Mark finally came home yesterday, and it’s really nice to have him back.

When we travel apart, I don’t forget about the good stuff, but when we come back together, I’m usually reminded how good the good stuff really is; how much I value it as a very unique and individual expression of who we are together.

Because of what I do, I see a lot of people, daily, who are impatient for that stuff between each other to grow, and motivation for sex can in part be from a desire to make that stuff — very individual, unique expressions of who you are together — happen sooner than it might otherwise. I don’t think it’s a terrible motivation for sex, mind: it’s not like it’s destructive or unsafe. But if it’s the only motivation (especially when sexual pleasure isn’t part of that for one party), or if that’s the only place anyone’s relationship has or is nurturing this stuff, that’s not so wonderful.

Anyway, I love the way that via cooking together, Mark has grown to love cooking, not just be proficient at it. When we met, it was about him learning how, but it’s developed to the point where he is in love with it. It’s been an interesting process, especially with him often asking why a given alchemy happens the way it happens and wanting this in-depth chemistry of the thing, and me being all Italian and goony about it and pleading, cajoling with him, while pouring a glass of wine and handing it over, to just enjoy the alchemy and emotionally connect with the flavors and smells.

He came home yesterday toting a box of hot sauces and spices he’d gotten while away he was all geeked out about, and last night, using some of what he brought back, we each cooked together making our two separate pots of chili (Mr. Price is a massive carnivore), and he was hopping around the kitchen like a gleeful mad scientist, rubbing his hands together. He also did that thing he does a few times while cooking, where when he’s thinking deeply, he’ll stick his tongue out of his mouth a little, not realizing he’s doing it.

I love that we often spontaneously dance in the dining room. In fact, having decided that we wanted to do NYE at home this year, we may even go the extra mile tonight and dress up to dance in the dining room. Probably to the Journey box set I got for Mark, no less.

I love that when he gets a new piece of clothing he likes, he has to catwalk back and forth a few times; he is that delighted with his own dapperdom.

I love (even if sometimes it’s a bit frustrating) how sometimes, we’ll go upstairs with an eye towards having sex, and one or both of us will get so silly about something, and keep the goofy rolling for so long that we wind up feeling utterly unable to have sex because things have just gotten too damn silly. Of course, it’s also very nice when that does not happen and the original plan delivers.

I love that our major time to regroup and reconnect always happens sitting together in the bathtub, and that if I brush my teeth afterwards, I have to try and look away from Mark because otherwise, he giggles at me the whole time since I tend to move my eyeballs in tandem with the way I’m moving my toothbrush.

I LOVE sleeping together. Which is always very weird, since previous to dating Mark, I can count on two digits the other people, including friends, I have not only enjoyed sleeping with, but have not done bodily harm to during the night because my subconscious self was SO annoyed and frustrated with having to share my bed.

And I love the fact that I’m the natural early riser here and that at times like these, when he’s still sleeping, I can creep back into bed after my morning coffee, find him all naked and warm, and wake him up.

posted in Heather Corinna, Mr. Price, home, my fine romance, family | permalink | comments (2) »

I sure wish I could croon that yesterday all my troubles seemed so far away, but alas, yesterday was a day from HELL.

I’m not writing about every item on my list, but to give you the highlights:

We don’t have houseboys in this house, we have a housedyke, and it’s me. I am usually the fixer-of-broken-things in our household. It’s actually not a role I like that much, butcha know, for the most part, I’m the one who knows how to fix things more often, so I’m stuck with it for now. Chalk it up to growing up poor, living on the fringes and having to learn to fix things because no one else is around or available. The cable modem, per usual (though it more often does this only when Mark is using his computer, but he wasn’t home yesterday), would just not cooperate and kept going down, taking ‘net access and phone service with it. I had a joint radio interview last night, and since Bellevue is a schlep for a car-less gal, was going to do it by phone, so it was a race against the clock. Also had to deal with a faucet issue outside, and then, in the midst of a rush to get a bunch of linens and towels done for Briana and The Baby Liam, our washing machine went kablooie. With a ton of water and towels still in it.

I unplugged it, restarted it, turned the fuse on and off, disconnected and reconnected the hoses, tried every setting….the works. I also tried yelling at it, shaking it and kicking it twice, but all I have to show for that is a sore toe. And as it turns out, we bought those used through our landlord, so any repairs are on us. Great. This is the first time I have every had laundry inside a place I lived, and I suppose I’m now paying the price (though I have had similar adventures with machines in laundromats, so). Or not: I have no idea what the price will be, but I probably can’t pay it, which is especially precious since there isn’t a laundromat anywhere remotely near here.

I found out I need scrubs for the new job like, yesterday, which is not so doable. I ordered some online where I could find them at a discount, but lord knows when they’ll get here. And new-job expenses are always a frustration: you take an additional job because you’re broke, but so often forget that with many jobs, for a while there the costs of travel, uniforms, what have you, end up draining your finances more. Never a good time, that.

I had some yuck to deal with at Scarleteen, too, my dog is becoming itchy again (poor kid), the house is a disaster since Mr. Price and myself have both been running so ragged with so many jobs, my backdrop stand in my studio fell on my sore toe, I burnt my hand on the stove, I felt disjointed and stressed during the radio interview. Part of why is that I believe that I was drunk-dialed by not just one but BOTH of my parents (funny that for all they don’t have in common, both love their vino). My Dad called slurring, and then just before the radio spot, my mother called elated about a bonus she’d gotten at work, but it was a kind of elated that I don’t usually hear her having without the Chardonnay.

And then there is this. Sigh. Right after what was said and posted in this video, and not shortly after the hate mail onslaught from some adults (not teens, nor even parents of teens, thanks) I had to deal with for a while thanks to this, which quotes from Shalit’s recent book, all of which pretty seriously misrepresent what all of them are talking about by shortening the whole list to two items and adding some implications which aren’t there.

Scarleteen offers a “sex readiness checklist” for young girls to help them gauge whether they should plunge into the fun. Among the items: “I see a doctor regularly,” and “I have a birth control budget of $50 per month.” The emotional readiness a girl should demonstrate is “I can separate love from sex.” Shalit notes, “Those who can separate love from sex are mature, like jaded adults. They are ready to embark on a lifetime of meaningless encounters.”

Anyone reading knows this, but a) Scarleteen is for folks of all genders and orientations as is that checklist, b) we have more than that one item on the list of emotional factors, and c) one of the opening lines which has always been in that list is that sex does not equal maturity. All that plunging-fun business also isn’t mine: that’s even a little too obscene for me. Plus, a readiness checklist I’d write for expressly meaningless encounters would be a bit different than the list we’ve got. I’d be sure to include the requirement for a full lobotomy, for instance, and maybe the preferential selection of sexual partners in the thick of a midlife crisis or men who go virgin-hunting. But then, I might be jaded.

All the same, I do try and be a bridge-builder rather than a bridge burner as much as I can. I have some very huge problems with some of the things Wendy Shalit has to say — or, more accurately, just how they’re framed. All the focus on “good” girls and “bad” girls strikes me as keeping a dichotomy alive rather than getting rid of one, the endless focus on appearance seems seriously counterproductive, so much of it is framed as if everything to do with women, especially when it comes to sexuality and love, is about men, and for more reasons than I can count, framing everything as okay once marriage is involved really bugs me, and not just because I’m queer, nor just because I don’t personally feel that marriage as an institution empowers women. You’ll see where I exempted myself in the comments on that first link, and that’s because I am not going to have a conversation amidst men not only telling women what’s okay or feminine for our bodies (and lordy, how Toni would cringe if she saw herself being quoted by that guy in there in that way), but presuming that married women don’t need birth control because it’s all married women want to be pregnant all the time or risk pregnancy all the time.

All the same, I really hate false divisions, and I particularly resent someone creating them with my work, using misrepresentation of what I do or have written again and again because it nets a response they like, for their own aims. Seeing that video really made me angry, especially with the “teddy bear” comments, since I talk a LOT to young people about how BOTH “slut” and “prude” are crappy things to call anyone, and about how sexual readiness shouldn’t be seen as a status item, or a mark of maturity or immaturity. I explain often how plenty of people my age and older have times in their lives when they’re not ready for sex, or it’s not something they want to do for a while, and how that’s not about age: it’s just about how full our lives are and where we’re at in them. Saying we imply that anyone not ready for or interested in any kind of sex is lesser — especially given how many times in a day we explain that no one should ever feel sex is any sort of requirement — is either dishonest or incredibly careless. Continually talking about how we’re only talking to young, heterosexual women — especially given the language we/I use is very clearly inclusive save in pieces when we are very clear what group we’re speaking to — strikes me as an intentional way to make what we do seem to be something it is not, to serve her own purposes (which has also been an issue before elsewhere).

Anyway, at some point, I am going to just have enough and call this sort of thing out, but too, I often feel like there’s never any harm in trying to engage someone who isn’t doing same for you, and in simply asking for some consideration that the divides they see are divides they’re making themselves. Sex makes everyone feel vulnerable, those of us who work in sexuality are more than used to the fact that no matter what we say or how we frame it, people’s buttons get pushed and very few people can really see sex and sexuality outside binaries, dichotomies and all kinds of hierarchies. That’s just an unfortunate given.

I do actually get some of what I think Wendy Shalit is trying to do with her work, I do get the impression she means well for the young women she writes for, and were it framed differently, made in any way inclusive (per orientation, gender and gender identity, relationship models, spiritual belief systems, etc.) less heterosexist and entitled, and by pitting girls against each other less, I might be more convinced by some of it. While there is plenty she says that I have big problems with, I really DO think there are a few points on which we might intersect, even if we would posit different solutions to and sources of those issues more than a little bit differently. And I’ll be honest: I didn’t expect her to even publish my comments, and I was impressed that she did at all. Maybe I’m just being an idiot, because for all I know, she did so without constructive motives. Obviously, I have no way of knowing, especially when someone has been what seems — she’s a smart, educated woman — to be purposefully misleading as a habit. But I had a little behind-the-scenes bridge-building elsewhere this week that caused me to feel a bit more optimistic than I might otherwise, so who knows. Don’t go to “Why bother?” if you would on this. I’ve had egg on my face from trying to find middle ground with people and ask for them not to slander or misrepresent me or my work before, and if I wind up all eggy again, I’ll live. Apparently it’s good for one’s complexion, anyway.

All the same, most of the comments there make my blood boil, and that will be the end of any conversation there I have there. I am not going to sit and listen to how risky abortion is (particularly while omitting that pregnancy has always posed far more risks), how marriage magically makes a need for birth control or sexual readiness/consent vanish, or how when women want to control our own fertility, we’re somehow denying our own gender. If I want to read about that stuff, I’ll go reread The Handmaid’s Tale, where at least Margaret Atwood scares me in a way about all that that’s compelling.

In the midst of that I discovered that the version of the readiness checklist she linked to was on a website served in Israel which has stolen ALL of an old version of Scarleteen, changed some text, including the copyrights, and coated the pages with Viagra spam (how this was mistaken for a Google cache, I couldn’t begin to tell you). So, I got to spend several hours spending several case and desist letters which so far, have netted me nada. The name, address and phone number on the domain registration are fraudulent, the host in Israel is not responding in any way: it’s a freaking disaster.

Oh: and everyone and their uncle kept calling through during the radio interview, cutting off half of what I was saying.

By the time Mark stopped home briefly before going out to edit again, I was livid with all of life, and also just lost it, and wound up spilling out a bunch of issues with us that have been real problems for me in one long rush. I was not happy about how it all came out in one fell swoop, but at the same time, lately we seem to have ten minutes a day to actually communicate, so it often feels like I either just push things out, or I let them sit for weeks or even months at a time. Not really great options there. And given the timing of things, we’re not going to have any time together to talk more for close to three weeks: from houseguests now through the week and a half he’s going back home for his holidays, which really stinks.

Thankfully, I don’t have to be back at the other job until Monday , which is good because the last thing I want to do is go in there all frazzled and irritated. I get to finish cleaning and doing some work today, as well as packing up some prints and presents to ship out. Thankfully, too, I get one of my closest friends today and that dear little boy I can’t wait to see and make more forts out of blankets with.

And if nothing else, there is coffee, my sleepy, snorty dog, the piano, Villainess bath scrub and hot water, all of which I’m going to need for a little bit once I’m done freezing my hands by wringing out all the soaking, cold, wet towels.

posted in Heather Corinna, Scarleteen, home, rantapalooza | permalink | comments (5) »

My great joy this week has been finding a new CSA which is easily the best one I have ever had. All organic, primarily local, inexpensive as hell — all this (I do a 2/3rds share, since Mr. Price is more carnivore than omnivore, and we take care of our own costs separately, anyway, and just share things as we like) and a pound of organic coffee for $35 a week — and they deliver, no less. My first order someone even screwed up, and one of the staffers was willing to bring my bin by on their way home. Most CSAs I’ve been part of have been great, but rarely organic, never delivered (and since I don’t have a car, that can be tough), never year round, and fruit has always been a rarity. The organic produce at our local market is decent, but it’s hella expensive. Heck, even regular produce generally costs me this much there. This is vegan HEAVEN.

So, I open my bin and it is brimming over with a bunch of rainbow carrots, a bok choi, a gorgeous bouquet of chard, a bag of green beans, three big beets, two delicata squashes, five yellow potatoes, a beautiful, big yellow onion, a head of cauliflower, four mandarins, two pears, two apples, and that gorgeous, odiferous coffee…which I am sipping right now, quite blissfully.

I had to cook the night it all came, of course, so I made stuffed peppers and a really swell greens and carrots combo. I haven’t done recipes here for a while — and for newcomers, understand I’m one of those irritating cooks who often does things off the cuffs, so measurements are rarely exact — so here you be:

The Peppers:
• two large green peppers, tops removed, inside scooped out
• four chopped mushrooms
• one small zucchini, chopped
• one half yellow onion, diced
• one half cup faux beefy crumbles (or seitan, or crumbled tempeh, up to you)
• one cup or so of a batch of spanish rice
• saffron, smoked paprika, cumin, red wine, aleppo pepper, white pepper, raw sugar

Preheat the oven to 400, then saute the onions with a half teaspoon of the aleppo pepper. When they’re transluscent, add the beefy crumbles (or other veg protein you’re using), brown a little, then add the zucchini and get it a little soft. Add about a half teaspoon each of the paprika and cumin, a sprinkle of white pepper, a few threads of saffron, red wine to taste, then the rice.

Oil a baking dish, then fill peppers tightly with the mixture, and flop any extra in the pan. Dust the tops of the peppers with the raw sugar and another sprinkle of paprika: bake covered until peppers are soft, usually around 45 minutes to an hour. We served them with this really nummy raspberry-chipotle sauce we keep around (we have a whole shelf of nothing but hot sauces in the cabinet).

I didn’t have any tomatoes lying around, but if I had, I’d have stewed a few and then made the extra rice mixture extra saucy to put around the peppers in the baking dish.

The Roots & Greens
• one big bunch chard (of any kind, but the rainbow chard is always so pretty)
• four or five carrots, sliced
• one mandarin orange, peeled and sectioned
• orange juice and port wine or, a bit of the ratafia I have still managed to hoard from Minnesota (if you’re me)

In a medium pot, boil a couple inches of half water, half OJ. Drop in the carrots and let boil until steamed, then add the chopped greens on top and the mandarins, and steam lightly. Drain and toss with the port or ratafia.

Even Mark cleaned his plate.

Today I’m off in a bit for my weekly coffee klatch with David, a few errands, then back here to clean up a bit and get some baking done before the evening. It was a busy, busy week of lots and lots of work (even by my standards), so I think I may actually take a weekend like normal people this time around, or at least, give it something of a go.

posted in Heather Corinna, home, Auntie Heather's Helpful Hints, yummy | permalink | comments (2) »

Meanwhile, back at the ranch….

Despite coming home and finding a mailbox with a pile of reactionary wait-until-marriage stuff inside, our weekend away in Port Townsend was scrumdiddlyumptious. Photos forthcoming, but for the most part, our exciting locales were the big, fluffy bed, two overstuffed chairs beside a gas fireplace, and a large, jetted tub. I was able to get out early Sunday morning for a seated meditation on a cliff with a moldy bench overlooking the water and then take a brisk walk across the beach. Mark literally took five baths in less than 48 hours: I expected to feel his developing gills as we slept. Sofia clearly also needed a little vacation — all that itching and your people endlessly traveling is stressful for but a small pug! — as was apparent given that save maybe one hour of the whole weekend, she found herself a cozy spot amidst the pillows on one of those chairs and refused to leave.

Saturday was a sweet, all-day mix of various sorts of debauchery — including MST3K fore-and-after-play, which should be a suggestion for the teens I work with, really — and even just by mid-morning, I was relaxed enough to enjoy a very, very nice batch of big, wavy orgasms. Funny how it’s so easy to forget — even given my job and the fact that I remind people of this daily — that the more stressed out you are, the milder your sexual response tends to be. Even the really good ones aren’t as good as they could be if you could just freaking relax; really relax, about everything. Between the stress of all the travel and having to be on so much, the perpetual struggles to keep everything I do afloat and the stress of just doing my work, not having felt well for quite some time, the works, I knew I was tense as hell, but until a day when by where nothing felt at all stressful, I wasn’t aware of how tense.

At the cabin this weekend, I was also reminded that I’m never quite sure what sound sex toy etiquette is. In other words, if you’re in a place where they will or may show up while you’re out to tidy things up, do you have to care about toys and lube and gloves being strewn all over the place? Is putting them in one pile on the nightstand good enough, or are you really supposed to hide them, even when you’re paying to stay where you are? I get the feeling you are supposed to, but the minute I even start to do it, I so deeply resent feeling like I should that I never bother.

It’s really swell to be able to look ahead over the next few weeks — heck, the next few months — and know that I don’t have to go anywhere. That doesn’t come close to fixing all of my troubles, but it sure helps out an awful lot. I’m a homebody by nature: I ground at home. When I don’t really get to do that, and am in and out a lot, it makes everything feel even more unmanageable than it is. Seattle winters aren’t exactly fabulous (but thank christ, they are NOT Minnesota or Chicago winters), but I’m glad as hell that I can be home for the whole of winter and spring. Once I really get at least somehat caught up with my backlog of every kind of work, I’m hoping I can spend it catching up on the mountain of books I have half-read, do the last of the housepainting I still haven’t finished, and have the time to do some damn art. And sleep. Get lots and lots of sleep.

So long as we can swing it, I’m going to try and use my accumulated miles for Briana so that she and The Baby Liam can come up for a couple weeks around the holidays. Her living situation is scary right now, even to someone like me who knows from hardscrabble living, and she’s got a pretty substantial break from her culinary school, so not only being able to see them, but just being able to give them a break at no cost would be great. But even that doesn’t involve me having to go anywhere. I get to bring my family to my own front door.

The Babeland event, by the way, was crazy-packed, so I had to do more lecture than Q&A, which is very much not my preference. But it was still a good thing, despite the fact that almost half the place was full with community college students from a human sexuality class, some of whom informed me later that their prof was a pretty creepy bigot who clearly hasn’t read a single study ON sexuality that was published later than 1965, and who routinely lectures even his knowingly lesbian college students about abstaining until marriage. Apparently, this was the only decent part of the class so far according to them, and also according to them and the Babeland staff, the guy nodded off through half of it. I got to walk away with a new toy for my troubles, and I resisted the urge to be greedy, since I’ve been aching for this for an age (I know, I know, it’s leather, but it has laces and a STAR on it!), and also had more than one set of youth educators wanting to talk to me about what the right way is to kindly ask your students not to masturbate publicly. I had no good answers (besides my usual suggestion to just redirect them to something else, giving them the look that says you know what they’re doing, and it’s okay, but not okay HERE) for the couple who worked in a pool with jets: you can’t keep kids off of water jets, man.

My enthusiasm for my to-do list this week tells me all I need to know about how frazzled and overextended I’ve been. When I am earnestly excited to better insulate the house here (it’s a rental, yes, but if we get the heating bills this winter we got last winter we’re in serious trouble), clean the refrigerator (and only a little depressed at how empty it is), when I wake up in the morning elated that the day will be about cleaning my disaster of an office, when doing tax paperwork seems like a break, I’ve clearly been living in Stressville. Besides finishing a couple articles that have been taking way too long (in my defense, figuring out the best way to do an article about how not to be a rapist isn’t exactly a cakewalk), and answering some advice questions, I’m going to be mostly away from Scarleteen over the next week or two. I forget, sometimes, that I’m allowed to do that, and that when it’s not coming even close to making ends meet, it only makes sense TO do that. A cleaner, more organized office, for instance, equals a clearer mind to better figure out how to deal with all the challenges right now. More to the point, now and then, during the times when I’m really not being paid at all or barely getting paid, it’s sage to do other work that needs doing which I also don’t get paid for, and is far less stressful.

Plus, there was that one time where I decided to ditch everything else to clean out my closet and found $300, effectively getting paid more for cleaning than for working. I don’t exactly expect that to happen again, but I’m not going to rule it out, either. Really, given what a slob I am, I’d not be surprised if Mark started secretly stuffing bills into hidden places just so I’d clean up my crap. I DID find a mix tape yesterday from 1988, and nearly wept with the sweetness. Labeled “Obnoxiousness Found Us in Gillson Park, Illinois,” jointly by both myself and my best friend at the time, who always went nuts with the mix tapes for the long trips we’d take — in both senses of the word — I am greatly looking forward to popping it into the tape deck in Mr. Price’s office to see what’s on it. I predict plenty of Beatles, Jazz Butcher (and I also just organized a huge pile of JB CDs a friend and rare fellow fan of them made for me a couple years back, which are a major coup since most of their stuff wasn’t even on CD), Elvis Costello, Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, ska and 60’s surf rock.

I’m electing not to talk about the moment a hidden camera would have found me in this morning, belting out “Angel of the Morning” at the top of my lungs while organizing my studio shelves. because, you know, we really shouldn’t document these sorts of things if we want to be taken at all seriously.

(Though as an aside, a reader here gave a very generous donation this week, and I thank you soundly. That not only helps me to be able to toss some change at my developer so we can get some more of the upgrade finished, it also means I can finally go get new glasses, and thus end the nonstop tension headache I’ve had for two months because my prescription changed. You’re a goddess!)

P.S. In trying to finish that article on how not to rape and enable rape, I’m troubled that while we have one word, a very powerful word, at that, for a rapist, we don’t seen to have an equally powerful — and ideally MORE powerful word — for someone who is not just not a rapist, but the antithesis of a rapist. So, what’s the word for a caring, reciprocal sexual person or partner? It’s pretty darn tough to sell a concept when we don’t even have a word for it. “Lover,” alas, is terribly outdated and not something young people are even remotely likely to use. “Partner” isn’t just about sex, and as I was informed a couple years back when I accidentally outed myself to some of Mark’s film crew at 5 AM, it still primarily belongs to us queers. We could make “mutual” an honorific, but it doesn’t feel right. Might be some mileage in “accord” or “harmony,” but I can’t seem to land on it.

P.P.S. The mailbag still is out of control this week. My favorite this morning?

I was so sad when I was told about your website. Teenagers go to your site and find permission to have sex in any way they want. I am a chastity speaker and talk to teens a lot about the risks of STD’s. I know how faulty condoms are and even though people are using them STD’s are still out of control. I was so sad to read a lot of wrong information on your site. Condoms will not protect again many STD’s including HPV the most common STD today and one that can cause cervical cancer and possibly lead to death. You suggest that waiting until marriage to have sex is just not possible. It most certainly is and I hope that you will start giving teens more credit for having self control. We need to encourage then to aim for the healthiest life possible. Many people are dying because of sex but no one has died because they abstained until marriage. Please carefully consider the info you share and make sure it is accurate because so far a lot of what I have read on your site is horribly wrong especially as related to STD’s and condoms.

I really love it when people tell me what I do. (As well as the idea that it’s up to me or any other adult to give teens “permission” to have sex, while at the same time telling me I don’t give teens enough credit for making their own sound choices, while they’re asking them to sign a very binding legal contract to another person in order to even CONSIDER that choice.) It’s so helpful: how would I know otherwise? I’m the idiot savant of sex ed, see. I have no idea what I do or say: all these words and statistics and sources just come pouring out of me when I consult my Ouija board every time I answer a question. A few days later, I go look at what I have written and it’s an absolute mystery to me.

I figured the best I could do with that one was to very calmly just primarily direct her to actual, international sources of sexual health information. Probably she won’t use them, or even look, or will find some way to discredit them — even though the CDC is almost entirely in the administration’s pocket these days, so you’d think these kinds of folks wouldn’t write them off anymore. But she is an educator, and I suppose you do never know when you’ve gotten one who earnestly has their heart in the right place, but just has never been informed.

And to think, some folks call me a pessimist.

posted in Heather Corinna, Scarleteen, Mr. Price, home, apropos of nothing | permalink | comments (6) »

So, up to ten miles round-trip now: I spent an hour yesterday afternoon sitting under a highway bridge at my mid-point near UW.

This is goodness. My hamstrings and quads currently disagree, but what the hell do they know?

It’s really good for me to do my daily sitting out of doors, rather than indoors, and attaching it to movement in some way. It always has been, really. In fact, at the first meditiation community I ever went to in Chicago, I had someone next to me complain once that my bouncing on my feet was bothering them. I resisted the urge to tell them that I knew I wasn’t moving the floor, that they weren’t supposed to have their eyes open anyway, so there, and that meditation is supposed to be all about working to tune out outside static and get in harmony with your surroundings, so they should consider me their special helper then, shouldn’t they? SNAP!

I resisted that urge because any of those comments and most certainly the snap would have been even less appropriate than the initial complaint, but also because I didn’t want to be the snappity-snip in the middle of a giant group meditation, which has absolutely zip to do with my spiritual growth and absolutely everything to do with preferring someone else be caught holding the asshole bag, by the by.

I’ve generally done better with walking meditation than seated. I’m not looking forward to the couple of months here where biking isn’t going to be an option often, but hey: it’s at least a shorter period of time to be away from it than it was in the midwest.

I realize, too, that my best meditating in this new ritual happens twice. It happens once when I take my sitting break at a mid-point — especially with things for my eyes to take in and associate, I’m such a visual learner — and the happy lasts the rest of the ride home, but even more so, it happens the first few minutes I get on my bike. I’m not thinking about the challenge of the hills, I’m not thinking about if it rains, I’m not thinking about where I’m going to go, and I’m not worried yet about being hit by a car: I’m just flying down the street feeling the breath in my lungs, the strong force of my body, and the wind on my face. I feel freed. I’m not thinking about anything but those moments for long enough that I can’t determine when they start or they end.

I think doing this is also me making a certain peace with Seattle that’s been slow to grow. I don’t dislike it here, not at all, but it very much doesn’t feel like Home. I’m not sure it ever will, not completely, and that’s okay — the landscape is just so different than the one that registers as home in my head (which is odd, because I feel very at home in Mexico, even without that registry). It’s beautiful all the same, and it’s certainly home for now. Given how slow everything often seems to be to warm here, perhaps that’s as it should be; that I should be as slow to warm to it and it seems to be to me.

(I’m keeping a photo journal of sorts of some of these sessions here for me to have a handful of visual koans for myself — my bike is being my self-portrait stand-in, it seems.)

* * *
So, for the first time I know of as of yet, I missed out on a big opportunity because I’m not someone’s mother. A production company for a big TV studio contacted me about needing a teen expert and wanting me, but that the gig required said expert being a Mom.

I walked out of my office after this brief conversation and into the kitchen, where Mark was hanging out. I very calmly, but with great resignation, voiced that I’d apparently passed the age where I was going to get penalized for BEING someone’s mother, and entered into the one where I was going to get penalized for NOT being someone’s mother.

I had to wonder if at any point there is an age for women where it’s neither considered too early nor too late for to be mothers when it comes to our careers and our market value.

I’m thinking not.

* * *

I talked to my father on the phone yesterday, who I didn’t know had climbed on a group bus to from Chicago to go protest for the Jena 6 two days ago: he’d just gotten home when I called. Not only am I supremely impressed he was able to battle his worsening agoraphobia to do that, it also makes me really happy.

I know, I know, activism is always supposed to be primarily about whatever cause or group or person you’re being active for, and I agree. But in my father’s case, especially since he feels so useless so much of the time, him being able to essentially do something that was like the civil rights movement work he once did, something he feels so strongly about, and something that made him feel so useful, is a really big deal. Him giving up the $50 that’s very little to others, but a big lot of money for him, to go is important. And it was a great experience for him, being able to go and step up, and also just being able to talk to other people on the bus there and back to whom it all matters. He sounded so happy, so energized.

We have had strange conversations about racism, my father and I. Not so strange, all things considered, but they’re sometimes not what one’d expect from a guy who once took fire hoses in the face to combat racism, and who ditched what easily could have been his best romantic relationship to do that work. He’s very anti-affirmative action, for instance, primarily because he feels like it’s asking my generation to “pay” for something that other generations did. I disagree with him on this point, I always have. For starters, I don’t feel like we’re paying for anything, that there is any sort of price I pay for affirmative action at all: while I don’t have a lot of privilege, I am visibly white, and even with things like affirmative action, privileges are and have been extended to me that are not and have not been to those of color. I don’t see anyone of color taking anything away from me with it, and I also feel like any band-aid we can have while the still wide-oepn wound of racism remains fresh and bloody is important. Really, I could care less about it from my vantage-point: it doesn’t hurt me in any way at all, and even if it did, I’m aware enough of the privilege I do have that when my privilege increases someone else’s burden, I want to do what I can to bring that in better balance. I’ve learned this from a lot of people and places in my life, but it’s odd to be pointing this out to a man who may well have been the first person to teach me to do that. Let’s even say that somehow, policies like affirmative action actually made it so that we whiteys were on the bottom of the olde race hierarchy for a time (yeah, I’m laughing, too): we’ll freaking well live. Everyone else has for a damn long time, after all.

Besides, it’s not like people of my generation are not still doing exactly the things that make affirmative action needed. Oh, if only.

My Pop is often of the mind that the playing field is somehow already level.

Mind, the neighborhood he lives in, the one we used to live in together, is over 80% of color. It’s also exceptionally dangerous, being one of the biggest gang neighborhoods in Chicago, and also THE place for metric arseloads of dealing and prostitution (yes, you’d think he’d realize that that alone should be a big, neon sign that the playing field when it comes to race is hardly level, but alas). White people TIPTOE through that neighborhood unless they’re cops, and no one with half a brain is going to be spouting racist bullshit on a regular basis over there, but only because of a fear of being directly hurt for doing so. He VERY infrequently leaves that neighborhood.

By virtue of barely being off-street, my father also looks that part. In other words, many of the same kinds of biases racist people have against people of color come into play with homeless people, so. I was trying to explain to him on the phone that when I find myself in spaces and situations where no one knows who I am, what my background or beliefs are; when all they can see is what sex I am and what color, I hear this crap a’plenty. When Briana and I were at the State fair in MN during my last visit, we got a serious doozy, as an example.

We saw a bathroom where the line wasn’t too bad, and while neither of us had to go, I figured it was best to go in advance so that when I was about to wet my pants, I wasn’t going to have to stand in one of those lines. So, in line we went. In a few minutes, two or three pre-teen black girls stepped out of the line for a minute, and walked past us, pretty clearly to go see what was taking so long and how bad the wait really was. When they turned around, they appeared to be doing that little bob one does when one has to pee like a racehorse. I asked if they had to go pretty bad, and got given the “ohmygodohmygodI’mgoingtopeeonthefloor” look we all get when we’ve hit that point, and so just said they could just take my place in line, since I really didn’t have to go, anyway, and certainly not that bad.

Behind Bri was a perfect blond woman with her perfect blond children in her perfectly shiny stroller and her perfectly shiny clothes, and the moment I did that, I heard her say, quite audibly, “What is this, affirmative action?”

I made a point not to turn around, because I just did not know what would have come out of my mouth if I did. Bri did turn, and shot her a look, because she then said (not at all apologetically), “I’m sorry, I’m a redneck.” Because that justifies everything, you know. Without the look, she likely wouldn’t have said anything at all, and part of saying what she did was based on her presumption that everyone around her was also racist, because most of the people around her were also white. So comfortable is someone like that in that, that they WILL say something like that, loudly, nearly anywhere because they’ve no reason at all to fear that they’ll be unsupported in their sentiments or be harmed in any way for them.

So, I’m telling my Dad this as an example, and explaining that of COURSE she would not have said anything like that if the girls I let go ahead of me were white. Or her kids. She likely wouldn’t have said anything at all, really. I told my Dad about the time Mark and I were at that B&B in Whiterock, right after Katrina, and how the older Canadian woman who owned it with her husband literally asked me, in absolute seriousness, why “those” people ever “chose” to live in that area way back when in the first place. And how I sat there, floored, trying to drop clues about the history of slavery and the legacy of poverty and the boon of being with one’s family in the hopes that with one, two, maybe even three, she’d realize what freaking stupid things she was saying sooner rather than later. I dropped a lot of clues, and some not so hinty-direct statements. She never got it. We excused ourselves from breakfast early and got the hell out of there.

Oh, I have stories, we all have these stories. But I don’t want to sit recounting them: they’re just too maddening, even to me.

My father just kept saying to me, the other day, that he just could not, would not, believe things were still like this in 2007. He finally at least said that he just didn’t want to. I tried to explain that my impression with this generation in particular (high school and college-age right now), was that I’m seeing a lot of hardcore resentment amoung plenty of youth when it comes to racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, ableism, the works. Plenty seems to feel like and express that asking them to take stock of their privilege and consider it when dealing with others is something they are entitled NOT to do (yes, I know, it’s such an obvious symptom of the thing that it’s not even ironic: it’s plain old literal), that they should not HAVE to do (because it’s such a strain on them to act and speak with compassion), and that I’m a big old asshole for even suggesting they do. So much of the ugly history of racism isn’t something many even know or care to know, and for those who do, it often seems very far away, when it’s really only-yesterday stuff, and in many ways, still-today stuff. I could go on about this for a solid year, really, it’s one of the toughest parts for me of working with young people right now, but the point is, his awareness of this isn’t so great.

My Dad is also all about everything really boiling down to class issues: I got my first socialism from him, to be sure. In some respect, I agree with him, but in others, I really don’t. (And we’ve had similar discussions about sexism.) Mostly, I don’t think we can untangle all of these things so easily, especially given the ways they intersect, and for whom they intersect most. But perhaps more to the point, I don’t find that most people are sophisticated enough, or maybe more accurately have the desire or the interest in deconstructing and examining all of this enough — because when you do, of course, you have to take more personal responsibility for certain things — to be able to even make those distinctions. Plus, it can be about class all it wants, but we still have to acknowledge that not only are more women and more people of color lower-class, but that the impact of classism is greater when you’re dealing with compounded minority.

I also have to remember, though, that my father was and has been exceptionally depressed that all the activist work he did was for naught in many ways, and that that’s a big driver in these discussions and feelings. The civil rights movement absolutely did some good, but it didn’t erase racism: the friends he had who lost lives or health in doing that didn’t lose them for nothing, but they also didn’t lose them for what they’d hoped for. The anti-war movement with Vietnam was important as hell, and made some difference, but here the hell we basically are again, all that history forgotten or dismissed. He didn’t change the world, and he really, really wanted to: he sacrificed a lot trying. It’s very hard for my father to have to deal with the fact that, for instance, racism is still alive and well and not just living in Lousiana and Alabama but also in Maine, New York and Seattle. It’s hard because of what it means about the world, but it’s also hard because of how it makes him feel about himself.

* * *
I’m finally putting up a few new photo sets today, and making more headway in my backlog. The sets going up later today include a set of photos of a transgender friend currently IDing as genderqueer: I’ve been dying to do some transition photos of someone for a long time.

It was her idea to do a series in which she was in her clothing of choice, nude, and then in old boy-clothes. I thought it was a brilliant idea, and I’m pleased as hell with the results. But I’m very glad she suggested it, because it’s not something I’d have felt at all comfortable in suggesting to her myself, much in the same way that I wouldn’t for a minute feel comfortable suggesting that a cisgendered woman pose in stiletto-heels and corsetry and makeup, even if I had some brilliant creative intent, if dressing that way would make that woman feel terribly uncomfortable and put in a drag she didn’t like (and as far as I’m concerned, it’s drag no matter who’s got it on — some folks just happen to like being in drag). As it was, seeing how Amy looked, mood-wise, in the boy clothes, I was RACING to take those shots: it was earnestly painful for me to watch her face kind of fall.

Per the final results, I hate to talk over artwork, but I think the images are incredibly telling. I did almost wish that I had had an assigned-sex woman who doesn’t dig girl-drag to do a sort of mirror of them — one in her regular clothes, another nude, and another in say, hardcore Victorian garb or, say, head-to-toe fetish latex blah-de-bah. But another day (and again, she’d probably have to volunteer to do it herself: I’d just feel so ooky asking someone to stand around like that who didn’t want to).

Next up, finishing Becca’s pregnancy shots as well as my first shots of baby Odin, who is — of course he is — cute as the freaking dickens.

posted in Heather Corinna, activism, home, family, photography & art | permalink | comments (0) »

Mark is finally home.

Road-weathered and bruised, to be sure, but home. Poor guy: not only did he have to wait for an age to have the car fixed after the accident, be trapped in Ohio throughout, then drive cross-country in the same car, but he had to do it during some of the worst storms many areas he drove through had seen in a long time. At one point, having literally just missed a tornado and seen it on the horizon — and thus, already in a panic — he also had the misfortune, at that moment, of driving by a billboard stating “Prepare To Meet Thy Maker!” Yipes.

But he got himself home, and it’s amazing to have him back here: by the time he got back, we hadn’t been in the house together for a solid month, which is lunacy. It’s funny how much another person’s energy can change a place. Don’t get me wrong: this is the nicest place I have ever rented in my life. Loved my last one-bedroom apartment in Minneapolis, but for the same rent, to be able to get two offices, a wood stove, a huge kitchen and a big place to garden in a far quieter ‘hood is quite the boon. But it feels different here when I’m living here alone, and not just because it’s far too big for one person to live in. The air in here is different: the vibe in here is lacking, almost as if the house was asleep when it’s only me inside it.

Being able to have him come home — flowers in hand for me (as well as an awesome t-shirt from Iowa’s minor league team), new Uglydoll in hand for the pup — and be able to walk to the market together, cook dinner together while dancing around to the 70’s rollerrink tunes we share a shameless love for, eat on the front porch, and then find ourselves making out on the living room floor before bringing it upstairs was idyllic. Getting to wake up this morning and see him all soft-morning-faced and smiling at me was a rush.

And thankfully, being in the headspace to have any sort of sex last night was a godsend. Earlier this week I was on the phone with my Dad, and he’d mentioned that we must really miss each other. Then, unfortunately, he took it one step too far and mentioned we both must be as “horny as hell.” SQUICK!

Look, I hate the h-word already. It’s always been seriously yuck-making for me, and is one of the few single words that a person could say to me to make me not only not want to have sex, but make me not want to THINK about sex again anytime soon. And your Dad saying it — however open you and your Dad have always been about sex — is well beyond one step over the line. I wasn’t sure I would be able to think about sex for a solid week.

Top that with the fact that I’d spent most of that same day getting caught up with Scarleteen advice questions. I’m never kidding when I say that the work I do is one of the best methods of birth control I know. Listening to/reading/conversing about people’s sex problems and crises all day is about as un-sexy as it gets, and on any given day, just plain borders on — or outright is — tragic. Now, every now and then, it’ll be SO tragic that I crave some sex, likely just so I can be tangibly reminded that the healthy, happy sort does exist. But most days, I have to basically find some time between work and play to exorcise my brain.

It’s all the worse when we get teen users who want to get very explicit about the sex that they’re having. I’m not an idiot, I know full well there are adults out there who cruise Scarleteen and read the posts to get off. I’d love to think there weren’t, because it’s really invasive of the users and what they intend in posting, but there are. And I gotta confess, I either think they’re just not right in the head, or, more likely, that they’re projecting so much of their own fantasy unto those posts that they’re not seeing or feeling the reality of them, because I’m pretty immersed in it and I often feel like I need to wash my eyes afterwards, and remind myself that that’s not anything even marginally related to the sex I have myself.

But thankfully, none of that was in my head when Mark came home last night.

Or this morning, for the hour I stepped away from writing this to crawl back into bed and do a little more making up for lost time.

(Yep, still having times when it boggles my mind that we’ve been together for around two and a half years now and the spark hasn’t dimmed at all. It’s just really surreal. Fantastic, but surreal.)

posted in Heather Corinna, Mr. Price, home, my fine romance | permalink | comments (3) »

Merde, do I hate getting ready for long trips.

I don’t travel well. I used to, back when I had a van which could basically substitute as a mobile home, or when I camped rather than stayed in hotels or houses; back when getting someone to watch my place was a simple, “The bed’s there, feed the cats, lock the door.” Back before everyone had cell phones, when you could just drop in anytime, anywhere, and when I didn’t have to look presentable at any point, and no one cared if I wore the same ratty jeans and t-shirt every day for a week.

But lo: those times are gone. Given all the last-minute phone calls I had to make, it even got to the point where I — the person determined to be the last person on earth to get a cell phone — was very nearly wishing I had one of the damndable devices. Don’t tell anyone I said that. Especially Mr. Price.

Even just prepping the housesitter was like planning for the invasion of Normandy.

Thank christ, it’s at least looking like I don’t have to go on Fox News. Yes, I was going to go on Fox News: they’d asked a couple months ago, assured me that no, they were not trying to be scandalous or demonize sexually active teens, queer teens or myself, but still, I was wary. Even though I made very clear that if they tried, I’d go all bodhisattva on their ass and just sit very quietly and say nothing in response, I wasn’t feeling very trusting. But, seems clear they just couldn’t get their proverbial shit together in time — and since I told them I needed a day and time a few days before I left at a minimum, and they didn’t give me one, I’m in no way obligated to do it if they contact me at this point — which takes a giant weight off of my shoulders. I’ve declined television stuff before now, I’ve never really wanted to do TV, and I’m glad to have escaped it once more.

I’m feeling very nervous about going home, though. I haven’t spent this much time in my home city since I left it in ‘99. I also will be primarily staying at the mother’s place, and we haven’t spent a week in the same space together since 1985. When you run away from your home at the age I did, even when your parent is no longer living in the same space, or with the same jerk of a husband, and some things have changed, excited to go anything resembling “back there” again is not what you are. In a lot of ways, too, when I moved from Chicago there was this huge weight off of my shoulders because I was free of so many physical reminders of the worst things that had happened to me in my life: there were so many places I just couldn’t even drive by, that living in cities with all of nada when it came to traumatic history has been very nice. I’m not that elated about having to see or pass by some of those places again.

It’ll be good: I’ll see some people I have missed, spend time in some places I have missed… the ones that remain, anyway, which are sadly few and far between. My Dad even told me that you can’t find a paleta man anywhere at city parks in the summer to save your life: apparently, even a nice, chilly paleta is too ethnic for the (once almost nothing BUT ethnic) north side now.

I was really hoping to find a way to get my own shit together and try and arrange a mini-reunion between myself and the kids I used to teach (few of whom are kids now), but I just couldn’t swing it. As it is, just getting the laundry done in time and all the loose ends wraped up for the events I already have going on is proving a challenge.

And I suppose me sitting here going on and on probably isn’t helping. Well, damn: off with me.

posted in Heather Corinna, home, history | permalink | comments (6) »

You know you’re a workaholic when it’s NOT working that has become an achievement.

But I am still in the midst of taking some real time off. Sure, I haven’t been able to quit working cold turkey. The first few “days off” I basically worked the same number of hours a non-self-employed person does. But for each day after, I’ve done work-work less and less: yesterday I only did about two hours of work, at a maximum, which is no mean feat for me, and today, I fielded just a couple Scarleteen questions and but one press inquiry.

What exciting, exhilirating things have I been doing?

Cleaning my house.

I know, I know, I know: a couple of friends have also mentioned that that doesn’t exactly sound like a luxury vacaction. Thing is, I can’t have a luxury vacation, period. Beyond that, this house has been VILE, victimized by both mark and I myself being riddled with deadlines over the last year, deadlines overlapping deadlines, leaving a wake of dirt, dust, pet hair and piles of paper behind us as we leap from one frenzied project to the next. I couldn’t relax in here lately if I wanted to, and I really, really want to right now.

My father, too, was — well, utterly mortified by the fact that this is what I’m doing with my time off. Now, in part, this is because my slobbery was learned behaviour from that man, a rather schizoid rearing, no less, since my mother — from what I can gather — is largely drawn to work in infectious disease to justify her extreme germophobia, and growing up in her household was like living inside a Q-tip box doused in Lysol (if I never smell amonia again, it’ll be too soon). This confusing polarization may well explain why it is that I cannot manage clutter to save my life (and make more than my share), but will find great delight in scrubbing room from floor to ceiling like a Marine until I can let out a well-deserved and blissful, “So SHINY.”

(There does, however, have to be zero pressure to do so. If I feel pressured to clean, I tend to react defensively — often unaware I’m doing so — by only making a bigger mess. I also grew up having to wipe up more male urine than I should ever have had to, being not-male myself, so when there’s a man in the house, much as I love a shiny bathroom, when I tend to scrub them, I often uncover a world of hidden resentment that wouldn’t have been there otherwise. That’s my latest rationaliztion for avoiding it, anyway, and I think it’s a winner.)

At this point, I’ve tackled both bathrooms, the kitchen, the living room and the dining room. At the moment, I’m procrastinating doing the office because the office is SCARY. Generally, I can deal with clutter, so long as it’s clean underneath it, but the office is both cluttered and completely filthy, to the point that I consider anything closer than twenty feet to it a distance unsafe for anyone.

Once upon a time, I had one of those hyper-realistic dreams, that may well have been more oracle than dream, in which I was a very old woman, living in a dusty house with too many pets, where the entrire floor was covered in books and papers. The piles went to the roof, and I had clearly constructed them around myself, as trails went through them. The only unrealistic part of my subconscious projection involved me racing — dirty bare feet fumbling, skirts flying, pencils stuck in my white hair, but those bits are perfectly realistic — across the house to grab someone a book, and knowing exactly where to find that book amidst all the piles. That doesn’t happen now and I’m quite sure it won’t ever.

But that, dear friends, is the state of my office (and my hair) at the moment — plus piles of laundry, piles of bills, a trail of coffee cups, an unpacked bag from Minneapolis, photo equipment, hula hoops: you name it, it’s in a pile in there. (Have you lost something recently? It’s probably in my office.) And fuck all if I know where a given book is, or even where the books in the office ARE right now.

I need to at least give a try in finding out, though, because I have got to make some headway with this puppy today before I head out to meet Ben, my much-beloved ACLU lawyer, who is in town on business and greatly in need of a Ballard drink-a-thon, which I am more than glad to do my level best to provide. I’m a sweetie like that, enabling alcoholics everywhere, to the point that I’ve moved into what is perhaps one of the booziest neighborhoods in the entire country.

But no more talk of booze until I can at least find the floor to crash on afterwards if need be.

posted in Heather Corinna, home, Ballard, apropos of nothing | permalink | comments (7) »

(all things great and small)

One of my favorite things about living in the Pacific Northwest, is that I am constantly reminded about how very small we actually are, just by opening my eyes and looking skyward.

Becca was here visiting over the weekend, and we went out to West Seattle Sunday afternoon, and got a chance to spin over to the other side of the water and take a nice walk in Lincoln Park (which seems strange, being natively from Chicago, where Lincoln Park = yuppie lunacy, not water and earth). On the drive home, we were both chatting about simply not understanding the mindset of most mountain climbers, who seem to look at a giant range and think “Conquer it!” while we just find ourselves in an appreciative awe, glad to let her have her power, to diminish us bny nothing but perspective and history, to pose those gentle reminders that the world is very, very big and we are very, very small, and that Very Big is made of the Very Small, besides.

There are other places to get this sort of thing, of course, but I just love being somewhere where there are trees right here, in my own yard, I couldn’t hug with a circle of four people locking hands, they’re so wide, so massive and so old. When I left Chicago in ‘99, I had many reasons for doing so, but one was that I had gotten to a point where while the urban was familiar, and I never had any problems being urban, I need plenty of green mixed into my city. Minneapolis did me right on that score, and Seattle does a fine job, too.

But as more time passes, I think that ultimately, my life is perhaps leading me to a place where maybe twenty or thirty years from now, it’s rural or village life I’ll crave. The mere fact that every couple of years, I feel a strong urge to reread Pilgrim at Tinker Creek sends that message loud and clear, and the fact that however much I love my cities, I feel more at home, in the most basic way, in the quiet and the green, in the dirt under my fingernails and the scuffs on my knees.

* * *
I just got a phone call from my sister today, wishing me a happy birthday a day in advance.

That perhaps seems mundane, unless you bear in mind that I get calls from my sister maybe once every five years. I suspect that besides her earnestly wanting to wish me a happy birthday, the call may have come because our mother has been ill. We think she’ll pull through, but we’ve had a big scare and a big shock lately, and since my sister has never had a relationship with my father, our mother is really our only tie, and that may loom larger just now.

We never got on growing up — we’re just incredibly different, and our parents also treated us very differently — and when I left home to get out of the hell I was in, it cemented a distance we’d had already, and which would only grow wider as the years went by. The fact that she was yet one more person in my mother’s family who met me with dissaproval and disbelief from day one, no matter what I did has never helped, and neither has the fact that years back, I just plain gave up trying to fill her in on all that happened to me she didn’t know about: she didn’t want to know, and while it’s possibly crappy of me to not have tried again in a decade or more, I just got tired and worn too thin trying so hard to get that branch of the family to hear me and understand or accept all I’d been through.

I struggle often with the fact that all in all, I have been a great big sister to so many women, but a really shitty one to my own flesh and blood, and it’s so hard to rectify or know how to fix, especially with someone so different than me, who in so many ways dislikes who I am and what I do with my life, and whose emotional/psychosocial makeup is so foreign to me. My sister is like my mother in that regard: very guarded, very nervous, very uncomfortable even hugging, and very, very freaked out by anything that even remotely rings of conforntation, so even in the moments when we connect and might almost get along, it’s like we’re two people who speak two entirely different languages which share no roots.

* * *
The book cover FINALLY went up at Amazon, far late in the game, but I can’t figure out why the image looks so mushy. Stupid Amazon.

But bonus: Jane and I are going to the Olympus for my birthday tomorrow, and Ben and I — whose birthdays are within a day of each other, and who both have sweetie-less birthdays this year as our partners both got stuck with commitments they couldn’t get out of — are having some sort of to-do Friday. Plus, there is a very big present covered in Muppet wrapping paper sitting on my office floor from Mark.

Old as any of us get, the gargantuan allure of the Very Big Present remains.

(It doesn’t make noise when I shake it. I tried. It’s just heavy. Hmmm. Big. Present.)

* * *
Yesterday at Scarleteen, a 19-year-old user made a post about a friend’s mother, just older than me, who had, since this girl was 14, treated her all BFF and gained her trust and loyalty… then wound her way into a lesbian relationship with her. She essentially appears to have done this to spice up her existing live-in relationship, by doing things like sending sexed-up emails to this girl, then forwarding them to her partner to get some good jealousy going, and having sex with this girl one afternoon, then shoving her out the bedroom door to let the primary partner in for their turn, knowing this poor kid was standing right in the other room listening and clueless.

And of course, this girl is torn as hell, feeling she owes this older woman “willing” to be her friend for so long all this loyalty; feeling used and wanting out, but not knowing how to do it without somehow being a bad person in her mind, and also putting her relationship with her best friend, the woman’s son, in a pickle.

Christ, people are goddamn awful sometimes — what the FUCK is wrong with people like this? — and some days, there just aren’t words and it just overwhelms completely. There are days when I really love my job, but there are days when I just really, really don’t, solely because the crap people pull with young people, and the shit so many of them have to wade through needlessly, that what little we can do to help out just feels silly.

* * *
I have a meeting this afternoon with the owener of the Belltown martini bar where we’ll most likely be having the Seattle version of the book release party, emails to get out for more book promo, including to the owner of the space which will hopefully be up to hosting the Minneapolis release party, workworkwork coming out of my ears, and a bedroom floor so overflowing with laundry that we couldn’t find the bed last night under all of it.

And unless I’m going to go to this meeting in my pajamas — which sounds wonderful to me, but likely won’t be recieved that way — it’d be sage for me to actually do some of it right now. Bummer.

posted in Heather Corinna, Scarleteen, home, family | permalink | comments (8) »

Busy, busy day, and it’s going to be a busy, busy week, especially since my work-week needs end by Thursday, when Becca will get here for a very overdue and much-needed visit.

Between now and then it’s taxes, weeding my way through the utterly overgrown photo editing backlog, a piece already well past deadline, getting a good deal of the Scarleteen content into the new content management system, some AGA management stuff, contacting bookstores and other venues for book promo (though did very accidentally fall on a seriously swell venue here, for use at no cost to me, in Seattle for the WA release party), housecleaning and a morass of other bits. Busy, busy, busy.

But this moment demanded recognition.

For at this moment, it is finally warm and sunny enough for me to have set up the table outside on the porch I used as my outdoor office all of last spring, summer and fall, and I am sitting out-of-doors, where we always ultimately belong, getting the morning’s work done with the sun on my face, harvesting new freckles, skin warmed and lit, and the life of the neighborhood making noise and movement to keep me energized.

(There really are people who prefer being indoors all the time, I know, but I just do NOT get you people. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that like my sweetie, who, in many ways, has already proved himself to me to clearly have been delivered to this planet from an alien one, y’all either aren’t really from this planet in the first place, or there has got to be something physiologically wrong with you, because tain’t nuthin’ on this planet that doesn’t need light, water and air.)

Given, “hot” to me is what is over 100 degrees, and 50 degrees is “cold,” so my standards of “warm enough” differ from those of many, but all the same, it is, now, warm enough. I have a promised project for myself sometime over the next few months, which is to find or make some outdoor shades for the porch, as well as to set up the long, shaded corner with some sort of permanent seating (I’m thinking that simply building a square-ish platform to stretch fully across it, then flopping a futon and a bunch of pillows on it). The plan is for me to be able to work out here even more comfortably than now, and when Mark and I often dine out here in the summer on the table I’m at now, as we often do, if we really, really wanted, we could lower one of the shades and make out like crazy people out of doors for dessert. La la la.

But for right now, the sun is out, and I get to do my work in it and the open air, breathe in the smell of everything green, and this makes Heather one happy, happy gal.

posted in Heather Corinna, home | permalink | comments (2) »

Just back from running a few errands in the drizzle, and within a mere four blocks I enjoyed one very fine sight and one very fine sound.

First, I see a little old woman and her little old dog on a walk. BOTH are wrapped up to the nines in utterly ridiculous sweaters, the likes of which I have not seen since 1985 (actually, I think combined, they both may have been wearing nearly as many sweaters as were made in 1985). BOTH are taking tiny, cautious but very determined steps as they walked. BOTH are literally smiling at each other.

My insulin levels went through the roof. Oh, for technology to advance to the point where there can be a camera simply installed in my head.

Just a few blocks later, I turn unto my street and am BLASTED with loud Mariachi music from one of the building under construction. For starters, anyone who is truly an expert in Heather-trivia knows I am kookoo for Mariachi. So kookoo, that when I had my On Our Backs spread a few years back, when asked the best way to woo me out of my mind, I replied that a full Mariachi band just below my window would easily do the trick. Alas, it has yet to happen. Clearly, no one really loves me.

But here’s the best part — Seattle? Not exactly a diverse city. Growing up in Chicago, especially in Rogers Park off Clark St., I obviously was very spoiled with diversity, so I’ll give you that my standards are high (the notion of which is, of course, ridiculous). But by pretty much any standard, much of Seattle is the Unbearable Whiteness of Being. And a decently sized Chicano population we very much do not have, particularly in Ballard.

So, turning the corner to my place on a grey, rainy day — far, far away from the things that feel most like home to me — and not only hearing the wild violins, trumpets, guitars make sounds that I love and miss hearing all over the place, but hearing them loud as FUCK, as they’re meant to be? Melodioso.

P.S. Because it’s too exciting not to gloat about, Dr. Lynn Ponton (whose work I think it sheer genius, and who I admire like nobody’s business), Lisa Jervis, Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards gave us such awesome blurbs for my books this week, it totally spun my head. A happy, happy author I be.

posted in bookish bits, home, Ballard, apropos of nothing | permalink | comments (6) »

Apropos of nothing, every third thought in my head over the last few days, no matter the hour, has ended with a melodic, out-loud “And thank you lambies…”

I’ve at least stopped doing a soft-shoe when it happens.

Poor Mark. I don’t think I need to tell you who the Ernie is in this relationship.

posted in Heather Corinna, home, Happy! | permalink | comments (4) »

A brief interlude to send a few more thanks for folks blogging about and helping out with Scarleteen fundraising efforts — in no particular order: edwarddain wrote this GORGEOUS entry here, we’ve got Miz Daisy Cutter here, Kythryne and Amy did an awesome thing over here, Amanda wrote a zinger of an entry, and also thanks to Figleaf (who I’ve started reading off and on lately, I dig his style), Pescana, faymar, Naamah and Cecily. More thanks to everyone: right now, we’re just over half of our fundraising goal for this push, which is awesome, and all thanks to people spreading the word this way.

I’m hoping for a fairly mellow weekend. I just spent the last 36 hours or so fending off a rabid pro-lifer across two of my sites (must be that time of the month), and am bitter and exhausted, but glad to see that (knock on wood) she appears to have become quickly bored, or perhaps, with the weekend here and her working spouse around, needed to actually take care of her precious children, rather than harass myself and a couple of someone else’s children at Scarleteen. I do have most of the posts filed away for a later date, however, for what will make a fine study in the 24-hour life cycle of an anti-choice escalation.

On the upside, no telling if it’ll pan out or not, but the last time I flew my Dad up here, we got him an application for low-income housing up here. Given they sometimes have waiting lists as long as two years, we weren’t all that hopeful for an immediate answer, but lo, an opening in one came up yesterday, and I’m going to check it out for him Monday morning.

The Low Income Housing Institute here is a very, very cool thing. I particularly appreciate them trying to build in nice neighborhoods: all to often, people underestimate or just don’t understand the effect living in a ghetto has on a person. It’s hard enough to barely get by, and to live more-than-leanly, but to have to do it in a neighborhood where you get mugged all the time, where your safety is a 24/7 concern, where it’s just as dangerous to walk during the day as it is at night, where street prostitutes are getting beat on my their pimps right out your window every night is just beyond, especially as years go by. My father has now been mugged nine times in his life. He has all of about four teeth left in his head.

I can’t live like that again, myself, and I didn’t deal with it even half as long as my father has. I actually had to ask Mark (Seattle is the only city he’s lived in: he grew up in suburban Ohio) to stop talking, even casually, about moving to L/A. or New York on a whim, in part because we just bloody moved. But mostly it’s because when I moved from Chicago to Minneapolis/St. Paul, I got used to not having to worry every night when I went to bed about break-ins, not having to step over drunks in my lobby in the morning, not finding human waste literally steaming on my doorstep, not having cats to deal with mice and rats, or having to walk from the el or my car with my keys splayed through my fingers in one hand, mace in the other, in a constant state of on-the-alert. When I left Chicago, I was living in a tiny basement barely-apartment with a concrete floor, one radiator on the ceiling which didn’t provide me any heat at all, a stalker, no security, and with my van getting broken into about once a month. All this for a rent that was not dirt-cheap, and only because the oweners of the house were doing me a very big favor in letting me live there to keep me from winding up on the street after an eviction from another place before, a place I lived through the previous winter in without electricity and gas, and where I ate maybe once every two days, for a period of several months.

Had I stayed living in and like that, I wouldn’t have known the difference in any tangible way, but since I didn’t, and close to ten years now have passed since I did, I just can’t go back. I don’t want to, and I don’t want anyone else I care about to have to live that way, either.

My Dad loves to walk: walking has always been his solace, and that he can’t even do that to find peace is grotesque. The place I’m seeing on Monday is on the top of Queen Anne Hill: it is in a gorgeous, safe neighborhood, and this particular building is only open to seniors and the disabled, so I’m hopeful. It’s a much-sooner opening than we expected — April — and unfortunately, that possibility had my Dad a bit panicked. Living in crap really sucks, but it’s also familiar at this point, and you know how it goes, especially as it gets earlier: sometimes the hell you know feels safer than the heaven you don’t. Plus, we’ve always had these issues with his pride and my caring for him. Way back when when I ran the school and I was taking care of him, it hurt his pride, especially when I had to foot all the bills, which I get, but at the same time I feel like there must be some middle ground between his pride and self-worth and his safety and my sanity.

We shall see: he may not even get this one this time around anyway, but there being an opening this soon makes it at least feel really possible that sometime in the near future, both of us will have to worry a lot less, and things can potentially be a lot better for my Dad.

posted in Heather Corinna, Scarleteen, activism, home, family | permalink | comments (3) »

At some point, I need to make a list I can keep handy online with happy-making things for those times when I sink low enough that it’s not easy for me to remember what those things are. Sort of an “In Case of Emergency, Break Glass,” but without the having-to-break-anything bit.

When it’s the right time of year, anything to do with the garden helps. Thankfully, I was reminded this weekend of one of the reasons I was glad to move here. Spring in February? That’s the stuff, man. Saturday I was able to work out some angst by ripping up all the dead plants covering the new sprouts, and Sunday we found time to get to the nursery so I could get some new plants for the year. Given last year’s Big Tomato Mushfest — my impression is that it’s just too mild here to for the bigger puppies to grow to their best potential — this year I’m going for mostly herbs and flowers, with a few cherry tomato plants and then the berries: the two blueberry plants I put in last year have hopefully cross-pollinated to keep warm and will result in some big, juicy beauties. I also had a little splurge which involved bleeding hearts (which I have loved since I was a child, but never grown myself) and narcissus.

I’ve also determined that whenever possible, if I can find around two hours or so in any given day to do some yoga, then go whack off, then take a hot bath, and then a long walk, that everything feels a whole lot better for the rest of the day.

One of the beauties of BPAL is that because there is no immediate gratification when you order, given it can take a few weeks for Beth to concoct her artistry, a few weeks later you get a very nice surprise in your email letting you know that pleasant, smelly things are en route to you when you’d forgotten you even ordered them. It would be even better if my beloved Geek hadn’t been a limited edition, but on the other hand, sampling new stuff is a cheap thrill, and since the scents I care for tend to be more boy-flavoured or unisex, if something doesn’t work on me, chances are always good it’ll work on Mark.

My piano, as ever, remains a fine source of solace. Last night, it was a Tom-Waits-a-thon. I try not to let the once-operatic diva in me who used to have the crystal voice be disturbed by the fact that the older I get, the more I sound like Tom doing falsetto. On the other hand, back in high school when I had to sing opera half of every day, I was always irritated that I didn’t have the right voice for jazz: guess I got what I wanted.

Buffy. Over the past three days, I indulged in a marathon. Season Six, if you’re curious. I needed something to indulge my bitterness.

But this should probably top the list. It had us both laughing so hard last night, and unable to stop replaying it, that we ended up nixing sex we’d been nuzzling our way to because we knew too well that one of us would end up shouting “I’m a munchkin!” at the worst moment possible.

* * *
I think I may hate my new camera. Not sure yet, but so far, I’m just really wishing they hadn’t stopped making my last one, because it’s so much nicer to me.

* * *
In spite of my needing some respite time, the fundraiser for Scarleteen is still going on, so a few more shoutouts to folks who have blogged for it: Bitch, Jane, Dacia, Columbine, Irmelin, DivaMommy, Debbie, Jenny, Ariel and my dear Mr. Price (who only lives on MySpace, and yes, as a cultivator of much web snobbery, this is terribly embarassing for me — I often ask, beg and plead with him to drag his cute ass outta the web gutter, but to no avail). Thanks, y’all.

(For the curious, donation-wise, as of right now we’re close to about a third of what I hoped we could raise this time around: so long as things keep chugging along, combined with the grant, we may just be able to get to where we need to be to tackle this year’s expenses.)

* * *
And now comes my big bummer of a question (this is not about me personally, I promise, so no worries). To my readers and friends out there who work in alternative health — in bodywork, naturopathy, chinese medicine, nutritional health — if you’ve got any decent background in managing breast cancer, could you drop me a comment or an email? I was even certain this weekend that I had a reader who worked in an alternative clinic in Chicago, but for the life of me, I couldn’t remember who it was. Anyone local or nearby Chicago — or who could give me any resources there — would be a double bonus. Bless.

If that paragraph gave you a yucky thud, again, I refer us all back to this.

posted in Heather Corinna, Scarleteen, activism, home, Auntie Heather's Helpful Hints | permalink | comments (6) »

Last night, Mr. Price and I walked home from a divey-but-comfy bar a few blocks away on Market, having met a friend for drinks, and having escaped truly obnoxious harassment by man so post-Stuperbowl drunk he was intensely drooling, whose fingers also appeared to be covered in someone else’s blood and who, after telling me how beautiful I was, refused to stop accusing me of being Norwegian: apparently, I can’t know my own national origins, but any drunken idiot passing by can have the inside scoop.

Upon getting home, I was exhausted: I’d started the day way early, biked through thigh-crushing Fremont hills almost upon waking — which was worth it, both for the cool light of morning rising over downtown, as well as for the hours I spent with a friend’s daughters watching this rockin’ display of awesome girl-powered cuteness — walked a ton, had a crappy early afternoon but a nicer late one, and the few drinks in there as well as starting to feel the impending migraine I unknowingly was developing (but which is now in full-swing) had just done me ragged.

So, Mark took the dog out as I prepared to go pass the fuck out, but he came back inside quickly saying something was on fire very nearby. I leapt up, ordered him to call 911, rushed through the house to be sure it wasn’t anything in here, then outside to sniff around the yard and walk like an overexcited bloodhound. There was bi smoke coming from somewhere, and there was a putrid smell, but it was hard as hell to place.

When I came around front a’sniffin’, this man was standing on the walk near where Mark was. I asked if he saw the smoke and he responded that yes, something seemed to be on fire. I all but blinked and he was gone…[i]which has been my experience with this guy three times previous to this[/i].

“That was so surreal!” I exclaimed, and Mark seemed to think I meant the burning thing passing away quickly. So, I clarified.

“That was Random Commentary Guy!” I said. Mark just looked at me funny, which, while a constant, does also sometimes mean he just doesn’t understand me.

I explained further. The ONLY times I have seen this man, always right in front of the house, are at times when I will putter outside the house asking some sort of stupid or obvious question aloud, and there he is, with some random commentary and then he is GONE. Vanished. Can’t even see him walking down the street.

I do not see him at the coffeeshops. I do not see him when I’m out walking the dog, or going to the market. I do not see him when I have come outside with nothing to say at all. I ONLY see him when clearly, some form of random, passing commentary is required, and only for the brief moments in which it is required.

Random Commentary Guy isn’t creepy, either. There’s nothing aggressive about his presence I pick up on, even though it’d seem there’d have to be something that felt aggressive about only seeing a guy you don’t know show up right at your front steps to answer your odd questions. He’s youngish, physically solid as hell, has a loose black ponytail, soft almond-eyes, looks either Native or Chicano, and has an even voice that is deadpan, almost disintersted, but oddly comforting. In fact, I’d say there’s something about him that feels mystical, rather than menacing.

But it does boggle the mind. For a good hour later, I was all, “Who IS Random Commentary Guy? Where does he come from? How does he know to show up here — do I have some sort of bat-signal I don’t know I’m transmitting directly to him, maybe even waking him from a nice nap? Does he want to give random commentary, or is he oddly or forcibly compelled to go where it is needed? How much of this poor guy’s time is taken up by this, and how many of us assholes is he providing this service for? Should I offer him some sort of gift? A sacrifice? Should I start asking more interesting questions? Or should I just give the dude a break and only ask my dumb questions inside from now on?”

I don’t know. But I betcha that if I stepped outside right now and asked this aloud, he’d show up with something to say about it.

posted in Heather Corinna, home | permalink | comments (4) »

I have just recently discovered that if I make a big fire, cover the foyer door with a blanket, and flop my yoga mat right in front of the woodstove, I can essentially have a very heated Bikram space to do Kundalini in. Since I start my day with a fire when I can, and often do morning meditations there anyway, I’m not actually sure why it took me so long to put two and two together this way.

Still no boxing here in Ballard, I’m sad to say, no heavy bag for me to work with at home, nor have I found anything doable in outlying areas I can get to by bike or bus per being close enough to get to without losing half a day in travel for a one-hour workout, or being something I can afford. Sure missing that sweet free studio time I got for teaching and co-teaching in Minneapolis, let me tell you.

I did try the local gym for a month, which is a nice place, and totally affordable. However (did I talk about this before?), I cannot for the life of me get a good body/mind workout with fifty gazllion television screens around me. It is the most distracting, mind-jangling thing I know of, and while I can tune out the sounds with my ipod, my eyes have got to go somewhere. I see people reading while they work out, but I don’t get that one: my mind has got to be on my workout, plus, moving around while reading makes me dizzy as hell. The only other places for my eyes are on all the mechanics of the machines or the wall-to-wall carpeting, and that’s not much better. Plus, I bloody hate machines. Ideally, all my workouts would be out of doors, but if I can’t have that, I at least need real things, natural things around me, or, in lieu of that, an austere space with nothing in it at all. having to work on the computer all day is machine enough for me, thanks.

So, it’s been biking for me, or jumping rope, or shadowboxing, or — best of all, really, per being able to do it anytime, no matter the weather — back to my yoga practices. And for now, I’ve decided that’s fine. Earnestly, both my body and my headspace are likely in more need of dynamic yoga and more meditation than punching and kicking things anyway, no matter how much I miss the punching and kicking.

My discovery this week with the woodstove was a very happy one and exceptionally well-timed, to boot. It’s been a weird few weeks for me, very packed, and very up and down. It was beyond awesome to have Mya here for a week, but it also meant I had to try and do my work at double-time (well, I already do that normally, so I guess I meant quadruple-time). I also realize that the older and older I get, the more of a loner I become. We had a great big party here last Friday, which was awesome, but I’m one of those people where big social groups sap my energy entirely. mark is one of those lucky folks who somehow innately knows how to draw energy from big groups, and I envy him that. Me? I’m mentally exhausted for days afterwards.

Sunday night, I had one of the most heartbreaking queries I’ve ever had at Scarleteen. A teenage boy was first posting with big STI paranoia, even though he’d never been sexually active, and was even limited in masturbating. He kept insisting he had real reason to be concerned, and after prodding a bit to try and find out what that was, he confessed that he had AIDS.

But he doesn’t.

Rather, his mother has told him for years he has AIDS (because, as we all know, people with full-blown AIDS and no treatment can be sitting around doing just fine: jesus), that he got it from an immunization shot at his doctor’s office, and that he shouldn’t ever get tested or seek treatment because no one would ever tell him if he was positive.

In short, it’s pretty clear that for whatever utterly fucked-up reason, his mother has sought to scare the crap out of her kid by making him believe he had AIDS. He’s been suicidal, paranoid, socially isolated, on the verge of an eating disorder, dealing with insomnia, terrified to even kiss anyone, the works. Obviously, I went ahead and debunked things for him, got him a list of places he could get free or low-cost testing, and made it clear that that test would be negative, but he clearly needs to see that result. I also gave him the number for DCFS in his area, because I can’t begin to imagine what his emotional process is going to be when he gets that negative result (flatly, I’d be unsurprised if this kid went home and gunned down his whole family), or whatever other forms of abuse are going on in that house. Really, this is one of the cruelest, most insidious forms of child abuse I’ve ever heard, and all Sunday night — date night for Mark and I, no less, as he was going out of town for his day job the next monring — I could NOT stop thinking about it, and anytime my mouth opened, all that came out were the chaotic sounds of sheer overwhelm.

(Much of the time, I’m glad that over the years, Scarleteen has established an ongoing trust that means teens in deep sexual or interpersonal crisis feel safe coming to us. As someone who grew up in crisis with nowhere to really turn, that’s obviously important to me. Every now and then, though, I confess that I look at other sex advice sites wistfully, wishing that we, too, could just hand out pat advice, say something salacious and witty, or tell people what vibrator to use.)

I’ve also been doing some freelance consulting/counseling for the stepparent of a sexually abused daughter: fantastic family from all I can tell, but per usual, it’s challenging work that’s not exactly emotionally easy.

Then the next day, Anne sent the foreword she’d written for the book. It was lovely: more than lovely, really. Totally perfect for the readers, but from a more selfish perspective, it made me feel ungodly good. Everyone gets a rush from hearing someone they admire and respect clearly have the same respect, especially when it’s someone who paved the way for you to do what you do with the work they did. It’s an honor.

But it’s also at times like that, I find myself sitting there floored that someone I respect has good things to say about me and what I do, that creates an uncomfortable reminder. A reminder of how much I’m still stuck in that childhood and adolescent mode of never thinking I’m good enough, never fully believing that no matter how hard I work, I can do as good a job as I feel I could or should, that I’ll never quite measure up, and that it’s this giant gift for someone to recognize my achievement or support what I do without an agenda or ulterior motive. And you know, that’s seriously depressing. Now and then, when I’m counseling abuse survivors and they’re impatient six months, a year, two years after the abuse, asking how long it’s going to take to get 100% over it, it sucks to have to say that that will probably never happen 100%, and it sucks when they observe that [i]I[/i] seem totally over my stuff and I have to tell them that I’m so not. Especially when they know how many years it’s been since I got out of and away from my abusive situations.

Like them (with a good 15-20 years added on), it sucks to know how many years you work at it and how much you do to work through it and to still have shit like this crop up where it’s clear how much baggage you’re carrying around. Obviously, this is hardly something — the pace of personal development, and the ridding ourselves of negative patterns and mindsets — that’s only a given with abuse survivors, and in my case, I don’t think it’s just about abuses, but also about the various coping techniques for a myriad of things I developed early on and kept with, as well as the simple flaws of my own nature.

Eh, well. Like anything else, awareness is the biggest step, anyway. I did used to be far less aware of these patterns and when I fell into them than I have been over the last few years, so hey: that’s something.

Back to the fire with me, per usual.

posted in Heather Corinna, Scarleteen, home, body/mind | permalink | comments (2) »

You know there is getting to be way too much development in your neighborhood when…

…woken up by the loud, terrible, crunching sounds of the second house right beside you to be demolished in the last two days, your immediate, half-asleep concern is to be sure you know where the nearest towel is.

posted in Heather Corinna, home | permalink | comments (3) »

Even if you already knew what a wonderful, incredibly thoughtful and totally you-centered gift your sweetheart having your piano tuned for you was before…

… it’s all the more perfect on a late, insomnia-laden night when the world is utterly hushed. You and your throat have been mellowed with a fine glass of bourbon. You also have the luxury of being alone in a big old house, not an apartment where you have to be mindful of the sleeping patterns of others.

Because you can play, play, play to your heart’s delight — with no reservations about driving those keys and swinging those hammers for all they’ve got. You can loudly sing lovesongs for said sweetheart in abstentia, feel that mental exhale, and feel about as at home as you get.

(I have, by the way, met one other person in the world besides myself who gets that the Talking Heads This Must Be the Place is about the most romantic song about truly deep love in the world. It’s even better, I have to say, when it’s got a perfectly in-tune Wurlitzer Spinet to sing its praises.)

posted in Heather Corinna, home, my fine romance | permalink | comments (4) »

It’s always a given that when Mark goes out of town, I won’t sleep at all the first night. Some of that is just that we’ve gotten so used to one another, and some of it is that being something of a natural insomniac, I think that my own sleep schedule — and having one at all — is often reliant on having other people around me who are sleeping. In fact, I seem to fall into step with the sleep schedule of others quite precisely: if I live with people who like to sleep in, I’m a bit more capable of it myself. Since I moved, daylight issues notwithstanding, I can certainly say I’ve been getting a lot more sleep that usual.

Last night was no exception to the no-sleep rule: I didn’t get to sleep until 4:30 this morning (and woke up at 11, annoyed with myself for sleeping so late). But, knowing that was in store for me in advance, I just made a nice dinner, a roaring fire, plopped a pile of films on the coffee table and snuggled up with the dog for the night.

I have what is perhaps a fairly odd collection of films I keep round. Of course, there’s every episode of everything Joss Whedon has ever done, and a copy of Harold and Maude (I think at this point in my life I’ve probably seen that flick 50 times, but it reamins my favorite: in fact, in high school, when Matthew died, my wonderful counselor asked what I need for her to bring over — she spent the whole day and night with me, bless her heart — and a copy of that was the top of the list, however too perfect a fit it was for the situation). There’s some fun stuff in there, but overall, I’m one of those people — is there a “these” kind of people with this? — who you probably don’t come to the house of all stoked for a fun movie marathon. Most of what I own is the very antithesis of fun.

I’m not really sure why it is or how it happened that I felt it was vital for me to own or rent films that are very hard to watch, but it’s been a growing theme. In part, I feel like it’s important for me to have films I can quickly show or borrow in case somone doesn’t understand how important the issues that are most important to me are. But I will often sit and watch really touch stuff for myself, back to back, for hours on end sometimes, tears running down my face, a lump in my throat, anger in my belly.

Last night it was Allison Anders’ (who I worship) Things Behind the Sun — amazing film, by the by, for anyone who wants some understanding about how childhood gang rape can effect a person, though if you have rape triggers, you will likely, as I do, need to step into the other room during the final flashback scene — followed by Petter Mullen’s The Magdalene Sisters. I picked up the latter a few weeks ago, having seen it once before when it came out, noticing that they’d attached Sex in a Cold Climate, the documentary which contains the three women’s stories it was based on. That I had not seen before, and had wanted to.

Seeing that documentary, after such a powerfully done film, after that text that precedes the credits which recognizes the over 30,000 women and girls who were enslaved by the laundries until 1996 when they finally shut down (which makes the eyes and heart burn, even if you knew that already — text is so potent in that way), finally made me have to go to bed because even I just couldn’t take anymore.

It’s one thing to read about things like the Magdalene Laundries, to watch a fine dramatization, or to play Joni Mitchell’s incredible take on it. It’s entirely another to watch old Irish women who could be your granny unable to say the word “rape,” unable to keep from weeping about something so terrible she went through that even forty years seems not to have dulled the pain much. I had to finally put myself to bed because it was completely unbearable not to be able to reach out and give these beautiful old women a hug, especially considering how much both films explore women’s inhumanity to other women (and without falling into the typical trap of presenting it as something separate from what is done to women at large to create and encourage those dynamics).

In my case, too, this particular group of women and what they went through feels personal to me beyond them just being women, beyond them being maligned for same: I see so much of the foundation for the way rape, abuse, sex and accidental pregnancy was handled (or rather, denied) in my mother’s Irish family and how much that hurt and placed both she and myself right in harm’s way.

I have to prod Mark often to watch some of these films with me: thank christ he’s a director, otherwise it might be an entirely futile effort. Once he finally does watch them, he’s often outwardly thankful for my insistence, but his inclination is usually to avoid seeing real brutality: not because he’s an arse, but because he’s still getting his sea legs when it comes to facing the world’s hard stuff. I have the privilege, if you can call it that, of a lifetime of looking so much of this square in the eye — sometimes having no choice in the matter — he’s not in that same space, and to boot, my upset and sorrow over these things, I think, makes it even harder. So, when he’s not here, I’ll often watch them more often, or watch more in a row, than I would when he is.

Maybe I keep films like this around — besides the obvious matter that films like this, like Monster, like The Accused,, like Boys Don’t Cry, what have you, are brilliant films — because I really need them. This week, for instance, I got an email from a man who had started posting at Scarleteen who was asking me (a pretty presumptuous request) to give him a women’s studies primer one-on-one to explain, as he said, the psychological impetus for misogyny specifically because, as he said, that bias hasn’t played out in the same way others have and thus must be different somehow than racism or xenophobia because, he said, there haven’t been any genocides of women or “anything like that.” I honestly couldn’t even respond after that bit there because I was just sitting over here with my mouth hanging open, much in the same way I sit when I hear or read those folks clearly convinced that nothing at all of consequence happened to Jews during World War II.

(Note: that link to Hoffman above is beyond deeply infuriating, and should likely not be read if you don’t want your day utterly ruined. On the other hand, if you haven’t heard revisionist arguments before, it is educational in that respect, and it’s also a fine illustration of the sorts of arguments feminist women have to hear all the time about how rape statistics are overinflated, domestic abuse can’t really be the major cause of death for pregnant women, sex trafficking isn’t really a problem because all women and girls in it choose it, things were just fine before Roe Vs. Wade and things like the laundries were just women being whiners, etc.)

Much in the same way I sit every time that I have to hear someone around me or within earshot talking about how women as a class really haven’t had it so bad, have we?

I think I sometimes need films like this because I need a full sensory reminder that some people get it. That there are plenty of people who know and are enraged and mortified by the treatment of women, the treatment of sex, the way dysfunctional and dangerous cultural treatments of sex have always hurt women the most. In part, I think I watch these things to feel validated in what I do: in part I watch these things to feel not so lonely in doing them as I often do. Perhaps, too, I need to just be able to cry openly and without reservation about them sometimes: rather than trying to fix them, I need to just fully feel them.

I think I need the fuel that being immersed for a couple hours in just deeply feeling them — without having to explain or defend; without having to intellectualize, subjectify or make palatable for someone else — gives me.

posted in Heather Corinna, home, feminism, women, sexuality | permalink | comments (6) »

Know what is supremely nice?

To be away from home for a couple of days, come back more than a little tired and stressed out because in your absence, anti-feminist trolls decided it would be a good time to make a mess of your message boards, something you discovered at midnight the night before; to have to spend all day when you got back cramming 30 hours of cleanup into six because at a young adult board, mob mentality always makes any acrimonious dynamic even worse, and to finish by crying your eyes out with a close friend whose relationship busted up in a really harsh and painful way, all while you have yet another early period (with The Bad Ovary™, no less: though I suspect it’s really the bad tube, but whatever) because there was no way you weren’t going to cycle-sync with a house with four women in it.

That’s not the nice part.

The nice part is to have your day finish with your partner coming home and giving you the biggest hugs ever, listening to your venting, setting a lovely table and making you a glorious meal (despite the fact that you’re eating it in your smelly pajamas post-Vicodin-induced haze), sharing a few sips of their whiskey and snuggling you into a cozy stupor on the couch until you fell asleep.

It’s not as if I forget it often — I really don’t — but now and then, I just have to say, yet again, that there are areas in my life in which I’ve got it mighty, mighty good.

Addendum: Topping all that off with the surprise gift of sending a tuner over so that I can play my piano? Nice touch, Mr. Price.

Addendum 2: Topping all THAT off with two nights in a row that resulted in several very tasty orgasms for me? Boy hit this week right outta the park.

posted in Heather Corinna, Mr. Price, home, my fine romance | permalink | comments (4) »

Four completely unrelated things:

1. Over the next four days, I have three different photo gigs: some active family portraits for friends, an actor headshot client, and then more family portraits and a solo set. I’ll be up north with Jane & Co. for two of those days.

I have also finally given up utterly on being able to depnd on natural light for shooting in Seattle. It felt really ridiculous to have to say to my headshot client that most days were fine for me, but that she’d need to find one when she could be here between 11 and 2, because there wasn’t any other time I could even hold out hope of having light. And even between those hours, it’s a crapshoot, especially if I want or need to do anything other than very creative work with available light or single-source light.

So, second half of my book advance in hand, I finally broke down this afternoon and just bought a bunch of lights, stands and reflectors, and closed my eyes when pressing the “complete order” button since the cost made me want to vomit. I needed another good write-off as we’re getting close to the end of the year, so it’s fine, but it’s so easy to take for granted that when you work digitally, your overhead costs for producing art are often exactly none that when you do have typical art costs it’s a serious bummer.

This is one of two reasons — the other being that I utterly sucked at it — that Heather did not become a painter.

Glad for the photo work en masse, though. One of the nicest things about working in several arenas is that stepping out of one and into the other for a spell tends to defrag one’s brain quite nicely.

2. It also gets me away from Scarleteen for a couple of days, for the most part. We just had one of my very least favorite kinds of posts, which thankfully, we don’t get too often, but we get them often enough, and even one is too many.

Women asking me how to work things out in a relationship — and stick with it — once their partner has raped them is just TOO MUCH. (And unfortunately, “No,” or “Get the hell OUT of there,” or “No, a person who rapes you does NOT love you,” or any such sensible advice very rarely works.)

3. It really sucks to wake up and realize that that extra pack of cigarettes you had were a figment of your imagination.

4. I am very much trying to get used to Mark’s new habit, when taking the dog out for a walk, of launching into a filk of “Get Your Freak On,” which replaces “freak” with “poop.” Each evening this happens, I am hoping that the serenade stops once he’s outside the door, but I’ve never peeked out to listen, because if it doesn’t, I just couldn’t bear the neighbors looking at me with well-deserved pity.

posted in Heather Corinna, home | permalink | comments (4) »

While we’re on the topic (and people are still rocking the comments from the last entry, and I am actually getting more editing/biblio work done today), it occurred to me last night as I laid in bed reading a Starhawk novel and feeling a bit ashamed about it that…

Utopian novels are pornography for activists.

Don’t get me wrong: I actually think Starhawk is an incredible woman who is really inspiring and has a great take on…well, everything. And she’s not a bad novelist, not at all: I like her style a lot, and I liked her books a lot. Still do, in spite of myself.

But, in explaining to Mark that while I felt the need for a novel — having over-read work-related stuff and nonfiction lately — I wasn’t in the mood for say, Vonnegut, I summed up why The Fifth Sacred Thing and Walking to Mercury had express appeal as being because “queer crunchy granola ladies try and save the world, have many challenges, but ultimately, succeed due to butt-busting, queer crunchy granola awesomeness.” I can’t fathom that part of the motivation to write utopian novels, and to read them, is not to validate our idealist fantasies.

In other words, my butt-busting, queer, crunchy granola-lady self just needed some activist porn.

posted in Heather Corinna, activism, home, pornography | permalink | comments (4) »

Things to do on a snowy night in Seattle (when you’ve got the house to yourself with your sweetheart is stranded at work overnight because Seattle has NO clue how to deal with one whole inch of snow):

• Share your cigarettes with the old, weathered guys hanging out on the corner by the 7-11. It’s cold, they’re jonesing, and you’ve got plenty.

• Go see Edie Carey and Holly Figueroa at the Tractor. Enjoy the fact that it isn’t packed for once (because everyone is afraid to drive anywhere since no one here knows how when it’s icy). Have a big pint of cider. Bliss out listening to modern-day sirens, and per usual, remember how much women your age just plain rock. (I mean, seriously, how cool are we?) Enjoy the biggest hug ever with Holly because you’ve finally managed to meet over two years of hit-and-misses.*

• Tiptoe home, because salting the sidewalks is apparently an undiscovered art, and walking uphill on ice is quite the endeavor. Dig how empty the city streets are: hear how every step you take echoes intensely. Listen to how different the big, cold winds sound up here on the coast: more like the UK than in Chicago or Minneapolis.

• Make a warm, roaring fire. Eat tomato soup and grilled-not-cheese in front of it; finish with a cup of hot, mexican cocoa. Pet the pug on your lap. Love bell hooks to death and thank the universe for having her in it.

• Be glad you cranked the heat in your bedroom before you went to bed, since in a 100-year-old house, insulation is very much not the order of the day. Climb under the warm, flannel sheets with your dog AND your cat (who often has to sleep outside the bedroom due to Mr. Price’s allergies and general disdain of all things feline), and sleep in the middle of the bed, monopolizing it completely just because you can.

* One of the many reasons I love the net is that it makes the formation of mutual admiration societies a million times easier than usual. A couple years back, when I was in the midst of the first big writing of the book, I made a journal post thanking some of the musical artists who were getting me through the process, and Holly was one of them. As it turns out, Holly, unbenownst to me, was also a journal reader of mine, and tossed me an email. Very cool when that stuff happens. She’s local, and I very, very much need to take portraits of her, but we’ve had some bad luck until now hooking up, so it was great to finally meet. Her physical energy is like her music: it just comes off of her in these crazy waves of intensity.

posted in Heather Corinna, home, seattle | permalink | comments (4) »

I really don’t know if it gets any better than a solid hour of morning snuggles with your sweetheart, especially when you’re just awake enough to really appreciate them.

There’s something about slightly-more-than-barely-awake snugglefests, when you’re both naked and warm, when it’s so easy to just melt into the other person because your limbs are still all relaxed and heavy.

For two insanely creative people, Mr. Price and myself are awfully utilitarian in our naming of snuggle/sleep poses. There’s Position A (head-in-underarm), Position B (spooning, which for us, more often than not, is him behind me, because of the…erm, rather opportune places it provides certain convex and concave appendages), Position C (which if I recall right is face-to-face scissoring) and Position D (which is how we often fall asleep, side by side, holding hands). I’m always a bit fuzzy on C and D because we tend to revert to A and B.

We lucked out in the snuggle department. Sparing Mark being a handful of inches taller than I am, we’re basically the same size and we fit more nicely together than almost anyone else I’ve been with. (And I have to say that one advantage — silly as it sounds — to having a male partner versus a female one is that while with any couple, you always have that one extra arm, you at least don’t have two sets of breasts that can sometimes make very tight snuggling a little more tricky, especially when both sets are substantial.) But more importantly, we’re both insanely demonstrative snugglers together.

In my long slew of casual and serious partnerships in my life, somehow, more often than not, I always managed to wind up with people who were less demonstrative than I. Sometimes this was a bummer, other times it wasn’t: my claustrophobia has often been profound with many people, especially considering that for all the bodies I’ve put mine next to, I’d guestimate that I’ve only felt 100% close and trusting of a small handful of them. And I confess that in many (maybe even most, I’m on my first cup of coffee and not inclined right now to try very hard to count back) of my intimate encounters, I’m that jerk who wanted everyone to get up right away all abruptly in the morning and get back to their own lives and their own skin, if sleeping overnight was even something I made an option. Having a cup of coffee and talking was usually okay: endless snuggles? Not so much. More sex? Maybe. After all, morning sex is the serious good stuff.

If I could only pick one time of day to have sex, it’d be in the morning. Of course, if I could pick only one time of day to do anything, it’d be in the morning. I’m one of those annoying morning people, as we all know by now.

I have real objections to these strange divisions made with physical intimacy: as in, this is sex, this is snuggling, or the ever heterosexist (and sexist, really, if you think about it) this is sex, this is “foreplay.” The morning snuggles are strongly intimate: sometimes far more so than when one or both parties are chasing the orgasm dragon, and you’ve got to think a little more, rather than just melt in, be a pack animal, and babble the sweet nothings as you please. It’s hardly asexual: I’m turned on throughout, and when it manifests itself as genital sex, I don’t decline, and I usually come in three minutes flat.

But it’s not a highway, it’s an old, misty, quirky side road. You’re delighted to take the long way, stop here and there, enjoy the drive, and sometimes you enjoy it so much that even if you had a particular destination, it’s become unimportant. Maybe you’ll get there, maybe you won’t: just enjoying the drive is the real order of the day.

I’m really glad it’s not just me in this partnership who can’t figure out why 99% of the time, this is all still so easy for us, still so exciting, still so freaking fantastic after all this time. I’m glad it’s not just me who can’t figure how things that have been big problems in nearly all our other relationships don’t even rear their ugly heads in this one: even the fact that I am cohabitating with someone and not panicking about it 24/7 is nothing short of miraculous.

And I’m really glad it’s not just me who could while a whole morning away just wrapped up in warm skin and blankets, whispers and grins, because I always have loved those side roads best.

* * *
P.S. I keep seeing about 2G in errors on my site logs since the switch to wordpress. Doing the math, I’m wondering if some users aren’t having an issue with the navigation bar loading? Can you tell me if you’re missing things on the page, or getting errors? Cheers.

posted in Heather Corinna, home, my fine romance, sex/life | permalink | comments (4) »

First day back.

Much grogginess from wearing oneself out amidst three different time zones, five flights in six days, and coming back home to have several crises plopped on my plate while I also am now in the last nine days of finishing my book edits and additions.

I have a bunch of meetings and catchup this morning I am racing to do, all while still on my first cup of coffee, but later today, will fill y’all in on the tales from Philly.

Long story short? I ROCKED it. Even by the much higher expectations the ACLU had for me than I had for myself. Quite frankly, I’m not even sure who inhabited my body while I was up there on the stand, but whoever she was, the girl was golden. (I’m told the transcript of my testimony should be up by the end of today.) Unfortunately, I know for sure it was me back in my skin the next morning when Mark and I nearly missed our flight due to oversleeping and waking up still as drunk as we were at 4 AM the night before.

More news later today or tomorrow. More coffee — much more coffee — now.

posted in Heather Corinna, aclu, copa, bookish bits, activism, home | permalink | comments (2) »

And now for something completely different…

Too. Much. Heavy. Stuff. I’ve been so emotionally and intellectually overwhelmed the last couple of weeks following the last entry (which so many people were so beautifully responsive to, thank you so much). With the events in both Colorado and Lancaster, the latter of which is doubly haunting for me, since it’s where we spent the first six years of my life, and the ridiculous media and general public approaches to both. With stories like this (if there was some award for the most sickening, disturbing thing said about rape in a given month — and how fucking sad it is so many disgusting things are said so often that I don’t feel able to say in a year — this one would win it, no contest). With editingeditingediting, and then spending two weeks of concentrated time going back and forth and forth and back between my editor, the publisher and the marketing folks desperately trying to hit upon a title for the book which everyone could agree on so we can take it to the bloody distributors already, dammit. With a couple of the girls from ST and the AGA in deep crisis. With conflicted feelings per the feminist community as usual; per having others around who do the sort of work I do at ST who can really get it, per just needing some intellectual communion I cannot for the life of me seem to find anywhere. With being annoyed at all the grunt work I have to do,and the fact that over the last couple months, I cannot find even an ounce of time to do some artwork, which is generally the salvation of my mental health and my often sore heart. With just really feeling like it’s possible that the way I have worked over the past decade, at this constant, breakneck pace, I have accumulated a need for vacation time worthy of all of that, as in, if I could take a whole year off right now to lay on my back somewhere warm and stare at the sky? I would. Would that I could.

I felt uncomfortable, with all that’s been going down in the world over the last month, having any entry up but the last one, which now permanently lives here. But I need a small respite into the land of silly, especially since I went and got myself some brand of sick this last weekend, to boot. I tell you, it’s a very hard balancing act sometimes having one part of you be a very silly, light whimsical person and having the other part, and much of the work you do — largely because of the world you live in and your efforts to keep constant awareness so you can try to fix it — be the other side of that coin.

So.

Sometimes Mr. Price and myself head to bed early to go roll around in it, get sticky, and make lots of happy, guttural sounds. Other times, we go to bed early with an eye towards an extended snuggle period in which we whisper back and forth for hours like little girls up late at a slumber party.

A week and a half ago, it was the latter. As it was, we were both so tired, we ended up falling asleep record-early, around 9:30.

And were woken up again not an hour later, quite suddenly.

Mark grew up in the quiet ‘burbs of Cincinnati. I, however, grew up in the third largest city in the states, and spent a good half of the life I lived in Chicago in a damn noisy ghetto, right at street level.

I can sleep through ANYTHING. I once slept, for weeks, through a building janitor letting himself into my basement apartment at night to creepily watch me sleep (the one night it did wake me found me breaking my lease the following morning). I have slept through car crashes outside my window, through domestic arguments next door, above or below, and through two floods, waking only once I was literally bubbling to breathe. When I moved to Minneapolis, I couldn’t sleep for weeks because the quiet was so freaky: I’d wake up and have to go outside to double check that the world hadn’t ended while I was napping.

Considering that I now also sleep with one snoring pug and one snoring boyfriend, back in a major metropolitan city, though getting to sleep is ever still a challenge at times, once I am asleep, the girl is dead to rights.

So, when, say, a car horn is wailing endlessly right below, I might toss and turn a little, maybe mutter “mrrrmmma urrrshle” (literally translated as “what an asshole” for those of you who aren’t fluent in sleepy-Heather-mumblese), but I’ll sleep through it.

Even when it’s Mark’s car, in our driveway, right below our bedroom window.

THE MARK PRICE GUIDE TO CRISIS MANAGEMENT

Find a dyke. If you have one nearby, wake her up. Plead with her to do something, anything, to remedy the situation like magic. Because this is what dykes are apparently made for, to fix shit for everybody else.

I’m asleep. Dead-to-the-world asleep. It’s warm under the covers. I’m all snuggled with the pug and — I thought — my sweetie. Sugarplums probably aren’t dancing in my head, but it’s likely that Otis Redding, reborn just to give me a private show, and lots of vegan donuts are. In a very layered, festive Bugsby Berkely number. With Tom Waits. And there’s enough cigarettes for all of us, even with me and Tom around.

Some horn is blaring, and somewhere in the maze of my subconscious mind, I hear it and do a good deal of annoyed, murky muttering, sputtering forth some form of incomprehensible gaelic curse involving a brassed-off hedgehog and malevolent cornflakes. But I stay asleep: I can do this, see, I’m an awesome multitasker.

But then there are lights on. Bright lights. My blind boyfriend is running around the bedroom like a lunatic waving his hands around. I don’t smell fire, the dog appears to be alive and well. Sparing whatever stupid ass is outside laying on their horn, I do not understand what all this fuss is about, especially since without my glasses, he appears to be doing some sort of dance akin to what I’d expect to see at a Pentacostal gathering. But he’s not Pentacostal. Did he convert? When? Why? Did they offer him film funding?

Just because some drunken bonehead is playing with his car is just no reason to get all fussy. Go to bed, hope it ends: if not, sandwich one’s head with pillows and suck it up.

Clearly, Mark disagrees. Sofia and I are still adjusting to the light and the noise, both (I feel I can speak for her) blearily looking at the veritable madman spinning in circles, naked, in the bedroom, stricken by a sudden case of Tourette’s barking, “Horn! Car! Help! MY car! Pants! Help!”

In my sleepy mental fog, I only understand one part of this.

Know where your pants are at all times.

“Where are my pants!”

Umm, I dunno. Why do you need them? It’s not like I haven’t seen your stuff before, babe, and you know already I think it is tay-sty. Yum-yum. Bring it back to bed, wouldya? Oh! Are you cold? Here, have a blanket. It’s warm and cozy. Mmmmm. Toasty blanket. Sleepy goodness.

“PANTS!”

Okay, he’s having a moment. But maybe pants will fix it and then I can go back to sleep. I mumble that unless we had sex, he never takes his pants off in the bedroom, so they’re probably in his office. (When Mark is screenwriting, his process generally involves removing more and more clothing as he goes on: I do not understand this process, but as a casual onlooker with a hearty appreciation for his backside, I have no complaints.)

However, I only mutter this after several rounds of “I don’t know, turn off the fucking LIGHTS!” and after he’s already found the pants and since left the bedroom. Oh well. I did try and help. La-di-dah. Back to bed. ‘Bout time.

Then I begin to hear voices. They’re not happy voices. Then there is a loud knock downstairs at the front door.

Be on the lookout for lynch mobs.

Apparently, at this point, Mark had come to several conclusions:

1) That awful horn was HIS car. Even though it’s an old car, without any alarms or the like that tend to go off when they want to, and even though he wasn’t in it, but was sleeping upstairs.

2) That those voices and the knock at the door are everyone in our neighborhood, waiting for him with rope and a nearby tree.

3) That he is living his worst nightmare, in which he has not merely been rudely awakened by a crisis he must manage, but by public humiliation of the worst variety.

4) There is simply no time for one’s anal-retentive complexes at a time like this.
Suffice it to say, my sweetheart is far more obsessive-compulsive and anal-retentive than I. Of course, everyone is, which explains the state of my kitchen.

So, for instance, whereas I would walk in the snow barefoot (and in high school, once paid the price for that with a bad bout of pneumonia when, one hit of acid over the line, it seemed really wonderful to take a long hike in the middle of a Chicago winter in one’s sundress and bare feet), Mark would go to bed with his shoes (and the two pairs of socks he always wears) on if I let him.

The only time I ever see his feet are when we’re having sex or taking a bath. Otherwise, I’d have no idea he had toes.

Mark would also sooner die than go out in public with his glasses rather than his contacts.

You will never see Mark naked in any photograph I ever take (no matter how much I beg to have a historical monument of the nicest bottom I have ever seen, even just for my own personal use).

So, you can imagine my surprise when, in stumbling out casually with my pug in tow, I saw Mark under the hood of his car — a strange enough occurrence all by itself, since the only other time I have seen this happen is when I insisted we go under there since clearly, the strong, smoky smell emanating from within was Not A Good Thing — quasi-shirtless, shoeless and in his glasses. It was like someone honked the horn to call us out into an alternate dimension.

Thankfully, for Mark, who was utterly convinced that every neighbor we had was outside with rope, stones and flaming crosses, it was but one neighbor, who had no intent to lynch.

Be bald, and call upon your bald brothers in your time of peril.

It was, rather, one of the neighbors in the multi-unit building next door, also bald, and also apparently once the owner of a wayward car which liked to yell in the middle of the night.

So, when I finally stumbled outside — having since woken up enough to figure out that the asshole leaning on the horn was the invisible driver of Mark’s car, which is an entirely sensible conclusion to reach while barely awake, for the record — with a couple of tools in hand just in case, I found two baldies under the hood. As it were.

Know your tools. Even if you don’t know what they’re called.

He needs to work the nut off the battery connector, since myself and Bald Guy #2 have explained that this will assure that the wily, strangely self-directed horn will not have the capability of shouting to the rooftops again while we sleep.

He asks if I have a pliers. I’m too out of it to explain that he needs a wrench, which I hand him.

He does not know this is not a pliers, and clearly thinks I gave him what he asked for. But that’s okay.

When all else fails, stamp your feet, pound your fists, and verbally abuse the once-inanimate object in question.

As it turned out, the mechanically minded of us were actually of little use with this fiasco. Because what finally made the horn stop yowling, well before we disconnected the battery, was simply Mark — in his great strife of having been woken to, by his perspective, giant public humiliation — pounding his fists against the horn, yelling at it to shut the hell up.

Go figure.

After this entire adventure, the poor guy was so hyped up with adrenaline from having been woken up like this and, again from his perspective, almost drawn and quartered by the neighbors, it required much wine and much sitting on the couch watching (the unpredictable choice of) “American Movie,” to feel secure enough again to brave bed and sleep, knowing now that somewhere outside in the world there were cars — maybe even yours! — who had minds of their own and could torment you while you peacefully slept, without warning or mercy.

Given that horrific nothing, it’s shocking, really, that some booze and a flick were enough. Then again, he also had a dyke and his pants.

Oh, be good: I said AND, not in.

Caveat: Mark is actually generally WAY better in a crisis than this. Do not take this to be a testament to his skills, nor mistake my exploiting Mark’s traumas for our entertainment as an accurate representation of how he normally behaves in crisis. And yes, this caveat is here because I’d like to sleep somewhere tonight that isn’t the couch. I’m no dummy.

posted in Heather Corinna, Mr. Price, home, my fine romance | permalink | comments (3) »