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favorite journal entries
To Jane and Sarah, On Their 30th Birthday - 01.22.03
In 1993, I had a surgical abortion. I have never had even a day
of regret about that decision, and have had many, many thankful,
grateful days about that decision, and about my ability to make
that decision.
Enough about you, let's talk about me (and JC) - 01.08.03 - 11.11.03
Upon discovering that when I returned home from a hospital stay
for my hands as a child that our janitor had thrown out my handmade
car. It was crafted from a refridgerator box, toilet paper tubes,
paint and an involved mosaic exterior made of magazines and junk
mail. I began wailing loudly and rending my hair with my hands.
If i'd have read Oedipus by that time, I'd likely have tried to
put out my own eyes. My mother suggested I simply make another.
At which point I launched into a tirade at higher decibels about
her not understanding the creative process and the vain and careless
undoing of my life's work. Ah, the artistic temper tantrum temperament.
So good, so good for you! - 01.02.03
You heard me right. This is my credo for 2003. Not "Sex can be
okay if it's safe," or "Sex can be good, but so can abstaining,"
and certainly not, "Sex is deadly." Nope. Sex is good for you.
To Sirs, With (G)love - 12.27.02
I came of sexual age when HIV and AIDS did, dear sirs, and watched
infants die in my mother's ward at the children's hospital from
AIDS; babies whose parents had no information on how to protect
themselves from the HIV virus because we did not know what it
was, and we did not know how to prevent its transmission. We don't
see that as much here, thank goodness, because now we do know
-- especially here in the United States, where we also have the
power and the ability to share that knowledge, and the grave responsibility
to disseminate it. Anyone who did not do so would be systematically
and intentionally putting all of our lives and health at risk,
which certainly is not the aim of the CDC or the United States
Government.
The Way Home - 12.24.02
I walk a few blocks with a mantra circling in my head, repeating
to myself not "He is gone from me," but "He is no longer with me as once he was, but remains as he is
now. I accept what is now, and honor and cherish what once was
in memory." I don't want to erase. I just want to make new drawings, and
file the old somewhere where it's okay for me to look at them,
touch them, and remember, whether they make me smile or cry; likely
both.
To an Amazon, from an Amazon - 11.07.02
Perhaps you were trying to do me a public service? Trying to inform
me that in our current culture and administration, even doctors
who appear to be fairly well educated cannot for the life of them
simply state the actual facts and allow the rest of us to make
what judgments we will, but instead feel compelled to take the
facts and twist and turn them to meet ideologies to which we SURELY
must subscribe, despite what we know about human history, the
daily realities of the population being discussed and biology?
Why Onkel Toms Hütte is Less Funny Than It Sounds - 08.12.02
This is the part where I bend your ear about copyright and artists
rights. Which is a shame, really. I'd had my heart set on sitting
and writing some poetry about a lovely evening spent catching
droplet's of B's sweat in my mouth, but my head is too wrapped
around these other issues to let that happen at the moment. So,
it's storytime for the viewers at home today.
Dangerous Curves - 04.22.02
It's hard, hard work. And it's work that involves being really
honest with yourself and taking some chances. It's work that means
being willing to recognize that wanting to escape out of your
body into a celebrities body is less about wanting their body
than it is about wanting their lives; wanting an escape from your life, or your feelings about yourself.
It's work that involves self-acceptance, which on many levels,
is all of our own life's work. It's work that means choosing to
take the harder way out: it's a million times easier to focus
on your hatred or dissatisfaction with your body than it is to
do so about your life -- and if you think becoming thin is going
to change most of your life, I assure you, you're really mistaken.
If I had a dime for every woman who wasted years of her life dieting
only to find out that she had the same set of damn problems no
matter her size, I'd literally be a millionaire.
La Violenza, La Mia Vita - 01.30.02
I was born to two parents whose lives were controlled by fear:
whose patriarchs controlled with belts and broken limbs; with
shouts or worse, silent stares; with stares that foreshadowed
pain that would come momentarily if their wishes were not granted,
a promise neither ever doubted. My father's brother once learned
those stares had meaning when he was thrown from a second-story
window to the ground below for doubting. He felt its meaning forever
in a limb that would always ache when the weather changed.
Jesus and the Mini-Mart - 01.17.2002
The mini-mart is a house of Middle-American cultural worship:
a temple whose bricks are forged from our atrociously bad habits.
The mini-mart celebrates cigarettes; commemorates coffee so rank
you have to be an addict to want to drink it, and pay for that
privilege.
Magic at 4 AM - 11.13.01
4 AM is when the stars are often still barely out, but the edges
of sky are blushing softly like a girl at 13, or a stranger you've
managed to embarrass. It isn't as quiet as say, 2:30 AM: cars
are beginning to rattle and hum on the streets, morning news turned
on by the rare few who are beginning their day then. A phantom
alarm clock whines softly somewhere, feebly contesting a lazy
hand pounding it on the head to silence it again and again.
La Luna - 10.31.01
"... I'm full, twice this month, no less, and I'm not just saying
that to flatter myself -- you might want a little reminder to
pay a bit more attention to me in the coming year. You used to
pay me lots of attention..."
"If you begin singing 'You Don't Bring Me Flowers,' I will utterly lose my mind."
Chronology of a Fixation - 10.14.01
Bring me the boys who are rough around the edges, but sweet as
sugar inside, the boys who paint or play guitar or write with
a powerful voice but speak low and softly. Hand over those luscious
specimens who are almost what'd be called "pretty boys," if they
shaved a little more often, or cut their hair now and then, or
didn't know they were bloody perfect in all their gorgeous disorder.
Bring me these boys first thing in the morning, when they wake,
their eyes full of sleep and their hair a rat's nest. Bring them
before they've showered, not after.
Crisis Is the Time for Truth - 09.11.01
If we lose perspective, in my mind -- if we try and arbitrarily
assign more weight to any one act of violence over another --
we devalue the loss of those lives further because we do not accept
the lessons their loss might teach us, and help us to stop this
whole awful cycle in the future.
More Laps Than a Napkin - 08.28.01
My lovers ran the gamut of age, gender, race, appearance, social
strata, you name in. I took the phrase "celebrate diversity" to
heart. And like I said, it was all good, as far as the law of
averages goes. It's so odd to even be saying "was," really.
Sexual Subjectivism - 06.24.01
If being subjectified means that myself or anyone else will be
displayed to groups of people who not only look and perceive on
their own, but attach values, personality traits, actions, dogma
and all of their own bitter baggage to it, hurled at the subject
or the artist (for having the nerve to be a subject or an artist),
I would oh-so gladly rather be objectified any day.
My Grandmother's Glasses - 10.29.00
My grandmother and I had little to no history at all, and the
history we did have was stormy, fraught with conflicting feelings;
many of anger, some of sadness, a few of blank apathy. When she'd
died, I agreed to come down and help with the funeral, write the
eulogy, support my mother. I did so reluctantly, and I didn't
expect to be very upset.
Fear Trumps Apathy - 07.01.00
Right now I see so much suffering around me, it's almost hard
to breathe. At the Scarleteen boards there are kids posting who
were raped or abused and who never told a soul, and have let it
tear them up inside. People brag about not practicing safe sex
elsewhere, flaunting the notion of endangering themselves and
everyone else. Right now, a multitude of people are arguing about
Andrea Dworkin's story on what she suspects was a rape she never
reported a year ago, and I can't even say a word. I don't want
to; there is nothing to say, neither I nor anyone else can validate
or invalidate someone else's pain and trauma, and it isn't anyone's
place to.
Dear Ed - 05.15.00
Ed, listen, I don't normally behave like this. For starters, I'm
neither a groupie nor a stargazer. I've fucked my share of notables
in my day, and didn't give a hoot who they were (and, I confess,
sometimes didn't even remember the next morning). I don't thinkof
film actors as royalty, nor do I squeal over them like a Beatlemaniac.
I don't. Really. No, I'm serious.
Ruins and Old Greeks - 02.08.00
George's shop has two floors: the first is for most folks simply
walking in off the street who don't know the lovely old Greek
man. But if he likes you, or sees you haven't found what you wanted,
he'll offer to move the little gate that reads "KEEP OUT" from
the basement steps, and lead you down . In the basement (an easy
2000 square feet) are aisles and aisles of old tuxedos, dresses,
boxes and boxes of hats, scarves and linens. Once you're truly
in the fold, George may pay you the ultimate compliment, and invite
you into his small parlor downstairs to sit, have coffee and talk.
This is the real gift.
Can You Say "Masturbate" on Morning Radio? - 12.22.99
"Well, Bob, " I say, thinking his name might be Bob, not sure,
but figuring in the realm of male names in Georgia, Bob has as
good a chance of being his name as any. "Bob, " I say again for
emphasis, "I don't teach anymore, because working two sixty hour
a week jobs was a little much for me, and if you think when I
was there I had time to talk about anything at all that involved
me, let alone a sexuality journal, you clearly haven't been in
an understaffed classroom full of 30 five-year-olds. So, I have
no idea what anyone thought, but I know the kids usually dug my
shoes."
First Entry - 05.17.99
I was not raised in that cultural sect which keeps secrets and
then feels the need to purge them somewhere secretly. Instead,
I was raised with the notion that a large part of being an artist
is to bear witness: to record events through individual eyes for
the purpose of marking personal history, and perhaps bringing
the personal to history in a way that is unique and diverse.
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