Outing Myself

I got a lower face and neck lift in November and have been conflicted about going public with it.

I always try to be as honest and open as I can on here. I love the AA saying, “we are only as sick as our secrets.” That has always proved true to me. Plus I believe that we all have the same feelings, doubts, and pains (barring sociopaths, narcissists, psychopaths, bad brain, etc.), and that we bridge gaps and help each other heal by discussing our own thoughts and feelings about our experiences. Those experiences can vary wildly from person to person, but the reactions and feelings really don’t. Writing has shown me that I am not unique and anything that I have felt has been felt by many others.

The problem with being open online is that you make yourself vulnerable to people with bad intent. When you have haters, and I have a couple of doozies (maybe all of us do?), they will distort and weaponize any bit of information gleaned from social media or gossip. I’m risking abuse by talking about a choice that not everyone might understand or agree upon. But I don’t want to live my life in fear of what someone with negativity in their heart thinks. I learned long ago that people will make up all kinds of crazy shit no matter how nice you try to be, so we all might as well just live our lives and ignore the rest.

One of the reasons I feel semi-obligated to talk about this at all, is that no one ever tells us about their own cosmetic surgery, despite the fact that it’s a booming business. Everyone wants to pretend it’s natural, which then causes the rest of us to compare ourselves unfavorably to celebrities who tell us it’s all diet, exercise and facials. We feel flawed or less then, and it’s not fair. Although it is understandable–Pamela Anderson talks about it in her Netflix doc, how she didn’t know that she was supposed to keep her implants a secret and it became the only thing anyone ever wanted to ask her about.

I want to make it clear that for me, it’s not about wanting to look young, which is the usual accusation from people opposed. There is nothing in this world that can replicate the soft collagen of youth and I like being my age. But I want to feel good in my skin and I haven’t felt that for the last couple of years. My face has been getting longer with time, and I didn’t like the droop. And my neck wasn’t making me happy either, I couldn’t wear turtlenecks (which I love) anymore because my neck looked unattractive at the top of the sweater. At a certain point it stops being about enhancing with clothes and makeup and becomes more about disguising and distracting. I don’t enjoy that struggle.

Also, for realz, I don’t know why anyone would be surprised. I’ve never planned on aging gracefully and no one close to me expects any different. When I announced my plan to my siblings, my sister said she was going to tell on me to mom. Which she did, and my mother, who is all about natural and would never dye her hair or do anything to her face, didn’t bat an eye. She knew this was coming.

I had been researching surgery for a few years because I had it in my mind that 60 would be the year, and I turned 60 in October. I still can’t believe I’m this old. It was daunting at first: I don’t have any close friends in NYC who have done anything like this, and I didn’t want to travel outside of my home. Many people I know have gone elsewhere for all kinds of surgery because it’s cheaper. But I wanted to recuperate in my house with my animals, and I wanted to make sure that if someone was going to be cutting up my face, they came well recommended and I could get their help if something went wrong..

I went to two consultations; both doctors that were recommended by a friend’s dermatologist. The first one was fantastic, a great guy with great results–he was upbeat, young and confident in his work. But he is also stupid expensive, like more than many yearly salaries expensive. Like I’d be in debt for a decade expensive. Notable is that part of that high cost is that after surgery you’re sent to a hotel with a nurse who watches over you for 48 hours.

The second guy I saw was still expensive but much more reasonable at less than half the first price quote. This is because he uses local anesthetic with a knockout cocktail of valium and some other pills, saving the high cost of an anesthetist. As much as I would prefer to be fully asleep during any operation, I liked the idea of not having to deal with the aftereffects of anesthetic and having to flush it out of my body afterward. His before and after photos were equally as great as the first guy, and I’m a big one for intuition and I liked the energy at his office. So I chose him. I’m still in debt, but it’s a much less terrifying amount.

The reactions I got when I told people of my plans were either excited or horrified. The excited people were my inner circle, women my age who have been considering the same thing. The horrified people were mostly people who have never experienced botox or other injectables, who don’t really know what any of that kind of thing entails, who think of Jocelyn Wildenstein or the show Botched when they think of surgery, or who simply believe in aging naturally. Which, for the record, is great, just not the path I’m taking.

I think where we live plays a part in all of this too. I live in a city where it’s common for women to do things to their face. If I had remained in the woods of Michigan it might be different and look out of place, so reactions from different parts of the country vary as well.

A few days before my surgery I saw a Facebook post from an acquaintance who looks cool, but has never been a person interested in makeup or beauty. She had a close up of her bare face, along with a paragraph about how aging naturally is the more noble way to go. It was pretty judgey, but most social media posts about plastic surgery are judgey. It doesn’t help that Madonna is purposely fucking up her face for attention, but that’s another conversation. I realized after seeing that post that that there would be some serious judgment if I were to talk about it. But what’s the alternative? To lie and pretend that I’m a natural miracle? That falseness feels yucky to me.

Three weeks after my 60th birthday I went in, and the surgery was intense. I let them film it; if you aren’t too squeamish and care to see the inside of my face, it’s here at Madnani Facial Plastics:

https://www.instagram.com/tv/Ck0uh5dPFru/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Local anesthetic has its pitfalls. I was so drugged up in the beginning that I fell asleep. But it’s a long process and sometime throughout the pills began wearing off and I got panicky. I felt what I thought was sawing, which didn’t help (it was actually pulling and stitching). I knew Sam was in the other room waiting for me and I tried to call his name to get me off the table. But as I became more cognizant I knew that wasn’t going to be feasible so I croaked out instead that I was freaking out. The nurse tossed a couple more pills in my mouth and I was happily out again.

I went in at 6:30 am and it was done by about noon. I was wheeled into a car and Sam took me home. He said he only recognized me by my tattoos and the fact that I was still trying to give orders, despite that I was delirious and couldn’t talk.


The next day I had to go back for a bandage change. My hair was matted down with blood and my ears were plugged up with bloody gauze, but overall it didn’t feel too bad. Thank you, hydrocodone.

I spent the next week propped up in bed high on painkillers. I really love an excuse to watch TV all day while high, but it was a lot. You’re in pain, you can’t lay down fully, you feel like your head is in a box because your ears are covered and you have to keep changing the wraps. It gets boring pretty quickly. My worst day was about five days in because I hadn’t listened closely enough to the direction to take laxatives. Without getting into specifics, I’ll just say that I considered going to the emergency room on that day and will never make that mistake again.

The photo below was maybe three weeks into healing. My face was very numb and my eyes dragged down by the swelling. I couldn’t turn my head to the side or up and down and I couldn’t open my mouth very far. But for the most part it wasn’t too terrible and passed pretty quickly. The bruises took well over a month to heal, I used arnica and took pre and post op vitamins and bromelaine, which helped speed it up, but I did look weird for a while. I went to get my nails done and my Chinese nail lady, who I’ve been seeing for years, asked quietly, “Who did this to you??” I had to have one of the other technicians give me the Chinese word for facelift so I could explain that I did it to myself. To which she huffed indignantly and patted my hand, which may be the most eloquent and best reaction yet.


I don’t have before and afters yet from the doctor, but I tried to take a similar selfie to one I took last summer so there is some way to see what’s been done.

This is last July pre-op.

The one below is a couple of days ago. I took it in the strong light in my bathroom and didn’t filter anything, so it’s not gorgeous. But I wanted to get something clear with a similar nighttime makeup so people can see the difference. I should probably add that I had a fat transfer under my eyes and laser skin resurfacing, so that’s part of what you’re seeing too.

I am very happy with the results. I feel like I’m still myself but I can wear turtlenecks again and I’m not panicky when people pull out their phones to take photos. Which is exactly what I wanted. I have zero regret.

I am happy to answer any questions that anyone wants to ask. A facelift is a frivolous, first world conversation and I understand that I lead a blessed life, that age catches up to us all, and I’m not trying to give this too much time or energy. But I would like to help move this conversation forward in a way that frees us all to be who we want to be, surgery or no surgery. There is too much shame and self-loathing in this world over frivolous bullshit, too much fear wrapped around aging or not looking a certain way. If I can take some of the guesswork out of navigating it, I’m willing to expose myself to that end.

Namaste, beauties!

Kim and Beep

I had a reading the summer from a psychic friend who said that I could be writing entries for this blog more often, as it helps some people. Sometimes I feel like I’ve said pretty much everything I have to say, and I don’t like forcing it unless there’s a specific train of thought eating into my mind. But he said it can be as little as a few words, so maybe I’ll get a little more casual and not turn it into a giant entry all the time. If there’s something you’d like to hear from me, feel free to ask.

Anyhoo, as most of you know, there was a memorial for our beautiful Kim Montenegro on Saturday. It was lovely, thanks to the hard work of Paty Huthert and Dennis McHugh, and I spoke, so I thought I’d copy what I said here for those of you who couldn’t get to Philly.

I also put my beloved cat Beep down last week and then had a birthday. I really don’t care about birthdays anymore, Lord knows I’ve had enough of them, but it is a time to assess and see friends. So it was a big week, too much really, and I’m grateful for all of the messages. Life just throws shit at you sometimes and you have to roll with it. I was so drained yesterday that I had to hibernate; I couldn’t bear to try to form words or respond to texts. But I’m feeling more rejuvenated now and better able to respond.

Kim’s absence will be with me for the rest of my life. She was a sister and a force of nature and I am not the only person feeling her loss. I asked her and Codie to help Beep with his transition and I did feel a warm presence when he left his body, which was a tough moment for me. I don’t know if it was one or both of them or someone or something else, but it was calming to feel there is more to life than what we see with our eyes and that we don’t completely lose our loved ones in death. It’s not perfect, but at least positive.

Thank you to Paty for making sure I got some of her ashes in this perfect pouch that she would have loved.

——————————————

KIM

It’s impossible for me to talk about Kim without thinking of the word “beauty”. 

Kim taught me to appreciate beauty in a deep way–not just in the superficial meaning of the word, although we did adore pretty people and things. Kim understood true, life-affirming beauty: the heart of a person, the way a home can look and feel, delightful smells, delicious food, and the value of doing something right the first time. 

The first time I met Kim, in the mid-80’s, she said, within the first ten seconds of laying eyes on each other, “Hi! You’re so beautiful! Who are you? Will you be my friend?”

I had never been greeted like that. What adult just happily asks a total stranger if they want to be friends? I was shy at the time and this openness and generosity of spirit threw me. She was so fearless, and it immediately shifted my energy from guarded to open. I fell in love with her on the spot. We became inseparable at that show and for many years. I wanted to look like her, dress like her, talk like her. I wanted everyone to know that this amazing creature was with me, my friend. She was the most exciting and entertaining person I knew and I loved taking trips to Philly where we’d ride around in that boat of a Buick, smoking cigarettes and waving at the guys who shouted at us. It was heaven to me.

I quickly discovered that she greeted most people with that level of enthusiasm. She would walk into a crowded room and light up everyone with her warmth, saying, “Hi! Hello! I love your jacket! You have pretty eyes! What’s your name?”  She genuinely liked humans, something completely alien to me, and she saw beauty in everyone and wanted to get to know them. She SAW you. She listened. I was constantly dragging her out of places while some random and annoying person cried on her shoulder or tried to invade our party. She was regularly pulling stray lunatics into my apartment and life, then when they became too much, which they inevitably did, I’d have to act as bouncer and bad guy because her heart was too soft to do it. She had absolutely no discernment when it came to people and it was a huge pain in the ass sometimes. But it was also a testament to how much love she gave so freely.

Kim taught me to appreciate quality, to really look around the room at furniture and art, to savor what we saw and heard and consumed. She taught me how to fold those fucking jeans exactly the way she wanted them to be folded. She wouldn’t let you bag her groceries because she had her own rules about it. The level of control could be exhausting, but we all reaped the benefits of that attention to detail. Her orbit was a warm place to reside. She remembered little things. She always made sure we looked into each other’s eyes when we raised a glass of wine. When we went to restaurants she would tear the crust off of the bread and eat it while handing me the soft middle, because she knew I didn’t like the hard parts. It was a minor gesture but its meaning was grand. I never see a loaf of crusty bread without thinking of it.  

Romances came and went, and we had our disagreements and downtime, but at the end of the day there was always a safe space of kinship. I could always trust her. Kim was imperfect, stubborn, and self-destructive at times. She often didn’t get out of her own way and it was frustrating. But she was also a blazing star, a shining beacon of creativity, affection, intelligence, honor, hard work, hilarity, fun, and enthusiasm. Her energy was infectious, there were times it felt as if we floated in a shiny bubble of her making. She was as easy to love as she was easy on the eyes. 

The last time I saw her, when she wasn’t really verbal anymore, everyone at the table had a glass of prosecco and she did her thing–raised her glass and looked deeply into my eyes. I knew what she was saying and that it was the last time I would have this, and I think instinctively she knew too. I held her gaze, raised the glass and said, “I love you. You know that, right?” And she laughed her sweet laugh and nodded.  

I know that this was not my first lifetime with her, and I know I will see her again in whatever form we take. I am grateful she didn’t languish for years, she would have hated the idea of being a burden to anyone. And I’m so grateful to her close people for the work and heartache they went through to make sure her last days were good. I am grateful for all of it, every minute, good and less than good. I know that this world will never be the same for me without her in it, and I will never be able to raise a glass of red without feeling her in my heart. But I also know that she would want us all to live our lives to the fullest and to remember her with joy. So that is what I shall endeavor to do. 

Goodness

I recently realized that I am grateful to be at an age where I have only 20 or 30 more years to be in body on this plane, maybe less if there is some surprise around the corner that I don’t foresee.

This is in no way brought on by depression or a non-love of life. My life is the best it’s ever been. It’s peaceful and abundant. At the moment I am typing this on the terrace of my dream apartment with the exact dog and cat I want sitting next to me. I have no personal beefs going with anyone, the villains seem to be ruining their own lives lately, and everyone in my close orbit is lovely and supportive. I have a job I genuinely enjoy. I’m healthier than I’ve ever been, barring being at the end of recuperating from my first case of covid, which even that was mild.

But a yearning is growing, a yearning for the peace and ease of a different kind of existence free of guns and maga and sadness and illness and bad religion, maybe free of gravity and body, something bigger, grander. Not this minute, or this year, or this decade. I still have things I want to do in this life that I love. But I can feel a pressing of sorts, like I’m pushing at a membrane of consciousness that wants to break free. Maybe it’s not death at all, maybe just a readiness for a deeper kind of existence?

I don’t know. As I wonder if our country is in the middle of a fall of what might turn out to have been a very short empire, I can feel myself becoming disconnected. Not in a bad way, more in an oversaturated, I can’t foam at the mouth about it anymore. I haven’t given up the fight, I’m just internally quiet somehow. Like I can feel how temporary everything is, including me.

I get a lot of information from dreams. I have never been especially gifted psychically, but I travel a lot in my sleep and all kinds of magic can and does happen. I once accidentally flew to an alien planet and crash landed into a meeting of sorts. Happily the surprised aliens seemed amused and very gently flew me back to my body, like putting someone’s escaped dog back in their yard. Then after my father died unexpectedly I was able to process a lot of sadness and unfinished business in my sleep. We had long, meaningful conversations that I believe really happened. But even if it wasn’t real, only my subconscious talking back to me, it helped. I have come to believe that we can, and do, get important inner work done when our conscious mind is shut down.

I don’t like to write about my most recent ex (six years ago now) too much because he has a new life and deserves privacy, and because it’s in the past. And honestly he probably doesn’t deserve the airtime. But he brought me some real awareness in a dream last night that I think could be helpful to share.

He visits me in dreams regularly. I believe this is because he stopped speaking to me and moved onto his new relationship at lightning speed while there was still a lot left to process after our own thirteen years. At least on my end, as it was a devastating loss for me. And I took on all of the blame and felt like a genuinely vile person. I lost my mind during that period and completely self-destructed while I put him on a pedestal as the Good One.

I was raised in an atmosphere of Catholic self-loathing and a denial of intuition. I was herded into behaviors and thoughts that didn’t resonate with my inner voice and actual needs and personality. And because of that I had to relearn how to trust that intuition and sometimes have a hard time seeing my own desires and behaviors clearly. So I have always assumed deep down that I am irreversibly flawed and undeserving and that’s why I make such a mess of relationships.

There are SO many moments and events in my life that I wish I could do differently. I am not a no regrets person. I regret saying something shitty to a kid at a teen party in 1979. I still think about the look on his face and wish I could take it back. I have all kinds of self-blaming little anecdotes like this categorized and filed away in my brain. So you can imagine the internal dialogue that goes on with the big stuff. It’s exhausting.

Anyway, at some point I got irritated with these regular nighttime visits from this person who doesn’t care a whit about me during waking hours, and I said to myself, as I am a big believer in stating intentions out loud: “Enough! I choose to stop these stupid dream meet ups that lead nowhere and just make me feel sad. You are UNINVITED.”

It’s been great for a time, no visits. Until last night, when this fucker called me on the phone in my dream. Called me on my dream phone! Even in my sleep I knew this was a pretty clever way to get in. I looked at the dream phone as a truly comical and unflattering photo of him came up, and rolled my dream eyes and after a moment of internal debate I answered.

I said impatiently, “What??” And as soon as I said that he was in front of me in person and we were talking again.

After some of the usual jokes he said, “I couldn’t be alone. I needed someone.”

I responded lovingly, with no heat or sadness: “I know. But I had to go. I couldn’t do what I needed to do within that. It had nothing to do with how much I loved you. Because I did, and I miss you every day.” He smiled and nodded.

I woke up right after that, fully awake and blown away. Because I finally, finally felt clear. This entire time I have been operating under the belief that my simple badness made me destroy that one chance at growing old with someone. That I am and will always be too broken and this is simply the great tragedy of who I am. Which is, stamped with a big label: 100% Damaged Goods.

This is in no way a slight on Sam, btw, for anyone who is wondering what the hell I’m talking about because I have him. Our relationship is equally important to me. He, and it, have been instrumental in helping both of us heal from past trauma, and it has been an incredible gift after a lifetime of dysfunction to get a do-over with someone worthy, where I finally do and say the right things without creating more regret. And he is steadfast in a way that has taught me how to trust. We are always kind to each other and there is a lot of love and support. It’s just not a traditional partnership and we live apart and it remains very free.

Back to the dream train of thought – I have always considered myself a nontraditional person. I never wanted kids or a house, I never really cared about having a big wedding. I just wanted to move to the big city and live a rock and roll life. Which I did and continue to do, albeit with a much earlier bedtime these days. But underneath the rebel outerwear, I continued to carry judgment about myself and relationships that were very traditional.

I always assumed that after a period of wild oat sowing I would find “the one” and that would be it. But I kept choosing the wrong people well past that phase and if they weren’t terrible then I would take on the role of the terrible one and destroy it myself. So when I did finally find the one, despite my best efforts I still managed to smash it into a million pieces just like all the others.

What I hadn’t considered was the idea that our soul, or higher self, or whatever you want to label it, has plans for us that don’t necessarily have anything to do with what our brain tells us we should have or do. Right after that break up happened I saw a fantastic tarot reader who told me that I was doing inner work and that’s why it had to be this way, that I hadn’t run into the ditch but was on course. I wanted to believe her but I also secretly believed that maybe she just didn’t know how royally I had fucked things up.

Now I’m realizing that there was a reason I was pushed in the deepest way to break from my ideas of who and where I was supposed to be. And who all of us are supposed to be, which is attached or at least desirous of attachment. And that maybe those assumptions actually had very little to do with what I truly needed or wanted, just like when I was a kid.

This seems pretty basic looking at it written down, but to me it’s not. Because it means that I am not broken, which is something I never even dared to consider. It means that although I definitely careened through those events like a monkey on a motorcycle, I was on my path. It means that my soul simply had another plan for me (and maybe his did too) that I only thought was flawed because I viewed it through eyes clouded by upbringing, society, expectation, fear of loneliness and pain, fear of hurting people, all of that. And that maybe, instead of just being chaotic devastation, it was meant to be a graduation of sorts.

Essentially, I couldn’t trust in my own goodness.

So on a more global, or at least friends-who-are-reading-this scale, I am telling you some embarrassingly personal stuff because I know from writing experience that if it’s happening to me, it’s happening to someone else. What if some of those things that you and I are inexplicably driven to do, that land you in foreign, often uncomfortable territory, are a step toward something deeper and more spirit enriching?

And what if we forgive ourselves for not being who we thought we should be – richer, prettier, in a happy marriage, admired by our peers, whatever. What if we’re supposed to have all these horrible and wonderful twists and turns and if we open up to or at least forgive ourselves for change we didn’t ask for, we will have an easier time processing the sadness and loss that inevitably comes with that change? What if we let go of all of these expectations and just try to be our best selves no matter where we land? And what if, if we are trying hard to be our best selves, we simply trust in our own innate goodness and allow life to unfold with a few less regrets?

Epic, for me at least. So I guess I’m grateful this asshole found a way to get in last night.

Love to you my friends. Please be safe and kind to each other in this bananas world we live in right now.

Epitaph

Ah, 2022. We keep thinking we’re going to get a break, but that certainly doesn’t yet appear to be on the horizon. After years of covid and the cult of Qrump, war in the Ukraine feels like such a dirty trick. So much of this feels like a dirty trick.

I have been immersed in a spiritual narrative for quite a long time, which I have mentioned here often, in which I am told and have believed that we are moving from 3D energy into a more aware and enlightened 5D. Which means that all of the pain and chaos that people are currently experiencing is a clearing of dense energies that need to go in order to make that happen.

But I don’t give a shit anymore. I just don’t. When I think about lives and a country being destroyed to assuage one madman’s ego, about all of the greedy madmen like him operating with abandon, and all of the similar things that I don’t see on the news that are happening around the world, I just feel rage. Rage toward whatever god or “source” or collective consciousness or grand scheme that has deemed it all “necessary” and continues to drag its feet on righting its plentiful wrongs.

It’s too much. It’s simply too much for me to continue to bask in the luxury of confidence in some kind of vague promise for a future that has not appeared. I don’t want to believe in anything at all right now because it hurts too much to hope. For now I feel duped by that train of thought. I don’t want to ponder the universe anymore. The cosmos can go suck a bag of dicks. I simply want to do my best to be compassionate in whatever circumstances surround me and hope that that makes my pocket of the universe a little more bearable for the people in the vicinity.

A man I knew and cared about was murdered this last weekend. He was homeless and I didn’t know his name.

For those of you not in NYC, it’s bananas here right now. The homeless are legion and completely out of control. People are being stabbed and shot daily, a woman had poop smeared in her face while she waited for a train in broad daylight, people are being pushed to their death on tracks, hate crimes toward Asian people are off the charts, a well-known and much loved vocal coach, who was a friend of many of my friends, was pushed to the ground for no reason. Her brain was damaged beyond repair and she died a day or two later. She was 87 and simply walking down the street. No rhyme or reason, just random, devastating violence.

I want to tell you about the man I knew.

I moved into my current neighborhood at the start of 2019, right before covid hit. I live very near Canal Street, which is a highly trafficked thoroughfare in Chinatown. It’s full of tourist shops carrying phone cases, t-shirts and keychains, jewelry shops with glittering diamonds in the windows, and Chinese women and men hawking fake designer bags. I love it, it’s classic high energy NYC, although I don’t go near it during peak hours because it’s impossible to get around the gawking families who don’t understand how sidewalk etiquette works here.

I saw this man the first day I walked the dog down Canal. He was a big guy, black, with very dark skin and gray, matted dreads. He had a sweet, round face and it occurred to me that he’d make an awesome black Santa. He sat very still on a folding chair, leaning a bit on the wall behind him with a wheeled suitcase parked next to him. He didn’t react to the bustling activity around him, just stared straightforward into the traffic.

I walk my dog two or three times a day, so I saw him often. After a few days I started waving hello. He didn’t seem particularly interested in engaging, but he would wave back politely. Slowly we progressed to saying hi or good morning. When covid hit hard I began giving him money. There was no one on the street and every business was closed, so I wondered and worried on how he would survive.

But survive he did. He would sit still all day in various spots around the neighborhood, and at dusk he would roll his suitcase away to hunker down for the night. I marveled at the sheer physical punishment of it. What would it feel like to sit so still all day on a folding chair and then sleep on the hard, frozen ground all night? My back ached just thinking about it.

He called me “Lady”. He’d say, “Hello, Lady. How are you doing today?”

I would say, all nosy and annoying like the aging white woman that I am–

“I’m great! Are you okay? Do you need anything? Are you going to be warm enough tonight?”

He would respond with a smile and say, “Fine, fine. I don’t need anything. You have a nice night.”

Despite the fact that I would occasionally see him looking in garbage cans, he never asked and always looked a little surprised when I handed him cash. He was consistently the same quiet, stoic man. I wondered, why is he out here? He’s not high or acting crazy, he’s well-spoken and clearly intelligent. How did he fall through the cracks?

One day I saw another man give him a haircut, which he needed as his dreads were one big mass. The man doing the cutting was dressed well and I could tell the act was one of charity and kindness. It made me happy to know that other people in the neighborhood helped him out. I heard that local restaurants fed him too.

Sometimes he would sit across the street from my building and I would wonder if he saw me hanging out on my balcony typing on the laptop or drinking coffee. The disparity in our situations was not lost on me, but I didn’t know what to do about it. I wanted to wave but that didn’t feel right somehow, so I just went about my business.

It was my intention, when things got warmer, to take the time to ask for his story. I wanted to know how he got on the street, if he was from somewhere else (he seemed to have a slight accent), and what I could do for real, if anything. He was good at deflecting the occasional probing question, so it seemed that he was not interested in volunteering much information. I enjoyed our repoire and I didn’t want to make him feel exposed or put on the spot, and I was unsure of how to proceed. I pretended not to see when he looked in garbage cans, and continued to exchange our usual pleasantries when we passed, figuring I’d have more time to wear down his defenses.

Meanwhile, the homeless situation is raging and it’s violent and dirty and scary. We are all walking and taking the train without headphones these days, on constant high alert for danger. It has crossed my mind that some of these assholes just need to be taken out. Like poop smearing guy, who has been in and out of jail for violent offenses and is unrepentant and vicious in court– just a rabid, reprehensible individual. But then I would remember MY gentle, vulnerable homeless friend, and remind myself that it’s not helpful to think that way.

Early Monday morning a crossing guard that I am friendly with said, “Did you hear? The homeless man that was shot near here was the quiet man.”

I asked, “OUR guy? The man with the suitcase?”

She said yes, and my heart cracked. I felt hot tears in my eyes, She told me that they knew more about it in the cafe down the street if I wanted to ask. I cry at the drop of a hat these days, so I took some deep breaths and pushed my rising emotions down to be able to ask without blubbering. Another neighbor walking her dog said hi and I shakily told her what I’d heard and that I was going to check. I stepped into the cafe and asked, and the owner nodded his head sadly. It was indeed our guy.

I stepped back out and told the waiting neighbor. We both waved goodbye because we were too overcome to speak any further.

He was shot in the head in the early hours of the morning while he was quietly asleep in his sleeping bag laid out on the cardboard he carried with him. The man who shot him was seen on camera kicking him first to check if he was awake. It wasn’t discovered that he was dead til many hours later. He laid dead on the street with people walking past for the better part of the day.

The next night I attended a high end shopping/showing event for McQueen. It was fabulous and the attendees were lovely. It was a privilege to be there and Wendy, always generous, bought me a gorgeous bag that I will cherish forever. But I had a moment, as I stood there with my glass of champagne, surrounded by beautiful, expensive people admiring beautiful, expensive things, where I felt an urge to smash everything in front of me. To tear it all down, break everything to bits, pull the expensive curtains off the walls, kick the glass shelves into oblivion and then simply sit in the middle of it weeping. In that moment it all seemed vapid and so deeply, devastatingly, horribly unfair.

I take comfort in the fact that he most likely didn’t feel or know what was happening. I take comfort knowing that he will not be sleeping on the sidewalk anymore. But I am also so very sad that this was his end. He deserved a more respectful finale. He deserves to have his name in the press and that has not happened. Maybe they don’t know. For now he is just one of the many homeless people murdered for no reason other than they are easy targets.

I’m writing this down so there is one obituary out there for him. Every time I have walked the dog this week I have thought about how I will never see him again or have an opportunity to know him better. He was such a lovely being with a pleasing face and calm voice that always cheered me. He harmed no one. I wish I knew his name. Why didn’t I at least ask him his name?

One of my door persons told me he’s been in the neighborhood for a very long time, at least a decade. She said he got a little erratic at one point and then disappeared for a year. Then he came back and was his usual quiet self again. She thinks that he had mental health issues and was on a medication that calmed him. She guessed that maybe he had gotten so accustomed to living outside that he preferred it. He certainly seemed to be much less bothered by his situation than I.

He was a part of my day to day life and in my own way I loved him. I’ll never forget him and I am pretty sure that other people in the area feel the same. His life and death make me acutely aware that the homeless are not vermin, but people with all the same feelings and needs that the rest of us have, in more difficult and complicated circumstances. There but for the grace of God and all that. I don’t know what the answer is, but I know it begins with that understanding.

I don’t need condolences, which I know many you kind people will want to extend. I am fine and live a blessed life. I just want to let the world know of his life, to the extent that I knew it, and his passing.

I wish you all safety and peace in this very difficult time in our history.

UPDATE:

A few days after my post The NY Times published an article about all the men involved. My friend’s name was Abdoulaye Coulibaly. I find their demand for cash in order to read infuriating, but if you have a subscription it’s a well written and researched article. The main takeaway for me was that he did have family who tried to get him off the street, but it was his choice to stay. So that was a relief. He had people who cared and he knew it. And now he has a name and a history for the world to see.

Time Warp

I haven’t been thinking about this blog much as I’ve made it a priority to get the first draft of a book written this year. I’ve been dancing around it for a decade and I have plenty of time to write, so it’s my one assignment for 2022. Doesn’t have to be the final product, just something fully down so I can release this feeling of homework hanging over my head. I have procrastinated because I don’t want to relive much of my past. And I have forgotten details. But it’ll happen and until then my short attention span has to focus on one writing job at a time.

We are all exhausted and scattered at this point. Covid’s lengthy stay reminds me of when the movie Jaws was released when I was a kid, when popular films stayed in theaters for months. The movie was so huge that it sat there on the roster forever, you could see it as many times as you wanted in an empty roomful of seats.

But that was much more entertaining than covid. Now we’re all so drained from the arguing, the news, the anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers making everyone’s job harder, the constant sickness and death, the Trump cultists and their relentless attachment to racism, their bizarre JFK fantasies, the talking heads on the news on either side, the bickering over cancel culture, the arguments over binary or non-binary, which kind of mask to wear, the attachment to guns and devastating gun violence. I think I can safely say we have watched this movie back and forth and back again and we are more than ready to get out of this dark room and maybe never watch a movie again.

My spiritual sources (hi, Mom!) keep hammering that we (the earth and its inhabitants) are still in the middle of this shift from 3D to 5D energy, and all of this is necessary to burn off energies and belief systems from this and past lives that keep us from moving into a higher frequency. I believe it. But I’m over it and it doesn’t feel like it matters whether I believe it or not. I don’t want to read or hear any more well-meaning channelers or psychics telling me this is all part of the plan. I don’t give a shit about the cosmic fucking plan anymore. It feels like a dirty trick and I don’t want to hear any more airy fairy explanations on how it’s going to be great one magical day. Because it hasn’t been great now for too long and it’s all too much. IT’S TOO MUCH.

My sister and I, whenever we’re at a bad party or just annoyed by something, like to quote Winona Ryder in that wonderfully awful version of Dracula.

Then take me away from all this death.

Now everyone is asking for this in a non-joking and most decidedly literal manner.

In the cosmic plan’s defense, I always feel cranky and negative in January and February as I am very susceptible to seasonal affective disorder. But I can feel the exhaustion in my friends as well. Our enthusiasm for pretty much everything is at an all time low. We’re not talking about going out to dinner or taking trips, we’re just sending each other TikTok videos and grinding through each Groundhog Day, trying to be as upbeat as possible in order to make it through and be able to calmly smoke weed and watch Netflix as soon as the sun goes down. So exactly how much longer are we supposed to trudge through infection, insurrection, businesses failing, depression abounding, until we are miraculously ascended? It’s disheartening no matter what time the sun sets.

Anyway, so that’s where I’m at with this whole pandemic, country going to shit thing–whiny and petulant. How’s everyone else?

So what I really want to write about today is my friend, although I’m not sure exactly how to do it. I guess I’ll do what I always do and noodle through this until it feels post-worthy.

You see, one of my lifelong best friends, who is three months younger than me, has been diagnosed with early onset dementia.

I am 59 years old. I don’t like sharing my age or hearing anyone else’s exact age, because I believe the numbers box us in a way that doesn’t speak to who we truly are. People get too focused on their idea of what an age should look and feel like when there is a definitive number attached. But when I was attacked and stalked by a couple of angry lunatics a couple of years ago, their main insults were age-focused, they called me “grandma” and “desperate” hoping to injure me with it. They did not. But now I state my age publicly in order to de-weaponize it and remove any idea that there is any shame attached to getting older, for anyone, not just me. I like who I am, I don’t give a fuck if my age makes someone uncomfortable, go fuck yourselves, etc.

Anyway, dementia is a disease that usually hits the elderly, so she’s considered young for it. Nonetheless, it is moving at breakneck speed through her body and mind. It’s confusing and devastating and it has driven home to me how quickly things change in this life.

I’m not going to say her name here. The people who know already know, and I don’t want random google searches leading to this somewhat lowkey spot where I am only beginning to sort through my feelings about it. I want her to be known and remembered for her true self, not the impaired version.

We met at a streetwear trade show at the Javits Center in the 80’s when I worked as a model for Tripp/Trash and Vaudeville. If a buyer wanted to see what something looked like on a body, I was that body. It was fun and easy and the place was full of rock and roll beauties, both male and female. I met Ronnie Sweetheart there, although we didn’t date til a bit later, and she met Timo Kaltio and dated him. She was a clothing designer and had her own booth across the aisle from Tripp, so on the first day of the show I wandered over to see what she was selling. When I walked in she had her back to me. She was dressed in her own unique clothes and her body was a perfect hourglass. She fussed with something on the booth wall and when she turned around to me standing there quietly looking at her, her already big eyes got very wide.

She exclaimed, “Oh my God! You’re so beautiful! Who are you? What do you do? Will you be my friend?”

I had never been greeted this way by another girl. I can’t really say woman, because we were babies. I was reserved and shy with new people, but her open enthusiasm was so charming and infectious that I fell completely in love with her in an instant. After that meeting we were inseparable through the three days of that trade show, and for many years after that.

She was like this with everyone. I would curl inward when we walked into a roomful of strangers; I’ve always been self-conscious when out of my comfort zone, so I come off as bitchy. It’s easier to be scary than to feel vulnerable. My friend, on the other hand, was genuinely curious about everyone she saw. She’d say, “Hi! I love your hair!” or “Hi! I’m ——. what’s your name?” While I became more small and compact, she unfolded like an exotic flower for the room to admire. People loved her because she saw them.

We both have a love of all things French, and one time a psychic told me that she and I had lived a very happy past life in France as friends. He saw carriages and gowns and food, and it helped me make sense of our immediate connection. In this lifetime she and I still loved to get dressed up and wear expensive shoes and eat amazing food and drink too much and laugh. We had crazy, wild, hilarious adventures that I’ll write about on another day. Every minute with her was entertaining, even the not so great ones. Her energy enlivened me and my groundedness calmed her.

Over the years our coordinating dysfunctions took a toll, although we never stopped being friends. In the beginning I was very codependent (as I was and still can be with most everyone) and I would constantly fix things for her. She was one of the most capable, creative, detail-oriented people I’ve ever known. Her home was gorgeous, her aesthetic in furniture and decor was unparalleled, the clothing she made was perfection. I couldn’t bag the groceries if we went to get food because she had to have them a certain way. If you folded one item of clothing wrong the entire shelf had to be redone. But she was emotionally fragile and leaned on me when there was an issue. I would step in and talk to whoever needed talking to, arrange whatever needed arranging, that kind of thing. God forbid if she cried, I was on the offending problem or person with a vengeance.

Eventually it became too much for me and I could see it wasn’t healthy for either one of us. So I shifted, with middling results. She didn’t like it and told me I had grown cold. Then around the same time as I was reassessing my behavior in our friendship, she got pregnant. It wasn’t under the best of circumstances and she didn’t handle it well, and I didn’t have any interest in pregnancy or babies. I tried to be supportive, but I found the whole thing tedious and it showed. She accused me of being shallow. I wasn’t, I loved her just as much as I always did, but people change over time and that passion of friendship in our 20’s can’t be sustained as we mature. So we were never as close once that shift happened, but we did remain sisters.

While I worked hard to get healthy and improve my poor decision-making skills, she, although still a shining light, seemed to remain a teenager emotionally. She would make the same terrible choices over and over again, each time hoping for a different outcome. I would try to explain to her that you can’t date a turnip and expect it to behave like an apple. Or that if the business wasn’t working, she had to consider new ways to approach her career. She couldn’t do it. She had this sort of magical and romantic way of thinking that caused her to consistently choose the wrong people and things and then consistently be devastated when the outcome was exactly what the rest of us expected.

She would say to me, “I just can’t do it on my own, I need help.” And I would say, “Then stop choosing situations and people who can’t help. Choose what supports you. It’s YOUR choice, YOUR destiny, and only YOU can change things.” We spent hours on the phone going in circles. She just didn’t get it.

In her defense, I never had a growing child to raise, so maybe I just didn’t see it from her angle. But to me it looked like she was her own worst enemy. The boyfriends were selfish children; the business decisions financial suicide.

Over the last decade she became increasingly tired. She appeared exhausted all the time and we all worried for her. Then she got spacier. She doesn’t live in NYC so I only saw her every six months or so, but she seemed goofier when I would see her, much less focused. But I went through my own chaos five/six years ago, so when she visited New York it was too much of a party anyway. I chalked up the spaciness to that.

Finally, maybe two years ago she called me and told me that she was having brain issues. She couldn’t remember all of her words, she would get lost in a sentence or story easily and the most clear indicator that there was a real problem was when she told me she could no longer drive. I felt scared when she said it. She was hands down the best driver I have known and we went everywhere in her cars. She told me she was trying to see what could be done, going to doctors, but she couldn’t give me a cohesive report or diagnosis.

And then it felt like overnight the powerhouse was gone. She was no longer the same person, but a diminished version. Her attention to detail and ability to keep a beautiful house and make exquisite things disappeared. Her facial expression is still open and sweet, but vacant. And she can’t take care of herself. She needs someone to bathe and dress her, to put on her shoes, to wash her hair. Her energetic charisma is gone. The expensive lingerie she placed gingerly in tissue in her dresser will never be worn again. It’s heart wrenching.

It is my belief, not based in science, that she grew weary of the constant struggle and gave up. I think she finally got too exhausted from trying and simply checked out.

She had a good moment recently and facetimed me, which she’s never done before. I dove for my phone when I saw her name come up because it’s been nearly impossible to make that connection and I knew if I missed it I might not get it again. It was lovely to see her face. Her gray roots were long, which I know the old her would hate, but I just saw her, this soul that I love. She was sweet and airy as her words and thoughts drifted around. There were a lot of awkward pauses. But she was happy that she’d managed to figure out how to video chat and I showed her around my new place through the phone.

She kept saying, “You’re so pretty…you’re so pretty…”

I said, “So are you, my darling. You’re as beautiful as the day I met you.”

She just stared at me through the phone and giggled.

So this is a whole new bit of life’s bullshit that I am trying to process. My friend is gone but she’s not gone. I am brokenhearted, as are all of her friends, but I can’t indulge in mourning. Because she is not dead and everyone close to her has to remain strong to make sure that she gets the proper care while she lives. And we are all determined that people remember her for how amazing she truly is, not for how she might be right now.

I keep saying the same things to Sam over and over again because he’s so young and I want him to understand how time flies more quickly than we ever expect. I don’t want him to lose or miss anything. I tell him how things change on a dime. How it feels like five minutes ago I was riding shotgun in her car with my feet up on the dash, singing off key and dangling a lit Marlboro Light out the window, half-naked yet still overdressed, headed to hang out backstage at one rock show or another. Sam is infinitely patient with me and will listen to the same stories or opinions over and over again until I process them. He knows that I’m saying it out loud more for me than for him.

So the only thing I can do to make myself feel better is say it to you as well. Time is so fleeting. People don’t last forever. Take in every moment as fully as you can, love your people as fully as you can, even in this currently draining political and health climate when it feels like we have little left to give. I have to continue to try to do that with her in this current state because it’s the only option. And hopefully when we get to the other side we’ll have a good laugh about how silly and beautiful we were when we were young, and how we naively thought it would last forever. Maybe it does on the other side.

We Are The Cosmos Dreaming of Itself

My mom had this little bit of film from her and my dad’s wedding– the party before and some of the actual wedding preparations and reception, and I just had it digitized. It’s grainy and there is no sound, it’s also 7 minutes long, so it’ll probably be boring for anyone not directly connected. But for people like me who love old film, here it is. My mother is in the white sweater and my father is in the plaid shirt at the night before party but if you skip to the 1:50 mark it’s the actual wedding prep and party, which is a bit more interesting and looks like it could be research data for Mad Men.

To me, it’s poignant. They were so young, so clueless, so beautiful, and completely unaware of what life had waiting for them around the corner – five kids, my dad’s early death, my mother’s difficult rebirth from housewife and mother to sole breadwinner. It wasn’t easy, but that can be said for most everyone anyway. As my great Aunt Nonno used to say, “It’s a great life if you don’t weaken.”

I don’t react to death the way many people do. I don’t feel it fully right away, it kind of just colors everything over time. As a result I am still processing my father’s death, which happened a good 37 years ago, in 1984. I don’t think any of us come out of the deaths of loved ones unaltered, but I’m guessing most healthy people don’t file it in a box in the back corner of their brain and then have it manifest as bad behavior or overreaction or just simple sadness at the most inopportune times. Or maybe they do? Grief is such a weird, non-linear experience.

I was sheltered and oblivious to the ways of the world when I left Michigan to go to college in NYC. I chose Parsons School of Design, which is/was difficult to get into, and very expensive. My dad made mention of the cost, but I had never had to support myself and money was pretty abstract to me. Especially his. My parents made me get a high school job and tried to teach their kids the value of work, but my dad always bailed me out when I got in over my head. So with college I think I had an ego about knowing I could get myself accepted into this prestigious school and beyond that I didn’t consider that he was working very hard to support a large family.

My dad flew with me to do the interview, which had to be in person. I dragged him up and down St. Mark’s Place, which was a magical rock and roll fairyland in the 80’s. We walked past Iggy Pop and people with giant hair and Malcolm McClaren and Lauren Hutton walking arm in arm. I could barely contain myself, I was vibrating with joy a and excitement to finally be there after a young life as a mopey Edward Gorey character surrounded by cheerful muggles in pastel colored ski jackets with lift tags stapled to the zipper. My dad was sort of a Tony Soprano lite kind of guy, he was Italian and a bit macho but mostly just funny and charismatic and very loving toward his kids. He stood at the front of Trash and Vaudeville in his suit waiting while I tried to get the snotty staff to help me try on clothes that I didn’t need. One of them asked if he was my bodyguard. He was amused by that.

When it was time to move to NY he took one of the kids from his office and the two of them drove me and all my stuff for 14 hours to stay at the fleabag YMCA on 9th Avenue and 34th Street, an old school flophouse where Parsons had set up student housing amongst the nearly homeless. I sat in the back of his giant luxury dadmobile while a small Uhaul jittered around behind us, packed with hatboxes and milk crates full of record albums and all kinds of crap I wouldn’t need. When we got to the Y, he and I took the rickety, dead slow elevator up to my floor. We opened the door to my room, which was like, 8′ x 12″, to a stained mattress on a cot, a dirty window with a broken blind, and a lone cockroach lumbering slowly from one side of the room to the next.

I was so scared. I said, with tears in my eyes but trying to lighten the mood, “Welp. This is what I wanted!”

He said, “I don’t know how you’re going to get all your stuff in here, Mare.”

I knew he didn’t want to leave me there, but he did. I waved goodbye from the sidewalk as they pulled away, then I went to that tiny, shitty room and started unpacking the mountain of vintage shoes I would never wear.

Turned out I hated fashion design, which was my chosen field of study. I thought I would enjoy it because I loved drawing, clothes and sewing. Alas, I did not. The teachers were lovely for the most part, but the workload was unforgiving and tedious. I sat up into the morning for nights on end painting watercolor swatches that I could never get right. I couldn’t drape for shit, there was no fun or fashion at that point, though I did develop the awesome cool people social life I always envisioned for myself.

So sometime during the second semester, when I was full and well flailing academically and didn’t give a shit about college anymore because nightlife was infinitely more interesting, one of the other students knocked on my door to tell me I had a call. It was late in the night/early morning after I’d returned from a party, and my mother was on the house payphone. It was the only means of communication for a full floor of probably 40 students so I knew if she was calling enough to get through the constant busy signal it had to be important.

When I picked up she was crying, and said, “Dad’s gone.”

I asked, not comprehending, “Well, where did he go?”

He had had a heart attack and died almost immediately. My mom felt terrible because she was a registered nurse and hadn’t recognized the symptoms. He couldn’t sleep and went downstairs from their bedroom and she heard a thump and he was on the ground and I think gone by the time she got to him. It just seemed so out of the realm of possibility, although it really wasn’t. He was a slightly overweight, stressed out, pipe-smoking product of the time, meaning that he pushed through uncomfortable feelings and ignored warning signs. He was in his 40’s at the time, younger than I am now.

Like most families, mine had its own dysfunction. And I had been taking my mother’s side whenever there were disagreements. I didn’t understand or see anything the way it really was, I saw it with a child’s eyes. I was preoccupied with my new life and hadn’t spoken to him on the phone in months, it was always my mom. Then he was just gone and I could never say the things I would have said to him if I’d known that drive would be my last chance to hear his voice or feel his hug.

My diary entry for that day has one paragraph about his death, and then 3 or 4 about a date I had gone on. I felt a deep shame about that for many years. One day, many years after, I broke down and told my therapist about it and asked how  could I be so shallow? What was wrong with me? He reassured me that I wasn’t a sociopath, just someone who shut down because it was too big to process. I was so relieved.

So when he died I quit school, despite the fact that a family friend offered to cover the remaining tuition for the remaining years. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. I gave away all of my pens and brushes and exacto knives and markers and paints and started this rock and roll life. And over the years following I would find myself in one crappy relationship or another, and often when it would get to be too much I would overreact and become irrational. Usually when I would get too  drunk and cry over a boyfriend, I would find myself talking to my dad.

One time I laid on my kitchen floor sobbing, completely inconsolable over whatever the latest shitty boyfriend had done, talking to my dad (or the ceiling) out loud. Suddenly a  light bulb shone through the haze. It dawned that this had little to do with the boyfriend and everything to do with my dad. I stopped sobbing, sat up and wiped my snot-filled nose with the back of my hand and thought, “Oooooooh.” Then I realized my dad wasn’t coming back and I still had terrible taste in men and I flopped back down and wailed into the floor again.

Good times.

One of the lovely things about transitioning into adulthood is getting to see your parents as people rather than extensions of your greedy child self. I have so much compassion for those two kids, doing what they were expected to do, marrying when they barely knew each other because that’s how you managed raging hormones and societal expectations back then. How could they not fuck up? I’ve been fucking up my entire life, the only difference is that I had the wherewithal to know it wasn’t a good idea to bring kids into my particular brand of crazy.

So I’ve never fully gotten over this loss. I don’t think about it all the time, I’m not mourning per se, but every once in a while I’ll be doing something mundane and some moment or thought will remind me of him and a wave of sadness will wash over me, like stepping into a hole that wasn’t there a minute ago. Maybe this is true with everyone and their  dead loved ones?  I do believe we are all permanently changed by loss. For me, each death or disappearance of someone I love softens me, makes me more gentle, more compassionate. But the price for that depth is sorrow.

I have had dreams where my dad came to me and we talked some things out, and I do believe it really happened. But that was still about me and my needs. So I carry this feeling that I failed him somehow. That I didn’t SEE him when he was alive. That I never told him how grateful I am and how awesome he was to all of his kids. That he was a special, amazing person outside of being a dad. That it was an honor to be his kid.

So this bit of film transferred to VHS, then digitized, means the world to me. It’s a window into my parent’s true selves at that age, before they became just mom and dad in the eyes of their kids. I feel so much love for these two babies trying  to be grown ups. And I am grateful that my mom and I have been able to talk about our lives as people outside of our mother/daughter relationship, to dissect things that have happened and to find common ground and the occasional forgiveness. 

I hope when I get to the other side I can see him again in all his magnificence: this handsome, vibrant being with the weight of kids and work and life no longer on his shoulders. I hope that I can tell him how desperately I missed him during all the ordinary and grand moments in my life, and how I wished I could have had conversations with him as an adult. But I am guessing that he has moved on to other lives, and maybe on the other side none of this Matrix classroom of suffering and confusion bullshit means a thing. Maybe we’re all just at peace and no longer fathers  or daughters or people who have to keep photos and videos  to remember and understand.

To that thought, I’ll leave you with this audio from a recent show called Midnight Mass, which is ostensibly about vampires, but surprised me with the one of the best explanations of life and death that I’ve heard. This monologue floored me:

Sending love to you, my friends.

Kali Ma

First, this entry started out about one of my BFF’s, Storm Large, as she just slayed on AGT and is back on again on Peacock tomorrow.

But my equally awesome friend Elizabeth Grey covered it so well already that it feels unnecessary to add anything else, so this entry morphed.

Liz’s piece is here, read it, you won’t be disappointed: STORM WATCHING

Okay, let’s get on with it…

My current life is somehow copacetic, joyful even. It’s a new feeling.

I have discovered that the more I focus on my own inner healing and awareness, the more the outer smooths itself out with little or no assistance. It’s like learning how to drive: when you first get behind the wheel you keep looking at the front edge of the car and it wobbles back and forth, then you learn that if you change your focus past the front bumper and onto the road, things straighten out.

I am not the first person to figure this out; we hear it all the time. But no one ever mentions that it takes forever. It’s taken me decades to see results, starting from the 90’s when I realized I was fucked and got a therapist and bought and slogged through every self help book available (“Women Who Love Too Much”, anyone?).

But maybe no one sorts anything too well until later in life? Who are these people who have their shit together in their 20’s? It’s infuriating. I feel like I’ve been navigating a dark room with a lighter for much of my existence, and I’ll take clarity wherever and whenever I can get it.

I’ve spent much of my teenage and adult life focused on romantic relationships. I can’t even look at my teenage diaries, they’re so cringey and obsessive over boys and relationships. Wanting them, gaining them, falling in love, falling out of love, losing them, fighting within them, feeling bad about my behavior around them, feeling mad about other people’s behavior in them, throwing them away, losing them, mourning their loss, trying to get them back, etc. Obsession has been my best frenemy and the murderer of so, so much sleep. It has been all-consuming of both heart and brain; it has caused me the most pain, drama and embarrassment in my life. And it has taught me much, so much about myself.

When I lost my ex, or rather made it too difficult for him to stay, I took it very hard. It wasn’t as much the loss of romance as much as the loss of the person altogether. If the one person who is supposed to be THE person decides to never speak to you ever again, then the logical conclusion is that you must be the worst person on the planet. And I always assume everything is my fault anyway. So I blamed myself for all the bad stuff, exonerating him in an unrealistic way that made it impossible for me to feel okay about myself. I mourned that loss deeply and with great confusion, and with it I mourned the loss of the hope that I could be a good, healthy partner to someone. I mourned the dream of happiness in one special person. And mostly I questioned my own value to anyone anywhere in any capacity.

I have always fought a battle between what my brain knows I should do and what some deeper part of me insists I’m gonna do regardless of that acuity. I have stood at the edge of many metaphorical cliffs saying to myself, don’t jump, it’s gonna hurt, don’t jump, PLEASE don’t jump.

But I always jump. And then as I’m plummeting downward toward the inevitable crash I think, “Christ. Here we are AGAIN. You ASSHOLE.”

I hate falling, but I can’t stop from jumping. I hate change, but I make sameness impossible. Why? Why can’t I just BE GOOD? Clearly this must be due to being a deeply flawed human; why else would I choose to love terrible people, choose to behave in destructive ways, choose chaos over peace? I have felt a great shame and sadness over my own craziness, real and imagined.

But I finally get it. And I’m finally at peace with all of it. And losing that relationship was the leap that put me here. Not because not having that person in my life brings me happiness, but because I learned through that chapter that I did not come here in this body and life to master the perfect relationship with one other person or even a series of persons. I am here to master the relationship with my spirit. My soul has shoved me past logic so many times because those lessons/tools/information were not going to come any other way. Of course I prefer to learn and evolve through joy, and sometimes I do. But for whatever reason I, like most people, usually need a little hard experience to get the point.

When I was in the throes of my deepest sadness and regret I got some therapeutic energy work done and the woman working on me said, “I keep hearing the words ‘I’m sorry’.” I burst into tears and said, “Those words are a mantra on repeat in my head all day and night.” Those words were too small to convey the oceans of sorrow coursing through my system, so they just looped around through my being 24/7, like the blood in my veins.

She closed her eyes and took a moment and said, “But I also just got a clear image of Kali dancing in your heart.”

Ooh, that’s fancy! I liked that, although didn’t immediately feel better. But the work did help and the image of Kali has remained with me. Kali Ma, the fearsome great mother who destroys to create and heal–gotta shout out a big thank you to my friend Carla Kali Ma Salls for first informing me about this amazing Hindu goddess well before I was paying real attention to the spirit realm and its archetypes. If you aren’t currently aware of Kali, do a bit of googling, you won’t be disappointed.

So I knew that vision was to inform me that my heart was strong and knew what it was doing even when the rest of me was not yet on board with the plan. And that I had made some painful, life-breaking choices to burn shit down, burn that baggage from this life and probably others, to release dense energy that needed to go in order for me to become more whole, more self-forgiving, more forgiving of others, lighter, and closer to my divine nature.

Some people reading this will say that this is grand talk from someone who has a boyfriend. To that I will say that this information doesn’t change depending upon whether anyone is in a romantic relationship or not, it just happens to be the particular theme for me in this lifetime. Everyone has those places in their lives that lessons seem to revolve around–money, jobs, health, children, friends or romance. It’s all relationships anyway.

But to answer anyone with curiosity on my personal details – Sam and I have been able to create a trusted support system for one another. He is solid in ways that I’ve not experienced before and I believe he came into my life to help me propel and heal during a time when I needed a soft place to land. It is a safe place for both of us. But because we are at opposite ends of the adult spectrum, our connection is by no means a traditional partnership. We both make a lot of allowances for each other’s freedom and we both know that eventually we will have to make some kind of shift to accommodate the differences in our ages and trajectories.

That’s fully okay with me. I want him to have all the good and bad experiences in life that he’s meant to have, like falling madly in love with someone his own age and running wild with it. It’s hard for a 20-something rock star to run wild with his 50-something girlfriend who is currently obsessed with caftans and prefers a nice glass of champagne on the patio to partying with bands til the sun comes up. I’ve already had all those crazy rock and roll adventures that are new to him and at this stage in life I aspire to Lisa Vanderpump, not Sable Starr.

Although who are we kidding? Maybe more Dixie Wetsworth?

Whatever the outcome I know that my happiness is not dependent upon a relationship status. This is somewhat new for me.

Personal details aside, this is what I wish to impart: those parts of us that are most flawed and cause us the most pain are meant to be there because they are our greatest teachers. We are here in this life and body to learn and experience, but we have to pay attention and listen for the messages if we want to move forward. Sometimes we are pushed to operate in uncomfortable territory and it is dreadful. When we are in the middle of the pain or upheaval it’s difficult to get the information and it always seems to take far longer than we’d like.

In the case of my ex it has taken me years to get clear on what that was all about, to forgive myself and forgive him, and to see how perfectly our imperfections operate in order to bring us closer to our deepest selves. Which is, in my opinion, the true version of God: divine law, divine nature, divine energy, divine love– where we can reside in peace and wholeness.

Forgive yourself. Forgive them. Listen to your intuition. Let go of expectations. Love your present as best you can. Don’t cling to your past or get boxed into a corner by your past stories. Do the work and it will get better. I promise.

Oh, and get fucking vaccinated if you haven’t already. Don’t be a dick.

I bow to you, my friends.

Death By a Thousand Cuts

I talked to a friend yesterday who told me that he ran into what I guess could be called a frenemy. Said frenemy is a woman that I worked with years ago– beautiful, intelligent, similar East Village history. It was not a great combo; I found her abrasive, unnecessarily defensive and territorial, overall a very difficult coworker. At the time I hated every second in her presence and I’m sure she didn’t adore me either. But I could see that she had some good qualities in dealing with other people, and I got over it with time. I thought she did too.

I liken this later time in my life to senior year in high school, when everyone has managed to get close to the finish line and the cliques don’t matter so much. There is a camaraderie of making it through together. It feels the same, for the most part, with all of those rivalries and beefs we had in our youth. The grudges have faded and we’ve matured enough to get past some of the issues that created them in the first place.

The last time I saw this woman was a couple of years ago at a memorial for another mutual friend. We had a nice conversation about what had been going on with us since that job, and I felt good about our interaction and was grateful and pleased that things were friendly. I thought we were great.

So friend who ran into said frenemy said that she told him that the last time she’d seen me I was crying in a dive bar. Now–the part about me crying in the bar is undoubtedly true. As mentioned many times here, I went through a very difficult period a few years ago, and I was drinking and crying all over the damn place. BUT, that was most definitely NOT the last time she saw me and she knows it. The last time she saw me I was not crying or intoxicated and, side note, was wearing really good shoes and an excellent dress.

I was at first confused, then irritated. I thought about sending her a message asking essentially, “Bitch, why??” Why must you perpetuate this ancient, dried brown bad blood by purposely talking shit? Why, whyyyyyyyyyy??? Then my second thought was that if I were to send a message then I too would be perpetuating and it would turn it into a “thing”. And I’m practicing not turning a thing into a thing or being a “right fighter” (thanks, Dr. Phil!), meaning that I understand that I don’t always have to have the last word, and that it’s not my job to harass people for not thinking I’m as awesome as I think they should.

So I let it be. But I like to fester on things for as long as humanly possible in order to maximize internal suffering. And as I was gloomily ruminating (gluminating!) over it, I happened to catch a woman on TV discussing a seemingly unrelated topic, specifically about how movies have often negatively shaped female comparisons and opinions about ourselves, that somehow felt related. Because I am guessing the answer to the why question is a lingering feeling of competition and a need to cut a competitor into more bite sized pieces. So it feels like I’m being nudged to work on this a bit.

The BLM movement has caused me to examine my own personal role in perpetuating racism and white privilege, and it’s been both eye-opening and saddening. I am sad that it’s taken 2/3 of my life to ingest this information, and to understand fully that I have to be proactive in all of my conversations, thoughts and encounters if I want to be a part of the solution.

So along with this I am now also realizing that I must do the same with women. It is imperative to change some ingrained, learned behavior if we are ever to disassemble another prejudicial system–the patriarchy.

This is more complicated for me. First, just typing the word feels yucky. Not because I don’t feel that it exists and needs to be dismantled, but because I don’t like winging it on subjects that feel too large for me. I like to stick to my own little dust-ups and the information I can glean from them.

But this is indeed a personal dust up, if only inside my head. It’s clear that for her there is some residual dislike. In my mind it’s unwarranted, but not unexpected, because women are always suspicious of one another, and often shitty as a result. We slice each other to ribbons with sharp little criticisms, bits of whispered disapproval. gossip that sometimes lies, often exaggerates or gets it at least partially wrong. We undermine our own personal integrity with publicly sanctioned, often whispered, sometimes funny abuse of each other, which rewards us with a temporary feeling of control or superiority.

I have always been a girl’s girl, but I can also act as insecure and mean as anyone else when feeling attacked or defensive. I love words, humor and getting into people’s heads, so I can easily tear someone up either to their face or behind their back with those three things. I want to do better, do the right thing, and I’m definitely closer to it. But I’m realizing that maybe just trying to be nice isn’t the point, isn’t as far as I need to take it.

So what does taking it further entail? I don’t want fake niceness with people I don’t like. It seems kinder to be honest with someone than string them along passive-aggressively. I believe that if I am speaking my truth that gives the other party the control and freedom to live their own truth. So even if it’s not enjoyable in the moment, it’s a cleaner way of living.

So maybe it’s the way we deliver that honesty? I don’t want to give up my dark sense of humor, it keeps me afloat. But what about all the tiny, unnecessary ways that we injure each other without self-awareness, often without the other person’s awareness, under the guise of humor, or even worse, faux concern? The way we judge someone we don’t know or don’t like by weight or appearance, the way we make some snide comment or joke that we quietly know is unfair or bending the truth. And even if it is the truth, couldn’t it be possible to convey that information with compassion and empathy instead of with a sting?

I’m still sorting it out. I feel much more of a kinship with Cersei Lannister than Gandhi. I would very much enjoy blowing up my enemies with green fire while sipping wine. I come up with terrible nicknames for people in my head that no one needs to hear. I tend to snicker when someone who has tormented me falls, probably because it puts scary things/people in a more manageable, less threatening box, which feels empowering in the moment. Winning a war is comforting.

But in the end it’s only a seductive illusion. At the end of the day it denigrates both parties energetically/vibrationally. So that means that in order to move forward I have to start viewing a person as a full entity rather than that quick, disdainful assessment and boxing up that keeps me feeling safe.

This is almost scary; it feels too vulnerable. I’m finding that the first step for me personally is just to keep my big mouth shut. Utilizing a filter is pretty new to me, but I’m guessing that if I get more adept at carefully choosing words, the thoughts might follow. So forgiveness in this case, I think, doesn’t mean pretending it didn’t happen, but it means I can let it die on the vine without retaliation or comment. And I’m grateful for the awareness that came with this little dig. I’m thinking about it, writing about it, and hopefully gaining knowledge from it.

I’m thinking that it could be possible to approach dislike with integrity. It isn’t about reaching for sainthood or trying to be liked by everyone, which can be a form of self-judgment anyway, like “I will try to be better, and then maybe I will deserve love, but I can never be perfect, therefore I can never be loved.” The snake eats its tail.

Any time someone decides that I am behaving in a way they dislike or disapprove, the first criticism leveled at me is always “For someone who spends so much time pretending to be spiritual, you sure are… [insert insult here].” Possibly. It seems strange to criticize someone for working to improve, but it’s an easy dig in my case. For me, any spiritual leanings are primarily about finding ways to live and think that remove pain and create joy, because I hate feeling bad and much prefer to feel happy. So the goal, whether you call it spiritual work or not, becomes simply about protecting one’s peace of mind: I don’t want to waste one more minute of my life dealing with competitive schism because it makes me feel bad.

And then if that feels palatable, we can move to the admittedly more global/spiritual level, and consider that if we shift our own personal consciousness to be happier, that in turn nudges the collective conscious closer to a world in which we don’t have to make a decision on whether to deal with bitchiness or not, because it no longer exists as a standard or readily acceptable means of relating to one another.

Women can do better, people can do better, and I think many of us are ready for it. I do believe that we are in the age of Aquarius and that a new world is slowly coming to fruition. But it’s at a glacial pace and I get disheartened sometimes when I look at things on the large scale. These little changes feel more doable. I can’t control the world but I can control my small piece of it, and maybe influence someone whose small piece is adjacent to mine, and then boom! Patriarchy dismantled, all animals and children are treated with respect and kindness, people notice my awesome shoes and forget they saw me crying in a bar in 2016.

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Wot, fisticuffs?!

I have been debating posting this story (below) that I read recently at a livestream benefit for The Wild Project. I have all these tales from the past that people love, but that are most definitely not coming from a 2021 kinda woke place. Which is part of the reason that my friends love them, but sometimes I’m afraid to stir up certain old energies publicly, especially after a devastating break-up promptly followed by an unwarranted series off attacks I received in 2019 and 2020, starting with the laptop dummies, an ex’s impossible-to-placate girlfriend, a pissed off junkie I barely know, and a misogynist fool who is inexplicably angry at me because Sam doesn’t want to have anything to do with him. It was a parade of meanness, to the point that I have had so much vicious and erroneous shit said about me and to me via the internet that the attention is almost flattering.

Happily all of that misdirected hatred being flung like monkey poo seems to be in the rearview mirror. I’m sure they still hate me, but if I am not put in a position where I have to respond, they can feel however they want. The upside to all of that is a shiny new, much thicker skin and the lightness of emotional freedom.

in the good old summertime i dont care GIF

I was trained from an early age to mistrust my intuition and instinct, to say yes when I wanted to say no, to feel constant shame about my very being, my body, my thoughts, and to hide away my true self and true feelings or risk being punished or mocked. I have spent much of my adult life trying to understand what happened, how it unconsciously directed so many bad choices, and to clear out that baggage. I am only now becoming able to forgive myself for all of my shortcomings, and to at least contemplate the idea that I am not a bad person. Maybe even a good one? The mind boggles at the possibility.

I know that I have been given certain gifts this lifetime in order to speak for and to like-minded people who have similar experiences and feelings, and to allow a window into a life that some people would like to experience. I feel that connection and obligation when I write and I always try to be as true and honest as I can be within the confines of not outing or harming the people in my orbit. The attacks left me fearful and somewhat voiceless, but I’m ready to get back to what the Universe keeps nudging me to do, which is simply write it down when it circles my brain.

Okay, so with all of that in mind, here’s the story I read. I thought the theater would have the livestream up for viewing after the event, but it’s just as well that they didn’t because it was so effing cold in there that my nose ran and I shook so hard that it appeared I might have some substance issues of my own. If they ever do post it I’ll add the link. This is edited for a live situation, meaning some details are cut out for brevity’s sake.

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Betsy was going to get it.

I was Queen Vixen of the Cycle Sluts from Hell goddamnit. You did not fuck my man and walk away unscathed. I did not operate that way. I was a powder keg of emotion on a good day, and this was definitely not a good day. Or week. Or month.

I lost countless hours of sleep festering over the details: imagining her and my faithless boyfriend in bed together, smiling at each other over their clever deception. Then in order to keep my heart from exploding in agony I would imagine all the ways that I would make them suffer. I pictured tearing her throat out with my teeth or pushing my long fingernails into her eyes, blood spraying everywhere as she screamed in pain and terror.

This did bring some brief comfort.

She knew she was in trouble and laid low for months. I went everywhere with an army of loyal mean girls and we had a strict code about right and wrong, meaning mostly that we got to do whatever we wanted while less locked-in females did not. We brooked no disrespect in our scene.

I kept an eye out constantly but by the time she finally showed up at a Manowar concert at the Ritz, I had almost forgotten to scan the crowd for her basic brown bob. So it was a surprise when she passed me in the fray of people, distracted and smiling with friends.

The audacity. I felt myself go hot; red flashed behind my eyes and flooded through my body and my vibrating arm shot out of its own accord before anyone could register what was happening. Cycle Slut sisters Dolly Dagger and Nyquil Nancy slammed into my back as I stopped short and lunged.

I snatched Betsy by the front of her shirt and yanked her face close to mine. I held my lit cigarette an inch from her cheek while tall, scary Nancy and always-up-for-a-scuffle Dolly glared backup behind me. We were dressed in our uniform of short leather jackets, cut off denim shorts and thigh high leather boots, looking (intentionally) like something out of a 70’s B-grade biker film.

Time slowed and stretched. Betsy stood very still, her two friends frozen wide-eyed behind her. Her eyes flicked down to the cigarette and back to me.

I said, “You fucking bitch. You whore. You think you can just show up and hang out now? You think you still have that right? I’m going to fucking kill you, you know that? I’m going to kick your fucking ass.”

Still glancing at the cigarette millimeters from her cheek, she replied in a shaky voice, “There’s nothing to fight over. I don’t want to fight with you. I don’t want Curt. You can have him.”

I smiled grimly and hissed, “Oh, but I don’t want him. I want YOU.”

I shoved her away from me and she stumbled backward into her friends. A long-haired dude watching nearby said, “Hey, that last line was pretty good! Did you make that up on the spot?” I ignored him and stomped away to try to get my pals working security to throw her out of the club.

After that, it was only a matter of time. She continued to avoid venues and parties that I might venture into, which was pretty much anything rock and roll based on any night. She would show up here and there, never staying if she spotted me. And I always made sure that she spotted me. I reached out through the crowd and slapped her hard on the back of the head as she walked through the Scrap Bar. I shoved her at the Cat Club. She had a friend with her, a seat-filler who looked a bit like me and considered herself my competition. She got in my face and shouted, “Leave her alone, Raff!”

I said, “You’re gonna get it too, you fucking cunt.” I snatched her bondage cap off her head and threw it into the crowd. It sailed over the dance floor like a Frisbee.

“Go get your hat, twat. You look like shit without it.”

Eventually though, Betsy tired of life underground. There was a lot of fun to be had back then and she was too young to stay home.

Raging Slab headlined a gig at a club called Downtown, and it was one of those nights where everyone and their bass player showed up. My band, my unfaithful boyfriend’s band Blitzspeer, Joey Ramone, Circus of Power, White Zombie, the Hells Angels… Everyone attended this show, including her.

I was primed for it, and when she walked a little too closely to me as I took a swig of beer, I chose the opportunity to spit a mouthful of liquid directly into her face. It was harsh; I shocked even myself with the crassness of it. She looked stunned for a moment as beer and spit dripped down her face, and then her expression shifted awake and she jumped on me, grabbing for my hair. Her sister pounced on Nancy. Other girls jumped in and within seconds there was a full on girl brawl on the dance floor: hair pulling, screaming, bystanders getting knocked out of the way. I’ve never seen anything like it, before or since.

I had been counting down to this moment. Betsy was not a person to me anymore, she was simply the Enemy, capital E. She embodied all the pain and betrayal, real or imagined, that I’d experienced up until then: the self-esteem obliteration that comes with being raised Catholic, daddy issues and abandonment of death, the diabolical behavior of high school girls, date rape, Curt’s incessant lies and verbal cuts, myriad major and minor heartbreaks, real or imagined. I was drowning in sadness and anger was the only thing that kept me afloat. I had managed to climb out of the Midwest and recreate myself as a big fish in the rock and roll pond of New York City, and I should have enjoyed it, but sadly I never did. Instead I lived like there was a war on. All I ever thought about was defense. Better to burn than to feel burning tears.

I exploded outwardly, tight fists swinging at her face. Betsy continued to pull my hair trying to hold my head down. I flung my purse off my arm and grabbed at her hands with one hand and punched upward with the other, where I knew my fist could connect. She was no match for me but she held onto my hair with a deathgrip. I kicked her off her feet and shoved us both to the ground.

I wore a Zack ring, which was very popular at the time, solid pewter with heavy jagged edges pointing straight upward. It was a small but evil weapon. I slammed my fist into her as she crouched on her knees, now just trying to protect her face with her hands and the ground. I could only make contact with her forehead, but I hit it with full force. It felt good to hit her, hit something firm and real for a change. I couldn’t feel the ring cutting into my hand.

The fight was broken up quickly enough; the boys grabbed their flailing girlfriends and dragged them apart. Betsy and friends left or were ejected and our side retired victorious to the bathroom for clean-up. My bag had been stolen. I had a bleeding scratch over my lip and my hand ached from so much pounding, the ring finger cut and bruised. We fixed our faces; I wiped away the blood on mine. Nancy and I hugged and I said, “I fucking love you man!”

I could not have been happier. We went back to the bar where Butch, the president of the Hell’s Angels, had a celebratory kamikaze shot waiting for me. But as he handed me the glass his eyes widened and he said, “Cops are here, you gotta hide.”

Someone shoved us into a back room, but it was too late. Seconds later the door flew open to reveal two cops with Betsy behind them with a swollen, bloody forehead. It looked like raw meat. Nancy and I were handcuffed in front of all of our friends and led wild-eyed out of the club.

I was stunned. This possibility had never occurred to me. No one ever called the cops in New York in the 80’s. You just duked it out and then went back on about your business. Sometimes you’d buy each other a drink afterward and become best friends.

I was held in the 9th precinct, then chained hands and feet to a group of other female arrestees, then hauled in a van to the Tombs, where I spent the better part of a weekend laying on cold concrete, learning the intricacies of crack use and street prostitution. It was the longest 30 hours of my life. Curt called my mom to tell on me and she laughed and said, “Well, she’s your problem now!”

I was lucky. Nancy went to jail too, so I had a friend along for the dry bologna sandwiches and wailing junkies writhing around us on the floor. Our arresting officers liked us and gave us candy bars and helped me pass off the ring surreptitiously to Curt before going in. Otherwise it would have been considered a weapon and brought with it a felony assault charge. Rock writer Lisa Robinson wrote about the arrest in the Post, and Bob Gruen photographed me leaning on the cop car, so the band got some press out of it. Eventually Betsy dropped the charges in exchange for my promise to stop tormenting her, which set me on the road to some of the deeper lessons in my life: humility, compassion, forgiveness… impulse control. She went on to get a black belt in karate, I’m assuming, just in case. We are friendlier now and I promised that I wouldn’t make her look too bad. She’s a mom now and I changed her name here.

Decades later Betsy told me that after the fight she went to a friend’s house to get a knife, to wait in front of my apartment and kill me when I came home. The wannabe in the bondage cap talked her into calling the police. I should have beat her up instead, I discovered later that she was calling Curt late at night behind both our backs; Betsy just managed to get there first. In any case, I think I probably would have preferred the early morning knife fight back then. I thought I was going to die young and that kind of end could have made me a legend. Curt would be sorry, she’d go to prison, my friends would hold a big memorial, it would have been glorious. But life sometimes has other, more mundane plans in mind. Still, I get a good giggle out of thinking about it. So much passion! Like West Side Story but with sluttier outfits.

A few years ago, a much better boyfriend than Curt, upon hearing this story, rolled his eyes and said, “You can’t just beat everyone up, Mary.” To which I replied, “Well, I know that…NOW.”

It is certainly easier to be 50 than it is to be 20. It’s taken me a long time to understand that when we operate defensively we are often at our most offensive. But that which does not kill us, makes us friends on facebook, and that’s kind of okay.

Golden Girls Thank You GIF by TV Land

Dogs, Sweet Things, Johnny Eggz…

I’ve gotta get back into this blog because I keep getting asked to do things that point back to it. Just this month I’ve done a livestream reading to benefit the Wild Project, Tattoos For Women did a multi-page feature on me, I sat in on a podcast with Inebrination, a radio interview with Heavy Metal Han, answered interview questions for a French book about Motorhead and was just informed by someone at KNAC.com that the Cycle Sluts 30th anniversary is coming up and they want to do a piece on the band. I had no idea we even had an anniversary. Anyway, all great avenues to promote myself, but also pressure to shut down the Xbox and create something to promote.

For whatever reason I was born under a lucky star and attention comes whether I ask for it or not. Much like romance, I’ve spent my life embracing it one minute and then pushing it away the next. And now it centers around this little blog, which has been great for me and happily for some of you, but this extended downtime has shut down any urge to pontificate as well. In the face of too much to say, I haven’t felt the urge to say anything.

In the interest of combatting entropy, I’ve decided that until the muse calls, I’ll post some old stories. I have enough of them already written down, everyone enjoys the tales of yore, and it helps me to have them warehoused somewhere.

But before that, as many of you know, recently my dog went missing. He slipped out of my building while I was distracted and then simply disappeared into the ether. It was a hellish day. A dear friend put up a large reward for his return and while I wandered the streets in tears, taping flyers to lamp posts and looking under cars, I got hammered via text by a tag team of scammers who became increasingly threatening as they tried to extort money prior to “returning the dog”. At the end of the day, as I trudged hopeless and aimless outdoors in order not to have to face down a long night of staring at the ceiling in anguish, I got a call from a lovely woman who had picked him up and taken him home when she saw him frightened and alone in front of my building. She refused all reward and told me he was very well behaved. I was extremely lucky…again.

The lesson for me, beyond to always have ID on every collar and harness is that there are many, many, many lovely people out in the world. With all of the turmoil we’ve been through over the last year and a half, it’s easy to get cynical. I was blown away by all of the shares, messages, texts, emails, and visits to my neighborhood to help out. People showed up and searched without even telling me. My posts about it were shared thousands of times. I was blown away by the outpouring of kindness from friends and strangers. And now that he’s found I get stopped on every walk by strangers who are excited to see that he’s safe.

So I guess the message I’d like to impart today is that there is hope for us as a species, and to not to get bogged down in the negative. There are more people in your corner than you know.

ALICE MAGAZINE INTERVIEW
SAM HARISS/DAVE TIERNEY/JOHNNY EGGZ/RAFF/CHRISTA ELIZABETH:

Okay, pre-pandemic I did an interview for Alice Magazine with Sam Hariss and Dave Tierney of The Sweet Things. And because I’m lazy and I like to eat, I asked our friend Johnny Eggz to make dinner so we could sit around and talk and I’d record it and make that the interview. Johnny plays guitar for Sheer Terror, is an amazing cook and one of the funniest people I know, and his wife Christa is awesome.

The article was published, with photos taken by the Uber-talented Johan Vipper. I can’t find it online so if anyone can, feel free to send me the links and I’ll add them here. Because we talked for so long, a lot of bits had to be cut out. So here’s some of the excerpts that didn’t make the cut.

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ME: All right, let’s do this. Where did you guys get together? There was mention of a Hebrew summer camp? Or did I dream that?

DAVE: I think our bio says we met at a bar mitzvah. 

SAM: It does. I had known Lorne from around. We had talked about playing together but somehow he got the idea that I was flakey (laughs). 

JOHNNY EGGZ: Naaaaah!

ME: That sounds about right. 

SAM: Regardless of that he suggested me for a tour that Dave was doing. Joan Jett had just passed on me for playing with her band so I was kind of bummed…

DAVE: And I didn’t have the luxury of being as discerning as Joan. 

ME: So Lorne suggested you for The Sharp Lads?

DAVE: Yeah, we were doing a tour back in January of 2015 and I asked Lorne, who couldn’t do it, and then suggested Sam.

SAM: So that happened, and then we were on the road, and Dave and I had kind of clicked musically, we were into the same bands – The Black Crowes and a lot of that kind of shit, whoever ripped off Keith Richards essentially. And I wanted to be in one of them. We were in Baltimore and Dave suggested we start a band; but he had two other bands already, so I told him that I would only do it if it wasn’t a side project and that he had to quit his other bands. I don’t know how I had the balls to say that because I had nothing going on at the time. But he agreed. So he finished out two more tours with The Sharp Lads and then wrote the first two Sweet Things songs in New Orleans. And then we had our first practice and I didn’t go. 

DAVE: Well, me and Lorne had been talking about doing this band for a while and then he said, “Get HIM to be our bass player.” 

RAFF: Poor Lorne…

DAVE: Yeah, and now we’re in this life sentence…Haha! So I was waiting for them to show up at practice and I worked on a cover of “Cokin” and then wrote “Love to Leave” 

RAFF: Which is still one of everybody’s favorite songs. 

DAVE: Yeah, it’s still like maybe our best song!

RAFF: So, your new album “In Borrowed Shoes On Borrowed Time” is veering into country territory, which people probably aren’t expecting. 

SAM: Well, we really like cowboy shirts! And we all kind of privately really like country and realized that everyone else in the band knew what good country was and had a knack for it. And you get bored listening to the same three rock and roll albums so it was something new and isn’t being done well by many people we know right now. So it’s kind of a cool little niche to mix with what we’re already doing. 

DAVE: We’re not doing it too consciously; we’re just following the muse. But you tend to find more good songwriters in the country genre. Or for me maybe it’s just ones I didn’t know because I didn’t listen to it growing up. I thought it was an obscure type of ethnic music and I didn’t know anyone who listened to it. I probably listened to some stuff that I didn’t know was country? Like my parents had Neil Young albums, which some of that kind of stuff could fall under the category.

RAFF: Yeah, but growing up we didn’t think that was country. Or I didn’t. 

DAVE: Yeah, it doesn’t make it onto that rack in the record store but it’s really not that different.

SAM: I got into it first and foremost because of Keith. I liked Faraway Eyes and that was the gateway.

RAFF (joking): So you like Keith Richards, do ya?

DAVE: I think once, a long time ago, I meant to download a Flamin’ Groovies record and I accidentally got the Flying Burrito Brothers instead. And I loved it. 

SAM: Yeah, and then it went from Keith to Gram Parsons. Who, side note, just couldn’t hold his heroin. 

RAFF: So let’s talk about the drumming situation. It’s just the three of you right now with fill ins because you lost Darren Fried?

SAM: We had a great replacement for a day but he’s French and couldn’t stay in the country. Darren was great for us. He had a good mixture of two things that he always says…

DAVE: He can play rock music and he’s a hard hitter but he can find the groove. He can put the tiniest bit of swing in it that makes you want to move.

SAM: And he can fill out a pair of denim shorts like nobody else.

WIVES HATING BANDS:

JOHNNY EGGZ: If you’re married to some kinda broad who makes you quit your band, it’s not gonna last. 

RAFF: But a lot of guys that we know have this happen. I know so many men who married women who thought it was cute in the beginning and then not so much once they’re married. 

JOHNNY EGGZ: They aaaaall do. 

RAFF: I don’t! I would never! I feel like it’s the same thing as marrying a painter and then telling them they can never create art again. Why would you want to take something that big away from someone if it made them happy? 

JOHNNY EGGZ: But you’re not a civilian. When I met my wife I realized she’s not a civilian. She’s an actress, she wrote movies, she sings in bands. She understands. Who else is gonna say, “Oh, you’re gonna be in France for my birthday, you’re not gonna be home for Christmas? Okay, have a good time!” Doesn’t happen. You did it, you were in the Cycle Sluts, that’s why you get it. 

SAM (joking, to Raff): Luckily that hasn’t happened to us!

RAFF: Haha! I hated it all from the get. Okay, what’s the plan for this year?

DAVE: The new record is coming out May 24th (2019), music video coming out after that, touring after that. 

JOHNNY EGGZ: Who’s putting the record out?

DAVE: Spaghetty Town Records out of Georgia. They have some really cool bands on their label. 

RAFF: Funded by Wendigo Productions. Put that in there.

SAM: Well, you’re going to be writing this! Just put down your internal monologue!

RAFF: No one needs to hear that. But yes, I’m gonna paraphrase the hell out of all of this. 

DAVE: Eight days in the UK in early June…

SAM: Tentative talk about maybe making it over to France. 

JOHNNY EGGZ: So where’d you record? How’d you do your deal?

DAVE: We did our album with Matt Chiaravalle, we started in July 2018. 

SAM: Yeah, seven months.

JOHNNY EGGZ: Seven months??!!

DAVE: Yeah, at Flux Studios and then a ton of overdubs at Mercy Sound where we brought in a lot of guests. 

RAFF: Let’s talk about that.

SAM: We got Alejandro Escovedo on the record. It’s funny, because I think of him as an Americana/country kind of artist, and a lot of these guys that we’ve become cool with like that, we like because that’s what they do. And they like us because they like punk. So I could tell when he came in that he was thinking that he was going to be able to do something where he could do a bit of yelling and we made him do his usual thing. So we got him on a second song that was still not yelling, but more of a ballad. And you know, he was in The Nuns, so I told him we should cover that Nuns song, what’s it called?

DAVE: Neurotic Jew?

SAM: No, it’s even worse, like Cheap Jew or something like that?

DAVE: Uptight Jew? The singer, I think, was Jewish?

[Ed. note – Google tells us it’s “Decadent Jew”]

SAM: We’re all Jews, and nobody dislikes Jewish people as much as Jewish people, because we had to grow up with each other. Anyway, so yes, we had Alejandro, and the Uptown Horns, who have played with everybody from the Stones to James Brown to Billy Joel…

DAVE: Plus our good friend Liza Colby who has been singing with us for a long time, Brian Hurd from Daddy Long Legs on the tin sandwich, and Rob Clores on keyboards. 

SAM: Yes, he played with The Black Crowes and Tom Jones. Oh, and shout out to the guy in the comments section on the article about us in Metal Sucks who said we were “slightly less metal than the Blues Travelers”,– Rob also played with The Blues Travelers. So full circle there!

DAVE: Rob is like our secret weapon. We asked him to play piano and organ and he came in with a clavinet.

THE SOPRANOS:

JOHNNY EGGZ: I was almost on that show.

RAFF: Really? What happened?

JOHNNY EGGZ: So I’m on the fuckin’ Staten Island Ferry talking to this guy Doc on the phone about how he had moved to 168th Street. And I was saying, “168th Street? Motherfucker you moved UPSTATE. Jesus Christ, what the fuck!” On and on, whatever I’m saying and there’s this woman across from me reading a book and going like this for the whole half hour ride. (Motions looking over the top of the book)

And then finally I get off the phone and she closes the book and puts it on her lap and goes, “Are you an actor?” 

I said, “Nah! I’m a guitar player.” And she said, “Do you wanna be?” 

And I’m like, “All right. The broad wants to fuck me. I’ll bite.” She gives me her card and says be in her office at 10 am the next day. I still don’t think it’s real but I thought, eh, what the hell. This is gonna be fun. 

Next day I go to the office and I walk in and I get into the lobby and say, “Rita Powers?” and they send me in the elevator and it goes up and opens and the sign says, “Powers Management”. So I think, “Shit, this is fucking real!”

She sits me down and she tells me she’s going to get me the Sopranos. And I tell her I don’t know how to act. She says, “You just be you. But we have to build you a little and get you in front of the camera so you get to know what the hell is going on. They’re not gonna put up with someone who doesn’t know so you’re gonna have to do some things before that.”

So I’m like, “Cool!” I signed the contract, now she’s my agent. The first thing she has for me is a Nokia commercial. So I show up in Times Square, outside, for this commercial, looking like the Fonz. She’s not there, so I’m walking around like a fuckin’ asshole that doesn’t know anything. I’m like fucking Crocodile Dundee being friendly to all the other actors because I don’t know that actors and actresses are fuckin’ assholes. And they fuckin’ hated me. I’m walking around saying, “How ya doin’? How ya doin’?” And they’re just miserable people. 

So they realize that I don’t belong and they’re like, “How did you get this?” So I tell them, well, I was sitting on the ferry and blah, blah… And NOW they really hate my fuckin’ guts. Because these people have been working their whole lives to get this and I’m just some jabroni that wandered in off a boat and said, “Hey, I’m an actor now!” 

So they’re looking at me and I’ve got the black pompadour and my whole deal, like a heroin addicted fuckin’ Dean Martin. And they say, “This isn’t gonna work.” And I’m like, whaddya mean, this is me! But they pound my hair down and they put me in a hoodie that says Nokia on it and they give me fuckin’ pom poms. 

Finally Rita shows up and I’m like, “What the fuck is this?? Look at me, I’m holding fuckin’ POM POMS!” 

She’s like, “It’s acting!” And I say, “I’m a guitar player! This isn’t me!” And she looks at me and says, “Well what fuckin’ label are you signed to right now? None? Okay, you’re an actor. Go act!” And I fuckin’ did it. A fuckin’ Nokia commercial!

BANDS SWEET THINGS WANT TO PLAY WITH…

RAFF: Okay, back to music…Sweet Things, give me a list of bands you’d like to play with. Let’s put it out into the universe. 

SAM: The Rolling Stones.

RAFF: Yeah…no. 

DAVE: I wanna play with Ryan Bingham. He’s my favorite kind of songwriter these days. And I like the new Jenny Lewis album. 

JOHNNY EGGZ: Jerry Lewis??

DAVE: Jenny or Jerry Lewis. We’ll take either. Old 97’s…

SAM: Blackberry Smoke, Chris Robinson’s band As the Crow Flies…

DAVE: When I was younger people always told me I looked like Chris Robinson. I don’t get it anymore but like 10 years ago. When you have long hair you always get comparisons to whoever. Dumb shit, like Kurt Cobain.

SAM: I get Slash all the time and I look nothing like him. It’s just the hair and hats. 

PUNK ROCK:

JOHNNY EGGZ: I hate Led Zeppelin. Hate ‘em.

RAFF: Really? Well, you’re a real punk, so it makes sense. 

JOHNNY EGGZ: I hate all of it. I hate Led Zeppelin. I hate Pink Floyd. I hate Journey.

RAFF: Well, I tried to explain to Sam that when we were kids you had to align with one or the other. So I liked Led Zeppelin but I couldn’t admit it to the people I was hanging out with because that wasn’t our identity. We were punks. 

DAVE: My stock answer when I was in high school was “I like punk and Led Zeppelin”. 

JOHNNY EGGZ: I think I hated them more because I hated their fans. 

RAFF: Well, there was such a divide at that time. Way more for Johnny and my generation than for yours. You were either a stoner kid that listened to Zeppelin or you were a punk that got shit in the school hallways. 

JOHNNY EGGZ: It was fucking HARD. Being 14 or 15 years old and being a punk rocker, a hardcore kid. I got my ass kicked for having blue hair. “Freak! Fag!” 

DAVE: Yeah, when I was really little Green Day was the thing. So we thought we were punk rock. 

RAFF: And to me, I just thought, great, now we’re rehashing and watering down this shit? I love them as people. Billie Joe in particular is, in my mind, one of the loveliest humans to grace this planet, but it was for kids and I wasn’t a kid by then. Although now when I hear their songs I think I was too hard on them, they’re great writers.

JOHNNY EGGZ: I’m sure they’re great guys! But my God, don’t make this music. Unless they want us on the tour! Then I’m all over it. 

RAFF: Well, D Generation toured with them and I traveled on a few of the dates as a girlfriend, which is so annoying to bandmates but somehow it happened. So I was in France and England for a short while and they were awesome. So generous, so fun, so cool. They would hold up a show if the audience wasn’t there yet to make sure that D Gen got to play to the crowd, which was all little kids with green hair. 

JOHNNY EGGZ Lemme tell ya. D Gen is the best band out of New York that didn’t get over the hump. Best band that never made it, period. They should have been the biggest band in the world. They were great in the cities, you just couldn’t put them over in Wisconsin. They were too smart for the room in the smaller towns. The resurgence of punk was right there. Every asshole band was huge and D Gen was better than them all but they didn’t dumb themselves down enough for mass consumption. 

HARDCORE: 

RAFF: Well, hardcore has never been the most glamorous of genres.

JOHNNY EGGZ: No. But other bands get broads coming to their show–Madball, and Ignostic Front, Jimmy [of Murphy’s Law] gets the girls. It’s not Sheer Terror though. Look at us! (points to a poster of the band on the wall).

SAM: Well, your logo is a bulldog.

JOHNNY EGGZ: No, I’m talking about the picture of us. You know what I mean? We’re just not, know …

CHRISTA: Underwritten by Bausch and Lomb.

JOHNNY EGGZ:  Yeah. Paul’s onstage [frontman Paul Bearer]. He looks at us, and just goes, “We got an endorsement from Pearl Vision Center.”

RAFF:  Haha! I like Paul. He’s funny.

JOHNNY EGGZ : He’s probably one of the funniest people I know. 

RAFF: But in this very dry kind of way that I find entertaining.

JOHNNY EGGZ: In a weird kinda way. He comes up with the weirdest shit, just … goes on, and on, and on with it. Like, we’re in a van. We’re driving fucking nine hours to the next town. Jason, the guy with the glasses standing next to me [on the poster], he’s heavy. He’s 350 pounds. You see Anthony, all the way on the other end? He’s young. He’s only 30 years old, and he’s little, very little. He’s, like, standing on his tippy toes to look like that in the picture. Paul will be like, “Jay,” that’s the heavy guy, “If we were caught in a plane crash, and we were stranded on an island, and Anthony was very sick and too weak, would you let him suckle from your breast, if that meant he would live?” 

(Everyone erupts in laughter)

Then, Jay is like, “NO. The fuck you talking about?” Then, Paul would be like, “You hear that, Anthony? He’d let you die.” 

And we’re all laughing and you think it’s over, but he just keeps going. “Now, you mean to say, if that was the ONLY way he could survive, you wouldn’t let him–”

SAM: Suckle from your breast?

JOHNNY EGGZ: Jay says, “I’m a guy! I don’t lactate!” “Okay, let’s say you DID lactate, you COULD lactate, would you give sustenance?” It just goes on and on. Then, Jay’ll put the headphones so now he doesn’t even hear it. Now, Jay’s out of it. And Paul’s just going on, and on, and on, and on, and on. Then Jay’ll take the headphones off an hour later, and he’ll hear what Paul is saying, and he’ll be like, “This is still fucking going on?”

NUDITY:

JOHNNY EGGZ: I’m the naked guy. I’m always naked. It cuts the tension when the band is bickering. 

RAFF: Just to get naked?

JOHNNY EGGZ: Just get naked, and just walk in. You can’t sell it. You walk in the room, and be like, “What’s up, guys? What’s up? I heard some yelling. What’s everybody yelling about? Anybody got any potato chips?”

RAFF: Dave could probably get naked, but Sam never would.

DAVE: Yeah, I’d get naked. That can be my job.

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