summer of love 2k9

our lady of mt. st. carmel aftermath



chris bond's shitpowdersplosion extravaganza birthday party @ tortilla flats

big bingo winner, duh.

spankings a plenty

holly miranda at zebulon

playing unong on the LIRR

amanda & dad

sean, aka the Busiest Man In The World

my iDork

jen going apeshit on buck hunter

french miami at death by audio



FAME at mccarren park

edit in RE: to lydia white... alright. alright. FINE. behold the budkini.

dirty tit? clean it up.

the night before last I went out on the town with my ladyfriend catharine, and we met up with peter and his sister in greenpoint, summer rain be damned. copious amounts had already been imbibed, and it's sufficient to say that by the end of the night my liver was "well done". on the walk/stumble home accompanied by my strapping date, I somehow managed to do a flying karate leap faceplant onto the freeway under the BQE to avoid getting hit by a semi with a giant lead pipe on the back. (white girl can jump, but apparently the problem lies in the "landing" aspect.) I was in immense amounts of pain but trying to brush it off to scrimp together what was left of my pride, and I thought it best to change the subject with the international language of love when we got back to my apartment.

my come-hither strip tease was brought to a screeching halt when I removed my brassiere and peter started cracking up uncontrollably. at first I was incensed. why was he laughing at my boobs? my sexy strip tease had been meant to illicit a slightly more libidinous reaction. then he reached over and peeled a sticky, sweaty piece of orbit gum off of my left breast.

"oh." I said. "I've been looking for that."

I'm not a writer, I just blog a lot.

I've got some magnificent milestones coming up. tomorrow will mark my 6 months of glorious brooklyn life, october is my seven year anniversary of being in remission from ye olde 'Cer, and this month connotes eight years of being an "online diarist". I've literally been blogging since before blogging was blogging. nearly a decade (I'm rounding, here,) of leaving a trail of brain breadcrumbs, sharing fanciful musings, candid confessions and a surplus stockpile of weird cat photos with the world wide internet. in all this time I don't think I've ever blogged about blogging, and it's a topic worthy of a bit of dissection. my "blogs" (in their many incarnations) have been reliably rewarding and inspiring, and I've met some incredible people and experienced events that I may never have otherwise that deftly usurp the stranger-than-fiction cake, but it's also gotten me into some hot water over the years. blogging, my bitch goddess, as she giveth and taketh. am I crazy for putting so much of myself out there? or are people crazy for reading it?

as I've taken up blogging again on the regular recently, I've found myself faced with a question: how personal is too personal? at the onset of junior college, I had a site that was relatively popular with a regular and loyal 'readership', and it was mostly based upon my adventures in chemotherapy, the shit show of ptsd that followed, and my life readjusting to normalcy (relative term) and doing all of that gut wrenching, teenager pupa to young adult caterpillar metamorphosis just a few leaps behind all of my peers. I've never been one to censor myself, and at the time I wrote about people in my day to day life often, sharing our interactions form the mundane coffee shop sitting with cheap acoustic guitars, to the twisted webs of love and romance in our little population 4k town. I was never cruel, and any catty undertones were likely sarcasm, but I found out just how powerful a little misinterpretation could be when I told one of my close girlfriends about my diary where my pen name was "blondefox". [disclaimer: before you ridicule, please take a moment and recall what your screen name was when you were 15. it was probably sublime lyrics. or something including the words "babe", "vixen", "gurl" and/or the number "69".]


the artist formerly known as "blondefox", working the register at tower records

this supposed friend, one of many in a clique of sonoma kids, decided that she didn't like the idea of me writing about our lives, and perhaps, just didn't like me, and she sent out a massive email forward on aol to everyone in our school, and then for good measure, some of my coworkers. despite that more than half of names were changed to protect the innocent and guilty alike, it was fairly obvious to distinguish that there weren't more than one of jake's russian girlfriend's running around town and that my vegan coworker with a flatulence problem wasn't actually named "alexis". some people reacted angrily and felt like their privacy had been violated, and others wrote me and said they enjoyed the documentation of our little army of small town bon vivants. unfortunately, there were several more in the former category, and the blondefox chronicles ended up squashing a promising budding relationship like a cupcake under an army tank due to inability to dispel the spurious nasty rumors that were ruthlessly spread by the parties who would have rather I'd taken the Anais route and waited until we were all dead for me to publish what went on behind closed bathroom doors at co-op parties. I was shunned by people that I had hung out with every day for years, and the vegan girl at work was dropping bombs behind the counter double time. I'd already decided it was worth it to have came, saw, and blogged in the end, and it was part of the reason I decided to move to san francisco instead of berkeley with my sonoman friends, but it ultimately killed my site.

that year, I went back to paper journaling, which I've found to be more cathartic in certain ways, but at this juncture in my life I only really write non-fiction and I feel like blogging has been a great outlet for sharing my stories and also keeping in touch with my west coast friends. I've even been telling some folks in my new york life about a place to find some of my writings online, and I had something happen to me that has never happened before. a charming young man with a fantastic hat, let's call him Uzi VonBorfewitzovich, wandered into my restaurant after a softball game and sat at the bar chatting with aaron and I for a spell, and we somehow got to shooting the shit about being a nerd and embracing one's geekitude. I figured, hell, what better time to tell him (someone with sketch comedy and nerd experience) about my blog, to get some feedback and exchange some ideas. the next time I heard from him, he said if we were going to hang out, I'd have to sign a non-disclosure agreement or something. I laughed, thinking he was making a funny, and then he said, "no, I really don't want to be in your blog. seriously."

now, uzi, if you're reading this, I'm sorry. but I feel I need the point of reference, and I was really taken aback that someone would balk at getting to know me better because of being concerned that bits and pieces of our exchanges would end up on this silly little blog thing that hardly anyone reads, as it is. it's not like I'm trading stock tips, here. I haven't exposed any torrid affairs since I last had one. but it makes me wonder... should I shut my blog trap? should I just blog about other things to keep all of my personal affairs personally mine? I don't watch any reality TV, so I couldn't do celebrity gossip. I don't like sports unless I am close enough to the field to see the baseball butts (and there'd better be garlic fries involved). I am good at weaving a word tapestry of adventures; they just so happen to be mine. maybe they belong to you, too? but where did all of that ownership really get defined, anyway?

something to ponder. thanks uzi. this'll be your last appearance in blogalogadingdong.

the secret world of sweaty broads

this is a sign outside a church on monitor street.

surviving new york city as a thoroughbred californian can be daunting, but most of the time I'm fairly calm about it while doing my best to mask how baffled I am. yesterday night jen came over and I offered to cook for her using the kitchen of my neighbor for whom I am catsitting rufus' new girlfriend, LK. (short for Little Kitty. don't look at me. I didn't name her.) I was completely jazzed at the opportunity to bust out my culinary prowess that often goes to waste as there's no kitchen in my basement studio, just a sink and a hot plate that can fry up a mean runny egg in a pinch.

I went upstairs with my produce to set up a little spread before jen biked over, and when I opened the door I was hit with a wall of heat, and the pungent smell of stale, nuked cat food. the apartment felt as if beelzebub had shown up for supper sans invitation. LK looked at me expectantly and then at the inedible pile of warm chicken 'n liver bits in her bowl and I obligingly opened a new can while holding my breath. I wouldn't even have to turn on the broiler to cook the damn salmon. it was well over 100 degrees in the kitchen already, so I decided it was time to finally bite the bullet and purchase myself a nice, practical oscillating fan. I huffed and puffed to the ABC dollar store by the train station and picked up their deluxe model for $28.99 (dollar my ass.) and jen and I lugged it back to home base. as it turned out, the fan made it just bearable to be in alex's apartment that I dubbed "the seventh level of hell", and ten minutes into its maiden ventilation, the engine burned out beyond any shadow of hope for repair. the broiler was on and the fish only halfway cooked. jen took off her pants and I pinned up my hair and we couldn't tell if we were getting drunk off of crane lake chardonnay or having a double heat stroke in our underwear.

as we were eating our delicious salmon, mother nature decided to spice up her already miserable feat of a climate by throwing a lightning storm into the mix. I watched out the window as the jagged white bolts slashed through the post-sunset sky over the BQE as the cats ran around pell mell, knocking anything over that wasn't bolted down. jen was totally unfazed having grown up in florida, but I was having a bonafide california attack. I was as freaked out as the felines when the sheets of rain started to fall and the booming thunder shook the walls. on the way out later to meet up with kimi, I caught my reflection and saw that my chest had broken out in a heat rash. cute. turns out that's not something that happens only in kenyan jungles.

today, I've decided to hide out in the cave for as long as I can and avoid having any other unfavorable reactions to the weather, like melting into a puddle of shimmery goo like alex mack. I'm going to start living solely off of popsicles and emergen-c packets and research bargain airfares to alaska. it's starting to look as if I were ever stranded on a desert island that I shouldn't even try to survive while awaiting rescue, and that I should just employ the nearest cliff as a jumping point. I'm a wuss. I'm also willing to compensate a willing party to fan me with palm fronds and feed me frozen seedless grapes with free giggles and ha-ha's and access to my closet. not a bad deal?

croc tears for the silver screen

today's writing topic, via the modern sophist: stupid movies that make you cry.

when I was a kid my texan born and raised father would often reference a cold woman by quoting a confederate railroad song that went, "she never cried when old yeller died, and I ain't gonna cry when she's gone". now, I never saw old yeller, but it's likely that I skipped that cinematic experience out of fear that I wouldn't be emotionally affected in any sorrowful manner and be judged accordingly. I've never been a dog person.

I suppose it goes without saying that I don't particularly enjoy crying. as far as proper releases go, I much prefer a satisfying sneeze, a toe curling orgasm, or an aromatherapeutic bath with tea light candles and enya 'til I prune. I don't wear waterproof mascara, and I'm not particularly comfortable with anyone (acquaintance or close friend alike) seeing me in a blubbery state. I usually will not allow myself to shed a tear at any movie stupid or otherwise if I'm watching it with someone else. I think the last time I cried watching a movie with someone was during a bette midler flick (and no, it was not Beaches) when zoe starting laughing hysterically as we collectively realized at the same moment that I am doomed to end up exactly like her character in the remake of The Women, where she plays a platinum blonde, flamboyant LA agent in velour juicy sweats who is smuggling pot into an ashram retreat and very vocally damning mother nature and refusing to participate in the yoga classes.

there is one that gets me without fail, though. every time I am channel surfing and see that armageddon is on, I'm inevitably unable to tear my attention away, and every time, I weep like a little newborn bitch when bruce willis saves the world. that scene where he's struggling through the apocalyptic space storm and aerosmith fires up their 1998 power ballad magic and liv tyler is back on earth watching her dad as he's about to detonate the bomb and screams, "daddy, noooooooooooo!". COME ON. tell me the glands in your eyeballs aren't swelling uncontrollably just thinking about it. bruce willis is my old yeller.

"it takes a big man to cry, but it takes a bigger man to laugh at that man."
-jack handy

time of my life

I can haz it.

picture by the lovely cassandra wages.

milking it for free

this is a slightly belated response to my dear friend Thomas’s blog, “A Respectful Breast-Man”.

some say the universal language is love. some might argue that it is, indeed french. au contraire. the truth of the matter is that only breasts are of ubiquitous appeal.

thomas published a musing on his website about whether it was possible to respectfully (for all intensive purposes) ogle a nice pair of dirty pillows, and found himself bearing the brunt of the rage of 700 feminists. and to this, girls, I ask you, what's the big deal?

this is a photo of lindsay and I on valentine's day, completely unstaged. had a good guffaw upon uploading later.

I am not of modest mammary proportions. I wear a 36DD, and once spend a summer vacationing in 36E with the aid of having a nuvaring up in my proverbial "piece". my then-boyfriend certainly enjoyed that I ranneth over, but I found that E cup breasts were problematic in almost every sense, seeing as you have to go to specialty stores to buy lacy slings with which to strap them in, no article of clothing that goes on the top half of your body fits quite right, and people (mostly straight males) physically can't not look at them. it's a knee jerk eye impulse. large boobs are akin to kryptonite, and the world is their superman. I catch girls staring at my chest, straight and queer alike. honestly, most of the time, I don't mind.

while it's fair to argue that they are mine and no one else's to objectify or appreciate, it's also true that they're going to be located directly under my chin for the rest of my life and there's not a burlap sack on the planet that could conceal their sheer stupendousness. let's not beat around the breast: I have an amazing rack. I don't mind every once in a while if a friend (regardless of gender) every once in a while bestows an extended gaze upon my bosoms, or compliments my decolletage. my bodega guy gives them a nod of recognition from time to time. these instances do not bother me.

what does on occasion bother me is when someone is staring at them in a manner that befits rubbernecking a freeway pileup. the casual, respectful breast man glance isn't offensive to me. fixedly gawking makes me uncomfortable and at times I'll just come out and tell the visual assailant to get their eyes where I can see them. it comes with the territory of possessing such herculean wopbopaloobops.

thomas is not a "douche-bag", he is a breast man. take it from a pair of magnificent knockers who have known and adored him for upwards of 6 years. this man is not a crook for stealing tastefully timed glances:



ladies, handle yo tits. the plight of the gawked at boobs is age old. best just to embrace it, and melt into it's comforting, cushioned splendor.

where everybody knows your name

yesterday night after I finished my last entry I went to a bar with my friend jen that is widely known in the neighborhood for being a shameless meat market for hopeful singles and lusty lotharios alike. it’s two-fer tuesdays at matchless, where you get a token for a free drink every time you buy one, and as it turns out when your mainly attracted audience is sweaty, horny, and broke tecate enthusiasts, you get a lot of people that come in alone and leave with a new friend or in rarer cases, two. and you can always depend on waking up with a hangover.

my reasons for visiting matchless were of a more innocent variety, though I can’t say that two-fer tuesdays isn’t a trusty barrel for the lascivious shooting of williamsburg hipster fish. but I had leftover drink tokens, and staying home and going to sleep like a normal person didn’t do me a lick of good the night before.

the smoking patio was completely packed, but instead of pheromones and well whiskey, the air smelled heavily of B.O. and desperation. I’d go so far as to say 97% of the two-fer goers could easily fall under the “busted” category, the dregs of summer lovin’, that last sip of the communal 40 oz. that you can only respect yourself after drinking if you’re browned out. To paint an accurate picture of how crowded the yard was, trying to navigate my way back to the bathroom to pee was akin to starting a mosh pit at a cat power show. when I was in the doorway a guy carrying a full pint glass was nudged by someone else and dumped it in its entirety down the front of my freshly washed, fabric softened dress and then proceeded to yell at me and tell me to “watch where I’m going”. I flipped a token at his feet and told him to shut up.

when I returned (disgruntled and drenched in beer) with my next round a new dude had joined our little circle in the corner and my fancy was unexpectedly tickled. the newcomer was tall-ish, dark hair, soulful brown eyes, broad shoulders, and from what I could tell after 5 minutes of banter, cocky, witty and new york to the bone. I announced that I wasn’t really digging the matchless scene and that I was going to hit up enid’s across the street if anyone cared to join me for a beer and mystery man (peter, as it were) and priscilla agreed that it was a much better prospect for not catching an airborne std and also having a conversation. the chat at enid's was warm, breezy, and wildly inappropriate, some belly laughs were had and beer consumed, and pris left to meet up with some friends on bedford. peter and I kissed for a second over a table and I knew that I had a call to make based upon ardent desire: a fuck and run notch for the bedpost, or invite him over for a glass of charles shaw chardonnay and some making out with pre-determined ground rules.

I went with the chaste decision. (mom, if you ever read this… read I bang the worst dudes before you judge me.) he was game for it. we ended up engaged in an extreme 3 hour makeout session that left his back looking like he’d been attacked by a wolverine, and gave me an epic beard burn and a mild bloody nose. when we were curling up to fall asleep he asked me if he could take me on a date the next day, and I agreed that would be nice. of course, in the morning, we never made it out of bed. another 5 hours of alternately sucking face like teenagers and engaging in a lively "getting to know you" tête-à-tête. it was actually agreed upon as one of the best first dates we'd ever had. we shared a strawberry kiwi capri sun and played with each other’s hair. argued about whether or not The Wire is a “dude show” and why the L word should be. mock pillow fights. it was criminally cute.

at 4 he regrettably re-robed and got ready to go play softball in jersey. he asked me for my phone number, and when he programmed it in he held up the screen of his blackberry and inquired, “is this how you spell it?”

The screen said “MELISSA”.

I burst out laughing. his face contorted with anxiety.

“my name is spelled C-H-R-I-S-T-I-N-A. but, close.” I said. “best first date ever.”

a million little pieces

I’ve been up for almost 30 hours save for the 20 minute cat nap I managed to squeeze in before my itunes skipped over my library of ryan adams and started blaring a santogold remix right as I drifted off. oh well. It wasn’t until I got home from a really darling miniature thai food dinner party that things got hairy and I embarked upon a less than fantastic voyage of sleeplessness. at a thrift store yesterday I happened across a book called “written on the body”, and though the cheesy erotic clip art on the cover originally deterred me, I knew I’d heard of it somewhere before. reading the flap, I realized that jorge had recommend that I read it many years ago. all I’d known of the plot was that it was a love story written from the point of view of a protagonist of unspecific gender. that sounded intriguing… worth a buck, at least, so I picked it up along with an e.e. cummings anthology and made for the register.

It was exciting in a way to have snatched back a little fleeting memory of us that was for all intensive purposes lost; it was a second chance at taking his advice, which was always top notch, that I’ll never be on the receiving end of again. maybe it wasn’t a sign, but perhaps just a small something that could be comforting, make it easier to pretend that he’s floating on foam pool noodles in the tropics instead of six feet under in florida. I deemed it my bedtime reading material and curled up in bed with rufus and started in on it, to discover that it bore more eerie similarities to Jorge and I’s doomed relationship than I was comfortable with, and stirred up some really unpleasant emotions that I have bottled up and shoved in the recesses of my psyche to save for when I can afford therapy for a REASON. It was like a brilliantly written british literary gumbo of true love, infidelity, cancer, death, terrible timing and abandonment. and I couldn’t put it down. so I read it cover to cover, and then laid staring at the wall until dawn with a tornado of hurt and confusion in my head, went to get coffee at 7:30 and spent the afternoon walking around manhattan in a daze. I couldn’t have just picked up “goodnight moon” or “authentic ethiopian cooking”? I had to pick the footlong dildo of mindfuck reading material and go to browntown with no lube?

here is an excerpt:

“’You’ll get over it…’ It’s the clichés that cause the trouble. To lose someone you love is to alter your life for ever. You don’t get over it because ‘it’ is the person you loved. The pain stops, there are new people, but the gap never closes. How could it? The particularness of someone who mattered enough to grieve over is not made anodyne by death. This hole in my heart is in the shape of you and no-one else can fit it. Why would I want them to?

I’ve thought a lot about death recently, the finality of it, the argument ending mid-air. One of us hadn’t finished, why did the other one go? And why without warning? Even death after long illness is without warning. The moment you had prepared for so carefully took you by storm. The troops broke through the window, snatched the body and the body is gone. The day before the Wednesday last, this time a year ago, you were here, and now you’re not. Why not? Death reduces us to the baffled logic of a small child. If yesterday than why not today? And where are you?

Fragile creatures of a small blue planet, surrounded by light years of silent space. Do the dead find peace beyond the rattle of the world? What peace is there for us whose best love cannot return them even for a day? I raise my head to the door and think I will see you in the frame. I know it is your voice in the corridor but when I run outside the corridor is empty. There is nothing I can do that will make any difference. The last word was yours.

The fluttering in my stomach goes away and the dull waking pain. Sometimes I think of you and feel giddy. Memory makes me lightheaded, drunk on champagne. All the things we did. And if anyone had said that this was the price I would have agreed to pay it. That surprises me; that with the hurt and the mess comes a shaft of recognition. It was worth it. Love is worth it.”

-Jeanette Winterson

I don’t have much more to offer on this right now (largely due to being braindead until I get some rest), other than I highly recommend that you pick up a copy of the book. it probably will not give you a nervous breakdown-lite, and there is some really unique prose between its covers. every time I think that I’m “over it”, there’s always something there to remind me otherwise. hope you’re resting peacefully, Jorge. thanks for the free membership to the book club beyond the grave. I’d like to see oprah top that shit.


“Written on the body is a secret code only visible in certain lights; the accumulations of a lifetime gather there. In places the palimpsest is so heavily worked that the letters feel like Braille. I like to keep my body rolled up away from prying eyes. Never unfold too much, tell the whole story. I didn’t know that Louise would have reading hands. She has translated me into her own book.”