Pop-off body parts. Think about it; when you had an itchy ear, you could just pop that fucker off and really get in there and scratch. When you're blissful bedded and spooning with your significant other, you'd finally have somewhere to put that arm that always gets in the way. Hayfever? Nasal allergies? Take off your nose and ream that mother out, but good.
Also, tails. I'm not one of those people who likes to practice the Sin of Onan with stuffed animals or anything - not that I would judge - but I think tails on humans would come in handy. Not little fluffy bunny tails, either, but long, strong, whiplike monkey tails that could be used as a third arm, practically. Just imagine the balance you'd have with a tail. If John Kerry had had a tail he never would have plowed over that snowboarder, thereby losing the crucial Mountain Stoner vote. Right there - course of history, changed forever. Why, if Nelson had had a tail at Trafalgar...
Why are you looking at me like that? I'm talking design, okay?
Where in the world is a middle-aged, high-income white woman supposed to get weed these days? The five pounds I bought an equal number of years ago has dwindled to nothing but a pile of stems and seeds, and I grow increasingly aware that I have lost every last connection during my absence from "the scene".
In days gone by, there was always a handy hippie or two hanging around; a neighbor, or a friend-of-a-friend, or, at times, just some dreadlocked and pit-pungent vegan stranger in a park. My other talents may have been paltry in compensation for it, but in past years, my friends, I proved myself a weed-magnet. I used to brag, as the kids say, "back in the day", about my superhuman sativa-sniffing capabilities; I had scored weed within minutes of touchdown in virtually every major American metropolitan area, as well as some capitals of Old Europe, and a few select places (the Islam-eschewing ones, where it is less likely the natives will cut off your hand for possession) in Southeast Asia. Ah, those were the good old days, people. No worries, no children to watch for, plenty of hard currency - Around the World With a Really Good Buzz - by Queenie MacFarland. International fucking bestseller, no? Ahem.
Alas, for Queenie has lost her mojo. All yesterday's hippies are just so much bong resin, and all my friends are good Churchgoing folk. I can no longer risk the random encounter in the park, for fear of unspeakable things that can go wrong, like murder or rape or robbery or, Lord help me, involvement with the Authorities - and I doubt I am likely to find myself in Bora Bora or Baden Baden again any time soon - unencumbered and ready to party, that is . I have a family and a painstakingly re-created good rep to protect. I am crazy enough to try to grow some - and I have tried - but there again, I am stymied. My thumbs are black as midnight, and I am sheer Death to any botanical matter I attempt to care for. Seriously, my spouse won't even let me cut the grass or trim the hedges anymore. I'm that much of a fuckup.
To add insult to these enumerated injuries, alcoholic beverages of all varieties have recently begun to induce raging heartburn upon ingestion. I still drink...but at a cost. I pop Prilosec now, instead of Valium or other exotica, to feel good. Oh, the ignominy of the aging process.
So, here I sit, sober as the proverbial judge, and here I suppose I shall be content to remain. /insert heaved sigh. I probably have enough THC stored in my body-fat to keep my Aloha unharshed for a couple of months, anyway.
What? You people thought I was writing all this stuff cold turkey sober? I don't think so.
Have you ever taken an instant and unreasonable dislike to someone you don't know? A mostly-unjustifiable hatred? I have, but I am an admitted and unrepentant bitch; also, as a blogger and blog-reader, sometimes I just have a sense, as soon as I set foot on a particular site, that I would despise the author of said blog in real life. The sensation is extremely rare, but every once in a while I end up on a site that gives me that frisson in my guts and I just know that spending time with the person behind the page would be torture, like dental surgery without the novacaine. I found a blogger today that I would like to boil in oil. May I share? May I go off? May I melt your earlobes with my vented spleen?
No? Hit the back button, jackass, because I'm going to anyway. It's Queenie's World. Duh!
I followed a link this afternoon, from the blog of a friend to the blog of an unknown quantity. I'd been noticing an increase in said unknown quantity's comments on multiple blogs that I like, and I must say that, in general, the tone of the comments this person regularly leaves led me, by itself, straight to the frisson described in the paragraph above. Initially, I wasn't super-revolted by the site that popped up - pretty standard, really, but not a good blog at all. Some lame attempts at humor, some me-too politics, some tired-ass quizzes that everyone I know did two years ago...so I scrolled down the page, analyzing the writing and the content. You know, generally checking the place out, like one tends to do when one visits a site that is new to one's sphere.
A few posts down and I, like Yosemite Sam, had steam coming out of my ears. I find myself requested, mid-page, to take a blogging Oath, whereby I swear not to blog about parenting or childrearing, so as not to bore the hell out of my readers, thereby reducing the crap-content of the blogosphere overall. How proud the author is that nobody the author knows blogs so shittily! How positive the blogger is that everyone understands that nobody can make anything interesting or enlightening out of that tired old cant!
Oh, heaven forfend that my readers get bored! Oh, all the posts about my kid on my other blog - the tired old thousand-a-day hitter - how they're just haunting me now.
Not.
Let me tell you something, nameless blogger - and no, I won't link you, wouldn't want all my "boring" and potentially childbearing readers flooding your oh-so-sacrosanct partyspace - if you don't want to read posts about kids, about families, I suggest you start by getting the hell away from most of the blogs I see your smelly tracks on, because most of those are parents. Fathers, anyway... Likewise, neither should you visit 65% of the other blogs out there, since many of them are written by adult people, some of whom have kids, adult people who are occasionally shameless and self-indulgent enough to write about their children.
How dare you presume to dictate what I write, you dull-witted twat - or what anyone else writes, for that matter? I don't presume to lecture you about your all-sex-all-the-time taste in post content, or your invalid assumptions about the power of your own intellect, or the drawing power of your online persona, do I? No, I do not, you dumb cunt.
So...hon? Fuck you and the Oath you rode in on. Your site doesn't totally suck - but call me when you grow up. Until then, I'll stick with blogging what strikes my fancy, and I'll stay far, far away from you. After all, I'd rather read a post about a child than one written by one.
A post-script, months later: I was an asshole to have even posted this shit. No surprise to my regular readers, but there it fucking is. Believe me, my ass has been ridden over this post for months now. I'd delete it, but then it would seem like I was covering it up, and I ain't a coward. A cunt, maybe, but not a coward. I hurt somebody's feelings - unwittingly, because I never thought she'd even see this, but she did, and I'm sorry for it.
We seem to be enjoying a lull in the Interminable Menstrual Cycle from Hell. Let the heavens fucking rejoice - any day without the bloody gush is a happy day for Queenie. It's been so long since I've been free to walk the earth sans Tampax that I don't know how to act. Might I dare to hope that this is it - that I'm back to normal again - and that my temper will settle down some? I hope so; I beat the alarm clock to death with my bare hands this morning because it wouldn't stop beeping. I'd post a picture of its digital innards splayed out all over my night-stand, but I don't have time; I have to drag my sorry ass to Target to buy another one before my husband comes home from work and sees the carnage I made of the old one. Dammit.
I shouldn't bitch. I should Give Thanks for my Blessings. Here's a prayer:
Thank you, dear Lord, for sticking Your heavenly cork in my uterus, at least for the holiday. My entire family shall praise Your holy Name, trust me. In Jesus's name I pray. Love, Queenie.
Now. Somebody, anybody - poke me quick, before it comes back. Please!
My husband and I were watching Ed Wood on HBO the other night. In case you haven't seen the film, it's the story of a spectacularly unsuccessful cross-dressing 50's B-movie director, and his touching relationship with the smack-addicted and washed up Bela Lugosi. It's an okay film - Tim Burton, you know - but really nothing to write home about. We'd seen it before, so I wasn't so much watching as using the background noise as a distraction from the mundane task of folding laundry.
"God, what a bitch," intoned my sensitive new-age spouse. We'd just hit the scene where Ed reveals his angora fetish to his long-time girlfriend and she rejects him. "You'd think if she loved him, she could put up with a little weirdness," he said.
I glanced at the TV - Sarah Jessica Parker having a horsefaced meltdown over her boyfriend's secret tranny leanings - then turned to face my husband. "Putting up with 'weirdness' is one thing," I said. "Expecting a lady to be able to work up a good wet for a hairy-chested bugger who's wearing her panties is another thing entirely."
My husband gave me that disapproving look, that "my, aren't we intolerant today," glare.
I take crap from his loving, giving, kum-ba-yah ass over shit like this all the time and I was having none of it at the moment. I replied, in a cutting tone, "Well, have you ever tried to bone a dude who was wearing your unmentionables? No - never mind, I don't want to know. It would be a total dealbreaker if you had, and I have no desire to be a single mother. Suffice it to say that I have tried it, and it ain't just a matter of acceptance. It's a visceral thing, man."
Of course, this led to the story, which my husband swore he'd never heard before. I know that I told him about this incident, during the sixteen-hour debriefing I insisted he attend prior to my becoming his wife. (I didn't want any messy comebacks on the merger, so he had a forced "full discovery" session before we even started planning the wedding. Hey, you've read my history - some of the milder events, anyway - can you blame me?)
See, back in the early nineties, your Queenie had a brief brush with this very issue. A bona-fide Rock Star and I ended up posing for a photo-shoot together, landing my "elegant" mug in a fanzine; surprisingly tasteful and non-pornographic black-and-white work. Quite nice, actually. The Rock Star was himself gay as Christmas, but the photographer - a big, strapping Irishman with a twinkle in his eye - caught my fancy, so I took him home with me after the shoot.
We had a lovely evening. Dinner, coffee, chocolate, wine, reefer, and the midnight hour found us locked in a sweaty clench on my down comforter, making out.
"Queenie," he said.
"Mmm," I replied.
"Queenie, I've...got a favor to ask." His tone was deadly serious.
I opened my eyes, I couldn't imagine what would break a man's concentration at a moment like this, so I sat up, brushing my hair out of my eyelashes and wiping my chin with the back of my hand. "This sounds like a big deal, sweetie...what's the matter?" I asked.
He took a deep gulp of air, and came out with it. "I...I like to wear women's underwear when I'm...with a girl. Could I...can I...wear something of yours?"
I must admit, this took me rather aback. Not something you hear every day, that - especially from a muscled-up man's man known to smoke cigars, drink Scotch, and get in fistfights. I just sat there for a minute, a little shocked. What was the etiquette for such a situation? Would a polite hostess offer him her bra, or was his request straining the bounds of traditional hospitality? I didn't know, and I didn't have time to consult Emily Post. But - what the hell. I'd never tried it before, it sounded kinky and so was I, so...what did I have to lose?
In a bound, I was out of bed and over at my chest of drawers. From its recesses I drew out Something Special, a hot pink longline bra that had been encrusted with rhinestones and decked out with a large, gold, faux-gemstone cross hung right between the knocker cups - part of an old Halloween costume. I tossed it at him, watching his eyes light up and his member strain at his boxers as he caught it. "Whoa!" he said. "This is a lot better than anything I expected!"
He took the lingerie to the bathroom, and I got under the covers to consider the situation. I came to no conclusions, and pretty soon, he re-emerged, wearing nothing but my longline bra. He grinned a devilish grin, and pounced me. "Naaa, lassie," he said. "Now you've made old Seamus a happy man."
He kissed me, a deep, lingering, virile kiss...and I burst out laughing. I couldn't help it. The sight of his skinny, hairy chest with my 36DD's gaping open over it...what can I say? I am a cunt.
Seamus froze, and drew back. "What's the matter, love?" he asked.
"Nothing. Sorry." I said, stifling another chortle. He smiled, and leaned back in.
A few minutes later, and I had reached my limit. I just couldn't do it. Any vestige of arousal was gone, and I was forcing myself to continue. Not any fun at all. I pulled my mouth away from his, and sat up in bed again.
"Seamus, honey. I...can't get into this. I'm sorry. I really like you, and I think you're handsome and manly and a helluva guy (cough)...I just can't get past (giggle) the underwear thing. It's not that...I'm being judgemental (snicker) or anything...I think whatever, um, turns your crank for you is just fine. I just can't do it. I'm sorry. It's me...not, um...you."
After talking it out like gentlemen, Seamus and I parted on amicable terms - especially amicable since, instead of making the beast with two backs, we went through my closet together. I gave him piles of my old stuff - sweaters, skirts, panties, bras, garter belts, stockings. He left with two full garbage bags of "playclothes", Seamus did, and I gained valuable closet-space. We became good friends in the end, and he did more photographs of me over the years than Carter's has Pills.
I closed the door behind him as he left, and I felt melancholy, but wiser - I really had liked the guy, and it was a shame - but I understood more about myself, gained a deeper insight into my inner motivations. I'd come to an important realization that was to serve me well in later years - hairy Irishmen with boners in women's underwear are a turnoff for Queenie.
Hey, it's a personal tic. Is that so wrong?
It had been a long summer. I can’t remember whether it was an “el niño” year, or a “la niña”, but it was one of the fatherless cocksuckers, and the weather was hotter than it had been for a hundred years. If recollection serves – which, I’ll warn you, it may not , because I feel certain I was pretty stoned the whole time – the temperature had been over one hundred degrees Fahrenheit every single day for something like forty-two contiguous days. Moreover, this asphalt-melting heat wave was aided and abetted by an unrelenting humidity that pegged the gauge, even at night. Ah, the southland, my home, sweet home. Hogar, dulce Hogar!
You have to understand that when the weather gets like this in a poor southern town, people start to get kind of crazy. Crime rates skyrocket. Racial tensions run high. Gang activity increases, and the freaks, like me, tend to come out at night. The heat agitates us natives, you see; you try living in an unairconditioned old house or apartment in such conditions and see how immune you are. Yankees are usually the first to crack, followed by Europeans – no tolerance for it at all. Before you can say Jack Rabbit (mmm, Jack Rabit), they’re wandering the streets in black socks and Birkenstock sandals, looking to drink (or eat, or smoke, or snort) away the heat, just like everyone else.
One evening stands out for me with all the power and sensuality of a dream. We’d been to several parties that night, Cecelia and I, along with the rest of our Usual Suspects – Ming Ho, the stunning half-Chinese, half-German, ex-runway-model turned medical doctor; Fred, the boy I was fucking at the time; Dennis and Sal, his friends from law school; and Emily, with whom I played music. As usual - Spice Must Flow - I was about nine sheets to the wind by last call. Coke in the bathroom. Joint in the alleyway. Discreet, tiny, intramuscular morphine pop in the ass, by the Doc. Cocktails all night. I was soaring, people – I promise you, I was feeling absolutely no pain whatsoever.
When the bars closed down, Fred and I snuck away to his house to do a few lines and engage in a torrid fuck in the dewy grass of the garden. We’d been pawing at each other all night, but our “relationship” was a thinly-veiled “secret” affair; it made both of us all the hotter knowing we had to slink around to do our dirty work. Later, after we’d cleaned ourselves up a bit, we walked down the street to join the rest of our pre-coital party in a rousing game of Marco Polo in the swimming pool at Cecelia’s house. Honey, there were probably thirty buck-nekkid beautiful people in that pool when we got there; with squinty eyes, by the light of the quarter-moon, it could have been a gathering on Olympus. Someone had brought along a case of wine and a big bag of grapes; these sybarites were lolling around in the water, feeding each other grapes and passing bottles of wine, the people on the concrete apron around the pool carefully placing joints between the lips of the bathers. It was a decadent scene, positively godless and heathen. It was heavenly, to my untutored eyes.
Fred and I grinned at each other, and started dropping clothes. I laid my tee-shirt, my panties, and my cutoff shorts in a pile by my Doc Martens, and hit the water running, sending a cascade of water over a few of my fellow-bathers. Before long, we were playing Sharks and Minnows, a game at which I excel. I can – or could, in those days - hold my breath forever; I’d slide into the pool, swimming straight to the bottom. There I’d flatten myself to the tile and propel myself across with tiny mermaid kicks, then resurface at the other side, clinging to the lip of the pool, safe. It worked every time, especially when your opponents are as fucked up as mine were. Except…
…drunk old Dennis (whom, incidentally, I was to date, and come within an inch of marrying ten years later) decided to dive in, over my head, and start swimming with a furious kick. He accidentally kicked me right in the snoot, leaving me gagging and spitting, partially filling my lungs with water. I was swimming at a depth of about six feet, but I surfaced as quickly as I could, calling out, “Hey…guys? Is my nose bleeding?”
A stunned silence silence fell. I looked a Fred, who recoiled in absolute horror. Cecelia rushed over, dragging me out of the pool, holding a dry towel up to my face, a dry towel on which generous spurts of blood quickly became visible. Ming Ho took one look at me and pronounced my nose broken. Holding me upright between them, they walked me into the house and iced my face.
“You need to go to the hospital,” said Ming Ho.
“No shit, she needs to go to the hospital,” snapped Cecelia, pacing around the living room.
“Mrpohnurfgham,” I said, behind my towel.
“The problem is,” continued Ming Ho, with a nasty look at Cecelia, “I can tell you right now that they are going to want to set your nose at the hospital. It’s either that now or reconstructive rhinoplasty later – and we all know that you don’t have the money for that right now.” She put her finger on my chin, and turned my face to hers. “We need to get you really, really, really plastered before we do this, because they’re going to put the tough-love on you over at Mercy Hospital. I know those bastards. And the nuns – don’t get me started on those sadistic old bitches. They’ll cut you, just for fun, just because they'll suspect you might have actually seen a penis...”
As Ming Ho stood there declaiming on the evils of the Sisters of Mercy and reliving her boarding-school girlhood, Cecelia, always a woman of action, dumped a half-gram of coke on the dining-room table. I put most of it up my nose. I choked down a couple of shots of tequila. I took another one of Doc’s special morphine shots, and then she drove me to the hospital. Doc had been right; the doctor on call in the emergency room gave me the choice of what he called a “manual re-set”, or later surgery. I opted for the former – two rods shoved up into my sinuses and a smack with a metal thing, followed by some screaming and other histrionics on my part – and my nose was good as new. They bandaged me up and sent me home. It was about four-thirty a.m. when I finally got to sleep.
I woke up an hour later, with an uninvited person climbing into my bed.
Vick, a local "artist" (read: socially- maladjusted drug addict with delusions of sculpture) who'd been a) at the party earlier that night, and b) trying to get into my pants for the better part of a year, climbed in my window in the night, thinking that in my current, weakened condition, he might be able to get a better shot at poking me. I think he fancied himself the old tiger, picking off the weakest of the herd. Obviously, the tiger was much higher than I was - you know your Queenie - I pulled a .22 pistol from my nightstand drawer and threatened to shoot him in the nuts if he didn't leave. As he scampered down the driveway with his tail between his legs, I limped around closing and locking all my windows and doors, gulping oxygen through my swollen membranes. Goodbye, slightest breath of fresh air, adiós, breeze. At least I could sleep unmolested.
When I woke up later in the morning, I had the hangover of the century. As you might imagine, I was also enjoying a good deal of maxilliofacial pain. Bloody snot filled my nose-bandages as I vomited up those last two ill-advised tequila shots, and to add insult to injury, it was about a thousand degrees in my “historic district” (read: unmodernized) apartment. I was miserable. I hurt so much I had to check into a hotel in town just for the air-conditioner. I also had to make do with sub-standard painkillers during my recovery; Ming Ho yanked my pain-pill prescription from me because I'd done the morphine the night before. "Sorry, Charlie!" she said, in her sing-song voice. "You take these now, your resistance is down because of the hard stuff, you get addicted to 'em. You played your pill-allotment away; so now, when you really need it, you're going to suffer!"
The moral of the story? There is an old proverb that goes, “Take what you want – then pay for it.” For every euphoric high, there is an equally rotten low – and sometimes, one follows right on the heels of the other, just like a shadow.
One final note:
Acidman can call me a liar all he wants, the horny old goat; the sad thing here is that every word that drops from your friend Queenie's lips is the unvarnished, mortal truth. Now, a few of you have sent me e-mails telling me how strange this blog is - well, here's your explanation why. I've lived in the southland for most of my life and I’m telling you, strange things happen in the heat.
And now, for a bit of self-examination with regard to ass-kicking. The previous post is a reference. Do not try this at home.
My dear friend Cecelia and I first met in a black dyke bar on Pool Cue Night. As the two token straight white women in our respective yet overlapping groups of African-American lesbian friends, we gravitated towards each other, chatting it up and having numerous cocktails, making all the usual jokes about being reverse fag-hags, etc. Our lesbians teased us, of course, about “going off to hole up and talk about stick-pussy, right here in a dyke bar, in front of God and ever’body!”, but we clicked in some way. We were years apart in age, but we became close friends over time. Cecelia was like a mother to me, during a rough patch – which I’ll tell you all about in due course, you know – she fed me, clothed me, and housed me when I was sick and not capable of doing it for myself, when there was no one else.
Back in the late seventies and early eighties, Cecelia cut quite the figure in the music scene. When I met her, I had no idea who the fuck she was, but she was in a band whose name you would recognize if I were fool enough to post it. As such, she met a great number of musicians and artists, with whom she remained close even after her fifteen minutes of fame were long past. When, at the age of thirty-five, the jet-setting Cecelia got pregnant by her football-player boyfriend – who then dumped her in a cold-water flat in London – she came on home to the southland, to the US of A, and settled back in the little town she’d come from to raise her daughter.
Cecelia, therefore, enjoyed that measure of local celebrity which only being a minor star who has chosen to live in a small town can provide. As such, she was a popular woman – lots of friends, and also quite a few straight-up hangers-on, mostly kids coming through the nearby college. The young ones would hear her stories, and suck up to her in the attempt to latch on and ride the hipster scene as far as they could. Cecelia was fine with that, up to a point. Her young sycophants were welcome to hang around only if they, like Greeks, came bearing gifts, presents of quarter-bags and half-grams and blue pills and bottles of wine. If there was to be an exchange, she’d say, then let there goddamned be one. “Gas, grass, or ass, baby,” she’d say. “You know the drill.”
For a few weeks, there was a young gay guy named James hanging around. Big, long, tall farmboy, brunette, with a cadaverous aspect to him, like Lurch. James would bring Thai Sticks – the real deal, how he got ‘em, I’ll never know – over to Cecelia’s in the afternoons, and then they would sit around getting stoned and watching Guiding Light together, James begging Cecelia to tell him again about when she played with The Police, or the time she fucked John Cale in the alley outside Studio 54. I couldn’t stand the smarmy kid. I can smell crazy one a mile off, so I gave Cecelia a wide berth when James was around, and let her know why.
A few weeks after James entered Cecelia’s orbit, a Big Name Band – I mean BIG, on a par with, say, U2, came through a major city about ninety miles from our little town, to play a two night gig. It just so happened that three of the band members were old cohorts of Cecelia’s, so they invited her and nine friends to come and see the show from backstage, for free, etc. Cecelia and her group went, they partied, they had a ball – until two days later, when Cecelia got a call from the drummer of that very very big band.
James, one of the nine friends Cecelia took along (he rented the limo they went in, which was the main reason that I didn’t go), helped himself to the drummer’s laminated all-access pass while they were partying with the band at the hotel after the show. The next night, when the musicians were getting ready to go play that evening’s show, the drummer noticed that the pass was missing and tore his hotel room apart looking for it. It was, according to him, “a big hassle” not having the pass. Well, imagine the drummer’s surprise when – you guessed it – James shows up for the concert that evening and is busted by Security for trying to get in on the drummer’s stolen pass. The drummer recognized James as one of Cecelia’s group right away, thus the phone call. Cecelia went ballistic afterwards, calling James immediately, telling him to fuck off and never return, no matter what kinds of gifts he bore. He’d embarrassed her in front of her oldest friends, and that was unforgivable.
I sucked it up and didn’t say, “I told you so, you greedy bitch,” but I think I did say something about laying down with dogs and getting up with fleas. Ahem.
James did not take his excommunication well. He took to calling Cecelia’s phone at all hours of the night, riding by the house over and over again, hanging around her job, and just generally following her around town trying to make scenes in public. The situation grew so hairy that Cecelia even spoke to a cop friend about it, just to make sure all the agita was noted by someone official.
Well, one night some three weeks after the concert, while Cecelia’s little girl was off visiting her Ma-Maw, she and I got together and partied down. Honey, we smoked most of a bag of weed. We snorked up piles of Peruvian marching powder. We drank Bombay Sapphire martinis at the local rock club, listening to the bands and having ourselves a time. Before long, though, James showed up. We thought we’d be safe from his stalking activities in there - he was too young to be in the club in the first place - but Rudy, the door-guy, had been off in the bathroom doing keybumps when James snuck in.
James strode over, eyes blazing, and insinuated himself between Cecelia and I at the bar. Without taking so much as a breath, he got right up in Cecelia’s face and started in on a laundry list of her various evils. She was old, she was ugly, she looked like a man, she lived like a ni**er, and he was going to do everything in his power to take her little girl away from her. He’d been riding by the girl’s school, by the way, watching her in the playground, and she sure was cute, it was a shame that her momma was a dried out old whore…
Somewhere, around the time the word “playground” came out of his mouth, that neocortically pre-programmed Scots-Irish overdrive kicked in. I threw my martini in his eyes and just…jumped the bastard. All six-foot-four of him went down under all five-foot-four of me, and I sat astride him, pressing him into the concrete floor with my thigh muscles. I just started pounding him. And hollering like a pig-farmer.
“Don’t you EVER mention that little girl again, you assfelching cumsucker!” Smack! “Don’t you EVER come near her, you filth, you son of a whore-cow, you fucking LOSER!” Pow! “I’m gonna kill you here and now, put your mother out of her shame!” Blam! “You’re a big fucking disgrace, you know that? Why don’t you just go HOME, kiddo?” Bang!
Rudy, the bouncer-guy, just stood there, laughing – he knew me and he knew Cecelia and he knew about James. Later, after the cops had come and gone, Rudy said, in his musical South African accent, “It was a beautiful sight, man. Like a lioness taking down a giraffe, or something. I'd no idea our Queenie had it in her.” He was, incidentally, hot to sleep with me for months afterwards. Bizarre, I know.
The cops, too, had congratulated me upon my pugilistic victory. They were not amused when they heard the story of what had happened – not amused that this kid was in a club he was too young to be in, not amused that he was stalking the Town Celebrity, not amused that said Celebrity’s daughter had even been mentioned by this unbalanced character. They were, however, highly amused by the story that the witnesses told. After it was all over, they took James away in handcuffs – but they bought Queenie a drink. James veritably ran from Cecelia in the future, even going so far as to move across town to avoid her.
I've lived with this disgraceful memory for years, and I am still torn on how to regard it. This is the only physical fighting that I have ever done, yet - was I just another redneck girl, or was I a punk-rock superhero? I know I can never be a Lady with a track record like this, but do I even want to be one in the first place? I’m ashamed of my wild behavior…while at the same time, I'm ever so proud that I was scrappy enough to beat a guy’s ass when the rubber met the road, that I was crazier and meaner and tougher than he was. And I didn't break a nail this time. Hell, I didn't even muss my lipstick.
I am a mess, I know. I am going straight to Hell. Just wait until we start talking about sex. Shit!
I am a woman of flaws great and sundry, some of which, I have no doubt, you are already perfectly aware. I smoke too much, I drink too much, I cuss too much, I have a bad attitude, yadda, yadda, yadda. I could go on, but I’m getting depressed just thinking about it. Besides, my scarlet letters aren't the point. The point is supposed to be, believe it or not, my one spot of shining purity. I’m trying to highlight something good about myself, here. Self Esteem Management for Assholes! –by Queenie MacFarland. I feel certain you’ve seen it at Borders.
No, really. I honestly believe there is only one place upon which it will be safe for the unfortunate deliverer of my eulogy to tread, and that is upon the bedrock of my loyalty. Queenie, ladies and gentlemen, is loyal to a fault, sometimes a bit too violently so. Those people that I love have a rabid defender, whether they like it or not. You can insult me all day long, call me a liar and a charlatan and a whore, and I will most likely shrug it off, like a dog dropping a turd. Plop. If, however, one is so foolish as to insult or impugn a friend of mine in my hearing, or, God help you, a member of my family, I cannot be held responsible for my actions. I go into some kind of neocortically pre-programmed Scots-Irish overdrive, a blinding lust for haggis made of the stomach-linings of my enemies. I can’t help it. If I love you, I love you. I’m sticking with you.
Now, all this is not to say that I have been in the habit of fighting. Oh, heavens, no. In the sphere in which I was reared, a woman seen to fight has just performed her own caste excommunication. Ladies do not fight. That is for Redneck Trash. You behave. If you want revenge, you must plan a social humiliation, as befits a young woman of your station. Along with this pap, though, I took an unavoidable infusion of the old punk-rock sensibility from the pop-culture in which I grew up. The two are incompatible, if you think about it, and some crucial piece of the lady-training just would not stick. The violence of our time stirs the chthonic soup within, making my guts boil and pucker ominously behind a camouflage of lipstick and pearls.
Just ask my mother. One Saturday afternoon when I was a junior in college, I’d driven to my parents’ house early in the morning, for brunch. After we ate (and after I made a discreet trip to the basement to fire up the Sneak-A-Toke and do a bump), mom and I decided to make a run on the mall, so we took her Audi downtown to shop. As we were leaving the mall, backing out of our parking space, a kid in a Honda came flying past - literally, driving about forty miles per hour through a mall parking lot on a crowded afternoon. Mom slammed on her brakes to avoid hitting the guy. Once he’d gone by, mom backed on out and we headed out of the lot. The little punk who had almost hit us was waiting for us, waiting with his window down. My window was down, too, and as we pulled level with him, he leaned his bullet-shaped head out of the window and spat, “you fucking cunt!” at my mother.
Before I knew what was happening, really, my body was contorting itself and I was out the window, like Dracula flowing through a crack in a castle wall. The guy backed up, but not before I landed a flying kick on the bastard’s driver’s side mirror, knocking it to the ground. In a flash, I'd picked it up, and hurled it into his windshield, the impact leaving a considerable crack. As the little fool hurriedly backed away, I found myself screaming at him, "she's not the fucking cunt, asshole, I am! Come back here, you pussy! Come back here and act like a man!"
Oh, the shame. I didn’t think about it, I didn’t even know what I was doing. He insulted my mother, for christ's sake, what was I supposed to do? The whole thing was over in seconds. Mother was mortified. I mean, head-hung, red-facedly mortified. Also, I broke two nails. A black day, indeed.
Violence is not my métier, however. I can only remember one time in my adult life when I was provoked to do violence upon a person, and that was a severe case with extenuating circumstances. It was again my pig-headed loyalty - and a liberal mix of narcotics - that drove me to act like an ass in a public place. Don’t tell mom, but I’d like to tell you the story – you Confessor, you - it happened about a year after I’d graduated from college, back in the heavy partying days that we’ve only begun to discuss here at Inblognito. That, however, is another post altogether.
A businessman, wearing a suit and tie and carrying a briefcase sits down at the bar and orders a beer. The bartender pours him a cold one in a frosty glass, and goes back to his crossword puzzle - it's a slow afternoon. After a while, the bartender notices that this guy is holding out his left palm, examining it, poking it repeatedly with his right index finger, laying it alongside his face, and muttering at it. The bartender thinks, "oh, great, another fucking nutjob" and decides to keep a surreptitious eye on his customer. You got to watch the strange ones, after all. The bartender learned this during a particularly stressful night in the Cook County lockup, but that's another joke.
Before long, the customer calls the bartender over and orders another beer. Just like that, no fuss, and he certainly doesn't act crazy in any other way...the bartender, puzzled, watches the man out of the corner of his eye while he wipes down the bar. Soon, the man starts the palm routine over again - holding it up, eye level, punching it with his right index finger. After a short pause, he mutters something into his hand, makes a fist, then leans back for a long swig of his beer.
Well, curiosity got the better of our barkeep. He just couldn't stand not knowing what this guy's damage was, so he walked right over to the businessman and asked him.
"Hey, buddy. You doin' allright?"
"Yes, yes, everything's fine."
"Uhh...I hope you don't mind me asking, but, uhh, what exactly is it that you're, uhh, doin' with your hand, there?"
A smile breaks across the businessman's face. "Oh! This! Yeah," he laughs, "I forget how crazy I look to people who don't know. See, I travel all the time, but I have to stay in touch with the office." He made a broad gesture, indicating his briefcase. "I have a bad habit of leaving my cell phones in trains and planes and rental cars," he said sheepishly. "So, I had this surgeon friend of mine implant a cell phone in my hand! Now, I'm always in touch, and I don't have to worry about lugging a cell phone around with me."
The businessman turned his palm to face the bartender, and there our barkeep could clearly see all the usual buttons on a cell phone, as well as a tiny hinged antenna that seemed to fold up and down whenever the businessman made a fist.
"Ohh. Well, um, I guess that's cool," the bartender said. "I was just wonderin'...heh, um, you looked pretty crazy." He smiled at the businessman tentatively, hoping not to offend the guy - after all, he hadn't tipped yet. The businessman smiled at the bartender as a little digital beeping began.
"Excuse me," said the businessman, "I have to take this."
The bartender moseyed back over to his bar and started cutting up lemons and limes and oranges for the garnish tray, chuckling to himself over the guy with the cell phone hand. A few minutes later, the businessman walked by on his way to the Men's room and asked if the bartender would mind keeping an eye on his briefcase while he attended the call of Nature. The bartender replied that it would be no problem, and went to the stock room to pull out a fresh can of maraschino cherries.
Ten minutes go by, then fifteen, then twenty. The businessman still isn't back from the bathroom, and the bartender is starting to pity the guy, thinking, "damn, he was haulin' a load". Ten more minutes go by, and the barkeep gets worried. Another five, and he goes in to check on the businessman, to make sure he's all right in there.
The bartender opens the door to find the businessman buck naked and spreadeagled on the bathroom floor. He's arching his ass up slightly - elevating it - and from the distended asshole protrudes an entire roll of toilet paper.
The businessman hears the door open, cranes his neck a little, and shoots the bartender a nasty look. "Do you mind?" he says. "I'm trying to send a fax."
I have a question for the women who work the front desk at the doctor's office - no specific doctor's office - all of them, from what I can tell; the question seems to be applicable all 'round. What crawled up your collective too-wide ass and died, and why does it smell so bad?
I shit you not, my friend, I came this close to forcing a bad case of camel-toe on the pediatrician's receptionist this morning, a gaping slash of a camel-toe, created by and impaled firmly upon the forward point of my Prada slingbacks. The attitude! The sneer! The importunate demands that I hand over my driver's license and insurance card, impatient, fat little hand out - waiting! - as I stand there juggling a three-hundred pound pocketbook, the nineteen-hundred page medical history I was "required" to print out and bring with me to the appointment, and a feverish child.
I suspect this woman of making her husband's life a living hell. I accuse her of eating bon-bons until her ass hit a full two meters in breadth, then unleashing her rage at the unsuspecting by letting her shit-mummy self-image dictate her Little Hitler act at her job. I sentence her to ridicule by my own hands, and upon her I now execute judgement, the smegma of the medical community.
I am reminded of an Eminem lyric, apropos to the occasion:
It's harder than me, trying to park a Dodge,
when I'm drunk as fuck, right next to a humongous truck, in a two-car garage.
Hoppin' out with two broken legs, trying to walk it off -
Fuck you too, bitch, call the cops!
I'm'a kill you and them loud ass motherfucking barking dogs!
Poetry for our time. Evocative of the human frustration in dealing with modern life in the western world. Positively redolent with emotion, one might even say, empathetic.
Dedicated to my blogmomma.
I was a young 'un, just about to graduate from high school. The scene was sometime in the early eighties - I'm not about to carbon-date myself by admitting the anno Domini - and I was in my 'hippie' phase. Yes, I secretly pulled the lever for Ronnie Raygun at night, but by day I was a patchouli-reeking, hairy-armpitted, circle-dancing sprite of a Deadhead. Living on falafel and mescaline, bedecked with crystals and tie-dye baby-doll dresses, I'd barely managed to make it through my senior year of high-school without a) getting arrested or b) forcing my father into an honor killing, or c) getting thrown out of Beta Club and the UDC, any of which would have been tragic. I'd been a Good Girl for six whole months, now it was Spring Break, and I needed to let loose a little.
I hopped in the beamer and drove all the way across the southland to Athens, Georgia, home of those Bulldogs my high-school boyfriend was always rooting against. Bulldogs were not my scene, though; I was going to visit one DeeDee, my best friend who had graduated the year before and was already attending college there. DeeDee lived in Oglethorpe House, a dormitory on the campus of the university. She met me in the parking lot, and after the obligatory squealing and jumping around, she helped me get my things upstairs to her room.
Thinking back on it, DeeDee was a stunning girl. She was the only person that I knew at that time who had had plastic surgery; DeeDee was born with a nose like something out of Marlon Perkins, and her loving parents had allowed her to have it fixed when she was sixteen. Overnight, DeeDee went from a walking snout to ambulatory pornography - she was five-seven, a hundred and ten pounds, perfect, creamy skin, bomb-ass black and white streaked hair with little braids in it (very Debbie Harry, very cool in the mid-eighties). DeeDee had the most perfect little breasts I had ever seen - just absolutely conical and perky and tipped with an interesting shade of pinkish-purple. Needless to say, she was a popular Frosh, our DeeDee.
Now, DeeDee was nothing if not a compleat hostess. When we arrived at her own personal den of iniquity, candles were lit, the incense was already burning, a bottle of Cabernet stood to air, and a fine-looking hogleg stood rolled and ready in the tray. You know your Queenie; I was right at home. DeeDee turned on some Led Zeppelin as we sat down to burn one and have a celebratory glass of wine. As the conversation unfolded, it became clear that she had Big Plans for us that evening. She had already arranged the purchase of four hits of primo clownface blotter from her friend Scott, and had us an evening of keggers lined up that would make Girls Gone Wild! blush.
We got high, we gossiped, we did our toenails. I think I even shaved my armpits for the occasion, I can't remember. I donned a tie-dye Dead shirt, a pair of cutoff shorts, and my cowboy boots. DeeDee lined her eyes heavily with "black shit", and I even succumbed to the lure of a little lipgloss. Finally, we dropped our tabs, and headed off to the boys' dormitory across the parking lot. I was excited, but no big whoop; I'd done acid plenty of times before and felt that I knew exactly what I was getting myself into. Yeah, yeah. Some patterns in the carpet, lots of spastic giggling. Yawn.
Well! Thirty minutes later and I found myself tripping my brains out. We had started the evening in the dorm room of a twenty-five year old graduate-student cum drag-queen, who was holding court with a group of freshmen and flaming her balls off. His followers were passing around the biggest bag of coke I'd ever seen, and they were all watching and discussing the television show Thirtysomething with the seriousness of Aramaic scholars. The situation was bizarre enough without the fact that the wallpaper in the room had a message for me, was trying its hardest to form letters and flash out a message. It was creeping me out, so I started looking for a reasonable excuse to get some air. DeeDee was across the room, sitting on the lap of the frat- boy du jour; they were making google-eyes at each other and ignoring the rest of the world. I was absolutely ravenous for a cigarette, and so went down to the end of the hall - the Smoking Lounge - to get my nicotine on.
The Smoking Lounge was deserted. I took off my cowboy boots and curled up in a circa-1960 chair with nubby green upholstery, and began to study my fingernails. They were glass, pure glass, and underneath them was a sea of cool blue water, gently undulating in the breeze. That water looked good; like I could take a swim in it. It looked so good, I wanted to drink it. I put my fingers in my mouth, to drink deeply of the luscious wetness, to let it drip down my face...to let it caress my skin...
"Dude!" Thwack on the back of my head. "Are you tripping?" I looked up to see the RA of DeeDee's friend's hall, the hall I was currently on. "Get out of here. I can't have you hanging around here all fucked up. This is a Men's dorm. You'll get, like, raped or something. Go home. Go. Get our of here."
The RA began to prod me gently to get up, pushing me towards the door to the elevators. "Go on. Go back to your dorm and go to sleep."
I rode the elevator down to the first floor, mouth-breathing in silence, and exited into the warm spring evening. Now, I've spent a lot more time in Athens since that night, and I've come to know the territory a little better. Back then, I had no idea where I was, no idea how to get back to DeeDee's dorm, and no idea that I had exited the side of the building that faced the Projects and downtown. Nothing looked familiar to my acid-washed mind, so I just started walking.
Now, at this point I think I need to remind you how incredibly fucked up I was. I would have been hard-pressed to even speak, much less navigate, protect myself, or otherwise negotiate the world around me. I walked most of the way through the Housing Projects when I realized that I had left my boots at the dormitory and was now completely barefoot. I sat down on a curb to smoke a cigarette and watch the midgets in the asphalt carry the dead giant off into the trees, then stood up and decided to take a right. This brought me past a row of stoops, front porches for the Project denizens. It was a Saturday night and ever'body was out on they stoop and drankin'; the hoots and hollers at the mindfucked white girl ricocheted off the brick walls and hit my ears like glass breaking.
"You bettah go awn, girl! You bettah go back to school! You lookin' for one of our men, white woman? He ain't yo wite-trash babydaddy, no he ain't..." I felt something hit me in the back of my calf, and another something glance off my shoulder. I didn't look back to see what it was.
Stoned as I was, my fight-or-flight instincts were still at least partially operational, so I hastened my stride and headed towards the lights in the distance. Those lights turned out to be the lights of downtown Athens, where I wandered through the last-call crowds in gape-mouthed amazement. I was tripping hard, people, wigging out. Hallucinations - people walking past me had horns and tails and hooves and humped backs and horrible deformities of their limbs. I was suffocating. I had to get out of downtown. I hated downtown. Everyone knew I was tripping! That's it!
At this point, LSD logic just completely took over, had its way with me. I was a shambles.
I grew some wings, flapped those mucous-covered alae in the direction of the Arches, and began to wander the campus. I walked and walked and walked; it seemed as if the University itself went on forever. The place was deserted, silent; I was a bird soaring over the smooth pavement, the institutional look of everything making me feel warm and safe. Suddenly, like a hemorrhoid, up popped the familiar outline of Oglethorpe House. I was home! I was saved!
I entered the hemorrhoid through the fleshy flap kindly provided by the management, stepping high to drag my bare feet out of the thwock!-sucking wound I was walking through. There was no answer at DeeDee's (hemorrhoid flap) door, so I went to the downstairs Smoking Lounge - one in every dorm! - to hang out. I was starting to get pretty antsy; I wanted to talk to someone. I'd been alone all night. What if something had happened to DeeDee? What if she, like, never came back, and all my stuff was locked in her dorm room forever? Oh, god, what a nightmare...DeeDee was never coming back. I should try to find my car and go home. That's it, Queenie. Leave your stuff and drive, actually attempt to operate a motor vehicle, three states home, to your bed. There I'd be safe, there I could get these damn wings off.
Oh, my god! Wait! I can't go home! I have wings! My parents are going to know that I've been tripping! Aaaaaaah!
I started crying hysterically, laying on the couch of the Smoking Lounge, watching my skin drip off onto the tile floor and surge into rotating floral patterns. I could never go home like this! Skin all dripped off of me...wings...mom and dad were going to know I was a druggie for sure this time! I was going to have to go to rehab forever!
I sat there all night, hallucinating and freaking out, elated and miserable by turns, all alone. I think, even over twenty years later, that this was the worst night of my life. Finally, when the sun began to rise, I went back up to DeeDee's room and camped out in the hall in front of her door, so as not to miss her if, by chance, she came home. I think I fell asleep for a short while, waking when a still-tripping DeeDee accidentally stepped on my hand as she came lurching down the hall towards her door. I looked up at my friend as she opened the door to her room...and horror overcame me...DeeDee was completely covered in blood.
I started screaming and pointing at the lashings of blood on DeeDee's face and neck, at the clotted masses in her hair. She had blood smeared all over her thighs and arms - she was terrifying. Heads began to pop out of other rooms, and angry curses were heard. DeeDee stepped into the room and looked in the mirror, and started screaming like a banshee herself.
"Holy shiiiiiit! I'm dying!"
Now, mind you, neither one of us had quite come down yet, so it took us some little time to realize that DeeDee had started the Period of the Ages in the night, having spent the entire evening in a dark room fucking frat-boy du jour's brains out. That's how she had gotten so covered with blood. She stank, too.
As she showered off, I lay down in my bunk, praying solemnly to God and promising never to do acid again. If He would just make it all go away, I would be good forever. I'd never smoke another cigarette, and I'd stop getting stoned, and I'd start going to church, and taking care of little underprivileged babies...I'd build houses for the poor, if only He would give me my mind back. I wept softly into my pillow, little agonized whimpers, and fell asleep.
I woke up twelve hours later. I could barely move my legs, and my feet were encrusted with embedded glass and pebbles from all the walking, but I got my ass out of that bed and out to the beamer. I was going home, dammit. I had had all the spring break I could handle.
I never got my boots back. I never fully regained my faculties - this is a fact - and I never, ever, ever dropped acid again.
I am fucking bathing in the warm, rosy glow of bloggerly love. Ever since I was dragged off the bouncy horse at the playground (and forced to bathe and wear panties) by my new mommy, and shoved into the arms of my terrified and slightly repulsed father, the new friends of Inblognito are just multiplying like rabbits. Amour is in the air, glasshoppahs. Smell it!
Last night was for Daddy. Tonight is for Mommy. Come back later and read her present.
I just re-read my entire Inblognito oeuvre - no large feat, since it all still fits on one page - and in reviewing this post, I was reminded of another classic story from the titty bar, a tale as yet untold. If you haven't read the first titty bar story, you might want to. I have a feeling that titty bar stories are going to become all the rage pretty soon, their own category, nay, their own Inblognito subcontinent.
And, by the way? I'll write a sweet and loving one for my Mother, but this one's for Daddy.
So, I found myself at the Parachute Lounge, that mangy roadhouse, one fine Saturday afternoon, performing a total bar restock with Jimmie the manager and Dean the DJ. We'd spent the hours from one to three taking every bottle and glass and mixer out of the bar area, wiping everything down and dusting all the "display" bottles (expensive blue-and-pink shit that our good-ole-boy clientele never drank), and toting boxes of restock liquor and beer for the cooler from Jimmie's truck to the storage room. We'd finished, and the three of us were treating ourselves to a nice, long cigarette break, complete with a few nice, long, lines cut out on one of the dancers' makeup mirrors, and beers all around. We got to shooting the shit - like you do when you're coked up, running your fool mouth - and talking about the various dancers in Jimmie's employ.
"Now, Queenie, you're a good-lookin' gal - why'nt yew ever thank about dancin'? You know that Dixie and Trixie and Rhonda and Shelley make a whole lot more money than yew dew, and yew prob'ly are workin' th' hardest," Jimmie gave me a concerned-fatherly look. "Yew bus' yer AYASS out there. Yew could be a dancer."
"Jim, Jimbo. James. Queenie does not get naked. Ever. Like, my ass is so tight I shower in a camisole, fuck my boyfriend through a hole in the sheet. It's against my religion." I flicked my cigarette butt out the back door and into a muddy pothole.
"No way. Whut cherch dew yew go tew? I din't know yew were a religious wuman," Jimmie says, all serious, looking at me, Queenie, poised to put the best part of a quarter-gram up my nose at once.
I pulled away from the mirror, in fear that I would laugh so hard I'd blow the blow all over the floor. "No, man. I'm kidding. I didn't mean to ruffle your feathers." Play nicely with the children, Queenie. "I could never be a stripper. I mean, I have no problem with it, I don't seek to judge. I just can't dance. And I don't look that good naked."
"OH, YES SHE DOES!" came the cry from the other end of the bar. It was Ashley, and Trixie and Dixie, just coming in to start primping for the five o'clock opening. "Yew are beyewtiful, darlin'," averred Trixie, mussing my hair. "Ah thank yew awt tew at LEAST give it a trah."
I finished my line, and lit another ciggie. "No way. Unh-uh"
Two hours later, and the strippers of the Parachute Lounge had reincarnated me as a Roman temple prostitute. They'd curled my mass of shaggy red hair into little, delicate ringlets, pulling it back away from my face with small mother-of-pearl combs in the shape of corinthian columns. They'd painted my face with all their combined skill, which was not unremarkable - if there's one thing strippers know, it's makeup. Suddenly, I had smooth and beautiful peachy skin. I had eyebrows, and cheekbones and lips. Finally, they shoveled me into a miniscule latex "toga" and a pair of thigh-high white leather boots that had belonged to Sunny, a dancer who'd left them when she up and split in the middle of a shift to go and marry a trucker (who'd given her a thousand-dollar tip) and never came back. The boots were a couple of sizes too large for me - Sunny was a hoss, a big ole woman - but, hey. I wasn't going to do any actual dancing. I was just there for shits and giggles, to amuse the staff and the regulars.
When I emerged from the dressing room, the entire staff and all the sunken, life-beaten old sots who showed up at five for happy hour and titty were assembled, standing around the stage and clapping. Jimmie's breath was taken away, partially by accidentally inhaling most of a line by mouth, and partially by my half-naked goods. The owner - a whole 'nother blog post in himself - one-time Mayor of the Dixie Mafia, waltzed over, bent to kiss my hand, and asked to be the first to christen the garter. He pulled out five crisp hundreds, folded each over once, lengthways, and slid them between the elastic and the bare skin of my thigh.
"Now, darlin...let's see you daynce!" the Mayor roared, gesturing wildly to Dean the DJ to crank up some tunes. I wasn't going to do it...I had no intention of getting up there and shaking my little ass, but something - the roaring crowd, the beers, the cocaine, the latex cutting off my circulation, combined with the strains of Duran Duran's "Her Name is Rio and she dances on the sand..." floating out of the stereo system just made me lose my last inhibition. I strutted up there and did that thang.
I hadn't watched the dancers for three months for nothin'. I simpered and preened, twitching my fanny while slowly undulating my hips. I worked the pole like a pro. I lowered myself slowly to my knees and crawled sensuously down the length of the stage. And finally, to the last bars of the music, I flung my left leg out for a tremendous Rockette high-kick - and my white, thigh-high leather boot came flying off of my leg, suddenly becoming a dangerous projectile. I saw it all in horrified slow-mo - the boot flying across the room, rotating slightly, as if I'd put some English on it, arcing to strike The Mayor squarely in the left lens of his prescription bifocals.
It knocked him over, the blow from Sunny's boot, knocked the old goat plumb out of his chair, making him slop his Jack and Coke all over his white suit. I thought they were going to have to call the paramedics. The bouncers rushed to help the old coot up, and the crowd went nuts, screaming with delight and showering the stage with dollar bills. I hopped around on one six-inch heel, collecting my tips, provoking howls of laughter from the audience, and even more money. As I rounded the bar side of the stage, I heard Jimmie call out "Yew kilt The Mayor!", and I hollered back, "I told you I couldn't dance!"
I slunk quietly off the stage, and back into the dressing room, stripping off the toga and the remaining boot, taking the combs out of my hair. I went to my locker and pulled out the trusty old flightsuit and cap, resigned to being a cocktail waitress once more. The Mayor was physically unhurt, but the cheap bastard docked my waitress pay for a replacement lens. Not that this was such a big deal, as I made almost a thousand dollars with one stage appearance. But, so ended my short career as an exotic dancer. I thought it better to quit while I was ahead.
As if I ever doubted it, currently subject as I am to a menstrual cycle from beyond the grave, raging, raw, human-animal hormones that war against the societal and professional proprieties which dictate that when I really want to rip the throats out of my employees and feast on man-flesh, I have to instead poke myself mercilessly with my pencil and deny the urge...oh, and that begins the litany, children, yoked as I am in marriage and motherhood to a pack of ravenous javelinas who seem to explode in hungered hoots every time I sit the fuck down..."What's for dinner, hon?", as if I haven't already put in a nine-hour day at the office, in addition to feeding, bathing, clothing, chauffeuring, and speaking kindly to his offspring. I want to scream, "your babymaker, you bastard!", and feed it to him in slices, like a fatty pepperoni. His children who, no matter how often I lecture, scold, or beat, cannot seem to pee in an aimed stream, or remember not to leave their stinky wrestling clothes in an airtight bag under the bed for nine months, or close the refrigerator door. And don't even begin to suggest that my DNA might be at any sort of fault for this...noooo...It's his. Everyone in my family manages to keep shoe-drool to a minimum. His family? Not so much...
And speaking of family, I'm sure I'll be bleeding like the heart of Tim Robbins during Thanksgiving, too, when my mother-in-love comes to irritate the fuck out of me with her oh-so-superior attitude, and her subtle criticisms of everthing from my hairstyle to the way I fold my towels. Oh, yes. That ought to be a picnic! Especially knowing that if there's one thing I can count on this holiday season, it will be that my husband will be too drunk to stand by four p.m., leaving my ass with the fucking bag to hold, for the remainder of the "holiday party".
Thus speaks Queenie, little ray of sunshine.
I should look for some sort of bright side, really. Here - I'll start by thinking happily of my Christmas bonus, and the portion thereof which will go to my friend Ramon, the Mexican pharmacist. My new reindeer? On, Valium, on Lortab! On, Soma, Flexeril! On, Xanax, on Vicodin, on Oxycontin, on Cocktail...
We had a very slow day at work today. Only three of the people that work for me even showed up anyway; a couple were out seeing clients, one took a personal day, one was genuinely sick and one is a big old pussy faker. It was no biggie, though - I think the phone rang, like, four times. At noon, I let our eight-months pregnant receptionist go home a early. Give the big, swollen grape of a woman a half-day - let her go take a nap or something. What can I say? I fucking embody the spirit of goodwill. Plus, I get a huge kick out of answering the phones. I never did that - had a receptionist's job for a "living" - and it seems like a hell of a lot of fun compared to what I do.
So anyway, I'm giving a programming computer a good rogering when the phone rings. I answer, in my best digital voice (I can sound uncannily like the lady the phone company hires to say, "The number you have reached - Seven Oh Four Five Four One Six Nine Six Three - has been temporarily disconnected,"). There's a wheeze at the other end of the line.
"Is this....uh...Ahm. I'd like to place an order?"
Well, at this point, I already know that it's a wrong number. Not many people call me to place an order over the phone - one of our products costs upwards of five million euros, generally a one-to-two year sales cycle of gentle and delicate ego massaging, wining, dining, and general clusterfuckage. Not many folks just call up and say hey! I'll take one. But, I also know that my company has an eight-hundred number that is one digit off from a movie-rental catalogue place, a television manufacturer, and a law firm. We get lots of wrong numbers. But I'm nice, let the old wheezebag get his talk on. After all, what the fuck else have I got to do? I switch accents.
"Yes, sir - how can I help you?", says my clipped, tired, suddenly-British voice.
"Yeeees, sweetheart. I'd like to order your Winter Adult Catalogue, as well as the European version - that's product number oh-oh-three-six-one - of Black Butts, as well as the new Cumsucking Sluts, Volume Three, please."
Now, even I, glasshoppah, have a threshhold, over which any pretense of professionalism is so much rubble. I threw back my head and laughed so hard that I got a little pee on my maxi pad, right in his ear. I couldn't help myself.
"Betty!" I hollered at full volume, "got a wheezy old coot on the phone wants to order Cumsickle Sluts, Volume Three!"
"No, no, darlin, you've got it wrong," intoned the asthmatic porn aficionado on the other end of the line. "That's Cumsucking Sluts, Volume Three."
"BWAHAHAHAHAHA!" I roar. Pulling myself into control, and flicking away a tear, I replied, in my best University of Alabama Tri-Delt accent, "Oh, sir, you've misunderstood me. I wasn't placing your order - you have the wrong number, you've reached the Atlanta offices of King and Sanders - I was just sharing the hilarity of the situation with my assistant!"
He hung up. I think he was mad. What can I say? It was a slooow day, and I'm not made of wood, here.
So, the other blog. And this blog. Let's talk about that for a second.
While I love my other blog - I do, really, I do - I am having way more fun with this little piece of blogspot catsqueeze than I have had on the internet in months. What, about seven hits a day, four of those from Russian Republic and Vanuatuian spambots, very few comments, a general air of an infrequently traveled country lane about the place...a country lane that leads, more likely than not, to somewhere like Cassadaga? But that's beside the point. I love the contrasts. To wit:
On my other blog, I try to be fair, to examine both sides of an issue. Conversely, there is only one side in Queenie's World, and that's Queenie's side. That's kind of fun. Of course, it makes it easier that this isn't exactly what you'd call a "public forum". Take a look at the sitemeter, for God's sake. Love it!
On my other blog, I edit. Here, I go splat! at the keyboard and post what sticks. Who the fuck cares?! Joy, above all my desiring!
On my other blog, I self-edit, meaning I throw up a filter between the fetid ooze my brain sits in and the world. When one is Inblognito, one may indulge in textual Tourette's to one's heart's content. Fuck! Piss! Shit! Satan! Mama!
On my other blog, I can't talk about sex, drugs, or rock and roll anymore without getting a screeching e-mail from a relative or something. Everyone I know knows about it now, thanks to the fucking newspaper. And where's the fun in that?
On my other blog, I cannot, for the sake of my family, tell the whole truth. Here, it's anything goes. Don't you love it???
I never posted "rules" on my old blog, no list of shit you could or couldn't do, no roll of infractions that would result in banning, nothing like that. Pretty much anything goes over there, unless you really, really piss me off - or spam me - the former being extremely infrequent. So, in the spirit of contrast, I present the Inblognito Reader's Guide to Maintaining Your Cover:
1) Never, ever come at me with politics. This space is sacrosanct to fluffy-headed storytelling. Any politics with me will result in a poke in the eye with a dry stick. Unless America is attacked again and then all bets are off.
2) Never be afraid to ask questions; be afraid of the answers you may receive.
3) Don't expect links to news articles and shit. Pain in the Ass. Unless it's something really cool. Then, maybe. But I'm not a linker. I'm on the down-low.
4) Don't hesitate to cuss. Ever. Good cussing is like poetry if constructed properly.
5) Don't hesitate to ignore the login request for comments. I hate that shit, and if I were visiting YOUR blog and you asked me to sign up to comment, I'd be history. Buh-bye. Please, comment anonymously if you like.
6) Expect stories of a graphic nature. This site is not safe for work, ever, nor is it intended for consumption by anyone under the age of 42. Pregnant women, people with heart conditions, back trouble, and scurvy might want to refrain from going Inblognito. The mental images presented in this blog have been known to cause psychic damage in the unwary.
7) No, I won't tell you what my other blog is.
8) I will not be de-spamming this blog. If the spammers take it, I'm abandoning the place. If you see tumbleweeds, you'll know the bastards got me.
9) Inblognito will contain material offensive to just about everyone. I promise.
10) If you have a link on this page, it is because I read your blog every day. A link here puts you under no obligation to link back. Do it if you like, but I won't ask for it and I won't expect it. I hate shit like that, anyway. Reminds me of fucking Girl Scouts.
Don't get me started on the Girl Scouts, the cunts, the little dentatas-in-training. I had a horrible experience with the Girl Scouts...but something tells me I should save that for another time...
Ah, yes. So we find ourselves again together, glasshoppah.
Have I even started on all the fucked-up jobs I've had in my short, happy life? Well, I have; I am the only child of wealthy parents who were determined not to spoil their precious, darling, perfect, sole-bearer of the bloodline. I became familiar with the word "pressure" at a tremendously early age, and have almost, since then, managed to totally perfect the act of just-squeaking-by. Not Living Up To Her Potential, yet Playing Well With Others. I'm a slacker, no matter how hard my parents tried to bring me up as the best sort of political trophy-wife. My folks have always showered my worthless ass with Nice Things - the best of brands, the Newest of the New - but have never otherwise given me a dime. When one is trying to pay the rent, all the Chanel in the world won't help you. Unless one sells it, thereby risking the wrath of She Who Must Be Obeyed, one's mother. I've worked a lot in the past twenty years...with such a minimum of effort.
My first job ever started when I was fifteen. My father (lord bless and keep him) signed for my work permit, but the only place that would hire a fifteen-year old was a fast-food restaurant. The choices were limited in my small, southern town, so I opted, as is my wont, for the path of least resistance: I went to work at a Captain D's. Oh, yes, my lovelies - wait, that should be "me hearties" - I sweated the polyester suit, I worked the captain's hat. With my hair up in a perfect French twist and my grandmothers pearls around my neck, I worked the counter at the Captain's for almost nine months. Let me tell you, that was the filthiest place, food-service cleanliness code wise, that I have ever been - and I've been in some filthy places. Shortly before I quit, they tore out the insides of the old D's, to remodel...and thousands and thousands of cockroaches fell out of the kitchen walls and onto the floor, cascading out like something out of a horror movie. Nas-T. I fled that bitch for the Red Lobster as soon as I turned sixteen.
The Red Lobster was a whole other kettle of fish. In the year and a half that I worked there, I managed to acquire a taste for cigarettes, marijuana, and quaaludes. I didn't know it then - because we didn't have "hostile workplaces" back then - but I was running from some SERIOUS sexual harrassment on every single shift. You had to watch your ass, or one of the waiters would grab it. You had to be sure that you took a buddy back to count out your cash with Tom, the manager, at the end of a shift, otherwise, he'd try to close the door and hump you. Moreover, one never, ever, ever, went in the kitchen when the cooks were doing their closing routine - or else you might find yourself in for a rough patch of Jungle Fever. It sucked. I hated that place - I did more screaming, hand-smacking, cheek-biting, and overall bitching there than I EVER have since. I had to; only the strong survived. I was virgo intacta when I left that joint - but there were some cooks missing some digits.
Later in my high school days I worked the front desk of a dry cleaners run by a pack of newly-minted citizens, fresh from the Black Hole of Calcutta. It was an okay job - I had to get up early on Saturday mornings, but I was there by myself all day, and so could toke the one-hitter in the bathroom, at my leisure. Other days I worked two hours after school, from four to six, bagging and tagging the clothes that people would leave to be cleaned. I fancy I was a good worker; I was pretty stoned, so I can't say with any certainty, you understand.
One Saturday I dragged my wake-and-baked skinny ass up to the cleaners, and the owners - whose English was an unintelligible gabble to my untutored ears - were having some sort of bizarre religious ceremony there. They'd brought the whole family, and were dancing around a picture of an elephant fucking a brown lady, whilst intermittently smashing fresh coconuts on the floor. There were candles and incense and weird mosquito music was playing in the background. I couldn't understand what the hell they were saying, but I gathered that there was some eye-rollin', hand-raisin', Hindu evangelism at work there. THAT, I understood. I've seen them hill churches. I was wating for them to pull out the snakes.
I bailed. Went home and went back to bed. Just too weird.
I've been a dog walker, a pastry-chef, a cocktail waitress in a titty bar, a food waitress, a lounge singer, an unpaid musician, a phone psychic (long story, and entirely different blogpost), a museum historian, a photographer's manager, a market analyst, a traveling salesman, and a tech consultant, with weird little interludes of part-time extraness thrown in. I have had some fucking odd jobs, people. Hell, the job I have now is weird.
But we won't talk about that just yet. I have years fucked-up shit to get off my breast before we even go there.
Do you make up nicknames for your neighbors?
I do; my husband laughs at me endlessly for the habit. To wit: I have a family of fucking crazies living across the street from me, real out-and-out loons, with most of the funhouse atmosphere centering around the adult female, whom I like to call the Red Devil. The Red Devil can most often be found working in the yard at 3am, or, in the unlikely event of a snowstorm, building a snowman in the yard, barefoot, in a cotton nightgown. She's a real odd duck; I can't tell if she's faking this Chaillot routine or if she's really batters. The husband (whom I call Fat Pat) is just as bad; he has a thing for cranking up his outdoor construction lanterns and bopping things with a hammer in the middle of the night. These people are pack rats; they have a fenced-in quarter acre behind their house in which you literally cannot see the ground. So. Much. Crap. Their garage is the same - no car has ever darkened its door. It's so filled to the gills with boxes of useless shit and broken appliances that you can't even reach the back door, much less aspire to park there. They homeschool their children, poor things; the youngest girl, at twelve, has a poor appreciation for all modern concepts of personal hygiene, weighs in at around 250 and is still attempting to dress like Britney. I won't speak of the boy; it seems that, in lieu of schooling, he mows lawns all day. Every. Day. I can't vouch that the elevator actually reaches penthouse. As a unit, they're The Crazy People. Come on. Can you blame me?
Then, down the street, we have a pack of Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormons or some such; I call 'em all Mormons for expediency, and sort 'em by color. We got the White Mormons, and the Black Mormons. Both sets are nice enough folks, but they tend to gasp in terror if you hand 'em a Coca-Cola or, heaven forfend, light up a cigarette in their presence. Not exactly "come over for barbecue and some cold ones" kind of neighbors. Also, they have Meetings every week, Meetings of a somewhat nebulous nature, but which invariably result in a traffic jam on my own goddamn suburban street. Just try to find a place to parallel park in my hood on Meeting Day. Forget it. Fucking Mormons.
Around the corner, we have Doctor God. He's a single man living in a family hood, which is unremarkable enough, I suppose, but I insist on remarking it. He's six foot eight, bald as a billiard ball, cadaverously physiognomied, and totally obsessed with a) his BMW fuck-you! series, and b) his lawn. Seriously, the guy will come home after a thirty-six hour hospital stint and trim his fucking hedges with a scalpel. He never speaks, nods, smiles, or in any other way acknowledges the presence of other beings. It's Doctor God's movie, and as an extra, you're damn well supposed to know your place. And for God's sake, don't look Ms. Lopez in the eyes. Total medical diva, for which I have no tolerance. I insist on pestering him whenever I see him, smiling, waving gaily, hollering, "HI, DOC! HOWZIT HANGIN'??" at the top of my lungs when I happen upon him shopping at the neighborhood Publix. Doctor God can rot - he's never opening up my head, the insufferable prick. I plan, instead, to Kill him with Kindness.
I think I've really passed my prime on the nicknames, though. I crested when my husband and I were first married and living in the downstairs apartment of a duplex house. We had a nice enough guy, a pilot, who lived there when we first moved in. Got along great. He got transferred, and in move two twenty-three year old girls, University rejects who'd decided on long-term careers as bartenders and Retail Merchandisers. THAY BOWTH TAWLKED REELY LOUD IN REAL LAHK VALLEY-GIRL GOES TO ATLANTA accents; you could hear every droning, insipid word they said. They wore horribly clunky shoes, booming up and down the stairs to the side of the house at all hours, usually with a drunk boy or other in tow. Them girls did plenty of fuckin', I'll give 'em that. There was practically a revolving door on the place - a new set of cars parked on the curb almost every night. They did plenty of partyin', too...they threw a kegger that collapsed the back deck outside our house...the night I brought my newborn son home from the hospital, the bitches. We were scheduled to move out of there and into our own home within two weeks, and they knew both when I was due and when we were moving...and they had five hundred people dripping out of and around my house, all night long, the third night of my son's life. It got even better when the ambulances and police started arriving. Damn. I hated those chicks.
Oh, their nicknames? Short, sweet. I called 'em the Cuntbags. To their faces, even, after the Deck Incident... bitches...
Do you have people on your blogroll that you don't really like? I mean, they wrote something you thought was funny, like, a year ago, so you linked 'em, and now they come and comment at your blog all the time and send friendly e-mails and are all-around nice chaps, but when you read the drivel they post you want to hurl? Really projectile-vomit inducing stupid writing, usually of the hard left, extreme right, or bizarro sexual variety? And now you're all friendly with 'em, and don't want to de-link them, because it would become a big deal...but you want to delete the link because you never click on it except by accident and it's just cluttering up your page?
And don't get me started on the friend of yours from five years ago who blogs too and found your site from Google and now wants you to crosslink, even though you think she's a vapid twit and wouldn't leave her alone in the room with your husband for five seconds? What about her sorry ass? Do you de-link her and have a big thing, or just let it slide? Come on, people. I want to know these things. I am woefully poorly-socialized; as an only child, I sometimes can't navigate these delicate social straits without assistance.
TMI comes in many guises, glasshoppah. Some people's innermost thougts are best left unrecorded. With that in mind, I shall seek no links for inblognito. After all, the whole point of the thing is the peace and quiet. Nasty as I wanna be.