Month: July 2007

Just Call Me Felix

Lord…week three of complete sobriety…YAWN…

So my beloved friend Kim Montenegro was staying with me for the last three days as she was in town for the London Edge Trade Show. Which she hated btw, and described as “Yin yang symbols and Hot Topic t-shirts”. I never made it up there to lend moral support or write about it as requested for Crusher Magazine because I’d already taken time off work to deal with the phone guy and am going on vacation next week (yippee!).

So having Kim in a confined space such as my East Village one bedroom apartment is much like wrangling a toddler who can handle their wine or an extremely sexy Tasmanian devil. She just whirls around, manically doing five things at once while I follow her grumbling and handing her the items she needs. The conversation goes something like this:

Kim: Oh my God, it’s hot in here, you need a new AC. Should I use this soap? Do you have a washcloth? Is this the right food for the cats? Where should I plug in the curling iron? I can’t find my hair clip. Is this the only kind of hair clip you have? Oh my God, I am so hot I feel nauseous. Do you have a sheet I can put on the couch? Let’s have some pineapple, okay? Where is my phone?? Can we watch an old movie? It is so fucking hot in here!!

Me: It’s not that hot…Your phone is on the hamper…I’m cutting the pineapple now…

She will work and spin and do stuff and talk and vibrate and talk and then, boom, pass out where she drops much like the aforementioned toddler. Usually it’s diagonally across the bed so I have to quietly shove her dead weight to one side before I can go to sleep. And then she wants to wrap herself around me, which I hate, so I spend the night squirming out of her grip like the cat with Pepe LePew, which then makes her feel sad because to her it feels cold and mean.

Luckily she’s got so much going on that once she’s made her super strong coffee in the morning (which gives me heart palpitations and anxiety) she’s ready to forgive and is off and running again with no grudges held.

And so our little comedy routine goes and has gone since the beginning of time. Well, since the 80’s anyway, which is the beginning of time for most of you. She’s hyper and hot and busy and on 10 while I start my days slowly, need a lot of quiet time and space, and am always cold. Drew says it’s the Odd Couple in g-strings and push-up bras. It was cute when we were in our 20’s, now it’s sort of entertaining because it’s been going on for so long. When we get into serious old age I fear that no one will want to come near us, but at least we’ll have each other. Our friendship has survived marriages and substance abuse and matching Pomeranians and distances and children and major differences of opinion on what temperature is comfortable.

For those of you unfamiliar with my tiny world, Kim is a one-woman rock and roll denim designing powerhouse. Her lines Submission and MotorMontenegro can be found here:Very Bad Horse. Her jeans are incredible; they look great and they last forever and the longer you wear them the more bad-ass they become. Kim does it all herself with very little help and manufactures in the U.S., which is really difficult because most companies manufacture in China and sell an inferior product at much lower prices.

So what she does is really an exhausting labor of love more than an easy way to get make a living. And it’s like that for all of the individual clothing designers I know out there, they’re all busting ass to stay alive. It’s kind of brutal and depressing at times but Kim’s talent and vision is undeniable, she’s a legend and I have faith that she will find her way through the current economy.

Without getting into details, at this particular time she is also experiencing a situation with someone who really doesn’t wish her well, and I believe is operating out of a place of fear—fear that deep down they don’t have the creativity and power that she has always exhibited so clearly. The specifics aren’t important but it’s interesting to witness the power/fear theme is manifesting in a business rather than romantic context. I believe that we are all creative and powerful beings, but some people have never learned to tap their own, and instead rely on other means to find feelings of self-worth. And sometimes those means aren’t always on the highest level.

So this is what I have stated to her, and to myself many times, and here once or twice as well, but it bears repeating: Our creativity and our power comes from a higher source, and if one channel for our survival is cut off, meaning if we lose a job or a contract or whatever means our money is coming in, there are an infinite amount of other channels to choose from. The channel is not the source. So if someone is ripping us off or not appreciating us or not paying us what we’re worth, or if circumstances are not conducive to making us feel alive and well-cared for, it is imperative that we look elsewhere. Channels change according to our needs and consciousness level. Source is infinite.

Okay, on a much less evolved and far more gossipy level, here is the latest on the mean girls I blogged about recently: Drew got a text from one of the girls stating that their friend would be interviewing at PF for a job, and could I put in a good word for her. I was stunned, and said, “Let me get this straight. This girl, who has never acknowledged my presence with eye contact or a simple hello, this girl who treats me like I don’t exist and is friends with another girl who purposely goes out of her way to be extra shitty to me whenever possible, is now asking YOU to ask ME to do her a favor?” 

Um yes…that would be the gist of it, Mary.

Suffice to say girlfriend will not be working at the Pink Palace House of Gay Horror any time soon. That particular channel is not open today. Do not fuck with Scorpio vampires. We do strive to be spiritual and loving but we also hold on to shit until the end of time. We write it all down in tiny serial killer handwriting on a long list in our head, and we quietly wait for the opportunity to strike, which always comes. If any one of these little amateurs had bothered to talk to me like a human being I could have explained this nicely and then gotten them a damn job. Ha! Try Hot Topic, bitch. I hear they’re hiring.

And lastly, for those of you who are asking about Jesse: He pushed himself too hard on tour and hurt his back. He’s currently resting and getting treatment so he can get back on track as quickly as possible, but it’s painful. I ask that anyone who is a fan or loves him to please send him lots of white light whenever you think about him to aid with the healing.


Paging Mr. Patron…

Helen Sinclair:  Two martinis please, very dry.
David Shayne:  How’d you know what I drank?
Helen Sinclair:  Oh, you want one too? Three.

I’m two weeks into a month long sabbatical from drinking and also on a mild cleanse which involves imbibing clays and powders and which is making me feel a bit fatigued. I have long been feeling some boredom with getting drunk, plus I want to break the habit of automatically ordering/drinking a certain quantity of alcohol just because I’ve become accustomed to it.

However, it has quickly come to my attention that my primary form of socializing involves imbibing liquor in shitty bars, and thus my social life is temporarily crippled. This will come as no surprise to my rotten sister, who usually calls and asks if I’m drunk before starting the conversation. So I’m feeling a litle bored as I’m staying out of bars for the time being unless there’s an express purpose for being there, like a band playing.

On top of being bored I am not experiencing the weight loss that I was promised by my non-drinking friends. Drew, who is also taking a month off, is of course. That fucker loses weight just standing there. And then as he stands there arbitrarily losing weight and building muscle he tells me about it while I lay on the bed struggling to zip my jeans. He also forgets to eat. What kind of person forgets to eat, I ask you? A person that’s skinnier than me, damn it! Sometimes it’s all I can do not to creep up behind him with a pillow and suffocate him.

On the plus side, not waking up with a hangover after a night out is absolutely lovely, and I fully intend to keep this in mind when back on the hooch. In the meantime I apologize to those of you who regularly depend upon me to shout “Whooo!” while showing my ass to a roomful of strangers. Who knew so much of my scintillating party personality was reliant upon the presence of Mr. Patron? My sister, for one.

Anyhoo, I have been having wine-free meals with people and had an interesting one with a girlfriend of mine who just got dumped. She is a physically beautiful, highly intelligent, and spirited person. Probably not the easiest girl on the planet, she’s got a lot of loony conspiracy theories rolling around in her head and she, like myself and most of my friends, is easy to rile and has a pretty strong opinion on many subjects. But she’s also very creative, sweet and loving and tried very hard to make her boyfriend happy, which apparently, she did not. I should add that she’s well out of his league in certain ways, though he is a nice guy.

She’s handling it pretty well, better than most, and we had an interesting conversation about the relationship. She did say some things that have got me thinking this week. First thing she said was, “I always felt like it was so important that I didn’t get too rowdy.” And the second thing was, “You know, aren’t I supposed to be a little bad? Isn’t that the whole point of going out with me in that he purposely chose someone slightly more unpredictable than he’s used to?”

Drew (that skinny bastard) and I talk about this all the time, the fact that so many of our strong girlfriends end up with guys that are initially attracted to their power, but then find they can’t deal and work to contain that energy by negating it or disapproving of it in some way. Women (in general) are naturally more willing to bend their personalities to a relationship but in this particular scenario they can end up losing themselves in an attempt to please and hold onto a partner. It’s happened to me, or rather, I’ve done it to myself, to the point where I really didn’t know who I was anymore. This seems to be a recurring theme in my life and the lives around me and I know I’ve written about it before, but I feel like I haven’t totally beat the subject into the ground just yet, so bear with me.

There are two angles to it: one, there are a lot of men out there who are attracted to, but can’t really deal with powerful women. And two, there are a lot of women out there who are afraid/unaware of their own power and willingly subvert it, usually in an effort to maintain a romantic relationship. These are generalizations, I’m sure there are cases where the sexes are reversed, or the same, but like it or not we still live in a patriarchal society where the former case scenario is most predominant.

The main confusion with this issue is that many of us do need to calm down a little. So it’s hard to know what to hang onto and what to discard while attempting to co-exist with another human being. For instance, I know that I’m a controlling maniac and that when someone tells me I’m being too domineering I have to heed that warning. But I also know that if someone tells me that my sense of humor isn’t “nice” (which has happened to me in the past), that I can’t stop naturally finding humor in certain things just because it challenges some guy’s ego, or a part of me will curl up and die a little (which has also happened to me in the past).

I only know these things now because I have a partner who is not bothered by my energy/power, is unafraid of my temper tantrums, finds my jokes funny (most of the time), and is not interested in hiding my sometimes obnoxious light under a bushel. This has freed me up immensely in many ways, and because I have been given this gift I feel an obligation to let people know that it is entirely possible to be loved for who you are, and that it is imperative that you seek out those who do love you for who you are (friends and lovers) rather than who someone would like you to be.

I am not saying that we can’t all use some improvement, and in many cases hours of therapy. I’m just saying I’m tired of looking at gorgeous, smart, powerful people across from dinner tables and dissecting where they lost themselves and why they weren’t enough. If you’re not enough it’s because he/she/it wasn’t the right fit. End of story.

Oh, and lastly, I’ll be heading out in a pair of hot pants this evening to face the dragons I discussed in the Orangutan Mama blog. If anything entertaining happens I’ll take notes.