Did I tell you I moved to England?

Well, I did.  In August 2014.  Just a few months ago and let me tell you, it sucks.

so I moved here for love and that part is cool, but I've never lived with a man, and we live in another man, an old white man's, house.  He fucks off for most of the year, but no the less it's his house.

Anyway, today and most days I'm sitting in here by myself watching tv and writing.  And researching jobs and applying to jobs, even got an interview with a bunch of kids.

So my real problem is that sometimes it feels like i have to do bad shit just to feel like I'm a live.  Bad shit as in shit I'm "not supposed to do" according to Ben, but i feel like doing according to me.

like smoke in the house.  now we're going to light a fire later and i was planning on opening the door and airing it out before he snuck up on me and came home.

trapped and busted.

and it does smell like smoke in here, but i like it.  it feels more like i have some space in here even if it's only for a few hours.  it's gross, but so what.  some shit's gross.  i need to be gross.

newlyweds.  we're learning each other and i have to not be so hard on myself.  I'm obedient and must be disobedient to hear myself and do what i want to do.  totally immature, i know, but still necessary.
I vacillate between how I believe I should behave and how I actually feel.  How I want to live.  And I'm resistant to change even though I've been on a constant change arc over the last 2 years... 4 really.  and I'm 40 and figuring that bit out too.

and still unemployed.  still without money and asking myself so many questions about that and myself that i'm often swimming in my own thoughts so deep that i can't see out.

but the one thing that is my favorite part of all of this is that i'm writing again.  and i sound like me.

Dear TV: Stop Making the Blacks the Problems

So I watched the black guy die on The Walking Dead, not as fullfilling as I'd hoped, but satisfying.

This girl sounds like a pompous ass...wait...

I guess I wrote this in my useless Media Crit class in grad school while applying for some fellowship. That teacher was terrible and we approached our Dean about it. Then, for a whole uncomfortable HOUR AND A HALF the teacher wanted to 'talk' to us about what's wrong and then started to cry. That cost me $2500 and I didn't get the fellowship, obviously.

Enjoy:


Charity A. Thomas was born in Washington D.C. and raised on the southside of Chicago. She attended The University of Chicago Laboratory High School where she was an award winning television columnist on the U-High Midway and she discovered her passion for the media and writing. After graduating from Howard University with a BA in Radio/TV/Film (film major/ theater minor), with a semester at Columbia University in New York, she moved back to New York and began working in film production. She worked the grueling hours on idiotic music videos as a production assistant, production coordinator, production manager, wardrobe assistant, 2nd 2nd AD, and make-up “girl”, before settling on being The Art Department Coordinator (caps intentional) on commercials (and the occasional music video because her money tree has yet to come into full bloom).

In 2001, after her roommate and best friend joined a cult leaving her with a multitude of bills during a slow production period, Charity decided to begin graduate school. She expects to graduate in May 2003 with a Masters in Media Studies. With that degree she will become a media critic and the voice of the pseudo disenfranchised group- thinkers. In between all of this excitement, she writes. She’s an eccentric poet (published in AIM Magazine and various small friend run endeavors), an apocalyptic playwright, a brilliant essayist, and… a screenwriter. She’s sure there are going to be very professional, even scholarly, biographies submitted to this fellowship program and in being true to a promise she made herself… is going to write this “biography” as she feels it. She’s completely aware that this might cost her the fellowship… but that’s life. This is how she writes. She’s honest and true. She believes her purpose is to illuminate truth. Writing is the way she does that. It is her catharsis and she still believes that when you do what you love… the truth of it comes out. She wants to participate in this fellowship to attempt to find an outlet to let her voice be heard. She’s very appreciative of the opportunity and doesn’t want to appear flippant, but as arrogant and vain as she is… she’s not too big on shameless self promotion. She believes the work will find it’s way to the right people at the right time and it says more about her than any “biography” could. She’s a Leo who loves yoga (both physically and spiritually), reading, listening to jazz, shamelessly promoting her friends artistic endeavors and she hates referring to herself as “she”.



Jesus, what a tool! No wonder I'm sitting here with no fucking money. Blurg.

I'm adding this blog to Twitter

I hate Twitter and I'm trying to make this entire experience less painful. I don't even like texting. It's way too much. I don't want that much info about anyone, and I don't want them to have it about me, but since I have to think about 'marketing' and other bullshit I care nothing about so that someone can give me the money I need to pay my rent and buy food... so be it. I was feeling a little guilty about the blog post of me hating my mom, but oh well. It's not as passionately true today, but the facts remain the same. So hi.

Job Search

Today I have nine jobs waiting for me to write cover letters for in my email queue. I hate writing cover letters. At least most are jobs I'm actually interested in. I always get so insecure about writing cover letters. They all seem like bullshit. Since I've rarely worked in traditional workplaces (and never had a full time job for more than 3 months in my entire adult life), the idea of writing a straight square cover letter always freaks me out. I'm always a little quirky because that's who I am and I don't want to sell a bill of goods to someplace I'll have to spend a significant amount of time. I have seen some good ones though and I'm going to give it the old bohemian try.

I'm going to the gym first to focus my mind. I'm only going to do 3 cover letters for the jobs today. I know I get burned out fast on things I'm not really interested in doing.

I hate this. I hate blind job sends. I hate it because it's never worked for me and I never receive any feedback so I keep changing my resume thinking it's the problem without really knowing. I've been freelance for 16 years and now that it's dried up it's made me question my basic value systems. It been good questioning with disturbing answers. Like, I know- KNOW- I cannot work in any corporate office environment. I don't want to use my life like that. I like money as much as the next girl, but is it really worth it to go to work everyday plotting my coworkers demise. It's really the conversation of it all. I hate the pedantic chitchat. If I could just show up, do my work (in however long it takes) and bounce then I'd be a happy clam.

But all the unspoken rules of conduct and conformity should have gotten beaten into me when I was still a kid. Instead, I got to wear whatever I wanted, speak my mind, manage my own time and people, and then go party with people I love and respect. I'm spoiled to the concept of work. Oh and did I mention they gave me a lot of money for it as well?

Oh, well. It's a new dawn. It's a new day. Let me go take out my frustrations on the elliptical machine and come back home and bang this out.

Dispondant

I guess I don't write because I don't feel like I have anything to say. I've started a storytelling night at my local bar, but still don't think what I have to say is important. It's a problem. I don't even have a story to tell next Monday, and it's my damn night. Arghh.

I feel like all of this is bullshit. What's the point of any of it? I'm feeling very doomsday machine about the entire existence. I guess that's what depression is, but the side effects of the anti depression meds sound like a hangover to me and drinking's much more fun.

I kinda want to tell a story about sex, but really? I can scant remember what that's even like. What about my childhood? Well if I'm drunk enough, which already says a lot about that story. I don't have any new stories to tell except what lives in my head. Not having much cash has limited my movements. FALSE. Freaking out about money and having the darkness living just over my head has limited my movements. This is NYC and I'm smart enough to find free shit.

What do I want to say? That I don't believe in the life I was bred to live. I think the whole system is going down in flames so why try to run a losing race? I can see through the illusion of a middle class ideal and what I interpret as the plastic boringness of it. It seems stupid to continue applying for jobs I don't want that I never hear back from anyway. The questioning of the choices I've made. Fighting hard to move forward and find my own way. All with $37 to my name.

I'm exhausted and feel like it's only going to get worse. I don't believe that all the time and it's not ingrained in my core. Yet the active part of me gets paralyzed and overwhelmed by it. I have no security anywhere. I have no job, my rent's always late, my family's moved from my childhood home, and the part that makes me mad to write- I'm single.

It makes me mad because I don't like to identify with the idea that a man would make any of that easier. [Yet see the sex comment above.]

I'm going to see Liza tonight and maybe her abject crazyness will inspire me to get over myself and stop the voice that tells me it's all worthless.

Happy post Kiddo, happy post.

I am so sick of not working

There's only so much boozing and vegging out I can do. I'm now DYING to got to work somewhere. I just sent out an invitation to my favorite podcast The Risk Show to be an intern. And I'm totally jazzed about it. I hope they accept. My new resume has filled me with confidence. Wish me luck.

Day One- No Drinking

Okay, so yesterday was really day one, but I didn't know it then. Last Friday I got a pimple on my neck. At first it just felt like a pimple, but then it started growing and hurting. It felt like it was growing legs into my neck. I’m very squeamish about my neck.

The pain became familiar to me because in the spring I’d had what I thought was a pimple, then a mosquito bite under my right boob. Then it got big and burst and was gross and I went to the doctor and he gave me the same antibiotics because I had a staph infection. I’d first felt the “bite” right after getting out of the pool and steam with my ladies on a Friday. By Wednesday I was at the doctors office. I couldn’t drink for a week and it was hell (and I didn’t quite make it… apparently I believe Coors light isn’t really an alcoholic beverage since it’s not one I partake of …ever.). I also didn’t swim as much this year.

So after the doctors yesterday, with a bandaged neck and on antibiotics, I decided to think about it differently. See, I’m up writing and not too drunk to string coherent sentences. I’ve decided to really take this time and take stock of my situation.

I’ve been applying to jobs all day and getting to the cover letter stage and freaking out because cover letters scare the shit out of me. So I have a bunch of tabs open with my résumé uploaded waiting for me to grace the page with some witticisms about how I want this bullshit job so I can show a judge that I shouldn’t be evicted and convince my landlady to give me another lease. At least until I can figure out if I’m really going to throw things in a bag and move to Paris. It wouldn’t be so hard if I could just get a commercial. And the thought of trying to get more work makes me want to drink. Not that I mind production work, I mind the fact that no one’s calling me to work. I’d love to do another commercial like the one I just did. Or like the movie, but the Marshall is scheduled to put me out January 7, and I don’t really have all the money I need to make that not happen. I’ve sold some mutual funds, but what if I give her all the money and she still evicts me? Then I’m really broke. And I’m just figuring out what I’m going to do here now that I’ve given up on production. I’m so close and just need like 6 months. I might not have it. So, I must write cover letters.

But I’ve gotta tell ya- it’s certainly put another kind of fire in my belly. I’m not so much saying what I won’t do, but look at what I really want to do. And not just write to make money. That puts too much pressure on my writing right now. It’s going somewhere I really like and, like me, tenses up under pressure. My personality changes and is not the creative soul I’ve sold myself on.
So I really want to bartend, but it’s the holidays and I’m waiting for the dust to settle before I go out and hit that. I don’t know the first thing about how bartenders make the magic that lives in my glass. I mean, I know, but I never know how much I owe or how much cocktails cost. I want to take a bartending class to get comfortable back there. And bartending classes aren’t free.

The thing about it all is- Money!

Every sidestep I want to take takes money and it’s keeping me up at night. All this education and I don’t feel like I’m qualified to do anything. I’ve never gotten a job with my résumé ever. I believe this is so because I have my crazy cover letters attached. I can be professional, but I’ve never really worked in a professional environment. I don’t have the clothes for it. I’d have to take out a loan to go to work and I am not what they call credit worthy right now.

So today on day one of my not drinking, I gave myself a little schedule and as of now, I’ve completed the big tasks. But I had to write down to eat yogurt with honey (check), journal writing (check), drinking tea (check) then working out (check). Shower (check), lunch (check), write on blog (check), read (I’m on it now).

So I’ve given myself a gold star day. I always like to keep the momentum of gold star days. Days when I’ve done exactly what I set out to do. There aren’t many of them, which keeps the gold star special. (I should get some more colored stars that way I have some kind of grading system. Make it not so all or nothing.) Yet, it’s Christmas now- an actual event day. Then it’s Saturday then… Then nothing. Then Saturday I can do the same exact thing and make it to class.

But see how the alcoholics can’t think about Saturday. So I’m going to follow their sage examples and just think about tomorrow. I’m going to keep it even simpler and just think about today. Because 10 days from now, I’m getting it in!

Reading: "It's Six A.M., Do You Know Where You Are?" by Jay McInerney in the Paris Review Book of Heartbreak, Madness, Sex, Love, Betrayal, Outsiders, Intoxication, War, Whimsy, Horrors, God, Death, Dinner, Baseball, Travels, The Art of Writing, And Everything Else in the World since 1953

Justin (shitmydadsays) on Twitter

Justin (shitmydadsays) on Twitter: "'That woman was sexy...Out of your league? Son. Let women figure out why they won't screw you, don't do it for them.'"


I have a feeling that if my dad could talk to me like this, we'd be much better friends. And we're already homies, except for him knowing about the smoking, drinking and fucking parts. Other than that, great.

Aw Shit, I shouldn't have answered the phone

So I’m sitting watching Cadillac Records with Leslie and my mom calls. I’ve also just painted my fingernails purple. I had to file them down because I scratched my face like a baby, and they’re still wet. I'm holding the phone precariously to my ear.
I answer cheerfully, as I always do and tell her what I'm doing, and she says, this’ll be quick. Of course it will because I just told you I’m watching a movie and poisoning myself inhaling paint fumes (which isn’t as bad as people say). She asks “do you know what I was doing 23 years ago today? Getting high.”

I thought, that’s funny, I just got high too. Then she asked what she was doing 23 years ago tomorrow- not getting high. I was thinking, where’s my pot? “And,” she continued, “and it was all because of my baby.” That baby would be me and that’s not a kid’s responsibility. I told her well, congratulations.

In addition to being drunks, my mother also likey-ed the cocaine. I guess it was called crack if that’s still the same as freebasing, but since we were in a different tax bracket and she actually bought powder and cooked it up herself, I guess we’re safe on the freebasing. She worked for Amtrak and ran the line from Chicago to NY to LA and San Francisco. They partied on those trains like it was actually 1999, so she got all the best drugs (and records) from all over the country.

I remember walking into the kitchen one day and it’s covered in all kinds of bowls, butane, what looked like metal medical supplies and shit I’d never seen in the fucking kitchen before. Besides the fact my mom was the worst cook ever and when trying to make me biscuits invented “breakfast cookies”, so much seeming activity in the kitchen surprised me. I asked what all this stuff was and she said, “Something I don’t ever want you to do”. Well, that was clear I knew she smoked pot, but I assumed everyone smoked pot. She smoked pot with her dad, so why would I think it’s strange. And she drank, but everybody drank. I didn’t see anything wrong with the way we lived. . I didn’t really understand about the drugs until she went into rehab.

23 years ago today I suppose. I do remember it was the end of school. The sixth grade. It had been a tough year for everybody and I was one worn out 12 year old. My mother had abandoned me in France. I don’t mean she left me to fend for myself in the French/ Swiss Alps, but she didn’t send me any letters or call. No one in my family did. It was so bad they called my house so I could talk to someone and no one was home. I wrote every day at first, then every other day, and then I just stopped. Later she told me, all fucked up, that she’d sent me a huge care package with all of the newspapers of the important events I’d missed in the mountains. Like, the Bears winning the Super Bowl and Challenger blowing up. She also sent some Championship t-shirts and hats, she said.

Then, my Granny had died. She’d been sick while I was gone and my Granddad says that she waited for me to get home safely before she died. I wasn’t home two weeks. I was on some Brownie trip that day. It was Presidents Day. Michelle had on too much of her mom’s perfume. (I don’t know the name of it, but whenever I get a sniff of it in my nose I think of this time and want to throw up.) Granddad had dropped me off for it before he headed to the hospital because my mom was M.I.A, California run. I’d barely seen her since I got home. I was staying upstairs with my other Grandma, Granny’s daughter, and my Aunt Donna. Uncle Sidney was around but he was so strung out and evil I didn’t miss him. And Uncle Torry was sitting around smoking cigarettes and looking maudlin as usual. Aunt Donna was also on a tear and Grandma was waist deep in Crown Royal and black assed days.

From February through June it was just Granddad and me. He was about 76 then and still took me everywhere I needed to go. I got cookbooks to learn how to take care of us. Even though everybody was around, except of course for my mom, nobody was really there.
In March I got my period and didn’t have anyone to go through the talk with me or go get me pads or rejoice in my becoming a woman. So I scavenged through my mom’s stuff and found this long pad that needed a belt and stuffed it in my panties. Luckily that first one was only a little spotting and only lasted a day.

At school it was tough too. I was awkward and too smart and my boobs were getting gigantic. I was also becoming chubbier because I was trying to feed my grandpa and myself and didn’t know what I was doing. And my Grandma was dead and no one would talk to me about it. I was pulling stuff out of the pantry that had been in there for years. I made egg foo young and we ate a lot of Vienna sausages. I was also nervous about boys and had a crush on Chris Fryison who was also chubby but had a great smile and made me laugh and bought me Chinese jacks in the 3rd grade. But since I was getting busty, the 8th grade boys started paying attention to me. I was still an early hip hop tomboy wearing bandana’s around my knees, plastic bangles that later had to be cut off, one earring like Janet Jackson and tons of neon pink and green. I had no female adult supervision so I looked a mess. And I had a curl.

One day in June, after my mother had been gone for weeks we were in the bathroom together in my Grandpa’s house. I was sitting on the toilet and she was in the mirror behind the sink. We were facing each other. I remember that part, but then I don’t remember the part of the mythology where I say “Mommy, what’s wrong with you?” I’m afraid that sounds a little too naïve for a girl who’d just told her uncle that he wasn’t coming in her house to look in the safe. My Uncle Sidney was a junkie and a thief and had Drunk Eric from down the street with him. He’s already broken into the safe and stole all the silver dollars and coins Granddad and I had been collecting my whole life. I stood my self in the doorway and told him he was coming in over my dead body and to get the fuck off of my front porch.

But that’s the story she likes to tell because it makes me her conscience. She needs me to be her mirror, but I can’t anymore because it’s too heavy. I can’t be the perfect reflection of her good intentions.

We got off the phone quickly. I hung up and harrumphed. Leslie looked in my direction and I picked up my pipe. Bouncy was screeching in the background and I just looked at him and took a hit. He asked what? And I answered, “nothin’ bullshit.”
That Beyonce sho cain’t sing.

Did I ever tell you about the one when I was growing up?

When I was a kid I lived in a house full of drunks. Not run of the mill drunks, I mean drunks that had doilies on tables and dusted every inch of the house until it was spotless. These were people who used to pick cotton and were terribly ashamed of it. I remember the one and only time I found a book on the top of my grandmother’s ivory wardrobe. It had numbers and names and was ancient. When I found it I took it to my great-grandpa cause he always told me the truth. And then the truth only needed to be that I was loved and adored and there was no other little girl in the world and beautiful and good as me.

When my Granny, his wife, saw that he was explaining the book to me she went ballistic. I never understood why because to me I had history in my hands. My granddad was explaining that this was the book they kept their sharecropping records in.

Anyway, these people drank and drank a lot. My Granny, had my Grandma, when she was 14 years old and Granddad was 21. These weren’t mature people. And they were suddenly in the north with a new set of rules and regulations and Chicago in the 30’s was almost as bad as Jackson, Mississippi- well I guess at anytime by my reckoning. So they drank and had fun (as far as I could see) and lived it up with the relatively few minor freedoms they got to have in the north. Like buying a house in what was previously a majority white neighborhood that would eventually become the murder capital of the city in the next 50 years.

What I realize now is that they were depressed and sad and living unfulfilled lives. They also didn’t know how to nurture us. They didn’t know how to nurture themselves; they hadn’t come from a nurturing environment. The legacy of The South still complicates the lives of those who escaped its horrors. I still live with the legacy of Jim Crow because Jim Crow people raised me. People who now theoretically had more freedoms, but also knew that Chicago’s Jim Crow could be worse. So what do they do with this baby born in the 1970’s without any knowledge of the systems they needed to survive? They teach her the same rules while telling her to fly away, but not too high. And not too fast.

The shames and inadequacies they felt when sober came out in a wale when they were tight. You could hear it in their laughter, the freedom of it. I guess that’s why I always thought they were having such a good time. I rarely saw them this free. But that freedom came with a cost, because as I’m learning in my life, you pay for that freedom the next morning with guilt and more shame. Living a whole life embarrassed and not wanting to pass that embarrassment to your children. It’s living in the fear that a misplaced word will display the short educations prescribed to children who had to work. Not wanting to pass on a shame that you don’t even have the language to denounce. It’s just a feeling.
It feels like sinking. It felt like my body was actually sinking and drowning. My chest would tighten, my skin would go prickly cold and my throat would go dry. Like all of my moisture was evaporating and I was becoming like stone. And then I would turn off. The messages getting yelled at me were getting through, but how I felt about them never really developed past that sense of dread. I get that feeling less often now, but when I was a kid it was constantly overwhelming.
Seeing that book was one of those times that I was conscience that the wrath I was getting had nothing to do with me. It was embarrassment on my Grandma’s part because she was almost hysterical. She told my Grandpa he had no right to show me this book and it was hers. He explained what he was doing, but the reason Grandpa and I had so much time to discuss the book was because she was off taking a nip. I’m sure she fully expected to come back in the room and watch one of her stories, but instead she sees the proof that she picked cotton in the south and whatever that entailed on the lap of her great granddaughter.
The great granddaughter that was going to be proof that they were all okay. She was going to rise above her roots and make everyone so proud. But I didn’t understand that either. I didn’t know there was anything in our lives to be ashamed of (except for the drinking part- that got complicated for me to beg off friends visits).

I think I might be fucked

Calamity Jane: Everyday takes figuring out all over again how to fucking live.

I just want to write down a bunch of curse words and write fucked up stories with fucked up people. But I guess I can't get there cause I keep getting myself fucked. Not in the carnal sense (today) but in the metaphysical sense I guess. I keep creating situations in my head that are preposterous so I can keep myself busy cause I'm bored out of my mind. I just want to party and bullshit right now.

The good thing is that I am keeping busy and feel like I've reconnected with my purpose in life. The thing I like best but would be considered the bad thing is that I'm also setting myself up for a mighty fall. I'm not using the minuscule amount of self control over my thinking on certain things and it's really affecting my life.

Firstly, I've got to go to work soon. This is really some bullshit and besides the fact that right now I feel all production people should be fucked, I don't want to do that. I just don't want to have to go pretend that I give a fuck about Pizza Hut, or Mastercard or anyone who has more money than me. I'm sick of pretending at all and since I'm doing it less and less, I'm getting much better at speaking my real mind and watching people look at me in horror.

Secondly, my own mind is full of rage, lust, sloth and abject hedonism. Rage and lust apparently go everywhere together. They're almost inseparable right now. I never would have guessed them for a couple. But since my lust has a crazy component right now, I just have to write it out and see if I can find a website sick enough to print it. I'm making that sound worse than what I've written, but not what I've thought. My rage is so all emcompassing it can only be satisfied by lust.

Lust, well it's always more difficult isn't it. Lust (or lechery) is an inordinate craving for sexual intercourse often to the point of assuming a self-indulgent, and sometimes violent character (Wikipedia). But there's a component of affection there, supposedly. In order to make the emotion of affection dissapate, I now rely on the lust. But sometimes, when my heart does go a flutter, I flirt with a stranger or spend some serious quality time with myself and computer. I can't deal with "feelings"; I'm learning, but I'm slow learning.


Sloth and hedonism, well they're pretty well matched. I did buy that bottle of Jameson along with other choice fun aides and nothing lasted two days. Two days? And I didn't share but a drop with anyone else. Then the next week brought about sake Thursday. I've apparently created a song and dance revolving around the nectar of the small isle.

But see, I'm still pussyfooting around what it is that I want to say. I'm not telling the whole truth. Maybe I've gotten so good at it that there is no whole truth with me anymore.

But I know one thing, I hate being told what to do and if you want something done you need to do it yourself. That's abstract. I'm in a constant tug of war with my friend and basically pusher of alcohol over the contents of my soul. Or at least my allegiances, or my loyalty. But what she wants is obedience and a reflection of herself as all saving saint that I know is false and therefore can't trust. I'm always a player in the dramas that ensue around her. I try to stay away, but I'm so bored and I want to be with my friends...so I succumb. Then she'll try to help me with something or start pouting cause she's left out or try to find a way to manipulate a situation to create some drama. I'm so sick of it. Now she wants me to clean something that's been dirty for years because she wants it done now. Fuck that. I'm not her kid. I'm not A kid.

When we met I was much more fucked than I am now (which is saying a lot). I had a neediness on me that reeked. When I'm reading my old journals it's the same ole thing: I wish I had money, I wish I had a boyfriend, I'm so lonely, some strange guy was here this morning, smoked too many cigarettes today, I'm fat, I'm so lonely- because I'm fat...it goes on and on for years like that.
Then suddenly there was a light at the end of the tunnel and it was full of booze and it gave me a bunch of people I like a lot and some, not too much. But I stayed cordial. Well, even my cordial is getting thin. I don't have anything to lose so much and I'm sick of being manipulated. I'm really sick of being needed in a way that makes me feel like I'm constantly in a turtleneck. Everything smushed, tits, throat.

Sometimes I think I'll just stay away forever. But I know I can't. That would freak me out more than anything else. I do change slow. When I learn slow, I synthesize. I'm still not even telling the whole truth, but at least I posted today.

My Week 6/3/9

I've decided I'm going to buy a bottle of Jameson's and sit in the house and write and get trashed for the rest of the week. That sounds like fun and will probably be more productive than the so called planning I've been doing to get my work done. Today I got up (at 11a) with good intentions and now it's 4 and I've been taking quizzes in Facebook with my little sister all day. I apparently must fuck off the first 4h of my day no matter what time I get up. So, now I'm gonna go get that bottle, a $5 foot long, see if they have any Sedaris in the biblioteque and come home and hit it.

I have a column/ review that I gave myself a deadline for. WTF was I thinking? They didn't ask for anything but I've volunteered it. I think I wanted to show my go-gettitiveness. But now I've boned myself. I'm gonna watch The Day the Earth Stood Still with the little wooden boy and write something about it. Shit, I need a drink.

Gentrification Blues #3

This weekend was hot. It was the official beginning of summer. I barely left my house. When I did I was again confronted with the changes in my neighborhood. It's like the rats on a ship or roaches in the dark metaphor. Into the blinding sunlight and mildly scorching heat came the ghostly bodies of my new neighbors. Mouth dryingly pale and still without manners. It's going to be a fun summer. I love sitting on the stairs of the library, now known as my office, and having to stare down the Park Sloper with the baby crying because it's hot and mommy can't take it in the library SCREAMING like that to cool it off or leave because she's got a great spot to get some sun on her legs.

So here I am sitting alone listening to my iPod scribbling furiously on the stupid story I've been hacking away at, I mean writing, for like 2 years now.... "Sorry, what? No, no one's sitting there." What could I say? No one was sitting there. I wasn't prepared to act crazy and have imaginary friends. So down she sits and my table's perfectly placed for two ways to get sun and put the baby under the umbrella. The screaming baby. The baby screaming so loud that my Erik Satie makes my head hurt and hands shake cause it's too loud and grating. I stare at the mother who apologizes profusely, but what am I supposed to say? "I accept your apology, but it would be better if you took your SCREAMING MONKEY home."

She started doing all the things mothers do to make their children shut up, to no avail. I start shifting. I'm already hot and uncomfortable and writing outside and feel weird. How do I describe how I felt with the future sitting there raising hell and a mother who kinda didn't give a shit. (Now, let me say that I have friends with kids and I know it's a tough job and adults don't want to be cooped up with kids all day. But I also know that that's why I don't have kids and really resent being subjected to other peoples problems.)

I guess it's just that I'm seeing something more and more that disturbs me about this neighborhood I love so much. Too many babies. When I'm dictator, I'm putting a moratorium on procreating in Prospect Heights. Go to Queens to fuck up your kids.

Chase Bank Can Suck it

I’m unemployed. Usually this doesn’t mean much because I’m freelance on commercials and have many weeks with no work. But I haven’t worked since December and it’s really annoying, at best. But that’s not the problem today. The problem today is J.P. Morgan Chase bank.
Or, as I affectionately call them, the devil. I get that we’re in an economic recession, which by the way, means nothing to me. I’m always in some sort of economic recession only everyone’s in my situation now and it’s not as lonely here. But “the devil” keeps taking what little money I do have. I understand banking practices and know it’s a system built on years of careful honing of greed and avarice. Not a wall to break down overnight, but when you don’t have any money, it becomes that much apparent.
In the last few months I’ve paid Chase over $600 in overdraft fees. That’s with the credit card that’s supposed to pay for those fees which charges 27% or so right now. I transferred my last CD into my checking account to cover some bills and it seems the more money I put in the more money they take out. Now, I’m not going to say I’m all that great with the account balancing business, but I’ve been attempting to be precise about it lately. I use chase.com to monitor my purchases and have been frugal and cognizant of my purchases to the last penny. Some automatic deductions do still throw me for a loop, like the gym and my non-Chase savings account, but I usually keep up.
But today was the breaking point. I’d walked around with $10 in my pocket all weekend to ensure all transactions were covered and still got charged. Online the payments were pending and deducted from my available balance, I made a deposit 2 days ago and today, they’ve taken $105 in fees.
I was furious. I called and was told I’d already gotten my yearly courtesy refund and I refused to take that as the final decision and spoke to a manager. She explained to me while yelling over my yelling that I need to make some changes in my life and some sacrifices. WHAT? I then went on to rail about no job, no money and giving one-fourth of my money to Chase every week. I lowered my voice, apologized for my tone chalking it up to frustration and requested another refund. I informed the manager that I was going to request a refund every time I believed I was in the right. I told her that even if they didn’t give it to me, I was going to ask for one when the time between the bank charging me overdraft fees, a merchant presenting a receipt, and a check clearing was a matter of hours because none of these things are in my control. I’ve done everything I’m supposed to do as much as I can short of having a combined balance of $5000. That’s just not in the cards for me right now. I wish it were because it’s very expensive not having any money.
Eventually, we wore each other down. She gave me back most of my money and I changed my account to one that doesn’t charge a service fee and fits my current needs better. What I learned was that in these “tough economic times” it’s expected that people will give up and be too embarrassed, ashamed and frustrated to stand up for themselves financially. Especially to a bank. That’s what they’re counting on. So don’t give up. Keep calling and asking for what you want. They can only say no and everyone’s not going to say no. Chase has enough money. I can’t afford to keep it afloat and neither can a lot of people. We have to stand up for ourselves and not be embarrassed about not having the money we used to have. Hell, the banks had to ask for money they didn’t earn. I’m just asking to hold on to the little money I have.

Cigarettes are How Much: or Mayor Bloomberg can Suck It!

Cigarettes cost WHAT? $9 for a pack of Newports (I'm black remember). Actually this all takes me back to when I first started smoking. (Hazy waves, hazy waves...)
It was my senior year in high school and I worked at a job with this totally rad grad school chick named Jen. She was also black and brilliant like me and working at a job with people she hated and didn't respect (which I would come to understand more viscerally as I got older). I was the office assistant and she had actual work to do and would send me to go get smokes for her when she ran of Benson & Hedges Menthol Lights. Only I was only 17 and we worked on a campus that was hard on ID'ing underage smokers. So she'd not only call and tell them who we were she'd also send me with a note (handwritten even).

The night I was formally presented to society I turned to my escort and said "let's get some cigarettes." All I knew to say was Bensonhedgesmenthollights, so that's what I got. By the next week when my escort was telling me how he'd had sex with his boyfriend in the car seat I was occupying on our way to see Tommy Tune in Bye, Bye, Birdie- we had cigarette holders, the long black and silver ones.

Smoking has always been so exotic and eccentric to me. It was also something grown-ups did. My grandma looked so elegant with her beautiful long brown legs crossed and smoke curling from her mouth. She'd look elegant until she got full of Schlitz and started cussing everybody out. But until that point, she looked like a movie star. And that's really the crux of it, isn't it. I'm an old movie queen and always wanted to move like Bette Davis or Barbara Stanwyck. I remember in All About Eve when Bette's Margo Channing was checking cigarette boxes to make sure they were full. What decadence.

Fast forward 60 years to a pack of smokes costing $9. So does that now make them a luxury item? I'm buying cartons now and can't breathe because I feel like I have an unlimited supply. Until they run out. Then I'll cry because THERE'S NO WAY IN HELL I'M PAYING $9 FOR A PACK OF SMOKES. I'll have to start rolling my own, and I'm just too lazy for that.

Rose's Bloom

Calm yourself because no one can save you
But you
No one can replace you but you and are you willing to do what it takes to make it?
You hate to hear it, I hate to write it.
But you know betrayal and its sting never gets easier.
Do you even know who you are?
The older you get, the more difficult it is to know the answer to that question.
You just want to put your head in the sand and hope everything goes away.
But when you wake up sober and in pain cause you can’t breathe from all the smoke in your lungs, you know the answer.
You’ve done this to yourself. You’ve been on this path of destruction for the last 20 years.
It began as playful teenage angst, and moved into middle-aged nuclear destruction.
It’s not cute anymore, the damage you do to yourself.
Waking up with strangers who make you feel terrible about yourself isn’t cute anymore.
It’s dangerous, not just to your body but to your soul.
It’s damaging to your self-image, which is still based in a teenaged cool you learned from black and white movies.
Everyone you’ve loved died from the cigarettes you still relish.
You begin to see wrinkles, your skin doesn’t snap back and the weight you keep gaining still doesn’t go away no matter how much you go to the gym or how many slim fast shakes you have.
Your mouth tastes like ass and you think your teeth are gonna fall out. Most of the women in your family didn’t make it past their 30’s with their original teeth in their mouth.
More reason for shame. And you can’t even imagine what you must taste like to men. Not that any man has tried to taste you lately. Not even the man trying to be your long distance boyfriend.
Balls!!!
Wilted, that’s how you feel. The bloom is definitely off of the rose. And you’ve never even been married. How’s this gonna work?
Who wants this life? Balls!!!
I know who does. Me. Fuck all the answers I’m supposed to say. All of that supposed has gotten me here, so FUCK SUPPOSED.
I’m supposed to make a ton of money based on my breeding and education. But do I? No!!
So I’m gonna continue doing what I want to. I’m gonna keep going and telling everyone else to go to hell.

Sorry I missed your Oscar Party, but I was having a bit of a nervous breakdown

I was supposed to go to a friends Oscar Party Sunday. I missed it. He's pissed. Oops. But then today, I IM'd him just to see if we were cool and he sends me this snide little note about spending a lot of time and money and disappointed that I didn't make it or call. I apologized again with my pithy "sorry, couldn't make it" and got no response. Then when I vomited up "and my phone was turned off Sunday because my bill was over $600 and so was the cable and my dad wants me to move to dc or else he won't help me anymore and I'm 5 months behind in rent which all came crashing down on me Sunday morning. I would have been a bit of a party pooper since my best friend had to come over and do a little care for me". Only then did I get a response. WTF? I was totally wrong for not calling. But I didn't want to. I don't want to keep telling that story and it's the main reason I'm not going out anywhere.

I understand that this is one of my more self important friends, and he did put a lot of work into it and was very excited about his party.

But I'm tired of explaining to people who make shitloads more money than me that although I don't have to bring something to your house it's tacky not to. And since I'm always the one black girl (and I know race isn't a major factor) I'm always the poor black girl. And I'm not even a girl any more. I'm the poor black woman. And I wouldn't even mind that if his crowd wasn't the crowd always trying to outdo each other and making snarky side shots under their breath. And if I'd said this to my friend, would he have understood? Maybe, but I didn't really want to talk to him about it because he could be as snide and snarky as the best of them. When I'm in high times, it's cute. When I'm not, I want to punch faces.

So Sunday I was in no mood to sit around being fabulous, meeting boyfriends and not betting in the Oscar pool cause I didn't have but $20 to last me the rest of the week. I'm so tired of the ridiculous amounts of money I have from day to day and didn't trust that there wouldn't be ridicule because my conversations tend to surround that fact right now. I'm also not in the mood to justify my life and my choices to a bunch of people I don't know. I'm sure I'm reading too much into the situation, but I've been in the situation too many times to not have my trepidations. I'm not so much fun to be around with new people. I'm lucky to have a place close to me where I know the people and I can relax and enjoy the company of people I know and like and who reciprocate without judgements.

That's it Heroes

I quit you. Like my 6th grade boyfriend. Only he said it before me when I called to tell him so he really quit me (which was humiliating cause he was in the 5th grade).

I’ve watched this show since it's first episode and when everyone else was done with you I persevered. When Hiro was in 16th century Japan, I still gave it a chance. When they kept introducing characters I liked that died 2 episodes later (usually thanks to Sylar) or just never come back (Micah and his entire family) and storylines that went nowhere FOR A WHOLE SEASON (Villians).

But now, I’m tired. I already have to choose between Heroes and 24 for the time slot. I am blessed with not only superior intelligence, but also a DVR, so I can watch 24 later and rid myself of all those pesky commercials. But now I’m apparently a 24 woman all the way. I’ve even read the spoilers for Heroes so I can see if there's any hope and the one glimmer is the same thing that's kept me here this long.

SYLAR. If it wasn't for him, I’d have been gone a long time ago. He’s the only one who has both retained his initial character and grown. Everyone else seems to have amnesia. Really, you guys have powers and know what each of you can do. This season has been so full of petty concerns and squabbles, people getting powers, losing powers, acting as if their powers are way weaker than they really are. It’s frustrating when Parkman won't just create illusions to escape or search for information. It’s frustrating that Mohindar is still keeping secrets when he knows what's going on and they've all been rounded up for containment. It’s ridiculous that all Peter can do is fly when he's been around both Parkman and Mohindar and could also take their powers, why wouldn't he? What the fuck is up with Claire and her super heroics. She used to be smarter than this.

Everyone used to be smarter than they are now... except Sylar. He’s getting smarter by the day and not just because of more powers, but because he's integrated his experiences into his personality and he grows. He seeks out new information, not standing around asking the same questions of the same people or not asking and going off all half cocked (PETER!). So Heroes when you get your shit together you'll get me back. When people aren't being retarded.

under pressure

my dad has offered me an opportunity to move down to dc so i can get some relief from all of these money woes that are plaguing me here in ny. i love that he wants to help me. i think it's great. but not the condition that i move down there and live in an apt. above them. my family are the straightest people i know, next to my paternal grandparents, who also live in dc. i love my dad, but stimulating conversations would be cut to a minimum. too much fast food, too many shallow ideas, too little thinking outside of a limited view. my dad's a great thinker but he's not living the life he always dreamed about with me. and the life he's living has made him more financial secure than he's ever been but he's a different dad. he has a baby and a life that didn't exist when i came about. and the time he wants to spend with me now, he feels he can help make up for the time he missed when i was a kid. i get that. but that time has passed. and i feel guilty enough for not being overjoyed at the prospect of work and cheaper housing and some help with my discipline. but that's just it as well isn't it? He said we could help discipline each other. a lot of the reasoning has to do with him and what he wants. well of course it does darling. that's how the world works. i live so much in what i want all the time that i always question if it's what i want, don't want or don't care about.


i'd be closer to my little sister, and that would be great, but we talk on the phone everyday.

i also don't like that if feels like unconditional surrender of my writing goals and dreams. he contends that i can write down there and, of course, i can. but would i? that move's a soul killer. i'm trying to do this writing thing here which is slow as molasses, but i'm doing it. arghhhhh.