Dream Job (Revised)

(1) You like what you're doing.
(2) The work is intellectually challenging -- real WRITING and EDITING, not just dumb-ass letter-typing, filing, and/or educational-publishing copy editing.
(3) You make enough to afford to live in a bigger-than-one-room apartment in an area where you want to live.
(4) You can wear whatever you want to work (i.e., no 275-lb dumb-ass executive assistant telling you that you need to "dress better" because your linen shirt that you put on that morning has become wrinkled a couple of hours later).
(5) You can go to lunch whenever you want (i.e., no dumb-ass admin assistant insisting you go precisely at noon for no reason).
(6) You come home from work tired in a GOOD WAY, because you've been WORKING and THINKING, not because you're just mentally drained from all of the phony idiots you've had to deal with all day.

I like my job. I like the work, and I like the people I'm around every day. This is the best job, and the best-paying job, I've EVER had.

I landed on my feet after the 7-year free-fall. And I ultimately landed a step UPWARD from where I left off back in 2007 when I moved to New York and embarked on my odyssey. I'm fucking lucky.

For instance, two women where I work now are in long-time secretarial positions --- one has a Master's in Physics (!), one has a Master's in Biology and has actually published work in her field. But they're secretaries. And I would have been a secretary had either of the two jobs in 2012 and 2013 that I was so upset at the time about losing "worked out" for me. I mean, I WEPT PROFUSELY when I found out I didn't get either of those... Had I gotten either, though, I'd today be someone with a bio on a company website reading how I had a Master's in English... but was an Admin Assistant.

Did I mention how extremely lucky and grateful I feel right now? I am FULLY aware of how differently things could have turned out.

All Apologies

Kurt Cobain's body was discovered and announced on April 8, 1994. I was 28. My 54-year-old married boss came over to see me that Friday evening (parking his car several blocks away, as usual), and wondered why I wouldn't tear myself away from MTV coverage and have sex with him.

What else should I be
All apologies
What else should I say
Everyone is gay
What else should I write
I don't have the right
What else should I be
All apologies

In the sun
In the sun I feel as one
In the sun
In the sun
I'm married
Buried

I wish I was like you
Easily amused
Find my nest of salt
Everything is my fault
I'll take all the blame
Aqua sea foam shame
Sunburn with freezer burn
Choking on the ashes of her enemy

In the sun
In the sun I feel as one
In the sun
In the sun
Married, buried

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah...
 

I'm all out of faith, this is how I feel

I liked this song a lot when I first heard it on US radio in 1997.

 

Didn't think about it much again until 2009 or so, when I was wandering—after being up all night drinking after receiving a hurtful e-mail from Sandra—down Bergenline in Union City, New Jersey, and heard it coming out of a shop. It mirrored my utterly hopeless feeling at that moment, yet... it was such a powerful song, I felt GREAT after hearing it, and somewhat hopeful about life, whereas earlier I'd only felt like shit.

The psychological complication of the song was that I related it both to me and my feelings for Sandra at that moment PLUS my knowledge of Sandra's past relations with Jim and how she'd relate this to him... (This overanalyzing is how I live my life, folks. It ain't voluntary and it ain't particularly fun.)

 

I think I've posted this song on this blog at least twice before in the past 7 years at various stages of my life. Tonight was feeling it very strongly again.

 

 

 

 

I thought I saw a man brought to life
He was warm, he came around and he was dignified
He showed me what it was to cry

Well, you couldn't be that man I adored
You don't seem to know
Seem to care what your heart is for
But I don't know him anymore

There's nothing where he used to lie
The conversation has run dry
That's what's going on
Nothing's fine, I'm torn

I'm all out of faith
This is how I feel
I'm cold and I am shamed
Lying naked on the floor

Illusion never changed
Into something real
I'm wide awake and I can see
The perfect sky is torn
You're a little late, I'm already torn

So I guess the fortune teller's right
Should have seen just what was there
And not some holy light

It crawled beneath my veins
And now I don't care, I had no luck
I don't miss it all that much
There's just so many things
That I can touch, I'm torn

I'm all out of faith
This is how I feel
I'm cold and I am shamed
Lying naked on the floor

Illusion never changed
Into something real
I'm wide awake and I can see
The perfect sky is torn
You're a little late, I'm already torn, torn

There's nothing where he used to lie
My inspiration has run dry
That's what's going on
Nothing's right, I'm torn

I'm all out of faith
This is how I feel
I'm cold and I am shamed
Lying naked on this floor

Illusion never changed
Into something real
I'm wide awake and I can see
The perfect sky is torn

I'm all out of faith
This is how I feel
I'm cold and I'm ashamed
Bound and broken on the floor
You're a little late, I'm already torn, torn

Surprise

Thursday, on John Lennon's birthday, I heard "Woman" blaring out of a STUDENT BAR on Guadalupe (the strip bordering Austin's University of Texas)! Nice of the managers to remember! (I don't like the insipid song, and I don't particularly admire John-n-Yoko's for-public-consumption forced relationship, but... I liked the surprise of the song coming out of a bar on Lennon's birthday in 2014. Respect for the man's work and being.)

A p.s.: I'm a reasonably open, intelligent person... Born in '65, and so not emotionally tied to the immediate drama of the Beatles split in '69, with all of the associated Yoko shenanigans (i.e., John bringing her into the studio, etc.). I like Yoko's "Walking on Thin Ice" CD compilation. And yet... I've never seen any video clip of John and Yoko interacting together on a basic level. I've seen their "performance art." I've heard their usually half-assed musical "collaborations." But every time they appeared on a talk show in the '70s, or were interviewed in the '60s-thru-1980, it was always John-the-mouthpiece. Perhaps proclaiming the greatness of both Yoko's art AND their relationship, but... Yoko never had anything to say other than a few coy, meaningless proclamations, i.e., NOTHING. I've never seen anything of the two together that indicated that they were the "Great Love" that John proclaimed them to be, or that Yoko was the "Great Artist" that he proclaimed her to be. (Perhaps to elevate his own love choice? More likely, to tie in to his own psychological desire to fall in love with a female-artist version of himself... like Stuart Sutcliffe and Astrid Kirchner, who made such an impression on him as a young man?)

Stepford Hipsters

If I see another guy in Austin that looks EXACTLY LIKE THIS, I'll shriek. I'm serious -- I can't walk out the door without seeing these clones!

What I find most creepy is that these hipsters think they're so "original"... And yet, in my 30 years of experience being around these people in various university/urban settings, I've found that they're almost always more sheeplike (in both dress and opinions) than the "unfashionable" Walmart shoppers that they constantly mock. There's nothing worse than hypocrisy.

 

Which is the better Self-Help song?

My vote's for the Stones.

Though, the Meghan Trainor video following does have a whopping 126,357,432 hits on YouTube...

REALLY?! Are people that "proud to be fat" that this makes them feel triumphant?

I suppose you could argue that the Stones song is misogynist and mean...But when I -- a young woman, a gay young woman -- first heard it on a classic rock station in the late '70s, I immediately interpreted it as a brilliant, open-ended (non-gender-specific) "fuck you" song to whoever had once spurned you.

With "All About That Bass"... Repeating the idea "I'm big and fat but I'm sexy" dozens of times doesn't make it so. Meghan Trainor jumping around in frou-frou pastels doesn't look "sexy" at all. Not only because she's overweight, but because she also looks like a generic mall girl jumping around in frou-frou pastels. Not to mention that overtly proclaiming that you're attractive/sexy pretty much indicates that you're not---that it takes promotion and hype rather than any actual innate reaction from viewers. This song's beat is sassy, but the idea isn't at all "sassy" to me; it's just forced, received PC-ness and, thus, a bit embarrassing to see the subsequent hit count: "I'm told that something is proper to like, and so I must like it."

When it comes to this Stones song, though... You're not supposed to (according to today's prep-school-raised rich kids now working for northeastern media outlets, for instance, and/or middle-school teachers) like it better, but... you do. Because it's 100% more psychologically honest, however disturbing the actual real sentiment.

Joan Crawford by Hurrell, 1934

 

 

Adult Milestones

A few weeks ago, a co-worker was telling me that he'd just bought his very first new car. He was in his 40s, as I am. All of his cars up 'til now had been used.

I was congratulatory. It really is a big thing to have a brand new car for the first time! But he felt a bit bummed since it had taken him so long to get one.

Me: "Well, look, you have a wife, you have a kid, you have a house, and now you have a car! You're officially an adult!"

Look at me: No wife, no kid, no house, no car! Geez, I haven't "achieved" ANY of the American Adult Milestones...

I guess my own Milestones were: Getting my Bachelor's degree, getting my Master's degree, getting poetry published, writing a screenplay, figuring out how to do a website just for Joan. I hadn't really THOUGHT about judging myself on whether or not I had been able to get along with a man or have a kid or earn enough money for a house...

Anybody can have a kid (seriously -- ANY shitty person can have a kid -- why is procreation glorified in any way? Any dog/cat/snail can do it); I can always get a car; I WOULD, though, like a house before I die.

Joan Crawford, May 1968

 

 

Almost stepped back...

...into creepiness. I almost called Sandra tonight.

She'd hung up on me weeks ago, shrieking, "You're drunk!" When, actually, I wasn't drunk at all.

There have been many times when I felt guilty over my behavior toward Sandra, but that particular phone conversation wasn't one of them. When she hung up on me, I suddenly got a flash: "She just doesn't like me. She was just looking for an excuse to hang up."

I cried and cried that night. Didn't want the real-and-true answer that I got from the ether: She was just looking for an excuse to not like me. Similar to many other "hints" that she'd given me over the past years. The most blatant being: Her not wanting to go to our former professor Wevill's reading with me. Not wanting to see Cat Power with me (when I'd bought her a ticket). Those two things were so black-and-white, so clear-cut. I still hung on after that, though, which makes me disgusted with myself.

Tonight, I had had a few beers. Was worried about Sandra's living situation. Her Sugar Daddy went semi-senile a few months ago, and his family took over and cut off her rent money, leaving her scrambling for rent/job. She had scrambled on over to Austin from Houston back in April, desperate. I had no money to offer, but tried to help with job leads and resume construction. A few days later, I found out that she'd gone back to Houston without telling me. Our contact had been sporadic after that.

I DIDN'T call tonight, thank god. I'm 49. Calling her would have been flashing me back to a much younger self, for instance: Humbling myself for no reason with apologies for no reason, just because I was so desperate for any connection with anyone. (Because a connection feels good. It's harsh to be constantly without one.)

From "Sunday" by Julie Newmar (March '08)

Newmar wrote this entry on her website in '08, when she was 74.

http://www.julienewmarwrites.com/story.php?idStory=59

I have lost the interest of this man. I am clearly heartbroken. I wish he would tell me point blank what he didn’t like about me, though perhaps it’s better not. I’ll just have to deduce this, which is more than painful enough.

Fact. I have not heard from him in two and a half days and it is like shooting oneself in the stomach, an immolation, a needless task. Of course, I will remove myself from anyplace not wanted and “belong” where life gives me force. I shall pack up my feelings and relocate, letting cyberspace—the fun I have at the computer—along with its new contacts absorb some of my passion. I was, even from my point of view toward this man, way too forthright. Right or wrong, it didn’t match his needs. I am chastened, reduced in size. The world holds much more for me. I accept the rejection, we all have had to do that. ...

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

When I was forced home financially to Austin from NYC in 2010, I remember a conversation with my sister-in-law at my lowest point: "If no one loved me when I was young and cute, who's going to love me now?" I, at 45 at that time, had absolutely no hope for anything, much less love. I am only gradually moving out of that ugly state; this highly personal revelation from Newmar at age 74 helped to enlighten me about a fact of life: Love is eternal, ageless. I, at 49, have many others in my future to experience, be heartbroken about, and recover from! :) 

From "Ron Paul -- Changing My Mind" by Julie Newmar (1/2012)

OK, so Ron Paul's running for president back in 2012 is hardly current news, but right this sec I'm busy browsing around Julie Newmar's website and came across this "editorial": http://www.julienewmarwrites.com/story.php?idStory=103 I personally don't at ALL "trust our youth"! But I absolutely agree with her re Romney and Obama. And about Ron Paul, when she says that he makes her think in ways she hasn't before, specifically about abortion. I, for instance, had/have long been a supporter of women's rights when it came to choosing what to do with our own bodies. And I always utterly disdained any rich, fat, old, idiotically religious white (or any other color) male's opinions on the subject. BUT: Back in 2012, I happened to hear Paul tell a story about his early years as a doctor when he was interning as an obstetrician/gynecologist and was an observer for various abortions performed at his hospital. He was noncommittal about what he was seeing UNTIL he saw a baby aborted at 6 months placed into a bucket for disposal --- and it was STILL ALIVE AND BREATHING while it was being carted away. He said he changed his mind about abortion at that instant. I was seriously disturbed and moved by his story. And I, like Newmar, also began to re-think my position on abortion after hearing it. When I hear a dumb-ass, fake politician mouth off about abortion, I don't want to hear ANY of it because it's supremely fake and poll-driven (witness Romney being pro-choice while governor of the liberal Massachusetts, then miraculously re-thinking his position when running nationally). When Paul, a former gynecologist, talked about it, though, I did listen and pay attention to his authentic viewpoint. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- from Newmar's site: I trust our youth. I also I find Ron Paul the youngest thinking of all the candidates. Young people don’t carry the baggage of years of careless decision making. Many of us didn’t like Romney’s rise to power and prestige on the backs of workers, all the time further disenfranchising the powerless, the underdog. Nor are we happy with Obama who saved his skin at the expense of the entire middle class by not standing firm and tough against the avaricious gamblers in our financial markets. Would that have been too big a maneuver to correct? Would something worse have happened? It’s still not right. I like Ron Paul because he changes my mind about things, makes me think in ways I haven’t before. I confess he’s even able to change my long-ago made-up mind about abortion. Now that’s moving a mountain. He shows me there’s perhaps a better way to think about the unthinkable. Even though Ron Paul is from Texas and I have sworn, in print, to never ever vote for a Texan for president, I could change my mind.

From "On Being 80" by Julie Newmar

http://www.julienewmarwrites.com/story.php?idStory=110

Just discovered the "Julie Newmar Writes" website via a recommendation from a film blogger I occasionally visit. (Newmar played "Catwoman" on the '60s TV show "Batman" and was my first crush as a little girl when I saw the show in re-runs in the early '70s.)

The site is actually rather amazing! Before I clicked on the link, I thought it would be something silly, self-indulgent, perhaps semi-senile... Instead, it's very thoughtful and interestingly eclectic.

Below is from her essay "On Being 80":

It's curious sometimes how life seems to reverse itself, when what was the strongest virtue in our lifetime becomes our weakest trait. Those dancers who can't walk, singers whose voices croak, a seamstress who can't see.
In this fall from grace, from our former powers, we think that nature or God has damned us; this is not so. It is more like a peeling away of consumed fruit revealing our infinite but not yet explored core. There waiting is the next discovery, a new platform or stage to revel in.

What's so great about “agefying”? It is the power that having distance gives us. It's the view from the top.
At 80, you have patience. Patience is like a magical chess game; the magic part is being able to see six, seven steps ahead. Been there, done that stupid thing. ...

Ask and it will be given. This is easier than you may think.
Food, things, the good stuff flow to me.
True, I don't any longer race out to the post office and markets. In place I've created a remarkable delivery system. I call it: You do this for me.
I am kinder, decidedly, but a lot less tolerant of those who practice life as a soap opera.
Maybe it is a safety valve but I chose to live on top of my discomforts as well as diseases. I don't discuss, indulge in, support causes for, join chat groups, war against that which ails and annoys me. It's simply wastes energy.
I can discuss unpleasant subjects, but in a less passionate and more general way....

I Need You

I need you to pin me down just for one frozen moment
I need someone to pin me down so I can live in torment
I need you to really feel the twist of my back breaking
I need someone to listen to the ecstasy I'm faking

I need you, you, you
I need you, you, you

I need you to catch each breath that issues from my lips
I need someone to crack my skull, I need someone to kiss
So hold me now and make pretend that I won't ever fall
Oh, hold me down I'm gonna be your baby doll, yeah yeah

I need you, I need you
I need you, you, you
I need you, you, you
I need you

I need you to pin me down just for one frozen moment
I need someone to pin me down so I can live in torment
I need you to really feel the twist of my back breaking
I need someone to listen to the ecstasy I'm faking
Faking, I'm faking, I'm faking, yeah

You, you, you, you
I need you

I need you, you, you
Is it you I really need?
Do I, I do, I do, I do, I do
I really do
I need you

"School" (September 2014)

It wasn't that the world was wasted on me, as I was.
I first felt superior, then shocked.
The teacher mocked that boy for wanting
to ride his horses on a school-day.

When the preacher's girl in panties skidded
past the bathroom door, we were all caught --
a bad girl took the blame.

Another bad girl once hit me in the face during dodge-ball.
We all rushed and buried Hughie even after he'd hollered "Red!"

What could I have said?
"Things are scary out there, Mama! Help me!"?

"Alexis" (February 1982)

After the first "Fortitude" poem in March 1981 when I was 15, there was a gap of nearly a year before my angst-ridden teen self started to churn out things more regularly. Here's my ode to Joan Collins, written when I was 16 after seeing her in "Dynasty" for the first time--my first poem generated organically ("Fortitude" had been for a sophomore English class assignment):


Deep purple Alexis
Aloft as the glittering dynasty crumbles
Glowing amber eyes amused by man's folly
Yet saddened by the loss

But, as always, coveted barriers remain
For once you know the static dreams
What is there to fear?

The sleek body laughs
And moves past the ruins to forge another kingdom

Azure and slate lie fallow in the radiance
To be forgotten soon
While the ending is written for them.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thank god that there was no Internet (and accompanying fan-fiction sites) available in 1982 for me to post this to in all my earnest initial burgeoning sexuality! Who knows, though --- the poem would have been mocked by many, maybe lauded by others. Actually, I probably would have found a "Dynasty"/Joan Collins fan-community had I been a kid online in 1982.

Everything I wrote pre-Wevill's writing class at UT in college, I felt weird and crazy for writing.

This "Alexis" poem isn't very good, but I like it because it was my very first attempt at trying to explain how aroused I was by an image, and how an image affected, or revealed, my inner self... Jung's archetype.

"Fortitude" (March 1981)

I wrote this when I was 15 years old for a sophomore English class. A year or so later, I bought a blank book to start compiling my poems in. Went back and filled this one in first. Poem 1.

Take a trip to nowhere
Now will you be free?
It seems very doubtful
They follow all, you see

Enter your mind's time warp
Do you think you are secure?
Do not depend much on it
The safety is the lure

A trance cannot gain anything
A revolution will
How else are we to win our peace
Than to rape and loot and kill?

Yes, our rebellion was successful
But still they are not free
For now, in their hypnosis
It is from us that they must flee.

Loyalty

Now that I've been in middle age for the past 3 or so years, I'm pretty sure that my loyalty in the years left to me must be to my body.

In the past? I was primarily all a-flutter about whatever my flighty Head told me, with my figurative Heart chiming in occasionally. As in (head), "This person is so creative and original, so different! I LOVE her!" and (heart, overriding head) "Well, this person is absolutely shitty to ME personally, but look... She once collected money for a friend's abortion! She once comforted a gay boy whose high school friends and parents were being unappreciative of his soul! She once cried upon learning that her sister's GoodWill coworkers were mean to her! What a great person! I LOVE her!"

When I say loyalty to my body, I mean it literally. An example: My very first lover back in '87 gave me a sexually transmitted disease. And then DENIED that she had given it to me! I'd never had sex before, and she'd had sex with probably 300 people; but she would never admit that she had given me the STD. We were together for over 2 years, and I brought it up maybe twice during that time... she would never admit it. Hey, as a virgin, I had a RIGHT to be pissed off about getting an STD on my first outing! Jesus. The vast majority of newbies get SOME sort of "fun trial period," don't they?? And, more importantly, the fact that even after we became more intimate over time, she never admitted that I now had an STD solely because of her. (If both parties had been sexually active for years, there's of course a gray area... In our case, though... Nah.)

That hard-core STD fact, and her psychological game-playing, probably kept me with her much longer than necessary -- "Who will want me now?" and all that. My head and my heart initially liking her, being fascinated, wanting to discover more, but my BODY, the realist, being utterly repulsed.

Being true to my body also involves paying attention to its responses. Who floods it with feel-good endorphins? Who makes it tense up? The girl I was in love with my senior year of high school, for instance... One Sunday, I was in my bedroom wracked with cramps to the point of throwing up from the pain. Ginny showed up at my house unexpectedly --- when she walked into my room, what I now know were endorphins kicked in; the pain immediately disappeared.

Conversely, with my first lover Mollie, the STD expert, I was almost immediately, constantly paranoid. Same paranoia with Sandra, much later, 2008, via the Internet and then once we met in person. With the one male lover that I've had, in the 1990s, there was no paranoia at all. He was married, which created a barrier that made me MENTALLY angry, but there wasn't any sort of "neurological" repulsion that made me immediately tense up around him.

Gotta start paying attention to that sort of pure bodily reaction. The inexplicable. The key to an innate sort of physical/chemical happiness that leads to longer-term emotional/mental ties. Going purely mentally on and on and on with those who simply don't make me feel good has been ridiculous.

Nice

A couple of months after I started working at my new job, the lady at the front desk stopped me one day as I strode in the front door and mentioned how she liked how I walked--like I was really going somewhere. At that time, she told me a back-story about what made her think of my walk, but I was a bit flustered at the compliment and now self-conscious about how I'd been walking and couldn't really remember the story later!

This week, at the end of one day as we passed each other heading out, she stopped me and said, "I have something for you at the desk when you have the chance to come down." I nodded and smiled, thinking that it was probably a company shirt or something.

When I went a couple of days later to see what she had for me, she handed me this: "Remember when I told you about the calendar page I saw in my friend's office that made me think of your walk?"

 

Embarrassingly, I HADN'T remembered the gist of the story she had told me (I didn't tell her that). But now I was amazed that this relaxed, flower/kitty-accompanied lady on a calendar saying with determination, "The question isn't who is going to let me: It's who is going to stop me?" reminded this woman of me! :)  What a nice thing for her to both think of and share with me! :) In recent years, some people have given me negative "feedback" making me think of myself as awkward and harsh... but here's someone with a different read on my "aura." Someone recognizing my good qualities is a wondrous thing.



Coincidence?

Is it a coincidence that when Sandra entered my life in October 2008 while I was in NYC, my luck started to go bad? And when she left my life a couple of months ago, things started to look up again? It is utterly simplistic and archaic to say such a thing, but I'm also prone to pay attention to patterns. I hardly cried at all during my first year-and-a-half in New York City, alone as I was, and under the stress that I was under. From late 2008 on, I cried constantly.