“You’re quite the sailor,” she said cheerfully.

God, how I hated that line. Every time I came across it, I’d wince and read on as fast as I could jump over it. Why did she say that dorky thing? What was she, eighty? A condescending eighty? I wanted to smack her in her fatuous little chops.

What bothered me most was that she was in the middle of being abducted by a vampire who was taking her to an unknown location–and she was attracted to him, to boot.  Just because she was a nerd developing Stockholm Syndrome didn’t excuse that line. Who wrote this crap? Well, I did.

This piece of writing just sort of lolloped back and forth through a couple of years, as other bits got written (including a doctoral dissertation), but Toria’s plopping out that bizarre little stupidity hung in there the entire time; I’m pretty sure it showed up in the very first draft. And I vaguely remember (or am backediting) that I hated it from the start. It wasn’t my fault, really. At the time, I had no idea who Toria Piper was; I didn’t know her abductor either. They were just people who showed up on Memorial Drive one Cambridge night, and I wrote about them, just because.

So every now and then for two years, I’d shudder and move on. And this wasn’t the only place in my writing it happened: I’d reread, feel ill, and go on to the better stuff that didn’t make me feel stupid.

Then one day a few months ago, I had an epiphany. I highlighted the sentence with my mouse–and pressed delete. It was sort of the way I feel when I take off my bra at night. Why did it take me so long? What was my stupid deal? I owned this work; I owned Toria and everybody she met that night. But it was as if I didn’t; as if I were somehow locked in to keeping it, as if I were in a bad relationship which I was committed to make work.

And I think it was that very thing. I had been in a bad relationship on which I squandered years of my time, in which I felt helpless and passive; it was as if I were reading my life as written by somebody else. Word after word, day after day. I learned that it didn’t matter what you liked or didn’t; that things just were the way they were.

More insidiously, I knew that beneath the talent and pretense, I was actually a pretty bad writer, just as I was a pretty bad everything else. I had my characters say things like that (even if rarely)–and it was a dead giveaway. I had to leave those little breadcrumbs of mediocrity alone, to demonstrate that I didn’t know what I was doing; that I was your basic talentless fangirl who wrote nothing but awkward sententious crap.

Ironically, I’d already been able to make a lot of major changes fairly fluidly–X-ing out pages of longhand; noting in marginal pen things like, “What are you thinking?” and “Oh, just stop it.” Similarly, I’d made many big changes in my life–moved, changed jobs, finished school, had a lot of therapy, etc. But looking back, I think that one little change meant something more.

It wasn’t like when I could see the blinding miserable fact that maybe an entire half-chapter was pointless and really needed to be moved to the outtakes file. The devil is in the details, after all, and when I finally silently bitchslapped that duhhh out of Toria’s mouth, I was taking it out of mine. It said that I had control.

Like so many things I’m actually quite good at, I’d somehow seen the story as something outside myself. It was really decently done, which meant that I didn’t really write it; indeed, it felt–and still feels–almost like automatic writing much of the time. It works best when I get myself out of the way and let the story flow through my fingers. But I am doing it; it’s not a fluke. I am making this good thing from my own cleverness, and because I own it, because I own me, I have control.

There’s undoubtedly a whole lot of dumb left, in both author and work, but when I see it, I can change it. I am not helpless and passive. Sometimes I have to take stock and weigh how much fiddling around it will take to fix it, and sometimes I just do a workaround as I can. But if I am able to, I just hit delete, and make one more dumb thing go away.

(Plinky prompt: Have you ever thought of starting your own business?)

OK. Maybe I play okay with others. Most of the time. Especially if they’re gamer geeks or something. Unless they’re a particular kind of gamer geeks (and you know the ones I mean), in which case, definitely not.

I suppose you can substitute any damn thing there for “gamer geeks.” Moving on:

In a way, writing is my own business. It took a while–a long while–to realize that this was the big trick in my bag; now all I have to do is to get paid for it. Well, I have, in tiny bits: I do a little grantwriting for a non-profit that can’t afford to pay me any more until the grants start to come in–meaning it’s in the same boat as most non-profits right now.

But . . . I wrote this novel, see. It’s probably more practical to think of it as two of them, because it’s wicked long. We’re talking Moby Dick here. It’s pretty damned good, if you like science fiction about realtime biological vampires with forays into serial killing and the nightmare of sexual abuse–and (let’s all do the *anime fall* here: some gay characters). An influential friend sent the basic info on to a couple of agents, who have failed to get back to me for several months now.

And all I can do is push back the terror that chunks of five years of my life (off and on) were spent on artistic self-therapy–and keep at it. Currently, I’m responding to my damnably insightful reader (Noooooo. You’re wrooooong. I . . . . Okay. I have absolutely no idea what I meant there at all. Noooooooo. You’re riiiiiiiight. Etc.) on the LAST cleanup of the damn thing. I figure I have time since nobody’s asking me to hand it over. Sob.

But I’m glad I’m in the convo with the reader, because I’m tired of it by now–and am already sniffing at the ankles of the sequel. Or whatever you call a book which might be a sequel or might not, depending on whether the previous work was one book or two. You see the problem here. At least with the numbering.

It really is actually damned good. Evidence: A friend who’s pretty blunt read some of the early still-head-half-up-my-butt stuff–and he said, “It sounds like a real book.” In other words, not the usual pathetic drivel your friends make you read, but unusual and hard-fisted drivel which makes you laugh and cry and write me abusive email.

And here’s the actual pathetic drivel: Part of the “works badly with others” is because I’m disabled. Not badly enough to need a dog, but badly enough for the uncle to hand over a pittance of SSDI–which, for non-Americans (and some Americans) is the sort of government dole you get when you actually worked your ass off and paid taxes. Soooo—

–it’s tiny, and fixed, and insert factual whinging here–but in a way, I can actually afford to not make money at writing, although the actual money would certainly improve my standard of living and that of the kid and the ferrets and cat and whatnot.

But what I WANT is for people to read it. And like it. And want more. For at bottom, that’s the real business writers are about. Unless we are the sort of pretentious literary trash I wanted to dropkick in grad school (now that I’m a doctor I know the zen of them having dropkicked themselves)—unless you’re an idiot, or somebody just wanting Nanny’s vanity pat on the head, we want to be understood. More or less.

After all, being understood (more or less) is our business.

I woke up this morning and discovered that Jared Loughlin “allegedly murdered several people” the other day. I am sure Jared’s defense attorneys are relieved, because as of yesterday, he had definitely done so. In front of witnesses, no less.

al·leged adj.: Represented as existing or as being as described but not so proved; supposed.

For those of you who didn’t click the link, this news was courtesy of  the Huffington Post, which is well-respected and read by many. Let’s put this straight: He allegedly attempted to assassinate Congresswoman Giffords, i.e., to murder her because she was a public figure, and because of her political beliefs. Right now, we don’t know whether or not this was literally his intention–I’m going with “crazy” myself right now.

But there’s nothing “alleged” about those murders, and nobody in the country doubts either that mowing down the congresswoman, the kid, and the other four people, was MURDER.  Did I have to link that to a definition? Thought not. Moving on. This wasn’t an unfortunate shooting accident demonstrating the need for gun control (don’t get me started), Loughlin actually indeed intended to kill these people.

There are fine points to be debated here, and there’s a lot to be said about “innocent until proven guilty,” and the culpability of the mentally ill (just being crazy is not a “Get Out of Jail Free” card); my point is that using this particular term is allegedly irresponsible, and an allegedly poor understanding of our language.

We all know that “alleged” goes along with “suspect,” right? But it’s a) one of the fine points mentioned above and b) something we’ve picked up from Law & Order. Using it here is media jingoism–it’s a two-word word, a phrase that conveys a sense of distance from the visceral–maybe he did it, and maybe he didn’t: Actually, according to that word, he didn’t until a jury of his peers says so. Next?

But he did. He did, he did, he did. Our justice system is charged to prevent Jared from being outright randomly lynched, and that’s a good thing, lynchings being bad things. But telling a country–a world–that mass murder can only be “alleged”–well, that’s a bad thing too.

See, I wanted a couple of condoms.

As the popular button has it, I am currently Doing Strange Things in the Name of Art. My primary area in school was watercolor; my secondary was ceramics. Thus, I enjoy color–and texture. I’ll post the link to the thing I’m mucking about with some other time, like when/if it’s finished. Suffice to say that I wanted a couple of condoms of particular spiffiness. They’re glossy, stretchy, and come in colors. (Sorry.)

The merry young lady at Walgreens thought it was worth taking a look, but all I discovered was that condoms are damn pricey these days, and that almost everybody thinks he needs an Xtra-Large, which is a marketing triumph if ever there were. So I whinged to the girl that I would have to schlep down the street to the local sex shop, poor lazy bitch that I am. She took this in good spirit.

So I went to the local sex store. With some regret, I will not publish their name (but local residents probably already know and can personally ask me if they like). I was sure they’d have condoms. Black condoms, to be specific. (I should say here and now that I later decided that these were not in fact going to do what I wanted, so I’m over it per se.)

Now, with black leather and black maid’s uniforms and black high high stilettos and whatnot, I figured that black condoms were not very special. In fact, I went in there vaguely seeing them as a party favor for New Year’s Eve, tossed into a punchbowl with silver glitter.

I’ve been in this shop before, for some reason I don’t recall but that is undoubtedly none of your business. Although they had previously had a charming young saleswoman (with whom I ended up having a motherly chat, as people often confide in me), tonight they had the more senior sales associate, who has the flattest affect I’ve seen outside of a heavily medicated loonie bin.

“Hi! I’d like some black condoms!”

“We don’t have any.”

“You’re kidding!” (I mean, really. See above.)

“I never kid about things.” (Oh dear.)

“I was so sure you’d have them.”

“Ma’am, you’re the first person to come in here asking for black condoms. It’s a supply and demand. If people end up wanting black condoms, then I’ll order them.” (Gosh, the creativity and vim and brio of Cambridge disappoints. Nobody wants black condoms? What do the SMBD people use?)

I was then recommended to try Condom World. This brought me visions of a Walmart of latex and sheepskin, and I was delighted–and, being me, amused. (I’m sorry. Condom World?)

“Where are they?”

“Newbury Street. They’re closed now.” It was indeed almost 8pm, when the condom-desiring (sorry) were undoubtedly safely home with their moral and utilitarian purchases.

She was clearly unhappy with me. As far as I could tell. It soon transpired that she thought my being somewhat tickled (sorry) was because I had never heard of the store. (I have no idea what other reason there might have been.)

“Um, purple?” Artists always have a Plan B.

She did wearily draw my attention to the condoms available which were flavored. Maybe some of them were colored. She didn’t know.

Now, boys and girls, I have been in several other such establishments during my long and faintly checkered career. They usually tend to have bouncy and outgoing personnel who know everything about their merchandise. As you can extrapolate, I thought this lady’s ignorance about these fetching little packets right by the register to be . . . well . . . limp. (Not sorry.) Anyway, they didn’t have licorice or anything. She tediously thought that maybe they had chocolate, and fished out the cola one. Hmm, I thought. Probably pale brownish. Not what I was going for.

The lady who owns the place (I think) came over to help if she could. Fortunately, she had somewhat better affect. I couldn’t find chocolate. But they had grape. In the face of no other method of discovery, I recklessly shelled out a buck and opened it on the spot.

“Woooeeyy!!!!” A quite fetching bright purple.

Although I had now enlightened them about their product, they were supremely uninterested.

The owner was concerned. “Do they have to be a certain color? They all do the same thing.” It was now very clear that I was misbehaving, and possibly putting my sexual health at risk by being pettish (sorry) about which condoms I thought suitable.

I explained that it was for an art project. Condoms are used in art all the time; I’m not the only one who thinks they’re nifty. The boss was very surprised when I shared that the Alien’s mucous membranes were condoms–and the slime was K-Y, which had the right viscosity so as not to melt under the lights.

The scary girl told me with weary annoyance that she had handed me a chocolate condom, ma’am. I told her that it was cola, and she apologized for giving me the wrong condom. (“Condom.” Not “one.” Pronouns are apparently forbidden due to their intrinsic funniness. Comparatively.)

Apologetically, I said, “I’ve never before looked for condoms that weren’t for penises.” This very concept was amazing and offensive. OK, I immediately realized what I had said–and was unfortunately amused, me being me. I explained the way I’d meant it, and that I did in fact understand that condoms were an item expressly designed for the penis. It was all too clear that they thought I was some kind of moron.

As such shops often do, I was being educated about the world’s oldest subject: Sex is not funny. At all. People who think sex, or sexual paraphernalia is funny, or who are enthusiastic about purchasing an object that is often wrongly construed as having funny possibilities–are very very . . . well, naughty.

Flat affect girl wandered off. “Well, I’m not the most eccentric customer you’ve ever had,” I muttered to the air, and the owner’s lack of reassurance indicated that apparently, I probably was. I tried to rehabilitate myself with the owner by confiding that I had in fact utilized the objects in their penile-adorning form back in my salad days. This obviously reassured her.

I said various things touting their marvelousness at Doing What They Were Meant To Do, and my truthfully fervent agreement that they should be used by all for those purposes. I then appeasingly bought some of the dandier ones (I know somebody who collects them) and slunk out with my small leopard-skin paper bag.

I then returned to the drugstore to pick up my prescription, and confided to my cheerful friend the events above.  She was jeeringly amused (at them) by their complete lack of humor; was appropriately impressed by the intense purpleness of my very serious condom; and did vouch for Condom World, where she had been with her boyfriend. I was greatly relieved to find that he had brought her there . . . because it was Condom World, for crying out loud! Disappointingly, it was apparently rather small, and my envisioned racks upon racks of exotic membranous confections didn’t exist. I hope that they appreciate the . . . well . . . funniness of their name, but for all I know, they too are serious about their sacred mission to keep penis-related fluid exchange safe for democracy.

And yes, it tastes like grape.

I have a pretty spiffy birthday planned!

First, I get to dawdle in the bath for as long as I like, having a completely me-centered schedule today!

Second, I get to vote! (“The government gets elected”  Loyal and Gentle Readers should see me after class.) All hail the 15th and 19th Amendments! This election matters; see my perhaps seemingly throwaway paragraph last post. Our present governor sounds unfortunately and creepily like Mr. Rogers, but his opponent is a thug; we have some significant propositions up too.

And last, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum has free admission on your birthday (and permanently free admission for those named “Isabella,” a wackiness I find endearing).

So in all, a pleasant day. However, its beginning was . . . a little disturbing, for those of us unfortunately prone to magical thinking. (And I defy scoffers at magical thinking to avoid this at least scurrying through your own minds in this position.)

I was awakened last night (or this morning, 12:30 am) by Ripley singing a bizarre new little chrring kitty song. I first did the “What is it, Lassie?” thing until I caught on, and then courteously left the light on for her to better track her mouse, which seemed to be why she was singing, because then she stopped. Upon really getting up at 9, the damn thing was still alive. And squeaking at a volume which corresponds to screams of mousie agony.

Like humans for centuries, I find this whole business dismaying. So after some miserable thought, I flushed it down the toilet. It scrambled in panic as best it could when it hit the water. I almost drowned once, and I have a vivid imagination, as we all know. Not my happiest moment, here. But I figured it was better than being tossed around screaming with broken limbs until I either bled to death internally or my spinal cord snapped or . . . you get the drift.

This being the first thing I did on my 48th birthday, it was hard not to see it as an omen–which leads us to the infamous and unfortunate quotation from the end of possibly the world’s most depressing poem *ominous music*.

But I resisted the general notion of my plans going aft agley–or worse, being slain by a benevolent hand–and so I cast about for something more cheerful. I finally came up with “Life is hard, but mouse poop is really disgusting. And dangerous.” It then occurred to me that I had changed my focus–at first, I had identified with the poor tiny helpless animal–but then I identified with the human who possesses agency.

And trust me, for me, that was the very best metaphorical start to my new year I could possible have.

(Damn them for being so cute!)

Um, damn Mouse #2 venturing out from under the stove at this very moment!

(Ripley!!!!!! RIPLEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

We will now steadfastly ignore omen of mousing cat apparently being sound asleep, and continue on to The Bath, The Polls, and The Museum, saving Removing Yet MORE Mouse Poop until return.

Yep, life is hard.

Those ads drive me screaming up my tree. (OK, fearless readers, I admit, it doesn’t take much, but still.) It’s their insistence on the word weird. Which is kind of weird, if you ask me.

“Weird” means a couple of things. We’ll give them a pass on the “supernatural” one. Duck in barrel. Moving on. But in general usage, it means out of the ordinary: Huh. That’s one I’d never thought of.

Unfortunately, these weird ads end up pointing you to weirdly uninteresting ideas. You cut flab by eating more, in several small meals, so that your body doesn’t think it’s starving. The average three-minute browse of a reputable nutrition site will break this earthshattering weirdness without your suffering through an audio website of this guy offering you his foolproof plan to lead you through this process. (He doesn’t tell you what it is until you give him your money.)

The two intrepid moms discovered that weirdly enough, your teeth will be even whiter if you combine two obscure dentifrices (available for sale from the weirdly heroic and disinterested hosts of this breaking news).

Blah blah. Whatever.  What sells this crap? What draws the crowd around the barker? It’s the fact that these disclosures are weird, i.e., off the beaten track and presumably therefore interesting. Better still, weird old speaks to the now-forgotten wisdom of the ages.  There’s nothing weird about being insatiably curious, which is the main reason people click; that people buy.

This whole thing would make me scratch my head. Sure, I’ve been curious enough to do a little clicking and asking around, but instead of seeking the Rosetta Stone to my life, it’s been to discover the depths of people’s gullibility. Damn, I wish I’d thought of this stuff! But I have the respect of my peers, and possibly an immortal soul. (Better safe than sorry there.)

I am burdened with one of those IQs which make the trailing decimal after 99% significant. I have been baffled by this fact while I blunder through life: My God, if I’m supposed to be so smart with my rate of fuckup, how in the cosmos did we crawl out of the water on our stumpy little proto-legs? It’s a tempting duhhh to relate the people who entrust Mr. Annoying-Voice Webman with their dollars with the middle of the curve, or perhaps below it. But that’s not quite what it is, in my extremely brainy opinion.

People are looking for answers. I’ve alluded to a couple of questions just by the way as I’ve been typing along here. What’s up with the immortal soul concept? And the idea of evolution? Can you go along with both? Most people at some point or another have sought answers to those questions, and to a lot of others: Are adverbs really a sign of poor writing? (Not when I do it. Usually.) Why do you find something in the last place you look? (Ann Landers once had to field that one.) Does chocolate really make dogs sick? (YES, given sufficient amounts per body mass. Have a vet ‘splain it to you, and keep Lucky out of the trick-or-treat bags.)

Why does old window glass ripple? How do you get Play-Doh out of a kid’s hair? Why do experienced hand sewers bother looking closely at both the thread and the needle? How do you make your candles last longer? Why is your hair unmanageable no matter how often you wash it? Why is it easier to peel Easter eggs than the ones for egg salad? Why does black pepper make you sneeze?

I know all those! (If you don’t, and go the trouble of commenting or messaging me, I’ll share.) And if you ask me, they’re all pretty weird, or not immediately intuitively obvious. Although the candle one took me a while. And I didn’t get the answers from clicking a link. Instead, I listened to stuff–professors, observation, deducing things from other similar facts–and experimentation. (I left out the don’t-do-this-at-home-just-because-I-did ones. For example, the answer to “What happens if you put your old Christmas wreath on the fire?” is “A period of hopefully very brief excitement, depending on what flammable objects are within a foot or so of the fireplace.”)

What’s weird to me is that people put so little effort into getting answers, much less figuring their own out. What’s even weirder is the fact that I’m not charging a quarter each for the answers to the above questions. Pony up!

El escritorio del Dr. Evil

Halloween. Costumes. Hmm. Who will you be? (Having no plans, I'm planning on The Curmudgeon Pretending She's Not Home to Trick-or-Treaters, myself.)

A perhaps shameful cowardice, compared to the guy on the T last year who was Dr. Evil. It was flawless-and somewhere he had gotten a doll (or maybe a dummy?) for Mini Me. Other costumed people on the train were equally impressed. He was pretty much giving interviews about how he'd put it together.

A meta-costume thought: If you think about it, Dr. Evil can pretty much be just a skin cap and a gray suit. (Unless you're my ex-husband. Kidding! Just kidding! [Mostly.]) But presentation is everything. This man had worked very hard, and in a small way achieved greatness. I couldn't stop grinning.

And when you think about that wildfire happy spreading to everybody who saw him that night, who's to say that it was in a small way at all?

Uf da.

I used a cloth diaper service for both my breast-fed children. I prefer Macs and stick shifts. I recycle; I vote for the most socially progressive candidates, which almost always means Democrats, even though it’s the choice of the stupid over the mean. Hell, not only do I vote, but I understand the political process. I have a doctorate in the liberal arts. I can’t keep track of who of my friends fits into what sub-category because there are just too many of them. I shop at the local farmers’ market. But . . .

NPR makes me twitch. They make me feel non-white. There’s just no other way to put it. I have a friend (white, by the way) who works at home, and she once found herself under the mild delusion that NPR was trying to make her commit suicide. I knew exactly what she meant.

Even though I myself happen to have that very same FM dj’s voice (the smooth mezzo, the ability to talk in complete and punctuated paragraphs) they make me want to scream. As another friend phrases it, they have never met a point they couldn’t belabor. Their self-precious bleatings sound like the voice of doom itself–except, of course, during A Prairie Home Companion, which isn’t fair to Garrison Keillor, because he doesn’t work for them. (I love Sven and Ole jokes. I was born and went to college in the Midwest. But listening to A Prairie Home Companion gives me the creeps. I’ve been waist-deep in live Scandahoovia, and I have never ever felt quite that non-white.)

The people of NPR live in a miserable world, but they don’t care about it. Theirs is a lugubrious intellectual detachment. Listening to them gives insight into FOX News’ distressing popularity: Highly colored and biased reporting it may be, but by God at least they are real breathing human people with nerve endings. Who probably have non-soy-derived milk in their refrigerators given by cows fenced in by electrical wire, pumped full of crack, and forced to wear Donna Karan 12-inch pumps.

So. Non-white:

I’m genetically multiracial, and so I’ve always chafed at society’s attempts to shove me into one box or another. It seems particularly odd in medical areas. So I asked some savvy public health people about it, and they said, quite reasonably, that it was really a cultural thing: foods you eat, patterns of dealing with stress, a whole bunch of different little things. And when adding all these factors up of all the things that make up my personal culture, by golly I’m just your basic Amurrican girl-i.e., white. I’d always suspected it. At 50%, it’s my largest genetic group, and as I grew up, I was called an Oreo every time I passed a glass of that alien-probed and radioactive milk.

However. Understand that I have medium dark skin, curly hair, and sort of generically-pretty-exotic features. I’ve “passed” as everything from Italian to Navajo–to others of those groups. By and large, I’m a generic minority, and quite comfortable about it. When people ask me The Question, this is my answer:

Some of my ancestors ran out of mammoths.

Some of them ran out of land.

Some of them ran out of potatoes.

Some didn’t run fast enough.

And some ran away from us.

What this boils down to is that I’m an American; and like it or not, the color I am is the ones that don’t run.

But NPR makes me feel non-white.

In many ways (see above) I’m in a close demographic with their target audience: professional class, socially progressive politics (although a tad too conservative in some ways), well-educated. But . . . I’m not. I feel alienated and highly uncomfortable. I am at a party, and I am The Other.

I decided to blog about this precisely because this is so hard to put into words, but here’s an example of what I mean:

One day, I was on the train here in Boston, and a (big white) prep/yuppie leaned over and said, grinning in approval, “I’m glad to see you wearing your beads! So many people hide them!”

(wtf?????) I was absolutely baffled. I couldn’t hear what he was saying to his wife and kid, but he was pleased as punch with me. Then I realized that he thought I practiced Santeria.

I like beads. I started stringing them just for the hell of it years ago and it’s sort of a hobby. I almost always wear 15-20 strands of multi-colored/patterned seed beads. I’m just into it. They’re both visual and tactile. They get admired a lot, but . . . although some of them indeed have orisha colors, they’re . . . just beads.

So I spent the next two or three minutes wondering how to tactfully tell this guy that I’m Episcopalian. That I’m not Latina or Yoruba in any way, shape, or form. And that there are tons of Santeria folks running around with their beads in plain view; he probably just doesn’t hang in their neighborhoods.

And that he had just sort of made me into an ethnocultural exhibit for his family.

I would bet TONS that this man listens to NPR every day. It was the vibe. He was just so liberal and hip! And culturally aware of diversity! So I figured that if I said something, maybe he would be less hip and aware of diversity (in the least sarcastic of senses), so I just left it be. But I was really enraged.

It was one of the most racist things that has ever happened to me.

And that last sentence is a piece of the world a lot of NPR’s audience just won’t get.

You see, there’s a big difference between being included and excluded. I’m still friends with the nice Italian boy I got fixed up with who was told I was Sicilian. I treasure the memory of that convenience store on the res where Grandpa tottered up to me with his cane, cute as a biscuit, and told me something funny as hell in Navajo, and poked me, and I laughed back, because it was funny as hell, by golly! Being taken as a fellow sabra by the Israeli woman in the clearance section of Bloomie’s got a little embarrassing when it turned out that I didn’t know that it was Purim, but hey. (It took me a while to realize that she hadn’t even thought I was goyische. New York can be like that.) I am happy to give anybody the wrong directions in bad Spanish. And I can pass for being black most of the time, although that one’s problematic because of the woeful class assumptions made by people who frequently want to dunk me in that glass of  milk mixed with Antarctic ice cap pureed with high-fructose corn syrup derived from the blood of small dairy farmers.

But although tons of my friends are white, and I don’t feel excluded at all (they’re my friends, duh) . . . NPR . . . they stick up for all of these oppressed people, and valorize them, and moan about them–but none of them, of it, is real. They go home, like most of us, to the people who are just like them, and listen to A Prairie Home Companion. Although they feel guilty for laughing at Sven and Ole, because it’s a class thing dere for dem, doncha know.

But hey, the boys dere are fair targets, because ya know vhat dey make up dere in Visconsin.

Anybody got a cookie?

Lopsided?

I drew the above back in ’04 (I think?) from a specimen at the Smithsonian Naturalist Center. After a year or so, I found it in the sketchbook, and thought, “Yow! He’s lopsided!” I felt pretty stupid. I even called them and asked if he were, and they said no.

But now that I think about it after a few years of working on my self-esteem, I don’t think it’s lopsided after all. (And no, I don’t mean that it’s-a-cool-drawing-in-and-of-itself.) Rather, faces are lopsided; some more than others. And more to the point, after looking at the pic for some clues, I realize that the left side of the face (your right) is normal–and the right is noticeably different. The very fact that you don’t see the zygomaxillary suture there is something of a giveaway. My guess is that something got a little squished on that side in utero. I’m betting the people at the Naturalist Center didn’t see this skull as abnormal, just as I hadn’t when I was right there paying very close attention, so that my hand put down what my eyes were seeing. So it was him; that’s just the skull he had–and I didn’t “fall out of drawing,” as they say.

I’m enormously relieved. I worked pretty hard on that piece, and it’s one of my best. I draw really well when I put my mind to it (and get a good roll on the chicken bones), and I was bummed that I could have done something that spectacularly . . . well, wrong.

The interesting thing for me is that although I have a degree from a kick-ass Art program (UW/Madison), I went with I-was-wrong. I trusted my insecurity instead of my training and talent.

I’m glad my brain and soul have caught up to my eyes and hand.

Twenty-two years ago, I had to take a core requirement in Art History that I just couldn’t bear. It was taught by an extremely non-linear professor. What he was talking about had really nothing to do with the slides, and it was a hu-u-uuge survey course in this echoing concrete lecture hall with a dark high ceiling filled with several hundred communications and animal science majors talking to each other. And I was trapped there for 90 minutes twice a week.

I have a minor auditory language processing glitch. (I can’t take notes.) It gave me too many tracks to simultaneously process, and I hated all of them.

It was ADHD hell.

But the thing that made me nuts–and really, still does, and I’m not sure why–was that at the end we had to look at a slide for maybe a minute, and then sketch on an index card what we recalled, and write something about it.

And it was all really abstract modern art of the sort that makes me completely baffled why the artist gets credit for something that would have been a lot more meaningful if it had been done by a chimpanzee. Mind you, I love tons of abstract modern art. I’m not talking color fields (e.g., the spatter paintings–which can be really difficult to do to get the effect, by the way), I’m talking a tree branch splattered with random paint, with a tire hanging from it (not a swing).

I didn’t see the point. I have this overwhelming need for life to make some kind of sense, and this activity was . . . stupid. At least for me. Cherry on the sundae. I was already in raging hippopotamus mode from having had to sit through the lecture itself.

Anyway, my best friend said the prof was a sweetie, and maybe I could comp the class, and do some other project to make up for it. So I went in to talk to him–and it was one of the most traumatic experiences of my life.

The sketch cards were his particular baby. (Ooh, tactical error much?) All I really recall was sitting there crying, and his telling me that if I didn’t like sketching, then I shouldn’t be an artist. He asked me if I had any particular art project I wanted to do, and I said that I really liked Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene, and that I wanted to do some work illustrating the symbolism.

Illustrating. Symbolism. Sounds artsy, right? Apparently not. He told me that I should go do literature instead.

So that’s what I did. I walked out of his office in a daze. I went into the watercolor studio and tore up my entire semester’s portfolio. (I have no idea what I did for the grade.) My friend said I was dead pale.

I think she felt really guilty for innocently putting me in that chair with reasonable expectations, and she was fretting about it to our watercolor prof. She said he just grinned and said, “She’ll be back.”

Fifteen or so years later, I was sitting in a big pink dress in Harvard Yard. I have a PhD in English.

And then I broke. I’m on disability. I’m dead poor. It sucks beyond belief. There’s a good chance I won’t be on the bench forever; at least that’s my plan, because . . . well, heck, peeps, you don’t slog through 250 pages of scholarship by being a wussy quitter. I got myself this big gold ring so I could have this metal teddy bear reminding me that I did that; it’s an objective proof of “Yay me!” And I was what one could say was pre-broken when I did it–I just wouldn’t admit it.

I had plans for my life; I adore teaching. I proposed; He disposed. Me being me, ADHD and PhD and m-o-u-s-e, I couldn’t handle it. So I poked along at the infamous novel, which actually started as a sort of writing warmup while I was working on the diss. Poke, poke, poke. Many adventures. Poke, poke, poke. Had to DO something, so that’s what I did. And presto! I finished it! And am now going through the clean-up–and have started the sequel, heh.

And somewhere along the line, I had to realize that the reason the watercolor professor said that I’d be back, is that there really isn’t anywhere else for me to go. I didn’t waste my undergraduate career on the BS in Art; just as I didn’t waste grad school on the PhD. I’m an artist; always have been; always will be.

So I write (obvously), and I draw and paint. I’m pretty good at it, actually. (One would hope.)

I broke; I had to admit that I was broken–but now I have a prism. Pretty cool, huh?