The cable has been down now for some 14 hours. Both internet and television. They’re constructing a new transit line, a light-rapid rail line, over the water, and the workers in this area executed brilliant competence last night as they swung their heavy machinery and managed to sever the cable lines that feed probably 300,000 of us with pictures and words from the outside world. Whatever shall we do, home without distraction? Whatever can we put our lazy little minds to?
You, you get me with a many-hour delay. Fed to you through disrupted service, put on hold, stuffed away in some insignificant computer file until such a time comes as I can unleash my glaring insignificance upon you.
I’m thinking about stairways today. Steps that ascend, descend, or are even completely meaningless, leading to doors that stay locked and never, ever open.
There’s a poem by some dead poet – Langston Hughes, he of the jazz-rhythm behind words – about life being no crystal stair. There’s no clarity of where our adversities come from, no ability to see ahead of us miles on end. No, our stairs are warn and warped, wobbly and overworked. They creak and groan, there’s soft spots in the center, and hard metal-cased edges to save the joints. They’re dark and cramped and have no visibility beyond the next 12 or 14 steps. Stairs, I surmise, are a bitch, but they take us where we need to go.
I remember high school. Sometimes with a smile, but mostly with a groan. This is year fifteen since I graduated, and I’m sure there’s a reunion, but I’ve heard nothing. Would I go? I very well might. But not being afforded an invitation, I don’t see that happening anytime soon.
High school was a mix of craziness and dying to fit in. Most of my friends were outside of school, since I was raised in a white-bre(a)d town filled of wealth and pretension. The native reservation in town might’ve been a world away, because we sure as fuck never saw them. There were two high schools: One on the east side, where the poor and fucked-up would attend, the other on the west. Naturally, the west reeked of money and patronage. There were the whores (oh, were there) and the jocks and the geeks and the brainiacs. I was a geek with social promise. I had friends, I was a mystery, but I didn’t opt to hang out with my peers, other than a few of the cooler outsiders.
In the midst of it all, I had my stairs. I’d choose to slip away and find a stairway that didn’t have a lot of traffic, and I’d read to get my head out of the world that I knew was reality. Sometimes Paul Theroux, sometimes my biographies of dead great artists, sometimes Vonnegut. Whatever, but it was my time, my world, my secrecy. For those few stolen minutes, the world around me would cease to be.
And then a bell would ring. I’d be sucked back into that mind-numbingly uninspired life with an unchallenging curriculum and bored-shitless teachers. I’d be forced back into monotony, where I’d be compelled to stuff my individualism back inside me, rendered just another pawn on the board of life.
It’s fifteen years later, and I can’t say that much has changed.
I have my own little world, this fancy little apartment of mine, all decorated like an eccentric professor unafraid of colour, and here I hide from the world at large. Me, my books, my media, my cooking, my comforts. Me.
And then, time changes. The hands pass 12, appointments loom on the horizon, the world makes its demands, the internet surfs me through to my bank account, and I realize I’m not alone, I have obligations, and for whatever it’s worth, I have a role to play. One that is no choice of mine. No matter who or what I wish to be, somewhere inside of me sits a cog that fits ever so perfectly into the droning gears of the machine of life. I wish I didn’t fit, I wish I didn’t have to, but I do, and it’s my lot in life.
Just like it’s yours.
We forget those little desires and dreams of greatness that we all nurse deep within us. Who’s kidding who? Each of us at one point wished to be a ballerina, an astronaut, a rock star, a famous writer, an actor; each of us dreamed of greatness, of a life of envy and regard. Yet here we are, doing what it takes to pay the bills, because someone somewhere pointed out just how fucking tired we must be, struggling to climb those stairs. We forget our dreams because to remember them is to be conscious of how much it is that we want but do not have, that we may never have. We become accustomed to the simplicity of life: eat, sleep, work, play, pay.
We acquiesce.
So precious few of us ever achieve what we really desire. We learn to settle, to stop wishing for more. We learn to make peace with all that we’ve come to acquire, regardless of how short we’ve fallen from the heights we once dreamed we’d reach.
I’m at a point in my life where I need to struggle daily to ensure my bills get paid. Sometimes I begin living on the depths of my freezer, embracing the canned goods that fill my cupboards in wealthier times. Sometimes I crack open my jar of change in the hopes that the $18.49 in loose change is going to get me through for three more days. And that’s the way my life is, because that’s the price I pay for this: The chance to live my dream, if even just the tiniest bit, of being a writer for a living. Through it all, I mostly struggle to keep my pride and my integrity, if not my unending fear of what might never be.
Ultimately, the time will come when this isn’t getting me through anymore. That time’s nigh, my friends, and it saddens me. Soon, I’ll have to give up this dream and return to the mundane existence of the 9-5 world. Soon, I’ll have to work under another’s directive, because, soon, I just won’t have the steam remaining to live with this kind of uncertainty. And this is why dreams break and fall away from us, because the demands of life, from a system that truly serves few besides the wealthiest, are far too overpowering to avoid.
And what does it really do to us, these realizations of loss and failure and reality that come in dark places, like deserted staircases and empty halls? The realizations of just how much we’ve given up for that greatly sought-after myth of security?
Well, fucked if I know. I’ve never had the privilege of being on the other side of that myth of security, and maybe it’s my fault. Maybe I should’ve given up long ago, let myself be sucked into the beliefs of laying down a retirement package, buying the house, getting married, and becoming stable. Maybe that’s what it’s all about. Maybe I’m just a romantic, content now to live on dreams and love and all that comes with. Maybe I missed the memo, that life is for living and dreams are for dreaming. But as hard as all this is, the mental struggle to keep the faith against the odds, to realize that the negative balance in my bank account shouldn’t reflect my actual worth… I can’t help but to believe I’d make the same choice all over again.
I just hope it’s all worth it.
Category Archives: writing
Pop Psychology: "The Little Things"
My Sunday mornings are something I greatly enjoy. Typically, it involves rolling out of bed sometime around 9 or later, then some lazy TV until I get up the energy to make a nice breakfast. Then, I’ll take my nice breakfast, my coffee, and settle in to watch one of my many movies (if nothing worthwhile’s on telly, and usually nothing is) until the urge to write has struck.
Guess which part of my morning I’m at now? Well, to my right sits too-strong coffee with a bit of milk, and in the VCR is one of my really old videotapes – An American Psycho. My breakfast was eggs scrambled with caramelized red onions and red peppers with sundried tomatoes and basil, and back bacon, and good toast. I’m pretty much in my happy place now. A shower eventually looms, and then a trip out into the world for a Solo Day of Fulfillment.
The movie, a psychological classic, has got me thinking. If you’ve never seen American Psycho, it’s a remarkable study of the psychosis of the Type-A serial killer, chillingly portrayed by Christian Bale. The writing is top-notch (as most of Bret Easton Ellis’ work tends to be) and the acting makes it pretty surprising that Christian Bale ever got another job after that movie, since he became the killer, which generally slays an actor’s commercial appeal. (Much like how accurately portraying Ted Bundy put Mark Harmon’s career in the toilet for a decade.)
As I said, the movie has me thinking. There’s the old cliché, “How well do we really know anyone?” Not very, not usually. We think we know people, but we tend to go on face-value more than any real criteria. There’s a segment at the beginning of the movie when Bale’s character, Patrick Bateman, goes on at length about his skincare regime. The inference is, his face is the only thing people have to go on, and its perfection is his façade, covering his whirlwind of anger, insecurities, and need for approval, all of which drives his merciless, brutal killing of women.
We find “love” by comparing likes. Ooh, we like the same movies, the same books, we have fun the same way, we laugh at the same jokes; it must be love!
The thing is, even the most stark-raving lunatic enjoys culture and movies and has favourite foods they can’t live without. Likes and interests are superficial, at best.
When it comes to people in my life, be it friends or family or lovers, I watch The Little Things. The insignificant things that we often brush aside are the greatest tells as to who and what the people around us are like. It doesn’t take me long to assess a person’s character, and it tends to make me fiercely loyal when I see them behave in respectful, goodly ways.
Ignore the big picture and turn on the macro lens. Do they respect people providing them service in stores and establishments? Do they come to the aid of someone in need? Are they helpful when someone asks them for info on the street? Can they chat amiably with a perfect stranger? Do they ensure they’re including you in conversations with friends? Do they arrive on time, or let you know when they’re going to be late? Do they drive aggressively, tail-gating every car they come upon?
You get the picture. I’m not saying a person should be dumped for any of the above transgressions, but you sure as hell ought to be taking note of it. For instance, one could assume that I have a very quick temper by the way I get so snappish when riding my scooter, or one could at least assume I’m very quick to get on the defensive. And they’d be right. It’s true, I get very defensive. It’s one of my worst qualities. It also speaks to the fact that I’m a perfectionist who overthinks things, so when someone begins to point out a flaw or an error on my part, I might well put up a wall to protect myself. I know this to be my character weakness, and I at least have the guts to own up to it with those around me. It doesn’t make the flaw go away, but at least I’m accountable about it. As flaws go, it could be worse, but it’s still a character flaw.
I’m forever astounded, though, by people who seem to blatantly ignore endless flaws and attitude problems in partners, all because they have ‘so much in common.’
So many of us hide a great deal of who we are. We’re fools if we fail to suspect others might be doing the same. We have insecurities, fears, hatreds, weaknesses, and they all combine for a lethal cocktail at times. How we behave in the Little Moments is indicative of our character at its deepest levels. Yes, we have flaws, but are we inherently good and kind people? Look deeper than the surface. Our daily insignificant actions are the only true evidence we provide – the things we do so naturally that we don’t even think before we act. These are the moments when who we are comes through, and those are the moments to take note of who’s at heart of the person you think you know.
It's Not You, It's Me
That phrase is among select company in the statements none of us wants to hear in a relationship we value. It’s gone beyond being a standard line given when something inexplicable has gone awry in a relationship to being a pop-culture joke of reknown.
In Seinfeld, George Costanza freaks out after being dumping by a woman, saying, “You’re giving me the ‘It’s not you, It’s me’ routine? I invented ‘It’s not you, it’s me’. Nobody tells me it’s them not me. If it’s anybody, it’s me!”
But this time, it’s the Guy.
He needs some time, he says. Life’s hard. Between the rehabbing, working incessantly, being completely out of sick time for the next ten months, the frustrations of life being different from what it was, the fatigue, the lack of freedom and fun, the residual depression that comes with… It’s proving to be a hell of a reality cocktail for him.
Apparently, the future of the relationship is in jeopardy. As a result of all the things going on for him, he’s been left feeling flat and emotionless, and it’s eating him up.
I’m worried that it’s over. My worries are valid. A decision won’t be made yet, there is no timeline. Space will be had. Things will be revisited. We’ll see what’s next on the horizon then.
The strange thing is, we both care for each other a great deal. I know it. He knows it. We’re a great match. On paper, we have so damned much going for us, so how it’s here, how it’s this way, neither of us can figure out beyond just really dumb fucking luck.
I’ve had reservations since the get-go with his badly broken leg that he suffered only a couple weeks into our relationship. I should have played things differently. I should have pulled back more, made myself scarce, but I didn’t. I wanted to pretend things were fine, too. Delusion is a great plaything.
Unfortunately, I know exactly what he’s going through. I should have known better. I’ve been down that road – coming home from work so fucking tired all you want to do is die a while, cry a while, whatever it takes to reset. The last thing you want is having to deal with people of any kind, because you haven’t even got the energy to deal with yourself anymore.
Am I feeling negative about it? Yeah. Because although I’ve come through those injuries and know that he’s at his lowest point right now – there’s a false optimism when you get that first update on the prognosis from the doc: “Progressing nicely” – because it’s never as easy as you hope it will be. In fact, it’s harder. You throw excess overtime and challenges into the mix, and then you’re sent spiraling into a hole you think’ll take you all the way to China.
And one day, things change. One day, things get better, and you come back to yourself, and things carry on as you wish they would’ve a long time before.
The only question is whether I’ll be around to see it. Whether I want to be. And right now, I don’t even know the answer to that. I know he doesn’t want to hurt me, but I’ve been pushing little hurts and neglects aside for a couple weeks now, with a realization of what he’s been enduring and cutting a little slack as a result. I’m not sure what my breaking point is. I had a vision for this relationship, and that break broke more than his bones.
I have no cards to play. I get to back off, and that’s all I can do.
That’s adversity for you. It’s why hard times are so consistently responsible for trouncing relationships. In the end, we all close our eyes and become prisoners in our own minds. Lovers seldom can truly break through the walls we raise between us and the world. We try to let them in, but there’s a place inside they often just can’t reach (and sometimes we can’t, either), and when things like these happen, those places grow cavernous and dark and dank.
The thing that makes this really hard is, I want the Guy in my life, but if this was to end tomorrow, I’m not sure he would be. I’ve never stayed friends with an ex-lover. I don’t have it in me. Just like I can’t do random, casual sex; my emotional capacity doesn’t work that way. My reservoirs run far too deep to just turn the valve off and change pressure modes for comfort’s sake. I can’t ignore matters of the heart, and I can’t pretend they’re less than they are. “Friends” are nice, but when you’re wanting a lover, there’s not much sense in pretending you’re not the person you know you are, or that you don’t have the needs and desires you do.
I sometimes hate how life can change in an instant. (Ironically, mine seems to be changing two ways in an instant. I’m so fucking torn.) There’s so little power any of us has over our circumstances, and when the going gets tough, we have to hold on to the things we have and struggle to keep ourselves in the game.
Only this time it just isn’t that easy. Nothing is.
It’s a waiting game now, and my suspicions last week about overtime possibly being a dire contributor to this relationship have proved true; I saw it posing a bad shift in balance between the me time I have far too much of, and the time he’s had virtually none of. I don’t blame him for the overtime, he’s had no choice. We all know what responsibilities to the workplace entail, and we’ve all sacrificed our private lives to an extent for it.
I just wonder if either of us really knew what was on the table.
Now we do.
Am I optimistic? As I write this, not particularly. And I fucking hate that. I have no question that he wants it to work with me. He’d be a fool not to want that. I just don’t think he has it in him right now. And if he doesn’t, then I probably won’t have it in me to be anything outside of what I’ve been thus far for him. I wish I wasn’t, but it’s how I’m built. I foresee things being hard to overcome if it goes that way.
For now, we wait. We hope. We wonder. Then we see.
Thoughts on a Saturday morning, before coffee, no less
Do you ever have those dreams that are all too real, you wake up, and your mood’s already shot?
I’m supposed to have a nice day today. Got someone coming by about 1 for an hour, then I have to head out to my father’s 64th birthday — a crib tournament. Oh, “whee.” What freaks me out is the Guy’s disappointed he can’t go (he of gimpy leg and crutches). I suppose that’s a good sign — he actually wants to meet my folks, which is likely happening Monday. Whack, hey? A late-night rendezvous with the Guy is scheduled this evening, and I’m sure that’ll be up to its regular real-good-stuff, but I’m still grumpy.
I don’t recall the contents of the dreams, just “dead Dad” as synopsis would suffice. I suppose this is one of the reasons you want to listen to your voicemail before bedding down for the night: You have one of these all too real dreams, and the message indicator’s blinking at you, it’s a little disconcerting.
Anyhow, I know my mood will shift. The big pressing question is, it’s an unpredictable Wet/West Coast day: Do I take my little ol’ scooter all the way the hell out to the burbs, some 45 klicks, and risk the rain? If I do, I imagine the “Warm me up NOW” demand on the Guy could certainly provoke fun and games when I get home.
Oh, dilemmas. Anyhow, like you care. All right, then: Smut, smut, smut, smut. Happy?
No, last night was another good night with the guy — kissin’ like fiends and, well, yes, okay, we had the dirty s-e-x thing, too. The Guy’s kicked the codeine, and it seems like my evil tricks do indeed stir the creature from its dark depths all too well. I wasn’t planning on fucking the boy, but hey, sometimes the best laid plans should be laid aside in favour ofgetting laid. So, we did.
It’s fun, this relationship journey. It’s like you carry a mental notepad and keep score of every little thing you learn. (Well, if you don’t, you should.) I’m forming this hierarchy of things I can do to rile the Guy, and lord knows he’s got his list on me.
But there’s this other list, this list that continues growing of things we both share loves for. Writing, reading, film, they’re all at the top of the list. We’re both very, very passionate about words, and he’s incredibly invested in my writing, which rocks me all the day long. But then there’re those inconsequential little things that really add up to “a hill of beans” in this big ol’ world. Both of our favourite frozen pizzas are McCain’s International Sicilian thin-crust pizza (which those bastards don’t sell at the Canadian Superstore.) We’re both big Anthony Bourdain fans. We both dislike mushrooms. We both can cook well. We’re both cute but a bit on the geek-chic-y side of things with glasses. Yada, yada, yada.
Maybe it’s true, maybe opposites do attract. But do they stay united? I’ve never found that they did. I’m enjoying the fact that not only do we share passions for the word, for each other, et cetera, but we share inconsequential little likes and loves, as well as very similar life experiences. Some days, it freaks me out a tad. I feel like Jim Carrey in Truman, as if I’m beginning to realize the joke’s on me.
Up there in the cosmos, Ed Harris as god, chortling a “hardy-har-har” as he watches with grand amusement while I begin to realize, yes, it really is all too very good to be true.
But just because I feel that way, doesn’t mean I actually believe it. I just continue to be the more cautious one in this relationship, but the caution’s starting to fade a little. The Guy makes a point of telling me how much he digs me, and often, because he’s finally in the position where he doesn’t need to be the analytical one anymore. He gets to read this shit and see, “Hey, she’s analysing it and being cautious. Cool.” He sits back, enjoys the knowledge that I’m not running into this as some madly possessive swooning chick who’s already searching out wedding bands (and that’s NEVER gonna happen, babe). Most guys don’t get the experience, probably, of having an articulate girlfriend who can reason out all the beginning stages of fear/apprehension/knocking down walls in a relationship. I suppose it’s an interesting experience at his end.
And, honestly, as a chick, this is a bit of a rare experience at my end, as well. Not a lot of guys tend to be so forthcoming about their feelings — and not in a I’m stalking you kind of way, and not in an I’m needy kind of way, either. No, he’s pretty casual in how he expresses his feelings, and it keeps it comfortable and simple.
I think keeping most of the in-between-evenings contact confined to email means we don’t feel too tethered to the other just yet. Our only phone contact this week was when I knew he was having a lousy day and I left a message to the effect of, “I’m sorry for the day you’re having, you’re in my thoughts. I’m looking forwards to seeing you, and I hope your day’s improving.” His only contact with me was essentially a “I was thinking of you and wanted to hear your voice” type message. Yes, both were voicemails, and I suppose we probably both felt fuzzy afterwards. Then, it’s back to email until we happen upon each other. I keep my life, and albeit limited to crutches, he keeps his.
But, when we’re together, dude says all the right things, and I try to, too. Okay, well, no, we’ve both said ridiculously bad things at times — we’re both painfully irreverent, and it sometimes means ludicrous things get said in bed that are followed with five-minute laughing fits, which I love — but they’re bad things said in the right way.
So, sharing passions should be the backbone of a relationship, but the commonalities make it fun. This is fun. I’m enjoying it. And I know I’ll never have to be forced to eat mushrooms when he cooks for me. Wicked.
But Jesus, was that a depressing dream. Hey, I know. I’ll make bacon for breakfast. Bacon fixes EVERYTHING. Right?
The Passion of the Artist (And the Lover)
I’ve been thinking of artists and passion today, and how important it is to keep that passion alive, whether in life or in love.
I saw the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line last night and came home wanting to write about the importance of having your passions appreciated by those you love. For some reason, I’ve been unable to put it together in a way that works.
This morning, I began thinking of another movie coming to that same theatre I so love here in Vancouver, the Hollywood, a classic theatre from 1937, which has been owned by the same family for all these years. I’ve seen movies like Casablanca, Gone with the Wind, and The Wizard of Oz there, and secretly covet the knowledge that they all aired there first-run, all those decades ago. These days, it’s a second-run theatre that specializes in great double-bills for the low, low price of $6. (Add to that real butter for the popcorn, and you’ve got yourself a winner.)
The other movie coming soon is Capote, and I’ve been thinking a good deal about it thanks to a conversation with The Guy. You might wonder what Capote and Walk the Line have in common, but they’re both about artists and how destructive the quest for one’s art can be.
Cash was very nearly destroyed by his music, as a result of his first wife being unable or unwilling to appreciate or support his craft – something as integral to him as the air he breathed. She fought him on all things musical and demanded he be the cliché man-about-the-house when he was no longer on tour. He felt like he was living a lie, and lies are as destructive as any force of nature can be.
Capote, on the other hand, one of my life-long writing influences, sacrificed everything to tell a story he predicted would change the way non-fiction was written forever. He was right about the impact of his creation (In Cold Blood), but failed to see what being unwilling to compromise his story would do to him as a man, and what it did was destroy him utterly. He never wrote another word and succumbed as a bitter, angry, heartbroken man to the diseases of alcoholism and loneliness.
I was a writer with writer’s block for six years. Anyone who tells you writer’s block is a myth doesn’t know what they’re talking about. What it is, is simply the failing to know yourself anymore. It’s the failing to know the route inside yourself, and they don’t sell those compasses. I believe that once you’ve overcome writer’s block – true, heart-wrenching, long-term writer’s block – that you’re stronger than it is, that you learn more about yourself than you ever would have otherwise, about the dark places inside, and the block will never happen again. (Not to me, anyhow.) But it destroyed me then. I felt dead inside and out. I hated my life. I wonder sometimes how intentional my two life-threatening accidents really were, whether I subconsciously sought an “easier” way out of my pain. I’ll never know.
For some of us, what and who we are is simply not negotiable. I am a writer, a woman, a photographer, a lover, pretty much in that order. Even as a failed writer, I knew it was all that I was – a writer, but a writer without the words, a writer with the failure to realize her potential. Today, if a lover ever tells me to stop talking about writing, I’d be out the fucking door like a shot.
When I was seeking out men as The Queen of First Dates, the litmus test for me was my writing. Did they get it? Did they care? Were they intrigued? No? Buh-bye, and thanks for flying Air Not in This Life.
Our passions are who we are. Our loves are who we are. Our actions are who we are. Our dreams are what we aspire to, and thus who we are. We absolutely must be appreciated on those levels, for if we’re not, we become shells of who we possibly can be.
Too many of us have to face the reality that we don’t get the support we need in our lives. Too many of us settle for lovers who don’t understand our visions, who don’t push us in the directions we need to travel in.
Instead of saying, “Wait, I deserve better,” we somehow begin dismissing those dreams, those loves of ours, our passions. We tell ourselves that it’s OUR obsession, not theirs, and we shouldn’t inflict it upon them. We somehow justify the segregation of who we are in those quiet moments in the dark of night with who we’re supposed to be in the light of our relationships. We compromise.
And we pay the price no one should ever have to pay.
Capote and Cash are perfect juxtapositions of what could have been and what was, in the face of artists sacrificing for their art. Cash finally had his first marriage end as a result of his destructive behaviours, and was ultimately saved from that destruction when he was finally able to act upon the passion he’d long felt for June Carter, who saved him from himself by becoming the love of his life. So much so that when she passed away in 2003, he’d follow her to the grave inside of four months later. The bond of love sometimes transcends death, for the lucky and the few. They were of that number.
Capote (seen here in a photo taken shortly before his death) had to choose between fighting for the life of a man he’d come to love, or praying for his death by execution, a death that would make his book a best-seller and give him a writing angle that would be unparalleled. The execution inevitably happened, with Capote looking on as that neck snapped and the body dangled from the gallows, and despite then finishing what would be the crowning achievement of his literary career, it destroyed the man.
This is what art can do. This is what passion is.
A few years back, I lost all my passion. Every bit of it. I don’t know if it was due to the adversities in my life or due to the writer’s block, it’s really a chicken-or-the-egg non-sequitur that I’ll never solve. I know the result, and there are nights I still remember the hollow I’d become, and marvel at the changes I’ve seen since. I drank to excess every night. I numbed myself into oblivion with drugs and irresponsibility. I cut myself off from everyone in my world. I didn’t give a fuck about anything or anyone except the pain I felt. I wallowed in it and never rose above the surface. One day, that began to change.
Now, passion is all I have in the face of an uninspired bank account and a not-so-rivetting lifestyle. But the passion is all I need, and I’m more content than I ever dreamed I could be. When you rediscover passion – for life, for love, for art, for nature, for all of the above – you realize how incredibly disposable the rest of your life really is.
But it isn’t something you can acquire externally. It comes from within. Your external choices, though, can impact how much of the passion you can embrace. Does your lover share your passions? No? That’s an obstacle. Does your work encourage your passion? No? Another obstacle. Does your life allow for you to pursue that passion? No? A greater obstacle. When we amass enough obstacles, we choose to avoid the struggle it takes to keep passion alive. It’s easier. Thus, we coast. We meander meaninglessly through life, and ultimately, we succumb instead to avoiding death, not celebrating life. Get busy livin’ or get busy dyin’, like the man in Shawshank Redemption says.
I’m happy I’ve found someone who seems to get what I’m about, on every level. It’s such a challenge to find that. It’s so easy to cloud the issue with silly things, like we like the same movies or we both play baseball. At heart, what are you? Does your lover understand it? Do they appreciate it?
If not, you’ve got to ask yourself if you deserve – no, need – more. I know I did. For the moment, I have what I need, and that’s a start.
Lenny Bruce, Obscenity's Legacy, and Today's News
I wrote this late last night, when I should have been in bed. I was out for coffee this morning when The Guy emailed me with a link and said, “This will make you very angry.” Rightly so. It turns out the Supreme Court of the US has decided not to hear a case on internet-based obscenity, meaning that internet obscenity laws are to be decided on a local basis. IE, small towns can decide what’s “obscene” on the internet.
Think about this for a minute. REALLY fucking think about the ramifications of this, people. This is huge. You’re going to have Buttfuck, Idaho deciding on whether or not materials that are being used and seen by people AROUND THE WORLD are obscene… in the land of “free press.”
It all comes back to you. Your vote. It comes down to voting for leaders and politicians because you’re looking for a fucking tax break, but you fail to realize the implications of what that leader’s choices for life-long appointments to the Supreme Court are. Life-long: Meaning decades of deciding the interpretation of YOUR constitution.
You want to tell me that America’s passion for freedom of speech is greater than any other nation’s. Not anymore. Never has been. That’s the greatest lie ever told, my friends.
This year’s the 40th anniversary of the death of Lenny Bruce — a guy who met the wrong end of every obscenity law ever passed in the US. Four decades have passed, and this is the bullshit that’s starting to cycle back into action.
AGAIN, I ask you: Where is your voice?
The timing of that news is just strange, since I’d planned to post this today anyhow. A sad fucking day for freedoms, my friends. Know that.
__________________
The writer I am today is a result of the reader I was then. To tell the truth, I’m barely a reader today. I seldom settle in with a book, but I hope to change that behaviour.
I recently took some time to organize my bookshelves, and this book in the photo, my tattered copy of Lenny Bruce’s How to Talk Dirty & Influence People, still stands up on display, right behind my grandmother’s 1955 rotary dial phone, which still rattles and rings anytime someone dials me up. Next to it, a first-edition of the Arrow paperback version of HST’s Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas.
When I was 18, my narrow, protected view of the world was shattered by HST, but then came Lenny. Like HST’s classic tome, it gets off to an unforgettable start – particularly if you’re an 18-year-old kid. Unbelievably, I had the balls to recommend this to my 14 year old student last week.
I recently took some time to organize my bookshelves, and this book in the photo, my tattered copy of Lenny Bruce’s How to Talk Dirty & Influence People, still stands up on display, right behind my grandmother’s 1955 rotary dial phone, which still rattles and rings anytime someone dials me up. Next to it, a first-edition of the Arrow paperback version of HST’s Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas.
When I was 18, my narrow, protected view of the world was shattered by HST, but then came Lenny. Like HST’s classic tome, it gets off to an unforgettable start – particularly if you’re an 18-year-old kid. Unbelievably, I had the balls to recommend this to my 14 year old student last week.
“Filipinos come quick; colored men are built abnormally large (“Their wangs look like a baby’s arm with an apple in its fist”); ladies with short hair are lesbians; if you want to keep your man, rub alum on your pussy.
Such bits of erotic folklore were related daily to my mother by Mrs. Janesky, a middle-aged widow who lived across the alley, despite the fact that she had volumes of books delivered by the postman every month — A Sane Sex Life, Ovid the God of Love, How to Make Your Marriage Partner More Compatible–in plain brown wrappers marked “Personal.”
She would begin in a pedantic fashion, using academic medical terminology, but within ten minutes, she would be spouting her hoary hornyisms. Their conversation drifted to me as I sat under the sink, picking at the ripped linoleum, day-dreaming and staring at my Aunt Mema’s Private Business, guarded by its sinkmate, the vigilant C-N bottle, vanguard of Lysol, Zonite, and Massengill.
At this tender age, I knew nothing of douches. The only difference between men and women was that women always had headaches and didn’t like whistling or cap guns; and men didn’t like women – that is, women they were married to.
Aunt Mema’s Private Business, the portable bidet, was a large red-rubber bulb with a long black nozzle. I could never figure out what the hell it was for. I thought maybe it was an enema bag for people who lived in buildings with a super who wouldn’t allow anyone to put up nails to hang things on; I wondered if it was the horn Harpo Marx squeezed to punctuate his silent sentences. All I knew was that it was not to be used for water-gun battles, and that what it was for was none of my business.
When you’re eight years old, nothing is any of your business.”
Lenny Bruce, if you’ve never heard much about the dude, was a pioneering comic who broke all the rules. The Jim Morrison of comedy, he had his ass busted for obscenity more times than Dick Nixon would proclaim he was not a crook. It was on his heels, on his ground-breaking sacrifices and legal hassles that Richard Pryor and every other comedian would follow. Without Lenny Bruce, there might not have been a Pryor, or a Hicks, or a Rock, or a Leary. Lenny Bruce said fuck you to the man, and he said what was on his mind.
These days, there’s something still admirable about someone with the balls to say “What you think is obscene is what others do behind closed doors.” As someone I quite like recently said, let’s meet at the corner of The 21st Century and Get Over It.
Laws of acceptability are drawn by people with the courage (or the accidental happening) to push envelopes in defiance of what accepted norms are. For instance, fucking can now be used as an adjective after 10 pm all because Bono accidentally said it as such during a broadcast of (insert irrelevant music awards ceremony name here).
But the ones who discover whole new lands, they’re the journeymen like Bruce because they’re the ones who consciously know what the accepted is, but choose to go far beyond it, consequences be damned.
You open to any fucking page, anywhere, and there’s something that even today is relevant. Me, my copy’s so fucking tattered it’s permanently mated with an elastic band, the only thing that holds it together. The page where the spine breaks clean in half, page 91, yielded this pearl from 1963, 10 years before my birth.
“Why don’t religious institutions use their influence to relieve human suffering instead of sponsoring such things as the Legion of Decency, which dares to say it’s indecent that men should watch some heavy-titted Italian starlet because to them breasts are dirty?
Beautiful, sweet, tender, womanly breasts that I love to kiss; pink nipples that I love to feel against my clean-shaven face. They’re clean!”
So many of us sex bloggers, we’re up in arms against this Moralizing of North America; the legislative attempts to arbitrate morality; this pitiful attempt to turn back the clock and eradicate sex and desire from the consciousness of the average person.
Got news for you, folks. We’ve been fighting this battle for decades. Whether it’s a brilliant writer and commentator like Lenny Bruce or a filthy fat fuck like Larry Flynt, the battles ain’t new, the war ain’t new, and the blood’s long from dry.
What’s different now, though, is the medium. Enter blogging. Enter podcasting. Enter streaming video. Now we have a voice. Now we don’t have to wait any longer for a voice crying out in the night, for a black-as-hell knight to ride in with a filthy leer and a winning argument. Now the undersexed, underfucked, randy-as-hell, crop-flogging, chain-wearing, paddle-using, nymphomaniacal, cross-dressing, same-sex fucking, porn-loving, and swinging folks, NOW they all have the ability to have a voice.
The thing about activism is that it’s not about ground breaking wide open in one fell swoop. Like any hole, it start with one push of the shovel. And another. And another. There will be rocks and boulders that limit progress, but with persistence, it all comes out. The greater the chorus of resistance, the harder it is to ignore. The greater the groundswell, the more ground we can break.
Unfortunately for the battle, Lenny Bruce died too fucking young. He should’ve died right around now, in his 80th year. Instead, a needle in his arm, he toppled off his toilet, and crashed to his death – a disgraced, bloated man who was mocked and ridiculed out of the mainstream, and instead, placed post-humously upon a pedestal by those who would continue to wage what was known as his crusade against semantics.
The book’s afterword ends thus:
“One last four-letter word for Lenny.
Dead.
At 40.
That’s obscene.”
And it was. It is. Few people ever have the balls that Lenny Bruce lugged around with him, and it’s a crying fucking shame. And still, here we are, fighting for the same things, dreaming of the same freedoms as this long-dead Jewish-American comedian, in this, the 21st century.
Who I Am and Why I Bother
Hi, there. I’m Steff, and I’ll be your pilot.
I seem to be getting new readers every day, and I wonder what their reactions are when they get here. I’d like to say a little about myself and what my little mission is. So. Without ado.
Who am I? Well, I ain’t your standard-issue sex writer. I’m cute, but I’m more comfortable in jeans and a funky shirt than anything else. I ride a scooter. I listen to indie rock and know what the inside of a mosh pit looks like. I work with kids sometimes. I’m smart, I’m independent, I live alone, and I’d rather be single than in a less-than-filling relationship. I went to Catholic school as a kid, was elected to the student body in college, always had good grades, used to volunteer a lot, always have done well professionally, can work a room and schmooze with the best of ‘em, have never worked in a sex trade, haven’t had a lot of partners due to old-school ethics… Et cetera.
In short, I really am the good girl next door who likes to play a little bad from time to time. Any parent in the world would be thrilled to have me in the family, but god forbid they ever find the home videos.
As a result, being a do-gooder goodie-two-shoes for most of my life, coming to terms with my sexuality has been a long and hard path. I went through hellacious battles with self-esteem, with judgment, and with self-scrutiny. I wondered if giving head meant I was a whore. I was scared that being a hard-core lover girl in the bedroom would mean I’d find a $100 bill by the bed when I was through. I didn’t want to be this thing I had inside of me, this chick who wanted to tear into a guy’s flesh and devour him whole. It was dirty, wrong, and in God’s eyes, not something I should do. Sex was for procreation, not for entertainment, was the memo I’d gotten.
I was passionately religious in my youth, and it’s the case with anything I ever come to believe: I get behind it with a vengeance. Catholicism was no different. The Sound of Music was my favourite film (and I have the special edition on DVD now, heh — “the hills are alive with the sound…”). I wanted to be a nun. (It’s why there’s a really sexy nun in the banner of this site. Hell, she gets me hot. I like to imagine sometimes that I really did it, I became a nun, and some man some where gets me so goddamned riled that I throw down my Bible and my rosary and take ‘im down then and there. Well, there’s always role-playing.)
I kid you not, man, but every time they spoke of Jesus getting spikes driven through his wrists, I had to sit on my hand ‘cos I could imagine the pain of stigmata. I remember the funny look my mother gave me when I told her that at the age of eight. She said, slowly, “Well, that’s very… pious of you.”
It was fucked. I was intense. I drank the Kool-aid, and then I learned about the world at large in my teens. I began reading about cults, about the myth of religion, about the world religions, and I learned all the similarities and all the fear tools. I began asking why a god who was supposed to be love personnified would make us bodies that could know such incredible pleasure, and then sit back and laughingly tell us it was a sin to know it. Not the god I had in mind, I thought. I started walking away from organized faith while swearing to keep the ethic (and I have). Then began the slow process of learning to get past guilt.
Then that was followed by this process of really owning my self and my body on my own terms, learning about sexuality. I began seeing what the lack of sexual expression seemed to do to all the old housewives and husbands I knew. I knew I never wanted to get old that way. And I wanted to be alive now.
I then explored my sexuality in the confines of my relationships, and was doing really well at learning about my more confident self inside.
But then, life. Life threw me a curveball, tossed me some death and depression, heartache and loss, and I gained weight, lost my sex drive, and with it, a lot of my will to live life as it deserves to be lived. Whew, I fell apart for about three or four years, into this horrible cavernous place of blackness, despair, and shame.
Then, whammo. Got into an accident, should’ve died, didn’t, realized I was the luckiest bitch ever, and a stupid one for wasting my life, got my shit in gear, began losing weight, got back into writing, and started having some serious experiences in the circle of life once again.
Rediscovering my sexuality* for a second time, after literally learning that whatever didn’t kill me made me better, stronger, faster, has been a fucking miraculous experience. Every week I’m a better, cooler, sexier chick who’s more in touch with who she was than seven days previous.
So this place is as much a record of my journey – but with certain details kept for my enjoyment only – as it is a reflection of my anger for having to have fought this hard this long to get where I am now. Women, when it comes to sexuality, are the victims of a system that has idealized the notion of sex without ever really talking about what the real components of it should be. Men, therefore, are victimized by a system of their own making. Funny how that works. We live in a society that fucking worships sex and hasn’t got a goddamned clue how to have it. This, my friends, is the Age of Irony.
And some of us out here on our sexual soapboxes hope to turn the attention where it needs to be – on the fact that this is an act shared between consenting adults using only what “God” gave them, their bodies. How sex ever became perceived as being so amoral is beyond me. It can be wildly fun, tragically passionate, incredibly tender… sex can be anything you want it to be.
If you only know what you want.
And I guess that’s what my goal is. To play a small part in helping people learn what they want. By writing positively in an everyday gal kind of way about sexuality and about sex acts that are normally written by people who are, well, a little more enthusiastic and lifestyle-ish about it, I try to take what some might consider exceptional sex back into the realm of the ordinary.
I’m just an ordinary gal with an extraordinary appreciation of sex. And I like to share. So, welcome to my world. I hope you stick around awhile.
*The interesting thing is, the more I learn about my own sexuality, the more I realize I need to know about others’. Every human body is unique, but there are commonalities of experience, and the more we learn about others’ loves and needs, the more we’re able to adapt to our own. It’s when I stopped looking at just me for my growth that I finally began to grow. We need others. And sexuality, well, it’s about others.
Thinking Too Much, Too Late
This isn’t really off topic… it’s masturbation of a sort. Literary masturbation.
Tonight, I can’t stop thinking of how I got from point “A” to this point of my life. I don’t know when this mood struck me. I made a comment in response to one of my readers earlier today, “It’s amazing, the footprints left when people walk out of our lives.”
It got me reflecting on some people I’ve known, experiences I’ve had – all that profound shit that shakes down from the tree of life.
I get a lot of emails from this site, people wanting to connect, forge something, interact, I don’t know. Sometimes it seems they want to know more about me, I get questions. They divulge deeply personal things to me, profound problems, fears, experiences. It can be daunting, but it’s very rewarding. I try to respond to everyone, to share a bit of who I am in trade for their confessions.
Another reason I’ve been thinking about myself is that I had this email sent to me about “Stop Internet Censorship,” a new-ish blog formed with a mission, that has a number of esteemed contributors. I was asked to join it, and have, because I think censorship’s bullshit. But it has had me thinking. How does this concern me?
Really, I’m not sure it does. Not yet. It probably will. But I’m pretty open about who I am, thus why I get really personal things sent to me, I guess. I leave myself vulnerable here, only because I feel invulnerable.
Everyone in my life knows I write this. They all know I do everything from sex advice and tips to ponderous deliberations. From my father and family to my employers to my friends, they all know. They accept that this is just who I am, and I’m not ever judged for it. I couldn’t much care if I’m outted tomorrow. It would impact my life little, I suspect. I’d flinch and grit my teeth because I’m a control freak and would rather decide on my terms when to let my identity be known, though.
A reader commented (on this posting) last week, and for all I know, hasn’t been back, that I was, essentially, a hypocrite. It pissed me off. It really, really pissed me the fuck off. So, let’s go with that for a moment. You know what you know about me because of my grace, generosity, and openness. It’s my gift to you, this intimacy with this stranger you may never know. I’m not being arrogant, I’m being honest. That is, in its essence, what blogging is. Allowed voyeurism, by we, the brave provocateurs.
Those of us who do this, who put ourselves out here in the raw – with the hurts, with the reality, with the insights – we do so for our own reasons. We have gracefully allowed you, the world, to be players in our mix. You’re the voyeurs we’re humouring by leaving our blinds up. You owe each of us the very simple respect of acknowledging we all have our stopping points. There are things that, for whatever stupid reasons we have, we do not wish to share. That is our right. When it comes to what it is we divulge, you have no say.
Those are the facts.
It doesn’t change much for me. I still plan to tell you a little more about who I am and how I got here. But just keep in mind that I have a line in my sand, and if you cross it, I’ll mince no words in telling you so. What I choose to tell is always going to be my choice. Fortunately for us all, I love to take requests. It’s just so spiffy and interactive, like a game. I do so enjoy games, after all.
Anyhow, most people treat me wonderfully around here, and I love it, and love those of you who it applies to. I do love to please a crowd. There’s just the occasional twit, and I wanted to say something this time.
But I do digress.
I think it’s safe to say we all know I’m a pretty introspective individual. My life has made me that way, through a variety of experiences. I’ve had a lot of strange encounters with death, a lot of struggle, a lot of experience, in all ways, shapes, and forms.
I guess it’s part of why I’ve been riding the masturbation topic this week. I’ve spent a lot of time alone in my life – I’d have to, to write as much as I do these days. But I love being alone. I can be the life of any party, and my personality, when I turn it on, can win over just about any person, any time. And though I love people, I’m protective of my space. That space is precisely what has seen me through all the struggles and hardships I’ve had. It’s also what makes me an engaging person to befriend and know.
Over the next week or two, I’ll be wanting to spend a little time taking a look at myself, and I hope to have an interesting post of how a girl like me gets formed. Not necessarily because it’s been a request, but because it’s my blog and I’ll do what I wanna. (Oh, I’m just playing. It’s actually something I do every spring… a stop-and-smell-the-self or something.)
I said earlier about the footprints left in our lives when people walk on out, and there’s been no bigger tread than that of the one left by my mother. Six-plus years have passed since her death and the loss still finds me from time to time, and this week has been no exception. Some sad topics came up when talking to my father the other night, and I’ll be expounding on that another time, but tonight it’s too much for me to think on.
I will tell one story, though, of one day spent with her that has profoundly affected the way in which I live my life today, something I hope the parents out there can learn from.
My mother wasn’t well educated, and I remember her getting her GED (high school equivalency) when I was in Grade 3, but she had the most common sense of anyone I’ve ever met. My father made me flush with pride the other night when he said that, then told me I got mine from hers, and took it further than she had managed. I’m proud I had her as a role model.
Something she forgot how to do as she got older, sick, and tired of the struggle in her life (the result of a bad menopause), was how to stop and smell the proverbial roses. But she taught us how to do it in our youth. I remember being in Grade 2 at a Catholic elementary school. We’d take the bus all the way from White Rock, out into the valley, and the whole thing would be a 45-minute ride, up and down the streets in the valley, before ending at that small school by the church.
I remember this morning in particular – a spellbinding onslaught of spring. One of those days after a warm rainy spell, when the April sky explodes in blue and light, and the world just comes alive. The birds sang, flowers bloomed big, the air was rich and aromatic. We couldn’t have been in class for more than a half-hour, when what should happen?
My mother arrives, tells the principal we have doctor’s appointments, picks us both up from class, and makes a beeline to Vancouver’s famous Stanley Park, which was carpeted with baby daisies and little purple flowers I’ve never learned the names of.
She took our shoes off, bought us ice cream before it was even lunch, and told us to play nearby after she hugged us both and told us it was a day made by God.
She then sat down on the grass with a sketch book, and began sketching as we ran wild all over the grass. I remember nothing of that day except the happiness and freedom I felt.
I learned then that life comes with a pause button. To this day, I never let things get too hectic without remembering I can say fuck it and stop it all. I did that again today, the second time in a week. I went for a long bike ride in the rain and just felt incredible.
That day, my mother just sat there, watching us. She looked so damned beautiful, but then, she always did.
Never underestimate the power of spontanaeity – not in life, not in love, not in sex. There’s nothing more spell-binding than a well-chosen change in plans. My life is richer today as the result of a seemingly innocuous little day at the park, spent at the whim of a woman who loved to hear birds chirping, and who’d been overwhelmed by a shitty streak of rain.
And never, ever underestimate the impact it might have on those along for the ride.
In the next couple of weeks, I’ll choose a couple more things that have profoundly shaped who I am, and maybe share with you the lessons I’ve come to learn as a result. Self-indulgent, but perhaps a couple people might find it interesting.
It’s fitting I end this post in the middle of the rousing chorus of Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here.”
Words, words, words: To Speak or Not to Speak?
At 1:27 am I turned the television off and found myself alone in the dark. It had been a long time since I’d last just sat there in that darkness, that silence. The day had been long, frenetic, and while good as a whole, was the kind of day that prevents you from getting the shit that needs doing done.
Suddenly, silence. Calm. Through my large sliding glass doors, the clouds have that murky coral-tinted charcoal look of a dreary winter night. But the city behind that glass is absolutely silent.
Know that old joke, why do you keep hitting yourself in the head with a hammer? Because it feels so good when it stops, the guy responds. This was one of those moments. The throbbing concussive pain that has been my life of late had momentarily ceased to be.
My head-hitting has all been of the cerebral sort, though, of late. My mind’s been in overdrive and I’ve had no outlet for it. I’ve actually been writing some of late, I should confess. It’s been the literary equivalent of the quickie. Fast’n’dirty, when time permits. Stolen moments, hoarded words.
I’ve yet to go back and read any of it. Tomorrow, today rather, is a day off. My plans include laziness and self-indulgence, perhaps self-pleasure. That’s a double-entendre, kids, since sitting around and reading your own work is about as intellectually masturbatory as anything can get.
I’ve been doing a lot of soul-searching about this sex writing gig of late, folks. I’ve had cause to do so. A recent opportunity arose in which I could try to do a certain quantity of writing in a certain form for certain people who happened to be of a certain religious persuasion. The opportunity would essentially mean I would receive a stipend weekly, with guidance provided in order to aid me in being completely self-sufficient (read: no more corporate whoring) over the next year. The only stipulation? Certain envelopes being pushed would constitute my possibly being uninvited from the party, and the cash cow going bye-bye. (IE: Big Brother and censorship rear their ugly heads once again.)
For a few days, I held off on writing or posting on here, the very politically incorrect “Cunt,” because I wanted to toe that line. I wasn’t sure whether it was in search of simply getting money for doing what I wanted to do, or simply “holding back” with the same goal in mind. Holding back, I can handle that, I thought. It’s not like I really take it all that far, I thought.
Or do I?
But in the last couple days, I’ve woken the fuck up. I can’t toe a line. It’s hypocritical. Shit, man, I can’t even get within a sidewalk’s breadth of that line, dude. How ass-backward would that be?
Pretty goddamned, I’d say.
I think the biggest thing wrong in North American relationships today is our almost Puritanical approach to talking about anything sexual. We have so many hang-ups and inhibitions when it comes to sex. We got to get past this, people.
We refuse to talk about it. Or most people do, that is. It’s shunned. We talk about things surrounding sex — the flirtation, the outfits, the seduction, the wining’n’dining, the commitment, the logistics — but never the nitty gritty, the real stuff that affects us on an individual level.
Face it, the whole notion of sex conversation tends to be along the lines of the boring and uninvestigative, like, “Do you like that?” You know what rule number one in the world of journalism is? Never, ever ask a question which can be answered with a simple “Yes” or “No.” If you want to know your interview subject, you always, always investigate for long, thorough answers.
You’re trying to bring your partner the best pleasure they can possibly experience, and all you’ll ask is “Do you like that?” Jesus. And people wonder what’s wrong with sex today? Worse yet, even today there are a lot of women who will NOT even ask their man if they’re likin’ it. That’s a whole other issue that I just won’t address right now.
The human body isn’t one-size-fits-all. It’s complicated. We need to talk to each other. You wanna improve your sex life? TALK to your partner. Get to know what’s working and what’s not. Asking’s the only way to do it.
Be a scientist. Gather evidence. Learn. Study the subject in as many conditions as you can. Experiment. Document your findings. Verify. Rinse. And repeat.
So, then, I ask you: How could I possibly live with myself if I began to censor myself just for a meagre stipend so early in this game?
Throw a few more digits at me, though, and maybe we’ll talk. For now, no whoring’s good enough for me. Hand me that megaphone, will you? And go talk to your lover.
I’ll have a few more things to say about conversations regarding sex in the near future, a couple examples of ways to go about doing that, for those who are a little awkward on just how to find out what’s really working. It’s so damned important.