Dialogues, From Others

Maybe There’s Some Kind of Something?

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I’m in two book clubs because I love and require deadlines, especially for things I enjoy doing. Actually, in one of these book clubs, out of ten or fifteen women I only really know one of them — since the woman who initially introduced me to said book club stopped going almost immediately after said introduction.

Meanwhile, I became irked with said book club for a while. With few exceptions, it consisted mainly of a bunch of former English majors who never read the books.

“So! Did you read it?” I would charge each woman as she entered some living room. Not “what is your name, again” or “so you say you work in natural dentistry” or “hey, nice pants!” They were all just good friends who liked making good food together. At one point I overheard someone whisper, don’t tell Adrianne you didn’t read the book; you’ll make her really angry.

But lately we’ve been having some really lively conversations, and I’ve gotten to know some of the other awesome people in the group: farmers, yoga instructors, natural dentistry marketers. Our last meeting covered the first book of The Brothers Karamazov. We started by summing up the general glum plot-line of eternally drunk and essentially dislikable characters: the rape of the village idiot, the wife beatings, the cognac and vodka. And so far so good.

“So . . . am I the only one who found this really hilarious, or what?” I chirped brazenly. I searched the room for someone to meet my high-five. “Eh? Am I right? Hoo!”

Complete silence.

“Wait, what book are you talking about?” someone piped up, cautiously. “This book?”

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Poetry

Spam Poetry: #1

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If your whole life is shit, at least you can have a decent watch on.

Something weighty, something made of
nice things, beautiful things, which united together create a
single thing, that

say, if you had children, at some point
would be such a decent thing
they couldn’t help but want to
inherit, this thing:

The unblinking smooth,
crystal face.

Soft wheat-in-sunlight gold
karats.

And with a matte finish that says

This watch-wearer’s no magpie, no show-off, no all
you’ve ever wanted
was this:

Something well-made.

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Pasties!

Lessons From Boinkland

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1.) The hardest part is keeping your head up and looking yourself in the eye in the mirror while you do that.

You try to look at yourself sexily but realize it just looks angry. You add a smile and it’s apologetic, a little self-deprecating. You look back down, and realize that with all this concentration on looking up, you’ve lost track of what you should have been doing with that glove, and now you’re in this weird crouch position and maybe you should shoot your leg out or something and oh hey that’s actually pretty hot —

“Lacy, keep your head up!” Sugar calls.

2.) Women’s magazines like to tell you that all women are snowflakes — by which they mean, we all hate some unique part of ourselves. The examples are usually something ridiculous, like ankles or nose bridges or ear lobes or some crap. We just obsess over these silly things, us girls! “Blah blah, I’m cross-eyed.” “Blah blah, there’s a hole in my scalp and my amygdala is exposed.”

But put thirty women of all different shapes, ages and sizes into a dance room and tell them to focus their dancing on their least favorite part, and they will all begin touching their stomachs. Every. Single. One.

3.) “I learned,” I announced to the “Burlesque For Better Body Image” workshop taught by a true master and co-Slutcracker, “that I guess I don’t like focusing on my ‘best’ feature. I mean, my breasts are pretty great, but there’s not many ways I can call attention to them that isn’t vulgar. It feels kind of dumb — like, I don’t know, shouldn’t I just point to them? Done. But hell, my stomach? I could freaking work that shit.”

The rest of the class nodded in unison. “Yeah!” someone cried.

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Things On Feet

The Angels Dig My . . . Plaid, Too

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I’m always surprised when things don’t last forever: especially as I form emotional attachments to them which only grow stronger the longer they’re around. Ah well! Out with the old! In with the new!

See how freaking shiny these boots are? That is amazing. And comfortable, too — I went out dancing in them, to the rave reviews of some old dude. If we could own nothing but rain boots for footwear, stores would be amazing; because no other type of shoe gets to both look freaking insanely adorable and be functional. It just doesn’t happen in nature.

(Unfortunately, I should add that my very first broken heart has apparently left me a jaded and distrustful woman. Rain boots can leak? What the fuck is that about? Now with every step, even now, in my completely new, completely more comfortable, in-many-ways-superior rain boots — I wonder if this is the day they’ll betray me.)

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Dialogues

The Natives

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My main fear, as I scurried across the icy street in high-heeled boots, was that the busdriver was an asshole. My next greatest fear was that the light would turn green.

If the light turned green, the bus would easily make it to the stop before I could. If the busdriver were an asshole, he would see me now, scurrying across the icy street in high-heeled boots, and he would not open his doors or even pause. He would blaze on down Avon Street as if that bus stop did not exist at all, and I would have to walk to the next stop to wait for a different bus, and even if that bus were on time, which would be the biggest freaking miracle in the universe, I would be at least a half hour late to the party, but more likely forty-five minutes, and if I were forty-five minutes late to the party my good friend who I hadn’t seen in ages would think I didn’t care enough about her or her cooking to just show up on time: after all these years, to just leave my apartment forty-five minutes earlier, couldn’t I handle that?

The light turned green. I began to book it, hopeless, as my bus whirled through the intersection — and came to a squealing stop right next to me in the middle of the road. “Hey there!” a man smiled from the front seat. “You want on?”

Until this day, there had been three certain facts in my life: death, taxes, and buses do not stop for you if you are not at a stop, and they will only let you off at stops, because I don’t know, that’s like a law or something.

“Get on!” the busdriver waved jovially. “I hate to see you running on the ice like that, you could hurt yourself.”

I stepped on hesitantly and then swiped my Charlie Card. The bus was completely empty: bright blue plastic chairs buzzed in the fluorescent light, roadsalt patches making neat little placemats in front of each one, white shadows and scuffs from former feet. “Some weather outside, isn’t it?” he grinned at me. “Isn’t this just crazy? My wife just called, she wanted to know if she could turn the heat up.”

What parallel universe have I stepped into? I wondered. Maybe I’m dead. Maybe this is a last hallucination. The bus just hit me, and I am unconscious on the road.

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