I Don't Do Singalongs

[disclaimer: took an ambien at 5am and I am now attemptitsadhing to proofread in this compromised state and it is hopeless not working nonensese sorry wanredya[tjishblog will not make smuh csensne]

i. Fireworks:

My window's open and I can hear the fireworks; they sound like gunshots every time. I don't understand fireworks. I guess I never have, though it was nice when I was little to have an excuse to lie on a blanket on the grass with all the other girls, laugh, ooooo and ahhh, stare at the sky, lick sno-cones that turned our tongues red then blue then white. It was good for photography. Sparklers in the dark, glo-sticks like the ones ravers use.

These days: independence, yeah. Not our country's independence. Our country is fucked, obvs. Even if I was into things like eating outdoors, other people, and daytime drinking, it'd feel a little sadistic to celebrate anything that G.W. promotes as he escorts our civilization into total moral/ethical anarchy. But like ... independence. The concept? It's my favorite one. I get really pissed when someone makes me give it up.

I have nothing to say right now but can't seem to stop typing. I think it's become a bad habit, like biting my nails. Yesterday I wrote--oh--new topic.

***

ii. typetypetpye:

Yesterday we wrote 40 pages of the teleplay. Afterwards I jumped into the air a little and then stretched and then was like "Wow." And Carly was like "Wow." And we were like. "Wow. Go Us."

In 2007, I have learned that you can write and write and write for hours. Then what do you have? A lot of words. Where do they go? My hard drive. The internet.

Remember when there was no internet? I don't.

Whatever you can get from typing to much, carpal-tunnel or whathaveyou, I am going to get that problem. I probs already have that problem. My stomach is eating itself but I don't feel like going to the kitchen. It seems really far away.

Carly also eats cheese and peanut butter crackers. They are orange. Orange food, in general, is suspect. Unless it's an actual orange. Which I can't eat because I'm allergic to citric acid, duh! Howevs, I drink OJ, etc. anyhow.

I bought OJ and cigarettes for TB but then we broke up. I drank the orange juice anyhow. It made me throw up. Not because I'm allergic to citric acid, but because that was the same night that I accidentally ate that piece of paper that they put between slices of cheese? You know what I'm talking about? I was like "This lettuce tastes really funny," but I kept eating it anyhow because I need my greens. Then I realized I was eating the paper from the cheese. My stomach could not take all of that nonsense, it was like, Thanks but no.

Anyhow, I love those peanut-butter-and-cheese-crackers, though they're orange. I am glad I am not the only one who likes them. I'd eat some right now if I could. Unfortunately, I've already eaten all of them, circa a few days ago.

***

iii. Music, I:

I've become a person who moves, visibly, to the music on her iPod, in public. I can't stop listening to music, like I need a soundtrack really badly. Silence kills me. It reminds me of what used to fill it, maybe, or it's just not proper for the amount of daily excitement I've felt lately. Even sad music is a kind of excitement. It's excited enough about it's void to give it melody.

I've been eating music. I asked Carly to give me a list; she did, a good long one, I ate it. To be honest, most of the music I love was ciphered from someone else. Music's something I love [like I replaced a stolen iPod within 5 hours, a phone I waited 10 days] but have no remote talent in: can't sing, can't dance, can't play an instrument, can't read/write music, nothing. So I surround myself with people who know more and ask them to tell me what I need to hear. I love lastFM.

Seriously, I love lastfm.

Things I would make love to if I could:
-Lastfm
-Google Reader
-Trebuchet Font
-Final Draft

Haviland made me a "You'll Make it Kiddo!" CD. I remember when she first played me the Phoenix song "If I Ever Feel Better." Now I play it to myself: I ain't even playing my own game, the rules have changed well I didn't know, there are things in my life I can't control, I feel the chaos around me ...

My headphones broke almost immediately following purchase a month ago (a month? I've got no clue, somewhere between then and now I lost concept of time), because that's how they do what they do, so the music kinda twists in one ear and out the other ear, and I went to Radio Shack but they said my warranty wouldn't kick in 'til July 1st. That must have been a while ago that I went there. I think my headphones have improved since then.

Everyone at Radio Shack is retarded. Seriously.

I could probably listen to Youth Group's cover of "Forever Young" forever and be totally satisfied. Fuck fireworks.

***

iv. playlist.

heartbeats/the knife. don't cry out/shiny toy guns. who you are/tears for fears. if i ever feel better/phoenix. mary/sarah slean. city girl/tegan&sara. irreplaceable/beyonce. a better son or daughter/rilo kiley. hear me out/frou frou. let it rain/ok go. vintage people/eisley. you wouldn't like me/tegan&sara. send me an angel/real life. sober/kelly clarkson. life on mars/david bowie. puttin' on the ritz/shiny toy guns. haven't found/pras. sway/the perishers. sorry/madonna. forever young/youth group. a little respect/erasure. under water/tegan&sara. save me from myself/christina aguilera. be kind&rewind/rogue wave. laura/scissor sisters. frozen/tegan&sara. if you were here/cary brothers. jumpers/sleater-kinney. just one of thoes things/the verve remixed. must be dreaming/frou frou.

***

v. btw.

I don't get you. I can't forget what you've forgotten.

**

vi. music

Today at the gym I was listening to Rilo Kiley and the lyrics to stunned me out of my sweaty stupor: And sometimes when you're on, you're really fucking on ... but the lows are so extreme...

I got goosebumps.

Last Saturday night at Nation, the song finally played that I'd been trying to get everyone to remember forever by poorly singing it and describing Indian chanting. Poorly. No one knew what I was talking about, which was totes ridic as I knew I'd heard it every time I've ever gone out ever, and I don't go out that often, so clearly it plays every time anyone goes out.

I told Carly I'd have an orgasm right then if it played. Obvs that was proverbial, but I jumped up and down like I was about to explode when it DID play. Seriously, I was as happy in that moment as I've ever been. I mean, the moment when a song you haven't been able to place PLAYS, especially when you totes PREDICTED it's play at Nation on Saturday night? Tara looked at me like "Whaaa?" It was "Beware of the Boys" featuring Jay-Z/Punjabi MC.

**

vii. Our teevee show.

The thing is; teevee's a flawed format, clearly, in that it requires nothing of it's audience besides passive viewership. It's lulled our country into passive complacency and an inability to put it's own thoughts together. That, and the jarring effect of 30 randomized and often violent images/ideas per minute can't be good for anyone.

But film, we say, is a valid way to tell a story. And I think television is too -- COULD BE -- but better-- because it also provides an opportunity to create characters, to play with narrative fiction and evolution on a scale of massive import. I like that even though most of the screen is accurately an evil box, there's still people out there trying to tell stories, and I think the internet enhances that by turning those stories into words we use to communicate with people all around the world: common ground from which to tell our own stories.

I like the idea of creating people who can evolve and change over several years and tell a million stories. It seems so anti-climatic, film: you make it, two hours, finit. But there're still a few TV writers committed to honest and progressive storytelling [e.g., Alan Ball. Um. That's all]. I don't want to write a show for people to watch alone, really. I think the only advantage of TV over books is that you can enjoy it with other people. I want people to sit together and watch our show and think.

I get excited talking about it (the ... artistry of it?), like tonight in the Haviland-Carlytron-Riese three-way ichat that we all felt, at first, should be preceded by an age/sex check.

Maybe I just get excited because communication with readers and viewers is, in my opinion: the point. It always seemed silly to me, those reclusive dudes. Like, wow. You're so cool you can't talk to anyone? You just want to like, grace everyone with your brilliance and then peace out? I admire you, a little because that seems like humility, but no, I don't, because it isn't.

I like humility, obvs, it's like, my thing. Or, insofar as it's related to insecurity. I don't like it so much as feel it's something I can't change and therefore I must embrace it!

As in: tonight. Haviland's apartment, circa 6:30 pm, I was telling her how fast we'd worked on this thing and I said something nice about myself; about my writing. Like, that I was good? To have done so much in so little time ARCHHH writing that makes me miserable. bladibla. And she said: "It's really nice. To hear you say that."

A frequent convo, as quoted in an ourchart blog I wrote 20 years ago:

VIP: "So what do you do, Riese?"
Me: "Um, I go to the gym a lot."
[VIPs start looking vaguely uncomfortable]
Haviland: "She's a writer!"
Me: "Also, I like to go to Mandees and buy brightly colored bra-and-underwear sets. And I eat a lot of food. Like, all different kinds of food."
Haviland: "She has a blog, it's really good! Riese, give them your card."
Me: "Oh yeah, I have this blog."
VIP: "What's it about?"
Me: "Um, like, myself. Like, thoughts that I have about myself. Me."
Haviland: "It's totally about us! It's really funny! Like, us, and what we do, and how cool we are."
Me: "And it's also about Rite Aid."

ANYHOW There are some characters on the TV who've resonated with me. Who's stories meant something to me.

Characters who've resonated, limited at one per show, except SFU, they get two, because they rule:

-Angela Chase, My So-Called Life
-Claire Fisher, Six Feet Under
-Brenda Chenowith, Six Feet Under
-Emmet Honeycutt, Queer as Folk
-Pacey Witter, Dawson's Creek
-Josh Lyman, The West Wing
-Elmo, Sesame Street
-I really liked Peter Jennings. I was sad when he died.

OK, that's all I can think about. What other shows've been on the teevee? Hm.

I had a crush on Jacinda from The Real World London. And Kim Stolz from Americas Next Top Model. And. Um.





**

vii. Live-Journal:

It's late now. The fireworks are over, but there's persistent flashes of lightning. I'm awake because I'm supposed to be working on an ad for a copywriting job and because I was talking online about the teevee show and because I'm up. I'm writing this for absolutely no reason whatsoever.

I don't know if I have anything to say right now. I used to have a livejournal [I know, surprise, right, like I haven't already mentioned this 10,000 times]. I could just write random things about whatever. Personal things, too: the truth, or a piece of it.

Lately, I've been mute on all things personal because if I opened my mouth I'd have so much to say I might never do anything else, ever, and I might get trapped back into an impossible and endless cycle that feels a lot like running into a wall over and over again and telling everyone I like the bruises. Sometimes I just want to scream. I stopped reading those things that made me want to scream but they keep showing up in my inbox and in unexpected places. I want to scream. I have so many things I want to scream: the obvious truth, for example. But I know it'd be like the scream of a tree falling in the woods with no one sane enough to hear it. I want to scream and then have it break into tears.

Instead, I laugh. Instead, I write. Instead, I pretend like I have something to say and then I write it. Instead I just type.

Writing's the only place, I think, where I even look at emotion/feelings. I've had people scream at me and ask me if I ever wanted to learn how to feel. If I had any interest in the territory of emotional vulnerability or of emotional emotions or of emoticons which I also hate. Sometimes I decide it's safe to feel (or maybe not? Maybe I decide it's totes unsafe, and want to verify that?) and then I give them all away.

typetypetype.

I'm so much better at emotion in retrospect. If you dare me to feel in the moment, you better mean it. You better have your shit together.

See instead of having feelings, I just think about how I'm going to write about them later. I think about how someone else might feel. Instead of telling people how I feel, I write it down three years later, which's also when I've realized whatever feelings I had three years ago.

Even when I try to locate/express feelings I actually have, I feel like I'm telling a story about a girl named Marie who feels things. Real Marie is an action super hero.

She is made of plastic and she can fly.
She has no super powers.
But she goes on. At the speed of sound. Eating her own dust.

***

My tiger my heart
We're growing apart
We're trying to be friends
But it's hard sometimes
To be friends with something
That eats butterflies
And pencil sharpeners
And I think it would be
Happier being free

**

So it's almost five a.m. This is a moment when I think "What would it really mean to just click 'Publish Post'?" Nothing, right? I mean, right? Then I could just go to sleep. These are just words.

Sunday Top Ten: In the Place Where There is No Darkness, There is Our Sitcom.

Sunday Night, 7.1.2007, circa 11:30 p.m.:
Me: "I need to think of an idea for my Sunday Top Ten."
Carly: "Oh, you mean your Thursday Top Eight? Your Tuesday Top Six?"

---

This's a dispatch from Carly & Riese's Gay Sitcom Write-a-Thon 2K7, which's been, thus far, Extremely Successful. [Aside from a brief break on Saturday night to drink and another on Sunday night to watch the Big Gay Cruise Movie with Haviland, Heather, Lainy, Jen, Craig, Janet, Layla, etc., which was actually worth it for it warmed our hearts down to their very embers. Carly's not going on the cruise, but she was a sport.]

In order to conceptualize, develop and actually write an entire sitcom in about five days, I've had to commit my mind almost entirely to this task. Therefore, I'm unable to think of anything for the Sunday Top Ten that's not at least tangentially related to our sitcom. I could do "Top 10 Reasons We're The Awesomest Sitcom-Creators Of All Time," but I don't want anyone to feel intimidated, especially you, Ilene Chaiken. Because we're going to eat your breast cancer for breakfast, and wash it down with a long tall glass of ovulation, smear it in a warm bath of BETTY--and we're gonna do all that with all our clothes ON.

Also Ilene, if you were about to pick up the phone to call and hire me, don't let the above paragraph change your mind. I'd like to remind you that there's a thin line between love and hate, and that it helps to have writers on your team who don't just sit around and validate your retarded ideas all day. You've hired plenty of amazing writers, e.g., A.M. Homes and Angela Robinson, who probs also questioned some of your "choices," so why not hire me? I'm not even amazing, so you could boss me around if you want to. I like being bossed around sometimes. Except today, when I've dispatched a great deal of the research duties on this particular Top 10 to my unpaid intern. She just sent me an email that included bullet points! Go Carlytron!

But the First Rule of Best Lesbianish Sitcom Ever Club is "NO Opinions Allowed: Except from Marie and Carly." So I can't say what it is about, really, because we can't handle opinions right now. But the first thing we did was make a list of all the things that we were not going to have in our teevee show.

SUNDAY TOP 10:
IN WHICH TEAM AWESOME CREATES A GAY TEEVEE SHOW UNLIKE ALL OTHER GAY TEEVEE SHOWS

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10. No Death

See: Dana Fairbanks Obvs on The L Word, Tara on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Vic and the Random Gay-Bashed Boy on Queer as Folk, Doug on Workout, Sandy on ER, most lesbians in Law and Order/CSI/etc [after murdering someone clearly]. Also Jen died on Dawson's Creek and she wasn't gay but she was a total fag hag and when she had her final convo with Jack [gay!] ... Krista and I were crying like, a lot. Although we also cried all the way through Closer, and in the final musical performance at the school scene in Uptown Girls. And during our third, fourth and fifth viewings of that musical section I just mentioned from Uptown Girls.

We've got a notes sheet where we write down all of our tangential glimmers of brilliance. At the top, it reads: ALL OUR CHARACTERS HAVE BEEN GRANTED ETERNAL LIFE. Like Gilgamesh!

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9. Specifically, no Breast Cancer

See: Dana Fairbanks, obvs.

This rule's 'cause of Dana Fairbanks. Moreso, it's because of Ilene Chaiken, who lives in a deluded fantasy world of her own creation in which the only way to "tell the story" of breast cancer [She "needed" to tell this story, p.s., like maybe it came to her in a dream or something? Who knows whatevs, she's clearly completely out of her mind.] was to kill Dana. She's probably already stewing up how to sacrifice Alice to Al Queda or something. [Note to google spies: I know I've just used Al Queda and lesbian and AIDS in the same blog entry, but I swear I'm way too busy to be a terrorist. I'm writing a sitcom, obvs! That's like, the opposite of terrorism, because it lulls the people into robotic complacency. Especially a gay sitcom, because the gays are particularly pissed for obvious reasons.]

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8. No Pregnancy, Babies, or discussions of Fertility and/or Ovaries.

See: Carol & Susan on Friends, Mel & Lindsay in Queer as Folk, Bette & Tina in The L Word, Keith & David on Six Feet Under

Why? Because if I wanted to talk about my ovaries or about babies, I would have a baby. If I wanted to talk about building healthy and stable partnerships in order to best enrich the upbringing of another human person, I'd stop being a baby. But Angelica in The L Word: adorable ... though the lesbian-with-a-baby storyline is really lame, especially when partnered with a lesbian-bed-death storyline. What came first, though, the chicken or the egg? You know?

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7. No Ridiculous Bisexual Females

[Vacillating between women and men, partying like there's no tomorrow, killing people, being manipulative/insane, constantly tempted to return to heterosexuality for All the Wrong Reasons, just experimenting with a friend but really likes cock, etc.]

See: Jenny, Alice, Dylan and Tina in The L Word, Marissa on The O.C., Sarah on America's Next Top Model, Genesis, Bree, and Ruthie on The Real World, Paige on Degrassi: The Next Generation, Julia on Dirt, whatever's happening with that Aidan-Spashley love triangle on South of Nowhere, etc.

Where do I begin on this topic? Really, where? Do I begin with The Real World, L.A Law, Ally McBeal ... movies like Personal Best and Wild Things? Though homosexuals and queers of all variations've been notoriously underrepresented on television for centuries, the Sweeps Lesbian -- TV terminology for that girl who goes gay for ratings, then returns to the men America's wanted her to fuck all this time -- remains a popular staple. I've got this really revolutionary idea: what if bisexual women were just women who were sometimes attracted to women, and sometimes to men? Wouldn't that be weird?

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6. No Coming Out Stories

See: Jack on Dawson's Creek, Justin on Queer as Folk, Spencer on South of Nowhere, Dana & Jenny & Phyllis on The L Word, Ellen on Ellen, Marco on Degrassi: The Next Generation, Jessie on Once and Again, David on Six Feet Under, etc.

There's nothing wrong with coming out stories, they've just been done. And done. Much like real life, in which people come out, I guess. I don't really know because I've never "come out" to anyone. Why? Because I'm one of those annoying bisexuals mentioned in "7" who take the easy way out, and just write blogs about their primarily lesbian lifestyles and figure if anyone really wants to know, they can just read it. Or you can put it on your myspace profile or whathaveyou. For example on how well this works, see below:

"Mom also gave me an update about your life, but I found that my friend Nick gave me a way better update a week or two ago. Which is you know, funny, how a complete stranger yet loyal reader gets the dirt weeks before our Mom. Anyway I played along, Oh wow, she's in a relationship? With a girl? Wahhhht!"

-My brother Lewis, email to me, 4.11.2007

Like when Lewis came to visit in November and I was seeing/special-friending Steph and we all went out together and she consequently spent the night, it did occur to me I'd never "come out" to him but I was like, whatever, he reads my blog. Anyhow: I know what it's all about, coming out. My Mom came out to me once! So did a girl from high school when we were both on the elliptical trainers at the Upper West Side New York Sports Club. A girl from middle school, on her behalf and also another one of our best friends. And so on.

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5. No AIDS

See: Pedro in The Real World: San Francisco. Ben, Vic and Hunter in Queer as Folk, Doug on Workout.

The thing about AIDS is: it's really depressing. If you've ever befriended a forty or fifty-something gay male in NYC, you've likely heard a variation on this story: "I use to have a lover. He had AIDS. We had an apartment in the meatpacking district before it was trendy. Then my lover died of AIDS. I used to have all these friends. They died of AIDS. Now I live alone. I don't have AIDS but I have a rent-controlled apartment. Also, everyone I know is dead. From AIDS." That is heavy shit and this is a sitcom. We want people to laugh. I mean, everyone loves a good tearjerker. If you are one of those people, go rent Philadelphia. Actually, if you wanna cry like A LOT? Rent It's My Party.

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4. No Ridiculous Fashions

See: Everyone on The L Word, Samantha on Sex and the City [I'm including her moreso for her fagginess, and I mean that in the best possible way, than for her brief flirtation with lesbianism].

I just don't understand why you'd dress your characters in ugly clothes when you could dress them in cute clothes. I mean, you have a choice, and you choose incorrectly. Why?

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3. No meditation, or references to drum circles, serious relationships to yoga, chakras, sun gods/goddesses

See: We don't know if this's been anywhere but The L Word. But in real life, lesbians dig this shit.

Um, it's just boring. Also, people who aren't into it (like, clearly, us), are really skeptical and semi-caustic about their disbelief. Probs I'm just jealous that you have like, a goddess to bless your chakra and unify your holy spirit or whatevs, and I'm just like "What's up. My mind is racing right now and it won't stop. Try to quiet the waves of my overactive brain. I need a drink." Mostly, we're bothered that Bette's entire meditation-hoo-ha storyline was not only completely out of character ["Of course. it's a technique of self-help people like him. You spout enough pre-packaged wisdom, there's bound to be something for everybody. you know, i find something for me in the Vogue horoscope, too, that doesn't mean it's not bullshit." -Bette, to Kit, Re: TOE, Season Two] and boring, but was crafted specifically to hide Jennifer Beals' pregnancy and for no other reason. Isn't that dumb? Couldn't they just give her weird outfits like they did to SJP? Oh wait--they did.

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2. No Terrible Theme Songs, Specifically no BETTY.

See: "The Way That We Live," The L Word, "Spunk," Queer As Folk, "Things Just Keep Getting Better," Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.

I mean seriously. I may have mentioned this before, but I believe the following things could create a better theme song than 'The Way That We Live": the sound of iced tea being stirred, an angry kitten, your mom, my ass, Milli Vanilli, a 6th grade recorder student group, a beached whale, a non-beached whale, the sound of Shane banging her head against the wall, the sound of people fucking, the sound of people crying, Rock-a-Pella, that guy who sang Ricky Martin on The American Idol Show, me.

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1. Sex and Partial Nudity Whenever Possible
See: Nothin', Til Now.

Why? Because sex is hot. And also, kinda funny. Like, much much funnier than dying or chakras. People're naked and rolling around sticking their fingers and tongues in each other. That's really funny. And what's amazing about it is that we humans've managed to transform it into something that sucks genuine out of ridiculous and then wears it like happiness ... which's why it's fun to have on the teevee. Every now and then, e.g., when appropriate. Like don't cut away just when things get good. Pump up some Shiny Toy Guns and get it on. Or if you're just chillin' in your room, what's with all the clothing? Fashion show? Because we're not gonna have violence, you know? Just love. Because that's the L Word, weirdos. Like, for your friends, mostly [because I get by with a little help from my friends], but for your family too and for life itself, and then for the stories we tell about it. The End.

Ha. Obvs it's late and my brain has dissolved completely and is no longer responsible for it's contents.

Some Notable Lines: If You'd Been Waiting to See a Unicorn as Long as I Have....

Sidenote [there's nothing for it to be on the side of yet, as I've only just begun, but um, whatever.]: new auto-straddle.

Let's get on with it....

In 10th grade, all my bestest friends lined up two days in advance to get front row tickets for an Ani DiFranco concert ...

[See that? That's what I call a "good lede." Because I bet everyone who's reading this, especially the dwindling 20% audience share identifying as "male," is like "Oooo! Ani! LOVE HER."]

... but I didn't, because I didn't like her then [now I love her, LOVE HER], and when Drew'd crank up "Living in Clip" on his barely-breathing Volvo's tape deck, I'd groan and hold my hands to my glittered face [that's literal, the glitter], so clearly, I wasn't planning to attend her annoying concert, let alone wait in line for front row seats like they did. Also, Mom woulda never let me camp out all night with a bunch of hippie pot-smoking heteroflexible ambisexual teenage Ani DiFranco fans.

But it seems many humans enjoy nothing more than a good line, and, in fact, will willingly go out of their way to receive particular things ASAP (e.g., the new Harry Potter), to purchase The Best of said things (e.g., front row seats), hoping for a chance to win/earn something (e.g., a spot on a Reality TV show) or to get something rare/hard to find (e.g., Nintendo Wii) or for something ridiculously free or under-priced (e.g., 'Free Scoop Day' at Ben and Jerry's). The lines we're willing to endure reveal our true selves (not really, but I feel like making absurd grandiose generalizations today): Lord of the Rings? Beanie Babies? American Idol auditions? Madonna tickets? The privilege of paying $100 to trap oneself in to a small dingy cage and then get dropped from a great terrifying height?

A cell phone? With AT & T? The media gets really excited when people wait in line for things.

i-chat transcript, 6.25.07. On the "iPhone."

Me: People are gonna line up, they say.
Carly: Oh yes. I mean, they lined up for like, OS X 10.4, so can you imagine the chaos for the fucking phone?
Me: It's like the opposite of the bread lines in Russia and Lord of the Rings.
Carly: Which is why I'm waiting until like, Hanukkah, to get mine.
Me: I bet that's the first time you've been happy about having Cingular. Actually....I had that, they fucked me. Then I got Sprint, who also fucked me, and now I have T-Mobile, and they are also fucking me. It's like, really brutal.
Carly: I hate Sprint with the fiery passion of a thousand suns. I'm fine with at&t/cingular/at&t/whatever. I would hate to be brutally fucked by a phone.
Me: I know it'd be very phone-y and wide and awkward. Unless it was like an old school Nokia.
Carly: I am Loling.
Me: From like, '99.
Carly: Those wouldn't be as bad.
Me: Yeah, but like, a Sidekick? Ew.
Carly: Or a Blackberry? Jesus.
Me: It would be like being entered by an actual UFO, but a violent one like from Star Trek, or whatever.
Carly: Oh my God, Lol-ing for real.
Me: A RAZR would be bad, because it looks like it would have sharp sharp edges. You know? Like a razor.
Carly: Oh, I got that.
Me: RAZR=razor. Get it?
Carly: hahahahahha. I do.
Me: By "RAZOR" I mean... razor.

When I ventured to the apple store on Wednesday to retrieve a new keyboard and power cord for my sad little MacBookinstien, I noticed there were a lot of whackos outside on their lawn chairs. Probs their phones got stolen like mine did. However, I didn't wait in line for my DASH. Instead, I spent three days pondering the various dimensions of my misery and how glad I was no one could reach me, lest they be subjected to my whining. Then, ten days later, I decided that my boots were made for walkin', and that's just what I did, I walked on over to T-Mobile. What was I waiting for, those long psychologically challenging days in my bubble with my air conditioner and my broken t-key? I don't know. Probs Godot or An Answer.

I hate lines. [Really? Really Riese? You are such a unique and special snowflake.] That's why I hate Rite Aid, the gym after 5pm, popular restaurants, the apple store, H+M, the airport, Starbucks, Whole Foods, the doctor's office, amusement parks and Pathmark. I'd rather be hungry, thirsty and wearing last season's fashions than wait in line. JK. I just bring a book. And think to myself: "Why's everyone so stupid and I'm so smart? Why're none of these employees working at maximum efficiency? I could start my own restaurant, harvest my own potatoes, build a fryer, hire employees, peel and chop or whatever the potatoes and then train someone to fry them before I get to the front of this line at the alleged Express McDonald's." If it's running really poorly, I can't concentrate on my book, I can only seethe.

I never try things on because I can't wait in line for a dressing room. This's a problem.

---

Some Notable Lines:

The Community High School Line : When Community High School was founded in 1972, it had only two rules: "1. No smoking, except in the teacher-student lounge, 2. Wear shoes." It remains one of the few public "magnet"/"alternative" schools to endure from the left-wing-powered wave of hippie alternative schools that were popping around America back then. By 1989, applicants far outnumbered spots, and, following the first-come first-served policy, ambitious parents started lining up up to two weeks ahead of time to get in. In '95, my year, they attempted to solve this problem by not announcing the location of the line 'til three days before the application due date. The first 50 kids get in. The remaining 50 spots; selected via lottery. The waiting list was actually a very promising prospect, too, because a lot of CHS students'd become drug addicts and skip all their classes. 'Cause they could. Freedom, etc. "School with no walls." By the time I got in off the waiting list, I was already at boarding school. I was like, sorry bitches! My brother went there though. His year, it was all lottery, and he didn't get in at first but made it via waiting list.

Anyhow, in 8th grade, I made a documentary about "the line." I re-edited it today to make it shorter and less boring. I've described my hair in this phase of life as an Angela Chase bob with a Zach Morris hair flip. I shoulda just let it be. My Mom's hair is also awesome. YouTube is retarded, so I don't know if you can see my subtitle, but when my Dad is talking about our plan, look at Mom's coat in the background.



Apple Store Line: What a miracle that they've finally concocted a semi-efficient system at their new Fifth avenue store. I woke up at like, dawn, more than once to wait in Soho. To wait and wait again. And then more.

Forever 21 Line: With clothes so cool, it's no surprise the line's always 50 yards long. I've literally spent an hour there selecting Hot Fashions only to abandon them in the sunglasses bin mid-line, convinced it's not worth it. Also; when you finally get to the front, you're probs not 21 anymore because: 1. The line's literally 100 years long. Those faux-vintage rainbow-patterned short-shorts aren't gonna look hot on your varicosed legs so give up now, fossil. 2. If you're lucky enough to stand behind an under-21 customer and overhear any of their conversation [bla bla ttyl lol cell phone bla oral sex on the playground bladibla], you'll feel geriatric.

Vans Warped Tour Line: I remember this line because I wanted to kill my boyfriend for being so cranky when it was his idea to attend this G-dforsaken event in the first place. I don't remember why they made us line up, either. We already had tickets.

Whole Foods: The Chelsea outlet's got a really serious line system with line captains and lights. It works quite well. Howevs, it'd be better if they moved the brownie samples from the bakery area, where they're only accessible by patrons of the third line, and into a more central area, accessible to all line-waiters. I think that's what the organic farmers who created these brownies would want for mankind.

---

Response to Request for Ideas for "Line Blog":

"What about the lines at theme parks? Or the lines of traffic I sit in sometimes? Or lines of cocaine? Ba dum bum."
-Carly

---

Things I'd wait in line for overnight, a list created with deep thought:


1. Tickets for the Spice Girls Reunion Concert.
2. If they ever made Newsies into a live musical, I honestly don't think I could stand the idea of anyone seeing it before I did.
3. If this was some weird fantasy world where poets are rock stars, clearly I'd wait all day for Stephen Dunn. I've seen him read though a few times, but still. Really, actually, I'm having a hard time comprehending the idea of people waiting in line for poetry, I can't even conceptualize this hypothetical.
4. Free things that're worth a lot of money. These're usually in the form of "contests" or something though, so probs not.
5. Shakespeare in the Park starring someone I loved. Though I never have waited in line for SITP tickets, which says something. About truthiness.
6. If all my friends were doing it. That might be fun. Like camping.

---

Blackbird singing in the dead of night, take these broken wings and learn to fly, all your life, you were only waiting ...

The thing is, I've never been comfortable with:
1) Extreme want/desire.
2) Pouring excessive energy or time into anything that isn't guaranteed to work out.

"The old farm roads' a four lane that leads to the mall, and our dreams are all guillotines waiting to fall."
-Ani DiFranco!

Re: 1)
Don't they have jobs? Families? I wonder about the people waiting for iPhones. How could you want anything so badly that you'd wait in line to PAY for it? Ten minutes've passed in line at Whole Foods and I already feel I've been had. How dare you make me wait to fulfill this want? This desire for organic strawberries? Certainly I can do without this, yeah? Certainly I can talk myself out of it? When you get in line, and wait, you're making a physical expression of want, which for me means dependence, which scares the shit out of me. I wish I didn't need anyone or anything for anything, ever. Lines make me feel like a sheep/robot, like waddling along the weaving ropes/the poles of the complicated line for The Raptor at Cedar Point, desperate enough to be scrambled around and whizzed through the air that I've paid for it and'll wait two hours for three minutes of it. You've convinced me to want this, and now I'm here, shuffling along, waiting.

I have an almost destructive inability to wait in line for food at group eating events. Like, I loathe those moments I'm standing there with my plate, waiting? I'll wait until the line's completely done, then go forage for scraps.

Re: 2)
As soon as "but you might not get in" is added to the description of a potential line to wait in (a sold-out show, an exclusive club, live television taping, contest of some sort, whatever), my desire to stand in it's completely zapped. Disappointment's inevitable: we can make the best plan ever for getting into Community High School and not make it, I can completely plan on attending NYU film school and not make it ... because every time, it feels like I've been had, you know? Clearly I'd've finished writing my book if I didn't have some complicated relationship with the conviction that it'll actually sell. Instead, I obsessively track the decline of the publishing industry almost to talk myself out of myself.

Maybe this relationship to investment-->reward (as in, I want to believe in it really badly but totes DON'T) is why I'm convinced every thing I do choose to put my heart into's gotta be the one to work out, because I'm standing here, after all, showing that I WANT.

If I work hard enough, I can make it happen. I will make this work. This project is worth it, I'll give up everything I will wait, I'll wait potentially forever, outside, even, in the cold, I'll bring a tent, I'll leave my life at home, rain whatever, hail whatever, I've been in worse lines, I'll give up everything everything to be ... America's Next Top [Girlfriend?] ... I've got what it takes ... I could lose so much but I could also win! everything! ... I'm not waiting for a chance, I'm waiting for everything I wanted to arrive/return ... now there is no pain you are receding shine on you crazy diamond look in your eyes like black holes in the sky distant ship...

... because I'm pretty convinced that nothing works out and I want someone to prove me wrong. I'm certain that any kind of investment rarely equals reward, that most things'll crash and it'll be violent and the heart'll break ...

I've solved this problem in my life by avoiding risky investments of time or emotion [e.g., relationships] and it's actually a pretty good strategy. So when I do invest, I'm serious. When I do invest, I invest more. And more. And more. Someone [you? you? redacted magazine? the unblogged story of the conde nast project? etc.?] prove to me that it's okay to shove all my eggs into one basket, to charge headfirst into exhaustion and over-extension of one's self because it seems like it oughta work out. My Mom often tells me it's time to "cut my losses." You win some you lose some you lose some you oughta win some. When I hoped I feared since I hoped I dared

"I waited for you calmly, with infinite patience.
I waited for you hungrily, just short of desperate."
-Stephen Dunn, "The Waiting."

You lose some, you oughta win some?

Well ... I did! I had! I have. I wasn't lying when I said that, that moment was exactly as sweet as it tasted. So. That, there. Stay. BE. JUST BE. Be what you were. Over there.

"I believe in peace, bitch."
-Tori Amos, "The Waitress."

"I praise how the body heals itself.
I praise how, finally, it never learns."
-Stephen Dunn, "Desire."

And ... something else about all that?

If I'd gotten into Community High, maybe I wouldn't've ever gone to Interlochen, and if I hadn't gone there then I woulda missed out on the rest of my life, on absolutely EVERYTHING! And I do believe (cue Christina Aguilera ballad) that everything happens for a reason. Really, I do.

Sometimes it takes a while for the point to emerge from the madness, but I'm pretty satisfied right now with the possibility at my fingertips, a million unfinished lines shooting out of my nails like Wolverine's claws -- but gentle, hesitant, non-violent and reaching towards attention. I'm blindly groping for what it is we're waiting for, but kinda pretty sure, every now and then, that I can ... and will ... get it?

"There's a starman waiting in the sky, he'd like to come and meet us, but he thinks he'd blow our minds."
- David Bowie, Starman

Sunday Top Ten: Each From Different Heights, Who Saved Me From Suicide This Week

The "T" Key is broken again. So is my soul. However, I have not jumped out the window or stopped using words with "T"s in them. You know what that's called? Inner strength. Know where I learned that? R&B/Hip-Hop, especially Beyonce.

This's one of the worst Sunday Top Tens ever written. Because I cannot possibly do any less than ten things at the same time right now, which means I can't do any of them well.

UPDATE: This post is a mess. However, I am not.

SUNDAY TOP TEN:
EVENTS OF THIS WEEK THAT HELPED ME STAY ON THIS SIDE OF THE OPEN WINDOW, WHICH I WILL ATTEMPT TO RELATE TO GAY PRIDE WEEK.
OR:

omg!!!! The "T" Key situation is driving me crazy. What if I wrote this whole post w/o Ts? And was just like "Figure it out, bitches, you know the alphabet, yeah? You know how words work?" But then I remembered I have international (that word really wanted to be "inernaional") readers who have a hard enough time reading my rambling whathaveyous. Seriously. I need o go o he apple sore asap.

There is a little dog on my bed. Oh. He just left. Sad. What a lark!

You know what? MySpace should have a category called "Damaged." I rejoined myspace. I like MySpace, it's cute. Try and find me, grasshopper.

10. My Friends

Y'all are totes hands down awesome. Also, I'd like to thank AIM for making our friendship possible. And thank you for taking that extra minute for yourself every morning to make sure you're pretty, otherwise we wouldn't be friends. Some of you are GAY and that's okay. I love gay people. That's why I'm excited about the cruise, which's so soon I'm getting tan just thinking about it. Wheeee! Love GAYS! I cannot wait for Susan Powter yoga, I need her to tell me how to become a warrior ASAP.

9. Depression Diet=Donuts and McDonalds

I recently lost much of my emotional and digestive capacities, and though I've always been a bit lanky, it's especially pronounced now. I had to purchase an actual belt and wear it every day, which's never been my habit. [People're often surprised that I don't own any: belts, earrings, necklaces, lube.]

"You look completely wrecked, to be honest with you."
-My Therapist

(Obvs I am speaking to her upside down with my legs hanging over the top of the chair which is not a Freudian couch, it's an actual armchair, so this's not how it's meant to be sat in, but I was too wrecked to be upright, obvs.)

It's ridiculously symbolic, the taking back of one's alloted space--"no, it's okay, you can have that air back now, I'll just take up less room"--into a bony shell of your formerly robust self. But the best part of Depression Diet?! When you finally DO acquire an appetite, you can eat whatevs you want because you're just so proud of yourself for eating at all! For example, I haven't had a donut for breakfast since I was like, 12. Until this week, when I had like; 12. Donuts are delicious. Howevs, donuts would be even better if Dunkin' Donuts could just hire one person with an IQ over 40. I don't want sugar in my coffee so cut it out!

They should hire more gay people. GAY people are smarter than other people, because they need to figure out how to have sex, it's not just like get on top, stick it in, bang-bang-bang, it involves either: a) passion and dexterity, b) fitting a large object into a way-too-small hole without causing rectal bleeding. Sorry but someone had to say it.

8. My Mom.

I love my Mom. She's awesome and helpful. Also, she's GAY! Here's my Mom and I at her gay wedding. We're clearly eyeing different cameras. I'm wearing all pink, because it was a gay wedding and pink is the color of The Gays. No one thought this was as funny as I thought it was, unfortunately.

7. Alcohol

I can't say enough about this particular substance. It's reliable and it's always there in a pinch. Some totally flawed studies in the 70s and 80s suggested that GAYS are more likely alcoholics, but if someone did some new less dubious studies with better sample sized populations, I wouldn't be surprised if it was at least a little true. I mean, it's really depressing sometimes to be ostracized by your friends and family and denied the same political rights as strais. I've been very lucky to live in a tolerant little bubble of Gay Pride, though, thanks guys. Personally, I'd find it depressing to be regularly rammed up the ass. But that's just my own personal thing, and I'm not a good sample size, so that's that.

6. Chris Pureka

K-Lilly (GAY!) turned me on to Chris Pureka (GAY!), who sings perfect sad GAY folk music about how we lose each other, feel about it afterwards, and think about it later. but we never explain why we treasure our secrets we're in love with our sadness sometimes. I honestly don't know what I'd do without Chris Pureka. I put my ipod ibuds in my ears and she cries straight into my brain-cage. She validates me.

5. My T-Mobile Dash.

I haven't really figured out how to use it yet, but it looks really neat. It's everything I've ever wanted in a phone: a full keyboard, internet, and larger than a GAY fetus. I don't like small phones, as I've said before, because they remind me of my iPod and I don't wanna be all like "Hello? Prince?"

4. Going Out to NATION: Actually, Not So Bad.

Saturday night: Washington Square Park, an hour past dusk, met up w/Tara-D and her crew of GAYS. Split off from the Under-21s and went to GAY night at Nation. I've mentioned before that I despise Nation, as it is never fun. However: we had fun.

During a breakup, your priorities get shifted quickly. Emotional survival is your only task, really, which's why I spent the entire Summer of '03 playing 'The Sims." You're just trying to stay in the green, you know? Fun skyrockets, and the best way to enable fun is to drink as much as you can without dying. Tara, Vicky and I met up with Carly and we drank, danced [I only "dance" when drunk and/or alone and/or I think no one's watching], talked.

The music wavered somewhere between decent and fantastic, and pure, uncomplicated fun was had. SoCo and lime shots, like kids on vacation. As if we are not adults, as if life is not quite so serious as all this. All action, no head, like a Zen superhero, like your first time flying.

Nation employs these whore-ish girls to dance on the bars. One of 'em's ass cheeks were hanging out and then all this money came out of her shirt, like money was flying in the air, and I took it. That came in handy later when some whore-ish someone stole Tara's bag. I won't talk about that though, because it was depressing.

3. The Best Moment of My Life So Far: Sunday Night Dance Fever

After dinner at Vinyl, we [Carly and her friends Stuart & Matt, and obvs me] venture, full o' Pride, to Posh, a GAY Bar for homosexual men who like to have sex with other homosexual men, often via asshole.

My face still hurts from laughing at Stuart's story of last year's "Himalayan Hunter" Halloween costume (told during dinner) which involved a thong, a lot of feathers and very serious boots but most importantly: actually changing his skin tone via three day fake-baking/spray-tanning regiment. He took three days off of work to develop the proper skin tone for his Himalayan Hunter Halloween costume. I kept thinking: would someone've been like "You know, if you'd been just a tad whiter, I woulda thought Deer Hunter. But that orange glow just gives you away!"

I've been here, I think, as our quartet approaches the throngs of men in tank tops and cargo shorts. The boys at Posh look like frat boys, but with expensive hair gel and shinier muscles, and once inside I remember: I lost my cell phone here, '01: Happy Hour after a lunch shift at the Olive Garden. I remember telling James I'd never talked to the new girl, Karen, because I was intimidated by how pretty she was, and he said, but you're the most beautiful girl at The Olive Garden. This is depressing on many levels:

1. I totally wasn't AT ALL. I mean, total over-compensation complement Thank You James. The Olive Garden was full of hot girls, which's pathetic.
2. He's GAY.

Yes, that afternoon, 'o1: On the black couch I felt Jason's hand on my thigh, thought: You have a girlfriend, seriously, what the F is wrong with you? He tried kissing my neck, disguised as something he needed to say immediately, like via teeth-to-neck transmission. I squirmed. At some point, I put my Nokia on the glass table.

Then I remember vomiting in the Times Square Burger King bathroom, stumbling back to the NYU dorm I lived in that summer, mumbling some nonsense to my BFF, then calling my phone from her phone, affirming I'd left it at Posh, and passing out. I returned later, when it'd transformed into a meat market, and I was like a vegan angel parting the waters of disappointment.

Anyhow, back to present tense: Stuart danced with this woman and it was really funny/amazing, Carly and I were like, this is the best thing to ever happen in the history of mankind. Also, this's one of those things that I should probably just write about in my livejournal, as it's hilarity has no hope of translating onto the page or feeling remotely relevant or interesting to anyone reading this blog besides me. But I don't have a livejournal. Or a t-key, p.s.

2. In the Flesh

On Wednesday, I attended the Special GAY In the Flesh Reading with Tara-D, Vicky, Angelica, and four other girls who's names I forget because I was depressed and wanted to die, therefore I was not paying that close attention. Also, I possibly put too much vodka in my Vitamin Water considering all I'd consumed on Wednesday was four four-packs of cheese-and-peanut-butter crackers and a Lean Pocket. [Note to readers: I need to eat massive amounts of food about every two hours, so this's like, imagine if that's all a Sumo Wrestler ate all day.]

[Also, I'm refusing a return trip to Pathmark: last time, I literally waited THIRTY MINUTES to check out, which made me want to smash my by-then-spoiled Stonyfield Farms yogurt into the retarded eyes of the cashier til all the fruit sunk to the bottom of her retinas and blinded her for life, thus enabling her acquisition of a Seeing Eye Dog who could probs do her job better than she can.]

We saw JD Glass read, and I met her and Radclyffe, who edited that "Lambda *GAY* Award Winning Stolen Moments anthology I was in. Radclyffe's written about 5,000 books. She's even more prolific than my hero RKB.

Speaking of RKB, I talked to her (while drunk) and ... !!! .... I'll be reading at The Best of "In the Flesh" on September 19th. Clearly Haviland's reading with me. I think I'll extend the city-tour begun in last year's story, "Fucking Around." It'll be like: Philadelphia looked like a sweetheart, I thought he was gay, maybe, but then he stole my Sidekick. JK. Go Philly, I love Philly. Good cream cheese, travel/tourism campaign for homos, etc.

1. Y'all

I had an idea for this section: I was gonna get one of those ridic greeting cards with the sunsets and scan it and it was gonna be this weird like poem-y Thank You card or something, 'cause I was gonna be like "how can I talk about how my readers are so sweet and sent me not just comments but emails and stuff and honestly like, opened up to me and all of this and that's just really like, amazing, and unexpected, and heart-warming. Like my heart is officially warmed.

So yeah, I love all of you readers, GAY, straight, bisexual, red, blue, green, Jewish and Muslim, poet and preacher, administrative assistants and girls who spray perfume on you at Bloomingdales, I love all of you. Thanks for being really cool.

Failed Attempt at Gay Pride Post

Guess what? It's Gay PRIDE Week! As you know, I dislike most events involving Pride and/or Outdoor Eating and/or Parades and/or Gay People and/or Strais, but I kinda heart Gay Pride. [Read: Get excited about it, endure the actuality of it for about ten minutes, then get crabby and wanna go home and write emails.] For those of you who don't know what gay people look like, the webmasters at Yahoo! have this helpful banner currently posted on their page:

As you can see, all gay people are very svelte, and homos love boas, leather, and tight jeans. We're old, young, blonde, black, white and Satanic. Also we've got trannies, like the cheerleader about to sing Today for you, tomorrow for me! from Rent. He'll be getting backup from the post-makeover Sandra Dee, pictured on the far right between the identical twin of the Token Black Man (Twin #1's on the far left) and the Leather Dykes.

*
tell me about your life. tell me all about it. don't be shy or afraid. tell me about your beautiful past. speak it to me. about your first feeling and impulses. about how strong and fine they were. how pure. and high-grade.

[Robert Auletta, Stops]
*

Okay. Actually. Let's be honest here.

I can't write this post. I keep going over my draft and I think I need to just give up.

I'm trying really hard, but I'm sad. I don't have any Gay Pride. Like: rah rah! Kill me.

*
and about how those around you responded. about the gestures. about the faces. what did the hands feel like? and about the hearts. could you feel their hearts beating beneath their chests?
*

For three days, I've been trying to write this thing about gender, referencing this week's [redacted]-I-mean-New York Magazine article about Gaydar and the "gay gene," probs too theory-heavy to be even remotely interesting, and I keep changing references to TB from past to present tense and back again and back and all I can think about is how much I miss my girlfriend and how sad I am and how I don't really want to celebrate anything.

*
And about the colors. What were the colors like? The colors of the rugs, the walls, the stairs, the sinks, the closets. Tell me all about the colors.
*

Like, if I'm going to have a parade, I'd like all the instruments to sound like this: waa waa waa. waaaaa.

I feel like I can only speak in cliche, like all my feelings are boring.

*
And the smells, the smell of the snow. The wonderful smell of the snow. And the sky. The look of it. Tell me. Did it frighten you? And the funny faces you made. Make some of those funny faces now. Don't be afraid. Yes, that's beautiful. Those funny faces you're making are beautiful.
*

I am was am comforted by her arm, extending in front of my body as I carelessly step into oncoming traffic. I was am was comforted by her arms holding me. I was am was comforted by our palms, face-to-face, comparing lengths, that first night in her car.

*
And the darkness. Tell me about the darkness. The depth and the intensity of it. Its feel. The grit of it. Of what you lost in it. The black of it. If you died in it. Or if you lived in it. Tell me about it. Speak it to me. Speak the hatred of it to me. Don't be afraid. Spit on me. Don't hold back. Spit it. That's why I am here. Spit.
*

I cannot be in my room because it reminds me of her. I cannot leave my room because I'm crying. My face's gotten so used to crying that I don't even need to move to do it. I can just sit here like Linus and his raincloud except my raincloud is my eyes. The thing is, too: Linus didn't even have a raincloud over his head. No Peanuts characters did. People just think that 'cause PigPen had a dust cloud, and I guess there's some Lil' Abner character with an actual raincloud, but that doesn't matter, really, the important part is maybe only my truth, and I'm not trying to make Peanuts profound or something, or make myself profound, but actually, Peanuts is way more profound than I am.

*
that's good. that's fine. all together. now we're one together. by the sea for a picnic. in the woods for a romp. our pretty dresses. our colored shirts. sipping cider. our heads thrown back. our hair flying. the trees, the sky, the sea, our eyes.
*

Also: I feel like there's a power drill in my uterus trying to unearth my bellybutton ring from the inside, I'm crabby, tired, nauseous, and overly Midoled. I'm sad and confused and I think I've got Toxic Shock Syndrome in my heart.

This picture was gonna be in my post:

Ardhanarisvara: cosmic androgyny
Third Eye Chakra

And this one:

Relic of my Boyhood
*

Last week, I showed her the most important drawing I ever did from my 1999 journal. She read to me from her 2001. We compared angst and genius/beauty. She always made me laugh. We made each other laugh a lot. The first time we talked on the phone, my face hurt afterwards from laughing so hard.

I honestly believed we'd be together forever, and I believed that more purely than I ever have before with anyone. I saw our whole future together, mapped out, and it was beautiful. It was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.

I'll probs erase this post 'cause it's pretty raw, for me. But that's all I got, kids.

And so the heart breaks...

*I'm glad, I'm glad. As you are. As we all are. As we are together.
[again: this monologue's from Robert Auletta, Stops]*

...into small shadows almost so random they are meaningless like a diamond has at the center of it a diamond a rock...

Sunday Top 10: On Camp

This week's This American Life podcast, 1998's Notes on Camp, "tr[ies] to understand what is the cult-like, mystical connection some people feel with their summer camps." I could cop themes from TAL every week, but I somehow resist that temptation. There's a lot of thematic Top Ten temptations I resist every week, like a cokehead staring down a pure white line of heaven dancing across their desktop: Most Annoying Things Ever, Reasons I'm Too Busy To Call You Back, Things No One Should Ever Wear EVER, Best Blog Entries I've Already Written, Annoying People/Things at the Gym, etc.

But um I could not resist this particular temptation. It's summer! Snort up, kiddos!

If you've given birth to children and they are grown-ups now, perhaps you're sending them to summer camp. Perhaps you yourself went to camp, or perhaps you're a camp counselor, or perhaps you went to Fat Camp, like on the TV show "Fat Camp."

The New York Times Magazine featured ads for the real ritzy Summer Camps, like Camp LaJolla (fat camp) and my fantasy favorite Stagedoor Manor, which looked like a hotel for future Gaby Hoffmans and whomever played Little Orphan Annie.

Perhaps you think camp is for spoiled rich kids and the easily-placated middle class suburban brats. Perhaps it is. I remain undecided.

I attended Jewish Day Camp every summer til I turned 11. I hated it a lot. Then I overnight-camp-hopped for several years, 'cause I'm fast like that. Sometimes, I wished I was fat, so I coulda accomplished something concrete by going to camp.

So, TAL: Ira Glass shared some listener stories, including a Wisconsin woman recounting her Young Zionist Camp experience. I suspected immediately her camp belonged to the Habonim-Dror group, which owned the Zionist camp I attended in Michigan. There can't be that many Zionist camps in the U.S, 'cause there's not a huge market, I imagine, for kids who want to feed animals, paint houses, celebrate Shabbat, learn "Ivrit" and sleep in tents while their rich Jewish friends are chillin' in the Catskills in air conditioned cabins learning digital video editing and trapeze. But anyhow, here's the end of her story:

"....A bunch of us were sitting in the dining hall, and somebody said look out on the lawn! ... there was this large cross burning out on the lawn of the campgrounds, these people came in wearing white sheets and white things over their heads like pillowcases and they made us all go outside. And there was another guy in a white sheet and a white pillowcase riding up and down on a horse and they started to yell at us that they wanted the Jews out of Wisconsin and they didn't want any Jew-camps in Wisconsin, and they kept yelling at us, Don't bother trying to call the authorities 'cause in this neck of the woods we are the authorities, and everyone was just petrified and we all stood around just shakin' in our boots, and all of a sudden one of the counselors said, "I'm an American citizen and you can't treat me like this!" so two of the guys in sheets grabbed him by the arms and marched him away, and another counselor said the same thing ... and pretty soon all the counselors were being marched away and we were left there ... I went "I'm an American Citizen too!' and someone came over in a white sheet and took me down towards the beach and as he was waking me down to the beach and said to me "Edina, couldn't you have kept your big mouth shut?" And It was all a political lesson that we were supposed to be learning."

Then I knew: hands down totes for-sure the same camp I went to, per the re-enacting the fleeing-Germany-before-the-Holocaust story I shared in a previous blog.

Zionists don't mess around.

SUNDAY TOP TEN:
WHAT I LEARNED AT SUMMER CAMP

10.How to do Shakespeare ...
in fifteen minutes ...
on a cart.
You know, like for retarded people w/o taste. JK, I love retarded people, especially if you are retarded and reading this blog. I mean that proverbially. [Is that the right word? Proverbially? I'm retarded.]

Me @ Blue Lake. Yes, that's a chapstick necklace.

Someone's brilliant idea for the summer theater program's "big show" was performing 15-minute audience-participatory "adaptations" of Hamlet and Taming of the Shrew on 12x12 rolling carts, like minstrels at a really annoying fair or amusement park. As Ophelia, I delivered three stunning lines and as Rosencrantz, Gildenstern and I forewent lines in favor of a [we thought] very clever song, to the tune of "It's the Hard-Knock Life" from Annie: It's the hard-knock life for us, it's the hard knock life for us, Pertrucio used to be real nice, 'til he got this Shrewish wife, it's the hard knock life! Now he's bossing us around, kicking [I forget] on the ground, it's a hard knock life!

I can still hear it in my head.

++
9. Camp A----us, 1992
Before you go anywhere overnight and voluntarily sacrifice your rights/privileges to their authority,
get a personal reference. Or something.
Don't just go because it looked OK in the pamphlet.
Even overprotective mothers miss some things.

We're happy in this photo, 'cause we're about to go home.
We woulda gone home sooner, but they wouldn't let us call our parents.

The summer after 6th grade, my BFF Janelle and I, finally permitted by our mothers to attend overnight camp, found the only camp offering week-long sessions and signed up. It was, allegedly, Michigan's oldest bestest all-girls camp, but, upon arrival, things were not quite as advertised.

All that "camp" stuff? Making friends, forming teams, attending structured activities, kindness, etc.? The promised attempts to forge real or imaginary bonds between campers? Nada. It was like showing up at college mid-semester, sans orientation, and told to fend for yourself. Which's fine, but not when you're 11.

Also, speaking of "nada," we realized quickly that 75% of the campers were Mexican girls who stayed all summer, every summer, simply to be somewhere other than Mexico. Nothing against Mexicans, obvs/obvs!, but I mean ... weird, right? Camp A----- shoulda incorporated it into their advertising, like "Diverse Group of Campers!" or "Spanish-Language training!" or "Camp A---us: Better than Mexico City!"

Anyhow, they wouldn't let us call home, and my BFF's younger sister got sick mid-week and her counselor didn't believe her [she had appendicitis]. It got pretty bad. Like a sicko reality TV show. Rained a lot. I made friends and learned dirty sexy Mexican songs to sing to myself in the shower. JK . Not in the shower: I was afraid of it (group shower) and, literally, didn't shower all week. That's disgusting. Seriously, how the F did I get away with that?

The talent show featured almost exclusively cross-dressing kitchen staff lip syncing Englebert Humperdink and stripping. So weird.

Also, they served mystery meat, fo' rizzle, which I'd read about in Ramona Quimby. Obvs, I got sick.

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8. Not Knowing How to Swim Indicates Deep, Unnerving, Ridicule-worthy Pathos

Swimming is the centerpiece of American camping. Apparently, most children not only enjoy a dip in the lake/pool, but look forward to it. Not only can these mini Summer Sanderses lap swim without drowning, many can perform complicated "dives" and "flips." Personally, I preferred my bathing suit for one location and one location only: the group showers.

[At 18, I took swimming lessons @ Sarah Lawrence. Can swim now. Heart my Speedo, totally no longer afraid of beaches or pools. Well: I am. But for different reasons now, like that there're lots of people there, in little-to-no clothing, enjoying activities that boggle me, like "drinking beer and eating potato chips in the daytime," "tanning," "grillin'"and "apparently absolutely nothing."]

But, camp: all afternoon, our little eyes'd sting from the chlorine, and our skin transformed from puckered to throbby white, then back to pita. At Zionist camp, the bottom of the pool was rough, like sandpaper. That's training for the Israeli army, I think.

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7. Letter-Writing Skills

When mining my storage space in Michigan for memoir-gold, I came upon boxes and boxes of letters, many exchanged w/friends during respective weeks of summer camp. I realized how bizarre it'd be, now, to have no idea what was happening with my friends until I received written notice in the postal mail. Obvs, when I've got no clue what my friends're up to now, it's cause I've failed to call/email/etc., and we're a bit more predictable now. Back then, someone could come back from camp a totally different person and we might not be prepared for such things. I love letters: writing things you're hoping'll stay true for a few days, words you can't ever redact and which you'll not get a response to for a week or more. Like Permanent "Out of Office Reply."

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6. Fleeing Germans for the Land of Milk and Honey is Very "Exhausting."

From my Diary, August 1st, 1994: "They woke us up at 5:15 A.M. to 'Escape Germany and found the state of Israel!' and we didn't get to be allowed to go back to sleep until 9:30. I was exhausted all day."

That "get to be allowed to" is ruining my life, but I can't edit my own pre-adolescent diary entry. So I'll just let it be, like y'all let my stylistic errors be, all the time.

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5. The "Camp Relationship" Mentality

I never had a Camp Boyfriend.
This photo is of one of many reasons why.

At camp, relationships occur in light-speed. Not that I actually had one, but most of my friends did. It was perfectly acceptable to return from a three-week session w/steamy stories of a super-serious boyfriend/girlfriend you'd acquired on Cedar Lake. The intensity and round-the-clock time together afforded by summer camp provided for this relationship-on-light speed effect, and I still use "Camp Relationship" proverbially -- like how the [redacted] magazine article I was writing during the infancy of TB and I's relationship pushed it all into overdrive. I was like, "It's like we're Camp Girlfriends!" and she was like, "What?" This happens a lot with us, e.g., when I quote anything published after 1939, including teleplays. Or when she quotes anything published before 1925.

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4. I am "a carpenter's dream: flat as a board and never been nailed."

This information was bestowed upon me and my Day Camp BFF Alex by a boy I'll call "Douchebag." Douchebag was fat and mean, but apparently'd received a beejer, which gave him self-bestowed Status to label the ripe young maidens of the lower grades. He got grosser and even less dateable in high school [being Day Camp, all kids were locals]. Alex, however, became smokin' hot, but in that effortless super-sweet faux-hippie FACT-beautiful kind of way. I realize in retrospect I probs had a crush on her, but also: so did everybody, I mean, her girl-clique called themselves "The Rainbow Girls." [Hidden message?] She has no memory of this incident, because she's not crazy. Anyhow, what Douchebag's clever line truly meant was: "You'll both have very perky **** later, and 'nailed' implies a violence uncomely to sexual descriptions."

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3. Liberal Politics=Liberal Policies


Hippie Day at Hippie Camp.

Every camp I attended and all I'd heard of were strict about keeping the boys away from the girls, lest we all get preggers or acquire SARS. Obvs Zionist camp was an exception to this rule, because we were one big family, like a Kibbutz. Boys and girls tents co-existed side by side, and the boys'd often drop their towels on purpose en route to shower, and my Best Friend the Weirdo'd perform ten-minute orgasms after "bed time" 'til all the campers yelled and his counselor threatened to kill him with various sharp objects. We could have boys in our bed, sleepovers, whatevs, though usually Naomi slept in my bed. She had memorable breasts for a 13-year-old. Hmm. Nothing happened. It was just a small bed.

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2. How to do Something, Right? How to Make Lanyards? Swim?

I must've learned some kind of concrete skill. I learned some Hebrew. I made a Dream Catcher once, at Camp Michigania, according to my diary. Michigania's family camp. I went with someone else's family, and they turned out to be even crazier than mine. Diary: Helen's having a hissy fit at Arts & Crafts 'cause the string on her dream catcher is too thick and she can't fit any beads on it. Her Mom got POed at me for the precious 30 minutes I was holding Helen's things hostage, she had my hat, and I ran out of things, and I was in the bathroom so I told her I was holding her Oxy and Deodorant [sic] hostage. Helen's Mom thought it was rude. The game ended.

Psychos.

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1. I Am Not Good at Camp

TAL discussed one of the primary strategies of summer camp as a "business": by creating teams, traditions, and complicated systems of rank/seniority/legacies, camps ensure return "customers," a.k.a. campers. I knew that my yearly alienation, as I trekked each summer to a new camp, would never change if I never went anywhere more than once. Day Camp doesn't count, 'cause I was forced to go there.

'Cause as it was, I didn't dig camp so much, though my blind optimism that each year'd bring the boyfriends and memories my friends regaled from their adventures was inspiring. I got homesick fast, then, 'cause I missed my Dad and Kentucky Fried Chicken, which's why I avoided the longer camps, like Interlochen, where I ended up eventually shipping off for year-round school. I wanted the cliquey camaraderie the other girls had, the easy-breezy-beautiful songs and chants and requisite tearful goodbyes. Instead, I mostly just waited for it to be over, like making it to the end was something I needed to prove to myself.

At Blue Lake, the last camp I ever attended, the final night was marked by a four-hour concert dreaded all summer long--a chance to make paper cranes out of programs/enjoy orchestral music--and so my heart skipped all it's beats when, on the night of "The Blue Meanine" or whatevs it was called, on my way to the cafeteria in late summer rain, I spotted my father and brother underneath the awning. Dad was wearing a Bulls hat, I remember ... I actually thought I was hallucinating, which was possible, 'cause I spent more than one day in the infirmary crying about my homesickness at that place, and they kept feeding me Pepto ...

Dad: "Oh! Marie! What a surprise to see you here! We were just passing through ..."

Lewis: [giggle giggle] "Hi Marieeeee!"

Me: [melting, OMG!] "Can you take me off-campus? Now? Before the concert?"

Dad: "Well, we certainly didn't come out here to watch a bunch of amateurs toot their own horns for four hours."

The kids, finally, envied me. I still remember eating the Patty Melt [I don't know if this's a universally consumed heart-attack-on-a-plate or not; it's onions, a hamburger, melted cheese on toast] at Big Boys in Twin Lake. Just like heaven...

I suppose returning to any camp for another year woulda been like that "not joining any clubs that'd have me as a member" thing. Implicit in return was the acknowledgement I'd liked it the first time around, that I had particular expectations and that these expectations were resolutely optimistic, validating that last summer, I musta fit in and made friends.

Funny, then, that I eventually chose year-round "camp" for my last two years of high school [a.k.a. boarding school], though not until many of the causes of my perpetual homesickness were no longer relevant. Like, I think Kentucky Fried Chicken is really gross now.

We Must We Must We Must Increase Our ...

I'm writing a Sunday Top Ten, I promise. Seriously: RIGHT NOW.

In the meantime: this book, The Bigger, The Better, The Tighter the Sweater: 21 Funny Women On Beauty, Body Image & Other Hazards of Being Female, is now available for purchase. If you buy it through that link, I get about seven cents. So, if all of you buy it, I will be able to feed not only myself but my/TB's pet monkey, Squirrel/Rocinante. Squirrel's not a real monkey, he's a stuffed monkey. Still, we all get a little hungry sometimes. Hungry for life, love, and literature, as well as all other things, like Metrocards and games-for-the-thief's-new-cell-phone.

Seriously though, clearly you like to read, and it's like supporting meeeeee AND getting a free gift. It's been in the sidebar forevs, 'cause of viral marketing.

Here's a review from BUST magazine. I've highlighted, in yellow, the part where they say my essay specifically is one of the highlights of the book. If you can't read it, just trust me.



Also, my essay from this book'll be printed, condensed, in August's Marie Claire magazine, the women's magazine devoted to women named Marie. This won't be like last year, when the photo/misquote combo in September's MC inspired me to cry/wail violently and hurl the magazine at the wall like a psycho. 'Cause this time I'm not just IN the article, I sorta wrote it, and there's no photo! [Read: Essay needed to be cut in half for magazine, I said: Do whatever you want to it, I trust you. See that? I BELIEVE, forgive, etc.]

AND if you live in New York City, we're reading at the KGB Bar on July 24th. Put it on your calendars now, 'cause you're all clearly very busy, and if you've gotta work there's still time to quit your job. Also, I'm not actually listed as being a reader, 'cause clearly whomever's in charge hasn't checked her email in forever-ever, 'cause then she woulda gotten the publicist's email about how I was somehow left out of this listing and subsequently added me to that page linked above. I assure you I am indeed reading.

I just re-read my contract, and I'm pretty sure I'm allowed to do this ... hmmm ... okay, I'm posting, below, the first graf of my essay, "Feels Like Teen Spirit." I learned this technique from RKB, obvs, who entices readers to buy the book by printing excerpts on her blog. Probs most authors do this. But I'm weird, so I don't. Actually, based on the last few posts, you might think I'm a real writer with a booming career. I assure you this's not the case. I am still Marie from the Block, eating Ramen. Seriously, I just had some Ramen. I'm still hungry, oh, how we are HUNGRY!

Excerpt from "Feels Like Teen Spirit," by Marie Lyn Bernard. The essay's about hyperhidrosis:

I started sweating during the summer of 1994, between seventh and eighth grades. This development, which was clearly an Adult Thing, was entirely incongruous with the rest of my Ascent to Womanhood. I was sweating but I did not have my period or breasts or a boyfriend.

“Is this like when you said you needed a bra?” my mom asked when I added deodorant to our K-Mart shopping list.

“I wanted a bra just for under white shirts, Mom,” I reminded her. “So that no one can, you know—see through—when it rains —”

“When I was your age, I was already a B cup,” she told me. “It was terrible.”

One of my favorite things about being thirteen was comments such as that one. Other favorite things: boys who were three to four inches shorter than I was, passing notes, spreading rumors, braces with rubber bands, Kurt Cobain and his big fat flannel shirts, Lurlene McDaniel novels about girls who were dying of fatal illnesses, Christopher Pike novels about girls and boys being chased by dead people. And sweating.

Also, speaking of books I'm in, I'd like to share a quote with you from a piece of fan mail I received IN THE MAIL (Yeah, the postal kind! Sent to my agent! Crafty fellow!), re: my story in The Best American Erotica 2007:

"It wasn't simply a hot, sensuous tale--instead it seemed to contain an emptiness--a void that yearned for intimacy--that longing for acceptance and with it, love. If he loved her, why didn't he eat her before he entered her? Why didn't he [sic] her with his lips and tongue and accompany her into the realm of ecstatic bliss?"

Since he asked where he can find more of my work, obvs I'll be mailing him a Bigger the Better postcard. While (obvs) reading this letter out loud to Cameron, the line printed above required me to stop reading: "Doesn't he know talking about sex makes me squeamish? Ack! I can't read this, let alone answer that question! Can't handle!"