Inblognito

Satisfaction

I got it, the full kit model. Oh, my God. I cannot even describe to you the sweet pleasure that comes with using the best vacuum cleaner in the world, nor can I even attempt to describe the utter filth that it drew out of the carpet in my already freshly-vacuumed (with the old machine) bedroom floor. Holy crap!

We're talking mounds of shit, here. We're talking a veritable Mojave of dust. I may post a photo of the next filter-emptying, just so you can see that my transports of joy are not totally baseless.

I'm not sure, but I may have just had an orgasm.

Fucking A. I gotta call Momma. She gots to get one of these.

Biblical

I've been kind of torn as to whether I should talk about the tsunami over here or not. Usually I like to keep myself on the level of Good-time Queenie - snarky, kind of an asshole, but deadpan honest and giggling all the way. That's not exactly the framework from which to address an Act of God on such a crippling, worldwide scale...not without coming across like a dickhead, anyway.

Be that as it may, I'm talking about it, because I just can't not talk about it. Yes, I'm one of those people who downloaded and watched all the videos they could find; I did so not out of some sick macabre fascination, believe it or not, but because I had no idea what a tsunami really consisted of. Oh, yeah, I knew it was a "wave"...but this...this is staggering, beyond my comprehension.

I've seen amateur footage from Sri Lanka, several videos from Phuket and environs, and one horrible, chilling snippet of film that claims to be from Banda Aceh. The sheer force of the water was devastating, the area so widespread as to boggle the mind. When I think of the earthquake that spawned such a massive sea-demon, all I can feel is awe that humanity even has a lexicon to accurately describe such chthonic destructiveness. Nine-point-oh. Holy Mother of God.

It makes you want to bang your head against a wall, doesn't it, seeing this big huge horrible thing that nobody can control, just riding rough-shod over life as we know it. It makes me want to bang my head against a wall, anyway. Those poor fucking people. Those poor sods. I can't just sit here and do nothing.

I'm not going to ape at this late date by linking all the various places that are accepting assistance on behalf of the survivors of this terrible tragedy, but I will send you directly to The Command Post for information on how to help, and I will most vehemently encourage you to give. Just a little something, man. We have so much, and there are literally millions of people out there right now that have absolutely nothing left.

I was in Target today, buying a new shower curtain and some towels. I struck up a conversation with Maxine, my checker, a West Indian lady with a glorious, resonant voice, reminiscent of a cello. She said that her sister lives in Paris and they had spoken several times in the last few days regarding the events in the Indian Ocean - it upset both of them, she said, and they just needed to talk about it. Maxine told me her sister had, at some point in their conversation, asked her, "Maxine - are you ready?"

Maxine looked into my eyes, through her plastic-rimmed specs. "Th' Bible seh He come like a thief in th' night," she said. "My sistah seh, all we can do is to be ready wit' Him. And do you know, I t'ink she right."

I think she's right, too. I mean, you just never know...this world is a crap shoot; that earthquake could just as easily have been on the New Madrid fault, up under us rednecks. Be ready, regardless of your creed, because there but for the grace of God go you and I. Be ready. And give.

The Very Bearable Lightness of Being

I don't know what the fuck Kundera was on about; lightness of being fucking rules. See, I've been traveling under a cloud of vehicle registration snafus that prevented me from getting my car tag on time last month. I knew that it was only a matter of time until I found myself being served a Blue Light Special, so today was my designated day to get - as Acidman is fond of saying - all my shit in a sock. I did, my tag is now proudly affixed to the back of my rolling can of trash, and I am feeling incredibly relieved.

Also: tis the season of the balls-out retail slash-and-burn. What was light is now positively elevated; I just bought a king-size Ralph Lauren goose-down comforter with a 330-thread-count cover for $99.99, on sale at Stein Mart. Tomorrow? Off to Costco where I will finally be united with the object of a full year's near-sexual lust. Haven't seen one before? Let me tell you - the sucking power of this baby is beyond anything Orrick ever dreamed of. I've seen the, erm, demo. Trust me.

Yessss. We loveses it, preciousss.

On The Scratching of Backs

You know, I would really rather not see my name and/or URL on a list of purely reciprocal links at your site. No, believe me, I understand - you want to make all the folks who link you happy, even if you don't read them - but let me assure you, it's not necessary here. I appreciate the concern for my ranking, or whatever, if you've placed me on your reciprocal roll, but I promise you that if this is the case, you have far more concern for my ranking than I do.

If you have a blogroll you actually read on your page, followed by a list of reciprocal links separate from that blogroll, I'd rather be absent from both than present on the latter. You read Inblognito? Great. Fine. Welcome. Blogroll it. You don't? Then please...just don't link me at all. None of this pity-link shit. I'm not even signed up on the Ecosystem, so it's not like I'm checking to see who all has linked me. If I've got you on my blogroll, it simply means I read your site regularly. You don't owe me anything.

What? Is that so wrong a thing to ask? I'm not being snarky, people. It's my fragile fucking ego, here. It cannot handle the metaphorical ball-kicking that is its presence on your reciprocal roll. I don't have anything against the concept of a receip-roll, mind - I don't seek to judge - I just don't want to be on it.

Scattered Pictures

I did a Google search for images of (long pig) Michael Moore this evening (photoshop project, another site), and look what I came across in the process:

(You find amazing things on Google images. No, I don't know who these folks are).

Ahh. Misty, water-color memories...of the ti-tty bar...

Actually, the woman on the left looks a lot like a "Misty" I once knew, back in my days as a cocktail waitress at the Parachute Lounge. Misty was a stripper, a tall skinny hill-woman with a beautiful face (when her mouth was shut - terrible teeth), lank, dark hair, and a baby-chewed body. Misty was not one of the more attractive strippers I have known, no, but she was prized above gold among a certain segment of the clientele, the segment whose fantasies involved a "real" woman actually speaking to them.

I went out with Misty and her boyfriend "Hawg" after work at the titty bar one Saturday night. Misty and I smoked a fatty in my car on the way to their trailer for some cocktails; we arrived to find Hawg and his friend Tick cutting out lines of crystal meth and watching a porno. It was creepily uncomfortable in that single wide - Hawg and Tick were obviously dangerously fucked up and horny, and I had the feeling that my relative virtue was in serious peril. I declined the offer of free crystal meth and resolved to leave after one drink. I assume it was Hawg who slipped the roofie in my Jack and Coke, in hopes of a four-way.

Alas, poor Hawg underestimated my battle-hardened CNS; I was still able to limp back to my college town in the Honda, sixty miles away, only to collapse unconscious when I reached the relative safety of my boyfriend's front porch. My boyfriend had to carry me inside like a sack of taters.

Like the corners of my mind, baby.

Scrooged

Who knew Queenie would turn out to be mildly allergic to the antibiotic Biaxin? Certainly not me; I've been popping 'em for a sore throat - at my physician's direction, of course - for two days now. Didn't want to be sick for Christmas, after all!

My throat doesn't hurt anymore, but last night at about 3a.m., I turned bright red all over, and had a long visit with the Ghost of Christmas Vomit. I've been made to see the error of my ways, via a phone consultation with the doctor.

This morning, I could barely sit up to watch my babies get their Santy Claus. When my relatives all piled in at eleven, I was puking guts into a stainless-steel bowl and shitting what looked to be motor oil. Poor Mr. MacFarland had to take the Boo-Radley cousin leg-humping for me, and play host as well. He hates that shit; consequently, as soon as I can keep down a cracker, I owe him a hummer.

All the ham, the 'tater salad, the devilled eggs, the broccoli and rice casserole, the congealed salad, the sweet-potato souffle, the home-made bread, the sweet tea, the apple pie, the Christmas cookies, the fudge...not for me. I had Jello.

Now there's nothing on tv but The Sound of Music and It's a Wonderful Life.

Bah fucking humbug.

Spirit Drill

I am bursting with motherly pride. Like the old saw goes, the apple don't fall far from the tree; as such, seeing my sixteen year old son turn into a snarky motherfucker behind a keyboard just warms the cockles of my heart. He's on the school newspaper, and has a weekly humor column that cracks his momma each and every week. May I share?

***

Spirit Drill

Although Robert E. Lee High School Pep Rallies are some of the best I have ever attended, there are a number of flaws that could be easily corrected. The problem with our pep rallies is not that they are poorly planned or uninteresting. The football-pad-wearing, volleyball-throwing, skipping-your-toes-while-jumping-then-falling-on-the-floor competition was so riveting that by the end not only had I bitten off all of my fingernails and most of my fingertips, but I found myself sitting with my entire right hand jammed into my mouth, shaking uncontrollably, and covered with sweat… among other bodily fluids.

No, the Pep Rallies themselves are practically flawless. My compliments to whoever thinks them up, particularly the genius that devises the intricate relays and scavenger hunts between the grades. The problems with our Pep Rallies are of a logistical, locational, and technical nature.

First off, the gym is hot. Sweltering heat does not encourage getting pumped up and energetically participating in school cheers.

Secondly, it’s too crowded. When I am filled with school spirit and I am bursting with Wildcat Pride, I cannot sit motionlessly: I am overwhelmed by the urge to jump up and down and wave my arms back and forth in praise of the great Wildcat. Unfortunately if I were to do that in our crowded environment I would probably end up accidentally hitting some girl in the face or jumping on some guy’s crotch, and in a school where you can get in-school suspension for being late to class, this would probably result in a jail sentence.

Lastly, the sound system is extremely loud and distorted. I can’t verbally express my school pride to my classmates even by screaming at the top of my lungs, because Coach Trout is enthusiastically screaming the names of the wrestling team over some speakers that turn the coach’s quality voice into an unintelligible blur. No only that, but the amplifiers are so loud that they are likely causing irreparable damage to our developing ears. I am surprised that the school hasn’t done anything about this problem yet, because this could possibly result in some sort of lawsuit, and the driving force behind any school decision nowadays is the fear of getting sued.

Pep rallies aren’t the only flawed assembly here at Robert E. Lee High School though. Our fire drills also suffer from some easily corrected problems. The last time the fire alarm went off, I noticed the despondency with which the students responded to the possible emergency. Students would go to the restrooms, to the snack machines, to change their grade on their teacher’s computer, when they were supposed to be evacuating. Also, we don’t learn anything about fire safety, such as “stop, drop, and roll” and “don’t play with matches.” We need to review this stuff just like we review everything else in school, like reading. I learned how to read in Kindergarten, and they are still making me do it. If we spend all this time reviewing reading, I don’t see why we shouldn’t spend some time reviewing stopping, dropping, and rolling, which is a lot more useful if you are on fire. How would the school administrators feel if all the students who caught on fire thought thy were supposed to roll, stop, and drop? How would they feel when angry parents sued the school for not teaching their kids the correct order in which to roll, drop, and stop? They would feel fired is how they would feel.

Lastly, they are too short. Seems like as soon as we get out there we go back in. In real life, it takes much longer for a school to burn down. If we only go outside for ten minutes every time there is a fire drill, then students will probably only remain outside for ten minutes when there is a real fire, then walk back in and get burned to death, but who could blame them? They were improperly prepared by the high school for the fire, or so the parents will claim when they sue the school for not preventing their kids from catching on fire.

I’ve said that all these problems could not only be fixed, but they could be easily fixed, so pay careful attention, decision-making administrators that don’t want to be sued. My solution is completely cost-free…. no new sound systems need to be purchased, no new gyms need to be built, and no extra class time needs t be devoted to assemblies.
!
!
!
We need to combine fire drills and pep rallies.

We could have an hour long fire-rally that will be not too hot, not too crowded, not too loud, fun, educational, and realistically long. The problem of indifference would be solved by the students’ excitement over having a fire rally: they would jump up and run outside as fast as they can. Just like that old saying, “You can catch more flies with honey than with a truck full of immigrants…”

Whether or not this is actually true, the simple fact is this: it would be awesome.

***

Isn't he great?

A Debt of Gratitude

In this isolated moment, even sour, nasty old Queenie has a message of love and respect to humbly offer the men and women of the United States Armed Forces. We miss you guys, and we want you home, even though we understand the brutal necessity of the work that you're doing. Your strength stands between my family and the murderous horde; this I will never, ever be able to repay.

Merry Christmas to all of you, our troops. May God bless you and hold you in His mighty hand, watching over you until the day you come home safe, to the arms of those who love you. There's an empty place at my table today, marked by a small United States flag. It's for you, for all of you, my guests of honor.

You are in my constant prayers; you have my respect and deepest gratitude. Merry Christmas.

Cultural Illiteracy

I've always prided myself on keeping up with what the hip kids are into; I am nothing if not an au courant hot mama. However, there are some names floating around in the entertainment media these days that I need a little help with. For example, who the fuck are:

1) Tara Reid - you know, drunken redneck with an eyeliner problem and a penchant for showing off her still-puckered implant scars at red-carpet functions? Who is she? Why is this girl in magazines? You can see the meat and IQ equivalent on any given Saturday night in Panama City, FL. Better knife-work, too, for that matter.

2) Lindsay Lohan - where the fuck did she come from? I don't remember actually seeing her in any movies or anything...so why is she everywhere? And why is she famous for having a boob job? What else is new?

3) Kanye West - huh? Who? I'm so clueless, I don't even know if Our Kanye is a man or a woman. Hell, for all I know, it could be a whole group, like Pink Floyd. "Which one's Kanye?"

4) Ashlee Simpson - okay...the daughter of a good friend of mine "went" as Ashlee for Halloween this year. She wore a dark wig, a shitload of eyeliner (what is it with these girls and eyeliner these days?), a tank top, and jeans cut so low that her ass-crack was collecting particulates from the open air. I was like, huh? You're who? Nicole Simpson? She was a blonde...and that's just macabre, anyway. Needless to say, I was chided for my ignunce. But really. Her claim to fame is having a sister? I think I'd rather be known for my boob job (see above).

5) Nicky Hilton - why? Can someone explain, in words of two syllables or less? Because I don't get it.

And while we're about it, WTF is "The O.C.", anyway? I thought it was a headache powder. I think I need to borrow somebody's teenage daughter for a few hours. Get the in-fill on all this shit from an expert, so I don't feel so old and clueless.

New! Improved!

I've added Babalu to the blogroll. I like that Val dude. Plus, he's cute. And he can cook a whole hog, a feat I consider to be the height of virile manliness. Yum!

Cold Sore

Fucking meth-lab rednecks ruin everything.

Mommas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be The Computer Guy

Otherwise, they'll never get a bloody day off. Why? Because people are assholes, that's why, and if there's one thing I can count on this holiday season - every holiday season - it's being woken up at the fucking crack each got-damn day by some sales putz who's trying to work from home and hasn't read the memo.

Seven of the bloody clock. Christmas vacation. First day off in months. The phone rings. A groggy Queenie - who drank (&ctra) heavily last night in anticipation of a morning to sleep it off - picks up and grunts violently into the receiver.

"Queenie? Is that you? Hi, it's Bob, from Sales. I'm trying to send some specs to Beijing and my e-mail's not working..."

Never mind, Bob, that I spent hours earlier this week, explaining to each and every salesman that they must change their SMTP with their service provider. Never mind the tech bulletin-slash-memo that I carefully crafted during unpaid overtime hours and included in each laptop case, the memo with the easy-to-read, step-by-step instructions, on how to send mail from anywhere. Never mind that I'm on vacation, that I'm sleeping, that I'm still too drunk to even be considered hung-over. Nooo. Too much trouble, thinking. Easier for the asswipe to call me at home, at seven in the morning, and demand that I just "walk him through it".

Bob, if you had any inkling of the pharmacopia I'd ingested in the last twelve hours, you adamantly would not ask me to walk you through anything. You'd know better. You'd read the memo and run for your life.

Dumbass. "My e-mail's not working." Neither will anything else on your computer, when I get done "walking you through" this problem...

Finished...and the phone, ladies and gentlemen, is off the hook. For the duration.

There will be no recourse for Bob until Monday morning, the shithead. I'm going back to bed. Queenie has left the building.

Lies and Garbage

He knows perfectly well it was a Wet-Nap. I'm not that much of an asshole.

What? Of course my Daddy humps my leg, from time to time. This is Alabama.

FYI

I've added Go Fug Yourself to the blogroll. Hilarious. And did I mention that I went off my medication?

Ice Princess

It is not unusual, in the south, to experience sudden and dramatic climactic changes virtually overnight. For example, last night, it was fifteen degrees fahrenheit at my house, where two or three days ago the low temperature in this neck of Lower Alabama was something like forty. Our fickle winter weather is something that we accept, as southerners, and many of us - probably most of us - are damn glad of it and thanking our lucky stars that we don't have to use a snowshovel to park the car during the winter. We have the technology, so we prepare for what's coming, with shorts or with Gore-Tex, as appropriate. All that being said, I want to know why it is so difficult for the owners of commercial property around here to man their fucking sprinkler systems, and turn the goddamn things off when the mercury drops?

Jesus. It's fifteen bloody degrees outside, and it's not like we didn't know the "arctic mass" was coming...the local meteorologists have been collectively orgasming over this for days - down here this cold snap rates as severe weather. It's the fucking "Top Story!" on the local news. Why in the living hell, then, can't Cousins Properties or Highwoods Anderson or CB Commercial or Southpace or who the fuck ever send some minimum wage Bubba out to cut the god-damn sprinklers off?? It makes absolutely no fucking sense at all.

As you might have guessed, Queenie ran into a veritable iceberg this morning, an iceberg that the traffic guy on the radio (pissed me off) referred to as, euphemistically, ice patches. Ice patches, my saggy white ass. You've got three gigantic office parks, one right after the other like doorsteps, all hysterically spurting water all over their precious "greenspaces" all night long, terrified that one freaking blade of grass might turn brown...and do the math, bozos! The ground freezes, the water runs off the landscaping and onto the streets, and boom, fucking iceberg. People die!

I'm a very non-litigious individual, but large commercial property owners should be pinned-to-the-fucking-mat liable for damages in accidents resulting from water-overflow onto frozen public thoroughfares. Ding 'em for wasting water, too, while you're at it - after all, the news media never stops hammering away at the "thirty-year drought" we're supposedly experiencing down here. These bastards should be made to pay through the corporate nose for such blatant negligence. Their shit, on my street? Oh, hell no.

I know, I know. Bitch, bitch, bitch. It's what I do best.

Holiday Riches

I wish I had a got-damn nickel for every Chia-Pet commercial I've seen today. If I did, maybe providing my babies with a Santy Claus commensurate with the rest of their Private School class wouldn't feel like such an ass-fucking.

I'm just sayin'.

Queenie Discovers Electricity

A certain blogger, whom we'll call X, gave me a treasure earlier this evening, the tale of X's earliest memory: sticking a bobby-pin in a lamp socket. I squealed with delight at the sheer metaphor of it (you would too, if I welshed on this bloggers inblognito, which I won't) and speculated snarkily on the brain damage potential in such an incident. I was smirking...for a second. Then, I remembered...

I was eight, and we were living in Eufaula, Alabama. Long, hot-as-shit summer day. Neighbor kids were at camp. Cross-the-street girl was grounded. Swim Team did not meet. Cable did not yet exist, nor did X-Box nor Playstation nor even Atari. There was no internet, no computer. Daddy was on a business trip and momma had a migraine, so I was left to my own infernal devices.

I remember that I'd been on something of a Star Trek kick - I was even trying my sci-fi lit wings by test-driving some of the Heinlein "Young Reader" stuff from the public library, just for fun - and I was really into the idea of space exploration, new worlds, alien races. My head was full of it, imagining myself as Space Ranger Queenie, Mistress of the Stars, jetting around in a bad-ass spaceship, conquering worlds and bringing "enlightenment" to the galaxy in a slutty-looking paramilitary-type uniform that usually involved spandex pants (give me a break, it was the seventies) and "Bionic Woman" type biotech implants.

Yeah.

I decided I'd play "pretend" and make-believe a spaceship out in the garage; since daddy's car was gone, there was plenty of room for me to set up a good one. I dragged some boxes into a rectangle shape, up against the wall, to be my ship. I brought pillows and blankets out there, to put padding between my skinny little behind and the hard concrete floor. I whipped out the Majik Markers and drew an array of buttons and squiggly things on the tops of the boxes - control panel, you know - and I wrangled the perennially ill-tempered family dog into the cockpit with me, to be my alien second-in-command. I plugged in the radio, purloined from the kitchen, as my com station, and I was all set up. I was ready to blast off!

I pulled momma's car key - also liberated from the kitchen - out of my shorts pocket, stuck it in the "ignition"...which, as I'm sure you have guessed, was the electrical outlet...and "blasted off".

I blasted, all right. The recoil from that thing knocked me clean across the garage, leaving behind a broad ding in the driver's side of momma's Town and Country Wagon (from the back of my head) and the slight smell of burning hair. I didn't leave the garage, but I sure enough saw plenty stars.

When I was able to get the tweety-birds to stop flying in circles around my head, I very quietly disassembled my space ship, carefully erasing all traces of my ill-fated game, and settled silently on the couch with a book. I kept my best "innocent" look at the ready, just in case momma's migraine should abate before dark and allow her to see the car. After all, I knew my momma; if she found out I'd dinged her car AND done something that stupid, I'd get an ass-whipping and I'd never hear the end of it.

It hurt...but I learned. Kids are tough as shoe-leather, and you can't protect them from everything. Once mine got past baby-age, I threw all those "childproof" outlet-caps in the trash. Hell, it won't kill 'em...and they'll only try it once.

Lust

Today my Velocipater posted a luscious picture of the recently renovated Anna Nicole Smith (all dotted up for the mutant, but that's beside my point). Since this is Inblognito and I can say anything I goddamn well please, I have to admit the shame of shames: I am so jealous of that woman.

Before you recoil in shock and horror, let me reassure you: no, I don't want her body, or her career, or her reputation, or that fucked-up little dog, nor any part of her consciousness - and I certainly don't covet the intergalactic black-hole that is her life. I'm a woman of simple needs. I just want her drugs.

Can you imagine? You've seen her show. You've seen her try to walk. You've seen her in public, essaying to speak to the cameras without letting too much drool pool up in her cleavage. That lady is soaring. All the time, twenty-four-seven. What the hell is she on? And where do you get it?

Damn.

Strange Attractors, Vol. II

I've mentioned before that I have a sign on my forehead, invisible to everyone compos mentis, but, apparently, a glowing indicia to people who are seriously disturbed. Now, I can't see it to read it, but I've an idea it says something like, "I'm too nice and well-bred to tell you to fuck off!", because - and let me be brutally honest, here - crazy people love me. Seriously, if yours truly and one nut-job are in the same square mile, you can bet your sweet ass that said fruitcake is a) trying to panhandle me, b) trying to date me, c) a distant relative, or d) stuck up my colo-rectal in some other, less conventional fashion. You can depend on that shit, like death, and taxes.

My stint in L.A. was not my only stop on the West Coast; I also lived in San Francisco for close to a year. Now, San Francisco is a fantastic, beautiful city, full of gloriously varied and endlessly interesting architecture, restaurants to die for, shopping from heaven, and the best damn mary jane in the contiguous lower forty-eight, a veritable river Alph of it, running down into caverns measureless to man, and stuff. I loved it, for all it was, loved it even as I despised it for not being home, if that makes any sense at all.

For some reason, I had a terrible time making friends in San Francisco, and an even worse time trying to date. There was a chic nonchalance regarding personal ties that was la mode at that time, out there; I could never really master the art of faking enough "fuck you man, I don't need this bullshit, man" attitude to be a total social success. Still, I tried. I eked out a small circle of friends that I worked with, and did my best to become close to my roommates. A girl, especially a gregarious Southern loudmouth like me, has to have people, or die on the vine.

As for dating, well, it was a disaster. Every single white, black, hispanic, or asian male that I met that rose to any sort of dating criteria was gay. Or married already, or Committed to someone with emphasis on that capital C. I think I met about four straight, single, employed, literate, ambulatory, non-addicted males over the age of consent the whole time I lived in the Bay City, and all four of those were pricks, total and complete shitheads...because they were convinced they could have any woman they wanted - back hair, ass-zits, combover and all. And hey, they were right. It was a buyer's market.

So, as percentages would dictate, a good eighty-five percent of my San Francisco friends were gay folk and straight women. Now, know this about Queenie, if you do not already: I got no problem with the Family. I'm as hetero as God made 'em, but I love me some lesbigans and some gay menz. Straight but never narrow is my motto, and so I was happy, very happy, when a group from my office asked me to go out with them to the gay bar one Saturday night.

We met outside the Cafe San Marcos at ten; my friend Christie and I had shared a cab from the Haight-Cole Valley area down to the Castro District where the club was located. It was me and Christie, Rob and his roommate Kimo, both gay Hawaiian guys, cute as buttons, our friend Susanah, hottest lipstick lesbian on the planet and the only woman I'll ever love, and our friend Hannah, the dour and mousy yet conversationally brilliant and scintillating computer specialist. The place was jammed; crystalline acid trance pumped from the massive speakers around the dance floor, hot lights swarmed the ceiling, and people were getting down. We had a ball, all of us; Christie and I dancing madly with Susanah and Robert, Hannah and Kimo up on a speaker, all of us making frequent trips to the bar for a wide variety of brightly-colored, murky-looking alcoholic refreshment.

I understood that, at the time, the Cafe was mostly a lesbian place, but that all flavors were welcome and expected. As the night wore on - and the drinks wore even murkier - I noticed that I was receiving glances and nods from a not-ugly-looking white guy down the bar. When I moved, with my friends, to a table to cool down after dancing, he sent us a round, then moved over to chat. His name was Don, and he was up from the computer farms in Palo Alto for the evening. Yeah, he was good and lit, but he seemed very personable, chatting up my table, making jokes, making a decent impression.

When we finally split up for our cabs, Don asked me for my number. I was not surprised, and was even a little flattered, so I gave up the digits. Christie and I got in the cab and waved goodbye. As soon as we sped away from the curb, Christie pounced me:

"No way you actually gave your number to that guy!! Did you? Did I just see you give your real phone number to that guy?!"

I looked at her, perplexed. "Yeah? Is there something wrong with him that I don't know about?"

"QUEENIE!", she hollered at me, laughing. "That guy was naaasty! Did you see his teeth?"

I had to admit that I had not, in fact, made a thorough study of his teeth. Shame on me. I pooh-poohed Christy as a dental snob, and left it at that. No more thought on the matter. (I am nothing if not a master compartmentalizer.)

Don called me the next day, an action that was unusual enough to be remarked upon – San Francisco guys waited three days to call (?). The cognoscenti did, anyway, my friends informed me later. Don’s call was short and uncomfortable; he seemed extremely nervous about the whole proceeding, and could barely manage to make me understand that he was trying to ask me out to dinner the following weekend. He proposed to take me to "a really killer steak place" and take me to a show - sounded fair enough to me, so I readily assented. Queenie, as always, was game.

The week rolls by, the dinner date arrives. Don has no car, so he calls for me in a cab...and a tuxedo. This was my first indication that something was wrong. I mean, I was nicely dressed; skirt, sweater, heels - but not black-tie dressed! Don, turns out, wasn’t as handsome as my beergoggles told me he was at the club the previous weekend, but he wasn’t ugly...Kinda balding. Paunchy. Older than I thought. No big deal. He hands me into the cab, like a gentleman, with a big smile...and I see the teeth.

The teeth. God, how to describe them?

Have you ever seen an old hearing-aid from the seventies? One of the old-fashioned kind with the big, plastic earpiece that hooked over the outer ear - the kind that old men used to use years and years ago? Don's teeth were the color of that earpiece, a yellowed green, like old hearing-aid plastic, covered with old-guy ear gunk. These yellow-green choppers were veritably swathed with sweaters of plaque, visible fuzzies. Those teeth weren't rotten - yet - but they looked like they had never been brushed. Ever. EVER. The situation was amplified by the fact that his front incisors were long – unnaturally long, reminiscent of a cartoon rabbit. Those suckers were out there.

In the cab, Don began to talk nervously. His breath was fetid, and soon filled the enclosed back seat of the taxi. What made the scene, to me, even more piquant was what Don was telling me with these teeth, this breath: we were eating at the steak place, he said, because he never ate anything but meat and bread. At all. He hated all vegetables, he laughed! Always had! Hadn't eaten a green for twenty-six years!! Vegetables made him nervous!! Wasn't that funny?!? Wasn't that just a scream?! So could I please not eat a salad or anything with my meal? And could I please drink anything but water? Because water made him, um, nervous? Isn’t that silly????

I shrank back into my seat as the cab made its way across San Francisco, picturing the inside of Don's colon and just not feeling very hungry any more. Don’s eyes darted to and fro as he talked himself into a frenzy, his voice a high shriek, about how he hadn’t been on a date in a long time, since his fiancée died five years ago, and that I was really going to love the meat at this place, but really, to please consider his dietary requirements when choosing my meal. I made little murmurs of assent, trying not to look too creeped out, trying not to judge…really, trying to relax the poor guy. The poor, poor guy. Right?

So, the restaurant that Don took me to was a nice, quiet place out in the avenues, a little mom-and-pop steakhouse with an intimate feel. We were seated, the waiters placed our menus, and took our drink orders, and I have a hopeful sense that things are looking up. As I’m framing a few complimentary remarks about the menu and the décor, I noticed Don swabbing his face and head with the dinner napkin. He was drenched in sweat; it was running down into his eyes, down his neck. His shirt-front was plastered to his chest, and even his hands were beading up. Now, at this point I was more than a little creeped out...and the more I watched that poor linen table napkin get drenched and sodden and yellow with his sweat, the more creeped out I got.

I think I was a little green around the gills; Don asked me if I was feeling okay. I leaped at the opening. No, Don, Queenie is not feeling okay. If the waiter comes, please ask him to wait. Queenie needs to go to the ladies' room.

In the loo, I planned an exit strategy. I knew I was with a nutjob and that I had to bail; my every sense was screaming at me that I was not safe with this man. I called my roommates from the pay phone and described the situation and my location. Then, I carefully washed my hands, splashed a little cold water on my face, and made my way back to the table.

"Don, I am so sorry," I said, lying bitch. "I think I am coming down with something; I just threw up in the bathroom, and I think I'm getting a fever. I don't think you should waste your money on this nice dinner for us; I need to go home."

I overrode his every (vehement, smelly, and sweaty) protest, and insisted that he allow me to pay for my own cab - my own, private, sweet-smelling cab - home. I thought I was pretty slick about it, and when he called me later to see how I was feeling, I played up the flu, and hung up quickly.

I didn't hear from Don for about two weeks. When he did call me for another date, I very kindly (and untruthfully) explained to him that since I had heard from him I'd gotten back together with my ex-boyfriend on the east coast, that we were getting married, that I was moving. I talked without letting him get a word in edgewise, about how nice he was to have taken me out, how sorry I was that I’d been sick, how I knew he’d meet a nice girl soon. Perfect closure, I thought, the message clear: you’re nice, and cute enough to date, but circumstances beyond your control have intervened and I am no longer available. Goodbye.

Right?

I was not expecting Don's reaction. He flipped out. Started crying on the phone, about how I had led him on, that he was trying to woo me – he used that word, woo - that he'd called his mother and told her he'd met the nicest girl. He went rapidly from sad and depressed to angry and abusive, and started screaming down the phone at me, that I was a whore and a prick-tease. At that point, I, of course, hung up, cold and more than a little scared.

Monday, and there are a dozen roses on my desk. Tuesday, and there is a fruit basket and a dozen roses on my desk. Wednesday and there is a diamond engagement ring, a fruit basket, some daisies, and a dozen roses on my desk. Thursday, and there is all of the above...and a brown manila envelope just full of candid shots of me - in the grocery, in the gym, at the bus stop, getting coffee, etc. Thursday afternoon I talked with an attorney, contacted the San Francisco Police Department, told all my friends, and began to get seriously paranoid. Friday evening, and my worst-case scenario comes to pass: Don crept up behind me outside my San Francisco flat and bashed my head open with a piece of metal pipe, leaving me unconscious on the sidewalk, a mass of blood and hair and bone. I remain convinced that he would have raped me, and perhaps killed me, had my house-mates not just happened to come up the hill at that very moment.

The damage, luckily, was superficial, though painful enough. I spent a few days at San Francisco General, thanking my lucky stars that I’d already run through my insurance deductible for the year. Of course, police were now totally necessary – a crime had been committed. Assault and battery charges were levied, Don was jailed and later released, restraining orders were filed. It was a fucking nightmare, my friend, one that really only ended when I was transferred to L.A. I still think about it, from time to time. Obviously, since I’ve filled these pages – and your head, too – with all of it.

But, see? Strange attractors, and I’ve got a million of ‘em. I'm a goddamned looney magnet.

Unworthy

I'd like to take a moment, now, to bow to the wit of Mama Montezz. Ripped from the comments at Uncle Robert's Sit-Down-To-Piss Emporium:

No, I'm not a comely young lass,
and so you said you'd take a pass.
And that's just as well,
for from what I could tell,
You'd have pro'ly been crushed by my ass.

Ha! Mama, I really am not worthy of the brilliance. You've...you've encapsulated my adult womanhood, lady. I think I love you.

Holiday Cheer

Fucking Christmas, man. Oh, don't get me wrong; I worship at the manger of the baby Jesus and adore the Jolly Old Elf. I love the traditional foods associated with Christmas, I embrace the holiday spirit, I love the crazed mass-consumerism that, November through December, props up the retail economy through the other three-hundred and four days of the year. A good American, all these things warm the cockles of my little dried peach-pit heart. There are, however, a few things about the Holiday season that I just can't abide, but am forced to swallow every year, lest I be called out publicly as the deviant personality that I really am. I will, though, tell you all about it:

1) My fucking relatives. Christ, but if my semi-moronic Boo-Radley cousin humps my leg this year, I'm putting a cap in his brainstem. I shit you not.

2) My fucking relatives. My nonagenarian grandpapa loves nothing better to sit at the Christmas feast and bitch about the "niggers" and the "Jews" in his loudest, Alzheimer's-ward bray. I have children, here. He busts the N-word over the Honey-Baked Ham this year, and I'm wheeling his senile old racist ass out on the porch for the duration, regardless of climactic conditions.

3) The Holiday Effect. Meaning, I can't run in to the Walgreen's for a pack of Depends without waiting in a goddamned twenty-minute line to pay for them. People buying cards. People buying lights. People buying The Santa Clause II on DVD. Like I said above, I am all for consumer frenzy...but the fallout is a bitch.

4) Holiday Television. Do you want to know a secret? I am, quite possibly, the only adult person in the northern hemisphere who has never seen It's A Wonderful Life. I'm not kidding. No, really. I am pushing forty and I've successfully managed to avoid that hoary cinematic chestnut every year. I hate any holiday television that isn't animated - to wit: South Park holiday specials, Charlie Brown, and the Grinch turn my crank, "Not Without My Daughter!"-style "women's television" tearjerkers (A Mom For Christmas, The Christmas Tree) and the Jim Carey Grinch are absolute crap and will not be viewed. Not. Having. Any.

5) Claxton's Fruit Cake. Why, God?

6) "Newsletter" Christmas cards. Look, people - if our relationship is such that you feel the need to create a précis of your family's events and happenings and send it to me once a year, you need to face facts. We aren't very close, and I probably don't give a rat's ass. Quit braggin' and get a blog, man.

7) The words "Prince Matchabelli". It's a fucking earworm. Prince Matchabelli. Prince Matchabelli. Prince Matchabelli.

8) Taking my rug-rats to sit on Santa's lap. It's a seasonal nightmare, but a ritual demanded by both sets of grandparents. I usually block out about four hours to get it done, start to finish, and that's just ridiculous. Do you know what it's like keeping three children in a line for four hours? No? Then, Holy Mother of God, let me enlighten you. It makes me feel like Sisyphus, like a herder of spastic goats who've eaten coffee grounds, like I'd like to blow my brains out. My husband doesn't know it yet, but this is one holiday task that's his this year.

9) Unscheduled Christmas Carolers. It's nine o'clock at night. The chirren are finally asleep, the lights are low, hubby is mixing a cocktail and I'm just about to lay into a juicy bong-hit...and the doorbell rings. Guess who? Hark the Fucking Herald Angels Sing! Now, where's the cocoa, Mrs. MacFarland? Where's our wassail, our mulled wine? Nine times out of ten, you know my cupboard will be bare of such exotica, and I'll end up handing out all of our Diet Cokes, beers, and juice boxes to the assembled. Not satisfying for anybody, and I get another trip to the Publix. I fucking hate that.

10) Holiday decorations that sing. You know the ones I mean - you walk by a tacky ornamental reindeer head in the mall and it begins to twitch and sing Rudolf. Or, the small, revolving Christmas Tree on a motion sensor that starts to belt out O Christmas Tree! every time you get up to have a slash. I see so many of these things on display in retail establishments this time of year, and I always pity the poor cashier stationed four feet from 'em. He or she has to listen to it, all day, every day. Now that's a holiday nightmare, enough to drive a soul bat-crazy. Who buys that shit?

I could go on, and on, and on. Really. Fucking Christmas, man.

Shhh!

Act like you don't see me. I'm hiding from my mother-in-law.

A Question on Style

When and how did the Hitler mustache become the de rigeur fashion statement for the nether smile? The mostly-bare pube is all the rage these days - one sees it everywhere - and it appears to be a fairly recent phenomena. Think about it, those of you who are old enough to: porno-actresses in the sixties and seventies had a full cohort of bristly assets, as did the women pictured in my friend Kathy's daddy's full archive of Hustler, as did the neighborhood ladies one saw changing in the locker room at the YWCA. I never knew my mother - nor any of my auntees, and certainly not my grandmother, God rest her dear soul - to shave the bush, or even to give it a trim. A lady might shave or Nair her bikini line prior to donning a swim costume, but that was it. Pube fashion, if I may clepe it so, was loose and lank, much like the hippie-dippy hairstyles that were its higher contemporaries.

As late as the early nineties, most strippers still had a decent-sized bush, though trimmed down to smaller-than-average, mown and maintained like a cricket pitch. I know, because I worked with them, had said vaginas wagging in my face for hours at a time, week after week. One still saw pubes in a Playboy, and, to pluck out a real world example, most of the young women I knew would trim - for a neat appearance - and shave the bikini line, as always, but the Hitler-stache was still an as-yet-unknown fashion happening.

Now? Bare muff is all the rage, bald save a tiny little strip of fuzz growing over the mons. Porn actresses, nudie-mag models, and strippers seem to be striving for the "prepubescent boy with giant silicone tits" look, as does every woman between the ages of fifteen and fifty that I've seen naked at my gym in recent years. What's up with this? How did this happen? When did it happen? Why did it happen? A question for a sociologist, I think. A very special sociologist.

Not totally unrelated: In the mid-eighties I spent several months traveling around Europe with my family; as part of this trip I was farmed out to one of my father's underlings in a tiny German burg while mama and daddy jetted to Monte Carlo for a grown-up weekend of partying and cavorting in the casinos. Herr Underling had a daughter my age (largely why he was selected for the task), and Frau Underling was kind enough to take us to the local natatorium as part of the weekend's entertainments. Of course, as a seventeen-year-old American female, my legs and pits were shaved, as was my bikini line. Where I came from, having a stray pube hanging out of your two-piece was call for social excommunication, a huge faux-pas, absolute ruination.

As soon as my neuer Freund and I hit the changing rooms at the natatorium, I became keenly aware that I was the object of overt stares. Of course, I was doing a bit of discreet staring myself; I'd never seen a woman in a bathing suit with pubic hair growing, literally, from the crotch to the knees. Such women were everywhere, the norm, and I stood out like a sore thumb in my white, hairless smoothness. The dowagers and matrons in the changing room glowered at me from under beetled brows, and once we went into the natatorium proper, grown men stopped in their tracks to peer at the hairless chihuahua. It was awful.

Later, once we were back at the haus, I asked my German friend why everyone had been thus scrutinizing my pussital region, staring at it as if I were prancing around butt naked. She explained, somewhat shamefacedly, that it might have gone better if I had been butt naked; that way, everyone would have seen that I did indeed have some hair on my body. Germans had, at that time, no problem with total nudity, but shaving was a sign of loose morals. Evidently, in a Bavarian small town, only whores shaved a bikini-line, legs, or armpits. The people staring at me couldn't believe that Herr Underling - a respectable man - would let his daughter hang out with a teenage prostitute.

These days, all of American womanhood seems to labor towards the mutual goal of a completely bald twat, razor-burn, diaper-rash, and itchy growback notwithstanding. This leads me to wonder if the Germans are shaving muff now, too. Has our cultural disdain for the publically hirsute spread? Has the old shaving-equals-slut aphorism fallen into disuse, like our Southern one about red shoes and whores and children? If so, do you reckon the Hitler mustache is all the rage in pube-style over there, too?

I know, I know. Pole. Grease. Hell.

Excuses

I'm not feeling well today. I've caught a cold or some such, and as soon as I can possibly manage it, I plan to pass out and sleep the deep sleep of the just. My throat is sore, I've got a fever, and my mouth tastes like hammered ass. If I spend any time on the computer today, it'll probably be just dicking around with the site a bit, not writing.

As such, I'll repost an old story. You may have read it, you may not. First in the Titty Bar Chronicles - Healed by the Word.

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far, away, I briefly made my living as a cocktail waitress in a titty bar. I reveal this fact, believe it or not, with some measure of shame; you would not believe what a prejudicial revelation this can be for some people. "She must be a slut," thinks the man, salaciously, hopefully, when I drop this one in conversation. As for women, you can see a sort of switch go off in their heads. Like, "Oh. Shit, well, I liked her, too bad now I'll have to relegate her to the category of C-list women." Like you're soiled, somehow, your proximity with naked muff not your own a contaminant that you can't have escaped. Unless, of course, the woman one is having the conversation with was, at some point in her life, a titty-bar employee, too. You'd be surprised how many chicks have a stripper-job somewhere in their dim pasts.

I digress. I wanted to tell you a story today, a story about how, this one time, in a trashy roadhouse by the side of the highway in Arkady, Georgia, I was literally Healed By The Word. No shit.

I was working there, at the Parachute Lounge. Two nights a week, I'd drive the forty-five miles to the small town of Arkady, to don a skimpy simulacrum of a flight suit, one that had had its legs carved into "Daisy Dukes" style buttercutters, arms cut down to little cap-sleeves, and a zipper open to reveal a full payload of cleavage. Oh, and a hat...let me not forget the little hat. Ugh. While the girls danced on the makeshift stage, and swayed carefully atop rickety tables, I ran drinks from the bar to the customers in thigh-high leather boots with four-inch heels and Air Force shades. I'm gregarious, got a big mouth, and back in the day I didn't look so bad, either. Them good ole boys, them bikers, them blue-collar men, they tipped well when they saw a girl was workin' hard - and the harder I worked, the drunker they got, the more they tipped the dancers, the more they tipped me. The dancers, too, tipped me out at the end of the night. I made a shitload of money at that job, much more than was available to me as an undergraduate anywhere in my nearby college town. More than enough, in fact, pay the bills and support my nascent cocaine habit.

Ahh...my nascent cocaine habit, you ask? Sadly, yes - this was, what? 1987? 1989? Somewhere around in there. Working at the roadhouse on the weekends, playing music for next-to-nothing in the bar circuit on weeknights, one does tend to overmedicate. Perhaps it's the overall lack of daylight, perhaps it's the intimacy that one comes to share with those faces that one sees in the bar night after night....whatever the case, I liked to get down and party, wax the ol' skis, as often as possible. Usually nightly, beginning just before the second set and lasting until way after last call.

Regular cocaine use, though, did not agree with my robust Anglo-Saxon constitution. I developed a head-cold at first - scratchy throat, snotty nose - a head-cold that just never went away. After about six months of the snot in residence, it moved over into my ears and began to infect them, too. The problem was, I was snorting so much coke that I could feel no pain in my ears. You know, the old numby. I had no idea I had an ear infection until one day when I woke up deaf.

No shit, I woke up deaf. I couldn't hear a damn thing - not the TV on max volume, not the telephone, not the doorbell, not my Fender amp. I hied my ass to the University clinic, where I was chided by the doctor. He could see the lesions in my nose, and proceeded to relate to me a story about his own coke problem back when he was a drummer in a rock band in the seventies. I took the antibiotics and the steroids he offered, and decided to lay off the blow for a week or so, until the deafness and ear infection subsided. I had to take the week off work, anyway - real work, I mean, music-work, because, well, I was deaf.

I did go back to work at the roadhouse, though. I could read lips well enough to understand "Jack and Coke" and "Bud", the most exotic things my clientèle usually ordered. It was business as usual, mostly, except for the fact that a group of Baptists had decided to come down to the Parachute and picket the titty bar. Bear in mind, at this point in the South, every little town didn't have a titty bar - in fact, the Parachute had only been open for about six months at the time. It was a pain in the ass, crossing the picket to get in the place of a Saturday. Red-faced peasant women waved Bibles in my face as I walked into the bar, sturdy ankle-less matrons screamed at me of my certain dooming to Hell. This actually went on for a couple of weekends, as did my ear infection. It was nerve-wracking.

The second Saturday after my visit to the doctor, I went to work. As I was crossing the Baptist picket, an old fishwife glommed on to my arm, hollering something - I don't know what - into my ear and shaking the bible at me. The bouncer at the door jumped in to extricate me from the fray and escort me inside the rope-line. A few seconds after he broke me away from this zealot, I felt something cold and hard smash into the side of my head, just above my right ear. It hit me so hard I went down, stunned.

I sat up and tried to shake it off...but something was overwhelmingly different. On the ground, in a puddle some five feet away, lay the fishwife's Bible - she'd beaned me with it as hard as she could. Something about the impact on my head, combined, I'm sure, with the antibiotics and the steroids, had made both of my ears go POP! I could hear again. Woozily, echo-ey...but I could hear. The sound, after weeks of silence, was extremely disorienting.

So that is the story of how I was Healed by the Word. I moved to the west coast for a day job four months later. I dropped the "music career" and the rampant cocaine abuse and the waitressing jobs forever, becoming, fifteen years later, a pillar of the fucking community.

Life is strange. People are stranger. Don't judge a book by its cover.

Part Two

This is a story in two parts. Part One is below.

Chris was under me in the food chain on the corporate buffet. We worked in the marketing department of a Very Large Company, and I was the director of the staff he was on. We used to chat a little on our smoke breaks; Chris smoked these real long cigarettes, like Virginia-Slims or something. He was a tall guy, kinda fleshy, but not fat, if that makes any sense; he wore his hair slicked back to reveal a high widow's-peak. He had a shiny forehead and was slighly dish-eyed, like an Arabian horse. Decent-looking guy, but the vibe I got off him was totally gay. Not like I'd go trolling for, erm, strange on the jobsite, oh, no, no, no, but I say this because I started taking Chris out for coffee on occasion, having lunch with him...that kind of thing. I had no idea that he was straight. We never really talked about anything personal...and I was totally convinced that he was not of my orientation, anyway. All very aboveboard, all very much in the company of others on my staff.

So, one day we're having lunch, brown-bagging it in the office.

"Queenie? I gotta talk to you about something." Chris comes chugging into my office like a fleshy little engine that could, huffing and puffing and red in the face.

"Of course. Come on in, sit down. We'll eat and talk."

"No, this is bad, this is really really bad, " Chris flopped into a chair. "...I told Mary about...about us, and she's really pissed."

"Huh?"

"I told Mary. Everything. And now she's pissed at me!" Chris wailed, clamping his hands to his cheeks and looking at me like a stricken Bambi.

"Okay, slow down, hotshot. Who is Mary? And what about "us"? You've lost me." I looked at him in genuine puzzlement. "I don't get what the big deal is."

"Mary is my girlfriend! We live together!" Tears welled up in his Precious Moments eyes as he sniffed back sobs. "I told her that I'd made friends with you and that we smoke together and go to Starbucks and stuff, I told her because I want her to meet you, and now she's really pissed and says...she says..she's chaaanging the locks!"

Chris dissolved in tears and snot as I sat there thinking, what the fuck? "Chris. Chris. Big guy. Dude. Hey. Chris? Honey? Can I tell you something to tell your girlfriend that will totally get you off the hook, but might hurt your feelings in the process?"

Chris looked up at me slowly. "What?"

"Chris, I want you to pick up the phone right now, call your girlfriend, and tell her that I was absolutely, positively, completely certain that you were gay. Also, tell her that the only man I'll ever love dumped me three months ago, and that I am now rendered totally frigid. If I hadn't thought you were gay, I'd have never even struck up a friendship." I looked him in the eye. "And that's the damned truth, too. You never mentioned that you had a girlfriend, which you should have. I'm sorry if it hurts your masculine pride in some primordial way, but I had you pegged for a gay guy. I’m not interested. Deal with it. Mary can deal with it."

Chris sat up, drying his eyes. "Oh, that's okay. I get that a lot, actually." He smiled over at me, pulling himself together a bit. "Will you meet Mary? I mean, would you be willing to come to dinner with us, or something...?"

Well, I went and met the infamous Mary. Mary, it turned out, was another item entirely. Envision, if you can, the actress Sherilyn Fenn wearing an extra hundred pounds and you have an accurate description of Mary. She was gorgeous but heavy - like so many fat girls (and I can say this, because I've been one) she had a beautiful face. Mary was also rapier sharp in her conversation, her grasp of politics, and her sense of humor. I was engaged by her immediately - I liked her personality and her style much better than her boyfriend's. Also, she smoked weed and knew where to buy it, which made her instantly that much more likeable, in my selfish worldview.

Mary and I became fast friends. We hung out in the evenings watching TV together and getting stoned, we went shopping, we talked on the phone. I don't remember how the subject first came up, but Mary eventually dropped the information that she and Chris were heavily into BDSM. I'm not sure I even really knew what BDSM stood for at that time, but I think, somehow, that telling me about their so-called "kinks" made her feel better, validated. Or maybe it just got her off. I don't know. I didn't care. It was interesting - until it degenerated into the level of TMI, that is - and I was stoned, anyway. Relaaax, Queenie. No biggie.

One night, Chris and Mary announced that they were going to a BDSM night at a club in yon nearby city, and that Queenie was coming along. You know me; I was game, if only to get in the doors of the place to see what the fuck went on in them joints. We literally spent hours getting ready for this gig; Mary dressed as a full-on Dominatrix in a whalebone corset that made her waist look freakishly small, with a leather skirt and a bustier thingy that matched. And, of course, a whip. Chris, on the other hand, delighted in dressing up as a woman and posing as Mary's submissive lesbian partner, Christina. I watched, fascinated, as Mary made him over as a woman - very skillfully, I might add - and then Mary added a few touches to my slouchy jeans and sweater. Some boots, a crop.

After we were all ready and in the car, Mary turned around and explained why it had been important for me to "go with a Dommish look," so that guys wouldn't try to "do stuff" to me.

I just looked at her, thinking, now you tell me?

In the end, the party turned out to be a real dud. Some of the scariest-looking people I had ever seen - real four-toothers - all gothed out, drinking to a live sex show. Big fucking deal. I had taken clients to worse in San Francisco and L.A. Bo-ring.

I planted myself at the bar and commenced to drinking. I sat next to a normal-seeming guy, who later introduced himself as PJ. He wasn't dressed up or anything, and claimed that some friends had brought him by and that he wasn't "in to that whole scene". We chatted for no more than fifteen minutes, about the weather, local sports teams, the costumes of the assembled, and the like. Mary and Chris collected their 'oohs' and 'aahs' from the local BDSM community, and we three left.

Imagine my shock, then, when four days later, my phone rings at home, and it's PJ. I hadn't given this strange fucker my number! I asked him how he got in touch with me, and he said that Mary had given him my number. As I made a mental note to kill Mary later in the day, PJ spoke in a nice, relaxed way of how much he'd enjoyed meeting me at the club night, and that he hoped to see me again soon. I said that might be nice, and hung up.

Three months went by. I moved out of my parents' house and into the city, into an apartment of my own. Three more months went by, and I'd met someone that I was interested in and was dating steadily. Bear in mind that this is prior to the advent of the cell phone, prior to porting one's number everywhere one went. I'd forgotten all about that night at the BDSM party. Chris and Mary and I were no longer in contact, due to some of that TMI I mentioned - namely that I'd gone over to see Mary one day and that she thought it would be cool to sort of use me as a straight-man to her sex-play with Chris. Specifically, she wanted me to be there to add to his humiliation as she "did stuff to him". I told her no, vehemently, once…and then when I came over again a week later, she had Chris naked and completely bound to a column in their foyer, with Saran Wrap. I shit you not, Saran Wrap, layers and layers of it cocooning him to almost complete immobility. He was on display for passersby, because he’d been “naughty”. To each her own, and I never seek to judge – but don’t drag me into it. Nuh-uh. Queenie say "bye".

Anyway, life marched on. I even had a new job, one that I actually enjoyed. I came in late one Friday night. I'd spent the week with clients in the northeast, and had gotten stranded in a snowstorm in Newark, missing my connection. By the time I got a flight to my home airport, collected my baggage, found my car, and drove home, it was probably one-thirty in the morning. As I sagged over the threshold to my apartment, I started shedding clothes, making my way first thing to the bathroom and running a hot, hot bath. I soaked in the bubbles, relaxing for the first time in a week. I toweled off, put on my nightgown, smoked a bowl, brushed my teeth, and went to bed.

Four o'clock in the morning, and the phone rings. I pick it up.

"Hey, Queenie! What you doing??"

"Mrrphur - mrr - who - is this?"

"It's PJ, honey! Don't you remember me?"

Now, bear in mind that I was sound asleep and hadn't the presence of mind to ask the fucker how he'd found me this time. As I shook myself awake, I asked him, "Wha's going on? Why...are you calling me at this hour?"

"Because I wanted to see if you'd come over and let me spank that little round ass!" he cried. "I want you to come awn over, Queenie, and let me beat that thang."

I hung up, of course, and went back to sleep. On Monday, I related the story to my co-workers at the watercooler, sort of the old, “a funny thing happened to me this weekend.” It was quickly forgotten. Months went by, turned into years. When I even remembered the episode at all, I thought of it as bizarrely humorous - the guy was drunk and going through old numbers...maybe he'd called information...poorly executed booty-call...I didn't dwell on it.

Sixteen months or so pass. Again I moved to another part of town. I was been promoted twice, and split off into yet another company as part of a corporate merger. Once again, late on a Friday night when I'm sound asleep, the phone rings, and I answer it out of habit.

"This is Queenie," I said, mechanically.

"HAAAAY, baby, what's shaking??" Like he's my best friend.

"Who the fuck is this? Do you know what time it is? You have the wrong number."

"No, I do not. This is your old buddy, PJ! Remember me from the bar at the bondage night..."

I was awake now, and fuming. "Of course I remember you. NOW WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING CALLING ME AT FOUR IN THE GODDAMNED MORNING???"

"Queenie. I gotta spank that round ass, girl, I gotta spank it sometime..."

I hung up, pretty weirded out, and it took me a long time to go back to sleep. I told my boyfriend. I told my friends. I wondered just exactly what one could do about something like that. PJ had done nothing illegal, not a case for the cops...and, as usual, time went by – years - and I forgot about it.

He called me again in 2000, when I was pregnant with my youngest, married...and living in a different city! Wanted, again, to spank my round ass. He hung up when I put my husband on the phone.

This long, long narrative brings to mind certain questions, certain conundrums. First of all - my ass isn't even round. Second - where does this guy keep getting my numbers? After all, I'd even changed my name before the last call, when I got married. What the fuck is his deal?

I always wonder if he'll call again - if so, he's about due. I also wonder whether he's some harmless freak, or a real sicko who's been stalking me for years, and who will eventually knife me to death in my sleep, spanking my round ass all the way.

Part One

This is a story in two parts.

In the mid-nineties, my world fell apart. I lived, then, in Los Angeles, working in a field that brought home plenty of bacon and cast me into daily, nauseatingly-close contact with stars, agents, admen, and retinues of hangers-on. I was engaged to be married to a man just shy of completing law school whom I loved very much, a rakish, world-traveling devil who was still living where I come from, down in the southland, back at home; he promised to bring me back to the land I am made of just as soon as he passed the bar. I did not possess wit enough to realize it at the time, but I had the world by the tail.

I longed for home, though; this southern girl was not impressed by most of what California (no offense) had to offer, and I wanted to get out of the industry in the worst sort of way. I wanted to (no offense) work with normal people, with normal egos, and commensurate senses of self-importance. I wanted to be near my family, and I wanted to be with the man that I loved. I cried in the Cala Foods when the Muzak version of "Georgia" came on; I began to strike up hopeful conversations with people wearing mullets and driving pickup trucks, just for the tinge of homey nostalgia involved. It was sick.

Mama called on a Wednesday. She was in tears; she'd had a mammogram, then another mammogram, and finally a biopsy. She had a lump in her breast, and was frightened to death. Now, know this, so that I may not be accused of dragging it out, my mama is fine. She's hale and hearty lo these many years later; the lump was removed in one -ectomy and has never reared its malignant heads again. She didn't die, she didn't lose a breast. But when she called, I got just as scared as a whore in church. I sat still for a moment, my mind racing with possibilities...but in my heart, I'd known, as soon as mama hung up, what I had to do.

I quit my job. I packed my shit. At the end of the week I rented a U-Haul, attached my car to the back of it, and drove home to see my mama, dammit. She needed me. I had to come home.

Well, in retrospect, of course I was using the lump for my own ends, at least in part. I wanted to be back south anyway, longed for it, longed for sweet tea and people who said "hidy" to people they didn't know, for lightening-bugs and thunderstorms. As soon as I had an excuse I leaped on it, and ran back to where I came from, tail bristling like the Jim Dandy Dog. This doesn’t mean that I don’t love my mama, or that I wasn’t genuinely concerned. I only mention this realization because it was to serve me well in the weeks to come.

Why? Well, three weeks later, mama was lump-free, leaving behind all medication at the end of ninety days, and my fiancée had dumped me for a female law student from Venezuela. I suddenly found myself with no job, a car I couldn't afford, living at home with my parents, who did not need me in a physical way - and not living in a nice southern city like Charleston or Charlotte or Atlanta or Birmingham, either, but in a tiny town out in the middle of nowhere. No friends. No fiancée. No life. No nothing. Boom - all in three weeks.

I went into a sort of shock. I sat on the couch for a month and stared at the wall. Finally, I came to the realization I mentioned above. Then, I got up, got my ass in gear, drove to the nearest city, and found a job. That's when I met Chris and Mary.

A Room With A View

Despite all my misdoings, the MuNuvians have consented to bestow citizenship upon me and my unworthy little story page. That's right - I got the tap in a mail from Pixy Misa himself, late last night. This means that I'll be moving, shortly, to a plush new Movable Type gig, a gig from which I can track you back, ping your ass, post photographic evidence, and just generally make a nuisance of myself. Isn't it thrilling?

Did I mention that I am positively with child to get started on my new space? I'll post here for the next few days, just until the new Inblognito is ready to have a magnum of champagne smashed upside its head, and then I'll port all and sundry over yonder.

Thanks are due to my blogmomma, Mr. White Guy, Miss Lowry, and Mama Montezz, especially, for speaking to the MuNuvian High Council on my behalf, and I'll be bowing and scraping to Pixy Misa for the next ten years. I'm thinking "Pixy MacFarland" has a ring to it...

Thank you, gentle souls. I am transported with joy.

LATER: If you have any interest in seeing the new Inblognito take shape, please feel free to visit the place at http://inblognito.mu.nu .

Stanley Steamer

My blogmomma and I conducted a lengthy e-mail conversation several days ago; in this innuendo-laden and semi-Joycean thread she and I managed to solve most of the world’s problems, cuss out all our acquaintance, and just generally lay down the law. As a final note, we remarked on the similarity of our turns of mind in a self-congratulatory sort of way, and I think my blogmother said something like, “too bad you and I could never get past that whole ick factor for being with another girl, otherwise, we’d be set for life!”

This brought to mind a story, and an uncomfortable pause in the flow of bits between her house and my luxurious Price-Is-Right theme-party double-wide ensued. After clearing my digital throat and relating just a piece of the narrative, Key demanded a Rugmunching Story. She being my blogmother, I feel obliged to oblige, although I fear that this particular yarn isn't all she's hoping.

There came a point in my life at which I would have given my right arm to be a lesbian. I was twenty years old, a mere sophomore in college, but living halcyon days, people. I worked in a popular nightclub, was earning excellent grades, and was in love, love, love, with Gluck, who went to another college some 70 miles away. We kept the roads (largely rural and mountainous) hot on the weekends, running back and forth between his school and mine. I’d been dating this Gluck boy since my senior year in high school, and I just knew we were destined for one another, meant to be, the Ultimate Item. Unfortunately, on Christmas Eve of that same sophomore year, kid Gluck decided to reveal to me that he’d been humping this acid-dealer chick that went to his school for three months, the same acid-dealer chick who had stolen some of my checks, cleaned out my bank account, and given both of us chlamydia. It was Gluck's express intention to pursue a relationship with this girl – who, incidentally, looked just like the female in the Muppet Show Band - regardless of the fact that she was a thief and a spreader of disease. He preferred her to me. We broke up with great tearing of hair and gnashing of teeth; my love story was shattered. World, rocked. Self-esteem, temporarily non-existent.

My misery knew no bounds. I would never, ever get over Gluck. I would never trust another man in the same room with my heart or my twat. I sealed up, like a clam – no pun intended – and just went celibate. Oh, I remember weeks of depression, dragging around campus with unwashed hair and rumpled clothes that probably reeked of reefer, weeks in which I could not so much as look a man in the face without feeling a rush of hatred; “yeah, you, asshole. I know you a dog!”

Now around this same time I became very active in a University Women’s Society; being the little naïf that I was, I did not realize that ”Women’s Union” was pre-metrosexualite code for Hotbed of Lesbulldaggas. I sashayed up in there flaunting lipstick, pearls, and a crushed ego – so much fresh meat for these tough, smart-mouthed, and self-assured ladies. I was ripe for it, really, once I realized the name of the game, because I really believed that I could just decide to walk the other side of the street - become a lesbian - and give up men altogether. Nasty little problem, solved. Right? Right??

I began scoping the women, trying to assess whom I might be attracted to if, you know, I decided to switch-hit. There was this one petite blonde named Sue that I really liked; I mean, she and I were compatible as friends, she was cute and she did herself well, and I believed that if the mood struck, I could be persuaded. Additionally, Sue professed to be bisexual, and something about the fact that she had been with guys as well as other women made me comfortable enough to say yes when she eventually asked me out.

We had a real live date. Sue and I drove to an intimate little Italian place on the square downtown, and gorged on breadsticks and huge salads and calzones. We washed down this conspicuous display of consumption with two bottles of el-cheapo chianti, switching over to longneck buds once the tab ran high. When the restaurant closed down, we stumbled down the street, arm in arm, to a sports bar, to watch the Braves play the Dodgers and drink more beer. Now, around this time your Queenie started to feeling just a touch woozy, so I ordered a large plate of cheese nachos with extra jalapenos, with the misguided hope that more food would give me a firmer base upon which to continue guzzling alcohol.

After about three more beers, Sue and I got in her car – buckle up for safety! – and drove back to her place. I think I knocked every picture in the house askew as I went through the place; I could barely walk straight and had a trajectory like a pinball’s. With no thought to anything remotely sexual, I started peeling off clothes and heading for the couch. I was trashed, and just assumed I'd crash on the couch.

“Where are you goin’?” Sue smiled at me, backlit by her bedroom light, golden hair standing out like a fuzzy aureole around her face. “You don’t have to pass out on the couch. Come on in here where it’s comfortable. I have a Queen,” she said, referring to the size of her mattress, and I, three sheets to it, distinctly remember trying to figure out what kind of Queenie joke she was making.

I pulled myself up off the plush depths of the couch and made my way into her room. I slid into bed with all the violence of a runner sliding home; it was all I could do to hit the downy target. As Sue turned off the light and slipped between the sheets next to me, I noted, in passing, that she was naked. I remember thinking, "surely she doesn't think we're going to screw. I can barely see," to myself, as she snuggled right up to me and began to caress my face and hair.

At this point I should say that we started making out, but I honestly can’t remember if I was enthusiastic or indifferent. All I can remember is a constant refrain of "I'm fixin' to do a chick...I'm fixin' to do a chick..." running through my head. Eyes closed, her mouth on mine, my breast to her breast, her hand sliding between my legs, the room spinning, and spinning, and spinning...and suddenly, Queenie doesn’t feel so good.

I sat bolt upright in bed. “What’s wrong?” asked Sue. I could not for the life of me have answered her; I had to keep my jaw deadbolted to stem the flow of gorge attempting to exit my stomach by way of my mouth. The alcohol, the nachos…everything was coming back on me – a full-reverse of the digestive tract. I stood up and out of her bed just in time to hit the wall across the room with a projectile stream, a cuvee of jalapeño bits, marinara sauce, and body-temperature Budweiser.

I lurched towards the bathroom, spewing chunks as I went. Around the corner and into the paradise of cool aqua tile – and braaaack! – I shot a gout of vomit into the bathtub. Finally, I reached the toilet. I went down, and there I clung for life, a buoy in the puke-ocean I’d created. Every time I closed my eyes I threw up. This went on for hours, and hours, and hours. Sue, meantime, passed out alone.

I spent the night on that tile floor. I spent the morning with a big bottle of Lysol, a mop, and my shame. Needless to say, Sue never asked me out again, and the Women’s Union was marked off – in big red Sharpie – as a bad place to troll for dates, since I probably had a rep there. Later, I reluctantly admitted to myself that making it with girls was not, for me, a viable long-term sexual solution; I went back to my self-righteously miserable celibacy.

My dating life went on for years, as hetero and vanilla as ever you please – but there was one other time, many years later, when I was living in Los Angeles, that I was to again find myself on the receiving end of some really bastard shit from a man and looking to get tail from a lady, to cure all my ills. After all, it wasn't Sue that made me vomit that fateful night, it was the liquor talking. Maybe I could be a lesbian, after all...

That, though, is another story for another night. What? You know it ended badly. Shame on you for reveling in my pain, you schadenfreude perv.

An addendum? There is one hidden irony in this short tale; remember the acid-dealer chick that Gluck dumped me for? She dumped him, years later, for a woman. After her release from a Women's Correctional Institution for possession with intent, she now manages a Johnny Rockets not twenty miles from here. Her partner is a welder. Gluck is working on his third marriage, this fourth child, and a commensurate number of child support and alimony payments.

Sometimes living well is the best revenge.