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.”

flying by the seat of my whimsy-pants

I'm going to try and give this blog CPR this week. bust out that binaca and get ready to make out, internet!

here's an excerpt of a letter to b:

my trip back to the bay was short and sweet, but also made it evident that I'm mentally detached from sf in a pretty official sense. things in new york are magnificently and unbelievably lonely at times, but the frenetic energy of the city and the golden rat race that everyone is a participant in (willing or not) lends it a unique charm. it truly is the mecca. and the other day I stepped in dog shit on ludlow in the lower east side and when I looked up alan cumming was chuckling at me. where else could you poo your shoe in front of boris grishenko?

this newfound clarity hasn't come without a smattering of strifes, and the past 5 months were more of a growing charlie horse rather than just your average pain. there was nary a psychic banana to ease my mental cramps to be found anywhere, high or low. my parents might call the past five years 'directionless', but I read this article the other day that detailed a newly identified common life phase that I'm fairly sure I'm in the throes of. it's called "odyssey", the decade of wandering that frequently occurs between adolescence and adulthood, where a "young adult" transitions in and out of school, cities, relationships and the like.

if the odyssey years are to be considered legit, then consider me to feel a hell of a lot better about my intemperate emotional flailing and hesitance to commit to anything, be it higher education, a person, a hair color, a brand of cola, etc. I suppose just the word "odyssey" resonates, as well, because I really look at my Big Picture as a grand experiment, a voyage, an epic that I write as I go. odysseys don't always go smoothly, they don't guarantee an ideal storybook ending, in fact the most famous one, ithaca is at peace in the conclusion, but not without some shit getting SERIOUSLY fucked up. so, maybe new york is my troy, and I've rolled myself in via a giant virgin america metal bird, and the war I wage is really one of personal growth and a righteous quest to find the best slice of pizza in all of the 5 boroughs. yes, odyssey is so much better than "quarter life crisis".

odyssey years: legit... or just a nice way to call someone a fuck up?

also, julia davis:

hearts they race

I'm overloading.

uh, is this thing on?

tap tap. bink bink?

so, I've been neglectful of ye olde blogalogadingdong... and every time I've thought to write an entry to announce an official hiatus, I've thought twice. there's absolutely everything to write about. each time I leave my apartment, I see the manhattan skyline, and I can not believe how lucky and brave I have been in the past month. I'm already toughened up... the other day I was walking to the train from work at 2 or 3 in the morning and when a bum asked me for a cigarette I immediately responded by barking, "go fuck yourself!" and got half a block away before even thinking twice to marvel at my finely attuned assholery.

this blog isn't on the chopping block just yet, but I am enjoying making my life slightly more private for the time being. perhaps a sort of a larvae-to-butterfly, thing. actually, the word larvae disturbs me on a fundamental level. "2nd puberty" isn't much better. suffice to say, all of this change has me love drunk on her lady humps and I'm raring to go for spring.

I'm going to consider posting up some paper journal entries in the few. even if only one, the planned parenthood brooklyn adventure was pretty fucking priceless. health insurance? pft. whatever. who needs it.