenAids, " snapped Dee, "Even if we've got some redundancy issues and one of them is charcoal instead of crimson like it said right there on the damned registry, yes, I love him, he loves me and I can't for the life of me figure out where you fit into the picture. Other than maybe raising our homeowner's premiums with your friggin' acrobatics." She slapped her hand against the thick oak tabletop, startling Jimmy. It wasn't until she'd paced over to the stovetop and begun chipping off a fleck of carbon that he noticed the two Advil. He spun one around with a fingernail. Looking up, he ventured a crooked smile.

"I'm guessing... that means... you're not gonna want to pack a bag and head back up north with me?"

"Oh, good christ, Jimmy...". He locked eyes with her. She crossed her arms tightly, scooted backwards against the sink. But she didn't avert his gaze. She was monumentally lovely in her polyester kimono and her uneasiness. Each little imperfection made her deeper, more complex, closer to the masterpiece than the rough sketch. Yet again, Jimmy was smitten. He'd been smitten for years. Sometimes it smoldered - like while he was rediscovering his bachelorhood, ekeing an existence from cases of Busch Lite and payday loans. Other times, it blazed with a fury.

The match had been lit when Dee's cousin Shirleen had called. The flames started small... flitting over his heart, leaving the odd soot-streaked ventricle. He’d tried to ignore it, flinging the phone behind the couch and kicking his feet up on the coffee table. The attempt lasted for three hours, two six-packs and six exploitative reality TV shows. By the time he staggered away from "World's Most Lethal Conversion Vans", the damage had been done. The combination of ethanol and introspection had kindled a massive wall of flame within his chest cavity. He was crying when he got in the car, sobbing when he fueled up at the BP. By the time he hit I-95, he was leaning out the window, howling her name, only occasionally followed by, "... you fucking bitch!"

"I meant what I said. I could give a fuck what we said and did, how long it's been, how... how... married you are," said Jimmy, "I kinda knew it all along... I just needed a little help remembering. Thank Christ for your meddling cousin."

"Goddamned Shirleen," said Dee, sinking into the chair beside him and fiddling with a loose curler, "I advised that bitch to keep her beak in her own seed dish back before we even booked the DJ. What’d she say?"

"Oh, nothing much," said Jimmy, "How was I doing, blah blah blah, Cheryl had her twins, blah blah blah, family misses me, blah blah blah, oh, and didja hear that Dee remarried?" He ran his hands through his hair, a sticky, inky mess after eight hours of highway driving.

"Oh, god. I'm... I'm...", stammered Dee.

"I'm sorry, too, baby," said Jimmy, fresh tears springing to his eyes, "But I'm not sorry I came, not at all. Looking at you... shit, I love you so hard I can't even take it. I know he can't love you like that... like you need. So what if some words got said, some bottles got thrown - "

"It was a full magnum of cheap red," sighed Dee, "I still remember you giving me shit about it while you spackled over the hole in the wall so we could get our security deposit back."

Jimmy smiled, "Woman, throw the entire south of fuckin' France at me if you want. I need you. You need me. I knew as soon as I heard that he wasn't right for you, and I sure as shit know it now. Look at your hands."

Dee swallowed and wiggled five crimson-slicked fingers in the air. "What about them?"

"Look how smooth they are. Those are girl hands, Dee. When was the last time you gapped a spark plug, or smoked a joint, or climbed a chain-link fence you weren't technically s'posed to?"

Dee scowled. For a second, Jimmy braced himself for another head injury. Dee was within reach of a NASCAR cookie jar which looked like top-notch concussion material. For once, however, she elected to leave his cranium unscathed. If he specialized in the wrong words, Dee was a Zen master of the unexpected.

"Were you serious about me going back with you, Jimmy?"

He'd been in shock once before... he and his younger brother had been swordfighting with old lawnmower parts behind his grandfather's shed; Dougie had managed to hack a decent-sized divot of flesh from his forearm. That had been over a decade (and numerous tetanus shots) ago, but the sensation was identical. Time momentarily froze,. then began to thaw and drip. Even in mid-July, you still felt frostbitten... numb and chilly and slow.

"I… I never thought you'd... well, do anything but smack the shit out of me for asking. But... I... I would be... so damned happy, baby. You've got no idea. No idea whatsoever.”

“Oh, I might,” she said. Her hand shot out – Jimmy flinched for a second – and she pressed the tip of her index finger lightly against his palm. It was the smallest touch which could still be called a touch... a centimeter of flesh spelling things big enough to require a freeway billboard.

“Wait here. Wait here for me, just a minute. Shit, we’ve waited this long,” said Dee. She stood up fast, knocked a Cabela’s catalog off the table. Her eyes glimmered and her breath hitched. She tore from the room, shiny roses fluttering behind her.

Jimmy’s mind, hovering somewhere near the dusty ceiling tiles, watched his body pick up the Cabela’s catalog, watched it flip idly through the camo and crossbows. He shifted his wrist on the potholder, drummed his fingers against the table, whiled away the minutes as Dee scurried around the house. He reached up with his good hand and traced the goose-egg throbbing away merrily behind his left temple. He listened to Dee fling open the front screen door, and he talked to himself.

“You know this isn’t gonna end well.”

“Never tends to, does it?”

“Then why the fuck do you keep trying, super-genius?”

“Because I love her.”

“You love whatever part of her she shows you, good buddy. Lotta makeup and obfuscation with that one. Hey, that’s a Dee word right there…”

“Rather have part of her than all of some other ditzy bitch.”

“Would you rather be marched out of here in handcuffs?”

“Oh, shit.”

He whipped his head around and stared at the window. Blue lights… flashing instead of flickering this time, discreetly announcing the presence of a police cruiser in the driveway. He heard Dee’s voice, an octave higher and a good deal dumber than before.

“... don’t be too rough with him, Hank. Think he’s just a little jealous and lovesick and, well, probably drunk.”

“Don’t worry about it, Dee. Happens all the damned time. Not even going to say to whom, on account of their husbands are still mighty pissed, but it happens. Where’s he at?”

“Sittin’ in that little breakfast nook you and Leon helped Derek put in last summer. Making no sense and not making for the door when asked, either.”

“Oh, lordy. When’s the old boy getting back, then?”

“Monday, and it can’t come soon enough. The dogs and I have had enough excitement for one weekend.”

“Okay, then, Dee. Let’s do this. Just wait right here for me.”

The rest of the conversation was comprised of inaudible murmurs; Jimmy had flung his good arm over his head, which was resting against the tabletop. Holding it upright had suddenly become a good deal harder than usual. He breathed deeply (varnish? Varnish. Bastard probably finished the damned thing himself…) and waited for the inevitable tap on the shoulder, the questions, the long harsh hours to come. He thought of what he’d tell Officer Hank. The heavy hand fell on his shoulder before he’d made up his mind; he tried out various lines as Hank nudged him towards the squad car.

“Betty Lou Homemaker in there went to Vassar, y’know.”

“I don’t give a fuck. I’ll love her ‘til the day I die.”

“Goddamned... fucking... fucking... fuck!”

“I was working two jobs back then, we were living on ramen and sex, it was never enough for her, but I’ll be damned if it wasn’t exactly what I... what I...”

He trailed off, the thought completed with a little half-sob. Office Hank rolled his eyes. “I’ll letcha choose the radio station if you promise not to yap so much once you’re in the car.”

“... country,” hiccupped Jimmy.

“It’s all country around here, bucko.”

“Well, when in Rome... apparently...”

She was standing on the porch as they pulled away, scowling and batting magnolia petals from her hair. A vision of dewy luminosity, awash in pale sunlight and Patsy Cline. If he squinted hard enough, the sparkles playing across her perfect cheekbones almost looked like tears.

Gimme Fiction: "But You're Down In Marietta" (Pt. I)

[Click here for Pt. II]

Her husband had gone downstate for a tractor-pull or a rifle exhibition or some such hyper-masculine bullshit. He was due to swagger back on Monday. Until then, she and an assortment of decrepit hound dogs were holding down the fort. The entire pack was understandably perturbed by their surprise visitor. The dogs' interests were fairly benign... they were very old and very stupid. The strange creature sobbing beneath the bug zapper at 3:00 AM could be a predator. It could also have a pocketful of rawhide treats. They gave the scene a casual olfactory investigation, shoving their cold wet noses into Jimmy's crotch as he cringed against the vinyl siding. Their alpha female, however, was rabid.

"Oh... no, oh, hell no. What in the fucking fuck are you doing here?" she demanded. One hand held her robe closed. The other clutched a six-cell Maglite. Jimmy found himself stifling laughter even as tears coursed down his face. She had all the accouterments of intimidation... the curses, the canines, the cylinder of cold-forged steel. None of them did a damned bit of good. With her helmet of curlers and smears of undereye anti-aging unguent, she resembled nothing so much as a stringer for the Hazelhurst Beauty Academy's football team.

"I was in the neighborhood. Thought I'd say hi," said Jimmy. This was a somewhat generous interpretation of the truth.

He'd been in the neighborhood for approximately half an hour, twenty minutes of which had been spent in the Skeeter-King 3000's irritably crackling company. An attempt to scale the garden hose reel and peek in the window had ended badly. It was the latest in a string of bad decisions. They'd begun the previous evening with a six-pack and a phone call, and their accumulated idiocy now struck him... pummeled him, really, physically and emotionally, from all sides. The twisted pile of gray plastic. The horde of inquisitive canines. The infuriated, flashlight-wielding demi-goddess. The wrist - throbbing, most likely broken – cradled in a flannel shirt-tail.

The smile slid across his face slowly, catastrophically. He couldn't stop it. Didn't want to stop it. There was a certain delicious fatalism, a certain grim release. Like sliding into a bubble bath teeming with piranhas. So this is hell, he mused. Kind of figured I'd wind up here. Never thought there'd be so many dirt bikes parked out back, but there you go...

"What are you smiling at, you horrendous little bastard?"

"Honestly?"

"Honestly, I should be phoning the goddamned cops, but by all means, elucidate…"

"You."

"Me?"

"Any of these other bitches heard a strange noise in the middle of the night, they'd come barreling out in a Falcons sweatshirt with a .357. And here you are in that little slinky thing, with your flashlight and your, your... SAT words…"

He paused, stared at her wide eyes and trembling chin. The thought struck him seconds before the Maglite did.

"I still love you, Dee…"

And with that there was a crash, a flash, the voice of god (surprisingly feminine, predictably harsh) and a wide expanse of red. Roses, vast unruly snarls of them, blooming on a polyester nightie. Darkness...

... then light. Buzzing, flickering, profoundly painful. Little shards of pale blue glass worming their way into his eyes. The fucking bug zapper.

"I'm still outside?" he squeaked. Shame crept in, scolding him from behind the veil of shimmering azure agony. Do you have to be so pathetic? So whiny? So liable to be knocked unconscious by your former spouse? Christ, man, get with the program!

"Did you think this was a movie? That I was going to drag you inside? Maybe apply a cool compress?" said Dee. The dogs circled his head, jostling, nudging and delivering the occasional tentative lick. It took Jimmy a few moments to realize that the insistent, furry presence thumping his temple wasn't a snout but a slipper.

"... and you're kicking me? In the head?" he said. He curled up, a sloppy comma scrawled in the dust. The broken wrist precluded crawling. The head injury precluded cleverness. He was actually sort of hoping for dematerialization.

"Get! The! Fuck! Up!" Each word was punctuated via slipper-jab. She was frantic. "The only reason you're alive! Is because I ain't gonna kill you on Derek's front lawn! Good god, Jimmy! We don't need those kinda complications! We're just barely married! Haven't even gotten around to returning that second goddamned KitchenAid to Bed Bath & Beyond!"

"His name's Derek, huh?" said Jimmy.

Dee screeched. Several of the dogs began to whine. Jimmy began to cry. Resumed crying, really; the past twelve hours had been the most saline-saturated of his life. When he spoke, it was in the slightly-strangled tone of one who has just disgorged every last ounce of pride and propriety through their tear ducts.

"Please! Please stop kickin' me, Dee, just for a minute... please... I think I busted my wrist falling off your hose-thingie... I got the makings of a skull fracture, but, you know, no hard feelings... just drove for eight hours straight... think my fan belt's fixing to shit the bed... I'm, I'm fucking spouting off at the mouth to you... you, of all people... former Mrs. Jimmy Pearson... present Mrs. Derek Whatever-the-Fuck... aw, Christ..."

"D'ya want a glass of water?"

"Wha... huh? Really?"

"Really." Her voice was eerily flat. He'd heard her order take-out with more gusto.

"Really-really?"

"Really. Get up, Jimmy. Fuck, I might even have Gatorade." She sighed, rubbed one eye, wiped an errant smudge of pearlescent pink goo on her robe. "C'mon. Inside."

He scrambled to his feet - clumsily, dirt clinging to his hair and waves of pain sloshing behind his eyes. He wiped his nose on his sleeve and gestured for her to lead the way.

Better or Verse - "Big Gulp"

[Ed. Note : primary writing done last winter. I made a good deal of solo late-night convenience store runs, replenishing my caffeine and sugar levels and occasionally shaking my fist at the security cameras and silently imploring, "WHY! IS! THIS! MY! LIFE?!" Every poem I've written since the age of sixteen has included at least a touch of goofiness. For me, the seriousness of the medium well-nigh demands irreverence. If I ever find myself in sequiny black-tie regalia, you'd better BELIEVE I'll be mooning someone. ]

I am become a Paul Westerberg song
Destroyer of self
And not all that easy on anyone else

These emotions go like Bubble Yum
And occasionally beef jerky
(What I mean to say is,
they stay in the mouth
tediously long
before you work through them
or just spit them out)
Mindsets you can purchase at 7-11
Don't tend to be terribly healthy

Of course I turn in,
Turning outwards just turns you
to somebody else
I'd sooner cut to the chase
and disembowel myself
(bleed out in non-foods)
Disgorge a quart all over the floor
(knock some Meox Mix off the shelf)

There comes a time
(being twenty-four-seven, we're ready)
When the primary things
lighting up your eyes
are fluorescent, polyethelyne
and words apparent even to the cashier
as the laziest of lies
Given three minutes,
given an eternity
The burrito and the tender spot
Lukewarm, piss-poor
Nasty, babe, but steady

Cold Snap

How forgetful we are of cold and of hurt.

I can't remember winter. Funny, considering I've experienced over two dozen of them. Yet I'll be damned if I can carry an accurate impression of the season from year to year. Superficial memories abound. Snow, cocoa, wet chilly wool? Those, I keep. Darkness, despair and marrow-deep cold? They begin to fade with the sun of each lengthening day. By the time the first crocus wriggles up, they're gone. Disintegrated and blown away across newly-verdant fields. For the next seven or eight months, the word will evoke naught but eggnog and evergreens. Winter has once again been Sanitized For My Protection.

It's like childbirth. Nature, cruel and clever, knows to slip you an amnesiac. Why else would you do such a thing again? You can never recall why things were so blackly, bleakly challenging. The past is erased, as it your ability to stave off a repeat... to run screaming for your diaphragm or one-way tickets to Ft. Lauderdale.

You forget. You can't dredge up the bottom-dwelling dreck from the hidey-hole of last year. And, as such, can't take a prophylactic leap off a short pier when autumn begins to eke out its last.

If winter's a knife in the side, Daylight Savings Time is the twist. Changes nature sensibly chose to distribute over a month or more are condensed into a single evening. It's a mutation of the nasty, horror-movie kind.

Until that fateful weekend, the season's a slow-moving beast, scaled belly scraping the earth, masticating another a few minutes of sunlight each day. Then the game changes. The clocks roll back, and sixty minutes - sixty of them! All at once! - are devoured. Snap, chomp, gone. That innocuous little lizard turns out to be more akin to Godzilla... rending the fabric of the day between mighty animatronic jaws, knocking the earth off its orbit with a flick of his tail.

The first Monday is hard. Not the hardest - that, you fear, is still to come - but compounded by shock.

I strolled outside, post-work, and it was... dark. "Dark" is a relative term in the city, of course. In the forest, the night is black, proper black, splotched with silver-white puddles of moonlight. Urban nights, for all their thrills, lack such stark beauty. It gets dimmer and muddier. The usual post-workday scramble is suffused with fatigue. People rest their heads against bus windows, eyes closed, utterly spent at 6 PM. They weren't so easily depleted a week ago. Yet again, it wasn't winter.

Exiting the bus and wandering home, my emotions were as dim as my surroundings. "Oh, yeaaah," I thought, "This happened last year, too. For a loooong time. How the hell are we going to get through this without killing ourselves?"

"This winter can't be as bad as last one, can it?" I asked Kateri, grasping for reassurance. "Can it? I mean, if I recall, it was… bad. Really bad.”"

“Yeah, it was bad,” she said, "But things were different then."

Truer words never spoken.

We’d each gotten our first taste of post-marriage life that summer. There’s no finer season to be newly single. The air’s heavy with lust and potential. Clothes, cares and inhibitions are readily shed. Even single parenting seems like a lark… long walks! Ice cream for dinner! Playdates in the park!

We were understandably enraptured with our independence. We had the world at our fingertips, babies on our hips, bite marks on our necks. “Aren’t our new lives awesome?” we’d comment, giggling while we sipped red wine and let our bediapered posse rip up the local café.

Flash forward a few months. It’s cold. It’s dark. And it’s bad. Really bad. Neither of us saw it coming.

“We had each other,” Kateri said, “But we didn’t have what we really needed.”

We didn’t have what we needed... or what we wanted. We didn’t know the difference between the two. And we didn’t know how to obtain either one.

We huddled inside, occasionally ducking out for a gallon of milk or a bad date. While the glacial weather was chapping our hands and faces, our nerves were being abraded by a series of spectacularly unsuitable men. Annoying, aloof, disrespectful, disreputable… they ran the gamut. And yet we couldn’t get enough. The slightest signs of affection were pounced on as though they were deep-fried Twinkies and we were starving… which we were. A few days of silence from our pseudo-paramours was enough to make us hungry, cranky, desperate.

“Heard from Mr. X?”
“Not since last Tuesday. Heard from Mr. Y?”
“Radio silence.”
“Fuck.”
“Fuck.”

From my current vantage point, I have no way of remembering the dismal drudgery of The Winter of Our Discontent. It’s been suppressed, like late-stage contractions or junior high in its entirety. I can imagine, though. Trudging through the snow, juggling diaper bags, groceries and a baby who wasn’t yet walking. Scattering my fire on the wind, blowing sparks towards a series of straw men, hoping one would ignite... and then being perplexed as to why my hands were burnt and my back was freezing.

Climate change be damned... that winter didn’t last forever. Things began to slowly shift with the first thaw. The warmth and light helped, of course. Finding a suitable bedmate seems a bit less dire when the comforters have been put away. Most important, though, was the fact that we’d survived. We hadn’t starved, frozen or slaughtered ourselves with ice scrapers. We’d spent a season alone. We weren’t just alive - we were better for it. The testosterone brigade’s text messages and lame excuses hadn’t sustained us through those bleak days. We’d done it ourselves. We’d kept relatively sane, performed home repairs, entertained the children during blizzards, prepared vast mountains of mac ‘n cheese, learned the measure of our own worth.

Our second summer of liberation brought further drinks, hijinks and late-night chicanery. It also brought, as I marveled, “... something I never saw coming! Well, um, except for in the dirty sense.”

Boyfriends.

We’d spent the summer in scorched-earth dating mode. This go-round, we suffered no fools. When our cell phones rang, we didn’t dive for them... we let them ring. Our bodies were sheathed in wispy, low-cut little numbers, but our hearts were armor-clad. “My date was late tonight,” I told Kateri, “And you know what? I realized I would’ve been legitimately happy if he just didn’t show up.”

We were badasses of love, refusing to concede an inch, guarding our emotions with heavy artillery “until things are absolutely, totally right”.

Imagine how surprised we were when they actually were.

Flowers started appearing on our mantels. Phone calls were not only returned, they were initiated. We were treated with respect, loved with gusto, mind and body.

“I might’ve just had an epiphany,” I whispered into Kateri’s ear, twirling a drink stirrer between my fingers. We were sitting in a booth at our dive bar of choice. The leaves and ambient temperature had recently dropped. Warmth was trickling from the earth, but we were, for the moment, still full of hope. And alcohol.

“... yet again, I might just be drunk.”

“Tell me! Tell me!” she said.

“So I was listening to ‘Pressure Drop’. It’s one of my favorite songs, ever, of all time. Love it! And it suddenly occurred to me that this might... possibly... maybe - fuck, this is scary -… be... the one for me.”

“Really?”

“I mean, I’ve had three Scotch and sodas. But, yeah. I’d be happy with that. Really fucking happy. And not for the wrong reasons. Not this time.”

Not this time. It’s nearly December. Winter’s nasty little fangs are about to clamp down on our asses (which, I might add, are decidedly smaller than last year). I fear the cold and the dark, the cabin fever and isolation. But this year won’t be as bad as last. It can’t. The boyfriends play a part - new love warms the room up more than a flotilla of woodstoves. But it’s mainly us. Desperation is a piss-poor fuel, one we won’t be using again. Our days of scattering embers are over. We built a giant bonfire, with our own hands. We stripped down to our undies and danced around, reveling in our handiwork. We chased away those who might steal our heat.

We’ll be hunkering down against the cold with companions who were drawn to us at our strongest... women who take no shit, take no prisoners. Women who make fire.

This year may be one we actually remember.

NaCroPoTiPe

Okay, so it doesn't trip off the tongue quite as easily as "NaNoWriMo" or "NaBloPoMo". "NaCroPoTiPe" sounds kinda like the Aztec god of crappy holiday candy ("Aw, damn... gummie Quetzalcoatls again!"). However, while it may lack the "prestige" and "other participants" of the aforementioned events, NaCroPoTiPe is a special time. A special time... and a special place.

What do you say... are you ready for National Crotch Poking Time Period?

---

I Have Always Been One of Those Ladies Who Takes a Really Long Time

A really long time. A reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally long time.

I was made aware of this issue fairly early in life.

"Why won't you come yet?!" spat my first boyfriend, scowling and flopping next to me in bed. I was embarrassed, upset and strangely guilty... I felt like he wanted his time back. "I could have been licking a non-defective woman!" was the implication, "Or at the very least engaging in petty vandalism behind the Econo-Mart!"

Thankfully (in my mind), most future conquests were unconcerned with my little "issue". Deeply unconcerned. Cupcake and I once discussed this phenomenon.

Cupcake: "[Then-Partner] has no idea whether it happens or not. I love it when he says, 'Nobody makes you come like I do!'"
Me: "... which is to say, NOT AT ALL?"
Cupcake: "Yeah... I mean, by that rationale, EVERYBODY makes me come like he does! Astronauts! Dogs! The mailbox!"

Over the years, my partners' competency levels varied. However, even with men on the studlier end of the spectrum, locating My Own Private Idaho was infrequent, elusive and usually more trouble than it was worth. I tried to identify patterns - did it occur when I was drunk? Sober? Thinking about licking the film of sexy, sexy evil off of Malcolm McDowell (60's era McDowell, not present-day McDowell, who looks like Sir Anthony Hopkins dove off a tall building and absorbed the entire impact with his face)? There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to my response, however. Sometimes it happened, and both parties were happier for it. Sometimes it didn't, and one party (read: not I) was a bit... frustrated.

The frustration always baffled me. I liked sex- I loved sex! Sex was the proverbial bomb! Sullying a perfectly good bed-tussle with an Orgasm Reconnaissance Mission seemed like interrupting a no-hitter to go kick a field goal. "But... but... but that was FUN!" I'd think, praying that the stars would align, Idaho would be located and we could resume lovin'. "I'm good at THAT! I kind of suck at this! No pun intended!" I loved the attention lavished on my body. I hated the pressure it always carried.

"Women have no idea how much pressure men are under." I've heard this dozens of times. "Each and every time, you can't stop thinking, 'Don't come yet! Don't come yet! FOR THE LOVE OF CHRIST, don't come yet!"

However, "need for improved skill" is far different than a "mysterious, intermittent inability to perform skill at all". The former is forgivable; it's assumed that a little bit of work will correct the matter. The latter makes one feel like a damned freak - which is secondary only to "fire ants" on the roster of Things You REALLY Don't Want to Feel Whilst Naked.

---

And I Despise Samuel Beckett, Too...

Despite the associated trials, tribulations and hang-ups, I still experienced the occasional partner-provided Idaho excursion - and plenty of self-administered ones, too. That is... until eight months ago. Something... happened. What, I cannot say. I didn't make any major relationship or lifestyle changes. I didn't go on or off any medications. I didn't experience higher or lower levels of stress than usual. Things were chugging along nicely... when suddenly, my ability to get off ground to a screeching, smoking halt.

"Not even after half an hour," I remarked to one of my sisters, dejected, "Not even after forty-five minutes. Not with various unguents and lotions. Not with porn. Not with really depraved porn. Not even with the five-way detachable shower head."

"Dude," she said, sympathetic, "DUDE."

The aforementioned Waiting For Godot's Climactic Moment scenario was a one-woman play. With a partner? Forget it. I soldiered on, living (and lovin') as per usual. I tried not to let the diminished Southern hemisphere seismic activity bother me. At first, I succeeded. However, there were nights I wound up spitting angry epithets at my own lap. As time went on, they became more and more frequent. And a series of men - ranging in prowess from "half-decent" to "enormous, throbbing tower of awesomeness" - hammered away at the issue, baffled and hurt that their efforts never made a dent.

---

She Blinded Herself With Science

And then I got the idea of proactively addressing the issue. And sharing it with the internet! But I get ahead of myself.

The evidence was sitting on the coffee table, clear as day. Lube... and a copy of Cook's Illustrated.

"You... you... you READ while you're doing it?"

"Um... yeah," I said, "Because, you know, it might take a long time? I'd read my Norton Anthology, but it's kind of heavy and I'm afraid of it falling on my head."

I hadn't really analyzed my muffin-buffin' M.O. before. However, it began to dawn on me that my knowledge of my own body - my triggers, my responses, my thought and behavior patterns - might be a little underdeveloped. Make that more than a little. Some women daydream and fantasize. Me? I lay there, wondering if adding Gruyere to corn chowder would be a good idea. SOMETIMES, a warm and wonderful sensation occurs. A lot of the time, I wind up flinging "Carve the Everloving Shit Out of That Holiday Ham" across the room in frustration.

It's not surprising that my ability to get there stopped... it's a miracle that it occurred in the first place. Realizing that I didn't know a goddamn thing about my lady-area's operations was the hard part. It's time to pull up my bootstraps, pull down my pants and get to work.

The Tools:
One (1) bottle multivitamins (per a friend's suggestion).

One (1) bottle special sex vitamins, featuring BIG, LURID PURPLE LETTERING and a picture of a woman with hair like Farrah Fawcett's after several hours of vigorous yanking.

One (1) book, "How To Come So Hard Your Eyeballs Roll All the Way Back in Your Skull and Your Optic Nerve Knits Itself Into a Sock".

Actually, the book is excellent, narrowly-focused, written by a Ph.D. in Clinical Explosive Orgasmology or some such. It's somewhat heavy on the positive self-worth exercises ("Stroke your inner thigh with a feather while repeating 'I AM FULLY ENTITLED TO ENJOY THIS PLEASURABLE SENSATION!'". However, I'm keeping an open mind; the pile of KY-stained recipes on my bookshelf shows the extent of MY subject-matter proficiency. I'll be reading the book cover-to-cover. I'll be doing the exercises, no matter how asinine. I'll be popping my vitamins. And I'll be taking you, dear reader, along for the ride.

I won't be posting every day (do you know how sticky the keyboard would get?), but fear not, there will be reports from the field. National Crotch Poking Time Period has begun. It oughta be an exciting time. Come, take my hand...

... on second thought, don't. But stay tuned.

Gimme Fiction: "Performance, Art"

#9 made glass-chip mosaics, each the size of a coaster, the cheery iridescent blues and greens of all-inclusive resorts. They were almost suitable for Pottery Barn's summer line. The thing which made them unique, however, also made them profoundly unsuitable for retail sale. Each piece was topped with a network of maroon smudges. The marks had a dirty intricacy, like spider veins or muddy lace. They were a little too precise to be accidental, a little too ugly to be aesthetic. Unlike their shimmering cerulean backdrop, they did not evoke lounge chairs and gently tepid seas. "What... IS that?" people asked, squinting, fighting the urge to pick one up and buff away the grime with their t-shirt.

"... all this talk about the boundaries between artist and art," she said, "All this theoretical, lah-dee-dah, upper-level credit bullshit. I figured, hey, might as well do my part to liven up the chit-chat in the galleries. So I removed the boundaries, and removed that particular tired conversation starter. So... well, sorry."

The crowd chuckled and clapped politely. Hundreds of wine glasses and satay skewers gleamed under the halogens. She raised an eyebrow and stepped down from the podium. Nudging through the Chardonnay melee, she collided with the occasional sentence fragment.

"... Damian Hirst by way of Jasper Johns?..."

"... trite, utterly trite..."

"... am I, like, a philistine if I say, "Ew!"?"

The bathroom was blessedly empty. She fastened the little brass latch. The gallery was a former one-room schoolhouse, largely unrenovated; the drafty windows and exposed brick contrasted nicely with the poster-sized paeans to genital piercing and flour-dough models of Bergen-Belsen. She unbandaged her hand with this-won't-hurt-a-bit briskness. It didn't hurt, not really. Her fingers and palm were criss-crossed with itchy red lines. If things continued to heal well, she'd begin another series within the month. She produced a tube of antibiotic ointment, applied a series of pearly globules, re-mummified her hand. "Art" is a continuum, she mused, repeating the process on the other hand, And so much of it is more pedestrian than they'd ever imagine. Rinsing the bottles with rubbing alcohol... Bell jars and Rolling Rock empties, bobbing in a stockpot on the back porch. Patching herself up afterwards, protecting the investment. Buying bath towels and Clorox at Costco. There was, of course, the one cringe-causing "other". Hard glass shattering under soft flesh, destroying as it's destroyed, growing darker and slicker with each successive breaking. It was a small part of the overall process. But it was large enough to garner interest, spur chatter over the mini-quiches, pay down the student loans bit by bit.

Sometimes - a lot of the time - it seemed dishonest. The surrounding banality, that was where it was at. Wasn't there enough pain in the Costco runs and stain removal tricks? Was culturing pearls insulting not only to oysters but to natural order?

She walked out back and stood against the flagpole until her husband picked her up. There was a vanilla milkshake waiting in the Festiva's center console.

"Am I... um... a fraud?" she asked, closing her eyes as they drove through the dark.

"Who told you that?" he asked, incredulous, "Want me to kick their ass? 'Cause I'll totally kick their ass."

"Nah, nobody... it's just... I mean... how is what I'm doing any different than one of them accidentally smashing a glass while they do the dishes?"

"Well, for one thing, they don't do dishes. They have dishwashers. People with dishwashers get to buy art instead of hawking it."

"So I'm not, like... demeaning the pain of existence by... you know... ?"

"You're existing, right?"

"Yeah..."

"You do your own dishes, right? Sometimes? Maybe not always before the cheese gets totally welded to the casserole dish?"

She laughed and rested her head on his shoulder. They shared sips of milkshake as they drove home, and for that half-hour, it was totally clear... it was art. They were art. The Festiva, the sink, the collection of stained towels, the struggling and questioning and slowly-diminishing debt.

"It's all kind of cutting the shit out of yourself and hoping you'll wind up with something pretty, isn't it?" she asked.

"Sometimes," he said, "To me, it usually feels more like running into a bottle factory blindfolded and hoping I get outta there with my life. And, you know, my junk. Want the last sip?"

"I do," she said, reaching out a bandaged hand.

Slipping Serotonin Serenade

I'm in the kitchen when I feel it coming on.

It's homebrewed, differing from other drugs only in raw materials... peptide chains and nucleotides instead of bleach and brake fluid.

The most wonderful substances in the world are cooked up in the ol' brain-pan. Runner's high, mother's love... they well up, they swell up, they go splashing synapse to synapse.

And then there's the dark matter. Would it be cynical to say it's more impressive than those sparkling spurts of ecstasy? Oh, but it is, in its way.

Depression is a chemical aberration, the type of nasty little mistake you'd scrape from the bottom of Dr. Leary's shoe. Like so many agents of devastation, it's made from common enough stuff. Breathable hydrogen, hydrogen bomb... these things often boil down to organization and degrees. The lowliest element, properly tweaked and shuffled, winds up leveling Nagasaki. Neurotransmitters can be delightful molecules; they're responsible for keeping us awake, alert, upright and ninety-eight-point-six degrees Fahrenheit. Sometimes, though, there are errors. Too little, too much, improper proportions. When that's the case, their range of influence becomes vastly different. Hunger cues and homeostasis are bush league. Unchecked and unbalanced, serotonin and dopamine not only blot out the sun, they become the sun. They become the eyes squinting to adjust to the freshly-vacant heavens. They become the warm aftershock breeze, gamma particles lazily twirling your skirt, a softly scary sign that things are now very different.

The linoleum's dirty. That stain's been there for six months. There is a Lego wedged behind the trash can.

I can't keep the house clean. I'm lazy. I'm a lousy parent.

The new world isn't colorless so much as desaturated. There are thousands of shades, all of which are variations on a single tone... wrong. It's a charcoal sketch, a silent movie - infinite variety, zero vibrancy.

There is the occasional murmur of rationality. "It's just your brain... your poor, fucked-up brain". "You're not an abomination, you're depressed." More often than not, that voice isn't a hand helping pull you up from the muck. It's a rattling pipe, a creaky floorboard. It's a crackle on the PA system; the "bad acid in the crowd" announcement of paltry comfort to those already shaking by the side of the stage (apologies to Craig Finn).

I've been in love. I've held a newborn baby. I've scrunched my eyes shut and flung myself from tall objects. I can state with some small authority that there's no high as massive, as sustained, as all-encompassing as the low of a really whiz-bang depression. The irrational has a seductive luster that the rational simply can't match. Being in love can be a bit complicated... there's the worrying, the wondering, the reevaluation and recalibration. Knowing - knowing, without a doubt - that everyone you ever love will hurt you? That you'll inevitably be bitch-slapped and broken by the hearts of others, but that the only alternative is a slow dissolve in the acid-bath of your own? That right there is a hit of uncut, high-test crazy, simple and slick and readily swallowed.

I have never and will never achieve anything. It will be a goddamned miracle, in fact, if I manage to budge from the linoleum. Forget Juicy-Juice spills... nothing welds your feet to the floor like a glimpse into the dim-lit back room of your universe. It's completely torn to shit back there. Your thoughts, your body, your relationships, your life... uncomfortable at best, awful on average. And all of it completely wrong.

It snaps more slowly than it begins... but it's always a surprise. When you're walking on a frozen pond in February, it's hard to imagine doggie-paddling across it six months hence.

I am a decent, kind person. I am much-loved. Bad things will happen to me, just as they'll happen to everyone. They are not an indicator of my inherent wretchedness. They just, well... are.

It's a bit shameful to admit how good it feels, coming down. Like that first shore French fry, crackling-hot, eaten from a paper boat with saltwater still trickling down your back.

The pleasure is well-seasoned with wariness, of course. It will happen again. I won't see it coming. There's little I can do to prevent it. It will definitely be unpleasant. It may possibly be horrendous. One second you're licking ketchup from your fingers, the next you're choking and flailing, your head suddenly and unexpectedly submerged.

I'm... well, mentally ill. In addition to piss-poor night vision and nicely-flexible joints, I have clinical depression.

The night vision is annoying. The depression is infuriating. Control of one's own mind is something we tend to take for granted. Plenty of people proclaim (following a puke-soaked evening or two), "I'll never drink that much again." "I'll never dabble in veterinary anesthetics again."

I'll never be able to say never. I can get lots of sleep, exercise my ass off, sample the gel-capped delicacies proffered by Merck and Eli Lily. But the potential for cataclysmic blackness will always be there, nestled among my neurons, playing poker with my childhood memories.

I'm okay now. I'm happy. And when I'm happy, I'm really happy. I'm in perpetual pre-cartwheel. Is it related? Is it worth it? I can't say. I don't know.

I can relax. I can enjoy each French fry. Waiting? Part of me's waiting. But I'll be smiling while I do it.

Thirteen Weeks

The first anniversary gift is paper. Traditionally, this has meant books, stationery and photographs. I'd be happier with, say, candy buttons (the sweetest way to scour one's colon!). Lamentably, the giftware industry has failed to embrace carnival prizes (eighth anniversary: Spongebob temporary tattoos).

The tenth anniversary gift is aluminum. Because nothing says "enduring love" like Beanee Weenies.

The thirtieth anniversary gift is pearl. While jewelry would fit the bill, the fine offerings of the Mikimoto Co. just don't have the same panache as two other apt choices - cunnilingus and dueling pistols.

Last week marked three months since Mr. Awesome and I first laid eyes on one another (and then, being shy folk, immediately averted them).

The three-month anniversary gift, in case you were wondering, is an ulcer.

It's fitting, really... but I get ahead of myself.

---

We'd spent Sunday traipsing around the New Jersey Pine Barrens. However, we never really "traipse" anywhere. We share a strange synergy - when we're together, spooky and fascinating things seem to pop up at every turn. If I ever discover a portal to the underworld, it won't be in Dar-es-Salaam or Kamchatka... it'll be behind Mr. Awesome's couch. In any event, what had begun as a routine nature walk had ended with us emerging from the woods with half-terrified grins, holding a mysterious animal skull on a crowbar. We tossed the skull in the trunk, screeched away from the scene... and went out for barbecue.

An hour later, we were both in agony.

"Fuck you, Sonny's Salmonella Shack!" I said, shooting daggers at the empty tub of mashed potatoes.

Two hours later, Mr. Awesome was asleep. I was prostrate in bed, tears oozing from my eyes, thinking dark and irrational thoughts.

"Maybe we never should've removed the skull from its rightful resting place? Maybe it was a sacred mystery-skull burial ground? Although it wasn't really 'buried' so much as 'tossed next to some empty orange soda cans'? Maybe we should return it? Maybe I should wake up Mr. Awesome right now and tell him this?"

Over the next few days, Mr. Awesome continued to experience intermittent pain and nausea. My symptoms, however, were a bit more alarming: I was unable to eat without experiencing a subsequent five-hour bout of searing abdominal pain.

"This is worse than genocide!" I hissed one night in mid-writhe, "And I'm a Jew, so I'm allowed to say that. Actually, I think I just depleted all of my Jew credits right there. Better go rub a Torah or something."

I was comparing my tummy ache to the Shoah. Clearly, something had to give. A trip to my doctor's office led to a trip to the friendly neighborhood medical imaging lab. A quick ultrasound (Ed. note: why is the transvaginal ultrasound probe so ungodly... generous? Where, precisely, are the expecting to insert it - the gap of the Pyrenees?) led to a diagnosis of "nothing visibly amiss - take a Zantac". Which, several agonizing hours hence, led to a trip to the ER, a tentative diagnosis of a peptic ulcer and a prescription for Nexium. Which - wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles, praise G-d and pass the noodle kugel - allowed me to eat without crippling pain for the first time in four days.

"Gee, that's fascinating, Jul," you're saying, "But as enthralled as I am with your gastrointestinal tract, what does this have to do with your three-month dating anniversary, the illustrious Mr. Awesome or the Pine Barrens Mystery Skull Preserve?"

I was getting to that, damn it. Cut me some slack, I have a strange digestive aliment. I intend to spend the next several weeks confronting the tribulations of modern life by falling to the ground and shrieking, "Ow! My gastrointestinal tract!"

---

While investigating the fascinating, fiery world of peptic ulcers, Mr. Awesome stumbled upon an interesting fact.

"I wonder if we gave this to each other?" he wondered, "According to the National Institutes of Health, H. pylori can be transmitted from person to person through close contact and exposure to vomit" [emphasis mine].

I've had a hard time conveying how this relationship has affected me. I've trotted out a parade of cliches... "hit me like a ton of bricks". "Totally gobsmacked me." "When it's right, it's right."

Nothing really captured it, however, until the sudden realization, "Wow… we HAVE been exposed to one another's vomit!"

What can I say? It's been an intense three months.

---

"How high your highest of heights? How low are your lows?"
- Great Lake Swimmers, "Various Stages"

---

Yeah. We've breached the vomit barrier. In addition to "nauseated", we've also seen each other lost, scared, exhausted and depleted.

We've dealt with illnesses of both the mental and physical ilk.

We've visited five states.

We've broken... let's see... at least six local and federal laws. Sorry, Massachusetts.

We've stayed at the worst motel in Elizabeth, New Jersey (for precisely 40 minutes, before decamping to less-terrifying pastures) and the best campsite in Promised Land, Pennsylvania (where the moon shimmered on the lake, the trees slow-danced above our heads and we drank cheap wine out of empty Dr. Thunder cans).

We never thought "we" would exist.

Our previous lives were dissimilar in some ways, eerily parallel in many. Mine was often comfortable; his, often hellish. However, they shared a certain character, a queasy quality best analogized as "purgatory, if purgatory were a strip mall in Hoboken."

We were fat, half-comatose, trudging circles over scuffed linoleum. The blue-light specials were self-negation and futility.

There was the occasional upwards glance towards the skylights (something brighter? something better?), but that world wasn't for us. This was the best we could hope for. The exits were hidden. "Hell," we thought, "Maybe there aren't any exits.

And it's not like this is Darfur. There's climate control, for fuck's sake. And Orange Juliuses. You keep your head down, you enjoy the Gap clearance sales, you accept what you've been handed."

It wasn't until we were thrust outside - stunned, destabilized and squinting in the sun - that we realized exactly how much we'd been missing.

It wasn't until I met him that I realized how much was possible... that behind the skylights, there was an another world.

Bright, rich, hyper-saturated... and it wasn't for other people. It was for me.

We could part ways tomorrow and I'd still consider myself tremendously lucky to have known him... and this.

I'll never accept anything less.

Turns out there's a lot to be said for adoration. For deep, mutual respect. For plans based on hope and excitement rather than duty and capitulation.

For ripping up the east coast, exploring abandoned buildings, getting sloppy-drunk by a campfire, being exposed to one another's vomit, stealing kisses in the kitchen while the children run wild.

For lying prostate on the couch, cursing the deities of the upper GI tract... then cracking a weak smile as you reach out to hold the hand of the man suffering beside you. For remaining legitimately grateful, from the bottom of your miserable, dyspeptic soul.

For love, for trust. For more... for much.

Happy anniversary.

Triple Play : Incongruous Songs Which Have Made Me Cry

1. "Doin' It" - LL Cool J. Note: My tears were in no way related to the Doin' of It, the fabled act of which has rarely reduced me to tears. Yes, there was one incident involving gallons of rum, unfortunate angles and an alarming inability to urinate for the next eight hours, but that was an exception, damn it.

I was sitting in the DecrepiCivic, gritting my teeth through a midsummer traffic jam. My fuel gauge had dipped from "sort of empty" to "hell yes, I'm empty" to "miss, please hook a Honda up with some Iraqi Black, PLEASE, I just need a TASTE!" In the interests of conserving my last few dregs of fuel, I'd turned off the air conditioner. Car horns and exhaust fumes drifted in through my open windows. The former shredded my nerves like a Microplane, the latter mingled with my sweat and oozed down the back of my neck. Harried and headachey, I'd forsaken the AM traffic report in favor of Top 40. At its best, Top 40 is the Cookie Crisp of the airwaves - delicious, sugary crap.

I was hoping for light entertainment. My FM dial, however, had other plans. For "Throwback Thursday", the local Top 40 station had unearthed "Doin' It", LL's paean to skillful sexin'. While the lyrics made me snicker ("Baby I wanna hit it in the worst way / Schemin' on that ass since the first day"), the rush of memories the song invoked made me choke up. "Doin' It" had thrust its way to the top of the pop charts while I was in junior high. The era - like the song - had been simpler, sillier, brasher than anything which followed. Sex - along with love, life, adventure, and everything else - was a purer concept back in tha proverbial day. Lack of context is a better lubricant than anything the KY corporation can conjure up. It's not "Doin' It (And Crying In the Bathroom Afterwards)", or "Doin' It (With Someone Who Will Never Understand You on a Deeper Level". It's doin' it, and doin' it, and doin' it well. I represent Queens, she was raised out in Brooklyn. It represented time - heavier even than Biggie Smalls - and I was rubbing my eyes with my sleeve, giggling, praying that my fellow motorists' eyes were trained on less-ridiculous spectacles.

2. "When the Levee Breaks" - Led Zeppelin. This ditty is notable for a fantastic Jimmy Page guitar solo, for being name-checked in a thousand hamfisted Hurricane Katrina articles... and for being the first-ever song that made me cry. I was slouched in the back of my parents' rusty Crown Vic, a surly pre-teen with a Walkman permanently welded to her head. My musical tastes were proudly iconoclastic. While my peers were exploring the plagiariffic pleasures of Vanilla Ice, I was rocking out to the 60's greats: Zeppelin, Hendrix and the like. Led Zep IV was a perennial favorite; it's a wonder the damned thing didn't melt from the combined force of my love and my auto-reverse button. I'd listened to "When the Levee Breaks" hundreds of times before, but that afternoon, it was subtly different. The lull before the break ("Don't it make you feel bad / when you're tryin' to find your way home / You don't know which way to go?") was a moment of high-voltage calm; the break itself pure bluesy bombast. The wetness unexpectedly dribbling down my face was a drop in the bucket, a harbinger of the rough weather ahead. There's no AccuWeather for one's teenage years, and thank Jehova for that... I couldn't have anticipated the hormones which would batter my body and mind, the depression which would periodically blot out the sun, the alt-rock snarls and emo sighs. I was also unaware that this was the birth of a tradition. Music would be a constant in my life, and so would my emotional connection to it... I'd sob along to Springsteen, bawl with Bad Religion. Which brings us to...

3. "Infected" - Bad Religion. I should've joined stage crew. I should've been on the newspaper staff. I should've teased my hair, slathered on the glitter gloss and lettered in intramural fellatio.

Anything - ANYTHING - but drama club.

It was a dumping ground for histrionic bitches of both genders, a boot camp for those constitutionally unsuited to army duty. Every fall and spring, they formed a dysfunctional, incestuous family. They held court in cramped classrooms which reeked of ambition and Aqua Net. And lo, the showtunes echoed from the walls... along with the fake tears, shrill laughter and vicious rumors.

The knives may've been props, but the backstabbing was all too real.

I have never been more out of place in my life.

I'm the quintessential introvert. I'm a bit shy, a little slow to warm up in social situations. Calling attention to myself is anathema to my nature. Other people jump in front of TV cameras... I duck behind the nearest immobile object, hoping to remain inconspicuous. My sense of humor prevents me from being a total social pariah - never underestimate the power of a good dick joke! - but "character actor" would be a stretch, let alone "leading lady".

And yet at fifteen, my confused little soul hungered for the stage. I wanted to prance across weathered floorboards, belt out Rogers & Hammerstein lyrics, feel the warmth of the house lights beaming down on my theatrical greatness.

It was not to be. Everyone knew it. My family knew it. My friends knew it. My drama teacher (enamored of Anne Taylor suits, sycophantic seniors and high-pitched psychological meltdowns) damned well knew it. "It's okay... you don't have to sing it again," she informed me after my halting, atonal rendition of "Getting to Know You". It was the closest she'd ever come to kindness... sparing us both 03:26 of misery by cutting my audition short.

I wasn't surprised, exactly, when the list of roles was posted in the auditorium. Our teacher had a coterie of favorites; the leads were a sure thing, the supporting roles relatively certain. I was a chubby, unpopular sophomore, incapable of singing "Happy Birthday" on-key. This put me at the bottom of the drama club hierarchy... which meant that I was an extra. No lines, no love. Back page of the program, baby.

I wasn't surprised. I was enraged.

I stormed out of the building, throat constricting, eyes burning. It was totally fair and completely expected. It was, within the warped little universe of Drama Club, right and just.

So why did it still hurt so MOTHERFUCKING BAD? WHY?! JESUS FUCKING CHRIST, WHY?

It was a four-mile walk from my school to my house. I must've kicked every single rock, mushroom and discarded soda bottle along the way.

I still remember what I was wearing (a much-beloved sage thermal and paint-stained jeans). I remember what the weather was like (unseasonably warm; when I wasn't sobbing, I was wishing I'd worn a t-shirt). And I remember exactly what I was listening to.

Bad Religion will always occupy a special spot in my heart... an obnoxious, pissed-off little spot. They've rocked their way through three decades, and have not once deviated from formula... a handful of chords, an abundance of adjectives and a heaping helping of fury ("They've only got one song," explained my sister Junket, "But that song fucking rocks!"). Organized faith? Fuck you! Societal convention? Fuck you! A corrupt power structure's willful blindness regarding the catastrophic effects of climate change? Fuck! You!

Getting a taste of exactly how embarrassing and agonizing a seemingly-petty rejection can feel? FUUUUUUUUUUUUCK YOOOOOOOOOOOOOU!

Stop. Rewind. Play-it-again. Stop. Rewind. Play-it-again.

My batteries were fresh. My "Turbo Bass" button (in reality, a "muddy the shit out of the lower end" switch) was firmly engaged. Music and misery mingled freely in my frontal cortex. Like all great pairings - rhythm and lead, Jagger and Richards, warmish bourbon and unfiltered Camels - each one rendered the other a bit rawer, more intense.

I haven't set foot on a stage in years, and gladly so. "Infected" has been with me for over a decade... from cassette to CD to MP3, from high school to college and beyond, as Bad Religion and I both grew older and wiser (although thankfully no less snotty).

It's almost enough to make one tear up.

"She mouthed the words along to 'Running Up That Hill' / that song got scratched into her soul."
- The Hold Steady, "Hornets! Hornets!"

Chuck Norris Lives In My Uterus

There's no "I" in "team", but there is an "I" in "IUD"... and, as of yesterday, there's also an IUD in I. Say hello to my new womb-mate, the ParaGard T-380A:



The sucker's tiny, not much bigger than a bottle cap. It's also kind of homely. While doubtlessly manufactured in total sterility, it can't escape its true nature: it's a piece of wire-wrapped plastic. It looks like something your seven year-old would bring home from summer camp, the kind of mystery craft which makes you wish you'd majored in early childhood education, because damn, those people apparently have some good drugs.

"Wow, that's an interesting... thing, Tyler. Is it... a dinosaur?"
"No. It's a motorboat."

"Is that a picnic?"
"No, it's the Reichstag, but made out of dry macaroni and puff paint."

"Oh, what a cute necklace."
"It's actually a 99.4% effective method of ensuring that I remain an only child, thus maintaining my monopoly on your emotional, physical and financial resources."
"What?"
"... but the googly eyes are just for fun."

The only other IUD available in the U.S. is the Mirena, similarly-sized but a damned sight swankier. It's both sleek and high-tech; it looks like it would be equally at home modulating the flush volume of an expensive toilet or occupying a pedestal at MoMA.

Both IUDs boast almost-perfect efficacy. The ParaGard's ugly charm was a big draw (I mean, c'mon, the thing wouldn't look out of place festooned with sequins and glitter glue). Additionally, unlike the stylish-yet-vapid Mirena, it was hormone-free and effective for over a decade. I'm someone who keeps birth control pills IN MY WALLET; if they're ever more than a foot from my person, I may forget to take them. The prospect of a decade free of worry (and of fumbling while extracting my Price Plus card, thereby informing my fellow shoppers, "Hey, look at me! I enjoy dick AS WELL as savings!") was almost as delicious than the activity which necessitated all that worry in the first place. I was sold.

That is, until Nurse Jen walked in the room.

"Hi! Pardon my butt!" I said, drawing the flimsy paper sheet a little closer to my bare lap.

"So tell me," said Nurse Jen, eyeballing me, "What do you expect from the ParaGard?"

I gulped. I'd come prepared for discomfort, for pain... but a line of questioning straight out of an upper-level management seminar ("101 Interview Questions Incisive Enough To Reduce Your Potential Comptroller's Bowels To a Bubbling Vat of Hershey's Syrup")? This, I did not expect. Especially not from a gentle-looking blonde in scrubs and a scrunchie.

"Um... well, not getting knocked up will be nice," I stammered, "And, er, I read that it can kind of make your periods heavier? Which is okay... I think?"

"A LOT heavier," said Nurse Jen.

"Like... a LOT a lot?"

"Well... sometimes, yes."

The next five minutes were a subtle verbal tango. Nurse Jen didn't attempt to steer me away from my desired nugget of uterine bling, exactly... but there was definite Subtext.

Actual Statement: "... now, every woman's body reacts differently..."
Subtext: "... just like snowflakes, no two MASSIVE EXPLOSIONS OF GORE are the same."

Actual Statement: "As long as you understand the potential side-effects..."
Subtext: "... which you won't, unless you'd like a little demonstration with a ketchup-filled balloon and a moving car."

Actual Statement: "You have to go with whatever will make you comfortable."
Subtext: "Remember that scene in 'Murder Mall IV' where that chick gets trapped in Ham-o-Rama and the killer spiral-slices her? Yeah, it'll be sort of like that."

My resolve did not crumble. It - and my uterus - are made of steelier stuff.

"Listen," I said, sounding for all world like one of the menstruating marvels in a Tampax commercial, "My period's always super-light. Heavier won't be a huge deal. And I have a massive tolerance for pain. You can cold-cock me with a speculum if you want! Um, a fresh speculum."

"Okay," smiled Nurse Jen, "It sounds like you're pretty well-informed. Let's do this."

Five minutes later, I was on my back, bare ass hanging precariously off the edge of the exam table. I counted ceiling tiles as Nurse Jen rooted around in what the Italians refer to as il cannoli del amore. Okay, so they don't. But they SHOULD. After the ol' cervix was located, palpated and swabbed with iodine, it was time for The Painful Part.

Nurse Jen grabbed a slender clamping instrument - sort of like an elongated, hollow-bowled set of barbecue tongs. "Okay... now comes the pinch," she warned.

A wicked cramp rippled through my abdomen. I breathed deeply, clutched my sheet and waited for it to pass. "That wasn't so bad!" I said. "Okay, now for the actual insertion," said Nurse Jen. "Uh-oh," I thought. I felt another, milder cramp... and then the disconcerting sensation of a gnarly little grappling hook sliding into my ute, ship-in-a-bottle-style. A deep ache (accompanied by prickling and chills) slid across my back. I briefly considered asking Nurse Jen if she'd jabbed something important, but decided against it. If anyone out there is in need of a new personal motto, you could do a lot worse than, "Don't insult the person holding your cervix in a vice grip." Thankfully, my fears of having a contraceptive device lodged in my spinal column were for naught... seconds later, the pain receded, followed by Nurse Jen's hand, a speculum and a feisty little gush of blood.

"Ooops!," said the ever-enterprising Nurse Jen, grabbing a handful of paper towels, "Make sure you don't slip in that when you climb down, 'kay?"

"I'm so embarrassed," I sniffled, "I bled on Planned Parenthood! I love you guys!"

Nurse Jen smiled, patted my shoulder and left the room so I could mop up and re-dress.

I grinned as I blotted my nethers with a baby wipe (of course I had baby wipes. If I were ascending Everest, I'd have a sherpa dedicated solely to my intimate cleanliness... most likely, a sherpa who'd wind up filching my credit cards and kicking me down an icy ravine). Historically, I've been a worrier. I've spent vast stretches of time obsessing over numerous and nasty what-ifs. While I've gotten a bit better, it was still a massive relief to have that particular worry eradicated. The fear of unplanned pregnancy, while never enormous, had been a decade-long companion. And now, thanks to a clever little foreign body, it was gone.

"I will name you Chuck Norris," I whispered, patting my abdomen and zipping my pants, "You're tiny, ferocious and frequently covered in someone else's blood. And goddamn it, I know you've got my back."

"Good news!" said Nurse Jen, stepping back into the room, "All your STD tests came back negative!"

"WOO HOO!" I exclaimed, "THIS IS THE BEST WEEK EVER IN MY PANTS!" After bidding her adieu, I walked out into the gorgeous September sunshine, slightly achey but supremely satisfied. There are problems which can't even be fixed by hollow-point steel, I mused, It's a lucky day indeed when a 1" piece of plastic does the trick. With that, Chuck Norris and I strolled down Market Street, ready to roundhouse kick anything that stood in our way.

Things I DO Believe In, Pt. II - Controlled Substances, Child-Rearing, Splenda & Audience Participation

1. All recreational drugs - and by "all", I mean ALL - should be legalized. Someone very close to me once battled a nasty smack habit. It was heartbreaking, horrifying and something I wouldn't wish on any person - or their family. And y'know what? It only strengthened my belief in legalization. While arguments for criminalization are abundant, I have yet to find one which holds water.

"But what if heroin were cheap and everywhere?"

Heroin IS cheap, and it IS everywhere. Given half an hour and the cash I have in my pocket, I could easily score a bag.

"But then EVERYONE would do it!" Would you do it? Would your child do it? Fear of a governmental ass-whupping is among the weakest of motivations for one's acts. A sense of personal ethics is just that - personal. It cannot be codified or handed down from on high.

"But society would collapse!" In 2005, the federal government spent $12 billion fighting the "War on Drugs", as well as an additional $30 billion incarcerating those convicted of drug-related offenses. $42 billion seems like a ludicrously generous chunk of change to help ease the social changes that legalization would bring.

I could debate this endlessly.

2. When discussing the delightful differences in male and female anatomy with young children, proper anatomical terms should be used. For the love of Flynt, it's a penis. Not a "pee-pee", not a "wee-wee", not - as one ex-boyfriend's mother disturbingly deemed it - a "tallywhacker". It's a penis.

Ed. Note: From That Point Forward, I Resolved to Both Shave AND Don Pants More Often

Jul, emerging from the shower: "Hi, J.Q.! Did you have fun coloring while mommy washed up?"
J.Q., staring in fascination at Jul's groin: "Mommy have... BUGS on it?"
Jul: [stunned silence] ... "Um, no... no, baby. Not bugs."
J.Q., venturing another guess: "Mommy have SPRINKLES on it?"
Jul: "I wish, baby. It's hair."
J.Q.: "MOMMY HAVE HAIR ON IT!"
Jul: "You're going to say that on the bus, aren't you?"

3. Even if you're not PLANNING on doing so - even if you're going to be carried around on a plush dais, being massaged with fragrant oils and fed slivers of medium-rare lamb - your shoes should be conducive to running.

This isn't to say that you should pair fugly, mud-splattered cross trainers with a Prada dress. However, you can always choose a nice pair of maryjanes over, say, those towering Balenciaga monstrosities which could also be used to lobotomize unwanted suitors.

4. Extrasensory perception... but not the type which can supposedly be controlled, manipulated and used to win big bucks via scratch-off tickets. I believe that humans are interconnected in ways we can't really comprehend. Whether these ties are vestiges of an ancient time or a tiny hint of evolutionary progress, I couldn't say. But existence nonetheless seems to be a colloid - an invisible, ever-shifting web of linkages. When you experience a tiny, inadvertent spasm, your hand flails out and you happen to brush against another spot on the web... that's ESP.

5. Assuming all other factors are equal, engaging in a higher percentage of non-consumption, non-production activities will lead to a proportionately higher level of happiness.

6. Babies under a year old should be carried as often as one's spinal column and constitution can tolerate. Nasty old ladies who sneer, "That child is NEVER going to learn how to walk if you keep carrying him!" should be (bitch-slapped with their own Valu City bags, garroted with their own plastic rain bonnets, tersely informed, "And YOU'RE never going to get the vigorous dicking you clearly require and which might make you less of a shrill, dessicated old hag, you shrill, dessicated old hag!").

7. Artificial sweeteners' purported nasty side effects could not possibly be worse than the effects of eating an equivalent quantity of "real" sugar (a product so far removed from its natural source as to be semi-synthetic itself).

8. It is far preferable to be alone than to be in a relationship where you must persuade your partner to stay with you. Desperate coercion is odious enough - just look at the guy who sold you your Taurus. Selling yourself to someone who should (in an ideal situation) be your strongest advocate? It kicks your soul in the crotch. Then, while said spiritual entity is writhing around on the floor, moaning curses of positively corporeal vulgarity... it kicks it some more.

9. I don't want to know where I'll be in twenty years.. Knowing one's future seems dull, depressing and horribly confining - you can squirm out of a straightjacket more easily than a two-bedroom condo in Levittown. But I do have a very strong mental image of my future self.

I'm soaking wet, fully-clothed and knee-deep in a warm ocean. The tide is picking up; little waves splash my legs as the sun and the wind dry my face. The beach is a far cry from Club Med; it's covered in wild tangles of foliage and towering, moss-slicked rocks. The sun is sinking behind a jaggy black outcropping. I am calmer than I've ever been in my life.

I believe in this image. I'm waiting for it to happen like some people wait for their 401(K) contributions to mature. It's a smooth little stone I carry in my pocket. It busies my fingers when I worry. It comforts me with its weight.

So... what do YOU believe in?

Things I DO Believe In, Pt. I - Hygiene, Morality, Cars, Cutlery & More

[Inspired by Sistah Cupcake's "Things I Don't Believe In" series.

Please note that these are MY OWN PERSONAL beliefs; I did not pick them up bed-in-a-bag style at Target, nor do I feel they apply to anyone but me. If you wish to adopt any of them, go right ahead. They've served me well and are unlikely to take a whiz on the carpet of your existence.]

1. Tide. More importantly, I believe that my decision to begin purchasing Tide (rather than Wash-U-Cheep or Archer Farms Brand "Vaguely Mountainous" Scented Anionic Surfactant) was a triumph of self-love. No, not THAT kind of self-love. That would sting.

"It's two dollars less than Tide," I thought, taking a deep, DNA-mutating whiff before returning the jug of generi-tergent to the shelf. "But… but Tide makes everything smell all nice and Tide-y. All my clothes, my sheets, my towels… I'm going to be enveloped in this scent for the next month, easily. Isn't my olfactory satisfaction worth two bucks?"

I could hear my ancestors plotzing from beyond the grave. I didn't care. I tossed my Tide in the cart and never looked back.

2. Using baby wipes in lieu of T.P. If you stepped in poop, you'd probably want something a bit more robust than a paper towel to clean up the mess, no? Why should your nether aperture be held to a lower standard of cleanliness? And don't try telling me that "it doesn't get THAT dirty down there, Jul!" You're not a goddamned gazelle, capable of popping out dainty, self-contained pellets while gallivanting on the savanna. If you've ever SEEN a FunYun - let alone allowed one to enter your digestive system- you need baby wipes.

3. Tongue cleaning. Bend a credit card so that the short sides have the approximate curvature of a Pringle. Hold it at a 45-degree angle to your tongue. Then... uh... well... lick. Hard. It's not a brute-force scraping so much as an impassioned oral tango between you and your expired American Express. After a few hearty swipes, your tongue will be cleaner, your breath will be fresher and everything from coconut sorbet to French kissing to yodeling along with "Freebird" will be a little sweeter.

4. Each of my actions can be categorized as positive, negative or neutral. Each type of action affects the overall "charge" of the universe (albeit on a ridiculously infinitesimal level). Whenever possible, I need to make a conscientious effort not to release any particles of negativity into the current. Even the tiniest actions' impact should be considered. The tiniest actions are, in a way, the most important – if you're committed to living your life a certain way, you do so at all times… not just times of great significance or while others are watching.

If I drop a straw wrapper, I pick it up. Otherwise, I would be placing the burden of doing so on someone else. I'm far from perfect, and so I shall remain. I won't pick up everything I drop. But the day I stop trying – the day I stop examining my own deeds, stop evaluating what "good" means and how I can work towards it – is the day I cease being a person and start being a vacant shell.

5. Odd number are better (for no particular reason).

6. Manual transmissions are better (they make crappy less crappy and good cars more fun).

7. When consuming fast food, plastic utensils are better. Soft, bendy, pthalate-packed plastic is best.

8. I never want any of my opinions on hot-button social issues to be simple enough to sum up on a bumper sticker. "IF THIS CIVIC'S A-CREAKIN', DON'T COME A-PEEKIN'", however? Genius!

9. When I die, I will go back to the earth. The matter which comprised "Jul" will assume other forms. Death is not an ending... death is a bend in the Moebius strip of existence.

If my family can be said to possess a belief system, this is it. This is how we were raised. Whenever a pet died, it didn't "go to heaven"... it went back to the earth, nourished other life forms and began a new part of the cycle.

This was no less comforting (and a great deal more plausible) than the concept of heaven. Thanks, ma!

T.B.C. ...

All Pink Is Not Salmon

[Ed. Note: the title is a rather silly joke, as salmon are known for their - HAR! - spawning. Titles aren't my forte. The "book" I'm allegedly "working on" (est. publication date: February 2037, est. publisher: um... the fuel-cell printer in my hovercar?) draws its title from a Rage Against the Machine song. Zach de la Rocha = WAY worse than piscene humor.]

His hands are small, sticky and perpetually wriggling free from mine.

His ambitions are bigger than his britches. The latter are a petite 2T, the former a grandiose "dismantle entire Western hemisphere (and possibly insert into mouth)".

He's big enough to scale the obstacles, small enough to require abundant kisses when he falls off. The most constant refrain is also the most futile: "J.Q., stay near mommy."

Literally, figuratively... doesn't work for either one. Time and toddlers are both way more stubborn than me.

Time has seemed especially fleeting as of late. Months pass like bites of cotton candy... bursts of sweetness which dissolve almost instantly. He periodically refuses to sit on my lap, spurning my advances with a devilish grin and a squeaky, "No! Go away, mommy!"

One day, "periodically" will become "frequently". One day, "frequently" will become permanent. He will giggle, slide to the floor and never look back. It will happen before I know it. He's already two ("… an' a half!", as he reminds me).

It's thrilling and heartbreaking.

I want to snuggle him to my chest, bury my nose in his hair and never, ever unclench my grip.

I want him to explore the world, the solar system, to discover far-flung galaxies made entirely of molybdenum.

I want a million more Toddler Astronomy Lessons… lying next to a Sagan in dinosaur pajamas, being kicked by tiny warm feet and regaled with tales of how, "It nighttime… the moon comes! When sun comes, it gonna be… daytime! Evybody get up!"

I want his sense of joyous adventure to persist long after he's left the lap.

I want this to happen, even as it's killing me.

What I don't want? Is another baby.

---

For years – even prior to his birth – I'd envisioned J.Q. having siblings. My sisters and I are extremely close; our bond has been a frequent comfort (and occasional lifesaver). The concept of what I wanted for myself didn't even register on my consciousness. It was an equation even my math-challenged brain could comprehend… siblings were good, I wanted good things for my child, ergo, producing a few more chilluns would be desirable.

Then my marriage collapsed, my life changed and the math got a lot more complicated.

---

August 1st, 2006. Independence Day. I tossed a few lawn 'n leaf bags full of clothing into my Civic and hit the highway. Not quite "Easy Rider", but still the wildest trip I've ever taken. Literally overnight, I went from doing the majority of the childcare in a dull, far-flung suburb to sharing half-'n-half custody while living in the heart of a major (if slightly urine-dampened) metropolitan area.

I fell in instantaneous love with the city. It was surly, grimy, difficult and entirely mine. I loved my block. I loved my neighborhood. But I especially loved a tiny stretch of I-676, just north of Center City. It's a magical patch of macadam if ever there were one. You're tooling along, surrounded by nothing but asphalt, contemplating ordering a pizza for dinner… then you make a tight left, and you're suddenly ENVELOPED by Philadelphia. It swells around you on all sides, twinkly and bright and enormous. You are hurtling straight towards the center of a place where anything can happen.

Not to kill a perfectly lovely analogy, but my life didn't always feel like that little stretch of highway. Much of the time, it felt like certain areas of West Philly… circuitous, confusing and terrifying.

However, the feelings of excitement and potential never fully waned. Sometimes – as I fumbled through challenges and gained a modicum of self-confidence – they were massive. They sprawled across the entire skyline.

I wasn't at all sure of my course. But I could feel myself being gently propelled forward… away from an unexamined life which had never really felt like my own, toward something brand-new, uncertain and scary, but definitely, unequivocally mine. Each aspect was carefully considered, wiggled into place, lab-tested again and again. Certain things immediately "clicked"… running, brutal honesty, walking home from work and letting the baby throw things in each and every fountain we encountered.

Other things took time. Relationships, responsibility, managing to wash the dishes before the apartment turned into Fruit Fly Island.

Some things just never seemed right. When I thought about having more children – immediately, at some nebulous future point, ever – my reaction was always complex. I'd imagine holding a tiny newborn against my bare chest. I'd sigh and smile. I'd imagine the late nights, the tears, the milestones, the sacrifice. I'd tense. I'd imagine embarking upon full-time parenting once again. My personal time, drastically reduced. My ability to pursue my own interests, harshly curtailed. My chances to revel in unabashed selfishness? More or less annihilated.

And I'd go out of my mind with terror and claustrophobia.

---

I'm a good mom to J.Q. Rather, I try to be... I'm a bit distrustful of anyone who claims to be a "good parent"; like being a good person, it's a continuous process. The effort must be renewed each day. So I try. I let him know how much he's loved. I give him relatively free reign to explore, experiment and play. I celebrate his quirks. I nudge him towards some semblance of morality. I buy him eminently cool shoes.

Do I love the almighty hell out of my kid? Yes.

Do I love parenting him? Yes, I adore it.

Every single minute? No.

Do I love the idea of parenting in general, outside of my own somewhat-unique situation? No. Absolutely not.

At first, I worried that sharing custody would make me a worse mother... that my parenting acumen was directly tied to the number of hours logged with my kid.

If that sentiment were any further from the truth, it'd have to be included in J.Q.'s Enormous Honking Book of Fairy Tales.

I've been a half-time parent for a little over a year. I am much, much better at this than full-time parenting. I'm happier. J.Q. is happier. I can't imagine going back.

When I'm with J.Q., I'm with J.Q. I'm not distracted by housework, hobbies or other errata - I try my damndest to take care of those on non-custodial days. I'm not teetering on the brink of burnout - I'm never more than a few days removed from a break, complete with adult libations, extra sleep, and eerie silence. My interests and J.Q.'s interests don't often conflict... they each have their time to be fulfilled.

Sound like luxuries? They are. They were bought at the expense of time with my child. While I cherish my personal time, I also miss the hell out of my little boy. I wonder about how he's doing, what acts of cute devilry he's plotting. Sometimes, I feel guilty. Sometimes, deeply so.

Nonetheless, our current arrangement feels right. Not right for everyone, of course... but it works for us. Parenting, Version One never felt this comfortable and copacetic. I was permanently exhausted. My stress level rarely dipped below the "OH HOLY SHIT!!!" range. I had a hard time summoning up energy, enthusiasm or much sentiment beyond nose-to-the-grindstone determinism.

Things would be different today, of course. There would be a different spouse... different living situation... different experiences... different me.

It's the last item which makes the real difference, of course.

The spouse, the house, the atlas of scars to guide my path... they're largely irrelevant. I'm different. Siblings might be in J.Q.'s best interests. However, my interests now get a say. They're a frustrating bunch... inconsistent and often unintelligible. However, one sentiment almost always seems to rise above the din. It's one of my son's favorite's, too: "Noooooo!"

---

Why would I want anything less for myself than I want for my child?

I want to explore, to branch out, to try and do and touch and feel.

I want to retain that little spark. I want to burn down a brushfield with it, race away with a grin on my face and embers in my hair.

I want a gamut of feelings as broad as Lake Baikal and as deep as the Marianas Trench. I want memories of both locales… being a speck of static on a vast field of gray frost, bobbing languidly above something unimaginably deep.

I want these things for J.Q., which is why I want him to grow up. It kills me, it really does... he's three feet tall. He uses an assortment of pronouns. He can solve problems which would stump your average reality-TV participant.

The baby years are over, for both of us. Because I want these things for me... or at least the opportunity to pursue them. Further years of child-rearing would put me further away from my goals and aspirations. Of course I'd love any hypothetical future kids... but that's not even close to sufficient reason to have them. I'd take a bullet for J.Q., but I'm not going to encourage the universe to start taking potshots.

I hope - fervently - that my reluctance to have more children isn't viewed as a reflection of my feelings on J.Q. He's the love of my life. Being his mother has been more profound than the greatest (or the schmaltziest) writer could ever express.

My heart is already tethered to his... wound up tight with Kevlar cord. Is it any wonder that it throbs so furiously when he's scared or upset?

That tie will remain even after his hand slips out of mine. It will still hurt. The ache won't - and couldn't - be soothed by the presence of another, tinier hand.

I want these things for us. Having tasted potential, I'll be better suited to describe it to J.Q. Having been suffused with hope and excitement, I'll be able to give them proper reverence.

I want him to dig his fingers into the damp sand on the beach at Pitcairn Island.

I want him to fall in love.

Hands and hearts.

May ours go wherever they wish.

A Birth Story - Pt. III

Pt. I Pt. II Pt. III

1:30 PM : Really, really awful pain is a lot like really, really fantastic sex. You'll have to bear with me on this one.

When ratcheted up to a certain level, both agony and ecstasy become more than physical sensations, or even smorgasboards of sensation. Sometimes it's with a wail, sometimes it's with a whisper... but eventually, it all goes supernova. Walls are vaporized, lines of demarcation char and flake away. What you're feeling is everything, everywhere. A whole world in a cramped single bed. Indianapolis to Indochina in the creases of the sheets.

It is a plane of existence with overeager hands and sharp fingernails. All your running, writhing and caterwauling only tighten its grip.

In the case of pleasure, of course you want to press against it. Tension begets tension, and tension is delicious. Friction begets friction, the kind that urges you a little deeper down the rabbit-hole, that twists your hair a bit tighter around its fist.

This is not a sex story, however. That was nine months ago. It is now a labor story, and to say that the context has changed would earn you the Understatement of the Year Award, as well as a soul-cauterizing stare of incredulity from our protagonist.

Three and a half hours have passed. "... in the blink of an eye" wouldn't be exactly right… nor would "... the longest fucking three and a half hours not directed by James 'Mammoth, Barnacle-Encrusted Ego' Cameron".

The fourth dimension has lost all importance (as have the other three, the bastards). People, places, things... irrelevant. World events? Of no consequence. There is only pain – pain which cannot be described as "sharp", "dull", "achy", "crampy"... really, by any term other than "omnipresent". Movie villains are perpetually threatening to administer "a world of pain". It would appear that I've relocated to said locale.

Mere minutes after the first squirt of Pitocin trickled down my IV, I thought, "Oh... fuck. Not in Kansas anymore!" A few seconds after that? "Okay, champ... so how do we hold it together until we get back to the farm?" Yes, my conscious mind talks like a high school football coach. It gives my superego the occasional hearty ass-slap, too.

You don't fight against the pain. That would exacerbate it a hundredfold. You don't tense - feel those fingers against your trachea? Do you really want them to dig any deeper? You don't cry, scream, rend your hospital gown or fling your whale song CD across the room like a rainbow-festooned throwing star.

You make like Modest Mouse - you float on. You make like Jeff Spicoli - you surf. You make like Ron Jeremy and you ride that bitch... as long. And as hard. As it fucking takes.

How I discovered this, I haven't the slightest idea. Luck and desperation, most likely. But for the past few hours, I've relaxed my body, focused my mind and managed to perch atop the wave of contractions. I'm still in the ocean. But thankfully, amazingly, I'm not going under.

Balance? Not me. Born a klutz. Perpetually speckled with bruises. Fear of drowning and Dodge Caravan-sized squid kind of precluded surfing. Never really cool enough to mount a skateboard. Failure to master the art of skipping earned me amazed scorn and a "NEEDS IMPROVEMENT" from my preschool gym teacher.

And yet here I am. I've found the balance. Didn't even bash my forehead against the doorjamb while looking for it.

Breathe, relax, be still. Be quiet. Go inward. Totally in. Ouroburos ain't got nothing on you. Breathe.

Breathe.

Medical personnel wander in and out. They adjust the electronic fetal monitor, ask questions I refuse to answer and increase my Pitocin levels. Baby-Daddy hovers, anxious, sympathetic and (thankfully) silent. I surf the pain, primarily from the confines of my bed. Visits to the bathroom, while soothing (lots of cool tile and industrial disinfectant), are curtailed by the nurses ("Let's try to keep these trips closer to five minutes than fifteen", chastizes one).

Amazingly, even from deep within the maelstrom of pain, my elementary school Voice of Shame is still quite audible.

"YOU HAVE TO MAKE SURE NOT TO POOP WHILE PUSHING!" it instructs at one point, "THAT WOULD BE EVEN WORSE THAN THE TIME YOU DRANK TOO MUCH CHOCOLATE MILK BEFORE LIBRARY HOUR AND WOUND UP PEEING YOURSELF AGAINST THE CARD CATALOGUE!"

"IS YOUR BUTT HANGING OUT?" it inquires at another point. I'm on the floor, on my hands and knees, rocking back and forth and counting backwards by fives.

I was walking back to bed following an illicit bathroom break; the pain spiked before I got there. Voice of Shame is highly amused. "I THINK YOUR BUTT'S HANGING OUT! WATCH OUT, FOLKS, THERE'S A FULL MOON OVER THE LABOR PAVILION!", it crows. "Seventy-FIVE, seventy, sixty-FIVE, SHUT UP!", I say.

After a few minutes, I pull myself back upright. I clumsily remount the bed. I prop myself up on my hands. I relax, and I breathe.

1:50 PM : Garbo ain't got nothin' on me. After hours of nothing but hissed breaths and tiny sighs, I finally speak.

"This... can't... continue," I tell Baby-Daddy. My face is chalk-white, my eyes wide. I've been surfing, surfing hard... and suddenly, without warning, I feel like I'm about to be pulled under. A few minutes ago, I inadvertently tensed up; the pain became indescribably worse. I'm worried that I won't be able to stop myself from doing it again. It's going to happen. And it's going to swallow me.

"You want me to tell the doctor?" he asks, taking my hand. I nod mutely.

1:55 PM : "Let's see if you're dilated enough for an epidural!", chirps Dr. Professional, "Hopefully you'll be up to four or five, so we can get the anaesthesiologist in here". Dr. Professional is an older woman, tidy gray crewcut, all business. She lays me flat, splays my legs... and emits a very uncharacteristic cluck.

"What do you know?", she says, "You're at nine centimeters!"

Huh, I think, that would certainly explain a lot.

Extricating her rubber-gloved hand from my Love Canal, Dr. Professional pauses for a moment. "Whenever you feel like pushing, you just let us know," she says.

Pushing? Pushing, meaning I push out a baby? And this horrific process will be over? My body doesn't feel like pushing... my body feels nothing but wretchedness. My mind, however, ever the sensible party, is settled.

"Now," I say, "I want to push NOW."

TO BE CONTINUED...

Four Weeks

[We interrupt your regularly scheduled birth story for a high-test shot o' romance. More intoxicating, less cirrhosis-promoting. About as likely to result in public indecency charges.]

1. There is candy bar love, which is for the young. It is sweet and easy and everywhere. It is bought sans thought, eaten sans appreciation. It is never further away than a few quarters and a crinkle of plastic. It is a delicacy for those who have never been hungry.

And then there is chicken dinner love.

You've come back from the wars. You've got stories the kids can't hear, furrows stitched across your forehead.

You are older. You are weary. Sugary simplicity does not cut it. Makes the teeth ache.

You sink down in the green chair, same wobbly leg as before (it will never be fixed, you've come to accept this, the flaw has become somewhat endearing).

She brings you a plate of roast chicken, potatoes, green beans from the little patch behind the shed.

She rests her head on your shoulder, rubs your back, quietly shoos away wild children, hopeful dogs and stealthy cats.

There is a deeper understanding of hunger now.

There is a tacit agreement to be gentle to one another, an understanding that life is too often anything but.

There is quiet wonder at how extraordinarily lucky you are.

Sometimes, there is cake.

2. Broken is a word loaded with ugliness, like hate or gallbladder or fundamentalist, and you've got to wonder "were we ever broken?", and there's two schools of thought on that, really, or possibly a million, like in the case of pasta sauce and oral sex and selecting winning lottery numbers, but in the simple model of things, there are two, and they are thus, option ONE, no, we were never broken, we might've chipped a tooth or two [insert oral sex joke here], but we squeezed our eyes shut and squeezed our fists closed and took the pummeling with fucking Gandhi-like aplomb, and now it's over, blessedly over, the sun has set on the empire of miserable unfulfillment and colonialist assholes in Old Navy Performance Oppressor! Khaki ensembles and goddamn it, we can finally untense, and then of course there's option TWO (and I sort of like option two, personally, but I also like Timbaland and Powerbars, so go figure), which lays it out like such, which is, yeah, oh yeah, were we ever, broken, battered, crushed, pulverized, stomped into fragments, flattened via steamroller, liquefied chemically, powdered anhydrously, broken broken BROKEN, but we each maintained a tiny little grain of Self throughout the entire process, and we always will, no Bunsen burner or cold-hearted bitch will filter that out, and although we've reassembled ourselves into new and interesting configurations, we're still very... miscible, mixable, deeper parts closer to the surface, more surface area to mingle, more flavor, tactile interest, sensation, hell, more of so many things, more than you'd ever have dreamed or expected while enduring the actual-factual breaking.

3. Around you and I, there is a cozy little sphere of warmth and safety and breathable oxygen. Out on the periphery, higher even than the silo, the refinery lights, the billboards and spray-painted devotions, there is outer space, and it is a place of aliens, uncertainty and stark black fear. Periodically, thoughts come hurtling from the sky, amazing and unexpected. Along the way, they accumulate fear, which is clingy like static electricity, only it is scratchy against the skin and cannot be banished by poking something metallic. A big, big thought gathers a large, large quantity of fear, and by the time it's a few miles above our heads, it's superheated with the stuff, and it glows and pulses and hums until finally the stress becomes too much. One thought can only absorb so much energy, even if the thing was the size of a Winnebago to begin with. So it fissures, cracks and disintegrates into elemental dust, and after the destruction there's an eerily pretty little orange smudge against the sky.

Although they say every so often one actually survives the trip. The Kaminski kids have one in their backyard... word has it the thing crashed through the roof of their barn one night while Bud was fixing up his tractor. Damn near needed a new set of overalls, I'll bet.

Anyway... they keep it out back by the tire-swing, neighborhood kids ooh and ahh and pay a nickel to chip off pieces with a ball-peen hammer. Supposedly the prettiest thing you'd ever hope to see.

4. This must be what the Grand Canyon would be like, if I weren’t terrified of falling, easily sunburnt and liable to wander off, get hopelessly lost in the desert and be forced to kill and eat my own burro.

I haven’t stood this close to this much potential in years. It is a space bigger than my brain can comprehend, in which things I can’t even fathom can be conjured into existence. It is huge and fantastic and overwhelming.

It’s bigger than awesome.

I am torn in several kajillion different directions; unlike a literal dismemberment, this one is downright wonderful. Requires less Neosporin, too.

I want to make you spicy Szechuan noodles. I want to see how we fight. I want to see how we make up. I want to make up stories for the kids. I want to be surprised and delighted and, weirdly enough, I have total faith that I will be. I want to take care of you when you’re sick. I want to do nothing arbitrarily. I want to be guided by rough experiences, good intentions and honest words rather than rote promises and accumulated trips to Target. I want to build something eclectic and odd and cozy and just right. I want to take nothing for granted. I want to take everything for a spin to see how fast it can go. I want to raise the kids, send them off to liberal arts colleges, invest in some sunblock and utility knives and head into what’s left of the jungle. I want to utterly forget the future, the very concept of a future, be it five minutes or five decades from now, and just lie here, silent and content and probably dead-tired, foreheads pressed together, still.

A Birth Story - Pt. II

Pt. I Pt. II Pt. III

8:00 AM: State of the Ute Address

Sack o' amniotic goodness: officially breached!
Private room: officially obtained!
General mood: wheeeeeeeee!
Was that a contraction?: fuck, yeah!

The sun is up, the birds are delivering spirited avian renditions of Broadway classics and we are kickin' back in the Labor Suite. The Labor Suite is part of the hospital's brand-new Julius and Ethel Rosenberg Memorial Baby-Poppin' Pavilion. It is nicer than some hotel rooms I've visited. Hell, it may be nicer than my house (my delicate condition having led to a rather indelicate degree of filthiness as of late). My contractions are coming on slowly and leisurely; I'm finding them to be quite manageable. "This is IT?" I think, twining my fingers in the bedsheets and slowly exhaling, "I can deal with THIS!" I'm clutching the sheets – rather than, say, a birthing ball or a soothing CD (Now That's What I Call Atonal Whale Songs! Vol. XI) – due to my ol' bacterial nemesis, Group B Strep. Wondering how that works? Permit me to explain.

GBS leads to IV antibiotics. IV antibiotics lead to – duh – an IV. An IV leads to a restricted range of motion. A restricted range of motion leads to a the medical equivalent of a hazing ritual, wherein a hospital worker says, "Okay, folks, so whadda we got here? A globe? Chained to a pole? What do you say we strap a big, uncomfortable elastic band around that bitch?" A big, uncomfortable elastic band (otherwise known as an electronic fetal monitor) leads to a snarl of wires, which leads to a plug, which leads to a discarded prop from "2001: A Space Odyssey", which is beeping softly next to your bed… which, incidentally, you are not permitted to leave for more than a minute at a time. Eat it, globe. (But don't eat anything else. That's not permitted.)

Am I bitter about the massive, iodine-scented volume of medical intervention to which I've been subject? Slightly – but only slightly. I'm giving birth in a spacious, sanitary private room. The majority of the world's women deliver their babies in conditions which are uncomfortable at best, dangerous at worst. I may be temporarily tethered by latex and discomfort; this doesn't change the fact that I'm a middle-class American, privileged through and through. My annoyance is tempered by gratitude. My excitement is interrupted by the occasional round of fully-bearable abdominal cramping. I breathe deeply, I chat with Baby-Daddy and Mother-In-Law (who has stopped by to lend a little moral support), I sip apple juice from a tiny plastic cup. Everything is going swimmingly... that is, until the arrival of...

9:00 AM: The Pitocin Patrol!

[Disclaimer: exaggerated for comedic effect... but only barely]

Dr. Speculina: "I recommend that we augment your labor with Pitocin. Your water's broken, but you're only a few centimeters dilated. We need to speed things up to make sure we're not putting the baby at risk." [Ed. Note: the longer the labor, the greater the chance of Little Lord Fetus' holding tank being contaminated by GBS germs]

Jul: "Well... um... I've heard some pretty bad stories about Pitocin, so I was kind of hoping to... not..."

Dr. Speculina: "Well, if you WANT to put your baby at enormous risk..."

Jul: "No, no, of course not! I was just wondering if there were any other options, maybe wait a little while and see how things go..."

Dr. Speculina: "I mean, technically, we could jam a manure-crusted garden trowel up there, too, just to 'see how things went'."

Jul: "You're pretty dead-set on the Pitocin, aren't you?"

Dr. Speculina: [glare comparable in frostiness to the one Gloria Steinem would deliver if slapped on the ass and instructed to rustle up a pot roast]

Jul: "Okay! Okay! I give!"

Dr. Speculina: "Eeeeeeexcellent." [whips open white coat, eagerly yanks out baggie of high-grade Columbian "P-Toc".]

[fade to black]

9:30 AM:

Baby-Daddy: "Can I get you some juice?"
Jul: [turns head away, does not respond]
Baby-Daddy: "Do you need some more Chapstick?"
Jul: [turns head away, does not respond]
Baby-Daddy: "Want to sit on your birthing ball for a minute?"
Jul: [silent glare, the intensity of which makes Dr. Speculina's best effort look like that of a puppy begging for a tummy rub]
Baby-Daddy: "Um... whoa... well... do you want us to go to the cafeteria for a little while?"
Jul: [nods vigorously, turns head away]

Poor Baby-Daddy. He'll never really get over the snubbing he's currently enduring. He hates to see me in pain... but he really, really hates not being permitted to help. His forced exodus from the Labor Suite will be the subject of black humor for years to come.

Typical Account of Labor, Jul: "Well, I felt very strongly compelled to focus... without any distractions."

Typical Account of Labor, Baby-Daddy: "So I was like, 'What can I do for you, honey?' And you were like, 'GET OUUUUUUUT!' And I was like, 'Well, can I rub your back?' And you were like, 'GET OUUUUUUUT!' So I was like, 'Is there ANYTHING I can do?' And you were like, 'YES, YOU CAN DIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIE!'"

This account - while amusing - is not entirely accurate. I don't yell, I don't scream. Nor do I speak, or interact in any fashion beyond the occasional blistering glare. My demeanor can best be described as a charming amalgam of autistic and homicidal. Baby-Daddy and Mother-In-Law slowly creep out the door, praying that the squeak of their shoes on linoleum doesn’t cause my spooky, silent wrath to flare.

10:00 AM: Pit of Despair

Ah, Pitocin. Ol’ buddy, ol’ pal. How I wish to draw you near, to hold you in my arms… to squeeze you… harder… and harder… and HARDER…

Pitocin is a synthetic form of oxytocin, a hormone released naturally during childbirth (as well as many other non-agonizing moments, such as breastfeeding and orgasm). Per the manufacturer (Merck), faux-tocin is intended to “[produce] the rhythmic uterine contractions characteristic to delivery”. Like Baby-Daddy’s characterization of my behavior during labor (“Do you want some whale songs?” “THE WHALES SHOULD ALSO DIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIE!”), this is both hilarious and a teeny, tiny, eensy-weensy bit inaccurate.

Well, let me rephrase. It’s a fucking lie.

The contractions characteristic to a natural, non-augmented delivery wax and wane. They begin slowly, then build in frequency and intensity. They feature a well-defined beginning, middle and end; it is this nifty “end” feature which allows the laboring woman to relax, breathe deeply, listen to Shamu belting out “Inagaddadavida” and prepare for the next onslaught.

Synthetic oxytocin is not released in dribs and drabs. It is delivered at a steady clip via infusion pump, the dosage increased every half-hour or so until a “desired labor pattern is achieved”. In many cases – and certainly in mine – “desired labor pattern” is a euphemism for “slavering hellhound of a contraction which gnaws at your uterus like it’s a goddamned Booda Bone. For hours. Houuuuuuuuuuuuurs.”

It’s brutal, exhausting and unrelenting. It’s also, as I discovered quite by accident, entirely endurable.

TO BE CONTINUED...

A Birth Story - Pt. I

Pt. I Pt. II Pt. III

4:00 AM : oh, not again... not again not again not again. Soft indigo light wafts through the mini-blinds, birds sleepily practice their scales... and I have to pee. My requests for an extra-extra long homemade catheter having been thwarted ("Do you know how disgusting it would be to trip over a fifteen-foot long tube of urine?"), I must lamentably get up. I yawn, fling aside blankets and begin the long dismount. I am 38 weeks pregnant, an unwieldly pink globe. Much like "Kirby" from the classic Nintendo game, jellybean-devouring proclivities and all. While Kirby was capable of unassisted flight, however, I'm incapable of taking a whiz without an intricate series of contortions. I wriggle to the left... wriggle to the right... inch my hips towards the edge... and finally, thank Yaweh, slide off the bed. I manage to take a single step towards the bathroom before feeling a tiny gush of warmth. My underwear's soaked. My eyes are wide. "Well," I think, brain whirring like an overtaxed hard drive, "My life thus far has been mercifully free of urinary incontinence. This... might... mean something."

4:15 AM : some people panic in an emergency. Some lead, some follow. Others shut down. Geek that I am, I troubleshoot. Which might explain my current position - pantsless and crouched above a paper towel. Might as well use the scientific method, I muse, retrieving the towel. It's stained with pale pink fluid. Pee? No. Female ejaculate? I wish. "Well, it ain't Crystal Lite," I mutter, sealing my rosy specimen in a Ziplock bag and sliding it into the fridge for safekeeping.

4:30 AM : The Best E-Mail Our Heroine Has Ever Composed

Sent: 04/__/05
To: Jul's Boss
Subject: I Will Not Be In Today...
Body: ... and I think you know why. Thx.

4:45 AM : "... and then I collected some on a towel? And it LOOKED kinda, um, amniotic?" On the other end of the line, my obstetrician yawns. "Yeah, you're going to want to head in." "Now? Like, right now?" I say. My doctor murmurs his assent. Some months earlier, I'd tested positive for Group B strep. GBS is a member of the "common-yet-rogueish" subset of infectious agents (such as escheria "E-Dogg" coli). 25% of the population harbors GBS at any given time; it's generally an innocuous little beastie. Under certain circumstances, however (such as the gooey operetta of childbirth), GBS rages out of control. It throws a microscopic keg party which grows way too large, way too rapidly. An infection that boisterous can be problematic... sometimes fatally so. As as result, Group B strep carriers generally receive IV antibiotics during labor. Which - if the telltale towel is any indicator - I've just begun. Surprise!

5:15 AM : these are my last moments as a childless individual. Do I panic? Do I ponder? Do I laugh? Do I cry?

No. I waddle into the kitchen and devour a protein bar. "No eating during labor?" I sneer, "My hormone-bloated ass!" It is not my most flagrantly defiant move as a patient; that honor belongs to "removing own stitches after oral surgery." Nonetheless, brushing soy crispies from my chin, I feel a twinge of pride.

Or is that a contraction?

6:00 AM : Rousing the Baby-Daddy

"Psssst!"
"Whuuuu?"
"Pssssst!"
"Whaddisit?"
"Um... I think my water broke!"
"Huh? What?"
"We have to go to the hospital!"
"Ohhhhhhhh. Really? Wow. Do you feel anything?"
"Maybe a twinge? I think?"

6:15 AM : the Toyota MR2 is a fun, feisty little death trap; a Hot Wheel-sized convertible with plenty of pickup and not much side-impact protection. I have no way of knowing if I'm the only laboring woman who has ever arrived at the hospital via MR2... but I secretly hope so.

"Uh... so how are we getting the baby home?" I ask, attempting to hoist myself from one of Ladybug's deep bucket seats.

Earlier that week, my Accord had thrown an uncharacteristic mechanical wobbly. We weren't pleased, but as my due date was two weeks away, we'd assumed it would be off of jacks and back in action in plenty of time.

"Well... huh. I guess we borrow a car... or rent one... or something?" ventures Baby-Daddy. We giggle nervously. Sure, there are disadvantages to having kids early in life. But the ability to shrug off "lack of non-deathtrap vehicle" as "Eh, Something That Kinda Sucks, But Not Too Bad"? Priceless. We grab my suitcase and lock up Ladybug. Holding hands, we walk towards Baby Mill Memorial Hospital's automatic double-doors and our new lives.

7:00 AM :

"First, do no harm" - Hippocrates
"Another day, another potential malpractice suit" - Baby Mill Memorial

It is a squat suburban behemoth, acres and acres of tidy brick and close-cropped grass.

As you turn into the hospital's main entrance, an LED sign cheerily informs you that "BABY MILL MEMORIAL HAS DELIVERED ___ BABIES THIS YEAR!" It's early spring. "___ " already requires a comma. Ushering a new life into the world has historically been a sticky, erratic business. Baby Mill Memorial holds no truck with all of that. It is their aim to ensure that each infant arrives as smoothly and predictably as a new Volkswagen rolling off the line.

"No, you can't do that."

I hear it within minutes of being admitted. I'll hear it dozens - perhaps hundreds - of times over the next several days. It is by virtue of exhaustion alone that I refrain from shivving an allied health worker in the ass with a sharpened otoscope.

Minutes after trundling up to the intake desk, I am tagged, classified, handed a standard one-ply hospital gown and parked in a semi-private waiting area. Triage Terrace features an uncomfortable-ass molded plastic chair, an uncomfortable-ass bed (to which I'm promptly confined) and several pieces of relentlessly benign wall art ("Thomas Kinkade Tossses Back Too Many Brandy Alexanders and Spews All Over the Canvas"- 2005). Baby-Daddy and I crack jokes as nurses bustle about... filling out forms, recording vital signs, taking fluid samples, denying any and all requests.

"Um... I really have to go to the bathroom...".

"Can't do that."

"But I - "

"We're still waiting for your lab results. Here, use this."

Baby-Daddy is handed a gleaming metal bedpan. We stare at each other in mute horror. Somehow, this is not what we envisioned when we sealed our love with fifty orders of Poulet Chasseur and "'til death do us part."

Nurse Wretched scurries away. We manage to position my lower half atop the bedpan - an operation not unlike squeezing a banacle-crusted freighter into dry dock - and I am granted sweet, sweet urinary relief. After a hearty sigh of relief, I reach over my globe, delicately dab my female region... and pull back a prop from "Saving Private Ryan". I stare at the handful of bloody goo, shocked. "Damn it, look somewhere else!" I tell Baby-Daddy. "Good news, it looks like your water DID break!" says Nurse Wretched, stepping through the (semi-)privacy curtain. "Ummmn... YEAH," I mutter, displaying my palmful of gore.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Chocolate and Adrenochrome

It really ought to be sold in tiny glassine packets, priced exorbitantly and slipped from palm to sweaty palm.

It's that good.

Cranked heart rate, dilated pupils. Tension. God-awful wonderful tension. Gum-snapping, knuckle-cracking, unabating.

I'm like a tuning fork, or a speed freak... vibrating at an impossibly high frequency for an impossibly long time.

It's simultaneously exhausting and exhilarating. My batteries are being depleted as rapidly as they're being juiced; a slight fluctuation in current would be deadly. I'd be over and done with, spurting acid all over the whole works or slowly droning down into oblivion.

I've written about it extensively... attempting to word it into existence, straw into gold. Off the paper, it's so much richer and more multifaceted. Words are Diamonique on the Home Shopping Network. This is the real deal, a little chip of brilliance shining in the palm of your hand. You have no idea how it got there; it seems way too good, way too beautiful. Armed thugs from the DeBeers Corporation are bound to show up to repossess it at any moment. You can't clench it in your fist to hide it... that would involve taking your eyes off of it.

So you sit, you squirm, you swallow (and it's softer than sand and harder than sugar), you feel gratitude and terror trickling down your back in equal measure.

You hide a tiny part of yourself in a pale blue eye, radiant verging on radioactive, the brightest thing in a cozy dark room, and you pray.

Don't blink. Don't blink. Don't blink...

Better or Verse - "Late-Nite Trinity Marshmallow Roast"

I. night's gone syrupy could get sleepy could get antsy moon is jellified could be napalm could be candy shadows and bare skin on which mosquitoes are alighting something soft, scratched hard enough just invites deeper biting

II. all orbits shift a hip switch neuron twitch a collision perfectly perpetually missed with the coordinates of planets, or of dragonflies there's a certain natural fallingfast a built-in alphabetization words unspoken, the tune hums you (we laugh at memorization)

III. it manifests subtle, something like an unshoveable nudge (hurricane-causing flutter) unpoppable bubbles it buries itself inside the earth from which it is borne you could call it a propensity it carries a humid dampness, a dark richness, (sweet inevitable) a certain... density

The Infideli-Diaries - Pt. IV (B)... Over and Done With

Pt. I / Pt. II / Pt. III / Pt. IVa / Pt. IVb

Infidelity Lesson #8 : you've heard it from health teachers, public service ads and that one weird friend who always winds up nursing a Yoo-Hoo while the other partygoers embalm themselves with ethanol.

"You don't do things drunk that you wouldn't otherwise do sober... it removes inhibitions, not free will."

This may or may not be true. I certainly hope it isn't. The "facial lacerations due to impromptu pole-dancing" incident, for example. I'd feel a lot better if that could be credited solely to Captain Morgan's sadistic little parrot.

When applied to infidelity, however, it’s dead accurate.

You don’t do things with your crotch that you haven’t already done with your mind. The aching tension leading up to sex can be more pleasurable than the act itself. The somewhat-different tension leading to infidelity can - and is - infinitely more damaging than the act itself.

There are few blissfully happy philanderers. There are plenty who claim to be, but they’re delusional, psychopathic or a zesty combination of the two. There’s always… something. Nagging doubt. A tiny stone in the shoe. “What if?” The act itself may seem startling, like a pissed-off wasp in the living room. But guess what? Somebody had to leave that window open in the first place.

It’s not a disease, it’s a symptom. Illicit sex and lies aren’t capable of creating long-standing marital unease… but they’re damned good at laying it bare.

It’s not a stain, it’s a solvent… like alcohol, or turpentine. The things it leaves aren’t nearly as important as the things it strips away. Self-delusion, doubt, avoidance, complacency, capitulation… the thin film holding the whole rickety contraption together… gone, baby. Gone.

(Free will? That, you keep. Compliments of the house and/or a laissez-faire supreme being).

No matter which side of the triangle you're on... no matter who you love, who you're fighting for, who you grope... you're grasping at ghosts.

---

By the time the big revelation dropped, it seemed laughably small. "That... that was it?" marvelled my then-husband, "I thought you'd, like, killed somebody or something."

It was a tiny and hellish circle of awkwardness, that morning... something scribbled in the margins of Dante's notebook. Soon to be separated, we'd spent our respective weekends cheerfully vow-breaking. We hadn't expected this. I hadn't expected a crisis of conscience. He hadn't expected that I'd return home early, discover him and his girlfriend snoozing, tearfully demand her ejection from the marital abode.

Exhausted, minorly-unhinged, snot- and mascara-smeared... it wasn't one of my better moments. It's one of my favorites, however. It was the morning I finally knew that my husband and I were no longer together, in any sense of the word.

---

"... that was it?"

I was huddled under a blanket on our bed, intermittently crying and yawning. My soon-to-be-ex was sitting next to me, patting my hair, attempting to get to the bottom of my unpleasant little surprise visit. After an hour of false starts ("Swingers' convention? What?"), I finally 'fessed up.

"What do you mean, 'that was it'?" I squeaked, "I slept... with... a married guy! That's not a good thing! That's not me! At least I thought it wasn't!"

"Was this before, during or after the swingers?" he asked, half-yawning, half-sighing.

"Um... before. It was a busy weekend," I said, squeezing my eyes shut." In true type-A form, I'd kicked off the revelry early. The weekend's first conquest occurred far from the woods, on scratchy industrial carpet... with the infamous Mr. Married. My conscience apparently hadn't enjoyed things quite as much as my body. If I'd known that Married would be part of my life for months to come, my sunburnt little head might've just exploded.

My husband's head seemed detonation-ready itself... with exhaustion, frustration and... was that... boredom? "I guess I don't see what the big deal is... why you're reacting the way you are."

"I didn't think I was like that... like... y'know..."

He sighed, patted my head, muttered something vaguely reassuring. I nuzzled my sticky face into the pillowcase, felt sleep begin to slide across my shoulders... the most unambiguously welcome touch of the weekend.

Just as it all went blurry, it all became clear.

He wasn't particularly interested.

He was concerned... sort of. He was worried... a bit. He was bemused by the seemingly-unremarkable source of my hysterics.

But he wasn't interested... not in rug burns, sordid details or existential crises.

I'd raged against infidelity all along... but it wasn't the problem. I'd lost him long before he'd found someone else. He could spend hours with her and still crave more. He couldn't spent five minutes with me without growing bored. It wasn't me. It wasn't him. It was us. We could date, marry, even raise a child... but we couldn't summon up an iota of heat between us. And why do we cheat, if not to re-spark the fire in our own eyes, and to see something kindred in another's?

"Howyoudoing?" he asked, breaking our lull.

"Think I'm a little bit better," I muttered, curling into a ball and closing my eyes. It was an awful morning which ended like a fantastic night... tired and sticky, bruised and confused, slipping simultaneously into sleep and something which might just be understanding.

Infidelity Lesson # 9 : to thine own self be true. All others, take on a case-by-case basis.

If you must pick one virtue from the pantheon... choose kindness. Try to wheedle your way into two or three... but if it must be one, kindness.

Never say never. Never say never again. Never let your guard or your expectations down, unless you'd like a surprise confrontation with Nevers #1 and #2.

Even if you've cheated for the entire game, deal that last hand honestly. Forgiveness. Top-down. One for them... one for you.



Credits: special thanks to M., S., R., and M. ... couldn't have done it without you (insert double-entendres where appropriate). Enormous flaming kudos to my family (for not disowning me), for my friends (for being wise and patient in light of my sporadic idiocy/immaturity) and the internets (your comments are like Good Dog's sweet potato fries... sweet soul-sustenance with a side of garlic aioli). Extra-special shout-out to Bob Mould and Sugar, whose "Changes" has been on perma-loop throughout the entire Infideli-Diaries.

The Infideli-Diaries - Pt. IV (A)

Pt. I / Pt. II / Pt. III / Pt. IVa / Pt. IVb

"Well here we go again, you've found yourself a friend, that knows you well
But no matter what you do, you'll always feel as though you tripped and fell
So steady as she goes"
- Raconteurs, "Steady As She Goes"

Suburbiaville's sleeping. The birds are silent, the grass slicked with dew. The sun has just peeked above the Target sign. The August humidity will be brutal in a few hours; right now, the air's just the tiniest bit shimmery... sexy underwear in fog format. Thanks to a few early-rising type-As, the town's parfum is an intoxicating combo of gasoline and fresh-mowed lawn. I breathe deeply. Rest my head on the steering wheel. Count backwards from ten. Then scream.

"FUUUUUUUUUUUCK!"

At an hour when most people have yet to pay a visit to Mr. Coffee, my world has already disintegrated into ludicrous intensity. Some people are prisoners in their own homes. I'm a prisoner outside of mine. My husband's boxy little SUV sits in our driveway. Snuggled alongside it is a shiny, unfamiliar sedan. While I can't tell for sure, I strongly suspect that the vehicles' owners are similarly snuggled... sharing the same IKEA mattress which has been brutalizing my spine for years. Me? I'm parked across the street, bawling in a dumpy little Civic. I have a set of house keys. I've got my name on the mortgage statement. I've got more irrational fury than a squad of drunken strippers. I've got every right to go in the house. I need - more than anything, it seems - to go in the house. So why can't I seem to move?

---

It's Sunday, six o'clock AM. I was ostensibly meant to spend this weekend camping - communing with nature, unburdening my soul to sympathetic squirrels. While camping did occur, it was by no means the defining event of the weekend. The previous forty-eight hours were, bar none, the most debauched of my young life. There was rum 'n Coke, sex 'n drugs, bad and really, really bad. Boundaries were pushed. Taboos were flaunted. The word (well, make that "pseudo-word") "WOOOOO!" was utilized, unironically and repeatedly. Milestones were reached, celebrated, lasciviously rubbed against.

My first solitary weekend since my son's arrival.

My last weekend before moving out on my own, turning the already-massive disconnect between my husband and myself into something tangible.

The first time in years that I'd violated my personal code of ethics.

The first time I'd - so help me god - semi-inadvertently attended a swinger's convention.

The last time I would turn to my spouse when crisis hit.

---

I wasn't due home until Sunday evening. At four o'clock in the morning, however, I reached a point of bucolic breakdown. I was hungover, sunburnt, confused, teary-eyed, alarmingly sore. I was in dire need of comfort - of both the "emotional" and "sleeping surface not studded with chisel-like rocks" varieties. Under the guise of "having to write about that cah-raaaaazy swingers' convention", I busted down my tent, bid farewell to my companions and hit the highway.

I drove home at roughly the same rate that I drove myself out of my mind… which is to say, terrifyingly fast. “I’m not even sure who I am anymore,” I muttered, rhythmically clenching and unclenching the steering wheel, “Who the fuck does these things? Me, apparently? What was with the swingers? Why did I whip off my top? Why did I do that? And that? Do I hate myself? Should I?”

The Pennsylvania Turnpike was an endless ribbon of industrial ugly. The sunrise was Thomas Kinkade by way of Egon Schiele, freakishly luminous smears of orange and gray. They were a perfect external complement to the contents of my head, which grew progressively nastier over the course of the two-hour drive. By the time I screeched to a halt in front of Thumbscrews Manor, I was a twisted, smoking wreck.

"I need my husband," I hiccuped, wiping my eyes on my tank top... then catching sight of the other car. Her car.

And whaddya know... apparently, so does someone else.

Life in the Thumbscrews household has been monumentally awkward over the past several months. We are bright kids, both fully aware that we're separating (and most likely divorcing). We're attempting to remain civil during this odd interstitial period, both for our small son and our sanity. We've given one another our blessings; our respective extracurricular activities now occur sans subterfuge. I've been staging my own controlled-scale rendition of "Girls Gone Wild". He's been seeing OtherWoman at every opportunity. Despite occasional spots of friction ("So... who'd you do for lunch today?"), things have been strangely copacetic. I shouldn't be surprised (I'm not due back for another 12 hours! Those crazy kids are in love!). Nor should I be infuriated (my own "camping trip" having featured more penises than squirrels).

So why am I falling apart?

---

"Pick up your phone! Pick up your phone! I need you, fuckstick!" I mash the numbers into my cell again... by my count, this is the eighteenth time. At this point, I'm actively arguing with his voicemail . "You can't pick up the phone right now? Can't pick it up because, oh yeah, you're fucking someone else? Pick up anyway! Never stopped Paris Hilton! And she's got her own fragrance! Do you have your own fragrance? 'Eau de Fuckstick', perhaps?"

And so it goes. Spew bile at a prerecorded greeting. Wail into the upholstery. Hate my husband. Hate myself. Hate my car ("I'll bet the backseat of an Accord would be big enough for me to properly curl up and die!").

I decide to get a hotel room. HBO, clean white sheets, $15 club sandwiches... these niceties may very well stave off total jibbering insanity. I drive to the local Holiday Inn, only to find that frugality trumps self-preservation. "Eighty bucks to sleep two miles from my own damned house? Hell, no... I'll show you where to stick your so-called Continental breakfast...muffins, nothing but muffins... always..." I sniff, driving back home.

On a whim, I activate the tiny SUV's car alarm. The neighbors are annoyed. The lovebirds are not roused.

I decide to seek guidance from above. I've never held much truck with Yahweh. Radio waves, however, are a different story.

Seconds after flicking on the radio, I start giggling.

"Steady as she goes," advises Jack White, "So steady as she goes."

I love this song. Always have. I also love "Under Pressure", which immediately follows.

"This is our last dance... this is our last dance... this is ourselves... under pressure."

When Jack White tells you to stay steady, you stay steady. When Freddie Mercury tells you to jump, you say, "How high?" Or perhaps, "How fabulous?" Whatever the case may be... you take action.

I walk up to the door and ring the bell. Seconds later, my husband appears, bleary-eyed and bathrobe-clad.

"Huh? Why aren't you camping? What's wrong?"

Tears immediately dribble down my face. "I had to come back. Muh-make her go home. Right now," I sob.

Amazingly... he does.

ROUSING CONCLUSION COMING SOON...

The Infideli-Diaries - Pt. III

Pt. I / Pt. II / Pt. III / Pt. IVa / Pt. IVb

She had a heartful of love and devotion
She had a mindful of tyranny and terror
Well, I try, I do, I really try
But I just err, baby, I do, I error
So come find me, my darling one
I'm down to the grounds, the very dregs
Ah, here she comes, blocking the sun

- Nick Cave, "Do You Love Me?"

Infidelity Lesson #6 : the Bad and Ugly aspects of infidelity do not blot out the Good, whether it's emotional, physical or an amalgam. People don't cheat because it makes them feel awful... they cheat because it makes them feel fantastic.

Remember chicken pox? You'd examine the situation afterwards, marveling at how you could've knowingly inflicted that much damage. At the time, however.... giving in, scratching that itch, feeling the release... the potential for a few little scars seemed so, so worth it.

---

There are aspects of gastronomy which would seem right at home in a sleazy horror movie. From foie gras to Frank Perdue, humans have a well-documented history of brutalizing our intended dinner. Unparalleled in the annals of animal cruelty, however, is the treatment of the ortolan. This diminutive songbird is a legendary French delicacy. Its method of preparation is also legendary, so uniquely sadistic that the bird's sale is officially banned. Banned, my friends, by a nation that has celebrated both Jerry Lewis and the guillotine. Clearly, the ortolan's fate is a good deal darker than that of your average Oven Stuffer Roaster.

Death is merciful. Those who would dine on the ortolan, however, are not. Thus, the bird is taken alive. Depending on the whim of its captors, it is either blinded or kept in constant darkness (in order to disturb its sleep/wake cycles). It is force-fed a rich diet of oats, millet and figs. When sufficiently plump (up to four times its initial size), it is drowned in a snifter of Armagnac. It's tossed in the oven for a few minutes ("rare" comes quickly for something the size of a dinner roll), then removed and placed before the diner. It is at this point, startlingly enough, that the whole too-hot-for-Food-TV Grand Guignol really gets interesting.

The crackling-hot ortolan does not pass go. It goes not collect $200. It does not relax atop a bed of herbed couscous.

It is deposited directly in the diner's mouth. Whole. Skin and bone, muscle and miscellany. And how might this sadistic little snackie taste?

Apparently, transcendental. Firsthand accounts tend to disintegrate into theatricality mere seconds after, "... I closed my lips." It's all succulent aromas, rivulets of ambrosial juice, tiny explosions of multisensory bliss.

It’s one of the Western world's greatest culinary adventures. And - contrary to what Visa commercials might have you believe - it can only be bought with cruelty. You get fifteen minutes of carnivorous ecstasy. A shy little warbler gets a week of suffering. This is an openly-acknowledged aspect of ortolan-lore. One consumes the bird with a napkin over one's head, the better to "hide your cruelty from the sight of God".

Do you do it? Do you understand and acknowledge the cost... and still open your mouth? Or do you take the moral high road and order the trout?

I know what I'd do. I don't fully like or understand it... but there's no question as to my decision.

Modern moral dilemmas are so rarely black-and-white. We're haunted by our actions, our inactions, and our ambivalence. Perhaps it's easier for some - people who are more confident, less thoughtful, stronger-willed... maybe just "better". Of course you don't eat the ortolan. You don't cheat on your taxes. You don't court avoidable catastrophes. You never, EVER sleep with someone else's spouse.

And then there are the rest of us. Standing in front of the bathroom mirror, cheeks flushed with shame. Listening to this eminently-correct lecture float through the walls. Laughing and crying as we floss bits of wickedness from between our teeth.

---

For an activity directly contrary to the DeBeers Corporation’s primary mission (wedded bliss and walnut-sized solitaires for all!), infidelity has a hell of a lot of facets.

It can be spun as monstrous, selfish acting out. Fucking your girlfriend in the same bed where your wife routinely cries herself to sleep. Sending your lover home to his wife with the faintest of scratches still traversing his back. A horribly decadent mash-up of larceny and gluttony; taking another man's daily bread for your own frivolous midnight snack.

It can be viewed as a tiny and perverse act of self-heroism, as per Nietzsche, Ayn Rand, the entire back catalogue of Rush lyrics. Raging against the machine, the status quo and the dying of the light. Daring to take a tumble down the rabbit hole, safety, sanity and decorum be damned. Striving for something better, hotter, more dangerous, more interesting, more... more. EAT ME and DRINK ME, indeed.

It can seem inevitable. If you live in a first-world nation, your comfort and happiness hinge in large part upon others' suffering. The factory-farmed chicken you eat for dinner. The child laborer in Laos who stitched your $5 t-shirt. The solider who stepped on a land mine to ensure that you'd be able to refuel your Range Rover on the cheap. The guy working in a sheetrock factory in Arkansas for fifty years, destroying his body so that you can live in a house ten times the size of his apartment. "MADE IN CHINA" (in a sweatshop). "MADE IN THE USA" (ditto).

Why does infidelity seem worse than shopping at The Gap? Because it's a conscious choice, for one. Those who remain oblivious to the human cost of their comfort can be accused of apathy at worst. Adulterers are more purposeful in their flirtation with (and seduction of) disaster. Then there's the "indulgence" angle. Covering one's ass is a necessity (albeit not in stain-resistant microfiber). The rewards of infidelity are pure decadence... vulgar luxuries of the worst stripe.

Or are they?

---

Infidelity Lesson #7 : minimizing the importance of [love / sex / affection / companionship / compatibility] in your relationship is a damned good way to ensure that it metastasizes into something hugely important later on down the line.

I’m sorry for so many reasons. Committing grand larceny of the romantic sector. Violating the trust of an innocent party. Letting my various "issues" overgrow, snaking out tendrils while I hid behind a gauzy curtain of pleasure.

Do I regret it? Do I view it as a stupid accident? Do I think for a second that it was preventable? No, no and no. If I’ve learned nothing else, it’s that patience and moral fortitude alone are not enough to soothe certain aches.

May you never ache that deeply. May you never need so ravenously. May you never have to choose between your principles and your sanity.

It’d be an exaggeration to say that he saved my life... although during several pitch-black nights of the soul, he was the mini-Maglite which held me over 'til morning. He was a friend, a confidante, a voice of reason, and an ideal psychological sounding board. Because of him, I'm a little stronger, a little saner. I have a slightly-clearer idea of what I want from my relationships and my life. My MP3 collection has been greatly enriched. I am much, much better in bed.

"I want a boyfriend-lite. Or maybe a lover-deluxe," I told him shortly after we met. That may've been coyness on my part... but I got all of that, and immeasurably more.

His wife got betrayed.

She'll never find out. How do I know? I just do, implicitly. The layer of abstraction disturbs me. I'm not sure if it makes the crime less odious, or if it only makes it seem that way. Was it like swiping CDs from Best Buy... or like slipping the ortolan a Valium before going to town on it? It was neither of these, and nothing else I can analogize, either.

It was, as you might imagine, complicated.

He had needs. I had needs. I'm not going to diminish them via description... "Sex" can have a million and a half connotations. "Companionship" and "affection", when absent for sufficient time, can produce the kind of bone-deep, screaming cravings usually associated with narcotics. One can withdrawal from all sorts of things... and that itch, that maddening fucking itch, is always present.

I was uniquely suited to scratch his. He excelled at scratching mine. There was never any question of him leaving his wife - he was clearly in love, albeit a darker and more complicated form of it than is typical. I managed to keep my feelings trimmed back to a bonsai-like level of manageability. One does not endure a lifetime of frustrated crushes without acquiring a few useful skills. It was a contradiction in terms: a cautious, carefully-controlled leap into lustful abandon. We knew damned well what we were doing.

But. And yet. However. Of fucking course.

We didn't discuss the "other" activities... we were so comfortable with one another that they just naturally blossomed. We'd steal long, conversation-packed lunches together whenever possible... chicken fingers and Immanuel Kant. We'd e-mail each other our favorite new songs. We'd send late-late night text messages, wryly bemoaning the state of our [bar / party / apartment / life]. We were, indeed, lovers deluxe, super-plus, with a side of fries and burgeoning tenderness.

It wasn’t guilt which separated us, although there had been the occasional shame-fueled stab at moral conduct. It wasn’t discovery – as stated, his wife didn’t (and won’t) find out. It wasn’t that things grew dull – one of the lurid little pleasures of infrequent liaisons is that the excitement retains a Twinkie-like shelf life.

It was the exact same thing which had driven us together – complacency.

When you’re scratching an itch, you’re thinking about how fantastic it feels, how long you can keep it going. The one thing you’re generally not considering is, "Gee... why was I so itchy in the first place?"

That’s the paradox of infidelity. As long as you’re getting those needs fulfilled elsewhere, you’re not addressing their original absence. Why deal with the unpleasantness of confronting deep, potentially-catastrophic problems which could blow apart your marriage? Why bother opening yourself up, making yourself emotionally-vulnerable, getting back on the horse than threw you... dating someone with whom things could get – dun dun DUN! - Serious? It’s warm and cozy in this bed, and we could keep our heads under the blanket for a long, long time. There’s fiddling while Rome burns, and there’s fiddling around while your not-entirely-satisfactory lives remain stagnant.

Perhaps it’s due to my own moral relativism. However, that revelation produced more shame than the initial transgression. We were using this betrayal as a pool float, paddling in place. While nothing excuses infidelity, magma-hot passion comes a damned sight closer than "maintaining the status quo". When doing something that could be described as "morally reprehensible", you desperately want it to mean something. Eating the ortolan seems all the more heinous when you do it casually, washing blood sacrifice down with diet Dew.

We agreed to part ways for a year. The arbitrary-separation idea was derived from Richard Linklater’s sweetly romantic "Before Sunrise"; our reasons were sadder and more pragmatic. "All those doubts and problems," I said, "Everything that’s wrong, everything we’re hiding from... we need to confront it. Beat the living hell out of it."

"Same time, next year?" I said, angrily swiping at my tears, "If neither of our lives have changed at all, you have my permission to kick my goddamned ass."

I miss my friend. I miss the various illicit deliciousnesses we shared. But a little part of me hopes that neither of us show up next year... that we’ve confronted our problems, righted wrongs, inched closer to self-awareness. We’ve gone mano a mano with remorse and forgiveness. We’re finally sated... sans any telltale feathers.

TO BE CONTINUED...

The Infideli-Diaries - Pt. II

Pt. I / Pt. II / Pt. III / Pt. IVa / Pt. IVb

not for vision understood
burns because it has to burn
change'll happen whether we
are still or moving
breathe in waves of doubt
bitter in your mouth

- Toad the Wet Sprocket, "Little Heaven"

Infidelity Lesson #4 : let's say a troubled relationship is like a mouse. It's taken over your house, it's gorged itself on cake mix and Ramen noodles, it's left odious little pellets in its wake. It's making you miserable. It must be addressed.

You could use poisons, traps or barriers.

You could sulk, you could cry, you could talk.

Or you could use the Amorphous Atom Bomb.

The Amorphous Atom Bomb is invisible. It changes position more frequently than a porn star. It has a fuse of indeterminate length; it could go off in two minutes or in two years. It could wipe out your intended target, half a city block… or nothing at all.

Not a good tool for taking down a furry, walnut-sized nuisance, is it?

It's not a good tool for taking down a relationship, either.

---

We're parked in front of our apartment. It's late, really late. Outside, crickets cheep and streetlights glow. Periodically, tractor trailers rumble by and rock our tiny Volkswagen like a German-engineered cradle.

Inside, bombs are dropping.

"Why are you always so unhappy, Jul? Why do you seem like you hate yourself? And why won't you just talk to me? Please… talk to me?" My husband rests his hand on my thigh, looks me dead in the eye and waits. And waits. And waits.

Like all couples, we've got a hit parade of common arguments. Your Laundry-Avoidin' Heart, It's The End of Eating Anywhere But Applebee's As We Know It (And I Feel Gassy). This particular one (She's Suicidally Depressed In Mysterious Ways) has been cropping up with increasing frequency, however. And unlike lesser tunes, it's poised to hit #1 with a bullet.

"You want to know why? You really want to know?"

"Yes! Jesus, Jul… I love you, I don't want you do be miserable… of course I do!"

"A few months after we started dating… I slept with somebody else."

When he responds, my husband's voice is totally flat. Tears, rage, vicious words… anything, anything would be better than the deadness with which he breaks the silence. "Really."

Until this moment, tears had trickling down my face at a leisurely pace, the stream easily dabbed up with a sleeve. I'd also been steadfastly avoiding eye contact. "Yeah," I say, looking up, "Really." As I'm speaking, my voice cracks… then the floodgates do.

I'm sobbing, shaking, howling, curled up like a comma on my sticky leather seat. My husband holds me as best he can, strokes my hair and tries to calm me. He hasn't always been a great husband. I (obviously) haven't always been a good wife. Years later, as our marriage crumbles around us, years of mutual doubts and resentments will come to the surface. Delusions and illusions will fall, and the overall mediocrity of our match will become apparent. However, we'll each retain our moments of pride… briefly transcendental bursts of kindness and compassion.

This is one of them… perhaps the quintessential one. There are pet names, special dinners, surprise parties... and then there's hugging the person who just tossed a grenade in your living room, blowing everything you know to smithereens.

When I have been sufficiently calmed, we fire up the GTI and drive, aimlessly, cruising in a haze of sodium-arcs and tears. We drive and drive and talk and talk. Some details are divulged (it was a one-night stand with a coworker; copious quantities of alcohol were involved). Others are omitted (it was the most exciting thing which had happened to me in a long, long time; with each verboten kiss, pleasant shock and self-loathing battled for space in my head). Only once do we venture close to the true heart of the issue… and, bright young things that we are, we scurry away immediately.

"The thing that really hurts is that you felt like you had to keep a secret from me for half a fucking decade." His voice isn't accusatory… just exhausted, incredulous. "Why? Why couldn't you talk to me?"

I stare out the window. Gas prices are going up again. Home Depot is a giant orange monolith against the night sky. I have no answers… nothing but a swirl of Lovecraftian emotions, immense, unbelievably frightening and lurking just below the surface.

I couldn't talk to you because you don't understand me, and I don't understand you. Because we're radically different people. Because I knew it from the very beginning, but couldn't manage to summon up sufficient balls to end things before I fell in love with you. Because one of the main reasons we're together today – sitting in a Home Depot parking lot, awkwardly crying and cuddling and bumping our elbows on the stick shift – is because I've spent the past five years trying desperately to atone.

Because one of the major reasons I wanted to get married was for absolution… to shoehorn myself into the role of ever-faithful wife.

Because a few years back, a friend gave me some high-grade Ecstasy, a cavalcade of neurological bliss in a tiny foil packet. I wound up tossing it in the trash. I was terrified of "becoming more confessional".

Because it wasn't a moment of blind, overpowering lust. It was an escape attempt. And if the thought of leaving our dull little comfort zone was scary then… it's a thousand times worse now. We're bonded. We're married. And I'm –

I sigh, a shuddery exhalation of defeat. "I'm sorry. I can't. I just can't."

---

Infidelity Lesson # 5 : every infidelity is like a Jerry Bruckheimer movie... it features a well-delineated Before, During and After. You'll spend a good deal longer than 90 minutes reviewing them in your head. Odds are, they'll be a lot more painful than action-packed. As far as Aerosmith-heavy soundtracks go?... we're only addressing forgivable sins here, people.

Don't waste too much time on the After. It's boring. It's predictable. And it's immutable. Afterwards? You'll feel guilty. In some cases, it will be inordinate, debilitating guilt. In others, it will be nothing more than uncomfortable twinges at the periphery of your conscience. Regardless, it will be your burden to bear. Confession is good for one's soul like grand larceny is good for one's wallet - you're forcing someone else to foot your bill. Bearing a painful, shameful secret is difficult - and probably the single-best way to ensure you don't rack up any more of them. As the late, lamented Sherlock Holmes put it, "The example of patient suffering is in itself the most precious of all lessons to an impatient world."

As far as Before? You'd better examine Before like a long-lost Talmudic text. It's important to know why it happened - and not solely to "make sure it never happens again". Contrary to what the Moral Majority (and the moralizing enormity) may believe, cheating is not like washing a red crayon with the white laundry – a thoughtless, simple error, easily preventable in the future. Doing morally-objectionable things is painful. Not really understanding why is infinitely worse.

How did it happen? Why? What factors were present? What facets of life were lacking? It's a question of developing sufficient self-respect, self-awareness and courage to fully face your own motivations. Successfully resisting temptation is small comfort if the temptation occurs again and again and again. Grappling with mutant, super-sized self-loathing is worthless without an equally-intense tussle with introspection.

Fear might keep you from ever touching the flame again.

But it won't explain why you reached out your hand in the first place.

And then there's the illicit, explicit, oft-overlooked During...

TO BE CONTINUED...

The Infideli-Diaries - Pt. I

Pt. I / Pt. II / Pt. III / Pt. IVa / Pt. IVb

"Why would I sabotage / the best thing that I have?
Well it makes it easier / to know exactly what I want"
- Snow Patrol, "Hands Open"

Infidelity Lesson #1 : love, sex, affection and trust are like Legos. They can fit together in a million permutations, or not at all. And when heedlessly trod upon, they hurt like an injection-molded bitch.

If the scornful prognostications of those more moral than I are true, I'm in for a lifetime of romantic misery. My actions have bought the ticket; all that remains is to brace myself for the ride. It's gonna be rough. My jaw will clench, my vertebrae will clatter and my heart will never, ever reach a place of comfort and quiet. I will - god help me - eat alone. Tears and Lean Cuisines, my friends. Tears and Lean Cuisines.

I've been on all three sides of the apocryphal love triangle. I've cheated. I've been cheated upon. And I've been a cheater's cohort.

I'll pause to let you gather stones. Igneous have good gouging potential, while sedimentary are delightfully abrasive. Use this handy rhyme to remember: "Lava-borne? Razor-sharp scorn! From a stream? Bitch, get your Bactine."

I'm the last person you'd expect to be a veteran of the Circus Adulterous. My parents have been happily married for decades (despite the occasional urges to fling cast-iron cookware at each other). Fidelity was an oft-touted virtue in our household, along with "taking a deep breath and counting to ten before whipping a skillet at your partner's big stupid head". My previous menage a monogamy (with The Artist Formerly Known as Mr. Thumbscrews) lasted for a not-unimpressive seven years. "Love triangle"? I'm awful at geometry. I'm even worse at flirting. I have a fairly well-developed moral code, I strive for kindness... hell, I donate money to Planned Parenthood and local LGBT support groups (I like to call it the "Make George W. Bush's Head Explode Like an Overstuffed Pinata Combo Platter").

Infidelity Lesson #2: those who haven't experienced infidelity can't really understand it. Those who have experienced infidelity DEFINITELY can't understand it. Situations involving strong emotion and stronger physical urges are among the messiest imaginable. We may be animals, but we're animals with big, complication-causing prefrontal cortices. For us, even "simple" lust tends to sprawl, fractal-like, into a web of implications, ambiguities and consequences.

This slightly-sordid sexual history could've been the province of almost anyone. Could've - but improbably enough, it belongs to me... someone so socially-stunted that I really ought to scribble "MAKE EYE CONTACT, YOU JACKASS" on the tops of my shoes. I've dipped my toes in the Thames of cheating, and I've flung myself in, headfirst and fully clothed (er... perhaps that's a poor metaphor). Some of my experiences have been unintentional. Some have been horribly deliberate. Some worked out for the best. I'm no longer angry that my (now) ex-husband cheated; the ramifications of that particular act of adultery have been surprisingly positive. Hell, sometimes I feel like buying he and the Future Second Mrs. Jul's Ex a steak dinner out of sheer gratitude. Other experiences, however, have been profoundly negative - moments of spontaneity which resulted in unrelenting shame, bad decisions which led to years of even-worse ones.

There's a damned good reason it's called a "checkered past". Some spots have been black indeed - dangerous little sinkholes of remorse and self-loathing. Others have been transcendentally wonderful. Infidelity is a messy, crowded scene... and sometimes, total surprises pop out from between all the sharp corners and precariously-balanced objects. One expects physical bliss - or at least hopes for it in one's humid little imagination. But compassion, friendship, insight, personal growth? These things aren't probable, but they're possible - and all the more precious, given their imperfect origins.

Daisies from cracked pavement... and existential gratification through moral transgression. I may pay a karmic price for my actions. Some might argue that my recent series of atrocious first dates is merely the beginning, the first circle of interpersonal hell. And - unless the inner circles involve flensing knives and/or couple's therapy - I can accept this.

Guilt? Fuck yes, I've got guilt. I've knowingly betrayed trust. I've been cavalier with people, tossing hearts from hand to hand like snowglobes.

Regret? Now that's trickier.

Infidelity Lesson #3:

Once a cheater... not always a cheater.

But you're not as morally unimpeachable as you think.

Your partner? Definitely not as morally unimpeachable as you think.

There are lessons to be learned in the sleaziest of forums.

There is (sometimes) a squirmy, uncomfortable beauty in the most atrocious of actions.

Learn from your mistakes.

Don't leave the same scars twice.

Don't do things solely to collect stories.

Don't hesitate to tell the stories you already have.

After all... you weren't alone then. And you're definitely not alone now.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Better Or Verse - "#8"

Of course you can live here
No one's afraid of you
Little muddy crookedness
Shifting down a
Shimmering silken straightness
Working over a
Mesh to which our good luck sticks
String streamers 'cross our ceiling

A tiny James Bond
Rappelling around
In exoskeletal glory

A small Gothic life
We've welcomed to ours
Stay; scare the hell out of the dark.

Happy (Belated) 2nd Birthday, J.Q.

"Take Your Child to Work Day" needs to be immediately followed by "Take a Nice Slug of Scotch and a Protracted Nap Day".


He's in love with language; his demands, cajolings and jokes are all made in five- and six-word sentences. The way in which he describes his world is heart-crushingly cute... a flashlight is a "make-sun". Dandelion heads are "bubbles" (because they're round and you blow on them). He is a master of metonymy; he requests sips of soda with a plaintive, "J.Q. dwink it gwown-ups peeeeeeeeease!" This is due to my incessant refrain of, "No, baby... Diet Coke is for grown-ups." However, it sounds wonderfully vampiric; the next time he busts out "dwink it gwown-ups" in public, I may respond with a sinister, "Yessss... drink it, my pretty... DRINK IT DRY!"

He's the most adaptable kid I've ever met. He went from a conventional nuclear family to a 50-50 joint custody arrangement and didn't bat an eye. He doesn't cry while being handed off... he's too busy lurching towards his other parent, grinning and yelling, "Hug! Hug! Huuuuuug!"

His eyes are brown AND blue.



He's had his share of Category-5 meltdowns, but it's clear even as he's rending his tractor-printed vestements that he doesn't want to be tantruming. He's readily distractable; "J.Q. HOLD IT SCISSORS J.Q. HOLD IT SCISSORS J.Q. HOLD IT SCISSORS J.Q. HOLD IT SCISSORS WAAAAAAH!" can be nipped in the bud by a can of squishy Play-Doh goodness or an acapella rendition of "Dazed and Confused".

He's recently developed a pretty intense case of stranger anxiety. While I feel for him, I also secretly enjoy how he darts behind my leg and clutches my hand. Wide-eyed, overall-clad and cowlicked, he looks like a 50's kid... I'm tempted to rename him Opie.

"J.Q. share it!" = "Give it to J.Q. RIGHT NOW, YOU HORRID BITCH!"

He troubleshoots. He can sit down with a toy for 45 minutes, taking it apart, putting it back together, rearranging it, making it 37% lighter and undetectable to commercial radar.

He loves crayons, but doesn't actually color. He methodically peels the wrappers off of each stick (occasionally thrusting one towards me and saying, "Start it, mama!")... then snaps them into the tiniest possible pieces. He am become J.Q., destroyer of Binney & Smith.

Two principles keep us happy:

1. Do as few things as possible which necessitate arriving somewhere on time, and
2. Do as few things as possible which must be completed in a fixed time span.

The everyday world is a source of immense wonder and joy. I'd like to keep it that way for as long as possible. He can dye his hair fuschia, he can go on the road with a kazoo-based Primus tribute band, he can come home in a patrol car after spray-painting "COACH MURPHY IS A DOOSHBAG!" on the side of the gym... but please, please, please, don't ever let that little electric glimmer in his eyes fade away.

He's learning proper names. He calls me "Joo-la." Very Star Trek. Joo-la, who has a third hand protruding from the base of her spine, clutching a baby wipe and nagging via telepathy... "COME TO YOUR PROGENITOR AND ALLOW HER TO CLEANSE YOUR COPIOUS NASAL DISCHARGE AT ONCE, YOUNG ONE! IT HAS BEEN ORDAINED!"

You love a one year-old for what they are. You love a two-year old for WHO they are.

I love you, kid.

You CAN Spell "Chicago" Without "WOO! TITS!", But Why Would You Want To? : Pt. I

1. Describe the recent, momentous Feral/'Screw Chicago-thon '07 via a Warren Zevon lyric.

"There ain't much to country livin' / Sweat, piss, jizz and blood."

Okay, okay... so that's the Warren Zevon lyric I use to describe EVERYTHING. It's the Kosher dill of lyrics - salty! Zesty! Penile!

Ahem.

Sweat : a goodly portion was produced whilst shaking our respective booties at the Abbey Pub. That's right. I got down with The Ferality, and you didn't (unless you are Jeff, in which case you did, and didn't it rock? WOO! TITS!). You can party all night long. You can rock it 'til the break of dawn. You can dance until your ass breaks free of its moorings, vacates your pants and slithers off in search of a more sedate host ("Come onnnnnnnnnnnnn, Southern Baptist!").

And yet it will be a mere shadow of the awesomeness with which we rocked out.

Um, "it" meaning your efforts to rock. Not your disembodied ass. Although a disembodied ass is pretty hilarious and awesome, as was the Chicago trip.

Piss : Feral's trip began on a disturbing note, with a fellow Red Line passenger committing an act of public whizzing egregious enough to shock even us. "And I come from Philadelphia, dude," I marvelled, "Public urination is like a form of greeting there."

Jizz : Unless you count "metaphorically jizzing self with excitement over meeting the fantabulous Feral", this was an entirely jizz-less trip. Which - sorry to dash the public's lurid dreams - my trips invariably are. I'm SHY, yo. My inability to think on my feet leads to a definite dearth of time on my back. While in Vegas last year, my homegirl Em's friend Steve regaled us with tales of his vacationary debauchery. "Well, first there was Morty," he reminisced, "... and then Ernesto...". "Well, fuck," said I, "Yet another reason to hate being straight and introverted. While you were sliding down the side of the Luxor pyramid on a trail of Astroglide, I was in my hotel room, gettin' freaky with Chinese takeout and a 'Law & Order' marathon."

Blood : there are those who argue that the best hangover cure is "the hair of the dog that bit you"... e.g. a little early-AM imbibing. But why stop at the hair, I ask? If that puppy is undisciplined enough to bite, BITE IT RIGHT THE FUCK BACK! This is the concept behind Blood Feast!, hangover cure par excellence. Take one extra-spicy Bloody Mary. Add one gargantuan helping of Irish breakfast, featuring the sangui-licious blood sausage. The morning after our Abbey revelry, Blood Feast! proved to be just the thing to soothe our ethanol-ravaged souls. Well, MINE. Feral was slightly squicked out. I don't see WHY... fried hog's blood?... Tabasco-laced vodka?... on top of a queasy tummy and aching head?... ummmn... wait a sec. I think I need some Saltines, yo.

2. Most Feral Activity, Solitary : eating cold deep-dish pizza. In bed. At 11 AM. While naked. And surfing online personals on my Blackberry ("Huh, 'PhilaGuy3478' says he likes 'down-to-earth gals'... I HAVE RED PEPPER FLAKES IN MY NAVEL! THAT DOWN-TO-EARTH ENOUGH FOR YA, BUDDY? Mwa ha ha!").

3. Most Feral Activity, Group : make no mistake, new frontiers WERE blazed in the field of basement alcohol consumption (that'd be consumption of alcohol while chillin' a basement, not consuming alcohol which was BREWED in a basement ["A heady bouquet, with hints of Tide and Parcheesi"]).

However, after admiring the Abbey crowd's inspired (though moronic) opening-act heckling, Feral and I spent the duration of the weekend heckling more or less everything in sight. Bad song on the radio? "FUCKYOU!" Trapped in interminable Chicago traffic? "FUCKYOU!" Disgusting, blood-centric breakfast? "FUCKYOU!"

Heckling a sausage? Now THAT is feral.

4. Least Feral Activity, Solitary : actually FOLDING the towel in my hotel room, rather than [flinging it on the floor/flushing it down the commode/setting it ablaze/twirling it above my head while shrieking, "WOOOOO TITS!"/and displaying said mammiferous protuberances], as well as only using it to mop up water, rather than [marinara sauce/Jim Beam/Skoal-flecked spittle/partially-masticated-worm-flecked tequila/evidence].

5. Least Feral Activity, Group : I've got two words for you: Shoe. Shopping. Cut us a break - we may be hardcore bad-asses (albeit hardcore bad-asses who have memorized the entire Dr. Seuss literary canon), but within each of us still beats the heart of a woman. A woman who requires shoes, goddamn it. I promise to rectify the damage by, oh, I don't know, belching the lyrics to "Baby Got Back" while scraping week-old taco dip off the carpet with a bottle opener shaped like a naked ass and imprinted with the words "BOTTOMS UP!!! KEY WEST 1998".

5. Cutest Thing Discovered Whilst in Illi-nwah... And Quite Possibly Ever : YOU MAY HAVE KNOWN... that the Feral-lings were adorable. BUT DID YOU KNOW... that they refer to Guided By Voices' Robert Pollard as "Bob"? HEE! It is cute enough to make one's heart explode right out of one's pericardial membrane like a grapefruit seed (albeit a gigantic, gory, life-sustaining one).

To Be Continued... We Do Not Buy the Drugs, But We DO Listen To Them; Jesus Fuck, What's With All the Fucking Soy, Do Midwesterners Really Enjoy Their Miso Or Something?; As Melancholy as Elliot Smith, As Hung Over as Paul Westerberg, On a Steve Miller Band-Style Big Ol' Jet Airliner : Goin' Home.

Double Feature : Co-Inky-Dink / Shiraz With a Shudder

1. The Devil On Miss 'Screw:

Remember back in the day, when George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord" netted his ass a lah-lah-lah-lawsuit from The Chiffons?

Remember how the judge issued a deeply cheesy verdict of "subconscious plagiarism"? "While Mr. Starr 's jacking of 'He's So Fine' may have been flagrant enough to put 'Chic'-swiping 7-11 bandits to shame, the court always thought he was the dreamiest Beatle and therefore rules that he did not do so ON PURPOSE"?

Okay. While I know you were all enthralled by this intellectual propert-astic anecdote, it was merely to provide a frame of reference.

Ringo Starr can make mistakes like that. Ringo, who presumably has a whole SWAT team of handlers working around the clock to prevent him from doing so ("Ahem, well, Mr. Starr, while Gevalia's offer of a free 10-cup coffee pot may seem to be a fiscally beneficial one, the board urges you to reconsider").

Which makes it slightly more understandable (although no less hilarious) that I recently managed to get me and my siblings emblazoned with the Underwood Potted Meat Devil:

(A friendly [if utterly horrified, and smacking at forearm while shrieking, "GETITOFFME!"] shout-out to Julie for this startling revelation.)

I whipped up the design on a Post-It one night. We all loved it. It was a moment of pure serendipity. Or so I thought.

Turns out I wasn't craving a powerful expression of sisterly love, but rather a fatty, hog-anus-laden snackie.

[Note: I still love my sister-tat, damn it. Potted meat? Not so much.]

---

2. Dear Jackass Date:

May I call you Jack?

Okay, I'm not sure what sort of mental picture of me you'd conjured up before our initial meeting. You'd seen photos of me (ones with minimal undereye circle Photoshopping, no less!). You'd enjoyed our witty e-mail banter. But okay, fine, so the Jul of your hopes and no-doubt humid dreams was NOT the Jul who came strolling up to you last week at Charming Local Taverna. It's not as though I misrepresented myself in any way, but perhaps you have some heretofore-undocumented neurological condition which may've resulted in your confusion. Would you like Oliver Sacks' number? How about a nice KICK in the sack?

There are ways to express disappointment, my lad. "Wow... thanks, Aunt Earlene! You must've worked REALLY HARD on this Carmen Miranda toilet paper roll-holder!" That? That's classy.

You, my erstwhile friend, are not.

I tried. I joked, I smiled, I made The Dreaded Eye Contact. I asked you questions about yourself, I slipped in subtle compliments and affirmations whenever possible. I was ON, enough to make Miss Manners commit a faux pas in her sensible little panties.

But YOU? You radiated disappointment. You conversed, but much like a celebrity being interviewed by a Muppet... with an eye-roll and a smirk, as if to say, "I'll play along, but JESUS, I can't believe I'm discussing the situation in Darfur with a pimped-out duvet cover."

When the waitress presented menus, you blurted, "No, no... just here for drinks." Ouchie.

Seconds after the check appeared, you flung a few bills on the table (I generally like to pay my own way, but if ever there were a time to say, "Fuck progressiveness", that'd be it), stood up and said, "Well, it was really nice to meet you... bye!"

I took a leisurely walk back to the Bachelorette Pad (it was seventy degrees out... I let nothing ruin a seventy-degree night). After giving it some thought, I fired off the following e-mail:

"Uh... wow. So THAT was awkward. Oh, well. Such things happen. Thanks for the drink. - Jul".

A few minutes later, you replied.

"Yep. They do. Best of luck. - Jack".

Back in the day, this would've resulted in a fury of self-loathing on my part, a torrent of bitter tears on my futon.

Fuck that shit.

So I'm not your physical cup of tea. That's okay. Everyone's got their preferences.

Like me. I'd have preferred to enjoy an hour or so of idle chit-chat, part ways amicably, then receive a "Sorry, just didn't feel anything click" e-mail a few days hence.

You apparently preferred to take the "make date feel monstrously uncomfortable and uncomfortably monstrous" route.

A pox on you. Literally and figuratively.

May you one day squirm as badly. May it last a good deal longer.

May you contract one of the itchier STDs.

May it not have even been that good.

May every man who has ever regarded my body as a source of things OTHER than disappointment - lust and pleasure, comfort and joy - band together and kick your fucking ass.

There are plenty of them. There's only one of you.

Your loss, asshole.

Writ In Ink

We've lived a combined total of 68 years.

There are few areas of the modern American female experience into which one us hasn't dipped her inquisitive little beak.

Our lives lend themselves to a Dr. Seussian level of grand abstraction.

We've gone here and there. Tried this and that (and that, and that, and definitely that). Felt this, that, the other, stop it right now, please don't let it end. We've loved, lost, obsessed, written bales of love letters, shrieked into telephones, hurled breakables, walked down the aisle with sweetly misguided intentions. We've indulged in questionable acts of both the legal and moral flavors.

We have gone away from one another. Crawled into fetid little burrows of alone. Did clumsy acrobatics on cliff-edges.

We are grateful - to life, ourselves and one another - that we've always returned. Sometimes voluntarily, sometimes cursing and kicking, fighting our extradition. Resisting our return to a biological and emotional inevitability, the only place we've ever consistently belonged - together.

Although our musical tastes tend to be infinitely more raucous, we abide by the Rickie Lee Jones Principle : if you fall, I'll pick you up (or, as J.Q. would put it, "Peekyu UP!").

I love you guys.

Weapons of Choice

1. Optimism.
2. Wit.
3. Photoshop.

G'ahead, mouseover... and see "Meticulously-Groomed First-Date Jul" transform into "Kindly Fuck Off And Let Me Take a Nap Jul."

[And this was an amateurish 15-minute job... NOW do you know why the ladies gracing the cover of Vapid Twat Digest don't look a thing like you or I? Hint: it's not because some people are magically born without any pores.]

UPDATE : check out the best example I've ever seen of retouching wizardry. I wanna live in a magazine, yo. Trenchant social commentary, all the free perfume samples you can shake a 0.0001 oz. atomizer at... PLUS a team of geeks ready to Dodge, Burn, Multiply and Pattern Fill you to maximal hotness.

The 'Screw Interview : Call & Response

Oh, I still exist, alright... take THAT, oblivion! As promised, here are my answers to The 'Screw Interview.

1. You can travel back in time and visit yourself at [select all applicable] 10, 16, 22 and 30. What would you tell your various temporally-disjointed selves (any hokey "buy stock in Microsoft" replies will be taken out back and accused of antitrust violations)?

10 : you're not brilliant and misunderstood - you're a painfully awkward little girl who really needs to learn how to relate to her peers rather than dishing up a toxic combo platter of fear and disdain.

16 : see above. Also : You're two years younger than your fellow college freshmen. You have a 4.0 GPA. Don't do something stupid like drop out. Pierce your uvula, date the lead singer of a thrash-klezmer band, become a macrobiotic vegan and subsist on sustainably-harvested plankton... but pretty please, with sugar on top... don't drop out.

22 : see above. Also : on August 1st, at approximately 1:30 AM, remember to conceive your son. You'll be terrified at first, but he'll turn out to be a tremendous joy, a gorgeous, sweet, hilarious, revelatory baby, a live wire in footie pajamas. You might want to consider leaving your husband, too… one need not pour it over Wheaties to tell that THAT particular carton of milk has already begun to turn.

Assuming that my words wouldn’t be capable of altering my past selves’ respective courses of action? “You can (and will) experience (and endure) more than you ever thought possible.”

2. Analogy Tyme: if your drug of choice was an item which could be purchased at Home Depot for under $150, which one would be be, and why?

(Ed. Note: there seemed to be some confusion over this one... I meant to pick your ACTUAL favorite drug, then analogize it to a Home Depot item, i.e. "A rototiller, because the dark, impenetrable ditches they produce are eerily similar to the ones gouged in your conscious mind by good ol' veterinary anesthetics").

Ahem.

A Roto-Zip, complete with 30 attachments ("drilling", "gouging", "impassioned shredding", "diamond-cutting", "piping gel-applying", "marital aid", etc). It's dirt cheap and useful in a myriad of situations. And its sleek, injection-molded carrying case makes the user appear WAY sexier than they otherwise would (okay, okay, that one may be a stretch).

3. You can reanimate and spend several hours (say, sharing some Batter-Dipped Choco-Cheesecake Nibblers at the local crap-on-the-walls chain restaurant) with one of the following individuals - which one would you choose, and why?

- A deceased relative of whom you were moderately (but not overwhelmingly) fond.
- A randomly-selected serial killer of moderate notoriety.

Serial killer all the way!

- My family has something of an obsession with serial killers. I have many fond memories of staying up late and watching true-crime shows with my mom... nothing says "togetherness" like a grainy photo of a drainage ditch and a narrator grimly intoning, "... unfortunately for Officer McCloskey, there were STILL MORE fragments of prostitute remaining to be found!"

- I'd be very curious to see which appetizers a serial killer would order... mega-fries (because they're slathered in ketchup)? Chicken wings (because consuming them entails gnawing flesh away from bone)? Riblets (because their preparation involves both harming an animal AND setting something on fire, two components of the Serial Killin' Trifecta [the third is "bed-wetting", but that doesn't go nearly as well with ranch dressing]).

4. Think of your most esoteric, potentially-humiliating sexual fantasy. Think of another, equally-odd (but completely fabricated) fantasy. Describe them both without identifying which is which.

A. I am sitting on the [bus/train/hovercraft], staring into space and wondering if there is some way to combine the deliciousness of mu shu pork with the convenience of Go-Gurt. Just as I’m thinking “Huh, is the name ‘Mu-Tube’ copyrighted?”, the deeply hot gentleman who has been sitting next to me casually shifts his coat onto my lap, slides his hand beneath it, up my leg and under my sensible little Anne Taylor skirt. I neither smack his hand away nor give any outward indication that something is amiss. After a singularly lurid commute, I get up, straighten my disheveled garments and depart without a word.

B. Due to an unfortunate travel mix-up, my trip to Huitzilopochtli Aztec Resort & Spa does not take place. Instead, I find myself stranded among the members of an isolated tropical village, the pervy proclivities of whom make bonobo monkeys look like Morrissey. I am warmly welcomed. Very warmly. The next few weeks are spent cavorting with villagers, handcrafted representations of the lustier tribal gods, sufficiently underripe plantains, etc. Eventually, the state department arrives and spirits me away via helicopter. A single tear trickles down my face as I watch my randy hosts fade into the distance. My state department liaison gives me a sympathetic look, takes my hand in his and says, “Hey… ever done it in an emergency rescue craft?”

5. What is the typical prison sentence for the most legally-questionable act you've ever committed?

Most likely a year or two... nothing terribly titillating and/or reprehensible. Carried a tiny packet containing Unnamed Controlled Substance in my wallet for a few weeks, during which I crossed state lines and visited federal property (not to mention "redefined freaking stupid"). I spent a number of years living with men, so I could've conceivably been co-implicated in a few pieces of boyfriendish stupidity (discharge of unlicensed firearms on private property, the ownership of certain pieces of highly questionable Adult Material, etc). Probably nothing I couldn't have cried my way out of in front of a sympathetic judge.

6. Think of the worst physical pain you've ever experienced (childbirth, ping-pong ball-sized kidney stones, atomic wedgie). Think of the worst emotional pain (depression, divorce, disaster). Think of the person who is closest to you in the world (child, spouse, sibling). You must decide whether they will suffer a comparable degree of physical OR emotional pain. If you choose the former, you will be required to inflict it yourself. If you choose the latter, it will occur without any involvement on your part. Which do you choose?

Physical... definitely. The worst physical pain I've ever felt lasted for seven hours. When it was over, it was over (I ate a pulled pork sandwich, admired my new baby and nagged the nurse to please remove the godforsaken IV). The worst emotional pain lasted for months. Aspects of it still continue to float around my subconscious... phantom wasps, capable of stinging at any moment, sans motivation or provocation. And if J.Q.’s life is half as interesting as I hope it will be, odds are he’ll endure plenty of emotional anguish along the way.

7. You're granted the power to uncover the truth behind one very, very big secret of the modern age - who shot Kennedy? What the hell is the deal with celebrity Scientologists? You will not be permitted to share this knowledge with anyone, ever - it will be solely to satisfy your own curiosity. What do you choose to learn?

Vis a vis big secrets. a few years ago, a friend and I watched “Lost in Translation”. After it ended, I wanted to curl up into a small sphere of hominid and weep for the rest of my natural life, ideally while ethereal indie rock played in the background. My friend, however, was focused on more important matters. “But what did he SAY to her at the end?” he whined, “I really want to know! It’s not fair to leave us hanging like that!” He was unswayed by my repeated protestations of, “That wasn’t the POINT! And why aren’t you sobbing?” Finally, I came up with the perfect answer… wait for it… wait for it… “He told her what was in the briefcase in ‘Pulp Fiction’.”

If I could uncover one non-MacGuffin secret, though, it would have to be “What is the physiological basis for ESP?” I have no doubt that humans possess sensory capabilities not currently acknowledged or understood by medical science. However, I don’t think these abilities are bestowed upon us by mystical/crunchy-granola forces. I think there is a very real scientific basis for them. Our rods and cones enable us to view the world, our cochleae enable us to rock the hell out… but what allows us to see without seeing?

8. While purchasing some plantains at Tienda Mexicano, you find The Lord. You discover that he is a cruel, arbitrary Lord, as well as one who has read entirely too many "Choose Your Own Adventure" books. He takes you outside, sits you down on the hood of his El Camino, hands you a can of Jugo de Coco and informs you that you will never see any of your current loved ones again. They will continue to live their lives, just magically sans any awareness of your continued existence. By way of compensation, you'll be allowed to determine your own natural lifespan. You may elect to die instantly, live to 120 or any option in between. What do you choose? Why?

Assuming I didn’t lapse into hysterical grief at being forever separated from my child… I’d live to be 120. It wouldn’t be as though my loved ones had died - armed with the knowledge that they were living their lives as per usual, I’d do my damndest to survive and thrive. I’d try to embrace the opportunity to start anew, to begin accumulating new memories, new experiences, new relationships.

9. You are given the opportunity to sample human flesh. Your enjoyment of this unusual entree will not be the result of any amoral acts - the source of your Bruce Burger (Tim Tartare? Francois Filet?) will be an individual who has died of unrelated causes. Your consumption of said flesh will not be as a result of starvation, nor as a condition of some sick wager ("Take a chomp out of Lloyd's thigh and I'll give you season tickets to Six Flags Over Highly Unlikely Transactionville"). Yea or nay?

Yea all the way. It’s not something I actively WANT to ingest… but I have a very, very difficult time turning down the opportunity to try anything new and/or novel. My id could best be described as Andrew W.K. (warning! simulated gore!) crossed with Charles Bukowski crossed with Evel Knievel - all gleeful, drunken daredevilishness. And as far as good bar stories go, “… that time I engaged in cannibalism” beats almost everything else, save perhaps “… that time with the identical-triplet strippers in the stolen Popemobile.”

10. You are given a Memory Dustbuster. It looks like a regular Dustbuster, circa 1989. However, when held against the human skull, it has the ability to suck out specific memories. Like many small appliances, this one has gotten a bit finicky in its old age. It no longer removes single memories... for each one which is removed, an equal-but-opposite second memory is also vacuumed up. You can suck out a particularly awful recollection... however, you'll also lose a happy memory of comparable intensity, and you have no say in which one it happens to be.

Do you use this device? How many times?

Nope... no question on this one. I'm grateful for everything I've had a chance to experience... good to awful, incredibly strange to unexpectedly content.

11. The Enormous Glowing Sphere of Influence Equation: how many of the following events have occurred in your life for which you've felt personally responsible? By this, I mean that the event in question would definitely NOT have occurred were it not for one or more conscious decisions on your part. Do NOT include events which were confined strictly to your professional life - thus, lawyers/doctors/matchmakers/executioners/etc. should use their discretion on this one.

- Marriages (1... a number which may increase at some nebulous future point. You never know when Gerard Depardieu might face deportation and require some wacky hijink-laden assistance to remain in the good ol' US of A!)

- Divorces (1... can I get a "booyah!"?)

- Births/adoptions (1, a number which is very unlikely to increase. I love J.Q. more than life itself, and I love parenting him. "Parenting" and "further children", in concept? Not so much).

- Deaths (0... not even Death of a Salesman (too talky), Death By Chocolate (too gooey) or Death Cab For Cutie ("You Will Be Loved" too likely to make me burst into hysterical, exterior AND interior garment-rending tears. You've never ripped off your panties in abject sorrow? Well, lah dee dah for YOU!]).

- Involuntary commitments (mental institution/rehab/prison) (0... have had the opportunity to do so - took a pass each time. Just doing my part to contribute to entropy).

- Relocations of over 1,500 miles (0... two 800-mile jaunts, plus seven or eight local moves, genus "let us express our incredible dumbness NOT by muttering 'duh, duh' or running while clutching shish-kebab skewers, but by boxing up everything we own and hauling it up and down several flights of stairs in the blistering sun!").

- Ascension to a level of fame/renown/power sufficient to interest/impact more than 10,000 individuals. (1/0). That's "one OR zero", not a divide-by-zero error, the bane of my tech-supportin' existence. Microsoft Excel, while a fine spreadsheet application indeed, has the eerie ability to convince users that logical impossibilities are not only possible, but should've been possible FIVE MINUTES AGO WHEN THIS REPORT WAS DUE DAMN IT. If I never again utter the words, "Okay, so if you divide FIVE apples by ZERO apples, you get what? You can't? Yes, that's right, and neither can Excel!"... it will be too soon.
Ahem... according to my trusty Sitemeter, Thumbscre.ws itself may count... but I'm wondering if the caveat "level of MILD interest, as a result of poop joke-telling prowess" should remove this one from contention).

- Change in income level of +/- 50% (1... my own. I started working at Indentured Servicorp Discount Tech Support when I was seventeen. As it turned out, they would make my life utterly miserable... however, they paid a bit more than the local Gefilte 'n Chips franchise, my OTHER employment option. After getting the job (but before getting a nice dose of soul-crushing), I bounced back home like a methamphetamine-crazed Tigger, yelling, "OH MY GOD, I CAN AFFORD NAME-BRAND RAMEN NOW!" The following eight years brought a marked improvement in my circumstances (and dinner selections).

12. An exercise in writing, randomness and self-reflection (when commenting/posting, only include item "C"):
A. In exactly 25 words, describe the thing you're proudest of.
B. In exactly 25 words, describe the thing you're most ashamed of.
C. Combine the odd-numbered words from A. with the even-numbered words from B.

I’ve is much fine and between but selfishness sense the humor which and on to and well not myself on others right survived of grown.

Half Jewish and Wholly Dumb

[Note: there is still time to complete The 'Screw Interview. Um, all the time in the world, actually. It ain't goin' nowhere. Just DO IT, goddamn it! I was hoping to get at least ONE affirmative response to the cannibalism question!]

I am imperceptive at best, oblivious at worst. To-do lists, fantasies, 80's song lyrics and muffin recipes flit around my head like fairies from the Magical Kingdom of Cluelessness. I walk into signs. I fall up stairs. Informed of an imminent natural disaster, I'd probably chirp, "ROCK YOOOOOU LIKE A HURRICANE! Oh. Um, better nail up some plywood, then."

Today may very well have taken the cake, though.

I stayed inside all day, diligently studying for an upcoming round of standardized testing goodness. As the sun set, I grew weary of psychology. I believe my exact words were something along the lines of "Oh, go sit and spin on your goddamned hierarchy of needs, Maslow!"

Thus, I hopped into the DecrepiCivic and zoomed off towards the Big Box-intensive side of town. Arriving at Best Buy, I was dismayed to find it closed. My disappointment mounted as I drove past IKEA, Target and Wal-Mart... all closed.

Driving back home, it finally hit me: "Oh, yeah. Easter. Thaaaaat thing." This despite the fact that my son spent yesterday consuming naught but Cadbury eggs (and transforming into a fondant-slathered little demon incapable of uttering anything beyond, "More chockit, WIGHT NOW!"). And the trip to mom's house... and the pastel decorations... and the large hunk of pineapple-studded swine on the table... it all made sense!

Ashamed at my own idiocy (and saddened that I would be unable to scratch my consumerist itch), I spent the ride home devising Easter-themed sales promotions, in order that stores might actually remain open on this intensely-holy day.

"Our Savior is risen... and so is the new Bacon-Cheddar baguette, only at Panera!"

"Christ busted out of the cave, and Southside Hyundai is BUSTING OUT THE SAVINGS!" *

I hope the Easter bunny isn't a vengeful holiday icon... if so, I'm getting a basket full of rabbit pellets next year.

* Credit for this must go to the illustrious Priscilla, preparer of world-class Easter baskets and beauteous blasphemy.

Audience Participation - The 'Screw Interview

One interview to rule them all, one interview to find them! One interview to bring them all, and in the naked self-confession bind them!

Okay, so I got lazy.

Have at it, peeps (and marshmallow chickies). If I get 15+ responses to the original survey, I'll post MY answers.

1. You can travel back in time and visit yourself at [select all applicable] 10, 16, 22 and 30. What would you tell your various temporally-disjointed selves (any hokey "buy stock in Microsoft" replies will be taken out back and accused of antitrust violations)?

2. Analogy Tyme: if your drug of choice was an item which could be purchased at Home Depot for under $150, which one would be be, and why?

3. You can reanimate and spend several hours (say, sharing some Batter-Dipped Choco-Cheesecake Nibblers at the local crap-on-the-walls chain restaurant) with one of the following individuals - which one would you choose, and why?

- A deceased relative of whom you were moderately (but not overwhelmingly) fond.
- A randomly-selected serial killer of moderate notoriety.

4. Think of your most esoteric, potentially-humiliating sexual fantasy. Think of another, equally-odd (but completely fabricated) fantasy. Describe them both without identifying which is which.

5. What is the typical prison sentence for the most legally-questionable act you've ever committed?

6. Think of the worst physical pain you've ever experienced (childbirth, ping-pong ball-sized kidney stones, atomic wedgie). Think of the worst emotional pain (depression, divorce, disaster). Think of the person who is closest to you in the world (child, spouse, sibling). You must decide whether they will suffer a comparable degree of physical OR emotional pain. If you choose the former, you will be required to inflict it yourself. If you choose the latter, it will occur without any involvement on your part. Which do you choose?

7. You're granted the power to uncover the truth behind one very, very big secret of the modern age - who shot Kennedy? What the hell is the deal with celebrity Scientologists? You will not be permitted to share this knowledge with anyone, ever - it will be solely to satisfy your own curiosity. What do you choose to learn?

8. While purchasing some plantains at Tienda Mexicano, you find The Lord. You discover that he is a cruel, arbitrary Lord, as well as one who has read entirely too many "Choose Your Own Adventure" books. He takes you outside, sits you down on the hood of his El Camino, hands you a can of Jugo de Coco and informs you that you will never see any of your current loved ones
again. They will continue to live their lives, just magically sans any awareness of your continued existence. By way of compensation, you'll be allowed to determine your own natural lifespan. You may elect to die instantly, live to 120 or any option in between. What do you choose? Why?

9. You are given the opportunity to sample human flesh. Your enjoyment of this unusual entree will not be the result of any amoral acts - the source of your Bruce Burger (Tim Tartare? Francois Filet?) will be an individual who has died of unrelated causes. Your consumption of said flesh will not be as a result of starvation, nor as a condition of some sick wager ("Take a chomp out of Lloyd's thigh and I'll give you season tickets to Six Flags Over Highly Unlikely Transactionville"). Yea or nay?

10. You are given a Memory Dustbuster. It looks like a regular Dustbuster, circa 1989. However, when held against the human skull, it has the ability to suck out specific memories. Like many small appliances, this one has gotten a bit finicky in its old age. It no longer removes single memories... for each one which is removed, an equal-but-opposite second memory is also vacuumed up. You can suck out a particularly awful recollection... however, you'll also lose a happy memory of comparable intensity, and you have no say in which one it happens to be.

Do you use this device? How many times?

11. The Enormous Glowing Sphere of Influence Equation: how many of the following events have occurred in your life for which you've felt personally responsible? By this, I mean that the event in question would definitely NOT have occurred were it not for one or more conscious decisions on your part. Do NOT include events which were confined strictly to your professional life - thus, lawyers/doctors/matchmakers/executioners/etc. should use their discretion on this one.

- Marriages
- Divorces
- Births/adoptions
- Deaths
- Involuntary commitments (mental institution/rehab/prison)
- Relocations of over 1,500 miles
- Ascension to a level of fame/renown/power sufficient to interest/impact more than 10,000 individuals
- Change in income level of +/- 50%
- Formal adoption/renunciation of religious faith (or other organized belief system)

12. An exercise in writing, randomness and self-reflection (when commenting/posting, only include item "C"):

A. In exactly 25 words, describe the thing you're proudest of.
B. In exactly 25 words, describe the thing you're most ashamed of.
C. Combine the odd-numbered words from A. with the even-numbered words from B

Better Or Verse - "Islamorada"

Perhaps [better/more experienced/more egomaniacal] writers aren't as afflicted by self-doubt. Perhaps they complete a piece, exclaim, "Aw, yeah! EAT IT, entire canon of Western literature!", then take an invigorating dip in a wading pool full of advance money.

As opposed to me. When I finish writing something, my first instinct is generally to print it out on heavyweight, 100% cotton bond paper... because that'll produce the biggest flames when I set the thing ablaze.

Every few years, however, I amaze myself by actually LIKING a recently-completed work. Occasionally, it's a technical memo (I laughed! I cried! I did not require a static IP address and thus skipped to step 9-C as directed!). If I'm lucky, it's something not quite as dry.

If it's the following poem, it's actually, um, rather damp.

This was written a few summers ago. I was going for e.e. cummings' "i like my body when it is with your" crossed with a painfully earnest note scrawled on looseleaf and poked in your crush's locker on the last day of school. And - holy flock of Christ! - I GOT something like that.

Hope you enjoy. And if you do, show your appreciation karmically. The next time you see your Special Guy/Gal sitting on the sofa, looking singularly bored with "Hitler's Wackiest Bloopers", slither into their lap and produce a little not-for-broadcast-television entertainment, why don'tcha?

"Islamorada"

float on little lust waves
on a crackle plasma sea
sweet jelly sting enveloping
rock and shell and salt-glazed skin
wet and thrill spark through me 'til
i go crashing 'cross the beach
like tidal force to you of course
i'm drawn and i'm your souvenir
my want in you like sand in shoe
my tongue like taffy on your teeth

Full Release

So, uh.... my divorce is final. According to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, I am "at liberty to marry again". I am also at liberty to stuff my belly button full of ground sirloin and go taunt a Doberman, but the Commonwealth will forgive me if I take a pass on both super-fun activities.

(I'm being disgustingly facetious here. The other day, I caught myself tearing up to - wait for it - "I'll Be", by Edwin McCain. How humiliating. I don't care if you were [wooed/engaged/married/freaked nasty] to "I'll Be"... it's still crap. It's the auditory equivalent of a CIA special-ops team... it materializes out of nowhere (in this case, immediately after "Freebird"), invades your ducts, forcibly extracts any tears present therein, then applies electrodes to their testicles. Um... wait. Tears don't have testicles. Except perhaps Chuck Norris's.

Point being: once again, Liz Phair is right. I DO want a boyfriend. I DO want all that stupid old shit, like letters and sodas.

Damn, I hope my boobs are nice enough to make up for my gun-shy disposition and stress-induced forehead wrinkle.

[Gives boob exploratory jiggle... hrmn. Not good enough to negate ALL emotional baggage, but good nonetheless. That'll do, tit. That'll do.]

On the left : the kind, compassionate and wonderful Menita has been there for me throughout the past year. I'm glad she was there with me when I received the news that my decree had arrived. And I'm REALLY glad she was holding a camera.

On the right : this is more representative of my mental state as of late. Introverted. Contemplative. Wistful. And kinda... rouge-tinted. Someone needs to bat the ever-present bottle of dye from my hand before I either go bald or start to resemble a bigger-titted Ron Howard.

The Ice Storm (Uh, Not The "Key Party" Kind)

Good : coworker poking their head into your office and saying, "What the hell are you still doing here? We're closing early!" Dewey Billem Fivehundredbucksanhour & Howe NEVER CLOSES EARLY. Not for snow, not for hurricane-force winds, not even for the time police found a bag of "mysterious white powder" at a local hotel (I can recall what it WASN'T [anthrax / ricin / Botulicious Neurotoxin 'n Shake Mix], but have no idea what it WAS [cornstarch? Gold Bond? A drug with some deliciously alluring "location/descriptor" nickname, like "China White" or "Poughkeepsie Fuck-You-Upper"?).

Not So Good : torrential sleet whipping into your face like icy buckshot. Philadelphians' inclement-weather driving techniques (screaming, "BUT IT HAS TRACTION CONTROLLLLLLLL!" as they skid across six lanes of traffic). Stepping in a puddle and feeling your Docs fill up with something remarkably akin to a Slurpee, only a lot less sweet and a lot more likely to make you scream expletives in the middle of Market Street.

Worse : "Wow, this came out of NOWHERE! It was pretty warm this morning! I even put the baby in a spring-weight jacket before I dropped him at daycare!... oh, crap."

---

Good : Baby's seasonally-inappropriate wardrobe means only one thing: agonizing guilt. Oh, screw that. It means BABY GAP TIME!

No So Good : Baby Gap employees not amused by intro line of, "So... who do I have to blow to get some heavily-discounted winter garments in here?"

Worse : struggling to hold a heavily-bundled toddler, a purse, a bag full of recently-procured Baby Gap goodness and a perpetually-inverting umbrella while being pummeled by aforementioned freezing rain.

Really Freaking Awful : one of those items can now talk.

J.Q. : "Cold, mama! Cold! Scary!"
Jul : "I know, J.Q., I know, mama is sorry, we'll be inside soon..."
J.Q. : "Soon!"
[After thirty more minutes of slogging through Hell on Ice]
J.Q. : "Inside... soon? Brrr!"
Jul : [affixes sign to toddler reading "FREE TO MORE COMPETENT PARENT", curls up on icy pavement and dies of guilt]

---

Good : hallelujah and pass the Annie's Cheddar 'n Tiny Semolina Anarchy Symbols, the market is OPEN!

Not So Good : the market contains yogurt raisins.

Worse : due to overwhelming parental guilt, by the time we reach the check-out, J.Q. ALSO contains yogurt raisins. All of them.

Really Freaking Awful : [the following morning] "It's WHITE?! What the - ? Oh, yeah... damned yogurt raisins."

---

Good : the kind, lovely and musically-discriminating Kateri provides us with Dylan-style shelter from the storm.

Not So Good : our shelter contains three children. By the time morning rolls around, one of these children will have crapped enough times to send Mr. Huggies' children to a very nice graduate school indeed. One of them will have experienced a "night terror"-style bad dream (complete with the type of bone-chilling screams capable of stopping the heart of every mother within a five-block radius). One of them will have decided that the ideal sleep position is "draped across nearest adult's face" and woken up in annoyance each time they were moved.

Worse : It's 10 AM. I'm exhausted. Kateri is exhausted. The previous night was harrowing enough to make even the bravest woman's Fallopian tubes spontaneously twist into tidy little knots. When J.Q. starts rooting around in my purse and chirping, "Makeup! Makeup!", neither of us feels motivated enough to stop him. Trust me, this will be important later.

---

Good : a sleepy and eyeliner-smeared J.Q. actually consents to ride in his sling.

Not So Good : he winds up riding in it for about an hour and a half, which is how long it takes us to get home (public transit, hurrah!).

Worse : [while rummaging in purse] "Why do all of my lipsticks have bite marks in them? And WHERE ARE MY KEYS?!"

But Not So Bad After All : we drive to New Jersey (my car keys being kept wisely separate from my house keys). J.Q. is spoiled rotten by his grandparents. I take a sojourn to the local Beauty Emporium Not Strictly Intended For Those of the Caucasian Persuasion and pick up a box of the reddest hair dye I've ever seen (I'm never going back to Lady Clairol... Creme of Nature rocked my lily-white ass). We all enjoy some vegan General Tso's. And Junket* is kind enough to replace my AWOL keys with fetching animal-printed ones. I'm trying to come up with a little saying to help me differentiate them... "Okay, so a CHEETAH would be capable of eating a DALMATIAN, so... oh, screw it").

* For this act of sisterly kindness, I am willing to forgive her for not agreeing that "LOCKSMITHS DO IT 'TIL YOUR PINS ALIGN AT THE SHEAR POINT" would be a good t-shirt.

Fool For a Client

One of my favorite aspects of my genetic heritage is the ability to hustle. It beats the hell out of "likelihood of developing Furby-sized malignancies" and "periodic desire to smear entire eastern seaboard with Nutella and devour it, in order that I might survive the harsh Siberian winter".

My paternal grandfather was by many accounts a cantankerous little bastard. He was stubborn, argumentative and hot-tempered. Had he been French, his ass would've been banished to Elba in a heartbeat. He was, however, Ukrainian, and used his unique form of cantankerous bastardry to help his family survive one of the blackest periods in that nation's history.

The great Ukrainian famine occurred from 1932-1933. It was not the result of natural causes, but rather the Soviet Union's agricultural collectivization campaign ("Together, we shall produce a wealth of grain for the motherland!... just not for you, or your kids, or anyone in your miserable little village"). Under the guidance of everyone's second-favorite insane mustachioed tyrant (ladies and gentlemen, "Genocidin' Joey" STALIIIIIIN!), millions of Ukrainians were displaced, starved or murdered. My grandfather, his wife and two small boys survived, eventually washing up in America (I'm sure dyeda would be immensely proud that his granddaughter is using her family's hard-won freedom primarily to make dick jokes on the Internet).

"How the hell did they survive?" I asked my father. "All those people were wiped out, but this tiny little dude and his entire family managed to make it?" "Your grandfather was... a hustler," my father explained, "He knew how to get things... and he knew people who knew how to get things."

I don't claim that my wiles even approach those of my grandfather. I doubt that I'd be able to single-handedly save my family from the horrors of Stalinist Russia. Hell, I can barely make it out of Target without getting hopelessly lost (and tempted to lure my meatier fellow patrons into sporting goods in order to cannibalize them). But I do see seem to have inherited a glimmer of my wee forebear's craftiness. I connive. I scheme. I fix what's broken. I may not know people who know how to get things ("Erm, excuse me, uh [peers at name tag], Jonathan? Do you happen to know where I might be able to get a jar of pickle spears to accompany Mr. Q-Tips and 12-Pack of Charmin over here?"). However, given sufficient time and Googling, there's very little I myself cannot obtain.

Including a divorce.

The average American divorce costs somewhere in the neighborhood of $5,000. And that's for a simple, uncontested case. For a more contentious split, the figures skyrocket.

My divorce cost about $250. A goodly portion of that was due to the fact that there was a 7-11 right next to the courthouse (Taquitos: official grease-scepter of the hungry litigant!). And how did you manage this, Jul?, you may or may not be asking. How did you sever the bonds of holy matrimony in a fair and expeditious fashion sans counsel? And what flavor were the Taquitos?

Jalapeno cream cheese, my friend. Jalapeno cream cheese.

Your Defensive Terrapin Style Is No Match For My Complaintive Mongoose Style! : Jul's In No Way Advisable Guide to Being Your Own Divorce Lawyer

You've heard the saying "All men want a virgin in the parlor and a whore in the bedroom"? Perhaps this is true. Perhaps it's misogynistic crap. However, when orchestrating one's own divorce, it is necessary to be a spitfire at the negotiating table and a total fucking idiot at the courthouse. Confused? Let me explain:

1. You do not pay a divorce lawyer to ensure an equitable dissolution of your marriage. You do not pay them to look out for your best interests.

You pay them to look stupid on your behalf.

I've ambled down to Family Court approximately 70,000 times over the past few months. I've come totally unprepared, and I've come hauling briefcases full of legal bad-assery.

The only thing which has made a goddamned bit of difference is my willingness to act like a total dipshit.

At first, I tried to play it cool. I had all the right forms. I had them signed, sealed, notarized and copied in quadruplicate. It didn't matter.

Me : "Okay, so I have every form you requested last time, plus every other form available on the court's website, including the really freaking obscure ones, just in case."
Court Employee : "Huh, let's see... motion to blah blah blah... request for blah blah... application for a rhinoceros license... temporary permit for colorful street festival and/or impromptu West Side Story-style "rumble"... okay, we can't accept any of this. You don't have an Amendment to Redact Aforementioned Mentionings."
Me : "There is no such thing! You just made that up."
Court Employee : "Nuh-uh."
Me : "Yuh-huh!"
Court Employee : "Oh, would you look at that, it looks like there's a problem with your affidavit of consent, too."
Me : "No, there -"
Court Employee : [rubs meticulously-prepared affidavit on rear of poly-blend slacks, flings to the ground, walks away chortling]

Desperate times called for desperate measures. I hadn't whipped out The Dumbness for a number of years. Why, I cannot say... it's a marvelously effective technique. The last time I'd done so, it had netted me a replacement fish tank in under five minutes.

Fishamajig Industries Customer Service Rep : "Well, it SHOULD be filtering... are you SURE you've checked the impeller?"

Me : "YES I AM SURE I CHECKED THE IMPALER!"
F.I.C.S.R. : "No you didn't! You just called it the 'impaler'!"
Me : "I'm holding it in my hand right now! It is... uh... tiny! And full of fish poop!"
F.I.C.S.R. : "Oh, christ. You'll have a new tank in 4 - 6 weeks, okay?"

The next time I visited the courthouse, I did so with a twinkle in my eye and a "duh" on my lips.

Me : "Um... so... I can get this done today, right?" [holds out sheet of construction paper with "MOSHUN FOR YOU GUYS TO GIVE ME A DIVORSE THINGY" scrawled across it in "Mango Fandango" lip gloss]
Court Employee: "You poor woman! You poor, stupid woman. Let me see what I can do."

2. However, when dealing with the erstwhile Mr. Thumbscrews, I found it best to scoop up that spare cognitive capability and cram it right back in my cranium.

Me : [deposits immense stack of paperwork at Mr. Thumbscrews' feet via forklift] [beep... beep... beep... beep...]
Mr. Thumbscrews : "What the fuck?!"
Me : "Oh, it's just your standard Complaint in Lieu of Forcible Contusion of Defendant's Testicular Region, a Waiver of All Possible Recourse, Countersuit and Hope of Salvation, Addendum to Complaint Granting Plaintiff Sole Possession of Entire Marital Library (With Supplementary "Except For Tom Clancy; Fuck Him and the Submarine He Rode In On" Clause)... you know, the usual."
Mr. Thumbscrews : "Huhhhhhh... ?"
Me : "Oh, just sign up and shut up."
Mr. Thumbscrews : "These don't give you permission to change J.Q.'s name to Bitey Bodhavista and raise him on an ashram, do they?"
Me : "Not explicitly, no."
Mr. Thumbscrews : "Oh, okay." [whips out pen]

The Artist Formerly Known as Mr. Thumbscrews is not an unintelligent man. He is, in fact, rather bright. However, when confronted with 30,000 pages of legal jargon, most people tend to clam up faster than Mrs. Paul's. As I had exhibited no prior Betty Broderick-style psycho-bitchiness - and, more importantly, seemed to know what I was talking about without charging him $200 an hour for the privilege - Mr. T. deferred to my judgement. Hope you enjoyed your corneas, honey... they're MINE now.

No! Our settlement was entirely fair. Which is the point: I could've attempted to forcibly violate my ex with a long, hard, enormous... court battle. But that was deeply offensive to my pride. Where was the challenge in hiring a pair of lawyers to attack one another like inbred bettas? It was far more unusual - and more satisfying - to finagle a mutually-agreeable split from the materials at hand - a few T-bills, a couple of Taquitos and a healthy helping of shrewdness. When viewed from outside the swirling shitstorm of emotion, our marriage was, at heart, a broken thing. It was a situation which needed to be fixed, and fix it I did. And I didn't even need to check the impaler.

Better or Verse - "M-80"

[Ed. Note: when fucking around with poetry {which is about ALL I can be said to do with it}, I go for mood rather than comprehensibility. There's nothing to "get", per se. It's like I told J.Q. this morning - "NO! NO! NO! SOAP IS FOR CLEANSING THINGS, NOT EATING!" Ahem. Poetry is for feeling things, not understanding.

But lest the more literal-minded of you get your Hanes Her Ways in a bunch... this is basically "Possum Kingdom" making out with "Only the Good Die Young" on the lawn in suburban New Jersey. This is the second thing which was going through my head during a recent late-night run through my childhood 'hood, the first being "AIIIIE SCARY FASTER FASTER DON'T WANNA DIE".]

One of those humid restless tangled-sheet nights
I went out back
Deconstructed your mind
Laid it out across grass in need of a mow
Like damp sandy towels
Or lawnmower parts

As it ought to be
I took things slow

And do I get the thanks of a grateful nation?
A lungful of Love's Baby Soft
The last biscuit from a drive-through box
Remuneration, meaning
A lil' something beyond
Eyeful of cutoffs
Quick grab of frustration

And, as the kids say, and I use the term fully ironically,
The shaft.

The dark sleeknesses that softly slide
Across the sides of new black pickup trucks
Could be headlights
But once I've trained your eye
Could be things murkier and more seductive

Petty vandals or
Translucent sprites
That drift on the bottom of swimming pools at night
And cling to you without your knowledge
No consent, but lesser harm
And much later, trickle happily away
From your hair, your skin, everywhere
As you sleep
They liked the warm

There must be something that I've earned
Light your eyes as the middle of a firefly
Show you where taxonomically-unidentifiable
Juiciness grows
Guide you through thickets that are best traversed
Without your clothes
Not for my sake, naturally
You should really let some things sleep late
Lest they drag you into the treehouse
Or your bathing suit snag on their claws

You go back to school in three weeks
The algebra, the too-high laugh
The trials, tribulations, two sharpened #2s
They're all you
But not walking too close to the tool shed
Shapes shifting in back of the sprinkler
Staring down the night with the lawn on your back,
the earth on your fingers,
galaxies in your eyes,
those words in your ear
Admit it or not it's all mine

XENOPHOBIA : REASONABLE PRECAUTION :: DR. ABUTOU MUGABE : ?

Halfway down ETS' GRE registration page, there's a rather interesting blurb:

"For security reasons we are not currently accepting online registrations for Nigeria. [...] Credit cards will not be accepted for Nigerian registration fees. This includes anyone who is requesting a Nigerian test center or who has a Nigerian mailing address..."

I feel kinda bad for any poor Nigerians just trying to advance their education... but I also feel that it's kind of bleakly hilarious.

Interpreting English Literature, Standard Test:

O Rose, thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.

Interpreting English Literature, Nigerian Version:

DEAR SIR,

IT IS MY PLEASURE TO WRITE TO YOU AFTER MY MUCH CONSIDERATION, MY NAME IS MR. INVISIBLE WORM THAT FLIES IN THE NIGHT. I AM EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT OF INTERNATIONAL WEALTH TRANSFERRING AT FIRST LAGOS BANK OF THE HOWLING STORM. I AM SEEK A RELIABLE AND TRUSTWORTHY BUSINESS PARTNER FOR MY LIFETIME INVESTMENT. I AM LOOKING FOR A BED OF CRIMSON JOY WHERE I CAN TRANSFER TWENTY FIVE MILLION ($25,000,000) AMERICAN DOLLARS (ALSO SOME DARK SECRET LOVE)...

100th Post Navel-Gaze Extravaganza

Happy 100th post to me.
Happy 100th post to me.
It only took seventeen freaking months to get heeeeere.
Happy 100th post to me.
Fweeeeeet!


1. Why do patrons of the pizza place down the block feel the need to drive their cars directly up onto the sidewalk? If you're gonna jump your Buick over an 8" curb, ruining your suspension and terrifying local urchins, it'd BETTER be because you're there for, say, an ice-chilled human kidney, NOT an extra-large buffalo-ranch and an order of cheese fries.

2. Would it make me uncool to admit that I find The Shins just as annoying as their primary-colored countrymen, The Wiggles?

3. So assuming I continue to Do It, rather than, say, joining a nunnery, or taking an abstinence pledge (HA!... [spurts diet Coke out of every facial orifice]) or just covering up that whole region with fiberglass tape and DAP... my next "number" is a personally significant one. Ala, "It's my lucky number," or "Hey, 365 days in a year, and now 365 notches on the ol' bedpost!" (erm, I jest). As my writing tends to be stark-raving open and honest, I feel that this would make a fairly awesome "reflection" post. Yet the thought of disseminating that particular figure far and wide strikes me as unseemly. And I'm the person who wrote about random fellatio in a Hyundai Accent! Thoughts?

4. My friends and family rock harder than a Pantera reunion show in Luray Caverns. Which is to say: HARD. I was Legitimately Sad today - not chemically imbalanced, not whining about my lack of post-doctoral work and Nobel nominations - just, y'know, circumstantially heartsick. I know! Surprised me, too. In any event, this afternoon, my friend M. took me out for chicken tenders swathed in ham and Swiss. Several hours later, Pixie treated me to a meal which opened with pierogies, featured guest appearances by bacon and stuffing, and concluded with a rousing finale of FRIED. CARAMEL-FILLED. CHEESECAKE. SITTINGINAPOOLOFCHOCOLATESAUCEAAAAAAAAGHHHHHH.

I'm feeling slightly less bummed, but I think it's because blood is having a hard time making it past all the grease and reaching my brain.

5. Question for my readers in the literary sphere: do I focus more on attaining publication of any stripe (polishing up essays/non-fic stuff, etc.), or on penning big-ass masterwork, then shopping it around? There are a limited number of hours in the day, damn it. Especially when one is destined to spend a number of them curled up in the fetal position, whining, "Owwwww... fucking fried cheesecake!"

6. Haircolor du jour: NaturTint's "Fireland". I was headed to the Whole Foods checkout when I spied its fiery majesty and was forced to toss a box atop my usual comestibles. It looks pretty awesome, but I'm kind of the opposite of the average Whole Foods patron in that I trust "natural" products a lot LESS than lab-formulated, possibly-carcinogenic ones. I'm a little afraid it will fade or bleed or inspire gnats to make sweet, sweet love to my head. Couldn't they have at least tossed a FEW harsh synthetic chemicals in there?

7. Worst music-as-relates-to-life quote ever, from high school friend's summer suitor, re: "Freebird": "I love this song, 'cause it reminds me of me!" (Second worst, 'though fully unintentional, my mother, re: Massive Attack's "Dissolved Girl": "This song reminds me of you." OH LORD, PLEASE LET IT NO LONGER BE THE CASE.)

8. Question for my readers in the child-development sphere: I once read that "speed of language acquisition" is the only developmental area with a direct correlation to later intelligence. True, or utter shit propagated by the makers of educational toys? I ask because J.Q. is not yet two and is speaking in full sentences (while at a friend's house: "Menita! Diaper... poop! Change it!"). If he is going to be a freaky little genius, perhaps I should start funneling my money into an MIT fund rather than wasting it on frivolities such as "rent".

9. Morality Quiz, And Be Honest: do you find that your feelings of guilt primarily stem from fear of being "caught"/exposed or actual remorse? Perhaps I am a monster (but a fetchingly crimson-headed one who produces brilliant offspring!), but I must admit that my guilt is usually of the former variety. I HAVE felt genuine remorse, but very, very infrequently. It takes a truly heinous act for me to feel the urge to atone, rather than shrugging, "Eh, shit happens. I wonder if there's any more goat gouda in the fridge?"

10. Favorite posts from the past seventeen months of angst and amusement? Requests? I'm open to anything but "Freebird".

Look Me In the Eye, Then Tell Me I'm Satisfied

Is it personality? Is it time? Is it the ever-popular endogenous chemicals, forever sullying my synapses like marinara on a white silk blouse?

Is it my friends? Is it my coworkers? Is it everything but me, or just me?

Why am I this unhappy with my achievements?

It has been an eventful year.

I have earned an associate's degree. In the oh-so useful field of Liberal Arts, no less. C'mon, give me a Norton Anthology. I'll interpret the shit out of that bitch.

I have gone down three jeans sizes. While I can now look in the three-way mirror at The Gap and coo, "MMM-HMMMN, girlfriend, you look FINE!", I have lost any vestige of an ass. Baby don't got back. Baby basically perches on her coccyx like a Weeble.

I have learned how to...

• Solder.


• Code my own style sheets.


• Transport four bags of groceries and a squirmy toddler across several city blocks and up several flights of stairs.


• Get divorced sans legal counsel. I've got eight syllables for you: independent source of income. I've also got 81 more: odds are your spouse is in a place of existential confusion as well as somewhat lazy; just draft up all the paperwork yourself and hand it over with a brusque, "This agreement is inherently fair and in no way the legal equivalent of nonconsensual anal intercourse, so fucking sign it already."


• Be naked in front of a man without immediately trying to cover myself with a sheet, a quilt, a cat or a nearby bookcase.


• Run for one mile without staggering to the side of the road and vomiting in a concrete planter.


• Etc., ad infinitum, ergo sum.

And a lot of the time, it feels like nothing.

I'm in the same position at work. I have gone from living in a messy Cape Cod to living in a stark white rental box (and hoping said Cape Cod just spontaneously implodes one day, because it is sure as shit not going to be purchased by any sane, credit-worthy individuals). I haven't been promoted, published, showered with love/Valrhona Le Lacte bars or party to a life-altering epiphany. I haven't been content, more or less ever.

When will it be enough? When will I be able to sit back, relax and say, "Yep... I'm fucking proud of you, self. Go grab another diet soda. You've earned it"?

It's the weight loss conundrum : the prospect of losing 50/75/100 pounds is so daunting, so impossible that it seems hardly worth starting a diet. And yet all weight is lost ounces at a time... day after boring, frustrating, rice cake-laden day.

I'm surrounded on all sides by high achievers. I work in a sector which is damned near synonymous with high achievement (well, and trips to Aspen / undermining all that which is right and decent in the world). Pounds and pounds of achievement, industrial-sized pallets of it. How can I be happy with a few ounces of forward momentum? For each credit I earn, there's an office wall upholstered in Ivy League diplomas. For each flattering pair of smaller-size khakis, there's another which make me feel like a dress-casual sausage. There are awards and accolades, achievements and acclaim. Works of art. Summers spent abroad. Grabbing life by the cojones and giving a hearty squeeze.

I'm trying, I really am. And yet there's that oddly familiar voice in the back of my head, the one hissing, "There is no try, there is only do." And I become angry enough to curse, spit, to do awful things to a certain pointy-eared Muppet guru. Because at this point, I haven't done much. And incessant trying is enough to make anyone feel like a Paul Westerberg antihero... desperate, demoralized, depressed and so, so unsatisfied.

You And I Are Very Different People Now

Impending Ex: "So, does [Friend of Mine With Uncommon Name] own an herb farm?"

Me: "Ah... I guess you could say that Friend has a partial share in an outside concern, but only receives shipments every few harvests or so..."

Impending Ex: "Oh, because I was picking up some thyme at the supermarket, and it was from [Friend's Name] Herbs. I was just wondering."

Me: "Oh my god. You're not talking about pot, are you?"

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.

Counterintuition

6:00 PM: J.Q. and I were in the midst of a massive Battle of Wills. Arguing with a toddler is a lot like doing so with Bill O'Reilly - the other party is totally unwilling to equivocate, deviate or negotiate. Also, they're clinically insane. Me and J.Q's area of disagreement? Whether yogurt was an appropriate dinner selection. I didn't feel this was the case. However, J.Q. was certain that if he just stuck to his guns, the U.N. inspectors would find weapons of mass destruction. No! That I'd relent and fork over a bowl of cultured wonderfulness.

J.Q. : Yogur!
Mama : No. Eat your veggie burger. It's soy-tastic. I have even included a sidecar of dip-dip (a generous squirt of barbecue sauce, a.k.a. colorful candy shell for savories)!
J.Q. : YOGUR!
Mama : No.
J.Q. : Yoguryoguryoguryoguryogurrrrrr!
Mama : No.
J.Q. : [bursts into agonized, o'er-dramatic tears, ala Nancy Kerrigan. If he was a little older and had discovered The Joy of Interrogatives, I'm sure he would've tossed in a, "WHY NO YOGIT? WHY NOWWWWW?"]

7:00 PM: Child was slathered in uneaten dinner. Mama was slathered in uneaten dinner. There was much sniffling and acrimony on both sides.

So what did I decide to do? Why, take my child to an art exhibition, of course! DUH.

And I'll be god-damned if we didn't have a fantastic time.

J.Q. was amazingly well-behaved*. He rode in his carrier, flirted with graduate students, analyzed art (blue-hued, quasi-Modernist painting of a woman crying: "Mama!" Thanks a pantsload, kid). He only opened his mouth to say adorable, squeaky things.

Oh, and to shove cookies in it.

His dinner? After all of that shrieking and pleading and bib-rending vis a vis the subject of yogurt?

Cookies. Lots. And lots. Of cookies.

And a lick of sauce from a chicken satay skewer.

And sips of diet Coke.

Gotta know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em and know when to say "screw it" and play 52 Pick-Up.

I promise to do lots of staggeringly educational things to tip the karmic scales AWAY from "child growing up to be serial-killing Republican".


* Despite this, tonight marked the momentous occasion of my first piece of unsolicited parenting advice in TWO YEARS (there is something to be said for the Russo-kranian "stoic" expression). While I was checking out some photographs, a woman tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Mama... the LIGHTS are too bright for our little EYES!" Excuse me?

1. It's an art gallery. There are bright lights everywhere.
2. In addition to being able to identify numerous polygons and subsist entirely on yogurt and cookies, my child has reached the exciting milestone of "being able to turn head".
3. You fucking whore.
4. I jest, I jest. He also eats grapes (*rimshot*).

Ephemeral Top 5 : 2/07

Tend Skin Lotion : this is deeply odd stuff. It purports to eliminate ingrown hairs, redness, bumpiness and other agonies associated with deflocculating one's hide. It's clear and slippery and stings like a swarm of attitudinal hornets. Kind of like what you'd get if someone dissolved Charles Bronson in a vat of Astroglide. It isn't sold in many places. It's expensive - at over a buck an ounce, it's pricier than Maker's Mark, and not nearly as tasty with diet Coke.

However... I'll be damned, but the stuff works. A recent round of overzealous epilation left my girl region in an alarming state. Tend Skin to the rescue! My post-bathing regime may now involve more cotton balls and shrieking, but at least my triangle is no longer of the terrifying Bermuda variety.

Jones Sugar Free Black Cherry Soda : it's four cents a can cheaper than mega-brand sodas. It has hep minimalist packaging. It's sweetened with Splenda, for those of you who haven't learned to love aspartame's special, dangerous-to-one's-health zing. How does it taste? Oh, I dunno... vaguely sweet and fizzy. Not noxious enough to cause one to do an inadvertent spit-take. Certainly not delectable enough to explain why I've consumed three cans of the stuff tonight alone. Which might make for a good tagline... "Jones : Addictiveness Not Commensurate With Quality!"

Cozy : which also happens to be the kid's new favorite word. He says it whenever I tuck him into his Graco Pack 'n Imprison... "Coh-see!" No, you may not have him. Selling babies is illegal in this country. Also, I've grown somewhat attached.

In any event: I am all about the cozy. Quilts and toast and tea and sweaters and such. I've also been cooking a lot, which is unusual... I tend to shun food-preparation methods more strenuous than "1. Remove wrapper from granola bar. 2. Insert into eatin'-hole." But nay... as of late, I have baked and basted and broiled and bound with yards on end of butcher's twine. I may enjoy the latter a little TOO much. Hopefully this fascination will grow old before I'm reduced to trussing individual grapes with dental floss.

Lean Cuisines and Possible Free Sterilization : I cracked. I bought a microwave. It's sleek and red and freaks my tech-savvy ass right the fuck out ("Does that mushroom shape mean popcorn or new game of Global Thermonuclear War?"). It also means that, when feeling lazy, I'll now have the option to eat things other than those which are, A. Shelf-stable, B. Granola bars, or C. Impaled on a fork, as they are still frozen.

Mile Marker : when I first started running, I was in wretched shape. I couldn't run for longer than thirty seconds at a go. Since I was measuring my progress in seconds, I began timing myself via music. If I managed to run through the chorus, I'd vow to keep going until the cool "deedle deedle deedle deedle DEEEEEE" guitar riff the next time. A single song was usually good for two or three walk/run intervals.

At the very end of tonight's run, I managed to plow through Clap Your Hands Say Yeah's "Over and Over Again", Flin Flon's "Floods" and Sparks' "Perfume" without stopping.

For those of you keeping track at home, that's ten minutes and forty-two seconds.

For those of you considering running [for fun/fitness/because those ominous howls seem to be getting closer]: when I finished, I didn't think, "Owie owie ow!", or, "Wow, that sucked a metric ton of ass," or even, "I wonder who would win in the Ultimate Smackdown of Catchy Songs, 'Perfume' or the Kit-Kat jingle?"

Nope. First thing that popped into my mind was "Again again I wanna do it again!"

New UmamiMami Post : "Massacre"

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

I Have Lost My "Edge"

5 PM. Crowded SEPTA bus. I'm standing in the aisle. J.Q. is ensconced in his "Lil' Danger to Self and Others" baby backpack. He's usually more well-behaved than the average adult SEPTA patron (e.g., when you catch his eye, he'll chirp, "Hiiii!", rather than, "What the fuck you lookin' at?"). Tonight, however, our bus is moving through rush hour traffic at a crippled sloth's pace. The windows fog, the riders get ornery and J.Q. begins to feel bored/silly/sadistic. With a devilish gleam in his eye, he grabs a handful of my hair and gives a vigorous yank*.

And you know what? I actually resist the urge to yell, "Stop it! Mommy only likes it when men who aren't related to her do that!"


* He has also begun yelling, "Ock-a-GON!" whenever he spots a stop sign, however... that alone is worth a good bit of searing scalp pain.

Bar None

After spending nigh unto three decades thinking about it, I have determined that I'm not exactly normal. Firstly... who the fuck says things like "nigh unto"? Secondly... remember the December issue of Rolling Stone? The cover featured a Santa hat-clad Snoop Dogg (the interior featured, well, crap: will someone please smack Jann Wenner across the nose with a rolled-up copy of his own publication?). I discovered a copy on my parents' coffee table a few weeks ago and I... well... kind of "adopted" it. I carried it around with me from room to room. I made ominous statements regarding the Crips. While watching my mother prepare leftovers for lunch, I said things like, "Awwww, damn... gonna have some Papa John's up in this muthafuck. Y'all let me know when the oven's done pre-heating so's I can stick some pizz-izzle up in that bitch. Me an' Snoop are gonna go chill on the sectional... uh... izzle. Word."

So, yes: normalcy, not my strong suit ("Papa John's ain't nothin' but hoes 'n tricks / bite on the crust, suck the Special Garlic dip"). Thus, when Junket invited me to her preferred watering hole, I was hesitant. "Go... to a bar. To... drink. Like typical people do. Not to, say, scrawl heee-larious modified e.e. cummings quotes on the bathroom walls in purple Sharpie?" (Ed. Note: yeah, you WISH I was kidding). "C'mon," said Junket, "It'll be fun! We can sit in the corner and be socially-awkward rejects TOGETHER!" "Sounds peachy," I said, polishing my Sharpie. However, after giving it some thought, I decided to bite the cocktail onion and tag along. "Oh, what the hell," I thought, "Might be fun. And if it's not... well, I can always head to the john and bust out 'how do you like your blue curacao Mr. Death'."

And so it came to pass that me, my coolest t-shirt, my sparkliest eyeliner and my youngest, cutest, tiniest sister Went Out Drinking last week. Why are my siblings so much smaller and more adorable than I? Huh? What's up with that? If I were to split myself in half, the result would be Junket. Well, two Junkets. One of the many reasons I won't be reproducing asexually.

Ahem.

Monday evening. Supposedly "counterculture" section of Philadelphia which nonetheless features a Blockbuster Video and several Starbucks. Like "Cheers", JunketBar was somewhat dim and grungy (although thankfully not marred by the presence of Ted Danson). And like Cheers, everyone appeared to know Junket's name.

"Hi, Junket!" said the female barkeep, mixing us up a round of Cambodian Cirrhosis-Causers. "Damn, she's... adorable," I whispered to Junket. "Mmmn-hmmmn," she said.

Several minutes later, another drink-flinger strolled up. "Yo, Junket," he said... what's the adjective I'm looking for here?... oh, yeah: delectably. "Brad, this is my sister Jul." "Pleasedtomeetcha," I mumbled, desperately hoping that no Cambodian Cirrhosis-Causer was dribbling from my wide-agape jaw. Brad shook my hand, then wandered off... ostensibly to work; I prefer to think that he was attending an Advanced Pouting seminar or locating a slightly-tighter pair of jeans.

While at the jukebox, deciding whether to play Fiona Apple or just cut to the chase and affix a "TAKE ME OUT BACK AND WHIP MY ASS" sign to my back, yet another barkeep came over to give his regards to Junket. Another hot, hot barkeep. "Jul? Eduardo. Eduardo? Jul," said Junket. "Hi, nice to meet you," said Eduardo. "Uh... well... hrmmn... see, uh... yeah. Yep," I said, disintegrating into Scotch-scented goo and oozing under a nearby pool table.

After Eduardo's departure, I recongealed and proceeded to rip Junket a new one. "Did you not feel the need to mention that your bar was full of smokingly hot people?" "I don't know!" whined Junket, "I didn't know if you'd be into that!"

Yes. Because nothing enhances the "coed liquor consumption" experience like ugly people (well, unless they're interestingly ugly... T.G.I. Not Malignant's? Congenital Deformity's? I'd be all up in that like a laparoscope, yo).

C'mon, now. I'm shy. I can't flirt my way out of a paper bag, even if said bag contains a mostly-empty bottle of hooch. I can't shoot pool. I really shouldn't play darts without making everyone in a ten-foot radius sign an indemnity waiver.

If I'm going to spend my evening sitting in a corner, nursing a Liberian Liver-Ejector, there'd damned well better be hot people present. If you're going to try to lure me out of the fortress of solitude, you'd do well to appeal to the nasty, reptilian sector of my brain. Decent jukebox? A dime a dozen (well, three plays for a dollar). Cheap drinks? Whatevah. The opportunity to push aside my croissant-flaky frontal lobe for a few hours and let the Lizard Brain take over? Now we're talking.

So how about you, comrades? What makes your ideal bar? Dirt-cheap PBR? Metallica's entire back catalogue on the juke? Foosball? Or perhaps an unshaven, sub-literate Adonis slinging drinks? And how are your watering hole preferences influenced by your personality? I'm guessing extroverts don't rate drinking establishments based on "number of architectural features that one can hide behind".

People Try and Hide the Light Underneath the Covers

For your amusement: the route of Jul's Desperation-Based Impromptu Road Trip '07. This is an inexact recreation; I couldn't come up with a way to accurately map those amusing little "Welcome to New York? I thought I was ALREADY IN NEW YORK!" moments.



Highlights:

- Showering in The Bachelorette Pad is a joyless experience. While standing under its lukewarm, erratic spray, I am often tempted to scrawl "HOW COME YOU SUCK SO BAD?" on the wall with one of J.Q.'s tub crayons.

Super Discount Hotel Chain's shower featured both a Shower Massage and a seemingly-endless supply of super-hot water. When I emerged, trailing clouds of steam hot enough to peel wallpaper, I was one happy stewed prune. Ed. Note: did I ever tell you guys about my Shower Massage song? The one which featured lines like "If you don't respect the Shower Massage / You are a total dope / I'll sneak into your shower / and strangle you with your soap-on-a-rope"? No? Yeah, I guess I see why...).

- Stopping in Promised Land, PA, just because the Springsteen song of the same name kinda rocks. I did manage to restrain myself from taking a detour through Cornish, NJ solely to inform the locals, "Dude, I LOVE your game hens!"

- Hiking in the splendid desolation of Stokes State Forest. No one else for miles... just a forest in the eerie, Blair Witch-y lull before a snowstorm. Did not encounter any bears, either, despite posted signs ("Bears Sighted In Area"... "How To Respond When You Encounter a Bear"... "Scream Like a Sissy or Run Like an Idiot? Weighing Your Options"... "LEAVE THIS AREA IMMEDIATELY OR YOUR ASS WILL BE BITTEN CLEAN OFF").

- Complete editorial control over radio. Hence, an eclectic blend of, well, crap: "True Blue"-era Madonna! C+C Music Factory! "Stuck in the Middle With You"! "Hey Man, Nice Shot" (which always begs the question: which son do you think Mr. and Mrs. Patrick love more - Robert, who played the Liquid Metal Man in "T2", or Richard, former lead singer of Filter?)! Plus one total gem... The Arcade Fire's "Rebellion (Lies)"... absolutely gorgeous. It receives a minor demerit for making me break my eighteen-hour crying-free streak, however.

Lowlights:

- Being informed by the front desk that I "must have misheard" the time given when requesting late check-out; having to go from "naked, surfing internet and picking chocolate chips out of trail mix" to "actively vacating premises" in ten minutes.

- Aborted detour to Otisville, NY... "Huh, state and federal penal institutes? Let's check this out!", I thought. Roughly ten miles later: "Why the hell are these prisoners so far from the rest of the decent, law-abiding citizenry? Oh, yeah. Better turn around."

- Alarming the locals during a pit stop at the McDonald's in Yuppie Snottington, NJ. I was covered in forest grime, squinty-eyed from the glacial wind and vaguely surly due to being stuck behind a creaky Ford for the past hundred miles. I felt very much like the protagonist of "Turn the Page".

Hell, maybe that should be a highlight!

- Vague sense of sadness and ennui returned the second I set foot in the Bachelorette Pad. Well, damn.

Future Highlight:

- Stokes Forest has cabins! And I can apparently live on trail mix indefinitely! I sense that my weekends are about to become Thoreau-iffic.

Greetings From Wilkes-Barre

... it's nondescriptastic! It's also pronounced "Wilkes Berry". Which sounds kinda like the breakfast cereal which assassinated Abraham Lincoln (see also: Aaron Burr-an Flakes, Lee Harvey Oswald or Possibly Castro or Perhaps the Illuminati or Maybe the CIA Crispies).

I am illin' and chillin' in tha W.B.'s municipal crib as a result of the most boring whim ever. On a scale of spontaneity ranging from "Mexican gender reassignment surgery" all the way down to "Mountain Fresh fabric softener instead of tried-and-true Spring Breeze", my sojourn hits bottom with a resounding clunk. But it's okay. I've got trail mix, HBO and free wifi. My hotel room is snuggly warm and not nearly as crappy as Super Discount Hotel Chain's usual offerings (this one time? In South Carolina? The entire carpet was damp and the room smelled suspiciously like a poorly-maintained pet store). The bath products are tiny and organic. The sheets are clean, crisp and unsullied by granola bar crumbs.

I didn't really intend to wind up here. However, yesterday evening, I was feeling rather somber. "Aaaaaagh fuck I can't do this any more nooooo," is how I believe I phrased it. I had just handed J.Q. off to the baby-daddy, along with a full status report (milestones, bad: vomited down mama's cleavage. Milestones, good: has 226-word vocabulary. Coupled with his all-abiding love of his tricycle and disregard for authority, J.Q. is fully qualified to be a Hell's Angel). I was young, free of responsibility and in the creamy center of a major metropolitan area.

I also had no plans save "work on novel" and "attempt to chisel vomit out of household linens". I found the prospect... unappealing.

"Nooooo gaaaaaaawd I am going to die of boringness aaaaaaaagh," as I succinctly put it.

So I packed a change of clothes. I grabbed my hiking boots... I wasn't sure where I was going, but I liked the idea that it might require hiking boots. I stopped at Local Retail Behemoth Not Known For Fucking Labor Laws Up The Ass. A road atlas, some electrical tape for my antenna (between that and the ossified fast food ground into the carpet, the DecrepiCivic has been awarded official "hoopty" status) and some trail mix were procured. I wasn't sure where I was going, but shit, more or less every destination would require trail mix. Well, except for Chocolate Chip, Raisin and Pepita Depot, and GOOD CHRIST, wasn't the point of this excursion to make my life slightly MORE interesting?

I spent many happy hours hurtling down the highway. I drove through snow, hail and the mysterious "wintry mix". I saw mountains and truck stops and tiny little airports. I explored local radio stations and wriggled my seat-bound ass to an utterly incongruous rural techno station. I hit the trail mix like a ravenous squirrel.

So here I am. Wilkes-Barre! Alternate town motto: "I Was Tired and It Was There". A few more hours of Kerouac-ing it up and slathering myself in tiny bath products (which contain sunflower seed oil? Shit, I'm gonna turn INTO trail mix), then I hit the road again. Further north? East, to the Delaware Water Gap (I have no idea what it is, but I intend to let its keepers know that a good motto might be "It's Gap-tacular!")? West, to... I don't know, I think mostly pine trees? Don't know. Don't care. Northeastern PA is my oyster, and I fully intend to crack this bitch open.

Jitterbug

I have had mostly-digested pizza crust vomited down my cleavage.

I have used a goodly quantity of Anglo-Saxon vulgarities during a technical presentation.

I have administered Pedialyte and a Q&A session.

Everything went down surprisingly smoothly. Saltiness is apparently better-tolerated than one would imagine.

I have renewed my FAFSA. I have been informed that my “estimated family contribution” is a quarter of my annual net income.

I have idly contemplated erecting a yurt in my parents’ backyard.

I have contemplated no fewer than sixteen different careers.

I have gotten two paragraphs closer to the most-desired and least-likely of the bunch.

I have wanted to run under cover of darkness. To walk two miles to the diner solely to warm my hands on a coffee cup. To curl up in the back of a movie theater with all the accouterments... bucket of soda, cargo container of popcorn, barely-suppressed memories of passing jujubes back and forth during giggly pre-feature kisses. To get a hot shower – a really hot shower, really, really hot, clouds of steam and all that – and press my back against the cool tile and try not to shiver.

I have performed the psychological equivalent of Tae-Bo in outer space : endless silly contortions, only to remain in exactly the same place.

I have not yet decided whether I’d rather get the things I want or stop wanting them.

I have fed my body on diet Coke and miniature brownies.

I have fed my spirit with wild speculation, morbid fascination and Chromacolor melancholy.

I have a headache.

I have faith tomorrow will be just as busy and a little bit better.

State of the J.Q.-nion

The kid has become... temperamental. Sort of like the easily-agitated love child of Leona Helmsley and Naomi Campbell. Whoa, that'd be pretty boss... an endless supply of shoes to fling at underlings! ["WHAM!... bitch!... WHAM!... get back here!... WHAM!... I'm not even up to the espadrilles yet!").

It is worth it, however, this taming of my own personal shrew. In the past twenty-four hours, J.Q. has:

1. Discovered Led Zeppelin. While driving to New Jersey, a block of Zep came on the radio. The child damn near voided his car seat's warranty, what with the gleeful whipping around. During "Misty Mountain Hop", he also kept yelling, "GO! GO! GO!" Were there such a thing as a Fisher-Price Baby's First Zippo (and why the hell ISN'T there, I ask?), he would have held it aloft over his tiny head. When we arrived at his grandparents' house, he requested more "Zeppin". Thus, I found myself encouraging my one year-old to dance to "Heartbreaker" at 10:00 PM. Perhaps I should start funnelling his college fund directly to the local bail bondsman.

2. Looked at the Dunkin Donuts coffee cup I was clutching and piped, "Dun-nit!" "HOLY SHIT, YOU CAN READ!", I thought. Before I'd finished mentally reorganizing my bookshelves (Will Self being the literary equivalent of a flaming, cyanide-tipped lawn dart), it became apparent that he'd merely recognized their logo. Still! Brand recognition! And loyalty ("Dunnit? Dunnit? DUNNIIIIIIIIIT!")! He could be a valuable market research tool... assuming there's a "0 - 2" market ("Okay, in regards to the Lil' Schiele Washable Crayon 8-Pak... HEY! Get the demo product out of your mouth, please!").

3. Devised the awesomest method of misbehaving, ever. J.Q. became somewhat agitated while we were browsing the local beauty supply store. Perhaps he grew weary of mommy's repeated demands that he not touch/lick/fling various products, lest he get killed/indelibly stained/Jheri-Curled. After being systematically relieved of four pairs of sunglasses, ten bottles of hair dye and a massive tub of leave-in conditioner, J.Q. finally had it. "Night-night!" he declared, flopping sulkily to the carpet. "Uh... sure. Knock yourself out," I muttered. He remained prostrate long enough for me to finish choosing between "Mutagenic Maroon" and "Known To The State of California To Cause Cancer Crimson". In retrospect, I probably should've feigned extreme annoyance in order to guarantee a repeat performance. "For the love of god, will you PLEASE stop lying motionless in one place and thereby enabling your mother to enjoy this retail excursion?"

He's sleeping now, no doubt dreaming of the lustrous golden locks he was thwarted from achieving (well, ingesting). And I am retiring to the bathroom to dump a batch of rouge goopiness on my scalp. Should I wind up looking more like Bozo the Clown than Franka Potente, I'll just have J.Q. sue Clairol for me. It's clear that he's already very much an American.

Format Change

And I haven't even hit the 100-post mark. Damn, yo. I feel all Madonna-esque. Especially coupled with my recent discovery of the underwire camisole, a device capable of sculpting the squishiest of protuberances into lethally-pointy peaks. And available at Discount Underthingie Warehouse, too! Eat it, Jean-Paul Gaultier.

Where were we? Boobs? Boobs capable of poking one's eye out? No. Format change!

I've decided to make this site more like an honest-to-goodness blog, and less like... well, I don't know. A freaky chimera, like Tyler Hamilton or Edward Scissorhands. It is an oddity which [voice becoming melodramatically shrieky] just doesn't have a place in your cruel, conformist world! It will not be mackin' on Winona Ryder any time soon, though, that's for damned sure.

Actually, I'd like to devote more (read: any) of my writing mojo towards loftier goals. Y'know, things which could potentially be published ("Well, Oprah, my 'turning point' came when I realized that the classical canon contained surprisingly few crotch-waxing jokes"). Things which will force me to hone my skills to a level of gleaming precision capable of piercing the heart of Michiko Kakutani herself (assuming she has one). Things which will, at absolute least, diminish my fear of rejection and overuse of adverbs.

I'll be writing shorter, more frequent posts. Kinda like a tapas bar, only without piquillo pepper slices festooning everything including the damned after-dinner mint.

I'll also be dishing up more substantial pieces on occasion... kinda like the McRib you wind up guiltily wolfing down on the way home from The Tapas Trough. They'll be posted on http://www.umamimami.com, Thumbscre.ws' newly-spawned and infrequently-updated sister site. "Umami" is the "fifth taste", present in meat, cheese, mushrooms... things which are goooood. MSG is effectively a Big Bottle o' Umami. It's meatiness incarnate; thus, Umami Mami is where my more-filling pieces will reside. (The "mami" should be self-evident.)

The first piece is already up - a few hundred words on the ass-kickingness of The Hold Steady's new album. If I am not consumed by a smoking, sulfurous chasm, the recap of my upcoming Centralia trip will be posted there, too.

Comments are, as always, welcomed with open arms... and I promise you won't even get your eye poked out.

'Screw Loose(d)

Thumbscre.ws is going interactive.

It will not be in a JenniCam kinda way. My reasons are twofold:

• While you may suspect that I let my child [poke me in the eye with a mascara wand while chanting, "MEK-up! MEK-up!" / derive 80% of his calories from Goldfish / stand on the sofa and dance to Sublime's "Caress Me Down"]... damn it, I'm not going to provide photographic evidence of such.
  


• While Jenni might've needed a webcam to display her bare ass, MY bottom line can be viewed in a decidedly lower-tech manner:
  
  <.HTML.>
  < .HEAD.>
  < .TITLE.> Jul's Ass Simulation < ./TITLE.>
  < ./HEAD.>
  < .BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF".>
  < ./BODY.>
  < ./HTML.>

It will not be in a Subservient Chicken type of way. Being decidedly less flush than Burger King, I can't really afford fancy-schmancy viral marketing techniques. Any ad campaign of mine would be more like a low-rent public access commercial. You know the type... they come on Channel 83 in the middle of the night. You only ever seem to catch them when you're drunk or violently ill... because, truly, would someone NOT busy expelling the contents of their very soul into the bottom portion of a Salad Spinner endure such awfulness? They generally feature at least one of the following components:

• Local Businessperson's sexy, bikini-clad wife reclining sexily against one of Local Businessperson's decidedly-unsexy products (Kia Spectra, recently-sold tract home, barbecue chicken cheesesteak).



• None-too thinly veiled aspersions on Local Businessperson's sanity:
  
  "Tell me, Actor Wearing Sigmund Freud-esque Beard, how would you characterize the mental state of someone practically GIVING AWAY Kia Spectras for the low, low price of $199.99 a month?"
  
  "Such an individual would clearly be suffering from a severe case of Discountia Extremenosa."
  
  "GOOD GOD, NO! Is there any CURE?"
  
  "Years of intensive psychoanalysis and ice-water enemas."
  
  [sotto voce] "That's NOT in the script, Carl..."
  
  "Oh, jesus... fine. Fine. Whatever. [heavy sigh] Yes. There is a cure. Selling. Every single Kia. On the freaking lot. By noon. On Saturday. HAPPY?"



• Hilariously offensive attempt to court a demographic to which Local Businessperson does not strictly belong ("Awwww, SCHNAP! San Giacomo's Pizza Palazzo has gots some BANGIN' barbecue chicken cheesesteaks up in the hizzle! Word is bond!").

Nay, Thumbscre.ws' audience-participation element will be more like a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book... minus, of course, the ever-present cheating ("'You fall to the floor, clutching your throat and making a noise like several pounds of silken tofu being fed down a garbage disposal. Darkness closes in.' Awwww, schnap. Better go back and pick 'DO NOT touch petri dish'...").

The Tree of Jul's Life has recently grown heavy with the Fruit of Material, all but begging to be plucked and transformed into the Sweet, Sweet Vino of Journalistic Excellence (after, of course, a thorough stomping by the Bare Peasant Feet of Horrendous Protracted Metaphor).

(And yes, I am aware that wine is made from grapes, which grow on vines, not trees. This was a case of "purposeful distortion of facts in order to make readership more likely to spurt Yoo-Hoo from their collective nasal passages", rather than, y'know, "dumbness". [As opposed to my recent discovery that I wasn’t sure whether the moon orbited the earth or – and I quote – “just sort of hung out up there”.])

The question, my pretties, is which fruit... uh, no... grape? (oh, fuck it: I was referring to Calvados, okay? End of story!) to pick first. Which is where I need your help. I want YOU to choose which story you'd like to see me tackle next. You'll have one week to submit your votes (and, with Sitemeter as my witness, SUBMIT YOU SHALL. Yeah, I'm looking at you, Lansing, Michigan. You comment, or I'm takin' you DOWN, no matter HOW highly-regarded your Library and Historical Center!).

Thumbscre.ws Choose-My-Own-Adventure :

Choice One : Sitting Shiv-a. Following a parole violation, a friend-of-a-friend recently became an involuntary guest of Local Correctional Institution. When informed of Secondary Friend's re-incarceration, I expressed my sympathies thusly: "OH MY GOD OH MY GOD! CAN WE GO VISIT HIM IN PRISON? CAN WE CAN WE CAN WE? I WANNA GO VISIT PRISON!" Yes, I am a horrible person. In any event: I wanna go visit prison! Let me hasten to add that the institution in question houses primarily non-terrifying offenders; I'd estimate my chances of experiencing a "Silence of the Lambs"-style semen-splattering at, oh, 6.73% or so. I like those odds!

Choice Two : Air-Conditioned Nightmare. If you live near a major metropolitan area, odds are you've been to a “Mills” outlet mall. They're massive, manic and mind-numbing. Everywhere you turn, there’s retail action – slightly irregular boxers! Cinnabons! Terrifying Jesus-centric wall decorations! - as well as throngs of consumers descending upon it like those “28 Days Later” zombies on a nice meaty torso. My local retail-industrial behemoth is called Franklin Mills. In addition to gooey pastries and three-armed sweaters, it also features an enormous animatronic Ben Franklin head.

For you, loyal readers, I will brave The Head. I will spend an entire day at Franklin Mills. I will not permit myself to leave until I’ve visited all 219 stores, the mall is ready to close or I am carted out on a stretcher, softly babbling about deep, deep discounts as a Man ‘o War-sized dose of Thorazine makes its way through my veins.

Choice Three : I, Deliberately, Visited, A Buuuuuuuurning Ring of Fire. Centralia, PA. Enough said. While there, I will attempt to quite literally cook an egg on one of the remaining squares of sidewalk. As I’m gonna have to buy a dozen anyway, I may also try to poach one in a birdbath.

Choice Four : Zdrastvooyte, Uncle Vyacheslav! In which I travel to Schenectady to consult my Uncle Vyacheslav about a planned trip to The Motherland. My family feels that he will provide valuable insight regarding our vodka-saturated ancestral nation. However, Uncle Vyacheslav has not been to The Motherland since 1945. Yes, THAT 1945. As one might imagine, he still harbors something of a grudge. I suspect our conversation will go a little like this:

Me : "So how far away from Moscow is our family’s village?"
Uncle Vyacheslav : "Let’s see… approximately 4,559 miles."
Me : "I wasn’t talking about Schenectady."
UV : "Well, I was."

Me : "Are there any foods which my babushka used to make which I should try while I’m over there?"
UV : "You should try cassoulet. Which is French. And therefore located in France."
Me : "Piroshki? Borscht? Kholodetz?"
UV : "Paella? Sashimi? Two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce-cheese-pickles-onions on a non-genocidal bun?"

Go forth, my pretties… vote! Comment! To paraphrase a great work, choose my destiny!

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.

A Fairy Tale of New York

J.Q.'s second Christmas was also the first one he spent apart from me.

On Christmas Eve, our brood gathered in New Jersey. It was a warm, happy evening. J.Q. was inundated with cookies, presents and attention. Within five minutes of being placed in his car seat, he'd passed out... an exhausted, sprinkle-coated cherub.

An hour later, I extracted him from the car, kissed his little forehead, handed him off to his father and drove home alone. It was deeply surreal.

The next day, I celebrated the world's first Solitary Contemplation-mas.

It began with Ground Zero. It ended with an apocalyptic wasteland. In between, there was exhaustion, disorientation, soul-searching, eel-eating and trudging around in rain-soaked wool.

It was a good day.

Solitary Contemplation-mas : A Primer

• You've heard of "Christmas in July"? Solitary Contemplation-mas is like Yom Kippur in December, only with less atoning. No atoning, actually. While there are no traditional Solitary Contemplation-mas greetings (see also : first word of holiday's name), "I ain't atoning for SHIT!" would be entirely apt.



• Solitary Contemplation-mas occurs every December 25th. What's that, you say? "Uh, dude, most people have other plans that day?" Agreed.
  
  "Most" people. If you want to be like "most" people - another namby-pamby emotional weakling who would rather peer into an eggnog latte than the troubled depths of your own soul - well, be my guest.
  
  Okay, okay. Special provision: if you absolutely, positively must postpone Solitary Contemplation-mas, it is permissible to do so, PROVIDED that the new date fosters a similar feeling of loneliness and disconnect from one's fellow man. The day the Free Ice Cream Cone and Fuzzy Kitten-Petting Expo comes to the convention center, for instance.



• The traditional color of Solitary Contemplation-mas is Pantone Cool Gray 8C.



• Solitary Contemplation-mas may take place in one of two venues:
  
  
  1. An extremely rural setting. This is the traditional choice; mamacita Nature has long been a refuge for the reflective, the distraught, the secretly-plotting-to-reupholster-their-Lazy-Boy-in-human-skin (if you are the latter, this is not the holiday for you. May I suggest Psychotic Break-wanzaa?). While full of thought-provoking scenery and blessed isolation, nature has a dark side. It is also crammed to the gills with things that will bite you, claw you, sting you or pin your ass to a rock like a fanny pack-wearing butterfly. And as the entire rest of the hemisphere will be busy with their pine-perfumed orgy of comfort and joy, help may take a loooong time to arrive.
     
     You should not allow being pinned to a rock to curtail your observance of Solitary Contemplation-mas. However, it is permissible to take periodic fifteen-minute breaks from soul searching to either scream for help or fantasize about your inevitable Discovery Channel special ("Holy Shit, How the Fuck Are You Still Alive?!: The [Your Name] Story").
  
  
  
  2. An extremely urban setting. If you fail to understand how one can feel utterly alone while in a crowd, you are ill-suited for Solitary Contemplation-mas; you should stick with the traditional candy cane-fellating rigmarole.
     
     Ahem.
     
     How urban is "extremely"? Do you feel as though you are a tiny grain of sand, swept up in a crushing wave of humanity? No? Try harder, bucko.
     
     Manhattan is nice. Busy. Enormous. Large non-Santa-centric population (oy gevalt!). Abundant Chinese restaurants, which brings us to...



• The traditional Solitary Contemplation-mas meal is Chinese food. And by "Chinese", we mean "Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Laotian... so long as said cuisine has been dumbed down and sugared up for the Western palate". The reasons for this are twofold:
  
  
  1. Chinese restaurants are open on Christmas.
  
  
  
  2. You know that vague sense of dissatisfaction and unease, the one you're supposed to be addressing via solitary contemplation? Yeah, well... Chinese food is kind of like that, only deep-fried and slathered in phlegmy brown goo. It's not inedibly awful, it's not fantastically good... it is a Moo Goo Gai Obstacle to Personal Fulfillment which one must gamely plow through. Hoisin sauce helps.



• The traditional solitary contemplation-mas beverage is plum wine. It is the potable analogue to pseudo-Asian food: it is liquor, yes, but it is also disgusting.
  
  
  Special Plum Wine-Related Sidebar:
  
  Most American school children are familiar with the "disintegrating penny" myth. As legend has it, a penny placed in a glass of Coke will dissolve within days, thus proving... something. The myth is kind of vague on that point. The inadvisability of using a can of soda as a change jar, perhaps? In any event, despite being more noxious than even New Coke, plum wine has no urban legends of its own. I will bravely take it upon myself to rectify this situation.
  
  Possible Plum Wine Urban Legend #1 : Plum wine needs to be served in specially-coated glasses, otherwise it will melt through the glass, through the tablecloth, through your shoe, through a 2" reinforced floor joist and through the skull of one of the poor elderly ladies playing mah-jong in the basement.
  
  Possible Plum Wine Urban Legend #2 : Plum wine will steal your woman. It looks so guileless in its cute little decanter. Do not be deceived. It's merely biding its time. As soon as you go to the bathroom to check if there's any seaweed stuck to your teeth, BAM! Its sticky, delicately-fragranced hands will be ALL OVER HER.
  
  It occurs to me that I should quit while I'm ahead, lest I be found dead with a chopstick protruding from my frontal lobe and an ominous note tucked inside my belly button.
  
  



• The official musical form of Solitary Contemplation-mas is the fugue... or, if you are some sort of freaking sissy, the toccata.



• The official weather of Solitary Contemplation-mas is rain. If rain is unavailable, sleet, hail and "plague of locusts" are also fine. If it is capable of blowing your ass down Fifth Avenue, cursing and shivering (or shrieking, "Aaaaagh! Get 'em off me! Get 'em off me!"), it is an acceptable meteorological condition.



• One concludes Solitary Contemplation-mas by watching a movie.
  
  Popcorn is fluffy and insubstantial and therefore prohibited. Milk Duds are permitted, so long as they are consumed chocolate-first, then caramel (traditional tactile sensation of Solitary Contemplation-mas: stickiness).
  
  Foreign films are preferable; French ones in particular. It is generally possible to tell if a film would be a good Solitary Contemplation-mas selection by the synopsis alone:
  
  "Le Cygne Pleure Milliard-et-Demi des Larmes" (The Swan Cries a Billion and a Half Tears) : a grieving widow's tragic life is turned upside-down by the arrival of a mysterious lodger. However, the unlikely duo's newfound happiness is endangered by a tragic secret from his past. Can two wounded souls find solace from the world's tragedies? Here's a hint: no.
  
  That right there would be an excellent Solitary Contemplation-mas movie. Someone needs to dig up and reanimate Jean-Luc Goddard, pronto.
  
  As far as American films go, "Blade Runner" is a good choice. "Kids" would do nicely (as well as segue nicely into February's "Kick Harmony Korine's Pretentious Little Ass-mas"). The recently-released "Children of Men" was my personal Solitary Contemplation-mas film; it is a rare film indeed which makes one think, "Huh, maybe the annihilation of the human race wouldn't be such a bad thing after all."

I paced around Penn Station, headphones blaring, doing parkour-style acrobatics off the steps.

I called my mother, wished her a merry Christmas, apologized once again for forsaking the bosom of my family for Eeyore-ish isolation.

Newark was cold, damp and oily black when I arrived.

Post-marriage, I try to take care of myself in all of the cute little ways a spouse might. When I hopped in the DecrepiCivic, it had a nicely chilled bottle of diet soda on the seat and a full tank of gas. "Awww... thanks, Jul! You shouldn't have!" I said.

Driving back home, I felt a little like I do after a really good run... sweetly depleted, centered, standing stork atop the oft-shaky tectonic plate which is my life.

Like I said... it was a good day.

Oh I could be
Condemned to Hell for every sin but littering.
I could
Slip on the East River and crash into Queens all skittering.

Everything is going up.
Everything is going as planned, yeah.
Everything moves along.
Everything is fine, fine, fine.

Soul Coughing, "The Idiot Kings"

Better or Verse: "Reverse Tantra"

In the dentist's chair, nails in pleather
The taste of copper and the smell of bone
From the ceiling, you count backwards and just know
You're days from the free toothbrush, stern lecture and home

Marshmallow, skewered by fiery glare
Wondering, not yet s'mored (or forest-floored)
In this new carbon cloak, where do you stand? There's
No oblivion, nor going back to the bag

Progress reports just don't indicate
The panache with which you do calculus
In reverse, strangely pantsless, in public and late
For some other all-important final exam

It is one hell of a party trick
Lit coal peering from a soft, trembling palm
One could have a fine career: The Human Wick!
Who can't decide whether the warmth is worth the burn

You have been burdened with buoyancy
And will come to curse the gurgle, the gasp
And the swap: what's in for what's above a sea
That has scraped you across the beach so many times

Las Vegas, Nevada Is Trying To Kill Us All - Pt. IV

So… um, yeah... I fully intended to finish my Las Vegas travelogue (for those just joining us... Pt I., Pt II, Pt. III). But I am easily distracted, goddamn it, as anyone who's ever eaten out with me can attest ("Oooh, bread! Did you know that most restaurants' 'brown' bread is white bread with caramel coloring added? Huh, who do you suppose invented the foil-wrapped butter pat? Yum, turbinado sugar! Let me now do some fork acrobatics. Whoo, look at 'er spin! Hey, my pierogies are here! This ONE time when I was eating pierogies...", ad nauseum).

So due to my flitty nature, there will not be a rousing, journalistically-brilliant conclusion to the Vegas story. There will, however, be a stupid synopsis, complete with bulleted lists. I may even toss in some napkin origami ("Look! A crane! Oh... uh, sorry. Why don't you just wipe your mouth on the tablecloth?").

Further Events of Note Which Transpired in Sin City

The Wedding : The raison d'etre for the entire sojourn. A coworker of Em's was getting hitched at Caesar's Palace. The ceremony was due to kick off mere hours after Em and I returned from the gun range. While getting gussied up, I was scrupulously careful not to wash my hands. I found the juxtaposition of gunpowder and formalwear to be somewhat roguishly sexy. "Will you be having the stuffed capon Florentine or the herb-rubbed prime rib, Miss Moneypenny?", I murmured in my best Sean Connery brogue, zipping up my dress. Once suitably smokin', Em and I headed over to Caesar's. The bride was gorgeous, the groom was adorable, the chapel was surprisingly non-tacky. The wedding itself was... well, rather painful. For me, at least. The participants both seemed radiantly happy, but this isn't THEIR blog, now is it (http://radiantly - happy- newlyweds- crushing- the- spirits- of- those- whose- own- marriages- have- recently- collapsed.blogspot.com)?

Prior to the whole divorce process, I wasn't easily swayed by our culture's common emotional triggers... death, natural disaster, fuzzy-eared puppies, insurance company commercials. I didn't cry at my own wedding. I didn't cry at J.Q.'s birth.

There was no saline dribbling down my face at the wedding, either. But it is safe to say that I was - as bad lyricists and pop-psych mavens are so fond of saying - Crying On the Inside.

I will never have another first wedding. I will never be so idealistic. I will never be so blindly hopeful.

You only get one chance to jump off of that particular pier with gleeful, fuck-all abandon. If you fall victim to an ill-placed rock or marauding speedboat... well, you'd better believe that your next immersion will be of the jittery, one-toe-at-a-time variety.

I sat there, toying with my miniature bottle of bubbles, averting my eyes from the bride and groom's soul-cauterizing joy. I had never been so acutely aware of that little hollow spot within me; my mind kept returning to it, like a tongue unable to stop prodding a recently-vacated tooth socket.

The happy couple kissed. There was a flurry of bubbles and flashbulbs. Em looked at my face. "Wanna go get some drinks?" she said.

The Strip Search : Em left the following morning. By this point, our normally hardy constitutions had been reduced to Waffle House hash browns: smothered, diced, scattered and fried. Fuck Transylvania - Vegas is without a doubt the most vampiric of locales. "I have no idea how you're going to make it through another two days," said Em, practically French-kissing her boarding pass in gratitude, "I feel like I've been here for two YEARS." "I know," I said, lying in bed with my eyes closed, "I'm thinking of hopping on a Greyhound bus to L.A. Or Death Valley. Anywhere but here. This town is killing me."

I was too drained, however, to successfully mount an escape attempt. Instead, I opted for immersion therapy. In a singularly Cheever-ish move, I walked the entire length of the strip, traveling from casino to casino. I have this to say about that:

• Steve Wynn is a genius. If he keeps cranking out consistently-gorgeous masterpieces of modern industrial design, he can rip through a DOZEN Picassos, take a whiz in the Sistine Chapel and paint a Hitler moustache on the Mona Lisa. His chosen field may be vulgar and commercial, but the guy is gooooood at what he does.


• Don't bother with the Bellagio's cute little pastry shop. Grainy gelato, lackluster crepes. C'est merde!


• Do stop by Vosges-Haut Chocolat at the Venetian. The truffles with Taleggio cheese are transcendentally good. Yet again, I’m a sucker for unusual candy. Pour some melted chocolate over a box of roofing nails, drizzle it in caramel and sprinkle it with pulverized Alaskan lichens, and you’d better believe I’ll pay $17.50 a pound for it.


• Even though I have no desire to see scantily-clad ectomorphs twisting themselves into knots, unless they are doing so in translucent heels while clutching a pole... I must admit that the Cirque du Soleil gift shops have some pretty awesome swag. C'est bonne!


• The Fashion Show Mall: visiting a mall while on vacation has always struck me as vaguely awful... how many cultural differences can one encounter at Bath & Body Works ("Wow, they sure like freesia here in Pyonyang... it's like a whole different WORLD!")? However, the cool, capitalistic confines of the mall are the perfect antidote for the non-stop stimulation of the Strip. In ye olden days, warriors would fortify themselves for battle with flagon of ale and a nice meaty haunch. Today, we can do the same with an Orange Julius and a hot dog on a stick.


• Heee-larious tourist game: "Drunk… Or Just German?"

After monorailing it back to my hotel (and determining that my fellow passengers were, in fact, of the Teutonic persuasion), I felt chipper/stupid enough to embark upon a new adventure...

Terror at 1,150 Feet : For the latter half of my trip, I stayed at the Stratosphere, the Strip's northernmost casino-tel. The joint's claim to fame is the big ol' concrete phallus known as the Stratosphere Tower. One would be tempted to call it a low-rent Space Needle… however, the thing’s literally twice as tall as its Seattle-based bro. It is topped by a glass-walled flying saucer which contains thrill rides, a revolving restaurant, the world's highest Starbucks... a busy little mish-mash of American culture. It is fitting, then, that my tower excursion was a Betty Boop/Lucille Ball/Anna Nicole Smith-style triumph of ditziness. I somehow managed to:

• Decide to visit the tower.
• Purchase a ticket for the tower.
• Wait in line to ascend the tower and
• Take an ear-popping elevator ride to the top of the tower, without ONCE remembering that
• I’m afraid of heights.

Whoops.

After exiting the elevator, one is deposited in doughnut-shaped room. The "hole" of the doughnut contains a gift shop and concession stands; in lieu of chocolate glaze, the doughnut's exterior surface is floor-to-ceiling safety glass. I exited the elevator, strode merrily over to the glass... and promptly sank to my knees. I was sorely tempted to lie down (maximizing body-to-carpet contact and minimizing my chances of FALLING ALL THE WAY DOWN THERE OH GOD NOOOOOOO). After five minutes of wide-eyed terror, I stood up. "Okay, Jul," I told myself, "time to take it like a man: with alcohol!" A tiny bottle of hooch was purchased at the World's Highest Gift Shop. A cup of ice was obtained from the World's Highest Starbucks. I retreated to one of the park benches lining the outer perimeter of the room and spent a happy half hour staring at a strip club's blazing neon sign and sipping Gentleman Jack. It was very Jethro Tull. "Well, shit," thought I, chewing on an ice cube, "Might as well take advantage of my chemically-steadied nerves. Thrill ride time!"

Jul's Handy-Dandy Tourist Tip #83:

If you're going to summon up all your courage and go on one of the World's Highest Thrill rides, don't ride in the last car. It will reduce what should be "courageous confrontation of one's fears" to something more akin to "sitting on top of a Speed Queen during spin cycle".

Jul's Handy-Dandy Tourist Tip #84:

Sometimes, when you need a "vacation from your vacation" because you're "about ready to fucking die", it's helpful to stage an Evening of Suburban Sloth in your own hotel room.

You will need:

• One (1) bottle sparkling wine. Ideally Pepto-Bismol pink in color, sweet enough to attract ants from neighboring counties and under $5 a bottle.

• One (1) Styrofoam take-out container full of greasy Mexican food... sour cream, pico de gallo, mountains of Mexi-cheese, plus a protein-stuffed starch of some kind. Starch should preferably be fried; protein may be fatty chicken, deep-fried fish or Beef Which Is Strangely Unlike Any Beef You've Ever Had Before, But You Suspect It Is Wise Not to Ask Questions.

• Three (3) or more (4?) episodes Law & Order, variety unimportant. Classic L&I is superb (and fun to handicap... "Huh, Chris Sarandon is in the opening credits. Insanity plea!"). SVU features Ice-T, as well as Namby-Pamby Sensitive Detective, always right on the verge of popping a forehead vein over a penguin bestiality ring or some such depravity du jour. And Criminal Intent, of course, has Vincent D'Onofrio... weird, mumbly and ooooh, lordy, hot as the surface of the sun. I’d confess to just about ANYTHING, just to bask in his twitchy presence for a few moments more.

What Would a Trip to Vegas Be Without Public Indecency? : A number of Vegas hotels have recently begun offering "European-style sunbathing". I was unaware that a town which offers topless shows, topless bars and topless mud wrestling was suffering from such a boob deficit, but there you have it.

In an uncharacteristically "hep" move, the Stratosphere had recently hopped on the public-nudity bandwagon. Their Naked Pool was advertised via a series of posters featuring fuzz-core photos and the promise of a “secluded, adults-only oasis".

After giving birth in a teaching hospital and crashing a swinger’s convention, I officially have no shame. Thus, the morning of my last day in Vegas, I grabbed my towel, my copy of “Fear & Loathing” and my courage and headed over to the Naked Pool. I navigated a maze of hallways, ascended a dim staircase and flung open a set of fire doors. Stepping out onto the roof, I surveyed the scene.

It was kind of hilarious. It looked like the set of MTV’s Totally Exploitative Summer Blast, circa 1993.

Sheets of beach grass were stapled to every vertical surface. The pool was flanked by frighteningly ugly fiberglass palm trees. Four individuals occupied the “oasis”.

There were three Aryan frat boys, reclining on lounge chairs, letting the sun crisp their bulging pecs.

And then there was The Goddess.

She straddled a pool float, giggling and flirting with the appreciative Tri-Delts. She didn’t appear to be made of flesh, but rather melted and injection-molded Barbies. Every inch of her body was taut, bronze and on magnificent display. Her bare breasts and thong-clad ass were as perfectly globular (and, one suspected, unyielding) as the fiberglass coconuts looming overhead. I scurried under the “Melanoma-Obsessed Dorkwad” canopy, eyes trained on her the entire time.

I spent close to an hour curled up on my shady chaise, reading “F&L” and sneaking furtive glances at The Goddess. She didn’t do much… bobbed around on her float, exited the pool to place a few cell phone calls (while lying on her stomach… perhaps her gleaming ass functioned as something of an impromptu antenna?)

Finally, I could stand it no longer.

“Goddamn it… I may be pale and squishy, but I wanna go for a swim!” I said, yanking my dress over my head . I flung my bra over the back of the chaise and strode, bikini bottom-clad, into the sunlight. The Goddess and her harem gave me a cursory glance, then returned to their conversation. I shimmied down an aluminum ladder and slipped into the pool’s chlorinated coolness. For the next forty-five minutes, I swam laps… doggy-paddle, backstroke and - uh-huh - breaststroke. I floated on my back and stared at the pale desert sky. Semi-nude swimming was indeed delightful. “Damn, maybe I’ll try this the next time I’m at the Holiday Inn,” I thought. Once pleasantly exhausted, I climbed out and sashayed over to my chair. After toweling my hair and sheathing my nakedness, I headed downstairs and treated myself to some breakfast. You can keep your butter, your jelly, your twee little jars of double Devon cream. Nothing makes toast taste better than cheerful brazenness.

And that, my lovelies, was Las Vegas. There was, of course, the journey home, which featured jellybeans, “In Cold Blood”, a barbecue-scented layover in Memphis and the enthralling experience of riding next to a prisoner being extradited (“Don’t worry, I didn’t kill no one,” said my seatmate by way of introduction. I wonder if one can REQUEST prisoner seating, like the Kosher meal?). There was the unsuccessful attempt to secure a gypsy cab for the ride home (The Soon-To-Be-Ex Mr. Thumbscrews advised me to “look for the guys wearing pimp hats”). There was the joyous reunion with J.Q. (who chanted “Mama!” for a solid 15 minutes). And then there was the solemn vow that my next vacation would absolutely, positively be in a more relaxing locale. I’ve heard Pamplona is lovely in July…

Night of the Rat

[Ed. Note: this is the grossest thing I'll ever post. If something grosser occurs, I'll be too busy killing myself to write about it. That being said... enjoy!]

Last night, J.Q. and I were enjoying a leisurely walk home. Our usual route was at its best: cool, leaf-strewn and minimally-odoriferous. A Whole Foods bag full of delectable overpriced goodies hung from the back of the stroller. Every few minutes, J.Q. tilted his head back, gave me a huge smile and said, "Mama! HiiiiIIIIIiiii!" For the moment, life was supremely good. Suddenly, the JulPhone rang. "Hrmn!" said I, "Perhaps it's a man!" (Gloria Steinem needs to kick my ass with one of her doubtlessly sensible shoes).

"'Lo?" I said.

"JUL!" sobbed my caller. I surmised via the voice's pitch that it was either a woman or a castrated man (which would certainly explain the sobbing). It was, in fact, my sister Pixie.

"It's Sloepoke!" she said, anguished.

Sloepoke the rat had recently developed signs of Fatal Familial Rat-Plague, the mysterious malady which caused Pixie's other rodents to scurry off this moral coil. One day they were fine... the next, a bit twitchy... the next, interred in a tiny cardboard coffin. As Sloepoke had reached the "twitching like electrocuted methamphetamine addict" phase several days prior, I figured that nature had taken its gruesome course.

"Oh, no, Pix...", said I, "Dead?"
"No... bleeding!"
"From where?" I asked, dreading the answer.
"HER BEHIND!"

Which was - without a doubt - the worst possible answer to that question. Even if Pixie had replied, "Her pores... I think it may be rat Ebola!", that would have somehow been a little more tolerable.

"Dude," I sighed, "That's never a good sign. She's probably going to have to be... y'know... put down."
"My normal vet is closed, and I called the emergency vet, but they want $97 just to LOOK at her!"
"Did you call dad?"

Our father possesses a singularly useful combination of traits: he's an engineer AND he was raised on a farm. He is well-versed in both creative problem-solving and the harsh realities of nature. If I ever needed to dispose of a corpse, he'd be the first person I'd call ("You bound their wrists with DUCT TAPE? Well... it's okay as far as tensile strength goes, but you might have considered heavy-duty electrical tape for increased torsion resistance. Now pass me that hacksaw").

"HE'S NOT HOME!" said Pixie.

My pulse quickened. As Pixie's sibling, it was now up to me to assume the task of Making Everything Better. Our immediate family sticks together with more tenacity than an entire CASE of duct tape. The previous evening, in fact, Pixie had traveled across state lines to save me when I'd locked J.Q. and myself out of the house.

"I'll be there in 45 minutes," I said, breaking into a jog. I'd been secretly hoping for a chance to put my running skills to practical use; an emergency rodenticide mission seemed as good an opportunity as any. After a brief pit stop in my apartment, I loaded J.Q. in the car and screeched off towards New Jersey.

"We're going to go see Pixie!" I told him.
"Pixie! Pixie? Pixie? Pixie? PIXIE!"

J.Q. is insanely in love with Pixie. Most days, he asks for her as soon as he wakes up in the morning. "No, baby," I tell him, rubbing sleep from my eyes, "As she is not your ACTUAL MOTHER, LIKE ME, THE PERSON GETTING UP WITH YOU AT 7:00 IN THE GODFORSAKEN MORNING, Pixie isn't here right now."

We whizzed down the highway. J.Q. munched on rabbit-shaped graham crackers; I ate the sticky toffee pudding I'd picked up at Whole Foods. In case you were wondering, "sticky toffee pudding" is right up there with "cherries jubilee" and "one of those meat-festooned scimitars from Brazil" on the list of Things Which Are Not a Good Idea to Consume While Driving a Manual-Transmission Vehicle in Rush-Hour Traffic.

Precisely 43 minutes later, sticky and harrowed, we pulled into Pixie's driveway. "Pixie? Pixie? PIXIIIIIIIIIIE!" said J.Q. "Uh-huh," I said wearily, carrying him into her apartment. As soon as she walked into the room, red-eyed, J.Q. launched himself at her like a 25-pound aunt-seeking missile.

"Okay," said I, ignoring Pixie's blatant alienation of my son's affection and extracting a medicine bottle from my coat, "Here's what we're gonna use." During my stop at the Bachelorette Pad, I had rooted around in my medicine cabinet and grabbed the most-controlled substance contained therein: Ativan.

Last February, shortly after my marriage began crumbling, I took a little trip to my G.P. "Um, yeah," I said, fidgeting and rubbing my raw, red eyes, "I can't live like this for another minute... anything you can do to, you know, fix that?" "Here," said my doctor, handing me a prescription, "This ought to take the edge off."

Ativan (a benzodiazepine related to Valium) did not, in fact, take the edge off. It didn't really do a ding-danged thing. However, close to a year later, I still had the little bottle in my possession... a relic of a sadder and more desperate time. I hoped it might be a little more useful now.

"How about you feed your #1 fan some more graham crackers?" I said, walking towards Pixie's PC, "I'm going to do a little research."

"IT IS NOT WATER-SOLUBLE!" I shrieked across Pix's apartment.
"IT DOESN'T MATTER!" she yelled back.
"WE SHOULD TRY DISSOLVING IT IN SOME PROPYLENE GLYCOL!" I yelled, "IT WILL BE MORE BIOAVAILABLE THAT WAY!"
"YOU ARE A FUCKING DORK! LET'S POWDER IT AND FEED IT TO HER IN SOME YOGURT!"
"Mama? Mama? MAMA!" said J.Q., who had wandered away from Pixie and was tugging at my pants leg.
"OH, WHAT THE HELL!" I yelled, scooping him up.

Five minutes later, a spoonful of raspberry yogurt had been prepped (I am sorry to say that I was unable to resist calling it "Death Yogurt"). Pixie tried to gently cajole Sloepoke into eating it while J.Q. hugged her legs and chanted, "WAT! WAT! WAT!"

"GET HIM OUT OF HERE!" she hissed.

"Yeah, probably don't want him exposed to an anally-bleeding rat and benzo-laced yogurt, huh?" I said, carrying him towards the kitchen.

For the next half hour, I tried to distract J.Q. while Pix attended to her rat.

"Come here and have some muffin, J.Q.!" I said cheerily, "It's got cream cheese frosting!"

J.Q. wasn't swayed.

"Pixie? Pixie? Pixiiiiiiiiiie!" he wailed, trying desperately to pummel his way past me to get to his aunt.
"PIXIE is kind of BUSY right now," I muttered, "Pleeeeeeeease eat the freaking muffin!"

And so it went until a saddened, disheveled Pixie joined us in the kitchen.

"She ate a few in the yogurt, some in a piece of macaroni and three by themselves."
"Whoa... so is she... ?"
"Nope, she's just really tired."

Either we had picked the wrong substance for ratricide... or Sloepoke was the Keith Richards of the rodent world.

For the next hour, Pixie, J.Q. and I sat in her bedroom, waiting for Sloepoke to die. She lay in Pixie's arms, eyes closed, breathing peacefully... very much alive. "Go towards the light, 'Poke!" I said.

"Here, like this," said Pixie, gently moving her towards a desk lamp.

Choice quotes from Deathwatch 2006, Genus Rodentia Version:

• "My bedtime is 8:30. If Sloepoke isn't dead by then, I'm burying her alive."



• "How's she doing?"
  "She's giving me mixed signals."
  "Pix, the anal bleeding kind of negates all of the positive signals. It negates ANY positive signal. I don't care if Sloepoke spontaneously learns English, stands up on her back paws and begins reciting Chaucer... she is STILL! Bleeding! Anally!"



• [Pixie holds up her hand and begins sobbing] "She's bleeding again!"
  "Not to sound unsympathetic, but... wow, can you possibly get anything WORSE on your hand?"
  "What, blood from a rat's ass?"
  "Yeah - wait a minute. That would be an AWESOME title for a metal record!"
  "Hey, it would!"
  "New from Danzig... BLOOD From a Rat's ASSSSSSSSSSS!"



• "Fuck, this rat has eaten seven Ativan and it is STILL alive."
  "Yeah, I don't know what's up."
  "Well... you know how chocolate is good for a rat's cough? Maybe Ativan is like that, but for anal bleeding."

When it became apparent that the end was NOT nigh, I packed up J.Q. and prepared to head home. I hugged Pixie and gave her my best wishes. "Dude, that thing has GOT to die during the night!"

She didn't.

"She woke up!" said Pixie this morning, "She is calm and stable, and she's eating and wants to be held!"

It's unfortunate that rats don't have the power of speech; otherwise, she'd probably also be proclaiming, "Duuuuuude... last night, I got SO fuckin' wasted!"

"Is she still... you know?" I asked Pixie.
"Uh-huh," she said, "And falling over."
"Oh, shit," said I, "Okay, plan B: use car's tailpipe as makeshift gas chamber?"

"Nope," said Pixie, sounding eerily chipper, "I'm just going to keep feeding her and see how she does."

So that's how I spent my Friday evening: helping a domestic rodent get as high as a verminous little kite. I don't regret a minute of it, though... Pixie, Junket, my parents and I? We are family, in ways far deeper than the Sister Sledge variety. When it comes to pain, crisis, desperation - and yes, blood from a rat's ass - we've got one anothers' backs.

Although if any of you ever run into a situation with, say, projectile-vomiting marmoset, give me a holler: Pixie definitely owes me one.

As Far As Insults To the Iraqi People Go, It Feels Sooo Good

Incongruity Alert: I don't generally do short posts, or current events posts, or political posts. HOWEVER, if no one else is going to take the bait...

Doesn't Iraqi president Jalal Talabani look like he's demonstrating how to locate the G-spot?

That is all.