Author Archives: Steffani Cameron

On Becoming a Sometimes-Sex-Blogger Again

As a so-called sex writer, I went off the reservation a long, long time ago.
As a writer, I’m writing a book, and it means revisiting all my work from the last few years. In the process, I’m tagging & categorizing all my posts so you’ll have an easier time to search relevant topics.
But, boy, is it interesting taking a look at all the passion I wrote about sex with in The Old Days of this blog.
It’s important, too, because I’m remembering why I used to write about sex.
For example, I came across one of my first postings on this blog, Shut Up and Screw, in which I wrote “During sex, when I’m not using my mouth for pleasure, I keep it shut.”
And, it’s funny, like the addendum note at the top of the posting said in 2008, I’d drastically revisited that position about liking quiet lovers.
Ahem, I probably revisited the position in probably more ways than we should be counting, but there was a moment later that year with a certain lover in which I made the jump from quiet to vocal, and it was a profound jump in a lot of other sexual ways, too… and maybe even in some inner-life ways.
I realized that there was this psychological place that you get past when you no longer care if someone hears you climaxing. It’s like that great philosopher George Michael sings, “Sex is natural, sex is good, not everybody does it, but everybody should.”
Unfortunately, I’m one of those that doesn’t do it these days — I’ve been celibate for an embarrassing length of time now, despite the occasional date, the men who’ve propositioned me, and so forth. I got to that place where I finally had no libido, and life was simpler not pushing it. If my libido was active, my social life would be a whole ‘nother story. Then, I mean. Now’s getting to be a different story.
She’s in there, the feisty one. And she’s starting to emerge, now that life’s moving past the always-be-surviving mode I’ve been stuck in for so long. Now that I don’t have to just focus on getting through this week, this month, etc, I really want to start playing outside my sandbox again.
Back then, when I wrote that silly little posting, was when I probably entered into the best two years of my dating life. I was dating often, getting tons of interest, and keeping very satisfied sexually, thanks to a couple partners over that time.
One of whom was later that year, the one who made me vocal in ways I never assumed I’d be. Oh, wouldn’t you like to know more. Tsk. Good thing you’ve got your healthy imagination.
That orgasm? Pretty life-changing. What? An orgasm? Life-changing?
Yup. And why not? When you finally get to that place after a lifetime of hangups, where you can loudly and proudly hit a climax and not feel like you should be ashamed and silent about it… yeah, it’s a big shift of self.
And that’s why I write this blog.
Or why I did.
And why I want to again.
Because everyone needs to take that journey.
Everyone needs to think more about how small things — whether it’s saying what you really think, expressing how you really feel, or just screaming out with a little sexual pleasure — can redefine who and what we are.
I believe in the examined life. I believe in accepting & appreciating that the little things do add up, that they profoundly change the landscape of our lives.
It’s like the rah-rah speech Pacino gives in Any Given Sunday.
“You find out that life is just a game of inches. So is football. Because, in either game, life or football, the margin for error is so small. I mean, one half step too late or too early, you don’t quite make it. One half second too slow or too fast, and you don’t quite catch it. The inches we need are everywhere around us. They are in every break of the game — every minute, every second.”
If, in every moment in life, we milk just a little bit more — from that kitchen you’re cleaning through to the kiss you want to deliver — the payout is so greater than “just a little bit more”. It’s the difference between surviving and thriving, liking and loving, and the difference between mere enjoyment and ecstasy.
I think, in some ways, my battle to make people see that has been successful, but more so in the earlier days of these writings.
I’m not satisfied with “more so in the early days”.
And this inspires me to somehow bridge the gap between the writer I’ve become and the writer I was — a reminder on the importance of spreading the word about sex in a non-porn way, while also continuing the exploration of outside-of-sex selves that I’ve been trying to journey through over the years.
It’s kind of awesome, this little walk through memory lane. Creatively and personally.
If you haven’t read a lot of the content over 2005 to 2006, and you think I’m a good writer, you really might want to take a read through those times. It’s probably the best creative period of my life. But I know it’s not the last.
If you’ve been around a long time? Thanks for your support, readers.
If you haven’t been around for much of those 5 years? I hope you will be around for the future.
‘Cos I plan to be here — in ever-changing and ever-growing ways.

The Power to Own It

I began a new blog today.
There’s an area of my life I don’t feel like writing about here or anywhere else too obviously just yet, so I figure a new blog is a good way to do it.
But I don’t want true anonymity, I don’t want to write for just myself, because what I’m going through is something that’s a universal experience, and it’s painful for us all.
I believe I know something about sharing pain. I believe I know something about sharing the dark inner-workings of some life experiences that many don’t have the guts to put a voice behind.
I believe my obligation as a writer is to share that with my audience. I believe I owe it to myself, and to anyone else hurting in that same place I’m going through, to put my emotions and hurts into words so that there’s some kind of community behind the feeling.
I don’t think I was given the talent of writing so I could fill paper for-my-eyes-only journals that get stuffed in a drawer and contribute fuck all to the way the world spins. I believe each of us was given whatever skills and talents we have with the obligation of using them in a way that builds into the human condition.
We owe it to each other to own our experiences and share them. We underestimate the power of identity and community, but we truly don’t fathom how important both are to the fullness of our lives.
So why am I writing the blog a little bit incognito?
Because it’s not just my story to tell right now, and to put my fully-public stamp upon the work would be difficult for others.
I don’t do secrets well. I keep confidences beautifully, but I can’t keep secrets about myself from others. I don’t care to, it’s not my style. I’m honest to a fault. I’m absolutely fucking CERTAIN I’m not the only person who thinks the irreverent things I do, who gets pissed about the things I do, or hurts in the ways I hurt.
I know I’m not alone. That knowledge emboldens me. I want to share. I want to stand up and shout THIS IS HOW IT FEELS!
So, if you look hard enough, you might find me.
And I’m fine with that.
But here, now, this place, given my audience, I can’t begin to define for you the scope of these feelings I have, because, well, it gives everything away. To my whole audience.
It’s hard, too, though. It’s hard to hide this, but it’s also hard to put it out there, because putting it out there means I can’t pretend it’s not real or that it’s not happening to me.
I don’t want to own these feelings. These are truths I could well do to avoid. Which is all the problem, and is why I’ve opened that can of worms.
That’s when writers need to write: When it’s the very last thing in the world they wish to write about.
When’s the last time you told the truth about your biggest fears? When’s the last time you owned up to your most regrettable failings and accepted that you’ve not paid the price for them or atoned in any way? When’s the last time you said you were all that and more, but that you could confidently say that that didn’t mean you were a bad person, just a normal human?
Because we should all do that a little more. We should all acknowledge we could be closer to that person we have a vision of being, and accept that our ethics and morality may stand room for improvement.
If you’re the perfect vision of who you’ve always dreamed to be, then congratulations, you’re in the rare 1%.
Me, I’m far, far, far from that woman. Today, I’ve taken another step in possibly trying to write/right some of the wrongs that are the crevasse separating me from who I’ve been and who I’d like to still be.
It’s a good way to end a week, and a bittersweet moment of satisfaction. I know there’s no happy ending for me here. But there’s a better ending than the one I currently see unfolding, and I know that it’s in my power to change.
And somewhere on the web I still get to have a voice and share that common human experience, if only a little incognito.
What a beautiful world technology gives us the opportunity to have…
If only we’d all try to use this technology to create real community rather than just more commodity.

Oh, You Naughty Librarian!

In college, I was a librarian. I worked both in books and in the audio-visuals section. Then I was a bookseller.
Everything I ever needed to learn about sex, I learned on the job. It’s probably the only thing escorts and librarians have in common.
Okay, well, no, not everything I ever needed to learn… but it sure as hell helped me write informative web sex commentaries like:

What can I tell you? There’s nothing like being paid in quiet work moments to go searching through shelves for titles you’d never have the balls to take out if you were just Joe Public, like Sex Tips for Straight Women from a Gay Man by Dan Anderson.
A quiet rainy night and no one in the bookshop, and I have a date with my boyfriend later? Sure, why not learn new oral techniques or read about the psychology of sex in the Guide to Getting it On by Paul Joahannides?
I was ALLOWED to read on the job. Clients might enter and ask about those books! (And in 3 years, only one did, and when I gave her Dan Anderson’s book and pointed out a couple passages worth really absorbing, she cancelled her evening plans then and there and invited her guy over for breakfast, laughing while I rang the book in.)
Will Manley reports over on his blog that, in 1992, he had more than 5,000 librarians answer his Librarians & Sex Survey, but the results were quashed by Those Who Be who thought, perhaps, that librarians couldn’t appear THAT naughty.
I woulda scored pretty good in some of the categories, I suspect, but thank god I’m not relevant here because you people just don’t need to know too much. Hi! I’m Steff the sometimes-sex blogger with boundaries.
But all this comes back to what I strongly believe — great sex requires:

  • great knowledge
  • communication
  • articulation
  • attention to detail
  • ability to be versatile
  • openmindedness
  • access to information and resources
  • insight and commentary
  • ability to not take things too seriously

Furthermore? I believe the people with the healthiest sex lives are usually people who are most open to other people’s points-of-views and lifestyle choices.
Why? Because being a great lover means realizing the world has more tastes than just yours. And accepting that personal taste matters.
The reality is, just because you think you have a money-shot doesn’t mean it works on everyone. Sex isn’t about YOU. It’s about your partner. And if your partner thinks that way too, then congratulations, you probably know what it’s like to have your mind totally blown by sex.
But if either of you think it’s all about the orgasm, or that your performance reflects on you in a “being-graded” kind of way, or that sex is about obligation or routine, then you probably haven’t transcended that place that takes some of us from being mere enthusiasts about sex to feeling profoundly sorry that the rest of the world doesn’t get what we’re talking about.
Frankly? If you haven’t been laid by a sex geek, you’re probably missing out.
The truth is, the more I learn about other people’s hang-ups, the more I read up on the difficult journeys many of us take as we fumble from awkward through to confident lovers, the more I’m able to accept myself as a total vixen-rockstar-lover while also being a woman who has all the insecurities most women have… and it’s okay. ‘Cos openness and vulnerability have their own hotness-factor, too — so long as I realize it’s in my head, I’m not the only person that feels this way, and I can admit it. Besides, that vulnerability is part of what makes me this unique blend of who I am.
My vulnerability is not all I can admit. I’ve found power in confessing things like this, that go against the supposed “sex blogger” image, even though I’ve written one of the most plagiarized how-to-give-blowjobs postings on the web. Why? Because I know I’m not alone, because I’ve shared in that human condition that writing & literature can inform us about.
It’s learning, reading, and sharing in others’ experiences and sexual journeys through blogging and the written word, and just plain learning biology, that has really allowed me to own my insecurities and stop apologizing for them.
So-fucking-what if I’m insecure about my size sometimes? If I tell a lover that and he uses that knowledge to covet ALL of me, it helps fight that insecurity — because it’s hard to fake that attention, it’s hard to be disingenuous as you consume someone whole. You can’t easily sell being turned on by a flabby belly, you know.
It’s my knowledge and life experience that helps me understand how and why we all differ sexually — I don’t have hang-ups about talking to a lover about how he likes it, what he wants, and other little fantasies and peccadilloes that shape each of us as a lover. It’s not some reflection on me if he doesn’t like it when I do X to him — that’s a reflection of how his body’s wired, and I can’t change it, no matter how good my X skills might have proven in other encounters.
That’s the kind of confidence that comes from education. It’s getting past THOSE conversations that make good intercourse become the kind of mindblowing sex that everyone dreams of having.
Learn something. Ignorant lovers are lousy lovers. Get over yourself. Learn about your partner, learn about how their sexual tastes differ. Teach them about you.
That’s when carnal knowledge is sexual power.
So: Do you think your knowledge about sex has changed you as a lover, and how? What are your thoughts on this?
Photo is by Dumio_Momio, and is Creative Commons.

Bracing Myself For What May Come

Throbbing pain behind my eyes makes writing sort of the last thing I should be doing right now. I can hear the blood coursing in my head in between the droning waves of traffic grinding up the main streets by home.
I close my eyes and nausea swims on top of my belly. Nerves, or just general dis-ease after two days with this headache.
So much got done yesterday — most of my floors, organizing, rearranging, decluttering. Much more needs to occur in the coming weeks for me to have the perfect little home I’ve always wanted but… I’ve never been this close out of the gate, y’know? Feels good. Even as my head pounds and pulses.
I dropped a line to my Mystery Mentor today, all the while going “Gee, what crazy antics in my life. Zoinks! I should write a book about it or something.”
After all this home-fixing-up stuff is done, it’s onto the book in earnest, but not in a “I’m gonna siddown and write eighty-umptillion-schmillion words today!” kind of way — instead, I’m writing me a book proposal.
It’s kinda assbackwardy, truth be told.
You figure out kinda an outline for your book. You pitch it. You go “Holy smokes, this is brilliance, buy my book!” in a way that doesn’t actually say that. Then you send that to agents and hope one goes “Holy smokes, this is brilliance, I must buy this book!” One does, they sign you, you’re hard at work on the book you’ve proposed, and meanwhile the agent goes to publishers and says, “LOOK. BRILLIANCE. Buy this! Publish it!” One does, you get a fat advance, you finish the book, everyone lives happily ever after.
Uh-huh. Or so I wanna believe.
I wrote last week about the Patti Labelle advice for her 30-year-old self, “Believe the hype, baby.” Honestly, I believe that’s been the biggest struggle for me in recent years. Learning to see myself on the inside as other people perceive me to be — and I still ain’t there by a long shot.
And that’s the interesting dilemma I’ll face in the Book Proposal Project: I need to believe.
I need to believe the story I’ve got to tell and sell is better than one that anyone at a party has behind them.
I’ve got to believe my story’s compelling enough to make someone stop in the middle of filling their glass at the office watercooler and say to their coworker, “So this book I’m reading, you should totally go there!”
THAT’S the game you need to believe you bring BEFORE you write a book. If you don’t THINK you’re that compelling, if you don’t BELIEVE your story has that much gravitas, then what the fuck are you doing? Don’t waste MY time, but sure as shit don’t waste yours. A book’s a one, two, five-year commitment, man. It’s not frivolity.
Believing this is where being raised as a Catholic Canadian really hoodwinks a (not as) fat-girl.

  • Who’s better at feeling guilty than a Catholic?
  • Who’s better at being sorry than a Canadian?
  • Who’s better at being insecure than a fat girl?

Oh, hey, now… have I got a book for you!
So, as I sit here with my pounding head in my ever-simplifying home, I realize next week is game on and I start this book proposal. My awareness of its psycho-emotional implications, though, are new.
My understanding that the book proposal itself may turn into a therapy exercise is probably the most important realization I can have. Therapy’s great, but then you gotta stand back like a comedian and point and laugh.
But this is the week the foundation is laid. By removing all my distractions — this pile of papers there, the clutter over here, the floors that need to be cleaned or the crap that needs to be donated — I’m creating a landscape or work environment in which my focus can only be pulled so far away at any given time.
The focus next week is to start the book proposal — but deliberately doing a therapeutic version. I’ll get the bullshit out, then blast it away with my irreverence and self-deprecation. What’s left will probably be a very good fascimile of who I am as a writer.
But I won’t get there if I don’t go through who I am as a person first.
The reality is, my book is about me. Between now and the end of this, I need to believe I — me, myself, girlie-o, chickadee, moi, yours truly — am worth plunking down some $30-40 on in hardcover form. I need to believe I can see YOU sitting in an armchair with a blanket around your legs and a glass of wine in hand, flipping page over page as you can’t wait to read how I got out of that NEXT jam, while ignoring your phonecalls and promising you’ll get to those emails come dawn.
I need to believe that.
And if you want to write a book? You need to believe that, too.
There’s a strange dichotomy in the mind of anyone who needs to have YOU buy a piece of themselves for their livelihood. There’s the legend-in-one’s-own-mind syndrome that butts heads against the reality of almost all of us getting taunted, mocked, or just plain failing at one point or another in our lives.
Insecurities aren’t rare. They don’t all cripple their owners, though.
My insecurities were bigger because I was bigger. I couldn’t fucking hide. I was 277 pounds and size 24. Where the fuck am I gonna go, right? That was only the beginning of the end of where it all came from, the beginning of what I needed to get past in order to tell the story I now think you’ll one day be okay with dropping $29.95 on.
In the meantime, minions?
Unemployment’s giving me the chance to get back into a life I somehow lost for a while — cycling, writing, enjoying my home, living simply, and, yes, even dating. I’m dusting myself off and getting back into dating** after a long time of just being completely disinterested. Do I want “love” right now? [shrug] I dunno. Whatcha got? Right?
We’ll see what the world unfolds. I feel like anything can happen right now, and despite the seemingly negative turn of events losing my job would appear to unleash, I feel very much the opposite — that opportunity is everywhere.
I feel like it’s my time, but the only thing holding me back is finding the path from here to there, and dialing up the courage and resilience it’ll take to keep walking that path long after the bloodied sores and blisters emerge.
Ever read Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist? No? You should. Right now, no matter what I do, there’s a very quiet little air of Maktub* in the back of my mind.
But I still need to do the writing.
*In the book, Coelho explains MAKTUB as meaning “it is written” in Arabic, a sort of idea of fate and determination.

**I’m taking applications. No. Really.

Believe, Baby

I’m blogging so much because I don’t want to write my book. You realize this, don’t you?
That’s okay, it’s just temporary. I’m adjusting. Going straight to work on the book is too ballsy psychologically — it’s accepting I’ve really been laid off, and it’s acknowledging that I have choices I need to make about my future.
It’s also terrifying financially, because writing a book TODAY likely doesn’t pay for two to three years, if ever. But we don’t talk about “if ever” because I’m choosing to believe the hype.
Have you ever read my writing about believing the hype? Possibly the single most powerful line I’ve ever learned off a talkshow, that’s what that is.
Patti LaBelle was on an episode of Oprah that was all about Fabulous Women in their 50s or something, and the question du moment was, “If you could tell your 35-year-old self any one thing, what would it be?”
So, Patti grins and goes, “Believe the hype, baby. Believe the hype.”
I’m TRYING to force myself to have this point of view where I believe I’m All That, Yo, but it’s difficult. Let’s face it, some insecurities take a lifetime to get over. I’m working on things. But getting tossed from a job, even if it’s by a boss who’s so upset her eyes have been red all day, doesn’t do a lot to prop up the self-esteem, no matter how channeled you are into running with the unemployment opportunity.
This week’s about transitioning — it’s about resting and chilling, getting in touch with silence and not talking to people. It’s about thinking about things I want, and little things I need to accomplish. Mostly, it’s just finding focus, cleaning house, and recharging batteries. And lots of baking. Oh, lord. Step back from the flour, lady.
Not sure I’ve explained the particulars of my situation to y’all.
I’m in the awkwardly strange situation of being in an open unemployment.
I’m laid off indefinitely; they have three months to get enough work to give me my job back, but someone else has seniority. On July 1st, I either will be back at work or cut a fat severance cheque. If, however, I was to take a new job before that 3 months, I’d lose severance. If I decline to return to the job when I’m offered work again, I lose severance.
The uncertainty of this time off makes me wonder how committed I can be to it. It makes me think about choices I have to make. My bosses know theirs is the last job I ever want. Everyone knows I want to write a book.
I’m not good with uncertainty.
You tell me a thing’s a certain way, I’m head-down and moving on, man. Tell me what is, and I’ll show you how to accept it and get over it. But keep me in suspense, have me living in the unknown of this-way-or-that? A part of my brain’s always chowing down on the potentials to try to process the invariable “what ifs” that come with.
But when it’s What Is? Pfft, I’m down with that. I just need to know, then I make a plan and run. Otherwise, my focuses scatter and I’m a twitchy scattered fool too.
For now? All I can do is reduce the chaos around me as I try to figure out the direction I’m supposed to go in.
I’m pretty sure that direction is writing.
It doesn’t make it any less scary to be “pretty sure” of it. I’m fucking terrified.
Writing’s easily the hardest art to pursue emotionally, and that’s biased, sure, but every other art has buffers between you and it. Art can abstract and be only an aspect of a view into the artist’s mind. Photography reveals nothing of the picture-snapper. Music can be picked apart in 20 different ways and can be liked and disliked at the same time. “Great vocals, but the melodies sort of suck.”
But, writing?
There’s nothing HERE but my words. That’s IT. Hi, reader! See? Nothing. Me, you, my words. That’s what we got, that’s all that’s there.
Emotionally, signing up to write a book at the same time I’ve become unemployed and can’t afford a life at all, it’s just kinda like agreeing to take a long dark walk into the deepest parts of my mind that, y’know, I’m more than happy to avoid. All alone — very, very alone. And when I want a break from it? I’m too broke to take social breaks — just getting out of my Cube Ghetto costs $4.50 return.
I’m not scared of monsters, I’m scared of long dark walks in unrelenting caves. Like writing. And I’m scared of not having excuses. I gotta put my money where my mouth is. I hate that.
Work — the 9-to-5 rat-race kinda dealio — is an excuse. “Oh, I never do X anymore because of work.” It’s such a time obligation and mental distraction that it’s easy to buy or sell the “got no time, I’m a workin’ stiff” excuse.
Take work out of the equation, then what can you blame when you avoid it? Nothing.
You know what I got?
I got no excuses. You, me, the fat lady in the street, we all know it. I got no excuses. I got time, I supposedly got the will, I got skillz. I just ain’t got no excuses.
For now, I have the “but my house is a mess!” excuse but that’ll be dead and gone by Monday, I imagine. Don’t worry, I’m stretching that out.
Then? Yeah. Onward.
Belief in yourself is easier when it’s not the only thing between you and the street. I’m not well-monied. I’m one of those people who’s two cheques from the street at any given time. This city isn’t kind to the lower-income sorts, and fear’s something I’m pretty in touch with right now.
But I still got belief. Do I believe the hype? Nah. Not yet. But I believe discussion’s merited, and that’s a start.
[Oh, and I’ll point out the PAYPAL DONATION button top right. And if you think I’ve got gall for doing so, just remember who’s doing the writing. There’s nothing wrong with me believing my work possibly might be worth something to you. I’m also pretty aware not many people have money to give these days. There’s nothing wrong with me point out a link, is all.]

Oh, Tiger Woods, You FAILED Us… BAD Golfer!

Oh, boo-hoo. Really? Tiger failed you?
It turns out people are whining more about the fact that the mighty golf god Tiger Woods has proven to be all-too-human and just as flawed as most people in the public eye.
I can’t believe the air of entitlement from the public about this. Like Tiger Woods did this to YOU?
What did Tiger sign up to do in life? Be Jesus? No, as a toddler he picked up a golf club and showed a profound affinity to it. He didn’t enroll in Dalai Lama classes or learn how to hang out on a cross for three days and change water to wine.
He played GOLF. He hit a stupid ball with a stick, and he was INCREDIBLE at it. He became the best player to EVER play the sport.
He did THAT to the best of his abilities.
Then, like most profoundly gifted people, he fucked up in other areas of his life.
So what do we have now? We have blowhards like wanker-to-the-nth, Augusta Golf Club’s Chairman Billy Payne, saying ridiculous things like, “Our hero did not live up to the expectations of the role model we saw for our children. It is not simply the degree of his conduct that is so egregious here, it is the fact he disappointed all of us and more importantly our kids and our grand kids.”
Are you kidding me?
Here’s a chance for EVERY PARENT IN THE WORLD to do what they should’ve been doing all along:
Explain to the kids that celebrities are people, and they make humongous mistakes in life, too. Explain how “celebrity” usually means someone’s good at one special thing, and they’re probably better at that one thing than most people ever will be, but that “celebrity” also leads people to think that being GOOD at that ONE thing means that they get a pass on being good at many other things — like living a moral life — and that it’s important to remember how easy it is to let your life get out of balance and lose responsibility for yourself.
Like Tiger did.
Tiger Woods — THE GREATEST PLAYER IN THE WORLD, EVER — has screwed up and been human.
It’s a good time for EVERYONE to remember that if Tiger can be human, we probably all will be, too.
Naturally, Tiger’s brand of “fucking up” goes above and beyond the average person’s ability to do so — but so do the demands of his life, the surreality of HIS fame, and the enormously frequent opportunities to screw up. So, of course the scope of his fallout is legendary, because so is his life. Perspective.
A skill or talent, or even brilliance, does not mean someone is immune from insecurities, emotional baggage, mental illness, stupid judgment, or the ability to be a complete ass.
Let’s start judging skills, talent, progeny, brilliance, and scope for what it is — being good at ONE thing, not EVERYthing — and stop assuming it comes with some moral pedigree.
In our daily lives, we’re all flawed to varying extents, and none of us ever faces the vast temptations and moral compromises those in the public eye do, and yet we’d like to keep our skeletons well hidden behind our closets.
Unlikely any of us has ever had anything close to the sexual escapades and betrayals that Tiger Woods has come to light with, but it doesn’t make the demands we place on our celebrities any less hypocritical.
Get real, people. Morality should be taught at home and at church.
Expecting it from celebrities today is as stupid and naive as it was in Roman times.
Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Get the memo. And get over it.

Kurt Cobain, Still Dead

16 years ago today, Kurt Cobain put a bullet in his brain and robbed us all of everything that spoke to MY generation at a time when we were so fucking confused about what mattered.
We were tired of the fluff and pop of the ’80s, sickened by the everlasting everywhereness of the Oliver Stone Wall Street mentality and the increasing loss of meaning in the modern world.
Then there they were — Kurt Cobain and Eddie Vedder… specifically Kurt.
Cutting through the bullshit, discarding the pretty-boy rock images that commandeered ’80s MTV, throwing down their rage and speaking to the discontent that’d been hidden by pop-hooks and plastic performances for too long now, the posterboys of the grunge-rock movement gave the establishment the finger and we roared in approval as we lined up in droves for Lollapalooza and other epic events of festival rock that brought us all together for bodysurfing, moshing, and community.
What made Nirvana’s brand of electric-pop grunge-rock so eponymous for my generation was that it could BE EVERYTHING all at once — it could be funny, hard, soft, loud, bouncy, moody, angry, and exuberant simultaneously. It was OUR existential noise put to a bouncy beat, and it GOT us. It took our insides and folded it out, and made it fun to act out and scream along to.
Few bands can push the cathartic-heart-restart button for me like Nirvana. Maybe the Replacements or the Butthole Surfers… but nobody put a finger on it like Nirvana did, and I still feel robbed today. ROBBED. Robbed, motherfucker.
Fucking hell. I’d like to beat depression and addiction to death with a tire iron for all the people and things it has robbed me of in life, and Kurt Cobain makes that list.
I’d like to say we’ve made lots of advances in the areas of addiction and death since news of Cobain’s death sent everyone in my age group (I was 20) into a depressive funk for days — even non-fans who felt he somehow had a message worth hearing that encapsulated why our generation felt so lost, even if they weren’t into him…
I’d like to say we’ve made advances, but we haven’t. We’re going backwards — losing more soul, losing style, losing voice, losing control.
Just today are reports that more people than ever before are overdosing on prescription drugs. We’re oblivioning ourselves to death. It’s so tragically ironic. Where’s our Kurt Cobain for today? Who’s trying to snap our apathy now?
For me, Nirvana woke me up about how having more than one emotion at one time could be all right, even be a good thing, that life could be felt in different ways at any moment. I could be happy and angry, glad but resentful. I could be overjoyed but despondent. I could just feel it all. I was human and it was how we rolled — Kurt Cobain said so.
And his death? I was 20. He was my Lennon, man. I remember where I was, I remember hoping it was another hoax.

Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are.

~Kurt Cobain

My friends and I suddenly dreaded aging — 27 was the age of death now. Him, Morrison, Hendrix — all dead at 27. But Cobain was different from the others.
Cobain gave up. It wasn’t just stupidity, it was a shotgun blast. It was a willful choice that life was too much. This unassuming anti-hero we all put our hopes in, blam. Gone, dead, done. He was our voice and he just fucked off.
We had hopes for Cobain. He was like that fucked-up friend with incredible soul that you know is a beautiful person through to the core, and even in their sadness a soft sunlight pours from their insides.
Cobain was kinda like that, the tragically-beautiful big-hearted broken-souled rebel we all understood in a small way, who spoke of beauty while ripping at his existential scabs, who mostly fucked up but sometimes didn’t and THAT was awesome? Kurt was THAT guy.
Lennon was stolen by a madman.
Cobain was taken by madness.
In nearly 30 years, we’ve done nothing to change the isolation and hopelessness felt by those with mental illness. The lonely are alone by design, even now. Increasingly, now.
Medication is doled out by the fistfuls because it’s easier to mask the symptoms than it is to solve them. To solve them would be to admit that everything about our modern life — the pace, the technology, the goals, the ambition — is a sham. We can’t have that. Not now. We’re so awesomely tech-dependent that we can’t possibly admit it might not be helpful to us on some deeply emotional/spiritual level.
Technology didn’t solve your life, so, here, this pill can help you — and if that pill doesn’t work, take this pill, but don’t worry about turning in those other not-working pills, and never mind about all those processed foods you’re eating or the lack of life you live, or the fact that you think your Wii exercises you. Don’t worry about solving what really ails you — turn on Glee and take this pretty pink pill and enjoy that tasty beverage, because nothing really matters anyhow. Hey, is that a text message? Hold that thought.
We ARE the soulless society Kurt Cobain railed against… times ten. We’re so empty and vapid as we all walk distractedly through our days that Cobain’s existence seems almost a cutesy little ironic footnote in my generation’s life.
WE rebelled against it all and now we’re the expense-account smart-phone motherfuckers micromanaging our lives in a desperate attempt at the illusion of power over a very real powerlessness. We want to pretend we control our lives. It’s all a sham, but it’s one that’s just so PRETTY, and LOOK it’s so SHINY.
I’m 36. I’m not a rebel these days, per se, but I sure as shit didn’t drink the social Kool-aid yet, either. I’m not the anti-establishment type some still are, but I’m enough of one that I’m a little more broken-hearted on this anniversary.
Even today, I don’t fit squarely on the right or left, but I speak truth to power and I don’t hide behind or excuse-away my ideas.
I own how I feel, I put it out there and I don’t apologize for it. I say it like it is so SOMEONE hears what oughta be said, or at least I know I tried to speak the truth to power.
I’d like to think much of who I am ideologically comes from those early heroes I had — especially the rock’n’roll types, ones who made me realize being multi-faceted wasn’t a contradiction in terms — it was a lesson in humanity.
Cobain taught me, along with a few other antiheroes of mine, that my emotions and my anger were an important part of who I am, that they drove the art I wanted to create, that they made me a more complete person than I was when I lived under the veneer of good’n’happy little citizen. They taught me that my word choices were my weapons, and I could be more at one time than I thought I could be.
Yeah. I still feel robbed. And I’m angry Cobain’s death feels in vain. I’m angry I have so little of him to draw on after all the years that have passed — that I’ve grown in my world-view and never got to see Kurt do that in his.
Some small part of who I am today, though, was in large a part of what Nirvana tried to do. And I thank them for that contribution.
Fuck you, depression and addiction.  Fuck you hard.

Of Insomniacs and Night Owls

It’s 4 in the morning and I’m thinking in my head.*
I fell asleep on my couch a little after 9, tired of the whole “stay up till midnight sleep till 7” routine of the working life. Now, I’ll sleep when the thought occurs to me.
Where do I have to go? What do I have to do? None of it is on schedule beyond the odd appointment or shop hours. Sleep, sleep I can afford. At any time, day or night.
So, it’s 4am and I’ve been sitting in a chair, in silence, thinking.
No TV or music, no droning of traffic on the nearby highway that never stops, no worry this’ll affect my sleep pattern and make work difficult later in the week.
Just silence. And all the time in the world.
So, I just sat there, me and the pinging and creaking of my 1952 radiators to keep me company as the fridge groaned and adjusted itself from time to time.
I was thinking a lot of the time I’ll be needing to talk to a crowd about at Northern Voice 2010 — when, for a moment, everything exploded and I was a pretty talked-about little blogger girl after I wrote a rant that got quoted and linked to all over the web, in sex-blogger circles anyhow.
Then everything came apart in my private life and all blogging momentum stopped. I made some other stupid mistakes that began driving nails in the blogging-success coffin before that, but that’s all another topic for another time…
Like for the folks paying a hundred bucks to hear a bunch of us speak at Northern Voice, for starters.
But what I was really thinking about is how I sort of have very little regrets about fucking all that up.
What if it’d been the other way? What if momentum really exploded? I’m pretty sure I’d have really fucked that up.
Oh, don’t give me “believe in yourself!” speeches. It ain’t that. I DO believe in myself and wish most people had the quiet inner knowledge I have about myself.
Then? I’d have fucked it all up.
Had I never lost the plot and gotten successful then and there?
I’d never have lost 70 pounds without a trainer or dietitian. I’d never have gotten into sports like I did. I’d never have blown my back out like I did and have to survive that fucking year of hell. I’d NEVER have proven all these things to myself in such a short time.
I fucked it up because I had a lot more to learn.
I’m glad. Life’s been a right bitch since 2006, but I’ve never been so smug and satisfied with myself as I am now — even if I’ve just become unemployed. Why? Because of everything I’ve been through in the last seven years, particularly the last 5. When it comes to getting by, I know I get it done now.
I’ve needed no man, no parents, no helping hands beyond small generosities of spirit and time from friends. I got through it all. Sure, uncertainty looms as I sit here in my silent clacking, but… it loomed before, and darker. Then it went away. I did that.
I guess I was just sitting there and thinking of the madcap events that dot the timeline between then and now, and how surreal life feels when you just sit back in silence at 4 in the morning with a single thought:
“So that happened.”
And now I’m off to bed. Thought, thought, and more thought.
Here’s one of my favourite insomniac tracks.

Easter and Change in the Air

My earliest memory of something atypical of Easter-cliche-happenings was in the year I would turn 8, 1981. It was Easter Sunday morning and my father, mother, brother, and I were gathered in the bright yellow sunroom for breakfast when the phone rang.
It was family back East. Seems my father’s father died that morning. I’d never met him. Phillip. But if he was my father’s father, well, he must’ve been a giant of a man, then.
We lived on opposite coasts of the world’s largest country back when air travel wasn’t exactly a bargain. But that was the summer — we were going back for almost the entire summer, spending it in Prince Edward Island for my mother’s parent’s 50th wedding anniversary and family reunion.
Two months too late to meet the last of my father’s parents.
Ever since, I’ve always found death and rebirth to be synonymous with Easter.
Winter rages, summer bites back. Seasons change. Lethargy bleeds out and enthusiasm rears up.
The romantic in me is enjoying the realization that such a major and untenable lifechange should come for me as Easter dawns.
I wish I could bottle and share this cauldron that bubbles inside me — a (in)toxic(ating) mix of excitement and fear, curiosity and dread, confusion and confidence. I have no idea what to make of it, how to pull it all apart.
It’s like my emotions are fighting like a carload of five-year-olds.
And this week coming up is filled with grey and cold and wind. A batten-your-hatches and clear-your-files sort of week filled with naps, short wet walks, pensive moments, and strategizing.
The weather gods apparently feel next weekend is a good time for Spring to begin her return engagement in the fair city of Vancouver, after peppering us with an ironic blast of late winter and snow after our “warmest Olympics ever” came to an end — and the city’s been in a freeze ever since.
From weather on down, change is coming every which way in my life. From my professional focus to my health attitudes to the time I have to focus on myself to my ability to be out in the world to my back account.
EVERYTHING changes here, now, this very week.
It’s not like this is some happy slow transition. No, dude. I’ve lost my job — I’ve gone from trying to juggle seems-like-60-hour weeks to juggling zilch, nada, zippo. My landscape of my life is like a vast stretch of prairie scrub. Goes for miles and miles and miles.
Its vast emptiness is paralleled only by the expanse of my savings account.
The life I had, overnight, is in cardiac arrest, sustained only by the faint hope that is the three-months-to-hire-me-back open-ended lay-off I’ve been handed. Aside from that?
Well, shit, son. Not every aspiring writer gets her bookwriting ducks in a row then gets her pink slip.*
My whole life’s kinda weird right now. I had a Mystery Mentor step out of the works on Twitter and give me very valuable advice for starting my book. I’m reading How to Write a Book Proposal by Larsen now. Very “start here” positioning when you have a good idea of how your book unfolds. As I’m beginning to.
But I’d been working toward this readying since December — figuring out plot and structure, style and voice, basic timeline. In my head, of course. But sometimes that’s a good start.
Life-wise, I was able to get just a few things in a row — not everything will unfold at once but instead it will unfold over the next few months, slowly making me able to sustain the kind of adversity I have to be ready to face if I’m to use this sudden shifting of worlds to my advantage.
All in all? Easter? What an exciting unexpected scary time for me.
Thank god I believe in myself and have an inkling that, despite this appearing to be “bad” luck, this may actually be the start of something wow for me.
WHAT, exactly, I don’t know.
But isn’t it fun?
Happy Easter, everyone. Save me some ham.**
And avoid the “death” part of Easter. It’s kinda lame. Ham’s better. Not for the pig. But, you know.
*Pink slips are blue, incidentally, in Canada. Get yer passport now. Yer missing the fuck out, people.
**You ever think the Christian tradition of ham at Easter is sort of an ironic slap at Judaism, which kinda started the whole Easter-ball rolling anyhow? I’m more a turkey girl.

What to Learn from Unemployment

I woke up with a smile this morning. I woke up unemployed.
It’s not permanent… yet. They have three months to hire me back. If they can’t, I get severance then. If they do, tickety-boo.  Just not for a while, please.
I’m so fuckin’ tired from runnin’ so fuckin’ long.
I need to stop. I need to breathe. I need to be.  I need to remember small things, simple moments, big dreams, little lessons, and good times. I need this.
Can’t afford this. But I need this.
I used to find stillness often. I’m that person who has literally sat still and watched light change on a landscape (during some midnight summer sun in the Yukon, a religious experience if you’re into that kinda thing). I used to know I could stop, just stand somewhere, just stare, just be.
Be someone doing nothing someplace for some time. Sometimes, it’s everything.
Then I got on a hamster wheel and just started running.
In the last year, I’ve finally forced myself to pull back — a lot. But my downtime has been nothing but fraud. Downtime? Not so much. Just… distraction. I was doing THIS, not that.
Years ago, I was hanging by the window on a ferry ride home, dreading that moment when I stepped off that boat and transcended island time right back into my rat race. This guy, I guess, saw something of that in me, and we got into this conversation. He commented that cities were built to distract us — “Hey, look at the shiny toy! You’re not unhappy at all! You don’t hate your job! Your boss isn’t a fucking prick! Your commute doesn’t suck balls! Hey, there’s a new nightclub — let’s go drink and pretend we’re anywhere but here!”
The city life, we’re all so busy rushing from the job to this to that and fitting him in while squeezing that in, and saving the date in case that other thing falls through, which depends on her contract panning out and —
Oh, Jesus. There are days I just want to stand on the sidewalk and shout at everyone “FUCKING STOP! Doesn’t it get TIRED? Aren’t you SICK of this endless shit? NOTHING EVER CHANGES. It just comes with new toys!”
But then I wonder if it’s just me, and I’m tired of checking into the same plastic neighbourhood and seeing all the same people with their shiny toys and lives of distraction, where nothing real gets said and everything’s all wink-and-nod.
Yeah. I woke up with a smile this morning. Yes, it’ll be hard.
But I’ve been wise to that distraction for so long. I see the veneer of happiness so many people wear every day, the air of lies and fakery that exude as people try to convince themselves that, YES, when they were six and daydreaming before Saturday morning cartoons, that THIS was a life they’d be happy to live — tied to a smart phone and plugging in detail of every single day, microprocessing life and yet never really ever stopping to remember what simply sitting still in a moment feels like. It’s all there in the subtle sighs and sunken shoulders, the trancelike moments where they fall away for just a — and then snap right back into this.
I think we’re all sucked into a “Is this all there is?” moment every now and then. Sure, we convince ourselves this is a pretty good gig, but sometimes the bigness of the world just magnifies the smallness of our lives, emphasizing how stupid it is that our daily grind should seem so immensely important when we know that 15 years from now all these stupid fucking appointments this week will mean jack shit.
I’m unemployed.
It’s time to recalibrate.
It’s time to break the hamster wheel.
There’s a gift, you know, in poverty.
Desperation can be a beautiful thing if you know how to channel it. Being forced to enjoy the simple and the free can remind one just how little it takes to enjoy a moment.
Yes, you might love the chef’s tasting menu at West and the flight of wine you had, but I imagine some sunsets with beer and buck-slice pizza, spent on a log at the beach, would blow your fancy-ass meal out of the water. The laughter, the comfort, the trust, the beauty… True ease.
You can’t buy that. You can trick yourself that it is up for grabs, but… you can’t buy that. It’s not for sale. Only the appearance of it is for sale.
I’ve had simple barbecues, a few good friends, an afternoon with no end pin-pointed, that have left every person there thinking “Yeah, no one’s enjoying their place or moment more than I am right here, right now. It’s this beer, that hot dog, this place, those people, and this feeling of weightlessness and grounding that comes with.”
I wrote once that I want the trappings of success but not the trap. You can keep your microscheduled, nanoprogrammed life of pace and panic. If it means you get the $80 meals and the lights and pizzazz, so be it.
I’m fuckin’ done, Martha.
I need me some time. I need me some mornings when I can roll over with a dopey grin and grumble into my pillow as I try to decide if I get up now and nap later, or sleep another hour, knowing the only other pressing conundrum is when to brew some coffee or start to write.
Other people have money, get to leave town, leave the country, find their fuckin’ selves. Well, some of us are stuck here, broke, hangin’ on a dime and a prayer, clasping at any five minutes we get without obligation.
I’m fine with that. I’m stuck here, broke, nothing but a vague sense I can get by and a will to write the best hardcover memoir you’ll read in 2012.
It’s like Ken Kesey once commented, something to the effect that, if you can’t find God in your backyard in Kansas, he ain’t gonna be found at the Egyptian pyramids, either.
In fact, I think “soul-searching” done abroad in fancy healing retreats may not be as beneficial as tackling those mysteries while trapped in your life. I think you have to earn it harder, you have to want it more, you have to dig for greater meaning. I think it’s too easy when you’re off at some yoga retreat. When you’re here, in your life, you need to make other people understand your search, you have to value yourself to do the work, and you have to balance the life you lead with the life you want.
It’s not easy and it ain’t for chumps.
Find your soul at home and you won’t have to worry about it falling away from you when you “return” to life.
This summer, I find my soul. I catch up with it. I figure out what the beginning after this end is supposed to be. I’ve done it before and I’ll do it better this time.
My life is a gift, man. My adversity is my opportunity.
It’s times like these I call upon this much-loved Bruce Chatwin quote I’ve posted on so many occasions:

“A white explorer in Africa, anxious to press ahead with his journey, paid his porters for a series of forced marches. But they, almost within reach of their destination, set down their bundles and refused to budge. No amount of extra payment would convince them otherwise.
They said they had to wait for their souls to catch up.”

Yeah. That’s right. I woke up with a smile. And you?