We've nearly reached the end of January, and I was wondering...how's that New Year's Eve resolution working out for you? Still not smoking? Drinking? Gambling? Cheating on your spouse? Did you volunteer for that charity yet? Chip away at your credit card debt? Have you cut down on the porn? Lost the first five of that ___ pounds? Have you started eating healthier, reconnected with that estranged family member, got a new job, taken up yoga?

Thought so.

Oh, precioussss mail, yes.

I feel I owe an explanation to our mail carrier who was forced to go above and beyond to deliver a package to us yesterday. I really appreciate you going through all that, I do. But I was just too ugly to answer the door.

I heard the bell ring, and I know you saw me peek my nose through the curtains to see who it was. I also know the only reason you ever ring the bell is when you have something --a package perhaps-- that's too big to fit in the mailbox. And since you are a conscientious trained professional it is your habit to deliver such items personally, or at least leave them in the lock protected, inner hall. Believe me, I had every intention to aid you in that endeavor, I even started walking toward the apartment door to do so. The problem was that I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror on the way.

You're a young woman, and very beautiful if I may say so (not sucking up, I swear)...and you work outdoors. And like me, your skin and hair must be suffering from the effects of this brutally cold weather. I pray not to extent of mine. In my case, the chapping of my lips has spread to my entire face, I even joke about it at work, when someone complains of chapped lips I say "Well I have chapped face" and they all laugh --you can ask them. But the joke ended two days ago when my overly dry and flaky skin began to shed in large, measurable strips; revealing raw, red skin and a wealth of acne that had previously resided underneath the top layer of my epidermis. As you may predict, a catch-22 emerged. I mean, I can't put acne medicine on already painfully dry, flaking skin. And I can't put heavy, petroleum based products on either as they would irritate the acne. My only solution is to wait it out, use a mild soap and water-based moisturizer, and dot this crazy hot-pink calamine-looking acne lotion on each individual pimple with a Q-tip. A painstaking task, let me tell you. One which, when viewed, gives one the impression I had put my head in a mosquito nest, then rolled it in poison oak, and then sat under a sun lamp for twenty hours in an attempt to burn off the rash covered bites. Not a pretty sight. Frightening in fact, potentially dangerous even, if you happen to have a heart condition or something.

So I'm sorry. I heard the bell, and I knew that you knew I was home. But instead of leaving an attempted delivery slip and walking away, you continued to ring bells until you found someone to let you in. I knew you knew I was cowering behind the door, one pink dotted cheek pressed against the peep-hole as you, so politely, so delicately, tapped upon it and said, "It's only the mail. I have a package for you." I knew you could smell my fear and shame when you whispered, "I'll just leave it here for you, okay?" giving me my dignity and a heads-up to retrieve it when you left. I hope you can forgive me and understand my position. It was for your own good.

I only voted for Nader cuz I thought the ballot said Nardwuar.

An excerpt from my morning shower fantasy interview of John Kerry, by Nardwuar The Human Serviette:

"So Presidential hopeful Mr. John Kerry...your domestic policy sounds okay, but what is your plan to help all the suffering, jobless, and often verbally abused Michael Jackson Impersonators? Do you have a plan to help them Presidential Hopeful Mr. John Kerry? Do you? Do you?"

A lateral move is a move nonetheless

If you read the last post, or this one, or this one, it’ll come as no big shock that G and I can't tolerate our landlord anymore, we have to move. We are not pleased about this, however necessary it may be. Apartment hunting sucks anywhere, but apartment hunting in New York is its own level of hell, a half floor a’la Being John Malkovitch, wedged between Malebolge and Cocytus. (A little preview for the Dante’s Inferno test.)

So yeah, we’ve gotta get out of here. Now having made that decision we fall to sleep at night --when we can, when the constant water leaks don’t drown out the wife-beating bastard downstairs screaming in Polish and breaking the china, or the kids upstairs all night house party that spills into the hallway-- and have sweet dreams of the mythical “Deal”. In the dreams we are secure that with enough time and patience, we’ll just stumble across what is our right and destiny: A huge, well-maintained, pre-war, true two bedroom first floor apartment (or loft) with sole garden access. A massive open floor plan and working fireplace, fully renovated eat-in kitchen, and original tile bath (replete with a claw-foot tub and an endless supply of hot water). Huge windows that spill daylight onto the hand crafted, built in, wall-to-wall bookshelves in the living room, the ones the previous tenants agreed to leave behind as long as we “promise to take good care of them.” Marvelous neighbors who are artistic and liberal and worldly and musical, and quiet as a tomb from nine pm to nine am, who would form a waiting list to see who gets to watch our dog when we go out of town, because they all love her that much. A building with a live-in, on call super --a woman-- who would use her crazy chick intuition to do repairs preemptively. It would be on a tree-lined street, in the Village or something. It would be under a thousand dollars. Rent stabilized. Forever.

Ahhhhhh. Let’s just soak in that make-believe claw foot for a bit, hmmm?

Ahem… anyway, if you know of anything, love your hoody, your landlord, know your asshole neighbor’s lease is up and would like to exchange them for two sane, delightful people and one perfect dog…give us a shout, m’kay? We are not above giving monetary compensation or sexual favors for good leads.*

*not kidding about the money, however the sex would be with my ugly cousin.

Cozy, breezy, three bedroom in prime Williamsburg location!

There's nothing like a houseguest to give you perspective on how you live. Like how our last visitor, G’s mom, brought to our attention we live in a shit hole. Granted it's a much nicer shit hole than two years ago --when I came on the scene with my paint and power tools, softy girlie fabric items and mad spatial reasoning— you know, now it’s not the worst place I’ve seen in New York. But subjectively? Through the eyes of an outsider? It’s a tiny awful shit hole crumbling away around us in spite of our ongoing cosmetic cover-ups. A fact we would have gone on denying, happily, had her presence not forced reality upon us.

The truth of our domestic crapitude began to reveal itself the moment she walked in the door. As she set her bags down in the front room, our living room slash guest room, I had to apologize for the lack of heat there, explain that the windows have half inch gaps around them (hence the indoor ice) and that we can't open up the radiator because the valve is cracked and shoots water two feet up the wall. More instructions and apologies were made as she continued through the apartment, each illuminating how essentially everything in our place has a warning or guideline attached to it.

When she went to wash up I had to explain why we have to keep a towel wedged between the sink and wall (to catch the leak from the faucet that’s rotting the floor). Then there's the shower that gets colder incrementally as you bathe, or shuts off completely without warning. And how --when we do have hot water at all-- it’s boiling, so to be careful of getting third-degree burns. The pots on the kitchen floor are to catch the leak we've been complaining about for over a year, they need to be emptied each morning and evening. You must stand squarely on the board in front of the kitchen sink or you'll wind up in the basement, and you must empty the bucket under the sink into the toilet each time you use it; because, you know, the sink just empties into a bucket. Everything in the cupboard needs to be pushed over to the left so that the pipe in there doesn't drip black ooze onto the dishes and food. That, and the roaches and mice, are why everything must be kept in gallon ziplock bags and the dishes rinsed before each use. A pull down and kick maneuver is the way to open the bathroom door, yell if you get stuck. And you have to slam, no really SLAM the back door to get it to close, mind the falling debris as a result. Earplugs help to block out the noise from the street (a major garbage trucking route), the Spanish Hip-Hop loving drug dealers upstairs, and the couple across the hall who insist on listening to the same fucking Coldplay album over and over everyday. And don't touch that thing there, ever. Really. You don't want to know. Any questions?

Luckily G's mom is a trooper and adventurer, a woman who jumps out of airplanes and swims with sharks, literally, so a little inconvenience wasn't going to ruffle her tough-ass Texan feathers. She didn’t complain about the place once, even when the damage list became so long she had to write it down (empty buckets twice/day, check, hold toilet handle, check, kick door, check…)

The official end of shit-hole-denial came one night while playing Scrabble in the kitchen. We sat underneath the steady downpour from the ceiling, made jokes about our 'fancy indoor feng shui waterfall' as we put towels in the pots so the brown water wouldn't splash into our drinks or onto the game board. We talked about the 'free concert' we were getting from the apartment upstairs, and how the ceaseless screaming coming from the children on the third floor gave the place a Norman Rockwell style 'family' air. G's mom was even making the best of the third degree burns she suffered from doing the dishes earlier that day, said the scorched skin was keeping her hands warm. We weren't going to let anything ruin our good time, and it didn't, until G’s mom nonchalantly said, "I think the ceiling is moving." We all looked up at the moment a four by four foot chunk of rotted plaster broke loose and fell to the floor. It hit the ground, smashed to bits, and sent wet white powder to every corner of the room. It missed our heads by inches.

You know how there's the rule that one should never say “It can’t get any worse” because you will have assured that it will? Yeah, listen to that rule. After we had cleaned up the mess, I stepped back in a corner to have a smoke and survey the damage. I took in the gaping, still dripping ceiling, the rotted lathing, took a drag, and said “Well, it doesn’t look like it will get any worse” just as my bare foot went through a hole in the rotting floor.

What was YOUR reaction to Bush's speech?

I know most people don't mean it literally when they say they were made so angry or frustrated by something that they pulled out their hair.

Well I ain't most people.

Why I say "nothing" when you ask "What are you thinking about?"

Internal dialogue, laundry day:

Why do I hate my green pants? Why is it that every time I wear my green pants I spill something on them, or lean against a wall clearly marked "wet paint", or get my period four days early and bloody them up, why does something happen literally every single time I put them on? They're ruined, can't be worn out of the house now (for obvious reasons). Why did I have it in for them? I mean, if all recurrent events are self-determined, why did I choose to sabotage a pair of perfectly good pants? And they were the 'good booty' pants too, made the booty look all just so. Maybe that's it. Maybe I'm reacting to an inner need to be free from physical judgment by the patriarchy. Maybe by destroying my pants I'm symbolically destroying the chains that bind me to sexual scrutiny, maybe, subconsciously, I don't WANT any random fucker to consider what my ass looks like in the green pants. Too bad, I love these pants. And what is wrong with this bra? What the hell is with these yellow stains? I know they say it's deodorant that makes the stains, not your sweat, but Jesus...it looks like I've been soaking the armpits in coffee. That can't be right, I must be sick. Maybe I have some disease that makes you sweat brown. Lupus. Cancer. I have cancerous sweat. Wait...where'd these socks come from? These aren't my socks.

I'll be getting that unlisted number...

Law of averages, chaos theory, kismet --however you may explain it-- it still blows my mind when you casually bump into someone from your past in the streets of New York. I always think about the 8 million people and 8 zillion possibilities, all the split seconds that had to come together to put myself and (whomever) in the same spot simultaneously. Sometimes for kicks I try to pinpoint the specific occurrence that put me in, or on, the other person's path; track backward for the event that would support chaos vs. fate, find the butterfly flapping its wings if you will. You know, like, If my shoelace hadn't become untied I wouldn't have stopped to tie it, which put me a few seconds behind where I would have been on the sidewalk, which made it so I missed instead of made the light at the crosswalk, which put me in the path of a guy walking with a guitar, which reminded me I need guitar strings, which sent me on a detour to the music store where I ran into my first grade music teacher here on vacation. That kind of thing.

So after having pinpointed this particular fateful morning's butterfly, I'd like to give a big shout out to the MTA who stranded a train-load of us underground at the Bedford stop this morning, which made me fifteen minutes late for my transfer, and as it happened, on the platform just in time to bump into my psychotic, abusive ex-boyfriend, the one who had given up stalking me due to his belief I had moved out of town.

Now he knows I'm living in New York. Thanks for clearing that up for him, MTA.

Culture Shock

I think an extended trip back home for the holidays is a most delightful thing, filled with invaluable lessons. Some arrive through the compounding daily reminders of exactly why you fled in the first place, and others just confirm you made the right decision by choosing a blissfully long-distance path. Not to mention the scientific value of seeing the Stockholm Syndrome in action, or the chance to figure out why Uncle Steve gives you that conspiratorial wink and a hundred dollar check every year. Pure Gold.

G joined me on the holiday journey this year, with full knowledge of the sadistic pleasure I get from introducing people to my family. My agenda is admittedly selfish, it's all about vindication. The moment when whomever I expose to the fold turns to me and says, "I'm so sorry, those stories... I thought you were exaggerating." Like Christmas Eve --after I had warned G how my father's side of the family has a way of making me feel like an outsider, the immutable result of a teen pregnancy, a mistake they couldn't sweep under the carpet-- my aunt asked everyone to line up against the mantle for a current family portrait, and then shuffled me out of line, handed me a camera and said, "Be a dear and take the picture for us, hmmmm?" Now imagine about five people treating you similarly, all the while chastising you for feeling it necessary to move four hundred miles away.

Being at Mom's is another brand of sadness and isolation. That bunch includes the impoverished, drunk, and desperate, or a combination of such, each with artistic mentalities and lefty leanings out-of-place in their small town; a place so full of economic and intellectual despair, it makes Flint Michigan look like Paris in 20's. My family is one thing, but I don't think G fully understood how far we had travelled from (what we've come to know as) civilization until Christmas morning. We woke to discover we needed a few things for breakfast and dinner, milk and such, so G volunteered to 'run up to the store'. Mom sniggered, I grabbed my shoes, and T (Mom's boyfriend) started to write down directions to a truck stop on a highway twenty miles away. "They'll be open I bet." he said. "If not, you'll have to drive a ways." A half hour later we arrived at something called the Pit Stop!, who was doing a booming business being the only store open in a fifty mile radius --in itself an absurd notion to a couple who have a Korean-owned grocery on the corner that stays open come sleet, rain, snow, heat, cold, wind, holidays of every faith, terrorist attacks, two-day blackouts, and frequent armed robberies. "I'll run in." I said. "Want anything?"

"Yeah, grab a Times while you're in there, we'll do the puzzle over breakfast." I laughed, assuming he was kidding. He wasn't. "What?" he said, confused. "No breakfast puzzle?"

"Look around honey..." To say we were conspicuous would be an understatement; we were the only sedan in a sea of Ford F250 trucks, and the only vehicle that didn't have a NASCAR emblem, a pissing Calvin sticker, and confederate flag displayed somewhere on the chassis. The only people who weren't wearing Carhart flannel-lined overalls and a foam-front hat. The sole two without a hunting license pinned to their coat, a shotgun in the gun rack, and who were not carrying an armload of the $5.99 special on twelve packs of Old Milwaukee's Best. "They're not going to sell the Times here, babe." I said apologetically.

"Really?" he asked, still in disbelief.

"Trust me."

Funny how even the shortest stint into the hinterlands reminds you how living on this island of misfit toys shapes your reality. Life here, as fucked up as it may be, has become the only thing that makes sense. I guess as a poor person I just get along better with urban poor people vs. the rural impoverished. When I emerge from the tunnel into the noise and filth and commotion, resume my wretched refuse status, rejoin the free-breathing huddled masses, I just feel better. My shoulders drop, a physical "Ahhhhh" passes through me. Antithetically, when I'm in my mother's small, safe, quiet little town I spend most of my time on edge, unable to stop darting my eyes around nervously; like the only black guy at a Charlie Daniel's concert.

G and I made it back to the city just in time for code orange and the influx of a million extra holiday revelers. The good news is nothing trumps a High Terror Alert as an excuse to enjoy a night in, alone, stay away from said revelers and all the other New Years Eve hoopla we dread as a rule. So you see, we didn't lay around last night watching movies and eating our weight in crudite because we didn't want to go out, it was the Terror Alert...you can't be too careful.

Anyway, it's good to be home.