Dew, like diamonds, sparkles on the lawn of contentment … June-green grass vibrates against the bluest dawn. The rising sun plays peek-a-boo with bouquets of clouds. Flowers bend under the weight of their blooms as I inhale my immaculate yard from the hammock of my hard work.
Oh to be Middle Class - where girls and boys dance without exchanging body fluids and there’s never a hair in the bathroom sink. The food is delicious, attractive and healthy, served on several layers of plates placed perfectly on gleaming tables. Plentiful leftovers are stored in the latest food-saving technology from Tupperware. The refrigerator is so clean you can’t help but stand with the door open, staring. It seems to stock itself!
Bacteria doesn’t stand a chance against such perfect organization. Such calm acceptability and abundance. Grout grows no mildew and carpeting won’t accept stains. Freshly Febrezed furniture and Swiffered floors. Ah …
You never run out of anything – there’s a can of cleanser for the bathroom and one for the kitchen. There’s plenty of paper towels and toilet paper and endless detergents and stain sticks.
And all of your coat hangers match!
You sure do have to bathe a lot but it’s not so bad with a huge-arse Cascadia shower head that sounds like spring rain, and of course you need shower rings with ball-bearings that elicit the zippy sound of success when stepping from the shower with a plush towel – white and warm – into a fog of accomplishment.
(Drum roll) … after 12 years of scraping the bottom of the social bucket (welfare mother) (I’LL NEVER SHUT UP ABOUT IT AND I’LL NEVER APOLOGIZE) - after 12 years of being the Rich Man’s scapegoat and the Common Man’s whipping post, I’m living the good life. YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK!
Now I can be a dick like the rest of ya.
Priceless
Supermarket cashiers would get all indignant when I accidentally put more stuff in my cart than I could afford. They’d be all pissed for having to do a little extra work for the lazy welfare mother. OH THE HUMANITY. And there was the Giant Eagle cashier in Brentwood who asked for my welfare ID every time I got in her line. Just because she could. Because she hated her job. Because she was spent enough to think it was my fault she wasn’t making shit for money.
In the late seventies, I had a friend who was a union cashier at the Giant Eagle and was making something like $9 an hour back when the minimum wage was $2.65. Giant Eagle briefly closed their doors to put an end to that, but go ahead and blame your paltry paycheck on women who wouldn’t need welfare if they where making union wages.
I used to fantasize about getting even with every cashier and customer support person who felt entitled to treat me like trash when I was poor. Part of their job is taking it from customers, too, eh? I imagined throwing fits about how they bagged the bread with the milk. Call the manager if they give me any attitude. NOT SO SMUG NOW, EH?
I finally get my big chance to be bitchy but feel so guilty about my good fortune that I can’t even look cashiers in the eye. I’m just another docile tax-payer who turned a whiter shade of pale for a paycheck.
I was at Foodland and saw this old biker dude I used to know, still wearing a Harley headband and the whole uniform. I wanted to walk right up to him and go, “Hey Mr. Harley Man, I’m still cool but have kids to take care of so don’t even look at me like some citizen, ya bastard!” I was a biker legend and made it into Easy Rider magazine on several occasions.
Now I’m so boring you could stick pins in my eyeballs and I wouldn’t notice. The only time I don’t feel completely dead is when I listen to the Tragically Hip in the car or my cube. (Gordon Downie wears a shirt we sent him from the South Side Goodwill in the “My Music @ Work” video – I shit you not). Rock and Roll never lets me forget there’s more to me than a debit card and student loans.
Yet a personality is a small sacrifice to enable me to pay my son’s fraternity dues and make sure he has the hippest cell phone and mall clothes. He’ll never have to feel as small as I have. And yes, Dear God, I am more grateful for that than anything.
The days of checks and food stamps
Knowing my life has improved while others’ have gotten worse doesn’t feel worth celebrating.Hey I’m doing great – sorry about the rest of yinz who had work limits imposed on you while the country lost over a million jobs! I can’t believe what the government has taken in just twenty years. What will be left after in another twenty? Social Security?
I made my comeback before the $85 monthly bus pass. Before Columbia Gas could shut off your heat in the middle of winter. Before limits that would have not given me enough time to recover from my addiction and go on to develop my talents. I mean that is the hope of America, right? Free to go as far as your dreams will take you, RIGHT? Well unless you have mouths to feed and no husband to help or fucked-up young. Or both.
I graduated from CMU before we passed laws to destroy addicts’ access to education by
denying them financial aid for drug convictions – I mean think about it – what kind of addict is trying to go to school? One in recovery who knows only an education will provide the golden rope to escape the despondent existence of the chemically tainted. And how can this law provide a deterrent when hardcore addicts don’t know about it or consider any future beyond the next hit?
Most American families have at least one addict and/or welfare recipient to liven up holiday conversation. But you’d rather see your cousin or grandmother get screwed by welfare or Medicaid just to punish the archetypal welfare mother in a Cadillac. You ignore the women with kids you see at rainy bus stops. You believe what you want. What’s easiest. And it’s easiest not to care. But newsflash: It doesn’t make you superior. Just a dick.
You never think about the archetypal welfare child who grows up to cost you tons more money in prison. You turn your back on innocent children and the result of your neglect costs far more than welfare and yet you think you’re morally and fiscally responsible? ARE YOU F’N KIDDING ME?
Oh, and I didn’t get my IT job because of my QPA at CMU. I Never could understand why
parents were willing to spend so much money to send their kids to that school. Until I started looking for a job.
I thought putting my CMU dual-degrees at the top of my resume would separate me from other applicants. But it had no impact. It was only through my friend, Madge, that I was able to get my job. She knew someone who knew someone etc. Now I know what your tuition buys you – connections.
Fairytales Ending
Thomas Jefferson said, “There is no law that can save a man from himself.” But there used to be laws that still regarded all people – even the fallen – with dignity. America used to be cool. Now we’re just scared stupid.
It’s hard to be grateful for the help I received knowing most of the country would prefer to see me in some low wage job for the rest of my life – regardless of the consequences to my son. It’s hard to be grateful and still remember how much boot-licking I had to do. It’s hard to be grateful when I feel guilty for merely being born when this country still gave you a second chance. No one gets through life without ever needing help or making a mistake. Let those without sin blow me.
But I’m so lucky! I have drawers stuffed with clean socks and underthings – an entire collection of bras and a washer and dryer that don’t require quarters or travel. There’s my Denon home theater system and Digital cable. And why pay 90 bucks a month for all those programs if you don’t get Tivo to record them and never have to be insulted by another commercial?
Ah … being Middle Class. Everything looks better. Smells better. You even dream better from Egyptian cotton sheets and down pillows. Such softness. Such absence of discomfort and temptation. What more could you want?
Well … I guess we never run out of things to want.
Or hate.
Fuck it. I gotta work.
Saturday, February 12, 2005
The Love Bus
Three teen-aged girls sit across the bus from me. Their fingers twirl hair, poke at holes in tennis shoes, pull chewing gum into long strings to wrap around the tips of tongues.
The bus squeals to a stop. Without warning, a cute boy gets on and walks toward us with a smile that loosens the duct tape on my heart. As if on cue, all three girls start talking at once; and somehow, through an ancient intuition known only to teen-agers on the Carrick bus, they each know what the others are saying.
When I almost get used to that, they whisper in a huddle and suddenly tremble with shrieking giggles that make him jump. They accuse each other of liking him while calling each other queer. The mere mention of the word makes him sweat testosterone.
He thinks they're jagging him. Sadly enough, he'll never know they're acting like that because he is so cute. Love makes idiots of us all — like a young man who sees his beloved's sweater bouncing towards him and tries to impress her by spitting but ends up dribbling on himself.
It's easier to dribble on someone else. In ten years, he'll know some eyelash-batting piece of bitch isn't worth it. He'll drink yards of beer at Mario's and wiggle his tongue at women who will drop condoms on the bar as delicately as hankies — women who can even fake blushing. They'll learn that getting sex in a bar is kinda like laughing at your own joke in a large, empty room. But lust has no memory.
Ah, yes. Nothing like some teen-agers acting like I did, to bring out the cynic in me. I'm in severe need of tunes. I'll put Melissa Etheridge's tape, Yes I Am, in my headphones, her first release after she told the world she was a lesbian.
I still can't believe she's singing about women, not men, tearing her heart up. I guess there will never be equals in love. Whoever loves most loses regardless of gender. Funny. When I'm attracted to a man, I can't pull off the independent woman of the '90s facade they find so comforting.
I attended a local college where the most attractive man I've ever seen works. I'd start hyperventilating as I stepped off the bus; but as I walked up to school, I felt perfect Freudian happiness — being near him but having all that mystic distance in which the illusion of perfect love luxuriated.
I daydreamed about running into him, literally, first meeting and touching him in the same instant. We'd pause too long in each other's arms and stutter apologies. I'd be quick-witted but vulnerable — he'd be attentive but strong, like a couple in a Dan Fogelberg song. We'd speak briefly, staring at our feet, ashamed of the ridiculous smiles on our faces and say, "See you later, sorry." But that night, on separate porches, we'd feel each other at the end of every breeze that brushed our faces.
And it happened, I smashed into him. His blue eyes were as bright as cracked marbles and sparked against his silver hair. I can still feel the shock of my hands on his shoulders. Maybe that's why I bolted. Didn't even say "excuse me."
It was easy to imagine the certain embarrassment I avoided by not speaking. I would've sounded worse than a busload of cheerleaders. But I'd never been so scared of anyone. A coward dies a thousand deaths, indeed. That night, I wandered around Foodland so weak I wasn't even capable of a "no" to a free-sample lady with cocktail wieners. And my mouth was already so dry. I would've given anything to hear him call me psychotic just once....
The bus rattles through Mt. Oliver, where even the bars burn down. The cute young man's getting ready to get off the bus. The instant the center doors open, the girls bust out in a window-rattling chorus of giggles that makes me want to backhand them. But at least they waited 'till he could run out the door.
Melissa's song, "Talking To My Angel" plays. Is there anyone who isn't waiting to be completely understood by a perfect being? It may be unrealistic, but compromise is a risky business. It's easier to be with someone who isn't your dream-come-true than to feel the desperation and drive of obsessive love. But it's not fair to your lover because in the back of your head, you're still looking. You say things like "I need my space."
I believe in love at first sight. Pretty scary notion to have on the bus. Luckily it doesn't happen often. My therapist urged me to "date" instead of doing high-dives into the souls of madmen. "Dating" sounded like going out with people you're not wild about so you don't have sex at first. You eat food and see movies which provide the perfect opportunity for discourse consisting solely of strategic hints about what kind of person you want your date to think you are.
This could go on for years. I'd rather go to Catfish Hill in South Park, blast tunes and tell him horrible things about myself. I'll only have enough time to tell a fraction of the story and if he can't handle that, well, at least he'll be gone before I get used to sex again.
My therapist said I needed to know a man for awhile before I could love him. But the longer you know someone, the harder it is. He thought I trusted people too quickly to prove they weren't trustworthy. It always seemed to work, though. I love while I can — it's the only thing that makes me trust a man without making him earn it. But then I can't trust myself....
Almost at my stop, I turn off my headphones and say "excuse me" to the man sitting next to me. He unfolds his arms, exposing a "no muff too tuff" t-shirt. I step over him and don't look back so I don't have to watch him check out my ass.
No wonder I never forgot the man with voltage in his eyes. But he was a captivating man that I saw at an all-girl's school I went to so I wouldn't have to see men. It pissed me off. I refused to even look at him until I'd see his eyes and couldn't look away.
I have to believe he's married — the thought of him spending his nights alone drives me wild. It doesn't matter though, I don't need a man to define my existence. I'm busy discovering my bliss and reading The Road Less Traveled and The Prophet. I spend time nurturing myself, repeatedly telling myself that I'm alone by choice, that I'm better for it.
Loneliness has an irreversible quality to it — like the further you go out, even if you want to come back, you'll never be as close to the world as when you started. I guess it's this tragic quality that makes it feel somehow heroic.
No wonder the road is less traveled. Everyone on it is alone.
The bus squeals to a stop. Without warning, a cute boy gets on and walks toward us with a smile that loosens the duct tape on my heart. As if on cue, all three girls start talking at once; and somehow, through an ancient intuition known only to teen-agers on the Carrick bus, they each know what the others are saying.
When I almost get used to that, they whisper in a huddle and suddenly tremble with shrieking giggles that make him jump. They accuse each other of liking him while calling each other queer. The mere mention of the word makes him sweat testosterone.
He thinks they're jagging him. Sadly enough, he'll never know they're acting like that because he is so cute. Love makes idiots of us all — like a young man who sees his beloved's sweater bouncing towards him and tries to impress her by spitting but ends up dribbling on himself.
It's easier to dribble on someone else. In ten years, he'll know some eyelash-batting piece of bitch isn't worth it. He'll drink yards of beer at Mario's and wiggle his tongue at women who will drop condoms on the bar as delicately as hankies — women who can even fake blushing. They'll learn that getting sex in a bar is kinda like laughing at your own joke in a large, empty room. But lust has no memory.
Ah, yes. Nothing like some teen-agers acting like I did, to bring out the cynic in me. I'm in severe need of tunes. I'll put Melissa Etheridge's tape, Yes I Am, in my headphones, her first release after she told the world she was a lesbian.
I still can't believe she's singing about women, not men, tearing her heart up. I guess there will never be equals in love. Whoever loves most loses regardless of gender. Funny. When I'm attracted to a man, I can't pull off the independent woman of the '90s facade they find so comforting.
I attended a local college where the most attractive man I've ever seen works. I'd start hyperventilating as I stepped off the bus; but as I walked up to school, I felt perfect Freudian happiness — being near him but having all that mystic distance in which the illusion of perfect love luxuriated.
I daydreamed about running into him, literally, first meeting and touching him in the same instant. We'd pause too long in each other's arms and stutter apologies. I'd be quick-witted but vulnerable — he'd be attentive but strong, like a couple in a Dan Fogelberg song. We'd speak briefly, staring at our feet, ashamed of the ridiculous smiles on our faces and say, "See you later, sorry." But that night, on separate porches, we'd feel each other at the end of every breeze that brushed our faces.
And it happened, I smashed into him. His blue eyes were as bright as cracked marbles and sparked against his silver hair. I can still feel the shock of my hands on his shoulders. Maybe that's why I bolted. Didn't even say "excuse me."
It was easy to imagine the certain embarrassment I avoided by not speaking. I would've sounded worse than a busload of cheerleaders. But I'd never been so scared of anyone. A coward dies a thousand deaths, indeed. That night, I wandered around Foodland so weak I wasn't even capable of a "no" to a free-sample lady with cocktail wieners. And my mouth was already so dry. I would've given anything to hear him call me psychotic just once....
The bus rattles through Mt. Oliver, where even the bars burn down. The cute young man's getting ready to get off the bus. The instant the center doors open, the girls bust out in a window-rattling chorus of giggles that makes me want to backhand them. But at least they waited 'till he could run out the door.
Melissa's song, "Talking To My Angel" plays. Is there anyone who isn't waiting to be completely understood by a perfect being? It may be unrealistic, but compromise is a risky business. It's easier to be with someone who isn't your dream-come-true than to feel the desperation and drive of obsessive love. But it's not fair to your lover because in the back of your head, you're still looking. You say things like "I need my space."
I believe in love at first sight. Pretty scary notion to have on the bus. Luckily it doesn't happen often. My therapist urged me to "date" instead of doing high-dives into the souls of madmen. "Dating" sounded like going out with people you're not wild about so you don't have sex at first. You eat food and see movies which provide the perfect opportunity for discourse consisting solely of strategic hints about what kind of person you want your date to think you are.
This could go on for years. I'd rather go to Catfish Hill in South Park, blast tunes and tell him horrible things about myself. I'll only have enough time to tell a fraction of the story and if he can't handle that, well, at least he'll be gone before I get used to sex again.
My therapist said I needed to know a man for awhile before I could love him. But the longer you know someone, the harder it is. He thought I trusted people too quickly to prove they weren't trustworthy. It always seemed to work, though. I love while I can — it's the only thing that makes me trust a man without making him earn it. But then I can't trust myself....
Almost at my stop, I turn off my headphones and say "excuse me" to the man sitting next to me. He unfolds his arms, exposing a "no muff too tuff" t-shirt. I step over him and don't look back so I don't have to watch him check out my ass.
No wonder I never forgot the man with voltage in his eyes. But he was a captivating man that I saw at an all-girl's school I went to so I wouldn't have to see men. It pissed me off. I refused to even look at him until I'd see his eyes and couldn't look away.
I have to believe he's married — the thought of him spending his nights alone drives me wild. It doesn't matter though, I don't need a man to define my existence. I'm busy discovering my bliss and reading The Road Less Traveled and The Prophet. I spend time nurturing myself, repeatedly telling myself that I'm alone by choice, that I'm better for it.
Loneliness has an irreversible quality to it — like the further you go out, even if you want to come back, you'll never be as close to the world as when you started. I guess it's this tragic quality that makes it feel somehow heroic.
No wonder the road is less traveled. Everyone on it is alone.
Fat Like Me
Fat Like Me
Published Feb., 1996
It was Alternet's #2 story for the month so there!
Fatties Fatale
The night I learned what it meant to be fat, I was 14 years old and 15 pounds overweight. I watched my best friend, who was the fattest person I'd ever seen, giving head to a 22 year-old man who was driving us home from a party. I had never seen anyone put so much of anything into a mouth. Gulp. I completely understood my future.
Her fat made her look old enough to get served at the liquor store. And it made her bold. She'd call random men on the phone, lie about her age, promise oral sex and we'd go meet them. She'd do as many as eight a night, until her teeth wore blisters inside her lips.
I already had full breasts and was only marginally fat. Men wanted more than oral sex from me. Each time I was date-raped, well, I didn't consider it rape to have sex with men who made me feel sick to my stomach. I was a fat chick. I had no right to say "no." Thin girls who never carried their own books, did. I was tortured at Brentwood high school and quit as soon as legally possible. I was ripe to be a welfare mother.
I found out I was pregnant in a drug rehab and went on to gain 75 pounds. I was officially fat and didn't care because I thought when people saw me with a baby, they wouldn't look at me like a whore anymore. I would be a mother.
Boy was I wrong. A few years ago, I talked to the fat chick who had been bobbing in the car that night. I told her about how I ended up as an honor student at Carnegie Mellon University. But when I admitted that I was on welfare, she said, "Don't you have any pride?"
I told her I didn't need pride, I was getting an education.
The Meek Shall Inherit the Girth
After a nice, big dinner, why do people need desert? And if sugar is a source of energy, why serve coffee with it? Oh, how refined America's tastes are ....
For centuries after sugar was brought to Europe, it was only sold in apothecaries. Average consumption by the eighteenth century was about four pounds a year per person. Now it's over a hundred pounds, even close to two hundred for many.
Around 7000 B.C., Neolithic man began to cultivate grains and roots because they could be stored. Now we sacrifice nutrition for shelf-life. Wheat is degerminated and bleached until it's so sterile even micro-organisms can't live on it. Let alone human beings.
Sugar and flour are staples because they're cheap to produce and store. When combined in donuts, pastries and cereals, the combination produces a narcotic effect. Sugar and white flour are the only things Overeater's Anonymous asks members to abstain from. They're the simplest carbohydrates, refined starch, instantly converted into blood sugar (glucose) providing a short rush of energy, of good feelings.
But for some, the spike of glucose causes a hyper-release of insulin, which is used to process it. So much insulin is released, gobbling up the glucose to store as fat, that there is less energy, less glucose available in the blood than before eating. The result: intense cravings for carbohydrates.
Vacillations between blood sugar levels may even trigger violence, a fight or feed response. The deluge of refined carbohydrates in this country could be the source of several behavior problems and even mental illness; however, budget constraints force institutions such as schools, hospitals and jails, to provide a diet of them.
Poor people (single mothers) are also limited to buying cheap foods for their families. Poverty is a major source of anxiety which itself causes the pancreas to hyper-release insulin. The more common response to low blood sugar is weight gain and a low-level lethargy, depression, aggression, fatigue, intense hunger. Which describes the mood of America.
An American Indian tribe in Ohio was brought to ruin when corn was introduced into their diet. They did nothing except farm and eat corn. Their teeth rotted away, their life expectancy dropped. All artistic endeavors like mound building and pottery making disappeared. Their entire life revolved around the production of the corn that was killing them.
Do you ever see a McDonald’s go out of business? No, they're busy adding playplaces for children who will grow up and blame their moms for being fat.
Fed Up
I wanted to go to a frat party before I graduated from Carnegie Mellon. I was really excited, started drinking early, met my friend Tracy and off we went.
It was early, the first floor of the frat house was empty. We heard a band in the basement and went down, looking for some high-class fun.
After only a few minutes, the band started a song that consisted of one line: "Hey fat chick, suck my dick." Two guitarists hesitated. They were fat. But I could see the exact moment that the group mentality kicked in. The fat boys jammed hardest, sang loudest.
I had just lost 80 pounds and wasn't really fat. I was hidden among the elite. All the thin girls were doing the head-bobbing thing, the almost-dance of the perfect. I couldn't believe they didn't even wince. Don't you have to at least pretend you're a feminist until you're married? But it was like they were proud. They were thin. And they would never suck dick.
I thought about bursting through the crowd and telling them how brutal they were. I imagined going in the middle of the dance floor and singing along, dancing and throwing karate kicks and punches I learned following my last almost-rape in 1985.
I was a 32-year-old honor student and a tattooed welfare mother. At first, I stared at pictures of the same men, dressed in maroon ties and navy blue sports coats, on the wall. All they had to do was be college students and they were treated with respect; and yet they still had to rip on fat chicks, who they'd never have to fuck, anyway.
Tracy stood frozen, her eyes huge and fixed on me, wondering what I was going to do, hoping it wouldn't be too embarrassing.
I left without saying a word.
The Fat Rolls For Thee
Obesity is now represented in the Americans With Disabilities Act. The statistics of how many of us are overweight varies from 3 out of 4 (tabloids); to 33 percent (Pharmaceutical Information Associates, Ltd.), to 3 percent for women and 3.4 percent for men aged 18-22 (N England J Med: 1993).
But the $33 billion spent on diet products over the past year suggest that large numbers of people are trying to lose weight. Ironically, since 1990, low-fat dieters gained an average of eight pounds.
According to the New York Times (4-25-93), Dr. Michael F. Oliver of the National Heart and Lung Institute in London, presented evidence at the First International Conference of Fats and Oils and Human Disease, that even when low-fat (30 percent) diets were followed, they had no effect on lowering rates of heart disease.
He said: "Two decades [of large, clinical trials] have failed to demonstrate that the national goal [of a low-fat diet] has any effect on heart disease rates."
In one group, deaths from heart disease increased.
Oliver also discussed new evidence suggesting that the body will convert carbohydrates into saturated (the worst for the heart) fat for its needs when their isn't enough in the diet. When it comes to fat, doctors are finding that what happens in Petri dishes may be irrelevant compared to what goes on inside a patient. Heart disease remains our number one killer and bathroom scales are on the rise.
Another obvious failure of low-fat diets is that people can't, don't, won't stay on them. "While it is possible to lose weight by eating less and exercising, consciously overriding one's homeostatic control mechanisms requires constant attention and vigilance, which takes time away from other duties." writes Dr. Robert Yeas, who is an obese physician.
A nutrition exhibit at the Carnegie Science Center lists protein (low-carb) products as energy foods, good for breakfast, and high carbohydrate foods for the evening because they slowed the metabolism down — the exact opposite of those who claim that high carbs are energy foods.
On a low-fat diet, 6-8 servings of starch are recommended, the exact foods that cause cravings in as many as 75 percent of the population who are thought to be hyperinsulemic (carbohydrate-sensitive). Expecting them to live on low-fat diets might be akin to screaming at someone in a wheelchair to just get up and walk.
The Road Less Swallowed
I slowly peeled back the cheap pantyhose, slightly lifting my chaffed inner-thighs worn raw. I could see where each strand of nylon had sliced into my skin. I had been walking as part of my exercise program and wore pantyhose that were too small because they made me look thinner. By the time I realized what was happening, I was pretty far from home. I had no choice but to walk back— each step burning the nylon deeper into my skin. Health hurt.
This was the late '80s. I was a clean and sober, born-again welfare mother and full-time student at community college. After a year's sobriety, I decided to take control of my life again and went to Weight Watchers. I exercised, drank the water and wouldn't even lick the back of measuring spoon. I followed my plan perfectly.
After six weeks, I was having such intense food cravings that I'd cry hysterically, crawl on my hands and knees begging for strength, thinking it was Satan, screaming "I rebuke thee in the name of Jesus Christ." I knew my neighbors could hear.
I'd tell myself "one day at a time," over and over, guzzle water and drink tea until bedtime. I thanked the Lord for getting me through the day and then I'd spend the night dreaming about cakes and pastries and my teeth falling out. I'd wake-up starving, start crying and curse God. I'd start eating fistfuls of Frosted Flakes, guzzling milk from the carton, thinking about a Cosmo cover model who said her main form of exercise was walking across the street to get pastrami sandwiches.
I kept trying. I was either gaining or losing weight. At least the carbs calmed me down. But I smoked and drank coffee all day to stay awake. Donuts, cigarettes, coffee: the 12 step diet.
I started eating in the middle of the night — I once drank pancake syrup when it was the only sugar in the house. I didn't remember 'till I smelled it in my hair. I blew my diet even when I was unconscious. It challenged the psychological reasons I attributed for my overeating. In the middle of the night, I wasn't bored or feeling deprived or unloved or fat, I was asleep. I woke up because my body craved carbs. I complied and would slip right back into visions of sugarplums dancing in my head.
There's more to than this than meets the thigh.
Chins up!
Humans are natural omnivores. Early hominids lived on the meat of lean animals and random berries and roots they'd gather. There were no refined starches so they lived a low-carbohydrate (about 15 grams/day.) existence. Nothing near the almost 300 grams recommended on food nutrition labels today.
Low-carb diets' popularity suggests that they reduce appetite, renew energy, increase sexual potency, clear-headedness, strength, all the things that come from a general sense of well-being. Too good to be true?
In Dr.'s Richard and Rachel Heller's book, Healthy for Life, "Syndrome X" is defined as the affliction that causes the over-production of insulin after eating starchy food. But the low-carb concept started in 1973 when Dr. Robert C. Atkins published his Diet Revolution that has sold over six million copies.
Low-carb diets are treated like a dangerous fad. But the low-fat approach failed to do much except increase the ingestion of cheap carbs so people gained weight. The issue isn't what or how much one eats, but what the body does with it. And that will vary. Nothing is perfect for everyone.
The Atkins plan was faulted for causing "starvation." After a few days, the metabolism is forced to burn fat for energy. Glucose levels stabilize and the appetite disappears. The experts call this a dangerous side effect.
Think about it: A doctor discovers a diet that suppresses your appetite without drugs, and the medical community faults it.
A spoonful of medicine helps the sugar go down.
Cellulite Hero
Eating and sex, two basic and essential acts for sustaining life, have become the source of disease and misery to millions of people, including me. So why am I fat if I know so much?
Why do I stand at the bus stop rubbing my round belly when an attractive man with a side part stares at me in lust and disgust? I feel like I'm rubbing a magic lamp thinking ,"this is all mine, bastard." Can't spank this.
Fat is supposed to mean that we're not doing what we're told, we're not working hard enough, we're fat and lazy. We have no self-control. We don’t care about ourselves. So why should anyone else?
But am I really supposed to jog my fatness up and down public streets and starve until I'm in tears just so I can earn the privilege of being with the kind of men who hate fat chicks? Will someone please just tell me how much weight I have to gain to get men to leave me alone?
I'm not hugely fat or unhealthy. People say I'm not fat enough to write about being fat (I wrote that so you wouldn't think I'm too fat). And of course I'm not fat on purpose. I didn't say, "Hey God, make me fat so I can grow up and write about what a victim I am." I've always been "chubby." I prefer "chunky" because it's more visually accurate.
Oh, enough. I'm exhausted with this rebellious fat business. I hate myself, okay? I wake up with swollen eyes, my mouth completely dry. I have to stop poisoning my body with refined starch.
And someday, I will wake up thin — the sun will peek into my window, loosening my eyelids; but the warmth, the warmth will hold my tiny body in perfect rapture. My eyes open in one smooth smile, no slamming back shut when seeing the first rays of a new day.
But, in the meantime, pass me a Pepsi. Because fat is my way of saying I'd rather eat than date. It's a bold fashion statement that few women have the stomach for. With God as my witness, I will never be hungry again.
Published Feb., 1996
It was Alternet's #2 story for the month so there!
Fatties Fatale
The night I learned what it meant to be fat, I was 14 years old and 15 pounds overweight. I watched my best friend, who was the fattest person I'd ever seen, giving head to a 22 year-old man who was driving us home from a party. I had never seen anyone put so much of anything into a mouth. Gulp. I completely understood my future.
Her fat made her look old enough to get served at the liquor store. And it made her bold. She'd call random men on the phone, lie about her age, promise oral sex and we'd go meet them. She'd do as many as eight a night, until her teeth wore blisters inside her lips.
I already had full breasts and was only marginally fat. Men wanted more than oral sex from me. Each time I was date-raped, well, I didn't consider it rape to have sex with men who made me feel sick to my stomach. I was a fat chick. I had no right to say "no." Thin girls who never carried their own books, did. I was tortured at Brentwood high school and quit as soon as legally possible. I was ripe to be a welfare mother.
I found out I was pregnant in a drug rehab and went on to gain 75 pounds. I was officially fat and didn't care because I thought when people saw me with a baby, they wouldn't look at me like a whore anymore. I would be a mother.
Boy was I wrong. A few years ago, I talked to the fat chick who had been bobbing in the car that night. I told her about how I ended up as an honor student at Carnegie Mellon University. But when I admitted that I was on welfare, she said, "Don't you have any pride?"
I told her I didn't need pride, I was getting an education.
The Meek Shall Inherit the Girth
After a nice, big dinner, why do people need desert? And if sugar is a source of energy, why serve coffee with it? Oh, how refined America's tastes are ....
For centuries after sugar was brought to Europe, it was only sold in apothecaries. Average consumption by the eighteenth century was about four pounds a year per person. Now it's over a hundred pounds, even close to two hundred for many.
Around 7000 B.C., Neolithic man began to cultivate grains and roots because they could be stored. Now we sacrifice nutrition for shelf-life. Wheat is degerminated and bleached until it's so sterile even micro-organisms can't live on it. Let alone human beings.
Sugar and flour are staples because they're cheap to produce and store. When combined in donuts, pastries and cereals, the combination produces a narcotic effect. Sugar and white flour are the only things Overeater's Anonymous asks members to abstain from. They're the simplest carbohydrates, refined starch, instantly converted into blood sugar (glucose) providing a short rush of energy, of good feelings.
But for some, the spike of glucose causes a hyper-release of insulin, which is used to process it. So much insulin is released, gobbling up the glucose to store as fat, that there is less energy, less glucose available in the blood than before eating. The result: intense cravings for carbohydrates.
Vacillations between blood sugar levels may even trigger violence, a fight or feed response. The deluge of refined carbohydrates in this country could be the source of several behavior problems and even mental illness; however, budget constraints force institutions such as schools, hospitals and jails, to provide a diet of them.
Poor people (single mothers) are also limited to buying cheap foods for their families. Poverty is a major source of anxiety which itself causes the pancreas to hyper-release insulin. The more common response to low blood sugar is weight gain and a low-level lethargy, depression, aggression, fatigue, intense hunger. Which describes the mood of America.
An American Indian tribe in Ohio was brought to ruin when corn was introduced into their diet. They did nothing except farm and eat corn. Their teeth rotted away, their life expectancy dropped. All artistic endeavors like mound building and pottery making disappeared. Their entire life revolved around the production of the corn that was killing them.
Do you ever see a McDonald’s go out of business? No, they're busy adding playplaces for children who will grow up and blame their moms for being fat.
Fed Up
I wanted to go to a frat party before I graduated from Carnegie Mellon. I was really excited, started drinking early, met my friend Tracy and off we went.
It was early, the first floor of the frat house was empty. We heard a band in the basement and went down, looking for some high-class fun.
After only a few minutes, the band started a song that consisted of one line: "Hey fat chick, suck my dick." Two guitarists hesitated. They were fat. But I could see the exact moment that the group mentality kicked in. The fat boys jammed hardest, sang loudest.
I had just lost 80 pounds and wasn't really fat. I was hidden among the elite. All the thin girls were doing the head-bobbing thing, the almost-dance of the perfect. I couldn't believe they didn't even wince. Don't you have to at least pretend you're a feminist until you're married? But it was like they were proud. They were thin. And they would never suck dick.
I thought about bursting through the crowd and telling them how brutal they were. I imagined going in the middle of the dance floor and singing along, dancing and throwing karate kicks and punches I learned following my last almost-rape in 1985.
I was a 32-year-old honor student and a tattooed welfare mother. At first, I stared at pictures of the same men, dressed in maroon ties and navy blue sports coats, on the wall. All they had to do was be college students and they were treated with respect; and yet they still had to rip on fat chicks, who they'd never have to fuck, anyway.
Tracy stood frozen, her eyes huge and fixed on me, wondering what I was going to do, hoping it wouldn't be too embarrassing.
I left without saying a word.
The Fat Rolls For Thee
Obesity is now represented in the Americans With Disabilities Act. The statistics of how many of us are overweight varies from 3 out of 4 (tabloids); to 33 percent (Pharmaceutical Information Associates, Ltd.), to 3 percent for women and 3.4 percent for men aged 18-22 (N England J Med: 1993).
But the $33 billion spent on diet products over the past year suggest that large numbers of people are trying to lose weight. Ironically, since 1990, low-fat dieters gained an average of eight pounds.
According to the New York Times (4-25-93), Dr. Michael F. Oliver of the National Heart and Lung Institute in London, presented evidence at the First International Conference of Fats and Oils and Human Disease, that even when low-fat (30 percent) diets were followed, they had no effect on lowering rates of heart disease.
He said: "Two decades [of large, clinical trials] have failed to demonstrate that the national goal [of a low-fat diet] has any effect on heart disease rates."
In one group, deaths from heart disease increased.
Oliver also discussed new evidence suggesting that the body will convert carbohydrates into saturated (the worst for the heart) fat for its needs when their isn't enough in the diet. When it comes to fat, doctors are finding that what happens in Petri dishes may be irrelevant compared to what goes on inside a patient. Heart disease remains our number one killer and bathroom scales are on the rise.
Another obvious failure of low-fat diets is that people can't, don't, won't stay on them. "While it is possible to lose weight by eating less and exercising, consciously overriding one's homeostatic control mechanisms requires constant attention and vigilance, which takes time away from other duties." writes Dr. Robert Yeas, who is an obese physician.
A nutrition exhibit at the Carnegie Science Center lists protein (low-carb) products as energy foods, good for breakfast, and high carbohydrate foods for the evening because they slowed the metabolism down — the exact opposite of those who claim that high carbs are energy foods.
On a low-fat diet, 6-8 servings of starch are recommended, the exact foods that cause cravings in as many as 75 percent of the population who are thought to be hyperinsulemic (carbohydrate-sensitive). Expecting them to live on low-fat diets might be akin to screaming at someone in a wheelchair to just get up and walk.
The Road Less Swallowed
I slowly peeled back the cheap pantyhose, slightly lifting my chaffed inner-thighs worn raw. I could see where each strand of nylon had sliced into my skin. I had been walking as part of my exercise program and wore pantyhose that were too small because they made me look thinner. By the time I realized what was happening, I was pretty far from home. I had no choice but to walk back— each step burning the nylon deeper into my skin. Health hurt.
This was the late '80s. I was a clean and sober, born-again welfare mother and full-time student at community college. After a year's sobriety, I decided to take control of my life again and went to Weight Watchers. I exercised, drank the water and wouldn't even lick the back of measuring spoon. I followed my plan perfectly.
After six weeks, I was having such intense food cravings that I'd cry hysterically, crawl on my hands and knees begging for strength, thinking it was Satan, screaming "I rebuke thee in the name of Jesus Christ." I knew my neighbors could hear.
I'd tell myself "one day at a time," over and over, guzzle water and drink tea until bedtime. I thanked the Lord for getting me through the day and then I'd spend the night dreaming about cakes and pastries and my teeth falling out. I'd wake-up starving, start crying and curse God. I'd start eating fistfuls of Frosted Flakes, guzzling milk from the carton, thinking about a Cosmo cover model who said her main form of exercise was walking across the street to get pastrami sandwiches.
I kept trying. I was either gaining or losing weight. At least the carbs calmed me down. But I smoked and drank coffee all day to stay awake. Donuts, cigarettes, coffee: the 12 step diet.
I started eating in the middle of the night — I once drank pancake syrup when it was the only sugar in the house. I didn't remember 'till I smelled it in my hair. I blew my diet even when I was unconscious. It challenged the psychological reasons I attributed for my overeating. In the middle of the night, I wasn't bored or feeling deprived or unloved or fat, I was asleep. I woke up because my body craved carbs. I complied and would slip right back into visions of sugarplums dancing in my head.
There's more to than this than meets the thigh.
Chins up!
Humans are natural omnivores. Early hominids lived on the meat of lean animals and random berries and roots they'd gather. There were no refined starches so they lived a low-carbohydrate (about 15 grams/day.) existence. Nothing near the almost 300 grams recommended on food nutrition labels today.
Low-carb diets' popularity suggests that they reduce appetite, renew energy, increase sexual potency, clear-headedness, strength, all the things that come from a general sense of well-being. Too good to be true?
In Dr.'s Richard and Rachel Heller's book, Healthy for Life, "Syndrome X" is defined as the affliction that causes the over-production of insulin after eating starchy food. But the low-carb concept started in 1973 when Dr. Robert C. Atkins published his Diet Revolution that has sold over six million copies.
Low-carb diets are treated like a dangerous fad. But the low-fat approach failed to do much except increase the ingestion of cheap carbs so people gained weight. The issue isn't what or how much one eats, but what the body does with it. And that will vary. Nothing is perfect for everyone.
The Atkins plan was faulted for causing "starvation." After a few days, the metabolism is forced to burn fat for energy. Glucose levels stabilize and the appetite disappears. The experts call this a dangerous side effect.
Think about it: A doctor discovers a diet that suppresses your appetite without drugs, and the medical community faults it.
A spoonful of medicine helps the sugar go down.
Cellulite Hero
Eating and sex, two basic and essential acts for sustaining life, have become the source of disease and misery to millions of people, including me. So why am I fat if I know so much?
Why do I stand at the bus stop rubbing my round belly when an attractive man with a side part stares at me in lust and disgust? I feel like I'm rubbing a magic lamp thinking ,"this is all mine, bastard." Can't spank this.
Fat is supposed to mean that we're not doing what we're told, we're not working hard enough, we're fat and lazy. We have no self-control. We don’t care about ourselves. So why should anyone else?
But am I really supposed to jog my fatness up and down public streets and starve until I'm in tears just so I can earn the privilege of being with the kind of men who hate fat chicks? Will someone please just tell me how much weight I have to gain to get men to leave me alone?
I'm not hugely fat or unhealthy. People say I'm not fat enough to write about being fat (I wrote that so you wouldn't think I'm too fat). And of course I'm not fat on purpose. I didn't say, "Hey God, make me fat so I can grow up and write about what a victim I am." I've always been "chubby." I prefer "chunky" because it's more visually accurate.
Oh, enough. I'm exhausted with this rebellious fat business. I hate myself, okay? I wake up with swollen eyes, my mouth completely dry. I have to stop poisoning my body with refined starch.
And someday, I will wake up thin — the sun will peek into my window, loosening my eyelids; but the warmth, the warmth will hold my tiny body in perfect rapture. My eyes open in one smooth smile, no slamming back shut when seeing the first rays of a new day.
But, in the meantime, pass me a Pepsi. Because fat is my way of saying I'd rather eat than date. It's a bold fashion statement that few women have the stomach for. With God as my witness, I will never be hungry again.
Children of the Bus
There's a baby across the aisle from me who starts shaking his bunny rattle until he gets so excited that he bangs himself right between the eyes with it.
After the first hit, he's startled. He tries again. After the second th-whack, he's startled and quite concerned. He shakes the rattle harder. His mother offers him another toy. He refuses.
The mother returns with a "then-don't-listen-to-me-and-we'll-see-what-happens-ya-
little-bastard" look, almost a smile.
The third time he whacks himself right upside the head. His face wrinkles with injustice as he cries. The mother tries again to get the rattle. No chance.
People on the bus show signs of annoyance. The mother rummages in her bag of tricks again, this time producing a set of keys. Oh no! He'll poke himself in the eye. Wait. He turned away as if mortally insulted by such a petty offer.
She reaches in the bag again. Ah, yes. She confidently hands him a cookie. As soon as he sees it, he drops the rattle. He immediately bangs himself in the head with the cookie, but instead of crying, he eats what's left in his fist. Funny bastard. I mean baby.
The bus breathes and the normal drone returns. I inadvertently look over to find the baby staring at me. Smiling as maternally as I can on a bus, I say "Hi, little baby."
He never blinks as he inhales enough air to let loose a scream that gets even the bus-driver's attention. Never before has a baby looked at me and seen something so wretched, so heinous, that it made him scream bloody murder. It's a real esteem booster for a weekly pass holder like myself.
Babies, dogs and cats (creatures in our lives with the least intelligence) are often seen in movies as portals of a higher intelligence, a pure intuition. I know what everybody on the bus is thinking: Whatever made the baby wail at the sight of me was something hideous in my very soul.
I think I smell garlic. The mother is bouncing the screaming baby roughly on her knee. All she has to do is give him another cookie but it's like she wants to prolong the effects of my evil to intensify it.
One minute I'm riding high, venerating motherhood, contemplating the violence that innocence succumbs to, then suddenly everyone's looking at me like I'm a blood-drooling whore carrying Satan's baby.
Ah, time to turn on headphones ... the opiate of the buses.
I look out the window and calm quickly. I know from experience that the mother will only hate me as long as the kid cries. I've never owned a car and have been on the bus with my son, Leo, since he was a baby. When he was three (he's now ten), I started going to Community College on the North Side. I felt like the heroine of some After School Special about the realities of single parenthood. We started on the Carrick bus at 6:30 a.m., me with my book bag, him with his Joe Cool lunch box.
We arrived in the North Side around 8:30 and I'd be completely spent. Leo used to try and slide down the poles like a fireman. He'd try to stand in the middle of the bus to see if he could keep his balance while it moved. He wanted to run up and down the center aisle. Sometimes I'd have to hold him while he kicked me with his Stride Right shoes. I still have dents in my shins.
I remember how people looked at me as I struggled with him. I could tell who had kids and who didn't by the way they reacted. People who are parents see little monsters on the bus and look grateful because theirs aren't with them. You can tell they've experienced a bus ride with a child if they look grateful and scared.
Non-parents smirk as they fold their arms over their chests and emit what is part sigh, part huff. They suffer from Pre-Parental Denial. This assures the propagation of our species. After seeing "little brats" throw "fits" on the bus or in the grocery store, they're convinced their children would never behave like that. Or they'd never have any.
Let them think it. Someday the fruit of their loins will peel and eat chewing gum off the black-rubber floor of a bus. Someday they'll understand. But not all of them. Some women on the bus with grown children suffer from Post-Parental Denial. Their children were perfect, just darling. These women were always telling me to put a hat on Leo, to fuss with him constantly, always suggesting something was wrong with him. These are the moms who wonder why their children never call.
Parenthood is an incredible test of character. Knowing that I'm the only person to take care of Leo gives me strength and keeps me grounded. I can't imagine not having him.
I lie. Having a child-free life is a re-occurring fantasy. My apartment would stay clean. I could go barefoot in the house, no more mud or crumbs on the kitchen floor. No more carrying bags of groceries home until I have shooting pains in my arms. I'd never buy or be tempted to eat another Twinkie. I also love thinking about being a kid again — people begging me to eat. Man.
And I contemplate the days when beating your children was encouraged and even admired.
Frightened children are obedient. One night I thought Leo was playing with his Tinker Toys and instead found him cutting holes in the back of all of his shirts 'cause he didn't like tags. My thoughts turned back on the glory days of parenting: dads with belts, moms with wooden spoons or hairbrushes — and a cruel twist, when we'd get a paddle ball as a party favor, as soon as the rubber string broke, mom would add it to her panoply.
That night, Leo was around four, I started telling him how lucky he was that I didn't beat him. I wanted to tell him every gruesome story from my childhood but stopped when I realized that he shouldn't be made to feel grateful for being treated with respect. That's every child's birthright. It didn't seem right to ask him to thank me for it. Besides, I'm not always so good at it.
By the end of every August, the boy got whacked. I'd been with him all summer with no money and no car, day and night. Unless you have kids, you can't fathom the variety of ways they invent to make your life miserable. The problem is feeling that they do it deliberately. But after hitting Leo and seeing the how-could-you-? in his eyes, I knew it was wrong. So I don't abuse my son, I just fantasize about it.
I will miss him, though. Last week he was in the shower and I walked into the bathroom singing, turn around, you're a young man walking out of the door, thinking about how near the day is that I won't be able to hold him anymore, when he won't be my little boy, my angel.
He started singing, insane in the membrane, insane in the brain and showed me his hair, shampooed into a Mohawk. I smiled, picked up his muddy Major Damage jeans and quietly closed the door behind me....
Downtown already? I didn't even notice that the baby was gone. Okay. Maybe I got a little intense. It wasn't all that bad — never is once it's over. But everything seems so intense when strangers are watching, but the more intense things get, the more quickly they're forgotten.
No. They're not forgotten, they're actively ignored. I've learned the difference. The crossing guards at Leo's school were issued bullet-proof vests. He and one of his friends were jumped by a bunch of kids outside of his school. He got over it almost instantly. I started eating handfuls of Rolaids. How do you get over being attacked for no reason? And why would five older kids need to do that or even want to? Why don't people seem to understand that although frightened children are obedient, they grow-up to be terrifying teenagers?
Oh enough. Time to get off this bus.
The low, gray sky looks too tired to rain. How many times have I prayed for a bus; although, it's almost certain one will be coming? I guess that's the whole concept behind faith. That's why I have so little, especially when it concerns our children. No one seems to understand the "our" part.
And here's the 61A, right when I start to feel completely invisible. I get a window seat and take my headphones off. I listen to the engine of the bus rise and fall — just like everything.
Maybe it's a miracle that things aren't a lot worse. Or maybe that's the bullshit that justifies what is happening.
After the first hit, he's startled. He tries again. After the second th-whack, he's startled and quite concerned. He shakes the rattle harder. His mother offers him another toy. He refuses.
The mother returns with a "then-don't-listen-to-me-and-we'll-see-what-happens-ya-
little-bastard" look, almost a smile.
The third time he whacks himself right upside the head. His face wrinkles with injustice as he cries. The mother tries again to get the rattle. No chance.
People on the bus show signs of annoyance. The mother rummages in her bag of tricks again, this time producing a set of keys. Oh no! He'll poke himself in the eye. Wait. He turned away as if mortally insulted by such a petty offer.
She reaches in the bag again. Ah, yes. She confidently hands him a cookie. As soon as he sees it, he drops the rattle. He immediately bangs himself in the head with the cookie, but instead of crying, he eats what's left in his fist. Funny bastard. I mean baby.
The bus breathes and the normal drone returns. I inadvertently look over to find the baby staring at me. Smiling as maternally as I can on a bus, I say "Hi, little baby."
He never blinks as he inhales enough air to let loose a scream that gets even the bus-driver's attention. Never before has a baby looked at me and seen something so wretched, so heinous, that it made him scream bloody murder. It's a real esteem booster for a weekly pass holder like myself.
Babies, dogs and cats (creatures in our lives with the least intelligence) are often seen in movies as portals of a higher intelligence, a pure intuition. I know what everybody on the bus is thinking: Whatever made the baby wail at the sight of me was something hideous in my very soul.
I think I smell garlic. The mother is bouncing the screaming baby roughly on her knee. All she has to do is give him another cookie but it's like she wants to prolong the effects of my evil to intensify it.
One minute I'm riding high, venerating motherhood, contemplating the violence that innocence succumbs to, then suddenly everyone's looking at me like I'm a blood-drooling whore carrying Satan's baby.
Ah, time to turn on headphones ... the opiate of the buses.
I look out the window and calm quickly. I know from experience that the mother will only hate me as long as the kid cries. I've never owned a car and have been on the bus with my son, Leo, since he was a baby. When he was three (he's now ten), I started going to Community College on the North Side. I felt like the heroine of some After School Special about the realities of single parenthood. We started on the Carrick bus at 6:30 a.m., me with my book bag, him with his Joe Cool lunch box.
We arrived in the North Side around 8:30 and I'd be completely spent. Leo used to try and slide down the poles like a fireman. He'd try to stand in the middle of the bus to see if he could keep his balance while it moved. He wanted to run up and down the center aisle. Sometimes I'd have to hold him while he kicked me with his Stride Right shoes. I still have dents in my shins.
I remember how people looked at me as I struggled with him. I could tell who had kids and who didn't by the way they reacted. People who are parents see little monsters on the bus and look grateful because theirs aren't with them. You can tell they've experienced a bus ride with a child if they look grateful and scared.
Non-parents smirk as they fold their arms over their chests and emit what is part sigh, part huff. They suffer from Pre-Parental Denial. This assures the propagation of our species. After seeing "little brats" throw "fits" on the bus or in the grocery store, they're convinced their children would never behave like that. Or they'd never have any.
Let them think it. Someday the fruit of their loins will peel and eat chewing gum off the black-rubber floor of a bus. Someday they'll understand. But not all of them. Some women on the bus with grown children suffer from Post-Parental Denial. Their children were perfect, just darling. These women were always telling me to put a hat on Leo, to fuss with him constantly, always suggesting something was wrong with him. These are the moms who wonder why their children never call.
Parenthood is an incredible test of character. Knowing that I'm the only person to take care of Leo gives me strength and keeps me grounded. I can't imagine not having him.
I lie. Having a child-free life is a re-occurring fantasy. My apartment would stay clean. I could go barefoot in the house, no more mud or crumbs on the kitchen floor. No more carrying bags of groceries home until I have shooting pains in my arms. I'd never buy or be tempted to eat another Twinkie. I also love thinking about being a kid again — people begging me to eat. Man.
And I contemplate the days when beating your children was encouraged and even admired.
Frightened children are obedient. One night I thought Leo was playing with his Tinker Toys and instead found him cutting holes in the back of all of his shirts 'cause he didn't like tags. My thoughts turned back on the glory days of parenting: dads with belts, moms with wooden spoons or hairbrushes — and a cruel twist, when we'd get a paddle ball as a party favor, as soon as the rubber string broke, mom would add it to her panoply.
That night, Leo was around four, I started telling him how lucky he was that I didn't beat him. I wanted to tell him every gruesome story from my childhood but stopped when I realized that he shouldn't be made to feel grateful for being treated with respect. That's every child's birthright. It didn't seem right to ask him to thank me for it. Besides, I'm not always so good at it.
By the end of every August, the boy got whacked. I'd been with him all summer with no money and no car, day and night. Unless you have kids, you can't fathom the variety of ways they invent to make your life miserable. The problem is feeling that they do it deliberately. But after hitting Leo and seeing the how-could-you-? in his eyes, I knew it was wrong. So I don't abuse my son, I just fantasize about it.
I will miss him, though. Last week he was in the shower and I walked into the bathroom singing, turn around, you're a young man walking out of the door, thinking about how near the day is that I won't be able to hold him anymore, when he won't be my little boy, my angel.
He started singing, insane in the membrane, insane in the brain and showed me his hair, shampooed into a Mohawk. I smiled, picked up his muddy Major Damage jeans and quietly closed the door behind me....
Downtown already? I didn't even notice that the baby was gone. Okay. Maybe I got a little intense. It wasn't all that bad — never is once it's over. But everything seems so intense when strangers are watching, but the more intense things get, the more quickly they're forgotten.
No. They're not forgotten, they're actively ignored. I've learned the difference. The crossing guards at Leo's school were issued bullet-proof vests. He and one of his friends were jumped by a bunch of kids outside of his school. He got over it almost instantly. I started eating handfuls of Rolaids. How do you get over being attacked for no reason? And why would five older kids need to do that or even want to? Why don't people seem to understand that although frightened children are obedient, they grow-up to be terrifying teenagers?
Oh enough. Time to get off this bus.
The low, gray sky looks too tired to rain. How many times have I prayed for a bus; although, it's almost certain one will be coming? I guess that's the whole concept behind faith. That's why I have so little, especially when it concerns our children. No one seems to understand the "our" part.
And here's the 61A, right when I start to feel completely invisible. I get a window seat and take my headphones off. I listen to the engine of the bus rise and fall — just like everything.
Maybe it's a miracle that things aren't a lot worse. Or maybe that's the bullshit that justifies what is happening.
My Welfare Lady
Graduation Speech, Carnegie Mellon University, May 15, 1994
Although a traditional student was selected to speak, the commencement committee produced a brochure for our speeches and distributed them with the graduation programs. Here's mine. I was 32 years old.
My life has a made-for-TV-movie quality about it. I began my education as a single welfare mother, high-school dropout and convicted felon. When I was 18, I had been arrested for passing illegal prescriptions and spent nearly six months in a Kansas jail for it. I was lucky to be in a small county jail. They even ordered pizza for us.
I plead guilty to one count of forgery, was released, went to a drug rehab and then lived with nuns for three months in Erie, PA. Seeing that not even Burger King would hire me, my probation officer let me come back to Pittsburgh. Upon returning in the fall of '80, I became gainfully employed as a mud-wrestler, joining two drunken male volunteers per night to roll around with in the mud.
It's only natural that I started hanging out with outlaw motorcycle types at this time. And even though they didn't approve of shooting dope, I continued. In the summer of '82, I spent a week in the hospital so doctors could drain an abscess on my arm that resulted from missing a vein. I was released and immediately hitchhiked all over the country with two of my friends.
When I returned, I went into another drug rehab where I found out I was pregnant. But when I decided to keep my baby, I knew that my life was no longer my own. For the first time, I actually cared what happened to me. And here I am, a welfare mother graduating with honors from one of the most expensive universities in the world.
I truly love this country, even though the government benefits that enabled my transformation are already gone. It will be my life's work to bring them back, to make sure every man, woman and child has the same chances to be free, even if it means you're free to make big mistakes, that I had. Without these programs, I'd never have been able to keep my baby. And with all my heart I thank the taxpayers.
My son, Leo, is about to turn 11. I've been in school, full time, since he was three, beginning at Community College of Allegheny County. I would have never imagined that I'd be here. I've had the incredible experience of having my life exceed my dreams. But there are far too many stories that start like mine and far too few that end here.
Our power of choice is limited to the awareness we have of the world around us. Ignorance makes us vulnerable, powerless, which is the opposite of bliss. As the benefactors of our education, we have been given the power to understand the mechanisms necessary to reach our full potential. That power is a gift of great responsibility that demands we extend it to others.
We live in a time of incredible information that seems endless. Only by keeping our powers of reason guided by our hearts, will we synthesize the answers to the problems we face.
Many people still don't seem to understand how things like poverty, prejudice and the resulting abuse elicit undesirable behaviors. Obviously many people don't understand how bad it hurts to feel so worthless. And even with the success I've been afforded, my self-esteem is something I have to fight for daily.
These problems aren't excuses for bad behavior, these problems are the cause. Being constantly demeaned, for whatever reason, creates a desperation that drives self-destructiveness. It infects victims and everyone who tries to love them. Or tries to ignore them. Over time the hurt turns to hate. Which turns to violence or depression. Prevention is the only solution.
All anyone needs is a chance to try, to have the strength of heart that comes from being cared for. And that strength, that hope, is a gift that each of us can give to others. That's the simple magic of it. And please don't ever forget that we all deserve to be treated with the dignity that drives our best endeavors.
Thank you, America the beautiful.
Although a traditional student was selected to speak, the commencement committee produced a brochure for our speeches and distributed them with the graduation programs. Here's mine. I was 32 years old.
My life has a made-for-TV-movie quality about it. I began my education as a single welfare mother, high-school dropout and convicted felon. When I was 18, I had been arrested for passing illegal prescriptions and spent nearly six months in a Kansas jail for it. I was lucky to be in a small county jail. They even ordered pizza for us.
I plead guilty to one count of forgery, was released, went to a drug rehab and then lived with nuns for three months in Erie, PA. Seeing that not even Burger King would hire me, my probation officer let me come back to Pittsburgh. Upon returning in the fall of '80, I became gainfully employed as a mud-wrestler, joining two drunken male volunteers per night to roll around with in the mud.
It's only natural that I started hanging out with outlaw motorcycle types at this time. And even though they didn't approve of shooting dope, I continued. In the summer of '82, I spent a week in the hospital so doctors could drain an abscess on my arm that resulted from missing a vein. I was released and immediately hitchhiked all over the country with two of my friends.
When I returned, I went into another drug rehab where I found out I was pregnant. But when I decided to keep my baby, I knew that my life was no longer my own. For the first time, I actually cared what happened to me. And here I am, a welfare mother graduating with honors from one of the most expensive universities in the world.
I truly love this country, even though the government benefits that enabled my transformation are already gone. It will be my life's work to bring them back, to make sure every man, woman and child has the same chances to be free, even if it means you're free to make big mistakes, that I had. Without these programs, I'd never have been able to keep my baby. And with all my heart I thank the taxpayers.
My son, Leo, is about to turn 11. I've been in school, full time, since he was three, beginning at Community College of Allegheny County. I would have never imagined that I'd be here. I've had the incredible experience of having my life exceed my dreams. But there are far too many stories that start like mine and far too few that end here.
Our power of choice is limited to the awareness we have of the world around us. Ignorance makes us vulnerable, powerless, which is the opposite of bliss. As the benefactors of our education, we have been given the power to understand the mechanisms necessary to reach our full potential. That power is a gift of great responsibility that demands we extend it to others.
We live in a time of incredible information that seems endless. Only by keeping our powers of reason guided by our hearts, will we synthesize the answers to the problems we face.
Many people still don't seem to understand how things like poverty, prejudice and the resulting abuse elicit undesirable behaviors. Obviously many people don't understand how bad it hurts to feel so worthless. And even with the success I've been afforded, my self-esteem is something I have to fight for daily.
These problems aren't excuses for bad behavior, these problems are the cause. Being constantly demeaned, for whatever reason, creates a desperation that drives self-destructiveness. It infects victims and everyone who tries to love them. Or tries to ignore them. Over time the hurt turns to hate. Which turns to violence or depression. Prevention is the only solution.
All anyone needs is a chance to try, to have the strength of heart that comes from being cared for. And that strength, that hope, is a gift that each of us can give to others. That's the simple magic of it. And please don't ever forget that we all deserve to be treated with the dignity that drives our best endeavors.
Thank you, America the beautiful.
The Placebo Effect: back in cyan, yellow, magenta and black!
The CYMK thing - that's all the colors they use to print magazines. Please don't make me talk about it. But this is an article about my anticipated return to print and my waiting public! But no one noticed. And come to think about it, I didn't care.But they made an editorial change to a title without asking me and the end. So yes my long awaited return to print! I guess everyone's sick of my shit or something. Or maybe the paper wouldn't put me on the cover like the other one did. Maybe the paper wouldn't let me run wild through the pages and make the paper something people actually talked about. I can rile 'em up! But they make me play nice AND I WON'T. Because I am nice! Anyway.
I'm still doing the same job, two years later, except for a new company - so I hate my job much less. Bye! I love you! Oh no one's here ... okay bye!
A Bittersweet Pill
Did you really think you’d never have to hear my shit again? Maybe “hope” is a better verb. One day I’m one of Pittsburgh’s favorite columnists – a literary bad-ass doing Spoken Word with Lydia Lunch and Cynthia Plaster Caster; getting phone calls from the Tragically Hip’s frontman, Gordon Downie, who said it’d be an honor to write a blurb for my first book, Once Upon Some Welfare, and within four days the book deal fell through and the "name of alternative newsweekly here" booted my ass. Six months later I was telemarketing.
But naturally, it’s deliciously self-satisfying to see some whippersnappin’ smart arse like myself get the ol’ slap-down from the local media, ain’t it?
Well I’ve come back to return the favor.
When the new owners of the "name of alternative newsweekly here" were firing me, they said they still wanted me to write for them. I go, “You want me to wait tables and write for you?” No … no way. It was somewhat complementary to be fired by the Neo Alternative Press in their suits and expensive eye-wear. But they wouldn’t shut up about synergies and “taking the paper to the next level.” And they sure did! Right out o’ business.
A local daily offered me work but wanted that “powerful” writing I was known for but did I have to be so dramatic? I thought about the Tribune Review – there was talk that they’d let me keep my bus column – but I couldn’t write for Citizen Scaife.
The editor a new alternative newsweekly never responded to my email. I think I said something like, “I’ll never again allow a writer put his hands all over my prose without my approval just because he’s the editor.” That’s a bad pitch, I reckon.
This was years after my comrades from the "name of alternative newsweekly here" who had moved to the other alternative newsweekly (after dogging it for years) had stopped responding to my emails – even the complementary one. WHA’D I EVER DO?
I was offered a chance to write, unedited, for zmag.org with the Semiotic Funky Bunch including Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn. But they said I had to write political articles. I’m a lowly Confessionalist Journalist which is just too personal. But the editor was really cool and said, “Every writer here would agree the writing you do is the most difficult.” So there!
After I realized my writing local career was over, it hurt, yo. It felt like saying good-bye to the whole city - to the rare and reverent chance to try and remind the poor souls we call losers, that they deserve better.
BUT I NEVER STOPPED WRITING YOU BASTARDS – just publishing – and once you do, you can say whatever the fuck you want, how ever you want, for as many pages, hours, days or years as you want. And what is the point of writing without that freedom? A paycheck? Eating Mimosa’s and drinking Chai with the East-Enders?
I spent the last seven years spewing about 25,000 pages of my shit somewhere that is archived but not widely read. Perfect. I should be proud that I refused to change how I write in order to stay in print but I became the dreaded has-been. So now if someone says, “I was a fan of yours,” I feel kind of embarrassed. I cringe hearing complements about my how good my writing I was. What was so special about it?
I POURED MY HEART OUT TO YOU UNGRATEFUL BASTARDS! Luckily my life has been a hit parade of bad luck providing constant material about how bad “the less-than-common man” is treated in this country and through-out history. But these things aren’t issues to me, they’re about people with lives I barely escaped or about the times I didn’t.
I know how it feels to be belittled and abused for being poor, or what it’s like to be the hyperactive fat girl in third grade. I’ll never be ashamed of being sub-perfect and I’ll never shut up about how brutal “the good people” were to me when I was down, and how they’ve gotten worse. I’ll never forget how lucky I was to have access to social programs that no longer exist, to get out of the loser gutter by graduating with honors from Carnegie Mellon.
You all know how cruel the world is to a loser. I think you look the other way in an act of preserving your shiny, happy world. You think Everyone gets what they deserve when you see the imperfect suffering. Until it’s you. Then it’s universal injustice.
But I’m not back in print just to lay the superior out. It’s not because of the War or Wal-Mart, but simply: The editor of "another alternativish newsbiweekly that went out of business" responded to my email. He promised me the freedom that I need (they all do). So I can say things that would get “real” journalists fired. It’s f’n great! It took getting fired and rejected to get this freedom. I guess it always does.
This column will be a continuing examination of how our world views are formed and their effects. I’m taking poetic license with the strictest definition of the Placebo Effect but it’s a fascinating dynamic that will turn a sugar pill into a cure based on your belief that it will work – and a Placebo can be anything idea/belief based. Which is everything.
So much depends on who delivers it. And when I look around, I think half the country is mistaking lies for love and turning it into loyalty for an entity that sends their children into war like plastic toy soldiers on cardboard countries.
People think they understand the issues when really they’ve taken the path of least thinking. I’ve always wanted to give the reader a good slap across the face and say LOOK AROUND YOU.
I might sound like the grimmest bitch alive but only because I know we can do better, but not unless we’re willing to accept the fact that the Truth is not always Beautiful.
I just want to tell the stories of my life and other ordinary people who got screwed even though they followed all the rules – or maybe broke some – but we’re all sinners in the eyes of the Lord, eh? Everyone deserves another chance.
The Placebo Effect is about receiving something you’re told will make you feel better, and you’ll actually feel better. The more you invest in it, the harder you’ll have to pretend. Especially if it’s religious.
You may not really feel better but you’ll have to act like you are or you’ll look like you’re been duped and you can’t have that! You don’t have the spine or heart to admit that you were wrong. You’re so f’n weak. On the other hand, you have no one to really believe so I pity ya.
Look I know I won’t be right about everything, but I figure I can’t be more wrong that any one else out there. No one gets it right every time. It doesn’t mean I’m not entitled to my own interpretation of the world. It doesn't mean I'm not right about everything, either. I wrote that in the most confusing way on purpose just to fuck with you because i can whew hew!
I meant to say PROVE ME WRONG if you think you can. I'd love you for it. Show me the world is some beautiful subatomic paradise and that we're all loving honorable beings. If you could do that, I'd blow you in perpituity.
But if you like me too much to tell me pretty lies, if you can't preach positivity to the darkest ones, then sing me a little song about how the world blows but you still love me anyway even though everyone hates me and calls me a freak and stuff.
But please don't try singing me a song about freedom knowing why they insult me they way they do. Because I'm "different." I am tragically hip agh! How the fuck did that happen?
Born ready, baby. But we're not all equally free - I don't care what anyone says. BUT I AM FREE TO DO THIS, AND YOU CAN'T STOP ME.
The ultimate human liberty is having complete authority over your own ideas. Without the freedom to think, the Freedom of Speech is mute. I’m just offering another way, my way, of looking at things.
And if you want to argue with me, don’t ignore points I already made that refute your point. I abhor redundancies and will kick your ass either way. But I’m just like you. Just trying to figure it out.
Sometimes I think the Right to Keep and Bear Arms and war is nature’s way of keeping the population count down. But when you see the pain – you know something is so wrong. Even so, I can’t help feeling that we’re one idea from freeing history from its bloody legacy. From its contradictory capacity for love and craving for killing – all coming from how we see things and why.
Sometimes I don’t care or know if we can do better. Ultimately I write so I can live with myself. And I just want to thank The Front for giving me the chance. I don’t know if anyone will care about what I have to say. We can argue endlessly about anything but there are some things just are just wrong. I can’t just watch. I can’t just do nothing.
In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, McMurphy tries to pull a marble sink from its pipes to throw through a window and escape the nut house. He wrapped himself around that sink and tried to lift it, every vein bulging – but he couldn’t do it. His best wasn’t good enough.
As he left the room, defeated, he turned to the others who were so smug or sad, and he said, “But at least I tried. At least I can say I did that.” He never did escape. But because he tried, someone else did.
When the Chief lists that sink, you can hear the pipes wailing as they're separated, water spilling everywhere, slowly at first. He runs and he throws it through the window which explodes, every shard capturing the sunrise.
I write because to be able to say, ”At least I tried," when I meet my maker, ya bastards. Thanks for blowing me in advance!
I'm still doing the same job, two years later, except for a new company - so I hate my job much less. Bye! I love you! Oh no one's here ... okay bye!
A Bittersweet Pill
Did you really think you’d never have to hear my shit again? Maybe “hope” is a better verb. One day I’m one of Pittsburgh’s favorite columnists – a literary bad-ass doing Spoken Word with Lydia Lunch and Cynthia Plaster Caster; getting phone calls from the Tragically Hip’s frontman, Gordon Downie, who said it’d be an honor to write a blurb for my first book, Once Upon Some Welfare, and within four days the book deal fell through and the "name of alternative newsweekly here" booted my ass. Six months later I was telemarketing.
But naturally, it’s deliciously self-satisfying to see some whippersnappin’ smart arse like myself get the ol’ slap-down from the local media, ain’t it?
Well I’ve come back to return the favor.
When the new owners of the "name of alternative newsweekly here" were firing me, they said they still wanted me to write for them. I go, “You want me to wait tables and write for you?” No … no way. It was somewhat complementary to be fired by the Neo Alternative Press in their suits and expensive eye-wear. But they wouldn’t shut up about synergies and “taking the paper to the next level.” And they sure did! Right out o’ business.
A local daily offered me work but wanted that “powerful” writing I was known for but did I have to be so dramatic? I thought about the Tribune Review – there was talk that they’d let me keep my bus column – but I couldn’t write for Citizen Scaife.
The editor a new alternative newsweekly never responded to my email. I think I said something like, “I’ll never again allow a writer put his hands all over my prose without my approval just because he’s the editor.” That’s a bad pitch, I reckon.
This was years after my comrades from the "name of alternative newsweekly here" who had moved to the other alternative newsweekly (after dogging it for years) had stopped responding to my emails – even the complementary one. WHA’D I EVER DO?
I was offered a chance to write, unedited, for zmag.org with the Semiotic Funky Bunch including Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn. But they said I had to write political articles. I’m a lowly Confessionalist Journalist which is just too personal. But the editor was really cool and said, “Every writer here would agree the writing you do is the most difficult.” So there!
After I realized my writing local career was over, it hurt, yo. It felt like saying good-bye to the whole city - to the rare and reverent chance to try and remind the poor souls we call losers, that they deserve better.
BUT I NEVER STOPPED WRITING YOU BASTARDS – just publishing – and once you do, you can say whatever the fuck you want, how ever you want, for as many pages, hours, days or years as you want. And what is the point of writing without that freedom? A paycheck? Eating Mimosa’s and drinking Chai with the East-Enders?
I spent the last seven years spewing about 25,000 pages of my shit somewhere that is archived but not widely read. Perfect. I should be proud that I refused to change how I write in order to stay in print but I became the dreaded has-been. So now if someone says, “I was a fan of yours,” I feel kind of embarrassed. I cringe hearing complements about my how good my writing I was. What was so special about it?
I POURED MY HEART OUT TO YOU UNGRATEFUL BASTARDS! Luckily my life has been a hit parade of bad luck providing constant material about how bad “the less-than-common man” is treated in this country and through-out history. But these things aren’t issues to me, they’re about people with lives I barely escaped or about the times I didn’t.
I know how it feels to be belittled and abused for being poor, or what it’s like to be the hyperactive fat girl in third grade. I’ll never be ashamed of being sub-perfect and I’ll never shut up about how brutal “the good people” were to me when I was down, and how they’ve gotten worse. I’ll never forget how lucky I was to have access to social programs that no longer exist, to get out of the loser gutter by graduating with honors from Carnegie Mellon.
You all know how cruel the world is to a loser. I think you look the other way in an act of preserving your shiny, happy world. You think Everyone gets what they deserve when you see the imperfect suffering. Until it’s you. Then it’s universal injustice.
But I’m not back in print just to lay the superior out. It’s not because of the War or Wal-Mart, but simply: The editor of "another alternativish newsbiweekly that went out of business" responded to my email. He promised me the freedom that I need (they all do). So I can say things that would get “real” journalists fired. It’s f’n great! It took getting fired and rejected to get this freedom. I guess it always does.
This column will be a continuing examination of how our world views are formed and their effects. I’m taking poetic license with the strictest definition of the Placebo Effect but it’s a fascinating dynamic that will turn a sugar pill into a cure based on your belief that it will work – and a Placebo can be anything idea/belief based. Which is everything.
So much depends on who delivers it. And when I look around, I think half the country is mistaking lies for love and turning it into loyalty for an entity that sends their children into war like plastic toy soldiers on cardboard countries.
People think they understand the issues when really they’ve taken the path of least thinking. I’ve always wanted to give the reader a good slap across the face and say LOOK AROUND YOU.
I might sound like the grimmest bitch alive but only because I know we can do better, but not unless we’re willing to accept the fact that the Truth is not always Beautiful.
I just want to tell the stories of my life and other ordinary people who got screwed even though they followed all the rules – or maybe broke some – but we’re all sinners in the eyes of the Lord, eh? Everyone deserves another chance.
The Placebo Effect is about receiving something you’re told will make you feel better, and you’ll actually feel better. The more you invest in it, the harder you’ll have to pretend. Especially if it’s religious.
You may not really feel better but you’ll have to act like you are or you’ll look like you’re been duped and you can’t have that! You don’t have the spine or heart to admit that you were wrong. You’re so f’n weak. On the other hand, you have no one to really believe so I pity ya.
Look I know I won’t be right about everything, but I figure I can’t be more wrong that any one else out there. No one gets it right every time. It doesn’t mean I’m not entitled to my own interpretation of the world. It doesn't mean I'm not right about everything, either. I wrote that in the most confusing way on purpose just to fuck with you because i can whew hew!
I meant to say PROVE ME WRONG if you think you can. I'd love you for it. Show me the world is some beautiful subatomic paradise and that we're all loving honorable beings. If you could do that, I'd blow you in perpituity.
But if you like me too much to tell me pretty lies, if you can't preach positivity to the darkest ones, then sing me a little song about how the world blows but you still love me anyway even though everyone hates me and calls me a freak and stuff.
But please don't try singing me a song about freedom knowing why they insult me they way they do. Because I'm "different." I am tragically hip agh! How the fuck did that happen?
Born ready, baby. But we're not all equally free - I don't care what anyone says. BUT I AM FREE TO DO THIS, AND YOU CAN'T STOP ME.
The ultimate human liberty is having complete authority over your own ideas. Without the freedom to think, the Freedom of Speech is mute. I’m just offering another way, my way, of looking at things.
And if you want to argue with me, don’t ignore points I already made that refute your point. I abhor redundancies and will kick your ass either way. But I’m just like you. Just trying to figure it out.
Sometimes I think the Right to Keep and Bear Arms and war is nature’s way of keeping the population count down. But when you see the pain – you know something is so wrong. Even so, I can’t help feeling that we’re one idea from freeing history from its bloody legacy. From its contradictory capacity for love and craving for killing – all coming from how we see things and why.
Sometimes I don’t care or know if we can do better. Ultimately I write so I can live with myself. And I just want to thank The Front for giving me the chance. I don’t know if anyone will care about what I have to say. We can argue endlessly about anything but there are some things just are just wrong. I can’t just watch. I can’t just do nothing.
In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, McMurphy tries to pull a marble sink from its pipes to throw through a window and escape the nut house. He wrapped himself around that sink and tried to lift it, every vein bulging – but he couldn’t do it. His best wasn’t good enough.
As he left the room, defeated, he turned to the others who were so smug or sad, and he said, “But at least I tried. At least I can say I did that.” He never did escape. But because he tried, someone else did.
When the Chief lists that sink, you can hear the pipes wailing as they're separated, water spilling everywhere, slowly at first. He runs and he throws it through the window which explodes, every shard capturing the sunrise.
I write because to be able to say, ”At least I tried," when I meet my maker, ya bastards. Thanks for blowing me in advance!
Monday, August 09, 2004
i feel dirty
nothing like trying to strike up a conversation on some hip writing medium to make my head go quiet ... no.
wait. i'm not trying to strike up a conversation. i just want to talk.
i guess i just realized ... how much i do not want to be read.
i love gordon downie anyway.
well ... i'm all creeped out ... i want to write but ... ew. i feel like ... so gross. so like a 'zine. so like a poetry slam. so like an episode of simplemindedness to make us feel like our thoughts are important.
well i've taken a lot of shit just for wanting to write the shit down. people get all like "what makes you think we care about what you think?" and then you have to go "what makes you think that i give a fuck what you think?" and beg them not to read my shit but they can't help it. but i kept it all somewhere that i knew most normal people would never find. and i just realized maybe more people can see it than i thought but to hell with it. this is what i think regardless of what anyone else wants or likes or agrees with and i'm not letting anyone take it away from me.
it is the freedom to think ... that is the only thing i need more than love. well ... sometimes when you're in love, the pressure people put on you ... suddenly just thinking something means you don't fit so neatly in the place they've carved for you in their imaginations and ... it's hard.
but i think in some way, i'm so basically nice, that i can speak freely and ... trust myself even though i'm pissed a lot of the time, too.
in the other places i write, i can't keep the canadians from reading my shit (oh it's a long story i mean 9 years long since i angered canada and MAKE MY DAY YEAH SHOOT ME WITH A DONUT YA DRUNKEN BASTARDS!! ... only kidding i love canada ... the trailer park boys ... i went to prince edward island and everyone was cool in nova scotia but what the fuck happens to people when they move to toronto? i don't know but it makes them dog people in vancouver i mean even the GD canadians can't get along.)
WHY AM I HERE? why did i do this? partially i guess i knew a lot of the stuff out here had to be so f'n boring you'd want to scream bloody blogger. and that my shit ... might "stand out."
well i have a list of people, places and things that can blow me.
"God" is at the top of the list followed by bob dylan and germs. and yet all three can collectively blow me in the wind. hey i just made that up! well part of it. bob dylan blowin' me in the wind isn't new. just combining the items of the list according to some common aspect. like the wind.
i don't have a problem with bob dylan or whatever his real name is - i mean isn't that the first bad sign? your name suddenly isn't good enough.
but okay he tried ... he fought the power ... until the victoria's secret people approached him. and you get the feeling he didn't really need the money he made from doing that heinous commercial - which was the only thing that ever made me pity some victoria's secret model.
but mainly ... my rockstar boyfriend loved bob dylan and i knew that since i didn't, he was going to be just *that* much more of a dick to me, for being so f'n stupid, so utterly female, that i did not love bob dylan. he makes love just like a woman but he blows me like a little girl.
beg me to blog again
wait. i'm not trying to strike up a conversation. i just want to talk.
i guess i just realized ... how much i do not want to be read.
i love gordon downie anyway.
well ... i'm all creeped out ... i want to write but ... ew. i feel like ... so gross. so like a 'zine. so like a poetry slam. so like an episode of simplemindedness to make us feel like our thoughts are important.
well i've taken a lot of shit just for wanting to write the shit down. people get all like "what makes you think we care about what you think?" and then you have to go "what makes you think that i give a fuck what you think?" and beg them not to read my shit but they can't help it. but i kept it all somewhere that i knew most normal people would never find. and i just realized maybe more people can see it than i thought but to hell with it. this is what i think regardless of what anyone else wants or likes or agrees with and i'm not letting anyone take it away from me.
it is the freedom to think ... that is the only thing i need more than love. well ... sometimes when you're in love, the pressure people put on you ... suddenly just thinking something means you don't fit so neatly in the place they've carved for you in their imaginations and ... it's hard.
but i think in some way, i'm so basically nice, that i can speak freely and ... trust myself even though i'm pissed a lot of the time, too.
in the other places i write, i can't keep the canadians from reading my shit (oh it's a long story i mean 9 years long since i angered canada and MAKE MY DAY YEAH SHOOT ME WITH A DONUT YA DRUNKEN BASTARDS!! ... only kidding i love canada ... the trailer park boys ... i went to prince edward island and everyone was cool in nova scotia but what the fuck happens to people when they move to toronto? i don't know but it makes them dog people in vancouver i mean even the GD canadians can't get along.)
WHY AM I HERE? why did i do this? partially i guess i knew a lot of the stuff out here had to be so f'n boring you'd want to scream bloody blogger. and that my shit ... might "stand out."
well i have a list of people, places and things that can blow me.
"God" is at the top of the list followed by bob dylan and germs. and yet all three can collectively blow me in the wind. hey i just made that up! well part of it. bob dylan blowin' me in the wind isn't new. just combining the items of the list according to some common aspect. like the wind.
i don't have a problem with bob dylan or whatever his real name is - i mean isn't that the first bad sign? your name suddenly isn't good enough.
but okay he tried ... he fought the power ... until the victoria's secret people approached him. and you get the feeling he didn't really need the money he made from doing that heinous commercial - which was the only thing that ever made me pity some victoria's secret model.
but mainly ... my rockstar boyfriend loved bob dylan and i knew that since i didn't, he was going to be just *that* much more of a dick to me, for being so f'n stupid, so utterly female, that i did not love bob dylan. he makes love just like a woman but he blows me like a little girl.
beg me to blog again
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