TWENTY TWENTY HINDSIGHT

This might not make any sense if we don’t share alleles, but I was at a family reunion last weekend and my grandmother commissioned me to write this, though I would have anyway.

———-
My family reunion is not like your family reunion.  It’s not an afternoon at a park where people wear name tags and talk genealogy.  There’s no mini golf or badminton.  If there are introductions, it is not to a distant cousin but to an aunt or a brother no one has seen in decades; to a grown nephew who sees more of himself in this family, his blood family, than in the one that raised him; to a quiet infant, content to chew her fist and watch these people who share her DNA , who will influence the course of her life through their presence or their absence.

This is not an annual event, nor semi-annual, nor even inevitable.  The last time my aunts and uncles were in the same room was exactly thirty-five years ago, the day my parents wed.  If we were your family, we might take out photo albums and talk abut how young everyone looked, about the fashions that have gone out of style and come back and faded again, about all that has changed.  But because we are not your family, because we are my family, no one remembered to bring a camera to that wedding thirty-five years ago.  The only surviving artifacts are one framed Instamatic photo and a drawing crayoned by the mother of the bride, the cartoon wedding cake the same size as her youngest son.  And the marriage.  The marriage survives.

The family has expanded.  There are so many grandchildren and cousins and nieces and nephews and husbands and wives that when I try to count the number of my relatives, moving in my head from the Northeast through the South and the Midwest, I lose track somewhere around Colorado.  The family has gotten smaller as well, through death, yes, but also through a gradual waning.  The missing aunt, the absent uncle, the sons and daughters who don’t call—all have lives and families somewhere else, not so distant in space, yet invisible.  But we are here now, some of us meeting for the first time.

It has been thirty-five years and we are together, full of food and blood and drink and stories.  It starts with a toast to the Pope, who prescribed our existence.  What would this family be if not for the Pope and his rules against contraceptive?  Smaller, surely, easier, quieter, with fewer disability, less tragedy.  But we would also be without the good, the flawed, the beautiful—the brother whose body failed him from the very beginning, but who didn’t complain, not ever, despite the pain and the transplants and the crutches and the wheelchair.  When the siblings rented out their lawn to visitors of the horse racing track down the street, this brother stood outside the nearby cerebral palsy center with free parking and waved drivers into the children’s costly lot, crutches aloft.  This brother exists now in the Atlantic and the Appalachians, in Yankee Stadium and on his sister’s bookshelf and everywhere people live with courage and dignity and humor.

Things have changed these thirty-five years.  The Pope, not just our maker, but their leader, is now their past.  Girls who once walked to school veiled in white, hands in prayer, hail Marys on their lips, left the church long ago, tired following rules imposed by an institution they didn’t trust.  To their children, my generation, the Pope is a just a man in a silly hat and a bulletproof box, the church just a building with pretty windows and closed doors.  Even our octogenarian matriarch—a woman who has settled into a graceful ease while remaining autonomous, a woman who went down South to work for Obama because that is where she needed to be—no longer has the patience for the distant figures who once ruled so much of her life, preferring instead to create her own sense of what is real and what is right.

Like her, the women of this family are strong, and independent, and willing to forgive.  For this one weekend, the sisters don’t hear family news through a conduit, from this sister telling that sister about another’s kids or troubles.  This weekend they tell each other about their lives and tell the rest of us about their past.  We are grown enough not to be shocked by hearing about our mothers smoking marijuana with our grandmother, who first said that she didn’t feel anything and then asked where she could buy a pack.  We are amused and grateful that this is who we come from.

This is our blood and we, the children and grandchildren, need little explanation for the little dramas and larger faults of our family, but you can see that we are exhausting and over-whelming and just plain too much through those who married into this family.  They have their own subtle methods of surviving.  One husband organizes, another rocks his child, another disappears to a makeshift kitchen, away from his wife’s people with our voices endlessly carrying over each other.  These men raised children who are strong and imperfect because they married women who are strong and imperfect, full of conflict and forgiveness.

Everyone is leaving soon, off to our different dots on the map.  If we were your family, we might make tee-shirts or mugs commemorating the occasion, say our goodbyes and promise to call.  We might trust that we will all be in the same room next Christmas or the one after that.  But we are not your family.  We are my family.  And although we may not see each other before there are more or fewer of us—at the next wedding or funeral, after the next divorce or birth—we will see each other again.  We will listen to the old stories and tell new ones and thank both our good luck and the Pope to have been born to this family.

The following messausage is not a joke. I know exactly what 919 is referring to, although I’ve been trying to stay away from infested vagines lately so I think I’ma pass.
———-

The vagina has become infested with ants. Ironically, her womb is filled with tiny antlings. Her legacy is transforming from iPod to insect. You are more than welcome to come bathe her if she is important to you. I’m just not a good enough friend. You can use the downstairs bathroom.

It’s been a long time, butterflies and bay windows. I’ve missed you. Well, I’ve missed the dirty emails (Actually, gross. No more treadmill action shots, please). An explanation for my world wide webular wastyface is forthcoming, but first, let’s talk text messausages…

I get a lot of tomfool text messages, especially as of late, what with the spreading my number over the Internet like KFed spreads seed and all. One stranger recently told me that she drank four shots of vodka at work. Another stranger asked if I would officiate her gay wedding, which I probably would do if said communal bliss wasn’t happening the same weekend of my monthly menstrual hut. I’m currently in two texting relationships that are far more hopscotch than any homo-to-hominid romanicism I’ve had since that thing with the lady cop last summer. Unfortunately, my pillbox only holds 30 texts at once and I deleted a bunch of rubies from 512 Stranger, my most LTR virtual girlfriend, before recording them (many apologies, 512), but below are examples of recent pop rocks:

* Just got a kitten. Thinking of naming her tyra banks. I almost went with Oprah… Obviously she’s black. (828 Stranger)
* I was gonna go to work. Then I puked. Then I realized my kitty is noticeably bigger. And I don’t want to miss her youth. I will be a shitty welfare mom one day. (Also 828 Stranger)
* The unemployed do not have the joy of being surrounded by drawers with such labels as “trachea chopper,” nor do they have the opportunity to order herring sperm from a catalog. By the gallon. For reasons such as these, work can be pleasantly surprising. Or maybe you have these things at home. I don’t know. (812 Stranger)

Fun, right? My unlimited texting plan is getting mad kalistenics and sometimes I get answers to the important questions in life, like, is it ok to break up with someone for using AOL?, or, how about for using the term foodie? Also, how do you know if a dude is gay or if he’s Italian? There are also, natch, the dang-shooky-dirty texts that make me wonder why people don’t understand the concept of good, clean text messausaging fun. Rude.

But the worst t.m., the one that gave me heart palpitations like that time I mixed poppers and ketamine, didn’t come from an anonymous wwwer. No, it came for my very first landlord, a woman who’s house I lived in for my first nine months as a nutrient-leeching pig fetus until rudely being evicted in the parking lot of a Mexican restaraunt: Mazog.

The text? Rding 20/20.

That’s right, wwwers, Mazog read my very public, very Googlable private diary. And although this really shouldn’t be that big a deal—after all, this a woman who told tried to convince my sister to spend a full day on that most democratic of public transit, the Greyhound, by saying, “It’ll be fun. You can pretend you’re poor.” But even though Mazog and Pazog are about as lowdown straightup combo of xx and xy one could want in a landlord, there was a not-so-small pool of urine at my feet when I found out that the innermost secrets of my public internet diary were being read by my MOTHER. I mean, I’m developmentally only 19 years old. I’ve done some really dumb shit; mostly dumb rite of passage shit—getting arrested for skinny dipping in a water trap at the country club, for instance, then getting kicked out of the dorms the following week for making my room into an opium den/speakeasy. Nothing too terrible, but still not the shit I want my xx and xy donors to know about when writing their will. Kids have always lead double lives. The part of you that’s masked from your ma and pa under a sheen of business casual and dinner parties is what makes being human worth singer songwriters and popped collars. I consulted my doctor friend about this (ok, more astrologist than doctor. And more Miss Cleo than friend), and she showed me a scientastic paper about how, back in the pre-Madonna day when life expectancy was about 15, six-year-olds hide their papyrus secrets under stone pillows. True story.

You can imagine how I felt. Exposed. Betrayed. And, mostly, terrified that my patrons/benefactors are going to cut me off the family plan if I don’t get my shit together. I considered retiring 20/20, but I already paid for the domain and the blood bank said my plasma was discount murky so I’m not willing to blow that 80$ hosting bill. Then I considered only posting lists of my good works (Thus far today: getting ranch with my cheese fries even though I’m terrified that the Brit Brit in me comes out merely by saying the words “ranch” and “cheese fries.” Meaning, I laid classism at the feet of french fries. Also, I didn’t call my most hated barista faggot under my breath this morning, despite the fact that he is definitely not Italian.) Instead, I’m going to man up. I’m going let my testes swing under these denim cutoffs. I going keep up this shit. I’m going get Mazog to sign a contract stipulating that if she ever peeps this again, I’m getting Tori Amos’s face tattooed on my neck.

After my first real heart shiver, I went slightly nut nut for a month or two and made some very rash and ill-advised decisions. Actually, it was a lack of decision-making that got me in trouble. I didn’t exactly quit school, I just stopped attending. I didn’t actually quit work, I just stopped working. I didn’t exactly starve myself, I just stopped eating. I was failing out of college and broke and so thin I wore sweatpants under my jeans to keep them up when a belt wouldn’t do.

But I got over it, slowly. It took some conscience ignoring, but I started being proactive about breaking the feelings fever. Meaning, I seduced the dirty bisexual my girlfriend left me for in an effort to drive a stake in their beehive and woo my electric back, which, shockingly, worked. And even though after that there was more color in my cheeks and blood in my veins, I still had a lot of pieces to sew back. I had eaten nothing but dumpstered bagels for three months because I had money enough for booze or for food, and though booze filled both belly and mind, food only filled the stomach hole. I started with miso soup and eventually stopped with the pills and started with the protein. I got a job at a lezzie bookstore/cafe, a shop that, like many locally-owned businesses, had an idyllic vision but treated some of the lesser employees—like, for instance, me—like the rotten yogurt in the back of your fridge that you keep waiting for your roommate will deal with.

Still, things were looking skyward. I were recovering, my girlfriend was forgiving, and I was introduced as the new baby dyke on my first day of work. And that’s when the Biggest Lie I’ve Ever Told: Employment Addition escaped my tooth cage.

About a week after I started working, my mom  called me. My sister was studying in Mexico at the time, and after a unfortunate night drinking copa de nada with some local students, she woke up to Spanish phrases written all over her face in Sharpie (B—, don’t kill me. It’s funny!). Mazog thought it was time for her to see a friendly familial face and was willing to buy me a plane ticket to Guadalajara as long as I left the next day.

At this point, I was halfway in my bathing suit and was smearing cocoa butter on my legs, but I had to get out of work first. The vague “family emergency” thing seemed too obviously code for “I have a hangover and will not be attending work today,” so I told my new boss that my sister had gotten pregnant in Mexico, and, after Googling “Mexico + abortion” quickly realized that unless she wanted to scramble the fetus via coat-hanger and/or umbrella, she was fucked. So, I said, she swallowed a bottle of malaria pills.

As the supportive twin, it was my duty to go to Mexico, spring her from the psych ward, and drive her to Tejas for an American abortion. Because it’s hard to sound concerned when you’re trying to pack and thinking about drinking Sol on the beach, I looked at a few photos of those missing persons posters that people hung on telephone poles and fences after that big September thing and then hung upside down off my bed to give my nose that stuffy my-dog-just-died sound.

I returned a week later with an Irish neopolitan (a little red, a little brown, a lot of white) and a snakeskin belt.

How was it?, everyone asked.

Terrible, I said. Terrible.

I have to cross my legs every time I sneeze so I won’t pee on myself.  I’m not leaving the house today because I accidentally drank four cups of laxative tea last night because I lost my glasses and the box was right next to Sleepytime.  My mom once pasted the following phrase that I had just cut from an email: “My girlfriend and I bid on one of Ani’s used tampons on eBay.”  The point is, it takes a lot to embarrass me.  I am such a dumb fuck that if I were a sensitive dumb fuck, I’d be one of those lesbians who wear stretchy pants and eat icing directly out of the can and have a meaningful relationship with Oprah and don’t consider having more than three cats hoarding.  But there was one day this week that challenged my ability to laugh at myself.  We’ll call this one Tuesday.

The morning was bright, hot, and duo-style.  I slept through class and this made me feel kind of terrible but my power to rationalize quickly supplanted guilt and I drank some coffee and drove my new friend/future lover home.  After that, I stopped by work to pick up a paycheck and buy some product.  It was S. Windor’s (of the Pensecola Windsors) first day on the job after a year hiatus, so I helped out and chatted for a bit, even though I wasn’t wearing socks and had wet brain and fuck head and a huge hole in the crotch of my cut-offs.  I got my check and my product and was about to leave when one of my bosses asked me how I was going to pay for the product.  Um, take it out of my paycheck?  Like always?  Turns out I longer get a paycheck from the Unmentioned Former Place of Employment because I had, unknowingly, been laid off.  And that’s cool.  I mean, I liked the shop and all the employees and that one crushtomer almost to the point of looking forward to work, but I’d been putting in all of four hours a week, so even though it sucks, it’s also not a bad spray tan or anything.  But that is a really uncool way to let someone go.  I’m sure it was less a malicious fuck up and more a communication fuck up, but the ungraceful manner of my dismissal drove me to tears, which is pretty difficult to do considering I don’t have tear ducts and/or feelings.  But, like I said before, after the number of times I’ve been fired, I look at getting laid off as a back-handed compliment.  I’ll get over it.  Eventually.

I then headed to the Chateau to bitch to Lady Mantranny and drink Bud Light and banter via text with a stranger in Austin who I want to gay marry after receiving the following messausage: I’ma woo you, bitch. A few hours and Bud Lights later, I went to the bar.  I was only going to be there for a Lima Bean or two and head home to shower off the shea butter and forge recommendation letters, but then a dear friend I haven’t seen since fucking her over in a really unfunny way walked into the bar.  We didn’t talk at first, but I had nerves like a Jonas on her wedding night, so it was chilled Stoli for my gray matter.  Eventually, my dear friend and I hugged it out and my tear ducts started working again.  And, as if crying in a bar isn’t embarrassing enough, the following occurred: for the first time in my drinking life, I vommed in a bar.  I then had to be convinced not to drive my car and/or ride my bike home (both of which were and are still are parked outside the bar), and was escorted home by a former and favorite co-worker and my new friend/future lover.  I’m pretty sure I didn’t vom in the car, but I did discover vom on the lap of my jeans when I woke up the next morning, so you never know.  This was all while the Carrboro sun with still round and yellow and perched in the sky.  Embarrassing, yes, but what are your teens, 20s, and 30s for if not a little public humiliation?  I mean, fuck, I’d just been fired.

And, yes, I recognize that I’ve been waxing and whining about jobs for a while now.  Why not just get a job and stop living off the generosity of North Carolina tax-payers, right?  What’s so great about not having a reason to get up in the morning?  The truth is—nothing.  Unemployment is boring.  But following rules beyond such OCD-imposed ones like Do Not Sit On Antique Furniture and Never Eat In Public is unpalatable like anal bleeding is unpalatable.  And because I have an unfounded faith that I don’t have to worry about boob sag because gravity doesn’t effect me, and also that I don’t have to work hard because I am immune to such things and poverty and Alzheimer’s and the second coming, I am secretly and not-so-secretly convinced that this blog is my ticket out of a working life, that if only the right person sees this and recognizes my genius use of malapropisms, I will be swooped up to the land of silk and sunny.

But even if that did happen, even if I made a few hardbacks shitting words and rainbows, I’d have to get a gender-neutral moniker and a day job as a sandwich artist just to keep my real life and my writing life completely hidden from Mazog and Pazog.  Is it crazy not to want your 60-year-old mother to read about that time you hooked up in the Christmas tree farm across from the bar and went to brunch with your friend in her mom the next morning covered in saw dust?  Do you want your dad to realize that the first hit when Googling the term “dickthroat” is your blog?  No one wants that blush to cross the parental palette.

Here’s the thing: the shit that enters my head and falls from my mouth is because I am a 26-year-old shorter version of my father.  My dad is most politically incorrect liberal white male I know.  When my parents confronted me about my taco-bumping ways, my mom’s only concern was that I was somehow hurt by my dad’s frequent use of derogatory terms to describe homos and fags, like I’m some kind of a pansy.  My father is such an adept liar that I thought that my grandparents’ dachshund Willy the Elder was my uncle until I was nine and that my dad was a Rolling Stone until I was eleven.  Take the following reviews of my father as professor culled from Rate My Professor:

this class is pretty interesting. but i think he makes a lot of the material up himself.

I will never forget the pubic hair survey or the 1910 dildo he brought into class! Hilarious and smart!

he knows his stuff. if your easily offended by cursing and blunt sex phrases, stay away. He likes to throw the word G**D*** around too. thats not cool with me but…he’s a good teacher

He is a awesome professor. He knows his sex facts!

See the problem?  My muddy mind was written in my DNA, and yet, the parental revelation of my musings is one kind of public humiliation I just can’t get down with.

As much as I love a good hotbox, summer without purpose is fun for about a week before malaise sets in and all of a sudden I’m ten years old and sick of sharks and minnows at the urine-filled community pool and definitely not going to summer camp (communal showers) and almost, unbelievably, ready to go back to school because at least school is boring with central air.

That said, I’m going to break my summer of 2009 malaise by starting a new collection: a text message collection.  Although even my most Peter Panish pal advised me against this, I’m giving you my phone number and I want you to use it.  Liberally.  Here’s the deal: I want you to text me, but I don’t want you to write boring shit like, “wazzup” because a) my mom already does that, and b) we’re not here to talk about feelings.  But do text me.  Tell me what you had for lunch today or the stupidest thing you did last weekend or your middle name or your mom’s sangria recipe.  Whatever.  If you call me, I will ask Peter Pan to listen to my messausages because that’s one chore I cannot do alone and she’s good at translating.  I definitely will not call you back unless you offer me money and/or a free box of Graham Crackers.  This is about texting people, not talking.

Get those thumb-typers ready….

828.231.8508

P.S. Don’t be a creep.