For the next day or so, I’m going to be taking a little bit of less-work downtime. Deep breaths? Check. Friend I haven’t seen in years coming to visit tonight (who I fully intend to drag over to the Copper Gate for some Aquavit-induced mania)? Got it. Tidying up the house and doing some much needed zen-style-scrubbing? You betcha. Some mighty-swell morning sex? And how. Snoozin’ pug at my feet? Aw. Made a fire to have some quality meditation time and fit a little yoga in first? Next on the agenda, followed by a nice, hot bath. I still have some work to at home do today and tomorrow, but so help me, I’m going to be doing it at the pace normal people do.

Yesterday we had the two-clinic staff meeting where I did my segment on self-defense for my co-workers which was…eh, it was okay. I’ve never had to try and fit a whole self-defense course, including everything from prevention to evasion to physical defense in just over one hour’s time, so it felt a little bit like five-minute-Shakespeare, but that’s okay. One does what one can with what one has to work with. Unfortunately for Mark, I found out over dinner last night that I had defense so much on the brain Sunday that he got attacked by sleeping-me twice during the night, including a sloppy elbow strike as well as a much more skillfully executed heel strike straight to his nose. Blimey: the things people who sleep with me have to put up with. If it isn’t talking, it’s my usurping the whole of the bed, if I’m not waking up hyperventilating with night terrors, I’m interpreting my bed-mate as an assailant in need of a takedown.

Beyond my unfortunately violent nocturnal activities, there’s nothing much to see here. Getting some new things up and done at Scarleteen, getting things in place for one new syndication as well as a volunteer consulting gig, am all set for the SSSS conference/plenary speakership w/Deb Levine in April (and a few days away in San Diego with my sweetie as a bonus: it’s a working vacation, but I’ll take what I can get!), still working on some fundraising avenues, busy at the clinic per usual (which also includes brainstorming on developing more ways to get some extra sex ed to clients), and daydreaming about a time in my life I really hope I’ll see where I’m not working so damn hard all the freaking time.

posted in Heather Corinna, subconscious life, apropos of nothing | permalink | comments (1) »

I’ve decided that for the next month or so — however long I need — that when I journal here, I’m going to photojournal rather than communicate with words and text. Even that’s tough, posting a photo or a piece of artwork and not saying anything about it. I tell you, you’d think that my odd little mind is convinced that if I shut my yap, the world will stop turning.

One of the challenges I’ve always had when it comes to being creative in more than one medium is striking a balance. It’s fine that I have phases where one medium is the primary one, and the others more secondary. That’s not the issue, or at least not the issue when those phases are days, weeks, maybe even a couple months. But sometimes, any one way of communicating, of creating basically monopolizes all others. That one way will rudely shove every other medium into the closet and lock the door, only letting them out when they whine and say pretty, pretty please, and sometimes, refuses to open it at all, no matter the plaintive wailing, which gets softer and softer as time goes by until one can barely hear them at all.

I feel utterly steamrolled by my own words lately, both in writing and in talking. Not only is that not leaving room for anything else, they’ve been so fever pitch that managing them in the way any writer needs to has become far more difficult than it should be.

I’m missing visual imagery these days. While images certainly have things to say, they’re communicated in a silence which I find meditative. It helps me listen to the world with my eyes and my more intuitive senses. (That sounded both completely convoluted and cheeseball, but so be it.) I’m more observant of everything around me when I do photography or other visual artwork, and that’s an important meditation for someone who is a far better talker than she is a listener. (Being hyper and a bit ADD also is a factor in this.) Words tend to energize me and work me up, whereas the visual — and music, too — calms, stills, quiets and centers.

I may even just write for myself a bit in the interim. It’s been a long while since I’ve done that, sparing my to-do lists, which while they have a flavor all their own, and are occasionally amusing, aren’t exactly the deepest form of personal expression.

Of course, I can’t get away with not writing anything, nor without conversing, simply because for two out of three jobs, I need to do those things. But I think that even limiting it in one avenue will be the good news.

So, you get a piece from a full set I put up today, of Melissa (Happy birthday, gal!), which is apt, really, and not just because her setting and posture speak — as it were — to some of how I’m feeling at the moment. Even though we spent this day last October talkingtalkingtalking, there’s still that quiet, that calm, that observation and meditative focus I get when I take pictures sewn throughout.

And now you get me being quiet. Starting now. Here I am, quiet, quiet, quiety-quiet. La la la, wordless bliss. Okay, no really: right now. No, wait, I — now. Quiet. Hmm. This kind of reminds me of The Monster At The End of This Book. Fine, seriously. No more words.

(Oh, hush.)

posted in Heather Corinna, subconscious life, photography & art, wah | permalink | comments (7) »

It’s really a pity when you have a really nice weekend with friends (Mark and I drove down to Portland with Ben and Joriel yesterday), a great treatment from your acupuncturist (even better when she’s just a doll and treats you gratis), several phenomenal vegan meals, and then a mellow night back home and end it all with a night full of troubling dreams.

All night last night I had a series of what were clearly anxiety dreams about this job interview tomorrow. Most were based around perceptions of me as not likeable, which has got to be about the interview, because I pretty much stopped caring overmuch if people liked me in high school. There was also a lost-on-the-bus dream, which I know is also about this, as I’m having to take four busses to get to the location they want to interview me at and potentially have me work at. (I know four busses would suck, but again, I really want this gig quite specifically, and I really need a second job, so.) Then I had a revisitation dream about the very ill-fated second job I tried to have in Minneapolis in 2002, where I was doing home-care for a developmentally disabled woman who physically attacked me, including ripping a handful of my hair out in her hand, on the first (and thereafter, only) weekend I was there for an overnight. Joy.

It’s been a while since I had a bonafide job interview, and a while since I had a second out-of-the-home job. Since 2002, actually, with that disastrous homecare gig (if I don’t count co-teaching kickboxing, which I would save that it was a barter-work situation, rather than something I was paid for with the green stuff). This is something I very much want, work that I think is critically important with aspects I have been wanting to learn to do for some time, so that’s part of why this is clearly very loaded for me. Too, I think the anxiety is piling up because while my conscious mind can work out how I can do most of what I already do full-time and an additional job, out of my own office and at a considerable distance, my subconscious mind is all “SAY WHAT?!? We want a vacation, dammit, not more work!”

I’m also a bit nervous, since they decided to interview me at a different clinic than I initially applied to — the first was for a part-time spot — that at this one, the position may be full-time, and if they offer me a full-time spot, I’m not sure what I would do. While I can figure how I could work something else part-time and still run Scarleteen and keep up to some degree with my art and other writing, I don’t know how I would do two full-time jobs and everything else. Horse before the cart, chickens being hatched before eggs…I know. I’m just sorting my crap out, okay? I stopped teaching in ‘98, and even just substitute-teaching in ‘99 because it wasn’t workable to do that and everything else at the time, and that was when there was far LESS work involved, and when I was almost ten years younger than I am now, and when I needed a lot less sleep. My kingdom to have all that energy back, man: if I remember back ten or twenty years when I could work 18 hours or more in a day, grab three hours of sleep and be a bit low-energy, but otherwise fine, and bounce right back to normal in a day, I find I am stewing with jealousy towards the me I once was.

I think I’m also worried I’ll find myself having to make a hard choice again between two things I very much want to do, and it’s making me nervous for no good reason, since I don’t even know if that’s a realistic possibility at this point.

Gah. Just need to get to tomorrow, I guess. For all I know, I may be being just plain silly. Even though he’s worse at babbling for hours than I am, so a call would eat up a good amount of my day, I should probably call my Dad for some support: it’d make me feel better.

That involves doing an awful lot today, including prepping some artwork for an anthology, trying one last time to get a written piece done for the same anthology. I tried several times to write Friday and yesterday, only to find that when it comes to the topic at hand, I’m all style and little substance right now. It’s all fine, well and good to write beautiful sentences and gorgeous phrases, but one doesn’t want to go all Macbeth and be full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, especially when you’re talking about the future of feminism. One more try this morning, and if the writing just doesn’t happen, I accept that I do, indeed, have limitations and not only cannot always be brilliant, but can often enough not be anything even within the same zip code.

Also on the agenda, finishing a batch of photos I did of Robert and Carol a couple years ago, a phone meeting with the c-chair of the western region of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality about them flying me in to do a talk for their conference in April, sending out a pile of books, meeting Cheryl for our Monday early evening cocktail hour, ringing up Northwest to try and work out transferring my miles to Bri so that she and The Baby Liam (who is not really a baby anymore, but who is likely stuck with that nickname from me well into adulthood) can be here for a bit in December, doing some laundry, and evaluating my cupboards.

The one unfortunate part of seeing my acupuncturist — who moved from Minneapolis to Portland — is that she suggested that she thinks it’s a strong possibility that I have developed a gluten allergy. I’m used to making dietary changes, so it wouldn’t normally be that huge of a deal, save that at this point, I eliminate so much for health and/or ethical reasons (and out of habit and necessity: even if I was suddenly okay with eating meat, the last time I ate it was in ‘81, and I ate it pretty infreqiently even before that, so it’d likely make me sick as a dog), that if you also pull wheat, rye and barely out, I’m not left with very much. For someone who routinely forgets to eat, the less available food there is, the harder it gets when I DO remember TO eat. Not good. On the other hand, if getting rid of gluten even makes a dent in some of the health issues I’ve been having, it’d be well worth the loss.

Lately, too, I’ve been having some not-so-great reactions to soy, which is a pretty intense vegan conundrum, to the point that I’ve figured I may soon have to add back fish or eggs on a quasi-regular basis, because without any soy, I’ll find myself with a pretty huge protein problem, especially when I can’t eat at home. Regardless, for the next two weeks, we’ve agreed I’ll go gluten-free to see what happens and how I feel.

Oh, how I will miss you, sweet, beautiful cupcakes: I loved you well. Here’s hoping that either Jelena is wrong, or that you’ll be able to make some adaptations yourself and accept some other kinds of flour through which to express yourself.

posted in Heather Corinna, family, subconscious life, body/mind, workworkwork | permalink | comments (6) »

Last night, I was over at the Copper Gate (my new favorite bar) drinking a more-then-generous amount of made-in-Ballard aquavit with my friend Ben, when I stepped outside to have a smoke.

I pulled one out, lit it up, and with my exhale, glanced across the street and saw Jesus Christ waiting for the 18 bus.

That is exactly what happened, in my mind, at that moment, without any question.

As in, “Huh. Well, whaddya know, it’s Jesus. Waiting for the bus. Cool. Hope he knows where he’s going: that route’s a bitch.”

I had a very brief moment, then, of wondering if I was supposed to say something, maybe wave, maybe offer him a smoke. Maybe tell him to get on the bus to freaking Canada, fool, because if he stays in the states, he’s going to get string up by some of his own followers in no time flat, or find himself ministering to his fellow prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. (Maybe, some other part of my mind thought, the sorbet arrived since I stepped out here, and it’s getting mushy right now, which would really suck.) After my initial moment of just being very pragmatic about it, see, I had to wonder if my quiet acceptance wasn’t the proper response, since everything I have ever read or heard from people who felt they had seen Jesus tended to be much more dramatic. The sky wasn’t even cracking open or anything, nor did I feel saved. I felt a little chilly and wished I’d brought my jacket out, and I really wished I could be having my smoke indoors where it was cosy and there was grain alcohol nearby. If I was going to get saved, you’d think I’d at least get to finish my cocktail.

But before I could consider that further, a passing pair of headlights illuminated the figure a bit more, showing me that what had initially looked like a long, muslin gown was really a pair of very loose pants and a very loose shirt, which actually did vary slightly in tone. The John Lennon spectacles weren’t a giveaway, since I’d not have been surprised at all if those were Jesus’ eyewear of choice. The long hair didn’t help, either. But in that moment, I realized that I hadn’t seen Jesus. I’d seen some teenage kid on his way home whose Mom would likely offer him a sandwich when he got there before yet again begging him to get a haircut for the 387th time this week.

Throughout all of this — which, of course, happened very quickly in my head — Ben was standing next to the mute friend I’d become, so when I’d come to, I had a bit of explaining to do.

Here’s the thing: I’m not a cynic about people’s mysticism or religious experiences.

I don’t exactly take many of them at face value, without question and a generous application of reason and logic, but I also do figure that the world’s a weird place where just about anything can happen, and where weird things often to, especially to me, almost daily. So, if it turned out that say, we all found out some day that everyone who had said they saw Jesus or Elvis (including those who conflate the two) really had, I’d be somewhat suprised, but I’d probably accept it pretty quickly. I did an awful lot of LSD in my youth: I am well-practiced in the art of adjusting my reality very quickly, and tend to gladly welcome giant shifts in my universe with a big grin and a wild clapping of hands. I dislike flying largely because it feels so strangely static for so long: I’m the only person I know who hates flying but immediately feels almost 100% about it all when there’s turbulence.

So, the fact — for that brief moment — that I was seeing Jesus didn’t really phase me. Mind, I often tend to have that response with celebrities of any stripe: I always think I’m going to spaz out like a lunatic when I meet them, and lo, I usually just wind up being quite casual, to my great surprise.

(There is a lone exception to this. When I lived with Michael, because he and Pete Seeger worked on books together, Pete called our place with some frequency. And every single time I picked up that phone and it was Pete, I could not even stammer out a single word before passing the phone — and I really, really tried to — not even a “Just a minute, I’ll get him” or even a monotone “Please hold.” It was a god calling the house, for crying out loud, and committed folkie that I was, I could not even for a half a second, feel worthy of speaking to Pete Seeger. I’m sure he thought Michael either lived with someone hearing-impaired or just with the rudest person on the planet.)

Years ago, through a strange confluence of events and a very bizarre connection (which took place with me doing a reading for him on the phone mere minutes after breaking a molar in two, that was fun), I went up to New York to spend a few days with Anton Fier, who was interested in seeing what we might write together at the time, and in me possibly doing some spoken word for him. Long story short, crazy weekend, very intense bonding, but record companies and contractual matters suck eggs. During the daytime of that visit, he went to the studio while I stayed at his place and wrote my little heart out to see what I could come up with for him (it was great stuff, and I’m still pissed we couldn’t do anything with it).

With some reticence, I’d agreed to answer the phone for him and take his messages while he was gone. I’m one of those ADHD types who has the hyperfocus, rather than the distractibility. If I’m in the zone working on something, someone can stand right next to me talking and I will often neither see nor hear them. So, when the phone rang at a point in which I was in the thick of my words, the following happened.

Ring, ring!
Me: Hello.
Them: Is Anton around?
Me: No, he’s in the studio today, leave a message?
Them: Sure, just tell him Iggy called.
Me: You got it.
CLICK.

Grumbling at the interruption, I grab a piece of scrap paper and a pen, and I start to write: Anton: Igg—

At which moment I realize, fuck me, that I was just on the phone with Iggy fucking Pop, and I treated him like a telemarketer. When I gave Anton the message later, I asked if that was THAT Iggy, to which he nodded while I proceeded to kick myself repeatedly.

Now, I elect to think famous people probably prefer this sort of treatment, say, to some woman screaming “HOLY FUCKING CHRIST YOU’RE IGGY FUCKING POP!” Iggy, Jesus, whoever, right? But I do usually tend to wish later that I hadn’t been SO casual or blithe. Or downright rude, as the case may be.

And I’m afraid I have to admit, now, that even if it really had been Jesus, I’d regret not having some good gab with Iggy more than not having same with the son of god. Or maybe, just like some of the Elvis-Jesus conflators, I’m more inclined to think Iggy is Jesus than Jesus himself, which seems plausible enough. But then, I guess a lot of things do to a person who sees Jesus waiting for the bus and worries about her melting dessert.

* * *
Just a quickie for those in the Pacific Northwest: I have a few events coming up soon here in Seattle as well as in Victoria, B.C.

October 1st: S.E.X. Reading/Q&A
7:30pm, The Collard Room, Swans Hotel: 506 Pandora Street at Store Street, Victoria
Free admission, all ages

October 2nd:DIY erotica workshop
7:30pm, Camas Collective Books and Infoshop: 2590 Quadra at Kings, Victoria
Self-identified women only, $10 suggested donation
Advance tickets at: http://www.sexedexchange.org

November 3rd: “Be the Media” panel at the NARAL Youth leadersjip Summit, University of Washington. This is still firming up, but to my understanding I’ll be leading an interactive panel for young women about feminist media critique.

I’ll also be in San Francisco to accept my Champions of Sexual Literacy award on the 11th, but I’ll have a little bit of time in there through the 14th. I have not had any events set up for me in San Fran, so if anyone would LIKE to set something up — a reading/ Q&A with the book, a joint gab session for adults or teens or both, even an afternoon for a photo session (my photo session time has been nabbed already) — please drop me a line soon. I’ll want to see a couple friends while I’m there as well, but I also have time for an event or two, especially since that’ll pretty much be the end of promotional events for me for a while (thank christ… and the bus he rode out on).

posted in Heather Corinna, subconscious life, s.e.x., events | permalink | comments (3) »

I had the strangest dream last night.

This makes three times in the whole of my life I have had a dream about Matthew, which is in and of itself so odd: you’d think I’d dream far more often about him.

(Cliff’s Notes for newer readers: Matthew was, effectively, the first great love of my teenage life, and the first person I ever got really close to with even more childhood and adolescent baggage than I had myself: his father offed himself when he wasn’t even two, his mother went insane thereafter and was institutionalized, and he then got tossed into the foster care system where he was molested in three homes out of four. By the same age I left home, he was living on-street, and shortly thereafter became a sort of Chicago punk scene icon. He both saved my life quite literally the day we met by distractedly walking right into each other at a bus stop, was really the first person I even told the whole of my history, helped me get out of my home, and then OD’d on ludes — do people even do ludes anymore?– and blew his head off with the gun his idiot roomie left sitting around loaded, four days after my sixteenth birthday, and eight days after he helped me get out of my house for good. I later found out that had happened on the very minute I’d woken up at four in the morning that day with a start, and that my number was the last on the phone sans a digit: he never completed that call. Suffice it to say, between having to clean up his place afterwards, deal with being the strangest sort of young widow ever, and have my teenage romantic ideals shattered utterly, all while I was trying to get over being suicidal myself, it was a considerable event in my life.)

Until last night, I’d had only two dreams about him: one the day after he died, in which he didn’t make an appearance at all, only his castaway shoes, and then one when I was in Miami with Sabrina in 2003, 16 years after the fact:

(From my journal) “In the dream, I was in some severe trouble, for not doing what a large mob of Shirley Jackson-esque people wanted or expected of me. I’d tried to hide out with my father, but he was unable to protect me. I ended up in a prison, in a terribly small, dirty cell, and in all the cells around me were a million different ghosts, passing in and out of the bars, whispering things I couldn’t understand, but being very assuming, with powerful presence, though they weren’t so much scary as just intense. I somehow escaped, and went though a series of alleys into a dark blue room, through a gold curtain. Matthew was there, instantly recognizable, though he didn’t look like the bleached, tattooed and mohawked 24-year-old he was, but instead how he might look today, sans window dressing — he had one blue and one brown eye as he had then, but plain brown hair, glasses, et cetera, yet was wearing the clothing he died in. And laying upside down (not sure what that means). When he saw me, he smiled big and started weeping, saying he never thought he’d see me again. We talked, catching up with my life, I said something to the degree of thinking he didn’t say goodbye because he didn’t still love me, he assured me he just couldn’t before now but that he’d loved me all the while, from then until now, without ever stopping. Cue a lot more joyful weeping.

After that, a beautiful old African woman in a lot of jewels passed by the curtain and smiled, and Matthew was then smiling softly, wearing purple and saffron robes; he held me in a tight embrace. And I woke up. With a truckload of astonished tears running down my face, just so tremendously grateful and shocked at the whole thing; feeling his protective and loving presence inside of myself so strongly.”

I’d waited a long time for that dream. I’d dealt with death before Matthew’s, but it was one of those where, since you didn’t get to say goodbye, or have any explanation, you go to bed each night begging — and thinking you can magically make it happen — for some sort of visitation in your sleep from the dead. When I was very young, I needed that dream for one set of reasons, but as I got older, I needed it for simple closure, and I got it in that.

In last night’s dream Matthew had come back from the dead. Not as a zombie or a ghost, nor was it anything about some mix-up. Basically, he simply was back, with no explanation as to how he got back whatsoever: he looked old, he looked tired and he seemed to be in a great deal of emotional agony. We didn’t have a prototypical tearful lover’s reunion: in fact, I met him with Mark, and while it was very joyful in its way, and there was the kissing and the embracing, there was something very sad and not-quite-there about it. He’d come back, but with little or nothing to come back to: there wasn’t a place for him as someone still present, basically. I’d moved on, and while elated to see him, and elated there was a way of having him back in my life, there wasn’t really room, and the magic had long since gone: it felt strangely empty.

He’d then gone to visit a bunch of other people who had been in his life before, most of whom I didn’t recognize. But all of their lives had fallen quite apart, in some horrendously tragic ways, but it was all sort of surreal (especially since the color in it was all desturated and greenish, the color old polaroids turn after a while), as if their lives were only like this not because of his death, but because of his coming back or what he was seeing in coming back.

I was trying to comfort him, but in the end, it was Mark, not me, who provided the comfort. He told him that those people were not really who they seemed to be now, but were still the people they were then, were all really doing just fine, or they would be if he’d just let his guilt go rather than revisiting it. And it seemed like Matt’s pain lifted, just like that.

And that was that: I woke up.

It was very strange, but in some way, incredibly beautiful. In some way I interpret it as a symbolic representation of the fact that burdens which I have borne alone aren’t things I have to go alone anymore, or aren’t my sole burdens to bear. It’s also really lovely to have this visual image of Mark comforting Matthew in my head, both of them sitting face to face, hands on one another’s knees, foreheads pressed together, with Mark easing his unbearable pain so compassionately.

(And oddly enough, Mark just rang. Saturday, the car was finally repaired, so he was able to leave Ohio on Sunday. He’s just now getting close to Montana so — gawd willing — he should be back home by Saturday at this rate.)

posted in Heather Corinna, Mr. Price, subconscious life | permalink | comments (4) »

I’d like to think that when Dorothy was in the middle of that tornado, that if when the wicked witch biked by, her skirt happened to fly up over her head, revealing a bright red baboon butt, she’d have to have laughed, even while her house, her dog and that poor old Auntie Em were floating away and her life hung precariously in the balance.

Because, you know: you just gotta crack up sometimes. Long before any sort of work strife, political struggle, flirtation-with-previous-states-of-poverty, breakup, illness or whatever will do you in, if you stopped being able to laugh and have some joy somewhere in there, you will have gone down way earlier and far more painfully than you would otherwise.

I’ve been the warrior I’m reputed to be this last week, and I have been busting my rump to think even outside of MY box (which usually isn’t much like a box at all: it’s more like one of those inflatable rumpus rooms you rent for some kid’s birthday party or a street fair — and yes, I mean outside that OTHER “my box,” too), and step outside my comfort zones to do my damndest to make this all better in a way where it’s hopefully better from here on out. No progress to speak of in terms of the results of my efforts yet, but it doesn’t matter because I don’t want to talk about that stuff today, anyway.

(And seriously? You can only answer “How are you?” with “I still suck,” so many times before you just want to respond by begging people to just put your mopey ass DOWN, for fuck’s sake, you know?)

Instead, I’d like to have a giggle at that witch of the west with her crimson baboon butt, or, in my case, over the needed eviction of Philip Glass.

* * *
As far as the rest of my life goes, it’s been a pretty okay week. A handful of nights back, for instance, I was workingworkingworkingworking, as I’m prone to do, and Mark kept coming downstairs — with less and less clothing on — trying to get me to go upstairs with him.

You know how it is when you’re depressed: even though you know sex is a nice balm, it does a number on one’s libido. And in my case, that’s usually just about me: in other words, I’m down with getting my other person off, but I know myself well enough to know that when I’m seriously down, orgasms for me just are not going to happen and I don’t want to trouble myself or anyone else with trying. Thankfully, even though my sweetie is a bio-boy, our sexlife is blissfully free of most hetero dynamics. For instance, I’ve never had to let go of the very nice queer thing where you sometimes will have a few sessions where you just take turns getting each other off, at different (and extended) times the same night, or on different nights altogether. In fact, in some of my life when I’ve partnered with men, one of my biggest bitches has been that bizarre heteronormative idea where folks seem to think that people are supposed to come from the same thing — especially when it’s the stuff women don’t usually come from in the first place, and men often don’t even find that interesting — or at the same time, or even on the same night (you have no idea how many times in a day when answering advice questions, for various reasons, I find myself sighing and saying out loud “Oh, poor straight people.” For real, and yes, I know that’s patronizing and I’m terribly sorry). While that’s all groovy when it happens, and plenty of times I do want to get off when my partner has or will, too, there are also plenty of times where I just don’t want to be distracted by my own desires for orgasm (or vice-versa), and I’d rather focus all my attention on my partner or have them focus all of theirs on me.

Plus, being naked is my happy space. In other words, part of the reason I’m so damn naked all the time is because I’m generally feeling pretty groovy so I want to run around without underpants like a hyperactive four-year-old. But when I’m feeling crappy or hyper-vulnerable, clothing is an armour for me, and I like to keep it on.

So, eventually, I headed upstairs, clearly getting the more-than-subtle hint that Mark wanted to get it on, with the hope that he was cool with a for-him-only turn.

Mr. Price is not a light the candles, put out the flowers, cover the bed in rosepetals for sex kind of guy — neither am I. We’re more usually the kick the laundry aside and hope you land somewhere near the bed for sex kind of people. I’d made clear the day before, however, that the bedroom was SUCH a freaking disaster that I couldn’t even think about sex in there: I could only wonder when the hell someone was going to call the health department and hope Sofia didn’t get forever lost in the piles while we were sleeping at night. So, I got led by the hand into his office — we both have our own rooms/offices here: it’s a strong cohabitation rule of mine — and there were blankets and pillows on the floor, a clear space around them, incense burning and lo, little flickering candles.

You know, for whatever reason, if that had been about seducing ME to be the receptive partner it would not have been half as darling and cool (it probably would have felt like guys way too old for you when you were in high school offering you a backrub): but since knowingly or unknowingly, it was about seducing me to seduce HIM, it made it not only really charming and sweet, but also very nicely genderblurry-scrumptious hot. So, by all means, that night was all about him, but there were a few days there where the very pleasant image of my naked boyfriend and his candles and pillows and not-naked me was the gift that kept on giving for this girl. MeOW.

And the wonderful afternoon-that-turned-into-evening picnic my friends Ben and Joriel hosted for a handful of us; vegan lunchies, plenty of hula hoops, sneaky liquor and all yesterday were just completely brilliant. The weather was to die for, and a whole day out in the sun, hooping and hollering with friends was just the thing.

But the best giggle I have had in a while was because I found the notes I took after my dentist’s visit in Minneapolis over my last visit.

Allow me a little backstory and an admission of the type I don’t like to make often, because it always feels like setting myself up for more hell than I have to deal with already in terms of some folks ideas about my suitibility as an educator for young people. But it’s essential to get the beauty of this.

When I was in my teens and early-to-mid-twenties, I very much liked me some hallucinogens. Very. Much. For an ungodly number of times I dropped them, I only had one bad trip, ever, and a WHOLE lot of exceptionally nice ones. (Go on now: tell me how women “aren’t visual,” I dare ya.) There was a while there…well, let’s just say the primary reason that I said toodle-oo to LSD and her chums was because I very easily could have blissfully drifted into a shiny, sparkly acid oblivion quite gladly for the rest of my life. Lucky for me I don’t still do them and haven’t for an absolute age (sigh!) or else I couldn’t really talk about this stuff here at all.

So, you can imagine my surprise and delight when, while in my dentists chair, settling in under the gas mask, it became clear from the taste in my throat, the fog in my head and the auditory and visual hallucinations that my hygenist perhaps took my talk of my high tolerance for chemicals a bit TOO seriously and dosed me GOOD.

Mind you, they’re pretty liberal with the gas over at my dentist’s, to the degree that the first time I visited just to have them look at my teeth, as I set in the chair, I was asked if I wanted gas and replied, “Umm, for a consultation? I mean, sure, but I think I’ll be okay without it, too.” They said they didn’t know I was there for that, butcha know, I don’t believe them. It’s been very apparent that they love their nitrous there to me, every time I’ve gone in. I should also note that before the mask went on, she and I were telling some mighty funny shared stories about my high tolerance in being a McDego compared to hers as a Native American, and determined we wound up with the same blessing and curse: we bonded, man. I also know for a fact that she knew what went down with me with that gas, because the next day, she greeted me the way people greet do when you had a good one-night stand with the night before. When I came in that next day for more work (not with her, alas), she — who I had never met until our lil’ trip together — rubbed my arm, winked and said, “Hey, I know you….”

(I tried not to think about why she was THAT familiar with me, since heaven freaking knows what I might have said or done while under all that gas. But what happens at the dentist stays at the dentist, right? Well, unless you put it on the Internet, that is. Ah, well.)

Once I started to get the feeling that I was somehow (legally!) tripping in my dentists office, I first had a moment where I wasn’t sure if I was hallucinating, or if I was hallucinating that I was hallucinating. When I figured out it was bonafide, I then had a few moments of extreme paranoia realizing I was going to lalaland, but thought it through: in a safe place, with a medical staff, everything is legal, I have a drug buddy sitting right next to me. Okay! Let’s go! So, float away I did, and an hour turned into a couple of days, and I walked out of there feeling as well rested as I would have with a full month of sleep, and as centered as the Dalai Lama.

I left there (gawd bless the rapid come-down powers of nitrous), took a long walk to the cafe where I was meeting a friend for lunch, and immediately 1) Googled the hell out of this to verify that it was even possible (and yes, it is, it’s just pretty uncommon), then 2) typed out copious notes in the hopes of making something profound out of the experience. I pulled up the notes today thinking maybe there would be something inspiring in them to jettison me this week.

And those notes net me something about as profound as the scribbles and cartoons I’d make while dosing in high school, hoping to later express my profundity, did.

(Italics are my additions from today. That’d be why they actualy make some sort of sense.)

* * *
Squares of ceiling, squares of ceiling, dots inside the squares make other squares, make other dots. Mmmm, negative space. Need more negative space.

Did Dr. Tye (my very odd, but very nice Hawaiian dentist for a few years before my teens) use gas on us? Is that why dropping acid felt so homey? Is THAT why he was always playing the Cocteau Twins when no one even knew who they were and most of his clients were little kids — Cocteau Twins are very nice when floaty. Was very nice dentist: maybe he hit the gas, too.

She was saying “close” and “open” but they sounded exactly the same. Why?
(That poor woman trying to clean my teeth and me likely looking at her like she was speaking another language while I drooled all over her. Ugh.)

Paranoia first/inner peace/deep acceptance/sense of balance — teeth in better shape than one thinks, even before work? More important to mental health?
(I sat thinking about that one for a while after making that note before my friend came, convinced that having perfectly clean teeth was this totally undiscovered path to perfect health and happiness. Then I sat thinking that maybe this is why people went into dentistry in the first place, having that insight themselves, and thinking they needed to be some sort of spiritual teeth gatekeepers. Then I had a cup of coffee and found my sanity again.)

SUNNY!

Need to defrag brain or nervous system? (Shit, apparently.)

Nerve endings in teeth and mouth: link to spinal nerves, brain? Changes feeling of temperature? Did not feel warm or cool - like sitting in bathwater where temp. is same as body temp. Limbo-zone between chakras? Why?

Do same things tomorrow: breathe deep, maybe pant, let go earlier, don’t worry (be happy!): find way to say thank you.
(I was SO hoping to be able to have the same sort of experience the next day when I went in for fillings, rather than just a cleaning, but alas, it was pretty obvious once I started the gas that I wasn’t inhaling anything close to the amount I was the day before. On top of that, idiot-me had decided that given how great gas could really be, I’d try and get filled without any novocaine. Not only did that immediately conjure up very vivid memories of having had that done nonelectively when I was little, it also hurt like a MOTHER. So, if I was even going to get a mini-buzz from the gas that second time, I pretty much killed that outright. Bummer.)

* * *

Anyway, ummm…yeah. Some seriously profound stuff in there, as always with post-drug-induced notetaking. Some things never change, including how utterly silly they remain.

posted in Heather Corinna, my fine romance, subconscious life, apropos of nothing | permalink | comments (6) »

Sometimes you have no doubt that dreams are little more than mental static, because I can find absolutely no meaning or relevance in having my legs very viscerally shot to pieces because I took a couple potatoes I found growing on a tree.

And yes, I’m well aware potatoes don’t grow on trees. Tell it to my subconscious. While you’re at it, tell it to freaking cool it with the endless blood and gore, will you?

posted in Heather Corinna, subconscious life | permalink | comments (1) »

It’s very frustrating for me that when I have bad dreams — and I often do, I’d say they’re at least 60% of my dreaming life — in which I am being attacked or about to be attacked that I never, ever fight back.

Here I am, 100% able to do this in my waking life; ever ready to do it if I have to, especially considering that with some of my younger life, I’ve long been at the point where I’ve felt that I will do whatever it takes to never be abused, attacked or assaulted again.

And yet, my subconscious, for whatever reason, won’t let me.

Last night, for instance, I had this dream that I was in New York (looked like the meatpacking district) with Audra and some other woman who was a friend of hers I didn’t know. The friend — foolishly — insisted on driving around, and in trying to find a place to park, of course had to park in this totally out of the way creepy back alley. By the time night came, I walked them both to where the car was, pretty wary of where we were, but neither of the other two seemed to recognize inherent dangers (which is totally out of charatcer for Audra). It was one of those scenarios where you were trying to watch your own back as well as everyone else’s, which is always a recipe for disaster. The car was — of course — unfindable, and there was a lot of blabbing about in this totally unsafe place for way too much time.

In no time at all, a few guys started grouping up and circling, playing the friendly game when the vibe was clearly predatory. I tried to make subtle gestures to the two other women to just effing run, but nobody got it. One of the guys started talking to me, way too close, and did that movement people who are about to mug or attack you face-on sometimes do where they look somewhere else really quickly while talking to you so you’ll look away too, and then you’re toast.

So, I kept my eyes right on him, trying to give him a look that said I knew what was about to go down here, and just said, “Don’t,” very firmly and low. He nodded, and while I got the impression that for some reason, he would step back, it was pretty clear his friends were not going to, and at that point I loudly turned to Audra and the mystery woman and told them to run. They both looked at me like they didn’t understand what I was saying, and they didn’t make any move to run, even though each of them had a guy attached right to them at that point.

So, I ran, but only half-hearted, because I felt very not okay about just leaving them there AND because I could not figure out why I was running when there were other things I could have done, but my body would just not let me do them.

Within a quarter block, some other guy came out of nowhere. I was half-awake at this point trying to coach my dream-self to drop to the damn ground and do an easy low spinning kick to wipe him out so I could get away, but I just stood there frozen until I woke up with a start. Everytime I wake up from one of these dreams, it’s with this huge intake of breath: I often feel like I was trapped underwater. It’s really quite odd.

This stuff freaks me out because it makes me very concerned that should someone ever earnestly attack me again in real life, I’ll freeze the hell up, just like I did when I was younger. Mind, this likely is a manifestation of exactly that fear, which clearly is still pervasive with me: obviously, to some degree, it probably always will be. I know full well that a big impetus for me leaving large cities to choose mid-sized ones over the last almost-decade has a lot to do with a greater peace I feel: I know I pay more in rent to live in safer neighborhoods and buildings because the benefits for me are huge. I spent way too many years of my life living in scenarios and locales where I often just couldn’t sleep at night because of valid fears about my safety. Leaving Chicago, the final straw was the stalker who sent me letters describing intimate details of my shitty basement hovel which I knew anyone could easily break into — and he clearly had, without my even knowing — since I’d had to do it several times myself (I’m terrible with keys). Point is, I know where this stuff comes from.

But dammit, I psychologically need my dream self to step it up for me, man. Just once would be really nice. Not sure what switch needs to be flicked in my brain to make that happen, but if anyone has any tips or clues I’d love to hear’em.

posted in Heather Corinna, subconscious life, surviving abuse | permalink | comments (6) »

Wow, the beauty of Wordpress means that quickly journaling my completely crazy dreams before I go to testify to try and keep our first amendment rights in place is a snap.

You may or may not see this as a boon.

I did not sleep for shit last night, and my unconscious had quite a lot to say about it.

So, in my dream last night, Mark and I were in some parking lot, and we were engaging in some very nice finger-fucking. But it was taking a while to get me off. I was aparently stoned, and was kind of slipping in and out of awareness, to the point that I felt myself falling alseep. I remember thinking it maybe wasn’t so cool to do that, but at the same time, I was testifying in the morning and I had to get some sleep, so…oh well.

When I came to, Mark was standing outside the driver’s seat window next to me holding… my newborn baby. I not only had apparently managed to be pregnant for nine months and not know it, but also to give birth while completely alseep. It was a bit of a shock — especially since I was just thinking, “GOD, they so totally overtalk this labor thing: it didn’t even wake me up! People are such whiners!” — but I managed to get over it, while still remaining incredulous. I also had this annoyed feeling about never having had that orgasm and having had a kid instead.

We got out of the car, and the parking lot was really full, with this weird sense of something being ominous or something like it. It looked like some kids were going car to car, but turned out they weren’t, and this lady walked up to me. I asked her what was going on, she said she just felt like something weird was going to happen. I pointed at said slimy kid in my arms and suggested it already has.

Then Mark starts trying to rope me into some new film project, right that day, and I remind him that again a) I have to go testify, and b) I’m not even sure I can do THAT because of just having given birth, and the kid might cry, and I was kinda starting to feel a little tired, now that I thought about it. I decided I could like deal with testifying, but that he needed to understand a film project was totally out, since between childbirth and the federal court, I was really overcommitted that day.

Then the wake-up call came, and I woke up out of the only half-sort of sleep I was getting which was producing all of this subconscious mania. Thank god.

Yeah. Didn’t sleep so good. Alas, so it goes: adrenaline, ahoy! Coffee is ready in the room, a shower and suit await, and a busy, intense day. Which I cannot WAIT to be done with.

Hopefully, sans stealth pregnancy and labor.

posted in Heather Corinna, aclu, subconscious life | permalink | comments (3) »