Eyeing Little Girls with Bad Intent

Standing at the checkout counter after I shopped at Trader Joe's, I spied an old old man on one of those wheelchair/ATV thingys, coming right through my lane. So, I skinnied myself up against the counter and asked him if he had sufficient room to pass by me. He smiled at me and said "It's just perfect, you didn't even have to move, but I wouldn't want to risk taking even a scrape or a nick out of what is so perfectly formed... It would be a crime against nature." He kept on smiling as he motored on past.

I had to think this over for a bit, and as I looked up at my cashier, I was impressed by how calm and silent he seemed. Too silent, so I said, "Did he just say what I think he said?"

Because I do not have that great of an ass.

Halloweenie

I'm currently working at the yoga studio, and the neighborhood assoc. is sponsoring a safe daylight hour Trick-or-Treat party for the local kids.

Time to take a costume count -

Girls
Pirates: 3
Witches: 8
Lion: 1
Fairies: 6
Princesses: 11
Skeletons: 1
Dead Prom Queen: 1 (Excellent. Great Concept, and the dress was Killer.)
Mummy: 1
Bear: 1
Spider Queen: 1
Spider Princess: 1 (Bless them for shaking up the dream a little)
Strawberry Shortcake: 2
Hippy: 1 (said "thank you," like a good hippy should.)
Vampires: 2
Gypsy: 1 (a personal favorite for four years running in elementary school. My mother told me years later that the day I was born, the King of the Gypsies was dying in the same hospital, which was overrun with his mourners. You can tell me what you think it means.)
Dorothy & Toto: 1
Hello Kitty: 1 (Not to be confused with THAT one mentioned in my 10/25 post, but she was Meow Meow Fine.)
Power Ranger: 1
Devil Angel Bride: 1 (Me: Are you a Devil Angel Bride? Girl: "Yes, I AM a Devil Angel Bride." Mom: "Aren't we all, just a little bit?")
Cat: 1
Plain clothes: 2

Boys
Skater Boy: 1
Harry Potter: 1 (One?? Shocking!! ONE? How many copies of those books did they sell? How many movies?)
Astronaut: 1 (I'm sorry, it's hot, no matter what the age.)
Pirates: 3
Mummy: 1 (Gorgeous costume - probably the only homemade of the lot - all gauzy and white. A snip here and there and I would have worn it out in the summertime.)
Skeletons: 5
THE Rock: 1 (I made the mistake of asking him if he was a muscle man - had you seen him you would clearly understand - to which all of the frustration in his tiny six-year-old body exasperatedly sighed, "Everyone says THAT." Fortunately, he corrected me. Don't quite know why, but it was hilarious.)
Police Men: 2
Jack-o-Lantern: 1
Fire Fighter: 1
SWAT Team: 1
Darth Vader: 4
Frog: 1
Zorro: 1
Power Rangers: 3
Vampire:1
Batman:5
Grim Reaper:1
Knight: 5
"Scream" Killer: 2
Robin: 1 (I mean, who really wants to be second place Beta guy? I really appreciate this kid.)
Scottish Bagpiper: 1 (Clan MacClay? Can't be certain. Must learn to read the Tartan, right after I finish reading The Book of the Courtier.)
Stitch, as in "Lilo &": 1
Twin Chinamen: 1 set of two boys
Twin Spidermen: 1 set of two boys (is anyone else aware of the hyper-proliferation of multiple births going on in New Jersey? I saw some article, but failed to read it. Consequent of what? Love Canal? Three Mile Island? Decades of Hormones in our so-called food and milk? Or do the folks in Jersey just really like their fertility drugs? Does this mean more twinned spawn of Satan, like Lamb & Lynx (see 10/24 post, or link to http://roguestitch.blogspot.com) ???
Ninja: 1
Freddy Kreuger: 1
Gangster: 1
Monkey: 1
Plain Clothes: 6

Adult Female Playing Jedi Mind Tricks: 1 (she was dressed like a good guy from Empire Strikes back, but let's face it, after seventeen, you really can't be door to door begging for candy. It's just not seemly. I will make an exception for the pushing-year-50-woman who came to my door last year dressed as Sponge Bob Square Pants. She was holding a kegger beer in a Dixie cup. Her SECOND pass by my door she was MUCH drunker.)

Slutty Bitch: 1 (didn't actually SEE one this evening, but it's what I plan to be on Monday night. Boo!)

I'll leave the sociological interpretations of the costume spread to y'all, but I will say, the girls were more creative this year.

The Courage to Heel

People have got to stop telling me that I must stay away from my recent ex. I'll bloody well see him if I want to, and I don't see how exiling someone gets them out of your heart. It sure as hell doesn't make you a better person to abandon your friendship just because your romance is terminated. He broke no promises, and he didn't fuck my best friend. I'm neither abusing myself by seeing him occasionally, nor am I preventing myself from healing, nor prolonging an addiction (thanks, by the way, to the friend who likened it to quiting smoking - you're right - human interaction is just so much like cigarettes). I enjoy seeing him, and I was very good and didn't try to get him into bed even once. Not even when his boxers slipped and his wee bum crack smiled at me a bit, and he blushed from a touch of embarassment. What do you expect from a skinny Brit? He actually blushes. It's painfully endearing.

Anyway, just because I think he's wrong and maybe even slightly retarded not to want to pursue a commitment with me, doesn't make him a bad person. It's his choice of automobiles that makes him a bad person.

Heart Like a Wheel

Prepare for the Ego to speak:

(ahem)

I have dated -

a billionaire's son, whose father has an entire wing named after him at the Met, but who died in a car crash shortly after our verbal canoodling began.

a former child star, who wiped his ass on the white hotel towel after a quick and apparently insufficient shower in my room at the Prague Marriott. He charmed my number out of the front desk clerk, which he wore on a post-it stuck his forehead. So adorned, he went to find me down into the basement casino, where I was seated between Cole Hauser and Matt Damon, making granny bets at the blackjack table. I didn't sleep with him right away, but the sex was terrible and I always regretted it. He hung himself two years ago for God knows what reason, but he was very clever and highly unstable. I still have the yellow legal paper he wrote all his LA numbers on, along with cartoon doodles and his two favorite lines from pornographic films: 1)"Hello, Kitty!" and 2)"White cotton panties?! There IS a God!"

the son of the Rabbi (who was from something like twenty unbroken generations of Rabbis), and his only boy child, the loss of whom will haunt a webbed attic in my heart 'till I die.

a Jewish construction foreman (that's a rarity on the West coast, trust me), with crackling aquamarine eyes and a taste for vodka that ended our engagement. At this moment, there's not enough time or space to illuminate you on his importance, but he goes on the list of top 5 major transformative periods of my existence.

a French novelist, talented in so many ways, whose Parisian upbringing never blackened his sweet sweet heart. The jury's still out on where we stand.

a freshman, when I was a senior at an Ivy League U., who was a tough, but not poor, New York City boy. He had big steel balls, which propelled him to approach me in the library after watching me for months. We made out that same night and were totally crazy about one another. He was a sweet little pussycat when he was alone with me, and a stubborn arrogant dick outside of that. He played jazz upright bass, smoked to much, wore black too much, hated his father too much, and had to be sent packing for missing one too many of my dinner parties while tripping on mushrooms. He went on to open his own wildly successful, edgy, street credelicious, boutique hip-hop label, just like he said he would back when he was nineteen. A few years after our untimely demise, I saw and slept with him (we did that quite well), during a visit to New York. He, by his own admission, exacted a rather cruel revenge for the break up, refusing to see me ever again. This was odd, because for ages after I left school, he would call me from the east coast to reminisce and dream of a possible future. I guess he really did want to marry me, just like he said he would, back when he was nineteen.

a too shy fellow waiter at The Old Spaghetti Factory - that's right, I said it, The Old Spaghetti Factory. You aren't going to shame me for THAT.

a French-Italian grip who squired me around Paris and Bois de Vincennes on his motorcycle, but who never so much as tried to kiss me until the fourth date. Later he took me to Rome, but didn't touch me the entire time. Maybe it was the scorpion tail constellation of cold sores lashing across my cheek, and brought on by the antibiotics that were helping me barely recover from a raging case of strep throat. I think he was mad at me for getting sick and ruining our trip. Some guys just can't take a joke.

a former junkie and L7 tour manager who had been married to the female bassist of The Smashing Pumpkins (she can deny it all she wants, but I saw the divorce papers). Funny how they only tell you about their needle use after they sleep with you. After we broke up, I endured seven months of self-imposed celibacy, until I could be certain all the HIV tests were truly negative. He still owes me $85.

a very handsome triathalon-ing environmental lawyer who, upon dumping my ass, assured me that with my magical healing powers, I had caused him to "really open up so (he could) now go forward and have a real committed relationship with someone (else)." He said this without the slightest scant of a trace of a wisp of irony. He still owes me money too, but I have his wetsuit, so I guess we're even.

a scrungy punk-rocking carpenter whose bedroom gave me the worst allergic reaction of my life, and had me in the immediate care center for hours on Easter Sunday. There I was, tragically misdiagnosed with scabies, something of a common trashcan diagnosis for those crude rogues they call emergency room doctors. This much I was told by the dermatologist I visited the following week. The insecticidal skin cream alone costs $50, the laundry takes a whole day, but the emotional trauma from the stigma of such an unsavory disorder can last years. It's priceless, really. Anyway, back to Tim: upon being fired for repeated tardiness from our mutual place of work, he was angered and downright shocked that I didn't quit out of solidarity with him. Where is the loyalty, indeed?

a truly lovely Wall Street investment banker type, with the heart of a poet, and to whom I owe ever ever so much. I love you still.

a true English blueblood, pretty like all those Eton boys, with the swishy Edwardian hair asymetrically hanging over his left brow in that insouciant manner wealthy Europeans have. This, by the way, doesn't make them gay. He is one of two boyfriends who had the genetic quirk of three nipples. He tried to take me to the Bahamas for spring break, but I bailed out after realizing that I didn't want to sleep with him. I couldn't see the parity in abusing a guy for a free trip, if I wasn't going to let him abuse me. And this was decided, despite the opportunistic encouragements of many friends, and even my mother. We were meant to stay in Eleuthera with his parents and the American Ambassador to Poland. Maybe I was really just too intimidated. But, that same Caribbean island is where my parents conceived me, so I guess I've already been there. Years later, I saw him modeling in Tattler in a pair of boxer briefs, third nipple and all.

a never realized mutual infatuation and admiration which lives on in the form of a dear if distant friendship. He is a Rhodes scholar, nationally syndicated cartoonist, writer of an historical tome which was published when he was about 28, senior speechwriter to the last two term democratic president, and all around great guy. Full of heart, full of soul, you ARE the true Renaissance Man, and I apologize for crassly flagging around your credentials in this grossly self-congratulatory way, especially as they are the least important things about you. Maybe I'm still just a little sore about not being invited to your wedding. I adore you.

Adam was primarily and formally a very close friend, who for a decade was the yardstick against whom all other men were measured. About a year before he slipped away, he said that back when we were eighteen he had told me he thought we'd be married one day. This was news to me, but he held to this even at twenty-seven. What happened is beyond me. We had no conflict in the end, but he disappeared without so much as a word of 'goodbye.' That's still a hard one. If you see him, tell him I'm sure that silence is the most comfortable place for him, but for Stephen and me, it's like a soft cell of screaming loonies.

But none of this could have prepared me for the surprise of you, Henry. The naked fact of you taught me I was capable of loving beyond what I believed were my boundaries. I never knew I could even be attracted. I'm grateful to know I'm not as superficial as I thought. The heart is a very large and mysterious place. Too bad it ends.

Pretty is as Pretty does

"Singers Lamb and Lynx Gaede may look like Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, but their songs send a message of White Nationalism that some call dangerous." (ABC News)
http://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/story?id=1231684&page=1

Talk about blue-eyed devils. The future of racism is here in the form of a couple of insipid teenyboppers who can't even fill out their training bras. They are like pin-up girls for the Klan. And don't even get me started on their names.

Well done, Mom & Dad!!

Thunderstorms and Neon Signs

Conversation at the yoga studio last Monday evening-

female student: ...it's so weird today, it just doesn't seem like Monday. It feels more like Wednesday.

teacher: You're right, it definitely feels like Wednesday.

me: You're both crazy - it seems like a lazy rainy Sunday afternoon, and I should be eating a bowl of popcorn while lying on the sofa with a HOT boy, watching movies.

teacher: (laughs) this is how you spend your Sundays?

me: This is how I dream of spending my Sundays.

student: (emphatically) You don't have a Boyfriend?

me: (slight strain on my face) well... not exactly.

student: Really?

me: Well, it depends on how you define Boyfriend.

(pause)

student: (after a moment of thoughtful consideration) ...a guy who is a constant source of disappointment to you?

me: ...but who I'm madly in love with?

student: ...even though you probably shouldn't be...

me: Yes. Why, yes! That's it exactly. I do have a boyfriend!

(lights dim) (roar of applause)

Getting over Henry

How do you let go of an axis to your emotional life? That's why so many people spin out after breakups; their pivot point dislodges. You lose the centripetal or centrifugal (not sure which one is right - they mean force moving to the axis and away from the axis, respectively), force that keeps you from flying off your center.

I'm safe and I'm strong enough, but am I ever going to grieve this one...