I had to re-pot one of my plants this afternoon, so that meant I had to brave the truckloads of Virginia Creeper and go get some potting soil out of my barn.
And just opening the door and being inside of it, wow — one of these days, when I’m not writing 4 projects at once, I’m going to focus on fixing up that awesome barn. The energy inside of it is just too cool; it is so old.
The original owner of this house, built that barn himself, over 100 years ago and, structurally, it is still in amazing shape. It needs paint, the roof of course needs fixing, and there’s some old stuff that has accumulated inside there that some day I want to go through (old doors, window frames, old screens — cool stuff like that. Some of it clearly dating back to the 1940s.).
I just love walking inside it. It’s so peaceful in there. I still sense the horse that lived in there, you know. I really do.
Plus, Kevin’s 1965 VW camper van is still in there! Good thing. Because he should be coming back from Montana before the month is out and will probably want to come get it. It’s been parked in there since May and every once in a while, it dawns on me to go and at least look through the window and make sure it’s still in there…
The other day it occurred to me that I forgot to tell my mom that Kevin’s van was parked out there. I’m guessing that if she went exploring the barn (and who wouldn’t? it’s such a cool little barn) she probably wondered why the heck I had an enormous 1965 VW camper van in mint condition parked in there. But at this point, I’m guessing that she probably wonders a whole lot of things about me. (I miss her so much. I hope she comes back before Christmas.)
Well, my phone chat with Peitor was wonderful. Gosh it felt so good to talk to him again. We’re back on track with Abstract Absurdity Productions, starting this coming Friday morning. Mostly, we talked about personal stuff, but what little time we did talk about our script notes just brought back to mind all the insane work we’ve done on this stuff already. Just indescribably absurd stories. So wonderful. I can’t wait until we actually start filming them. And the jewel in the crown, as far as the importance of the scripts goes, is still 3 projects out. I cannot wait until we are ready to tackle that one. We were in Mel’s Diner on Sunset Blvd. on a Sunday evening when we were first fleshing that one out. Peitor had me laughing so hard, I literally almost fell out of the booth.
Outside of Mel’s, back in December
Even though the scripts are meant to be funny, the humor is intensely dark and the stories have complex emotional undertones. And the character in that particular script is named Marilyn — she is absolutely nothing like me, and the story is historically based, and takes place in 1969, so it literally is not me. But every time Peitor would refer to Marilyn doing or saying something really absurd, it just, of course, made me laugh so hard.
Anyway. A really good day here today. The palm tree is inside and sitting in the front window and so far, nary a cat has ventured past the precarious pile of books surrounding it. Not yet, anyway. I’m really hoping that if they do try to get at the tree, a pile of books clattering down on to them will keep them scared away from it until Spring.
Nick Cave sent out a Red Hand Files newsletter today that was awesome. And I’m not just saying that because I love everything he does. It’s one of those ones when his ability to express himself just blows your hair back, you know? Jesus. It was just so well stated. You can read it at that link up there.
Okay. I’m going to let Thug Luckless out of the box for a few hours and see what kind of progress we can make with him tonight. Have a wonderful evening, wherever you are in the world!! Thanks for visiting. I love you guys. See ya!
Yes, based on the above illustration, you can probably tell, it’s laundry day around here! But that’s not all the excitement.
No!! There’s more!
Late yesterday afternoon, I discovered a little baby mole on the floor of the downstairs bathroom. It seemed thoroughly exhausted from trying to maneuver itself on the linoleum floor. It was very much alive when I found it, but it just couldn’t get any traction and, I’m guessing, couldn’t really see.
I was able to scoop it up and get it back outside BEFORE seven cats found it and tore it to pieces. I cannot emphasize enough just what a relief that was. That poor little thing. I have no clue how it got there, but that bathroom is close to the backdoor that leads directly to the backyard. I’m guessing it is connected to that somehow.
Either that, or one of these spirits here in the house decided that, rather than return my one stocking (see post below somewhere), it would give me a baby mole instead…
Today is the day that I’m bringing all the potted plants indoors for the season. Which means that I have to somehow barricade the palm tree from the cats. I’m going to try just loading piles of books around the tree, and not in neat piles, or anything, but in really precarious piles so that the cats will have nothing to actually grab on to. We’ll see if that works. It’s already gone down to 36 degrees Fahrenheit twice now, so I can’t risk keeping that tree outside any longer.
It’s definitely Nature vs. Nature around here, isn’t it? Either a killing frost or wild & untamed cats…
Big, BIG news from late yesterday evening! Nick Cave & Warren Ellis are doing that symphony thing again with their film scores — this time in Sydney, in early December. I realized this means that, ostensibly, they will have plenty of time between those 2 gigs and Christmas, to fly here to Crazeysburg from Australia and appear with our symphony orchestra, too!
We don’t actually have a symphony orchestra, but I have about 8 or 9 weeks to get the 14 townspeople together, teach them how to play various orchestral instruments and stuff, and then, I don’t know, either build a symphony hall, or use that really old town hall thingie that we already have here, and put on a show. I’m not planning to join the orchestra because I want to be able to actually attend. And since I have this amazing bathroom scale now, that helps me achieve my goal weight several times during the course of a single evening, I know I’ll be able to fit into some sort of amazing couturier gown.
I can just tell it’s gonna be a terrific Christmas…
Anyway. In all seriousness. I’m guessing the Sydney event will be just stunning. I wish I could attend. I really do.
In other good news — yesterday afternoon, Peitor texted. He’s back in LA and we are planning to finally catch up over the phone later today. I’m really looking forward to that. It was the height of summer, the last time we actually talked.
Nick Cave is also having a Conversation in LA later today, as it turns out! But of a much different sort, and it’s the last Conversation of the US tour. (Folks from San Francisco are still posting amazing stuff on Instagram from Sunday. It really looks like the SF show was so cool.) (And it’s a toss up between the theater in SF and that one in Montreal — which one was the most jaw-dropping; they were both just gorgeous venues.)
Okay, well. New topic. About 18 or 19 years ago, I won that award in London for my book, Neptune & Surf — Erotic Writer of the Year. And the organization is now 25 years old. They are having some sort of 25th Anniversary celebration at this year’s awards (in November, in London). They are now called the Sexual Freedom Awards, and they are asking previous winners to contribute a statement about what sexual freedom means in 2019. I get 140 characters (not words, mind you!) to express that. Can you imagine me distilling something like that down to 140 characters??!!
Well, I’m trying…
You know, I remember what I wore to those Awards. I had the prettiest little dress but I don’t recall where I got it from or whatever happened to it. It was black velvet, a real short, billowy skirt and a halter-style top that had criss-cross ties in back. So, clearly, I didn’t wear a bra that night, but back then, I didn’t actually need to. I still had those “modest breasts” back then; I didn’t get the “twin Cadillacs” that I have now until after menopause. (It’s really ironic, because back then, I used to wish for something that could at least fill a push-up bra because I used to spend a fortune on fetish lingerie, and now I wear minimizers because I really, really can’t stand having my tits enter a room before I do. It turns out, I really enjoyed having the figure of a boy but I didn’t know it until it was gone…) And I wore those gorgeous black 4-inch spiked-heel ankle strap open-toed shoes to the Awards. Loyal readers of this lofty blog no doubt recall that I bought those shoes in London in 1976, when I was all of 16 years old!! Yes, for some mysterious reason, my mother let me buy a pair of fetish high heels in London when I was only 16. And I still have them, and they are still gorgeous because I have taken really good care of them all these years, but back at those Awards, I was actually able to walk around in those shoes. Not anymore…
The other day, actually, I got out a pair of vintage Gucci high-heels that I’ve had since the 1990s and they still fit. They are gorgeous, too. Copper-colored patent leather pumps, with very pointy toes and a 3 or 4 inch spiked, gold heel. For some reason, I happened to notice the bottoms of the shoes and discovered not a single scuff mark, and that tells me that I never, ever, EVER wore those shoes outside. I find that so (gently) amusing — that I would pay a fortune for a pair of shoes back then, just to wear to bed.
At one point, while married to Wayne, I had something like 32 pairs of high-heeled shoes — most of which, I wore only to bed. (“Bed” being a time-honored euphemism for not actually sleeping.)
It’s just funny to remember all that. I was just insane. I had so many little (expensive) outfits back then. I would sometimes change outfits 2 or 3 times while “not sleeping.” Menopause was actually a blessing to me — to finally be able to calm down a little. It wasn’t exactly 100% fun being so over the top hormonal all the time. It got exhausting.
All righty!! I guess on that lofty note, I will get the day started here, gang. Finish that laundry and start writing so that I can spend time chatting with Peitor without feeling like I’m not getting any work done… I hope you have a terrific Tuesday, wherever you are in the world. I was listening again to Ghosteen this morning so I won’t regale you with that — you need to go purchase it, instead. (And it really is just so beautiful, gang, you really should buy it.) But I love you guys! See ya.
Me doing laundry just now, here in Crazeysburg! Not quite as glamorous as my wee bonny hormonal-peak years in Manhattan!
If you saw my early morning post yesterday, then you saw the view from my bed, as I was watching the sun just barely coming up outside my window, my coffee cup on my night table next to me (you couldn’t see that part, though, because my room was still cozy & dark.)
Here’s the very same view this morning but I stayed in bed even later today!! (I’m guessing you can see, between the 2 photos, how cool this room is when it’s dark and the sun is just barely up.)
Same view from the bed as yesterday but today the sun is up
And I have switched coffee mugs. This is sort of my “November” coffee mug. I’m not sure why I think of it as that. But for some reason, I jumped ahead this morning to the November coffee mug. This morning, it just totally appealed to me…
Coffee next to me on my night table! For some reason, getting out of bed held no appeal today! (That’s my Inner Being Dialogues journal there next to the mug. I’m well into the 3rd journal now. My Inner Being is very chatty.)
I have now managed to force myself out of the bed and am sitting at my desk, blogging. (Yesterday, I blogged from my phone, so reluctant was I to leave the bed.) But I have yet to get dressed here this morning. Which is almost unheard of. I am almost always dressed by the time I sit down at my desk. But this morning, I’m still in my jammies (a photo of which I regaled you with a few days ago — me, wearing my summer PJs in Peitor’s bathroom in West Hollywood last December.) And I’m wearing my blue flannel robe, because it’s chilly.
Loyal readers of this lofty blog no doubt recall that last fall, I decided to finally wear the blue flannel robe and claim it as my own. Back then, I said that I had bought it for an older man I had been involved with who left before he had a chance to wear it. But now I am okay with saying that he is dead. Last fall, I said that he “went away”. But what really happened is that he died before he had a chance to wear it. This is the photo I posted one year ago, of me finally wearing his blue flannel robe. (I now consider it my robe. I’m doing totally okay with it.)
Reprint from last fall. This is the robe I’m wearing right now although, unlike last year, I am currently wearing some other stuff under it.
And for no reason whatsoever, I’m posting this photo of me from last February, wearing my favorite blue sweater!! (I originally sent this photo to Valerie in Brooklyn, but I saw it this morning while scrolling for the blue flannel robe!!)
I’ve had this blue sweater for about 12 years now. It is my very favorite sweater. My expression is one of delirium, so I guess I really, really DO love the blue sweater!!!
Well, my gosh!! The photos out of Nick Cave’s Conversation in San Francisco last night were just great! He looked like he was having a really good time. And the theater was beautiful. And that amazing full moon last night — I’m guessing it all came together for a really great show.
Only one more show here in the States, on Tuesday night…. me getting very sad… oh well.
All right, well, lest you think I’m just ridiculously bitchy and hard-assed about spelling (see yesterday afternoon’s post), I just want to stress that her email to me came on the heels of a long, long stream of emails from men who seemed not to care at all that I was actually looking for a woman. And so when an actual woman wrote to me, finally, I could not have been more crestfallen when I discovered that she could not be bothered to use spellcheck and so came across as sort of offensively stupid. I don’t mind if you aren’t super smart, or anything, but come on — at least be smart enough to use fucking spellcheck. Of course, she had no clue that I was a writer. It’s not in my profile. My photo is not even in my profile. But honestly — don’t you try to bring your “A” Game when you’re responding to a person’s ad and you hope they will reply to you? I was figuring, thatwas her “A” Game and, frankly, it was kinda scary.
But, anyway, I quit the site! Enough. I have to focus on the PLAY. Not on my endlessly erupting libido.
Oh for heaven’s sake, I am just too much sometimes, right?
Okay. Well, I think it’s a national holiday here (Columbus Day). The streets are certainly void of school buses and cars going off to work. A very quiet, lovely sunny morning in October.
And speaking of Peitor in West Hollywood (which I was, quite briefly, a moment ago), and, therefore, of our fledgling micro-short video production company: He has had just heartbreaking issues with both of his elderly parents. His dad in Iowa and his mom in Italy. It has been nonstop now for a few months. Not only does he have to constantly travel to both of these far-flung places — meaning, drop everything and jump on a plane because something dire is happening — but it is also just draining his whole heart, mind, body; everything.
He and I text sporadically but have not had a chance to even talk on the phone since before I went to NY. We were all set to get back on schedule with the micro-scriptwriting and then he was suddenly called off to Iowa again because of something dire with his dad.
So that has been just very intense. I really miss him and our weekly phone chats. He really knows how to make me laugh. We had such a great time last December, when it was just him and me together, alone, for nearly a week because his husband was off producing some TV show in Toronto… God, did we laugh!! Well, we also had time to talk about serious stuff, too.
Peitor last December, on the lobby grounds of the Sunset Marquis hotel in West Hollywood. This is two doors down from Peitor’s apartment building.
All righty! Gonna put on some real clothes now and get to work around here. I hope you have a really good Monday, wherever you are in the world, gang!! Thanks for visiting! I love you guys. See ya.
Okay, well. I have officially un-joined yet another extreme dating site. I had truly an endless number of men writing to me, even though my profile clearly stated that I was looking for a female and the only female who did write to me lived about 800 miles to the south of here and could not spell!!!
You know, if you don’t know how to spell, there is this thing called spellcheck. If you use it, I will never know if you can spell or not; I will just assume that you know how. I don’t ever give any sort of surprise spelling tests or anything. Once I assume that you can spell, then we’re usually good to go and your ability or inability to spell will likely never cross my mind.
But, man. This female simply could not spell and that was just the final straw. And the specific words that she couldn’t spell were just ludicrously simple. So I got fed up and I quit the site.
Oddly enough, I got invited to a sort of party last night. Just a sort of “come over and drink with me because my daughter has a sleepover at a friend’s house ” type thing.
I thought it was so cool that I was invited. Most people— pretty much everyone except my friend Kara — do not ever invite me anywhere, least of all into their homes. But the woman is way too pretty and her boyfriend was out of town. And mere moments before she asked me if I wanted to come over and drink with her because she had the house to herself, I was thinking that she was very sexy in an over-the-top kind of way and that it would probably be really fun to have sex with her. I was even going to ask her if there was any chance she might be bi. She does not seem like someone who can spell very well, but I’m thinking there’s probably never going to be a reason why she would ever need to write to me. And obviously she drinks and I don’t anymore. Plus she smokes and she eats meat. But I was still thinking, man, sheisfuckingsexy. And, honestly, I don’t usually find myself thinking that these days. Plus she was really nice. She just really appealed to me. However, as soon as she said that her boyfriend was out of town… oh well. Best to leave it alone.
But Jesus Christ, right? The entire universe seems to be wanting me to just mind my own business right now. So I will. I guess, put it all into my work instead.
Okay.
It is a gorgeous day here today. I am in this really good headspace. Sort of daydreamy. Not too intensely focused on any of my usual stuff, for a change. Nick Cave has a Conversation in San Francisco tonight, then one last one in LA and the US tour will be over. So fucking weird how fast that went. I can’t get over it.
Oh that reminds me, I came across this photo from forever ago that I just love!! Long time ago now, right? Jeez. (And let me just say here that boys like these never lived next door to me! If they had, I would never have moved all those many, many times!!!)
Ah, well.
This idea that life goes on is something I have yet to fully grasp. The older I get, the harder it gets to understand— where time goes. And how it manages to go there so quickly. Wherever it goes.
Okay, I’m gonna scoot now. Thanks for visiting. You know what? I know I did this just the other day, but I’m gonna leave you again with “Shivers” by the Boys Next Door. Okay!! I love you guys. Have a great Sunday. See ya!
I will probably post to the blog again later, but right now, I’m just super cozy in bed, a cup of coffee on the night table next to me, the sun coming up outside the window.
Life seems just perfect at this very moment. Here’s what it looks like:
That’s a photo of my front door from last fall, but it looks exactly the same this year, so I’ll be lazy and not photograph it again!
(This is the same front door that hasn’t been opened in about 40 years or more. I’m not exaggerating, either. I’m thinking that maybe next time my sister comes to visit, I’ll ask her to pry it open. It might be fun to have a front door that works. Right now, it’s just a haven for spiders.)
It is so like fall today here in Crazeysburg, gang. Rain. Wet, dead leaves all over the sidewalks and in the street. Temperatures in the low 40s Fahrenheit. In short, it’s kind of a beautiful morning.
Wow, well it looks like Nick Cave’s Conversation in Seattle was a really good one! Not only were there a number of photos uploaded to Instagram last night, but they uploaded the photos, like, moments after the show ended and all the comments were intense and sort of sublime. Only 2 more shows and the US part of the Conversations will be over. I just can’t believe how fast that went. It makes me more than a little sad.
All right, well. Yesterday was interesting. I did manage to join that other extreme dating site but had problems again with my profile loading correctly. I do think this is because the Universe, in general, wants me to stop going on these dating sites that yield, you know, basically nothing. So I’m not sure why I keep doing it, and I’m not sure why I never seem able to get my profile stuff to upload correctly.
But anyway, I clearly stated that I was looking to meet sub women and got an unending amount of emails from men, long into the night. Which, I guess, is actually kind of nice but I’m not looking for that. So I’m guessing I’ve wasted my time yet again, but whatever. We’ll just see.
It’s too bad so many people got murdered by meeting on Craigslist because I had the best luck with Craigslist, for years. Back then, I was primarily dating couples, and there were just tons of couples on Craigslist who always actually lived nearby. But then couples became complicated. And I don’t want to sound too disparaging about my own fair sex, but it was always the women-half of the couples that got complicated. It really was. They got needy, emotional, manipulative; no longer trusting what my motives were. My god, it was like walking on eggs all the time. You know, if I was looking to fall in love with a man and ride off into the sunset with him, I don’t think that dating married couples would be my chosen strategy. Unless, of course, I was seeking an indescribably complicated life.
Anyway. I digress.
So. Yesterday. I began writing about Thug Luckless!! (See yesterday’s post about the Wu Tang Clan name generator.) Oh my god, it was so much fun!! I’m writing under a pen name, because I’m just going to sell it as porn, but he is just a really, really fun character. He’s an AI sex robot in a post-Apocalyptic town, whose owner died so he’s now just this lone sex robot, walking the streets, programmed to fuck women sort of eternally because now he has no owner and so there is no one left who knows how to turn him off.
The town is called P-Town because all the indoor plumbing has failed and so anyone left in the town just pisses in the gutters out in the street. And the sun never shines there because an eternal thick smog hangs over everything. Your basic post-Apocalypse kind of thing.
But Thug is sort of a sad, thoughtful kind of loner sex bot — who smokes, but his cigarette is never lit because he doesn’t know how to do that part. Most of the men in the town died in the factory meltdown thingie that caused the Apocalypse, and so the forgotten women who are left in P-Town are just these grey, jaded, attention-starved women. They prefer actual men when they can get one, but they still go with Thug because he’s always out there, wandering the streets, programmed for sex and to always be agreeable to everything.
It’s really fun. Oh my gosh. And it’s just a vehicle for porn — it won’t hold up to the scrutiny of any sort of time-honored storytelling principles, or anything. So I can just sort of sail through it without having to think too much or craft the story arc or anything.
Even though my story is really trashy, my inspiration for it was Marjorie Prime. I really found that movie so captivating — the ideas underlying it, and then how, at the end, the AI robotic characters outlast their humans and so stay eternally young, just reminiscing amongst themselves in the empty house, with their programmed thoughts & programmed memories because there is no one left alive to turn them off. Their owners all died of old age.
Anyway, that was my impetus for Thug Luckless. And that’s what I spent most of yesterday writing about. (And, of course, that only magnifies the problem with me and dating sites — or dating, in general. The places my mind goes to, whether or not it’s pornographic — most of the rest of the nearby world sort of pales in comparison to that. It can get hard for me to maintain even simple conversations.)
Okay. I gotta get going here today. I have to work on the PLAY!!!! Gotta give Thug some time to cool down… Have a super Saturday wherever you are in the world!! I leave you with a sort of theme song for Thug Luckless, as he endlessly walks the streets of P-Town. Thanks for visiting, gang!! I love you guys. See ya.
I don’t know about you, but whenever I need a new pen name, I go to the Wu Tang Clan name generator. I love that fucking thing. Usually I find it sort of cosmically brilliant — the names it comes up with for me. They’re usually oddly spiritual and intense (just like me!!).
Today, though, it christened me Thug Luckless. It’s a funny name but I don’t think I can really write under the umbrella of that. I mean, I could, but what sort of stories does Thug Luckless tell? Probably stories that would sell millions of copies, especially if he’s an X-rated ghetto cat and it’s a graphic novel… Perhaps I’ll give Thug Luckless some deeper consideration.
Meanwhile, I’ll try my luck, spin the proverbial wheel again, and hopefully land on a pen name that’s a little easier for a gal like me to wear.
It’s another beautiful morning here in Crazeysburg! I once again slept great. Today, though, I forced myself to get out of bed at 5:30 a.m., and not revel in all that soft cozy snuggly-ness of the flannel sheets, letting another whole morning drift away… Okay, well, perhaps it wasn’t the whole morning that drifted away yesterday; it was an hour and a half. Perhaps I need to re-examine the extreme writing regimen I keep. I don’t know. I’ve been like this since 1994, so I’m guessing I’m probably just going to be like this. (Or maybe get even worse!)
This morning,in those 2 seconds before I forced myself to get out of bed, I was thinking about a new series of stories that I wanted to write. But I wanted to write them from the POV of one of those expensive sex robots — sort of like a “Marjorie Prime” thing, but with a sex robot that’s perhaps somehow AI, as well. (Hence, wanting a specific sort of pen name.) (Thug Luckless just doesn’t seem like a sex robot/AI kind of persona. Although, if I were to somehow acquire — through some indescribable blessing from Heaven — an expensive sex robot and his name was Thug Luckless — I don’t know. I might actually like him a whole big bunch. You know what? I think I really need to ponder Thug Luckless some more! Not be so hasty to cast him aside.) (You know, I was getting ready to join yet another extreme dating site, under the grand delusion that somehow I would find a non-drinking, non-smoking, non-weed-smoking, super kinky vegetarian, male or female, within 10 miles from me who only wanted to get together once every 3 weeks… I mean, if you focus only on the super kinky part, they are all over Muskingum County. There is kink everywhere. It’s the other stuff that’s so difficult to find. Anyway. Rather than go through all the trouble of once again setting up my complicated profile, I should just spend time writing about Thug Luckless instead.)
(You know, nothing makes me happier than sitting at my desk, writing weird shit. And I’m now feeling like I’m gonna have a really good time with Thug Luckless. But I also like to have actual dates that involve really weird shit sometimes, too. With, you know, people who aren’t young enough to be my children — that part of “weird shit” is not what I’m aiming for. I just sometimes feel like I’m destined to write my whole fucking life away at this point. Pun intended, I guess.)
But onward….
Almost nothing out of Nick Cave’s Conversation last night. At least, not yet. I think maybe 2 photos, in neither of which was he actually on the stage. Apparently, in British Columbia, they also follow rules. It’s kind of interesting to see in which areas of the world people tend to follow rules, and in which areas of the world people are generally mavericks with little to no regard for anyone else besides themselves. It’s just interesting. And you know, I don’t actually need Instagram to tell me that he showed up, everyone loved it, and he wore a suit…
I was thinking this morning how it would be so cool if he released a video of one of these Conversations. Although, I don’t know how he could do that without violating the privacy of the question-askers, unless they agreed to it beforehand (not agreed to be violated, just to be videotaped). I just love listening to Nick Cave talk. I love to listen to him sing, too, but I love to listen to him talk. There are about a bazillion interviews with him on YouTube that I watch over and over just because I love listening to him talk, even though I already know now what he’s going to say because I’ve watched them so many times. And the interviews range from the 1980s up until about 2016. So, you know — quite the Nick Cave panoply there on YouTube.
All righty. I actually have to get started here today. I have a scheduled phone chat with the director on Monday, so I want to have some considerable stuff mapped out before then. Have a really nice Friday, wherever you are in the world. Thanks for visiting. I sat at the kitchen table in utter silence this morning, so I’m gonna leave you with nothing!! But I love you guys. See ya!
Last night was the first night of the season that I slept with the flannel sheets on the bed.
I always have this dim remembrance somewhere in the back of my overworked brain that the flannel sheets are always indescribably cozier than I remember them being, after spending about 6 or 7 months with really crisp cotton sheets on the bed.
Well, last night was no different. I simply could not believe how indescribably cozy my fucking bed was and I did not want to get out of it this morning. Seriously, I laid awake for an hour and half, just so cozy that I just kept snuggling deeper into it. I literally had to force myself to get my behind out of bed and go downstairs and feed the cats, myself, etc.
Plus, all through the spring and summer, when the windows are open, I also have all the Venetian blinds open in my bedroom. So even when I’m awake at 5 a.m. in the warmer months, I can immediately see the world outside my window, including the streetlight and any headlights of cars going off to work. (Well, the drivers of the cars are going off to work.)
But last night, I had the windows closed, the heat on, and so all the Venetian blinds were down and closed. So I was seriously in a dark little snuggly place this morning. Man. I simply did not want to get out of bed.
So, of course, now, half my morning feels like it’s gone. And I hate that. It deprives me of precious, valuable minutes within which I can sit at my desk and work!! Grumble, grumble…
Anyway. It is sufficient to say, I slept great.
I didn’t get any more writing done yesterday once I finished that new segment for In the Shadow of Narcissa. It actually took a lot out of me to write that one. Partly because, aside from just the difficult subject itself, there were specific things between my adoptive mom and my brother that I chose to leave out. It was just too disturbing to commit it to print.
You know, if it was about something that happened to me, it’s easier for me to write about it. But it’s not as if my brother gave me any sort of permission to write about him. I haven’t actually seen him in decades. I know he’s still alive but, understandably, he doesn’t want any connections to his adoptive family. I’m trying to select occurrences that best illustrate how I was learning to respond to my mother and not just specifically “what she did.”
In my opinion, she was inexcusably cruel to my brother when he was a defenseless little boy and it tore my fucking heart out to watch all that shit happen to him. (And to be honest, there’s a whole chunk of stuff I don’t actually know about because I didn’t see it; I only heard it and all I heard was heart-wrenching screaming. And what the heck do you do when the only person on Earth who can make everything all right — Mommy — is the one causing the Hell? How do you process it?) Shit.
And then there was a time when I was in my 30s, when my adoptive mother was in a really lucid and loving phase (she was on meds at that point), and she sat me down one afternoon, when I was visiting from NYC, and in a bewildered, heartfelt way, she wanted to know why my brother hadn’t spoken to her in (at that point) something like 15 years. She said, “What did I ever do to him that was so bad?” She had no true conscious awareness of herself or anything she’d done. I didn’t have the heart to shatter her, and it wouldn’t have helped, anyway. My brother wasn’t coming back and I knew it. All I could say to her was, “Mom, I just don’t know.”
Still, none of it means that it’s okay for me to write about my brother’s private life. It’s not as if I can undo it by telling a bunch of total strangers about what happened, anyway.
So, yesterday afternoon, once I’d signed off on the new segment and sent it off to the editor at Edge of Humanity Magazine, I tried to focus on the play, but I just couldn’t. I went outside and trimmed the hydrangea, finally. That took nearly an hour! It really had gotten so big this summer. What a glorious thriving thing that hydrangea is. Even while I was trimming all the dead blossoms off of it, I could still feel so much life just pulsing from that thing. (I call it a thing, because it’s hardly a bush, but it’s not a tree. Not sure what to call it, but it’s massive now and just full of palpable life.)
It was such a beautiful fall evening. Just perfect. I came back inside and, as I am wont to do pretty much 24/7, I sat back down at my desk. But I had not a thing to do at my desk so I got on pornhub!! Yay. I never have time to get on pornhub!! So! And then 3 hours later…
Jesus. You know? Where does the time go?
Oddly enough, me and porn don’t have the best relationship. Only because I find so much of it really predictable, unimaginative, overflowing with narcissism and tedium — and those are only the videos that last about maybe 6 minutes. To me, they feel unendurably endless after about 63 seconds. I love porn, and you’d think that in this modern world that is so saturated with porn now, that I would just be this happy camper in pornland. But, sadly, such is not the case. And that’s because, in my opinion, there is just such a plethora of bad porn out there.
Yet, once in a blue moon… even picky girls like moi hit pay dirt. It’s all about the key words, you know. I’m an extreme fetishist, to boot. Not necessarily in my private life anymore, but it’s still where my mind goes. I’m not sure why. It has a lot to do with human behavior and human thought processes — I find extreme fetishes so fucking interesting. Especially the people who dedicate their whole adult lives to one specific extreme fetish and turn an entire room in their homes over to doing this one specific thing. And it almost always involves owning expensive stuff that you can only find on Stockroom, or you have to make it yourself.
I just find that fascinating. But it doesn’t mean that just any extreme fetish will appeal to me. I have to hunt pretty diligently to find something that goes into that mind-bending realm that is not, you know, sort of just horrifically awful.
And then I have to find that perfect balance of energy between the male and the female. The guy has to be the perfect Dominant — balanced, not over the top and not cruel. And the female has to actually seem really super in to whatever’s going on and not just being tortured or something. And I also discovered that I like it a lot when I don’t understand the language they’re speaking. I like it when I have no clue what they’re saying. (Oh, and it has to be “amateur” — not amateur quality, but just not a professional porn company.)
And I usually don’t get into the same extreme fetish twice. It has to be something new and, preferably, something I’ve never heard of before. (And at my age, with about 35 years of extreme fetishist friends and colleagues and co-workers behind me, it’s not 100% easy to find something I’ve never heard of before.)
Well, so you can see that me and porn are usually better left un-coupled. But once in a blue moon — say, last night, for instance– holy moly! And it really comes down to key words. Find a topic that might hold a certain appeal; click on it, then scroll down and look at the key words other people entered. Then click on one, then scroll down again and look at more refining key words that other people entered, and then look for the one that has the keyword “extreme” in front of it; click on it and then either shriek in horror at what pops up in front of you, or go, Whoa….. and be a happy camper in pornland for 3 hours.
I’m not going to tell you what I got into. Just that it involved somewhat expensive stainless steel instruments that you can buy on Stockroom. And it was something that I never, in a million years, would have guessed would not make me want to squirm or even to perhaps puke.
It all comes down to the people, you know? When people are really in to something, just totally getting off on it — that alone can get very compelling.
There were men I knew, who were my colleagues — really wonderful, intelligent men, back in NYC in the ’90s and early 2000s — who were Doms, into very intense extreme fetishes, and the young submissive girls would literally line up for the chance of getting a playdate with them on a Saturday night. You know: Please, please torture me for a few hours because I know you’re so fucking good at it. It really does come down to the specific person, to the personality, the specific human mind involved.
And now that I no longer live in NYC, then they have to also want to make high quality digital videos of what they’re doing and upload them to pornhub…
Okay. New topic. It’s going to sound related to the above topic, but it’s not. It has to do with the spirits that I am certain are in this house. And I don’t mean the house is haunted. I think it’s some sort of portal for amazing spirits. This whole town is. I don’t know how to explain it. But they don’t frighten me at all.
On Tuesday, I took off a pair of stockings. The kind that need garters to keep them up. Just a pair of regular Hanes stockings. Not expensive at all. I was feeling lazy and decided that rather than hand-washing them, like you’re supposed to do, I would put them through the gentle cycle in the washing machine and then just hang them up to dry. I had three other things I also wanted to wash at the same time. So I bundled it all in a towel and took it straight down to the washing machine. Then, 20 minutes later, the wash cycle was done and when I went to get everything out of there, one of my stockings was gone.
100% completely, thoroughly gone. I looked everywhere for it. Even thinking it could have somehow fallen out of the bundled towel and a cat had absconded with it, but it was absolutely nowhere. Just gone. I found this really endearing, you know? Like, Okay, dude, whoever you are — you can have it. It’s not like it was Wolford or something stupidly expensive. It was just regular old Hanes.
Too awesome, right? It will be so cool if; a.) it never shows up again, ever; or b.) it shows up someplace where it could not have ever gotten to all on its own.
All righty! I’m gonna scoot and get more coffee and get the day going. Lots of work to do on the play, still.
Have a terrific Thursday, wherever you are in the world! I believe Nick Cave goes back to Canada tonight. The Conversations are indeed winding down. Where the heck does the time go? I simply cannot believe it. That frightens me more than some unseen spirit making off with one of my stockings, that’s for sure.
Thanks for visiting. I leave you with what was essentially the soundtrack for extreme fetish playdates everywhere in the early 90s!! Enjoy! love you guys. See ya!
If you’re keeping up with my memoir-in-progress about my childhood — In the Shadow of Narcissa has updated. You can read it here, or at the permanent link at the bottom of the side bar.
In the memoir, we’re in the second house in Cleveland, where my mom started to do her weird punishment stuff. But she was also still able to be this really beautiful mom most of the time. She didn’t start to get seriously awful until the third house.
The second house was actually an interesting time in my personal life, although that stuff isn’t in the memoir — or at least, not yet. Not in the online version, anyway. Maybe when I’m actually writing it as a complete book, more of my internal stuff will come into it. I’m not really sure.
Even though, within about 10 years of the time period I’m currently writing about, my adoptive dad would do a complete about-face and become this truly nasty individual who only cared about money, in these early years, he was incredibly kind to me. Just so nice. And he was the sole thing keeping our little house sane. In those years, my adoptive mom really tried very hard to please him. And I think that’s what kept her struggling so hard to keep her mind on an even keel back then.
All righty. So.
It got pretty chilly around here — true October weather now. I’ve turned on the furnace and put the flannel sheets on the bed. Next, I’m gonna have to break down and trim back my hydrangea. Even though it’s been officially dead for a number of weeks, I haven’t had the heart to officially tell it goodbye. It looked so amazingly pretty this summer. And probably by the weekend, I’ll have to bring the potted plants indoors, too — which is never fun, because then I have to do constant battle with the cats to keep them from eating the plants. Especially the palm tree, which I raised from a wee bonny twig (it’s now about 4 feet tall).
As soon as that tree comes indoors, I think the cats literally wait for me to be asleep, and then they go after that poor palm tree, which always looks so glorious when it comes inside from having been on the porch all summer. And then, in the space of one single night, the cats do their best to get at as many of the palm fronds as possible, chew them, and then throw them back up all over the carpeting.
It’s the one time of year when I really just scream my head off at those darn cats. The things they put that poor tree through every fall, even when I try to barricade the tree beyond belief. They still manage to get at it and usually turn the whole tree over in the process. Soil everywhere. The tree flopped on its side, most of its leaves, gone.
It is so darn frustrating. The joys of living with feral cats.
All right, I gotta scoot here. Sorry this is so brief. I’m gonna tackle the rewrites on the play now. Hope your Wednesday’s been good! Thanks for visiting, gang. I love you guys. See ya.
Marilyn's Room 