The Champagne Life

Dear Mom...

2012-01-10T08:41:00.000-08:00

I miss you all the time.

I dream about you. Twice in the last week. Usually about not being able to save you. About being terrified you would die. And then I wake up and remember...you did. A year ago on Friday.

I tell myself the dreams are normal. It's grief. It works that way. Still... I hate waking up. Dreaming is the only time I still get to see your face.

It's going to be a long, long life without you in it.

How it is now...

2012-01-02T11:04:00.000-08:00

This is how it is now.

Iris' only make me think of my mother. Eucalyptus..my dad. I put both at their grave on holidays, birthdays, and on days when Trader Joe's had a flower sale. I plan on tattooing both on my right arm along with lilies for my grandma, a red rose for grandpa, white orchids for Greg and tiger lilies for Leslie. It's a lot of loss to look at every day, and I want it to be pretty.

Things have changed. Healed. Stayed scarred. What matters most is more internal now. It's as if losing all of my anchors forced me to become my own weight in the world. Oddly enough, it's the best I think I've ever felt. I am not afraid to be alone. I can eat by myself without texting everyone in my phone book.

I don't keep busy. I don't clean the house every week. Sometimes I let the dishes pile up. I leave the house without make-up on. I don't worry about who sees me...I like what they are looking at.

I don't return most phone calls. I stopped writing letters back when I'm too busy. I don't do people favors and they get mad when they don't appreciate it. I just don't do them in the first place. I don't resent not being in charge 100% of the time. I still like to be the boss though.

I eat what I want. I still feel guilty after...but I do it anyways. My hair is long and red again. Like when I was 15. I'm all curves. It's been years since I could count my abs. I still want those back. but not enough to be hungry or sweat it out in the rain when it's 32 degrees outside. I have acknowledged my deep and abiding hatred for gyms that don't look like spas. I live in the same house I grew up in, and have stopped telling people where I'm headed next.

I met most of my heroes from when I was young and met most of my teenaged self's goals. I have new goals. I care less when I don't win. I still like to win though.

I love being in a strong marriage and grateful for it every day, although I wish it was legal in my home state. I am planning a wedding anyway. I can't afford anything fancy and am struggling to accept that It might not be perfect. I seem to have downgraded from Type A to Type B+. I'm happy about it.

I cook. All the time. I read again. I work. Some days are good and others aren't. Little things matter less. Most things are little things. I get excited when something gets me excited. I have less desire to breed and a bigger wanderlust than ever before. I want to see Africa soon. And Tokyo. And Greece. And maybe Peru.

I still want more money. I have more straight people who own beige everything in my life than I ever thought possible. And I genuinely like most of them. I feel like a grown-up. Real Age.com says that even though I'm 30 I'm really only 22. I think it's because I lied to the computer.

I don't pretend to like yoga anymore. I like stretching and it is totally different. I like yoga pants. I'm over the actual yoga though. There are lots of friends I let go of. I still love them. I just don't make any effort. The connection has been left to wither on the vine and disappear from lack of care. I'm suddenly comfortable throwing stuff away. I donate things. Often. I have less and worry as much as before. Which would indicate that I am a worrier...and that getting more won't help.

I still want to write a book. But know for a fact it won't happen this year. And I don't feel bad about that. I run the heater when I'm cold. I run again. When I run, I think of my mom. I am hopelessly in love with my very best friend and playmate in the whole entire world. Sometimes I still wonder what she sees in me. But I don't think she's going to leave. I don't think I will either. Not ever.

I feel lucky more than I feel like the universe has it in for me. Most of the time I am hopeful, bordering on content. Sometimes I wish for things I shouldn't want and feel bad about it. I don't worry about missing out when I stay in. I I don't miss New York. I want LA in my life more...but am not ready to move there just yet.

I love my family. I am learning to let go of being angry. I am still really angry at fewer and fewer people. I wish I could afford hypnosis to speed up the forgiveness process. I am finally old enough to understand why everyone was so worried about me as a kid.

Everything is uncertain and for once I am okay with it.

How I want it to be... is going to change this year... just like it always does. I am not keeping score.

My main resolutions this year include indulging. Like burning the expensive candles I buy instead of "saving" them. The same goes for drinking the good wine that is sitting in my pantry. And buying flowers for myself when I bring them to my folks.

They also include donating money to charity without thinking about stuff I wish I had. Spending my time in fulfilling ways. Running marathon #2 for the other parent I lost. Making Mau and Rawr real. Continuing to please myself first. Enjoying every day. Learning new cooking techniques. Taking a ballroom dance class to remember my grandparents who took each other dancing every Friday night their entire 80+ years. Working where I am, not wishing I was somewhere else. Traveling. Pulling together the fragments that are still scattered. Loving the people I love as hard and unapologetically as I can. Loving myself the same way.

As far as lessons learned and hopes for the future, this is the first year of my concious life that I have decided, for now, to just let it all be. There are hopes, and stuff was learned. And it is not going to move me forward in any meaningful way to make checklists out of my life.

For today at least... it was enough to just do a couple things I needed to do, then go for a run, drink coffee with cats and wait for J's smiling face to get home. Not bad 2012...not bad at all.

Letting it all hang out...

2011-10-31T10:27:00.001-07:00

For most of my life I have made people around me sigh and shake their heads before dispensing their personal list of Too's in my direction. Everyone seems to have this list of unsolicited advice for me. I'm too open, too sexy, too aggressive, too trusting, too impulsive, too free, too outspoken, too opinionated, too fat, too skinny, too trashy, too uptight, too forthcoming, too honest... too much.

And I never know what they are talking about. Usually because I don't remember much.

My memory of the last 15 years is a jumbled mess. San Francisco is a whirl of rooftop photo shoots, other people's boyfriends, punk shows, Joey's couch, before-they-were stars gays, knives in boots, pretty girls I was afraid to talk to and booze and crazy haircuts and roaming the Mission pre-dawn waiting to run into people I knew I would find. I never called anyone back then. I remember that I never made plans.

Austin came next. Desert and cockroaches and being all alone, cowboy style. Driving across the country in my little ford ranger and stopping at every truck stop I could find. Te city itself is a whirl of clubs, music, Miss Marla, Boys before they were Boys, fights, drunks, bats, punks, bikes, drag clubs, chickens, Kinky Friedman and Willie Nelson, TV studios, cigarettes, pickup trucks, cameras and pretty bois. Well, I guess there was that bartender. And the tatted up marine I loved. And the fashion model. Oh yeah...and Dallas Inequity. Okay, so Austin I sort of remember. But I took pictures constantly. That helps.

In New York I put down the camera so the rock star and I could go on tour. I was skinny and modeling for lots of things and it was always 3am every time I looked at a clock and I was always in heels and always had a cocktail. There was lots of kissing and not much else. I was sick a lot. Everyone was beautiful in an ugly way. Everyone was nice and it threw me. That and it was dirty. And friggin freezing. I remember finally figuring out that the entire city wanted something at all times and it was too much. The hunger and desperation of people trying to Be Somebody.. it was too damn cold for that. That's what I remember about New York.

When I tell stories about my life people tell me to write a book. I wish I could. Every time I sit down to sort it all out it just jumbles up in my head. Becomes a blur of colors and a circle of head shakes. I start to get the Too's. Is it too much? Does this make me sound slutty? Or stupid? It's too focused on feelings or events. it's too hard to explain. I sound crazy right? moving to a new city for a girl I didn't know? What about naming names? Is that too much? I usually give up pretty quick. It's a mess when you realize that other people's opinions of you have become so ingrained that they don't need to lecture you anymore...you lecture yourself. These days though...with the owners of most of those voices dead and gone... little cracks have started to appear. Little places to shove away all of those lists ringing in my ears. Cracks are great for things to fall through...and I am systematically giving all those too's a nice little shove.

J says I should care less what people think. Someday, I tell her..when we're rich...I promise I will cease to care entirely. Until then...everyone is a threat. Every Internet photo...of me...taken by me...every blog post (it took me from July til now to get up the guts to start posting again after a work conversation about having no expectation of Internet privacy)... every review of a project and every post to my Facebook looms over me..a life lived openly in a list of Too's just waiting for someone to judge it. And that's the thing isn't it? Everyone does it. Everyone has secrets and adventures and debaucherous nights. The rule I keep breaking is that I don't seem to have the sense to be ashamed of it. Or to hide it. Well...most of it.

i have secrets like anyone.

The funny part is, I set it up that way. Deliberately. I still remember sitting my mom down when I was 18 and trying to explain to her that part of the purpose of that first tattoo was to keep me from ever becoming one of those sad women in the suburbs who keep their glory days in the past while hiding every amazing thing they every did from the neighbors and their kids. I wanted to wear my crazy life. I wanted to own it. To be proud of my adventures. And for the most part...I am.

It was for the same reason I never censored the pictures people took of me or my name on the racy ones I took of them. I made art...much of it provocative... for most of my life. It's what I'm here for.

Then, when my dad died. I stopped. I worked for Republicans and hated my job. It made sense to be miserable. It made sense to have a boss that hated me or yelled at me. The world was over. My dad was gone. I wore gray suits. I had a government job and a health plan and was home every night by 8pm. I did that for 2 years. In Sacramento. In the suburbs. Every morning I woke up, covered up the tattoos, put my hair in a ponytail and went to work. I jogged. I wrote. I worked. And I dreamed about New York. I dreamed about the day I would go somewhere that I wasn't a freak and get to Be Somebody.

Fast forward past the blur of art loft, club kid, touring, spit, glitter, peaches, boozy breakfasts and and stunner style, cold feet, dirty floors, and stuff I left behind. There are 8 million just like me all over New york. Every one of them amazing. Every one of them waiting for someone else to tell them so. I hated New York by the time we left. the slime of it. The grating rub of taxi horns and sirens and constant Look At Me's overwhelmed every sense. The city is something to be survived. And I did. But barely.

I left New York and all the things I had been dreaming about to come back to Sacramento. This time, it was my mom who was sick. When she died...it started again. I got a corporate job that I like but where I'm not exactly free. It's not creative and I'm not in charge and I worry constantly about pleasing the people above me. I wake up every morning and cover up all the tattoos in shades of gray sweaters and blue jeans. I pull my hair into a ponytail. I go to work. I come home by 9pm to feed the cats and kiss my wife who I love more than anything. I fantasize about buying our house outright. Owning it and filling it with kids and watching them grow up.

And I dream about LA. And the beach. And money. A jobs where I can show up in a ripped t-shirt and giant earrings ad tell someone about the great photo of J and I on last night's party.com instead of praying no one sees it. Some part of me still feels a pull to that culture. LA, I think, Is New York lite. All the drama with more sun and sand and bars that close at 2am so everyone can feel like a rock star when they shut it down. I dream about making things for a living. Making movies or TV. Pushing scripts I like, production whatever...just MAKING stuff that I care about. I guess there are probably millions of me there too.

SO I stay in Sacramento. I stay in my little house in the suburbs and worry about the bills. I look for a way to change the cycle. I keep the gray sweaters handy and try not to annoy anyone. I don't go to parties or protests and I don't take pictures. Somewhere in there though is this tiny little spark. The little part of me that dyed my hair Jessica Rabbit red this year. The part that sent a totally inappropriate text to a high school crush 12 years later...just for fun. The part that wants to marry J again, this time in cowboy boots with a tranny accordion player and some really amazing Leslie van Stelton and Maro Hagopian photo shoot in the barn afterwards.

That part of me still likes my job. Still loves my house in the suburbs and desperately wants to keep it. Still thinks my idea of fun is just fine thank you. Still has opinions and takes amazing photos...when I bother pulling out my camera. Still wants to write that book someday. Still has no idea what the next step is.

After two years of illness, and sadness and saying goodbye here I am, feeling myself inside the shell I made...kicking my way out with no direction. And it's funny...because the people I met in the last two years...look at me like I've lost my mind. They only ever met gray sweater girl. They call me mousy. They think I'm soft. They tell me I'm too trusting. Too scared. Too sweet. Too innocent. Too vulnerable. Too people pleasing. Too concerned with what people thing. too quiet.

How bizarre. I think, what is happening, is that 15 year old me and 30 year old me have finally just come to an understanding. 30 year old me gets up and goes to work on time, does her job well, speaks respectfully to people she doesn't like, can do amazing things with a line item budget and a team of cranky creative creatures and owns a house in the suburbs and likes it. 15 year old me gets to pick the hair, the parties, the pictures, the dates and the clothes. We are sorting it out amongst ourselves. And it is a work in progress. 15 year old me wants a creative gig. 30 year old me wants lots of money. They both want to be the boss someday. 15 year old me always wanted a gay best friend and life of fabulous queers. 30 year old me has more than enough of that and wants a straight date just for kicks. They both want to make art and take pictures and have kids someday. One of us thinks someday is soon. Both of us love being invited to fabulous parties. neither of us really like rules. 30 year old me has finally learned to follow them though. Most of the time. We both want more than there is time enough in this life to get. And we both want to try anyways. We both still like to get naked in public...although 30 year old me keeps her clothes on and instead lets the world just read her diary. 30 year old me still has a totally innapropriate sense of humor. About everything.

And sometimes, it is all just too damn much. But it's beautiful. And I am grateful for every second. And for the first time in a long time it feels like me again.

Time Flies When You're On The Floor

2011-07-15T09:25:00.000-07:00

When you are grieving for a lost loved one, the whole world seems to be telling you that any type of behavior is acceptable...for a time. Then one day, you are supposed to just know when, you are expected to pick yourself up, dust off the shroud of feelings you have been in encased in, and just Get On With Life.

I have been lying on the floor for six months.

I get up to go to work. I come home to eat badly, water plants occasionally and lay for hours on end watching bad TV.

It's been six months since she died.

It's time to get up.

Inertia is a weight that rules me. I put away the whiskey without thinking about it months ago. I still of pizza as a food group though. True Blood on Netflix can still steal two complete days from my life without a second thought.

I am upright. I am writing this. I went to work last week. I had a BBQ recently. Somewhere in there healing is taking place.

I am not the same though. I don't know who I am now. I have anger and passions and beliefs that are all new to me.

And it's time to do something with them.

On the days I can get off the floor.

The Last 30 Years....

2011-03-31T11:33:00.000-07:00

With such a milestone birthday coming up next week I though I should take stock. This is what I have come up with so far.

In the last 30 years I have:

Been the angsty teenager mother's worried about.

AND the homecoming princess.

Run away.

Come home again.

Gotten a tattoo. Or, a few.

Pierced my own ears.

Screamed so load at the Gilman I lost my voice.

Inhaled.

tripped. all over myself.

Made mistakes. Big ones. Some of them I learned from.

Skimped on the sunscreen.

Smoked.

And QUIT :0)

Learned to drive stick. In Kansas.

Seen the sunrise in Appalachia.

Fallen in Love. With many people.

Stayed with one.

Dyed my hair red, black, pink, striped, blue, purple, blond, and some weird shade of candy.

Read the newspaper with my father every Sunday.

Loved Jon Carroll, The Sex Pistols, Riot Girl, The Clash and Etta James.

Learned to cook.

Grown my own food. Had politics about it. Gave them up. Still grow it.

Worked for Republicans and Homeland Security.

While voting Democratic.

Learned to love my mother for exactly who she was.

Helped both my parents die gracefully and with love.

Held each of their hands when they went.

Got a college degree.

Got a Master's Degree.

Been broke.

And loaded.

Met celebrities.

Had an affair with a married man. Loved him. Left him.

Owned it.

Traveled to Galapagos, Mexico, Canada, London, Ecuador and driven across the US 10 or 12 times.

Sometimes alone in a pickup truck.

Picked up hitch hikers.

Made a lot of friends. Some of whom...I am blessed to still know.

Done a lot of yoga.

Run a marathon.

Read the entire fiction section of the Fair Oaks Public Libray. Really. Except the Westerns.

I befriended my siblings.

I have cared for 1 dog, 7 cats, 1 bird and 3 junkies.

Been to Weddings. Seen my friends have children.

Lived in a warehouse full of dirty art kids with one bathroom.

Celebrated in the Rivington penthouse.

Lived in New York, Austin, San Francisco, Oakland, Washington DC, Santa Rosa, San Diego and Sacramento

Snuck in to Soho House...on 2 continents.

Had art shows.

Thrown parties for 5000+

Thrown a party no one attended.

Spent a Christmas alone.

Been published.

Made stuff that went on TV or in theaters.

Written hundreds of love letters. Saved Evry. Single. One. that someone wrote me.

Had a lot of crazy sex. Sometimes with people I did not know well. Or at all.

Been fat. Been skinny.

Sizes 0-14 to be exact.

Not said things I should have.

Asked for forgiveness.

Started fights.

Been cruel.

Gone out of my way to be kind.

Got engaged.

Got fired.

Poured beer on a customer. On purpose. Poured Olive oil on another one. On accident.

See above.

Cooked Thanksgiving dinner for 20.

Lived in a warehouse loft with one bathroom for 9 people.

Been evicted.

Watched someone in trouble and didn't help.

Helped someone no one else would touch.

Drank Miracle Grow.

Took piano lessons and never learned to play.

Was a ballet dancer for 15 years.

Was a photographer for 10.

And a newspaper editor.

And an Art Director in New York City.

Where I had an apartment in Chelsea.

Had a drink named after me.

In the Next 30 Years I Want To:

See Africa. And Tokyo.

Party in Beruit.

Get pregnant.

Have a baby-without drugs.

Get married. To the person I am engaged to now.

Learn to dance in public without fear.

Start a country band.

Buy my family home.

Buy an apartment in a city I love for summertime stays.

Take vacations.

Run another marathon. This time for my mom.

Finish that novel I keep working on and get it published.

Give workshops.

Get promoted.

Make upper-middle class money.

Keep my friends.

Make more.

Take walks. Keep cooking.

Sing in a country band.

Do Korean Kareoke.

Wear Chanel to a party.

Own hats.

Paint. Draw. Journal. Write more love letters.

Eat for life and love.

Live expansively.

Learn to fight.

Travel for work.

Be an Art Director Again.

Get a PhD in Sociology.

Take business classes.

Learn the trapeeze.

See my siblings happily married.

Help a baby be born.

Spend more time in Texas.

Let go of old heartaches and bad habits.

Forgive myself for everything I did wrong in the first 30 years.

Be open to whatever comes my way.

Accept Grace.

Give Love freely and Accept it without reservations.

Play hooky.

Learn to stuff an artichoke.

Celebrate every day on this earth and every blessing that comes with it.

Milestones... 2/13/11

2011-02-13T08:07:00.001-08:00

Today is exactly one month since Mom died. I am sitting at a desk in what used to be her room. Typing where her bed used to be. Staring at all the Get Well cards on the wall I can't bring myself to take down. Leafing through Post-Its that remind me to pay off more final bills and cut up old credit cards and file the mountains of her paperwork we keep finding in every corner of the house. One lone yellow Post It reminds me that rooms must be painted this week so as to finally get them advertised for rent.

I dream about having enough money to stay home for weeks, do nothing, and cry. Then maybe go to Alaska. I've never wanted to go but I promised Mom I would take her last year... she wanted to see the glaciers before they were gone she said. Never in a million years did either of us think that they would outlast her.

I still can't really lose it for long periods of time. Work and stress and fear and a driving desire to keep our family home together and operation prevents all out hysteria. Still, it's like walking around in a fog. I remember when Dad died that it was June. My next memories are from August. I think I'm in that part of the process.

The sleepwalking part.

Being me, I'm a little more manic than most. I'm cooking again and heading to the gym and trying hard to burn away some of the panic that starts to rise every time I let t Really Sink In that Mom is gone. Dad is gone. I live in their house. My life is totally defined by what is missing. By who is missing. And how it happened. And what it means.

I have decided to produce a series of workshops for people my age on how to prep to care for their dying parents/grandparents/spouses etc. It won't cover children...that's the one thing I think could be more horrible than this. I can't speak to it. I'm not really sure how it will look yet. Basically an advocacy program of sorts. How hard it is, how little help you get, how much it changes you....and why it's totally worth doing anyways. And how to survive it.

I had thought I would hole up and write this whole time but it turns out it took us a whole month just to move a desk and set up the computer so I think, as with most things, maybe I was being a little overly ambitious. At some point this year I will start again. Until then...everything feels clinical and has some kind of metallic aftertaste. It's removed from me. It requires peeling...and I'm not ready to do that yet.

Workshops, work, renters, the house... there is plenty to do in the meantime.

There are still occasional cards and calls. The visitors are gone. Life is drifting into the new patterns formed by gaping hole between us all, left by my mother's absence. There is nothing to do but wait and see where the dust settles.

2011-01-20T11:30:00.000-08:00

Soooo... it's starting to feel a little bit like this.

Wondering what comes next.

Surreal Scrabble

2011-01-15T12:33:00.000-08:00

Mom died three days ago.

I have to say it that way because right now, it still isn't real.

I'm wandering around, making arrangements and phone calls. Hoping nothing important falls through the cracks more than it already has. The money wasn't where it was supposed to be so it's a lot of scramble, hope, pray and defer jobs on my to do list. it is an exercise in prioritizing I tell myself. It is forcing me to do things like plan her service instead of pay off her bills. It is better this way. It's just harder to hide from what has happened. It's harder to shift focus from how empty my insides are.

What I can do Right Now involves a lot of emotional hurdles. Thank god for Jasper and Taryn. They are cleaning out areas and throwing away broken plates and putting things in front of me to sort so I don't have to actually Start a project that in any way involves loosing even the smallest bit of what I have left of my parents. They are angels on this earth. Leroy too has shown up in a way that makes me feel like somehow, it will all be okay in the end. Melissa is still reeling, but present and I know she will lend a hand as well. The last thing I said to my mom before she died was that we would all take care of each other. It's a promise that we have all tacitly agreed to keep.

Despite the ever growing to do list, we are all just sitting around, glad to be home. Playing out our sibling lives. Loving our spouses. Trying to comfort the cats. Trying to wrap our heads around the fact that the two most important people in our lives...the only two people who ever guaranteed us unconditional love and acceptance... are gone. The world is colder and lonelier and scarier than ever. We have all been huddled together around the warmth of the big screen TV in mom's room, sitting in piles of her pillows and swaddled in her snuggies watching comedy after comedy and trying not to let it sink in just yet.

Jasper built an altar in front of mom's card wall with mom and dad on it. It has a baseball and a Buddha and mom's favorite stones and a couple of candles. It strikes me that if no else moves it I could leave it there forever.

I have nightmares about evil cats and disappointed babies. I wake up sweating thinking about money and how much I love our home and don't want to leave it. I am wearing mom's purple snuggie and eating cheese and have gotten fat from grief and a lack of will. Jasper made fish and I cooked cauliflower last night and I realized I hadn't eaten a vegetable in weeks. I miss my mom.

The funeral home was a nightmare of cardboard boxes with faux metal handles and tacky memorials and a grinning guy who needed a check more than he needed to learn our names.

The trip to the cemetery to arrange for placement was an adventure in inappropriate. As we walked in we were greeted by the sight of a red-haired woman on the telephone who finished talking for several minutes before acknowledging us. Behind her was a tasteless joke flyer with the words "Try Before You Buy" scrawled across a cartoon coffin. She wore a skating rink on her ring finger and kept twisting it and tapping her nails while she walked us through the process. "Only 17 characters per line...that includes commas!" she admonished as we tried to figure out how to sum up our mother in four short lines. "I didn't come here to play scrabble...we need a minute" was out of my mouth before I knew it.

Shit.

I did it again.

I am too raw for the world right now. Then, just as I was starting to feel bad about my whispered outburst, I noticed that the woman was tapping her nails along to...swear to god...wait for it... "Only The Good Die Young." Seriously. Couldn't make that up. We giggled uncomfortably and mentioned it. She got a little sweeter... but didn't turn it down. We made arrangements and headed home, back to the safe glow of late night comedy and distressing phone calls and oh yeah...phone calls.

We have received four. Total. 2 uncles and 2 cousins. And 1 email.

Nothing from mom's sisters.

Friends, thankfully, have just shown up. Or texted. Still, in spite of ourselves we can't help but wonder exactly what will be left once the dust settles. At this point, it feels hopeless to try and direct the flow of events. We are all just clinging to what little life rafts come our way and preparing for a life adrift.

The Last Christmas

2010-12-21T18:00:00.000-08:00

Today is the last Christmas I will ever have with my mother.

We decided to have it today because it was the only day we could get my brother, sister, and myself along with all of our respective partners in the same room together. Mom is indifferent. She is humming songs. her eyes don't track. She knows who I am.. most of the time. She's not hungry.

Still no one calls.

Laurie left today. My dad's sister. There are no words for how much comfort her presence brings even if only for a few days.

Despite the sadness and the holiday anger still simmers beneath the surface. Rage at how unfair it is. At the onslaught of endings and goodbyes that has ruled life for the last five years.

Leslie. Dad. Grandpa. Soon Mom. Then Grandma. The ceaseless cycle of loss not quite offset by the occasional birth.

Today a woman from hospice sat in my kitchen and told me that two weeks from now the world would no longer contain my mother. Two weeks from now I would no longer have parents. Home will be my responsibility and no one Else's. The world will be lonelier than I ever thought possible.

I can't stop crying. But I also can't believe it yet.

I just have no frame of reference for that. It's like trying to imagine what a million dollars would actually feel like spread out in your hands. Theoretically it all makes sense but you just never know... not really...until you do.

If one more person says they are worried about me I will explode. Worry isn't doing anyone any good.

All I am trying to do is get the word "goodbye" dislodged from my throat. Mostly I settle for "I love you" about 1000 times a day.

No idea what comes next. Actually... some idea. No idea how it will go. No sense of the future. Just a big yawning hole where all the supposed to's used to be. The Dance I was supposed to have with Dad at my wedding. The 2 am phone call I was supposed to make to Mom when my first child wouldn't stop crying. The first time I was supposed to be able to tell them they would be Grandparents. The trip we were all supposed to send them on for their 40th Anniversary...this coming year.

For the very first time in my entire life... I have absolutely No Idea what comes next.

Here's What I Know...

2010-11-16T07:46:00.000-08:00

That the hardest

relationships are also the best ones.

All of the most important people, the ones that make up the structure of my foundations as a person; my mother, my best friends, my wife... none of those relationships came easy. In my head I imagine us as two perfectly cubed blocks of wood, knocking against each other to make tiny divots and other places to fit. Over time they rub down the edges, like sea glass, until the two are seamless. They become one. Like building a log cabin without nails. It's a lot of work. You can't do it alone. You just constantly keep filling in the cracks and they're drafty and have a lot of dirt and mud in the foundation. Still... those suckers are still standing 150 years later.

As it applies to people, it's also the only type of relationship left I find worth having. With limited time and energy per lifetime, I'd rather put mine towards something that will be there when I'm 80 than little office dramas or coffee with old acquaintances I don't know anymore.

It's why I am endlessly attracted to the hard case. Why I believe not just in second chances for people but in unlimited chances. A lifetime of chances. Or at least I do when I get the sense that the person I'm running into over and over again, banging out the dents with, has something valuable to offer. Sometimes years will go by in between my interactions with people and yet I pick up exactly where we left off in the building process every time. I believe that this is worth my precious time.

Even now, with my mother less coherent every day, we are still building our relationship. We are still building a sense of each other. A stronger love. A harder bond. A more seamless fit.

I am so grateful for the extra time every day that I wake up and sneak close to her bedside just to confirm that for one more day at least... she's still breathing. For one more day at least, we can smoth out just one more rough spot. We can become just a tiny bit closer.

I was watching TV with mom the other night and some silly show about men living in New York came on. I watched about 5 min before I changed the channel. Just long enough to hear one man advise another that his relationship was "too much work" and that real love was supposed to be easy and fun. I wonder how many people actually believe that.... I wonder why? I wonder how many of them are actually happy? How many of them will die in nursing homes, alone and forgotten... How many of them will wake up and have mid-life crisis and feel like no one actually knows them? It seems like an awful lot of work to maintain such a lazy approach to relationship building. You'd spend your whole life scraping them partway through and starting over. That feels sad to me somehow.

Last night was J's birthday. Taryn and Ramsey joined us for triple chocolate cake and too much champagne. It was a far cry from the first birthday we spent together, rock n' roll style in New York with cupcakes, back-up dancers and Tequila. We opened presents with mom and scraped cake off her chin and toasted J and cried. It was beautiful. Despite the alcohol I will always remember it. The highlight of the day was the pile of cards and love that Jasper got from my relatives on my dad's side of the family. Every one of them appreciative of what she is doing here. Every one of them acknowledging the very real and special role she plays in my life. And in my mother's. Every one of them welcoming her with open arms.

Our stories are tangled up here. Mine and J's. It's a new deep groove in our foundation. The first, almost, seamless fit of what I hope will be a lifetime more to come.

The simple sweetness of their acknowledgement that this person is loved and loves in our family and has by that alone, earned a place in it...well, let's just say that I could feel my dad in that last night. And J got to see a little bit of what he was like. And why he was so special to me. I haven't figured out yet how to say thank you. How I managed to be so blessed with so many immovable foundation pieces. I know that my parents were the cornerstones. I've been so scared that without them, without those first balancing pieces, that all the rest would fall apart. Turns out they planned for that. Turns out...I have serious back up.

There's just no way to say thank you for that. But I'll probably spend my life trying like hell to recreate it for my own kids.

My aunt and uncle on my mom's side are part of this as well. We are very different but there is a lot of love there. Slowly, we keep banging away at the sharp edges. We keep wearing new grooves in each other's hearts. They laugh at how much someone like me, tattooed, thoroughly modern, gay, can be so old-fashioned in my values. It's true though... I am the original Family Values poster child. Of course, what that means to me is a little different than what most people hear on TV. I've been blessed with strong family support from my father. I built my own additions with friends for the last 15 years that are unwavering in connection and support. Now I am engaged to the only woman with a stronger will than myself, and we both want Us. It's not smiling, blond or nuclear and there will never be a Christmas card with matching sweaters and an Irish Setter... but it's my Family-and they are wonderful. And as far as I'm concerned... It's the only thing that really matters.

When I say old-fashioned values... I mean 18th century style. I love that once upon a time women had babies with all of their friends and female relatives present. I love that once upon a time people cared for their family members who were old and sick and dying. They provided them with love and dignity at the end of their days without ever questioning whether or not it was their responsibility. I love the idea of barn raising's...the modern equivalent of which I guess, is when you find out who your friends are when they show up to help you move for no more than a slice of pizza and a couple of cold ones. Once upon a time every neighbor within 50 miles would take the day off work, pack up the family and show up to labor with you for 16 hours to help you build your house or your barn. That's how bad they didn't want you to be homeless. That's how much trust there was that when they needed it... you would show up and return the favor.

I love that the best thing you could do for someone was feed them and care for them when they needed it. Those are the values I appreciate. They have nothing to do with sexual modesty or a woman's rights over her own body or any of the other Individual choices that get thrown under the bus of that Values label. It's about connection. And generosity. And a tacit understanding that people in general and family especially Deserve love and care and respect from the beginning of their lives right on up through the end of them. That this is our mandate as people. This is what matters.

Those are the "Family Values" I try to keep alive in my life. It really is about the value of family. It's a respect for how hard it is to build solid and lasting relationships and the knowledge that despite the work, their value is immeasurable. An appreciation for Marla's couch and Tonya's bathtub and Paula's pasta salad and Laurie's calm and Rawr's arms and my mother's humor and my uncle's generosity of spirit and Shcricken and Taryn's ears and shoulders and zillion other people and things that are, well, Valuable.

Thank you Universe for my amazing friends who are also my family, for the family I have left and the ones who started me out, for every person in my life who has built me, stuck with me, held me up when I couldn't do it on my own and stuck around for the fun part later on down the road.

I must have been a really good cat in a past life.

Today, I don't have Cancer.

2010-10-28T08:34:00.000-07:00

Today, I don't have cancer.

Relief is still gushing over my head and dripping down my shoulders. Today I do not have to look my dying mother in the face and say "Mom, they found a lump."

I mean...they did. Find A Lump. But for now at least, a lump is just a lump.

It's ironic. About two months ago I realized I would be totally irresponsible to not get myself insured in case I got sick. Who would take care of mom if I was malingering in bed? I got a flu shot but still... a simple cold could derail us all out here on our ledge. So, I went into research overdrive and bought the most affordable private insurance that I could. It covers everything But pregnancy and cancer.

I made all my check ups. I got my teeth cleaned, proud of the fact that I had thought to add a 20 dollar dental plan to my oh so affordable insurance. I made an annual physical appointment and the set up a lady check up with a women's health clinic. The woman I saw didn't speak much English but the form she checked out was very clear.

There it was in stark purple letters. A little box checked on a referral form.

Mass/Lump found.

R. Breast.

Doctor's note: ultrasound immediately.

My insurance covers everything but pregnancy and cancer.

Three weeks later and some generous help from my Aunt and Uncle who saw me starting to lose it a little under the strain and I found myself on the phone with the insurance company.

"Yes I'd like to upgrade my plan please."

"Of course ma'am. I'm happy to help. Just fill out the forms online and in about a month after underwriting you will receive notification."

"uuuhhh... I have this referral and I want to get it done sooner than that but my current insurance won't cover it."

"Oh. I see. We'll, you need to get your referral checked out before we can upgrade your plan."

And so it went.

The short version... if I had cancer they wanted an out for treating me so I had to get the procedures done first to check it out. Then, if I was okay, they would consider me for a plan upgrade for the next time.

I filled out the paperwork for my new plan and sent it off and went downtown to keep my appointment. The clinic had ordered an ultrasound and it seemed simple enough.

Then I walked into the building. Que the halleluejuah choros and white light. There was parking. It was huge. It smelled like flowers.

Breast cancer, it seems, is a sexier disease than other kinds of cancer. It raises more money. It's pink with little hearts and comes with a high survival rate and a puppy. Or so it felt walking in there. After six months of sitting in dirty hallways with rude nurses and absent doctors on cold floors waiting for hours to be seen...just me, my mom and her terminal brain tumor... this place, this gorgeous testament to how much somebodey cares about breast cancer and the women who have to go through it, just jump-started the tears. My sick and dying mother couldn't get half of the comforts of this place unless I ferried them in to the hospital myself. Half the time she couldn't even get a nurse to smile. I guess brain tumors aren't quite as sexy. They don't have their own color. The survival rate isn't good. There is no puppy.

I walked in and no less than six smiling women at desks rushed to complete my paperwork. Coffee, tea, and soft pillowy sugar cookies with, you guessed it, pink icing, were laid out on banquets along the wall of the plush waiting room. I was ushered into a dressing room with doors that closed and carpet and seating to change into my thick, spa-like hospital robe before being offered a warm blanket and an armchair.

I couldn't get comfortable. All I could do was pace and wonder why I had to spend the last six months at a cancer center begging for blankets or for appointments to be kept relatively on time for my gurney-bound mom who spent hours waiting on charge nurses who treated her like a nuisance when this place was here the whole time. The answer of course is simple. This place is for boobs. All the brains and money in this building are dedicated to the preservation of life... and boobs.

Brain tumors...get your own building.

Glioblastoma are nearly 100% fatal, barring miracles and other minor acts of god. There's no money in it. The near dead and dying get dirty hallways and the smell of disenfectent. They get underpaid and harried nurses who feel underappreciated. They get forgotten by family members and left to die. The boobs...well... they get their own spa.

Don't get me wrong, I am so grateful that a place like this exists for those who need it. I just wish that Everyone who needed help could have access to a place like this. It's on my life's to do list. Make enough money to open a cancer center in my parent's names. One with cookies and a smiling staff where there are warm blankets and no one has to wait too long and the misery of illness is not compounded by any sense of injustice in the treatment process. A place where everything is warm and supportive and hopelessness does not pervade the hallways and nothing smells desperate or lonely.

After only a few minutes of pacing I was called into the small sonogram room, offered pillows and blankets and told to lie back. It was actually very comfortable. There were sheets on the chair instead of paper and the tech was very nice as the tears I just could not stop started slipping down my cheek. In seconds I was blurting out my family's cancer stories and trying not to sob as she ran the sonogram tool over my right breast. She wore goves and even the gel was heated.

"Hey, didn't you just do that spot?"

The tech looked worried.

"I have to get the doctor," she blurted as she left.

I just kept crying. There was nothing else to do.

She came back with a cup of coffee and a smiling blond doctor as I collapsed in tears. She handed me a box of Kleenex as I ran through the litany in my head...

"OhMyGodThisCan'tBeHappeningICan'tGoHomeAndTellMyMomIHaveCancer

ButICan'tLieToHerInHerLastDaysOfLifeWhatTheHellGodWouldNotDoThisIt'sToo

MuchWhatAmIGonnaTellJ?"

The smiling doctor handed me a Kleenex.

"You need a mammogram. We can't tell if the mass that's in your right breast needs to be biopsied or not without a mammogram."

IHaveAMassInMyRightBreast.

Shit.

After a few more tears and some incoherent explanation about my precarious insurance situation (I couldn't upgrade to a plan that allows mammograms for someone my age if the doctor wrote in her notes that I needed one because then I would be too high risk to be given the plan I needed and could be denied the upgrade but the local clinics needed me to have No insurance in order to see me etc etc etc) as I checked my watch and started to worry about mom at home without anyone to handle changing diapers or giving injections.

ICan'tGetSickNotNowIJustCan'tBeSickNotYetGodPleaseNotYet....

I paced the waiting room calling on god and every dead relative to spare me this...at least for now. I could not stop crying.

"psssst....c'mon," a head peeked around the corner and motioned for me to follow.

The doctor and the tech looked sneaky as they hurried me into a small cold room. I got my mammogram. Off the books. These are the kind of doctors I needed to know were out there. The ones who cared more about a patient's life and safety and comfort than about billing forms or insurance or lawyers. I didn't even get the doctor's name but I will be forever grateful. It was rebuilding of my faith in the people who practice medicine. Some of them anyways.

After 20 minutes of compressions and pictures the doctor came back again and said... "Everything looks fine." Relief.

I cried my way through the dressing room as I pulled my sweater back on and at the front desk where I was told to stop and make a six month double-check appointment...once my new insurance was firmly in place. Just in case.

I smiled and thanked everyone and the even the parking lot attendant was nice. Two dollars. For the day. Seriously, where was this place six months ago? I got to go home and hug my mom and J and say, with a huge smile, "Just a check-up... nothing to worry about".

J gave me a long hug and I could feel her heart beating in time with my own endless "Thank You" loop playing in my head. Mom and I settled in to watch the news and I just sat with her smiling and holding her hand and being grateful that as bad as things are, for today at least, they won't be getting worse.

For Today at least, I Don't Have Cancer.

End of the Line

2010-10-24T15:07:00.001-07:00

I got a job yesterday. It is the first job I have held in two and a half years. It's a good job. It's what I went to school for. I will work with interesting people on a schedule that works for me and will be able to pay at least some of my bills. Even more amazing, today my trusty unemployment ran out.

Still... the thought of having to care about anything besides mom, besides the immediate, besides the here and now and the misery soon to come when she passes out of this world... it is taking all of my willpower to go to work.

Things have started on a rapid downhill slide. There is less and less lucidity. She couldn't get names or faces right after an hour. Food is less exciting. Getting out of bed takes more energy. Sadness is pervasive.

I videotape everything.

Funny how I spent my whole life training to be able to photograph other people's misery halfway around the world and now the moment that brings me back to my chosen career is my own misery. It makes me wonder if God isn't really a fat laughing Asian man on top of a hill having a good time at our expense. At any rate, I'll never be one of those assholes with a camera that asks a distraught or grieving person "How do you feel?". Never.

In school we had to watch a documentary called "Silverlake Life". The filmmaker documented his last months with his partner who was dying of AIDS. He preserved and he processed and at the end, when his love had died and was being carted away... he just could Not Put Down the Camera. It was his last tie. The last thread of connection. The last hurdle before reality and the loss of a lifetime breached the barrier of plastic and ground glass and leached into his actual life.

I understand why.

If I just keep filming maybe, just maybe I will catch my mother on film saying something I can keep. Maybe, I will be blessed with a few seconds of her saying "I love you" or "I am gonna be okay... I'll watch out for you" or best of all, "I'll never really leave you". Maybe, just maybe if I keep the camera running I can find something that will get me through the next 60 years or so without my mom, even though the thought is inconceivable right now. It rattles around in my head, like those stone polisher machines people used to give little boys for Christmas when they didn't know them well. It never sinks in. It never really registers. It just tumbles through at odd moments while I load the dishwasher or button my shirt. "My mom is dying." "My dad is already dead." "This is what totally alone feels like."

Except that it's not.

I have so much love and so much family...chosen and not. Still, I don't think there is any kind of unconditional love like that a parent can give to a child.

I got two of the best anyone could ever ask for... and I have no idea how to repay that to the world or the universe or whoever is responsible. I hope that someday I will be presented with real opportunities to say thank you.

Follow the light...

2010-09-26T08:57:00.000-07:00

What is required of us in times of great stress is great determination. Well, that and something to look forward to. Some kind of light at the end of the tunnel.

Here, in the land of the miserable and sick, that light at the end of the tunnel takes many forms. All of them, are predicated on Hope.

Mom and I are planning Thanksgiving at a huge fancy hotel. We have rented the Presidential Suite aka, the two story palace that normal people would never even bother trying to see the inside of. Dinner will be brought in. Friends are being called. It is the next iteration in a long and exhausting line of Things To Look Forward To.

It is a plan that requires a great deal of Hope. Hope that we are all here in two months. Hope that she can make the trip. hope that we all remember it well. Hope that the money-conscious among us understand that there is Nothing I wouldn't do to make my mother's last days as spectacular as I can. Hope that I don't forget the lessons inherent in the process of helping mom say goodbye...namely, that this is all there is.

If I have any sense of what life is about after so much loss it is this... There is only today. There are loops and curve balls and tidal waves of loss. money won't shield you from pain although it helps. It isn't worth trading all your time for though. Family is real but not a promise of love or fidelity or right action. You have to appreciate people at their best and forgive them for their worst. There is only so much control we have in this world...that is to say...None. Given that we are small and battered by life's forces and spinning and gravity and disaster then there is no reason at all to put off that trip to Europe or to choose sleep over sex or to drink cheap wine... Except... part of building a life is the economics of it. The sacrifices that lead to other rewards. The people and experiences that become part of the larger whole...the community you build by staying put, by putting in time and effort for things that do not bring immediate gratification.

These little sacrifices expand us from the inside, even as they make our world seem smaller.

Jasper and I have not left the house for more than 20 minutes at a stretch in almost four months. I rarely leave Mom's room. Our families occupy most of our energy, thoughts and spiritual space. Our tiny microcosm of life and Death, is a whole universe for the time being. The world gets smaller, the people in it dwindle to a select few who show up, over and over again. Inside though, cosmos are exploding. Galaxies are being born. Inside everything expands and everything becomes clear...

We. Are. Infinite.

Morphine and Cigarettes

2010-09-25T12:57:00.000-07:00

We finally moved into the Morphine stage. Predictions are dire. Days are spent curled up on twin mattress on her floor in between dishes, laundry, baths, wound dressing... Wound dressing. Her skin is literally breaking apart. She can't digest food. Everything hurts. She cut her toe. it won't stop bleeding. There is a blood blister the size of China on her arm from the last Heparin inection. Nurses come every other day. I am trying to plan something for Thanksgiving but today that feels a little optimistic. I am not crying. I am snapping and withdrawing from people. I am going into the bubble.

Sh*t List

2010-09-10T10:21:00.000-07:00

"How Dare You?"

This is the phrase most often skipped. The one I don't say. The one running on a repeat loop in my head as I face the irate, bored, indifferent or just plain arrogant face across whichever counter I happen to be leaning that day.

Yesterday, I tried to follow up with a nurse on a referral. She spent 15 minutes finding anyone else whom she could possibly pawn the responsibility off on. More time that it would have taken to make the call. I admit, I was frustrated. The world went slow motion as I slowly tapped my toe. My utter lack of poker face once again reared up to haunt me as the words "You are so lazy," typed themselves out in running text across my forehead.

Pulling me into another room the nurse sat me down and with a straight face said "I'm going to help you. If it were me I'd want to know. You are alienating people. No one will help you with your attitude. I know exactly how you feel... I never got upset with the people who were helping me".

Inside my head I was screaming, "But you're NOT helping me. You are the opposite of helping!"

But I flaked out. Sheer frustration and irritation meant words left me in the form of crocodile tears and an inability to say what was running through my head. She left me there, in a puddle and when I emerged to check on mom I found her, leaning over my mother telling her that I had no right to stomp on my mother's dreams of walking again and that she...the hero nurse...was going to help her when I wouldn't. She had the solution...my mother should check in to Eskaton!

Excuse me? WTF....

My mother has been given two months or so left to live. This is the estimated time it would take her to recover from her stroke in a nursing facility. 4 hours a day of therapy to regain her mobility only to have the cancer rob her of it as fast as she can get it. I've never been a really angry person but for a moment, looking at the hope and excitement in mom's eyes before I asked her if she thought that walking again meant the cancer would be cured, I was boiling inside. Watching her cry as she realized that wasn't the case broke my heart. I feel it, the anger, forming a hard little knot as I listen to her sob daily about karma and what did she do wrong as I do unspeakable things to try to alleviate her pain. Bowel dis-impaction. Belly Injections. Narcotics. Ice Packs. Massage. Meditation. Social Workers. Distractions. Parties. An endless parade of house guests. Waking up ever hour on the hour every night to argue that we are not on a train between heaven and hell. To soothe that our souls are safe and that the little boy in the corner calling her name is not real. To bring forth more tears of frustration upon the realization that once again her body has betrayed her and she has not, as she thought, finally been able to shit. Enemas. More tears. Attempts by me to focus on the news. On visitors. On a party or a dinner. More tears as she realizes that I am not my dad. That he went first and she's not sure she believes in heaven anymore. She is alone some days. More alone that I can understand just yet.

I remember ordering a book online with my dad's laptop shortly after he died. His password was set to visible. "Glenn's Unending Solitude". I cried for three days. How sick a joke that the only one who could understand my mother's pain, who could truly comfort her, is already gone.

"You can complain if you want but I need to say this," saucer-eyed nurse says testily. "Your mom has a right to her life."

It's hard to know what to say in these situations besides Fuck You. Sadly, I've noticed over the years that resorting to telling someone off, no matter how much they deserve it, always makes you look like the unreasonable one. So I just cried. Not much better in my book but at least a slightly more sympathetic reaction.

It would be different if it were just one nurse. Something about this system though...you never know how broken it is until it's broken you.

First it was her eye doctor who dispassionately decreed in January that my mother had a rare form of glaucoma and would lose her sight. She was told to do nothing and return in 6 months. Her request for an MRI was denied.

Then it was her primary care doctor who, from February through June sent my mother to three specialists, turned her away over and over when she was late or missed appointments and yelled at her for not respecting Her time. My mother's complaints of constant vomiting, loss of balance, loss of vision and constant falling, sleeping and memory loss/visual hallucinations were all dismissed with a Nexium prescription and a GI referral.

Once the MRI happened and we were in the hospital it was nurses who wouldn't come when called, a surgeon who had to begged to aspirate a hematoma rather than put her under for a third brain surgery in as many weeks (thank god I knew the word for it), a meddling aunt, and an oncologist who would not visit. There were PT and speech therapists who wouldn't release her, then doctors who downgraded her status. Showers were a fight to the death between me and the charge nurses. If I slept at home I would come back to the hospital to find her moved to another room without her helmet, or a nurse ignoring the huge sign over her bead warning of a broken wrist, grabbing the same wrist while she writhed and screamed in pain for blood pressure stats. No one listened about her weak veins until every last one was popped. Then there was the night she had an allergy to the food in the tube in her nose and it took me six hours and three irate nurses, one resident and Finally a doctor on call to convince the idiot on her case that night to discontinue feeding and administer Benadryl. This after six hours of her unable to breath and neck swelling that brought her throat in line with her ears. "I am a professional...the nurse kept saying. Don't tell me how to do my job. She has no allergies". Six hours later someone remembers to add her allergies to the chart.

Then it was home again. Home health Physical Therapy said to take off the boots Nuero PT gave us in the hospital and to remove the wrist guard they had placed on her listless left wrist. One week later she had dislocated her wrist by rolling on it. Two weeks later her arches had fallen.

After weeks of fighting with the insurance company I was then told that there was nothing I could do to get leg massagers in-home. Three weeks in she had developed a hip to ankle blood clot. I will be giving my mother heparin injections in her stomach for the rest of her life.

From there it sort of went downhill.

The nurses in Radiation who wouldn't transfer mom from a wheelchair had a field day ordering gurney service. 8 home health aides came and went with excuses ranging from "Your trees are scary" to "I don't do dishes". One pushed her out of the Hoyer lift and another tried to use it to change diapers. We were on our own again with an apology and a fruit basket from a company that only returned a call after I contacted the CEO.

Apria has delivered no less than three broken hospital beds and two broken wheelchairs.

Her doctor won't return phone calls.

Oxygen and showering were called luxury items by her insurance.

Getting a prescription refilled involves begging, tears and hopping/skipping rain dance of sorts in our local pharmacy.

Social security and FMLA paperwork and the people who administrate it have left me in sobbing puddle underneath the kitchen table more than once. I truly believe there is a special place in hell for the woman who worked mom's case. It took six weeks, endless calls, two supervisors and threatening lawyer just to get her widow's benefits and convince them that being bed bound with a terminal illness counts as permanently disabled. I swear it's enough to make me a Republican. At least with a multitude of private industries you have the luxury of telling someone to go fuck themselves and go to their competition. With the government, all that does is stick you at the back of the line with someone even less helpful.

I make excuses on a daily basis for the people my mother loves who aren't here. Each day is like the one before...she can't tell the passage of time anymore. "Not today mom....maybe next week"..."maybe we can call her".... "maybe they were busy...I'm sure no one forgot you"...."and my favorite, "Don't worry mom...I promise I won't leave you." That last one is the only one that stops the crying.

Mom's Physician finally called today. Not sure how I will get through her impending visit without telling her that the only reason I am not suing her at the moment is because my mother thinks civil suits are tacky.

Guess I've always been more comfortable with the pink flamingo set because frankly... none of that woman's patients are safe as far as I am concerned.

Meanwhile this list grows daily with new slights and new indignities. I gotta work on my poker face.

As the S-list grows however, so does my list of angels on earth who somehow surpass the muck of the system they are in and shine out with all the force of the divine in their sincerity and caring. Larry, the home health nurse who kept coming even when the insurance ran out and baked us pumpkin bread the week we had no visitors and couldn't get out to the store... the hospice nurses-enough said... then there is Evelyn, the only nurse on floor five who would come when her call button was pushed right away or Melissa, the nurse on the cancer floor who fought six angry nurses for the ability to get a shower gurney and help me bathe my mother in the hospital. There is Mark, who made mom's wishes for her yard come true and all the family and friends who came together to make it possible for her to see her oldest daughter get, if not really married, than at least publicly committed.

The laws of spiritual physics seem clear, for every 3 incompetent assholes, there is one shining moment of grace and love that might otherwise have gone unnoticed.

Some of it has to do with what it is that you invite into your life. I am learning to set clearer boundaries. I am also learning that asking for what you need...sometimes makes you a bitch. And that's okay. For example, high maintenance visitors. Don't call me for directions...use map quest. Get your own coffee...it's in the kitchen. Don't watch me do dishes...offer to help. Or relatives who want to argue...whatever it is that pissed you off...if you're still mad in four months I'd be happy to discuss it. Until then...kick rocks. There's no room here for that. Or worst of all, my own inner critic. Whatever could have been done better or differently...it's too late. Suck it up. Move on. There's only today which means my morning meltdown in the laundry room or the gut that is growing around my middle daily or my utter inability to stem the tide of tears no matter how silly... it's over already. Gone. Not part of this moment's reality.

My father was big on this when he was alive and tried desperately to explain it to me when he was dying. "Life is to short to waste it angry," he'd say. I've spent the last eight months angry. With cause. But nonetheless, I'm hoping that what time I have for making memories with mom that is left is tinged a little lighter, a little more sweet with less of the biting bitterness that has coated this whole situation. The engagement party was a wonder in more ways than one. For one full day...we all just had fun.

I am looking forward to more days like that. As many as I can have. And in between the tears and frustration and facial tics and fanatical phone slamming and inability to function pre-coffee... I know that I will have brief moments of grace. Howver bad it gets....there is always, just a little bit, of Light.

Tea leaves

2010-08-02T18:16:00.000-07:00

When I look at old photos of us I am amazed at how much of my future was foretold in so many fits and starts over the years. My favorite is the one of me at 8 or 9, standing with Leslie in Old Sacramento near a train. It's gray outside and she had lent me her sweatshirt. An old pink one. From Mills College. I never remembered it until today. Not even in the four years I attended school there. At the back of the album was another long forgotten piece of my own puzzle. The Rincon Valley School District Award for Writer of the Year. Funny how these things work out.

In between is mom smiling, her thick auburn hair shiny under outdated hats and ancient rhinestone and turtleshell combs that have long since been lost to little girls playing dress up. It's hard to get through the albums. Each picture is a testament to my mother's beauty. My sister shares her face. My brother had her smile. I just look sader and sadder as the years go by. I get surlier and surlier...ever conscious of how different from them all I look. Of how my thin hair is nothing like my moms and my smile is crooked with a gaping hole in my two front teeth and my skinny legs and gangly arms mark me as alien in a family of Marilyn Monroe's and Clark Gable's.

I felt ugly most of my life. I spent the first ten years wishing I was my sister. I spent the next ten wishing I could be just like my dad. Now, in my early thirties, I hope I end up just like my mom.

I miss her most on the days she is here. The days she wakes up bright and competent and utterly herself, ready to take on the world. These are the days I want to ask her advice. About eveything. I want to stockpile and save it up, concious as I am that these spurts of lucidity are limited and will someday soon stop altogether.

My world without her is unimaginable.

Every day for the last four and a half years I have spoken to my mother. Even when I had nothing new to say. Sometimes we would just sit in silence, half heartedly watching tv together from 3,000 miles away. Just keeping each other company. Every day I have been grateful for her. I wish I had figured out ten years earlier that if I could just be myself around her she would not only love me but like me. That we would even get along and enjoy each other's company as much as we do now. I guess I had to figure out who I was first. I hate that it took so long. All that teenaged time...wasted.

These days when I have something to say or just want company, I call my sister. She is my heart and the soul of our family. She is as much of my mother as I can hope for with her own unique charms. I keep my father and Leslie alive in myself as best I can while my brother represents for our grandparents. It's unbelievable to me how few of us are left to keep so many alive.

My mother is the center of our family. I cannot fathom the world without her. She is Mom. She makes the sun rise and set. The world turns on her access. Oceans change currents at her command and I can not possibly do things like get married or buy a house or have children without her to tell me all the ways in which I am doing it all wrong.

Today I went tearing through the photo albums. Today I decided that I don't care about anything except every second I have left with her. Today I cooked three different meals until I found one that made her smile and I watched four different movies from my makeshift bed on her floor and wished we hadn't spent the morning putting so many legal things in order because now she is too tired and too asleep to tell me stories about college or how she met dad or what to do when ... well, just What To Do.

I don't know how it is possible to be three feet from someone and miss them this much. I can't remember how it felt when dad started to go. Just blank. And crying. And a feeling that it just couldn't all be real. It sort of feels like that again but peppered with a hot streak of Anger and a sense of divine injustice. I just got to know my mother.... there is nothing right or fair about loosing her. Not now. Not like this.

I am just not ready to let her go. Every day I wake up and I will her to spend just a little more time here with us. Hell I even took up praying. Sort of. The sense of futility it brings is less than helpful. Every day I take one step at a time until I can't anymore and we collapse into tv and junk food and tears I rarely allow. If I start crying... it's just too hard to stop.

I wish I could go back and shake my 9 year old self. Force a smile. Tell me I was beautiful. That it wasn't worth all the hurt and the worry. That someday people would love me... Different and all. That the time I had with the ones who loved me from the start would be far too short to waste a second of it angry that I wasn't just like them or hurt that anyone else had ever not wanted me. It's the last thing I care about here. Now. The 30 year old version of a Mills College grad and Rincon Valley Writer of the Year.

Here now, all grown up with a love of my own and a life that's been happening for the better part of a decade, there is no trace of the clear notion I had as a child that because I looked different my family must deep down think I didn't belong to them. That they would someday sent me back to wherever they found me. That I would somehow always disapoint them because we would never think the same way. After all these years of pushing them away, of fighting so hard for my own independence, of fighting to be free of all judgement or constraint... I just want my mommy.

This is the kind of shit people should tell you when you're 9. And 15. And 20. That no matter how it feels in the moment, there will always be a time that the people you love let go for real. They all leave. It's always too soon. There is never enough time. And you can't go back and change a thing. Every second wasted in an argument or feeling sorry for yourself or consumed with any sort of self defeating thought or purpose is just that... Wasted.

Dad tried to tell me that years ago. Just like any great partnership though, it took mom to make that real. All regrets aside, the last four years with her have been incredible... and I am grateful for every second. And no matter what, at least I know that I can call my sister and hear some piece of the woman who for 30 years has made the sun rise and set and the world spin. And maybe there is a god in that way because DNA alone doesn't do that. And for the next minute, second, month or day that I have her here, with me... I am trying, just trying, to soak her in as much as I can so that someday, when I need to, I can look back at some picture of us together and remember that we were always, All of Us, meant to be.

Swarming Season

2010-07-24T07:42:00.000-07:00

When my mother and I started planning our garden in the spring, neither of us could have known how successful it would be. Tender green shoots crowded everywhere, tomato plants bigger than I am and flowering lavender are spilling out of the small box in our yard set aside for the endeavor. Even the pots into which we had to transplant our peppers are sagging with the weight of un-staked food. The garden is wild and unkempt...clearly in the possession of people who haven't the slightest idea how to care for it. Yet, somehow, as with everything... life finds it's own way. Against all odds and even with the unsolicited help of my decidedly brown thumb, we are practically drowning in fresh onions and arugula. Some things are best left to their own devices. I guess I identify in a way.

Amidst my planting fervor, mom made several trips on her own to the nursery, returning with packet after packet of seeds. "These will bring the bees!" she'd say excitedly. I'd smile and nod and toss them aside. Who cared about bees when I was trying to save her from heart disease? How to keep the slugs from eating all my strawberry patch...now that was worth focusing on. As she got weaker and the tumor we didn't know was there began to grow she got more and more impatient to bring the bees to our yard. She hauled the 30 pound bag of soil out back, slit it open and scooped what she could into every container in the house. After a month of high pressure hose watering alternating with periods of disinterested drought, they were all pretty much dead. Mom and I were locked in battle about whether or not she needed to go to the hospital (my vote was for yes but mom wanted to wait for her doctor and sister's approval). Admitting defeat, I bailed out for a job in LA for a week. When I got back...the decision had made itself.

Now, nearly three months later, there is no fight in either of us other than the frustration we both feel at how different things have become and at the ending that seems so inevitable. Mom has a bit more anger than I do, a side effect of the steroids she is on as well as an understandable reaction to being shut out from all the things you used to love by the betrayal of your own body. For the two of us together though there is a kind of fierce love and protection that has grown out of all those years of fight. As if somehow, by seeing the worst in each other early on we are now able to freely see what is best, and share it. There is clinging. And sadness. And crying. And laughing. And quiet companionable silence. And love. It's palpable. And there are also... Bees. Thousands and thousands of bees.

It's the beginning of swarming season in California. Yesterday in the late afternoon sun, thousands of displaced bees looking for a new home descended upon the backyard. Jasper jumped out of the pool and headed inside and we sat at the window and watched as these tiny creatures swirled en-mass for hours before settling in a nearby tree. Sadly, many bees died in this process. Travel is hard for them in groups I guess. A site on the Internet said that bees only have a limited amount of time to find a new home before they die, unsupported as they are with no place to call their own.

Our yard is littered with dead bees. Collateral Damage. The bodies are being swiftly dismantles by the ants we can never seem to get rid of. Nature is taking charge. The rest of the bees, the stronger ones, buzz happily in an old pine tree. I'm looking forward to honey if we can keep our own home for a while. I worry about my little family. There is a fear that not everyone will be strong enough to find their way without a home. I think I will. I can't say for sure but I've survived before and am quite certain I can do so again. My brother...well, he's a bit more fragile. More susceptible to being blown off course by the winds of change or chance.

Who am I kidding...so am I. The difference is I guess, I can always adapt. I've had so many different lives, each because a door was open at the right time and I just waltzed right through, never knowing or even caring what was waiting for me on the other side. Just thrilled to death by the adventure of it all. If I were a bee... swarming season would be my favorite. The rush of a huge collective buzz then the whoosh of wings as everyone took off, with one mind and no plans, driven by a singular desire for a new outlook, a new place to call their own, a new path and a sturdy foundation on which to build a new life. I've always done that...I've just done it alone every time. The idea of a group...of collective conscious driven by the same desire...jeez...I guess it means I'm ready to settle down again. That I miss community. Shared value systems. People who understand my motivations and passions because on some level they share them.

I had that with my dad and his siblings. I have it with my sister. In some respects I have it with J. It's nothing I ever shared with my mom or her family. It's such a beautiful gift, this time to see her as she truly is. As a person not playing a role she imagined for herself. Not an HR rep or cocktail party hostess of mother...as a real person. There are so many things I wish I'd known about her before. For starters...she's really funny. Her wit is so sharp and I can't help but feel like all my admiration for her intelligence and expertise and leadership over the years pales in comparison to how much I love just sitting around and cracking jokes with her, watching her wry smile worm it's way out of her usually monotone expression. She is deeply unsentimental but it is tempered with a genuine caring for people. When vulnerable she is fragile. I never knew.

Every day is different. And they are all difficult. Difficult is fine. Every day is a gift. For a lifelong worrier, the coming of the bees was a mixed bag of signs. Too many ways to relate to an act of nature always makes me feel like God is trying to tell me something. Still, just for a moment, watching all of those wings beating in the fading afternoon sun and listening to the cat whine as she paced, eager to out and catch some of the hovering bits of yellow, I had my first moment of real peace since mom was diagnosed. It seems that the antidote for grief is pure and unabashed wonder.

Slowly, our of the darkness, a direction...a next step is forming. And I think it involves a small scale swarm, a lot of travel and some serious slack-jawed awe. When I was a kid I used to have this recurring dream that I had wings but couldn't get more than 2 inches off the ground to fly. It would take a running leap off the roof to get me airborne but once it did I could feel myself weightless. Waking up always felt like falling and my eyes would snap open and my breath would be short. I fell asleep yesterday, sunlight streaming in through the sheer curtains on the floor in the living room where my mother now sleeps to the sound or her rhythmic snoring and a thousand tiny wings. I woke up in the dark to silence and the feel of solid ground underneath me. And I could breathe just fine.

Easy Like Sunday Morning

2010-07-16T17:55:00.000-07:00

I don't know why I thought it would be easier once we all got home. Wishful thinking I guess. Still, grateful we are all here. Intact. Sort of. It's been two days. Mom still isn't sure where she is. her pain is much greater than in the hospital and I am struggling with knowing what to do. I'm not a nurse. I have never felt so incompetant in all my life. Each transfer that takes too long or requires starting over and each time I have to say, "No mom, the walker won't help if you can't stand. We need the wheelchair..." causes shortness of breath in place not held by my lungs. The interminable waiting for the showersafe wheelchair to be delivered causes tremors inside my guts as I say again, "No shower today mom...just a bed bath. I'm sorry...soon...I promise."

I'm a doer. I've always been the kind of person who thought she could do anything. And from such thinking often woke up at the end of year to find I had accomplished nothing ordinary and done everything I had only dreamed about the year before. All by myself. I guess that's lesson number one from all of this. It's not just me alone in the world anymore. It can't be. Such disgusting irony given that when this is all over I will be as alone and on my own in this world as anyone ever really gets. No parents. No home. No place to call mine. No job. No city I call my own. Just me...and Jasper... floating in space, sometimes touching and sometimes brushing past each other as we chase different things. It's a connection. It's the most beautiful connection I've experienced. It's not like having a home and parents and history with a place though. Those things are leaving at a rate I cannot keep up with.

This is how growth occurs. When you lift weights, tiny fibers of your muscles tear. As they knit together again...as they heal...they grow bigger and stronger than before. This weight...this weight is heavy and I lft a little more each day. Jasper is here...spotting. Loving. Helping. Giving. I am grateful for her every moment we are here. I am learning to finally...really...lean on someone. As with most life lessons...it is because I Have to.

Simple acts such as rolling mom to the side to change a bedpan or helping her from bed to a wheelchair...these things take two people and a couple of trys sometimes. Her fear, our lack of practice...we all have to get through it together. Our morning ritual of bed bath, breakfast, clothing and bathroom plus meds...it takes about three hours. Then there is laundry and dishes and bills and appointments to schedule followed by lunch and bathroom and visitors. Then a short nap followed by PT and stretching then it's time for dinner and bathroom and more meds. In between are tiny bursts of discussion, errands to run and moments of utter exhaustion and collapse in front of an infomercial which for some reason mom is particularly drawn to these days. Who am I to argue?

Nighttime is a series of naps punctuated by bathroom runs. I average about 5-6 hours in between wake ups. All this and her treatment hasn't even started yet. That will add an additional 3-4 hours of sitting up and out of the house activity. I am afraid it will all be too much. I am dreading that conversation. The one where we look at each other and say..."We gave it a shot." In the meantime, all waking hours are spent watching tv or reading the paper. Her need for rest and solitude is obvious. I find myself hovering just outside her curtained bedroom, waiting for her to indicate that today is the day she is ready to talk...even if it just about the weather. Waiting for the little moments that occur without warning and color my frustration and sadness with a tired but shining moment of joy in her company.

She calls endlessly for the cats who are so terrified of her hospital bed they rarely venture into the room. Spats, the warrior kitten, has made a brave trip or two to the body pillow I place alonside my mother so that she is able to stay in a turned position. Anytime mom realizes she is there and trys to pet her though the cat bolts. Smokey calls plaintively from the stairs, unable to bring herself to see the bald woman who smells like medicine in the bed in the living rroom as her Person. These two animals were her best friends for the last four years. It's hard to watch them reject her. We are all waiting patiently for them to come around.

Everything that is happening is intellectually understandable. From an objective point of view it all just is what it is and it's all okay. This is what she wanted. To be home, surrounded by love. This is what I can give her. A home full of love. Complete with mistakes and imperfections. Just like actual relationships. We forgive each other. We work through our stress. We power on. Some days will be good and others bad. This is what I say to the people who come by, sniffing around looking for reasons to object to our arrangement. Everyone has an opinion when they don't do this daily. Everyone is sure They know Best. I smile and put on my mother's party face, the one I hated as a teenager and say things like, "Oh yes we're fine...just a little tired today" and "oh no thank you, we're good here." These things are true. At the same time they are the biggest lies. Except lies don't count when everyone knows you are lying. At least that's my rule. I think it's a Southern thing.

Meanwhile, inside I'm screaming. How could this be happening? How is it possible that the strongest woman in the world is lying here so helpless in my hands? How could it be that she is so dependent on me and that I, superhero in my own mind, must lean so heavily on Jasper to accomplish the simplest of tasks? What the hell was the Universe thinking? How could I be so old and so unaware of all of this weakness in us both? How could I not know how fragile we all are? How do I live with that knowing now that I do?

Still, any Zen Buhdist would be proud of me. The intensity and the difficulty of everything means I am honing my attentions into laser sharp focus. Multitasking is a skill I've had for years. Now I am learning to direct my full and undivided attention to each task at hand without a hint of distraction. Things like 20 minutes of blueberry pancakes in a sitting position with friends gathered around the table and mom listening intently to the conversation...these things are superhuman accomplishments. They are my little gifts to both give and recieve throughout this process. This is what makes it worth it. These small moments... my tiny drops of Grace.

20 minutes of mom was what I got today. It is what I got in exchange for two loads of laundry, breakfast for six, one sheet set change, three bedpan runs, one bath, 15 minutes of PT before coffee, 4 hours of sleep and countless moments of hand holding, soothing and hugging during one very difficult 30 minute bed to chair transfer during which I Needed Jasper to help. As any new mother might understand... those 20 minutes were worth every second. Those 20 minutes cancel out each frustration, each moment of self doubt, every fear and every shaking, shuddering silent sob on my mattress on the floor by her bed. This is what it is for... to give her...and I...those simple 20 minutes of normalcy. Of bacon. Of blueberry pancakes on a Sunday morning. Of two newspapers and lively conversation. Of Life.

This is what it all means. It's part of it anyways. The secret to life...figured out in one horrendous tornado of chaos and the collapse of my world as I know it. The Secret of Life is...

Bacon and Blueberry Pancakes.

Mysterious Ways...

2010-07-12T17:38:00.000-07:00

It's funny how things work in the world. It's always right as you can't take it anymore...not one more thing could possibly go wrong or you might seriously drive to the nearest Wal-Mart and then to the nearest clock tower to engage in a little Charles Whitman brand of stress release...and Then... one more thing goes wrong. Somehow though, subtly, as you are crying and raging and fighting it all the way.... a little bit of light creeps through. A moment of grace.

This is what keeps us going. I guess this is what they call Hope. It's what seems to feed something else I'm trying to understand through all this. Faith. Not the Jesus-y, singing songs and marching with signs kind or the Woo-woo "I met you in a past life" kind either. More like the Core of my own reality in this lifetime. (Not to get all woo-woo but jeeeeez...Saturn Return much?)

After one piece of bad news after another for nearly a week straight the clouds parted a bit today. Our neighbor Bill, whose wife was diagnosed with cancer the day before mom was admitted to the hospital, came over today. His wife Anita had made us dinner for Wed when we bring mom home, anticipating our exhaustion and distress at eating anything out of a box after a month of hospital fare. After less than 30 seconds of explanation about the stress of trying to get wheelchair ramps up and running before mom is discharged in less than 48 hours, there he was, his own projects sidelined, out in the yard with pre-built temporary ramps in hand. I could have cried. Or at least hugged. But he disappeared without waiting around for so much as an extended thank you. Just one of those moments when I am so grateful to live in this community, surrounded by these people. This, I think, is what people once called being neighborly. So rare is this quality nowadays that it is easily confused with divinity here at our house. "Heaven Sent" is rapidly becoming the only descriptor appropriate for the folks who come through with exactly the right thing at the right time when so many things have gone wrong.

J and I have been baffled lately by the amount of thanking that has been going on. So many thanks coming from people just for being here. As if I'd be Anywhere else. J thinks it has something to do with a widespread cultural fear of death that makes people temporarily confused when near it...and grateful to be let of the hook when someone else agrees to take over. Personally, I think it's a little simpler than that. If we do it... they don't have to examine their own motivations for not wanting to. Don't have to admit that maybe they wouldn't do it themselves...at least not for just anyone. Maybe not even for someone they really do love. It's just oo hard...and it takes so much. They are grateful for not having to think about it. Grateful for the fact that someone else will care for this person they truly do love in all the ways they would hope to be cared for themselves. In all the ways they can only pull out of themselves for one or two people in a lifetime. Most folks save this strength. They save it for a spouse or themselves or for the truly unlucky... a child. If luck is on their side, they only ever have to do it once in a lifetime. This is twice for me...and I'm only about a third through an average lifespan. The odds are not on my side.

I've been around death since I was very young. I had friends who died early. I watched lover's lose parents and held the hands of those who suffered through the loss of grandparents and friends. It was something I figured out early on I would need some sort of belief system to be able to deal with and accept. Except, well, I don't believe in Heaven or Hell and the whole god thing is still pretty up in the air. Divine Creation? Sure. But Holy Trinity or Elephant headed dieties with anger issues? Not so much... I decided I would pretty much have to come up with what was gonna work for me. It's changed over the years but the core is pretty much as follows.

1) I think that the laws of science govern the laws of spirituality. We are all energy. Energy doesn't ever die...it just changes form. I guess this what someone might call their soul.

2) There is a moment, when you watch someone leave this world, where you literally see their essence leave them. The shell is not who we are. I have no idea what the substance is...but it's not about the packaging.

3) I think you get to stay attached to the other souls you held on to in this life. You found each other for a reason. Maybe that reason becomes clear and maybe it doesn't but I believe there is some element of choice in how it all goes down once you are free of things like gravity. Don't ask me why I believe this. It's comforting. That's why they call it faith.

4) I think you might get to decide to do it all over again if you like.

5) It makes death less scary to think you'll arrive at a giant party and actually know a few folks already there. Whatever religion may hold, I'm not so into the idea of a big white guy with a Santa Claus list of lifetime achievements or a highlights reel that determine whether you were good or bad and therefore what your afterlife looks like. My world has never been so black and white in life...no reason to believe it will be when I'm not constrained by culture or other people's ideas or you know, a body, anymore. Nope, I'm sticking with the whole concept of Afterlife as a giant cocktail party, come as you are. Stay as long as you like. Leave when you're bored. Don't worry...you'll be back eventually.

Somehow when I think of it this way it all just seems... natural I guess. I suppose that's the point and purpose of all those churches I see everywhere. Faith is something I never saw much use for in my life until now, associated as it was for me with intolerance and rituals that had no meaning for me. In essence though, it is something else entirely. I don't need any religion or dogma. Just a belief in my own ideas about how the world and what lies beyond it could feasibly work. I can believe anything. I can lean on it. I can let it get me through. I can rest easy knowing that someday my spirit might get to play beer pong with my dad in his 21 year old form or have a really great, in depth conversation with my usually monosyllabic brother when he finally joins the party at 99 and proceeds to wax poetic about everything he never said before.

It's a lovely idea anyways. One that makes me laugh and cry and turn up dad's stereo. It's the Ramones until mom gets home...then classical and the Beatles. For the first time in a month today, I had a moment of peace dreaming about all the people I always wanted to meet...even the ones I thought I knew, sipping drinks with Dad and lined up against the wall waiting for his bridge partner to finally show up.

And I guess that moment...that little bit of peace...well it's the whole point.

Some of this stuff you can't Make Up

2010-07-10T19:28:00.000-07:00

Sooo.... my mom's roomate looks like Tammy Faye meets Dolly Parton. She has been screaming for hours. Some of it is profane. Some of it pornographic. Some of just funny. I managed to get mom moved to a quieter room finally but it officially shot out my last nerve. Came home to rest. And drink. And paint. Came home to notices that bills I thought were paid have not been. Came home to suspicious letters. Came home to the realization that I need to put my New York back on because this shit is gonna get ugly.

How sad that is.

Mom looked beautiful today. The facial I gave her yesterday helped and she even managed an appetite and an expression bordering on serene. Her doctors say they expect all of her symptoms to keep improving. Full time lucidity is on the immeadiate horizon. I can't wait. Makes me wish I hadn't tried so hard to make people understand she was sick. Now she'll get better and they still won't have caught up enough to interact as needed.

One aunt is coming to visit. She informed me today she has booked a hotel room.

It's lonely on this limb.

Little Fears and Big Ones

2010-07-07T18:26:00.000-07:00

When the doctor called last night I was joking around with Taryn and Cameron about where to hang the giant pile of pictures and family photographs I had pulled off every wall in the house that my mother will never again see. Anything that took stairs to reach got yanked off the wall in a flurry of ambition to finish her new room before her arrival on Friday morning. As I panicked about ramps and measurements for the new wheelchair accessible shower, Jasper picked up my phone.

"Hello?" "Hello is this Miss Totten?" "Ms Totten this is Dr Wren from UCD Med Center... I'm calling about Jan Totten?"

He sounded twitchy and nervous. I held my breath. I grabbed my purse. I lost my appetite. "Is she okay?" tubled out of my mouth. "Weeeelllll..... we're not sure." Seriously people, what kind of an answer is that?

I got to the hospital by some sort of teleportation. I must have because I sure as hell don't remember the drive. When I got there no one could tell me how it had happened that in the 24 hour period I had been at home readying the house for my mother's imminent arrival that she had regressed to almost the same state she was in after her first surgery... babbling and hallucinating and mumling mmmmhhhmmm incoherently every 2 minutes. Moaning. Her head swollen with trapped fluids. I didn't sleep all night. Just went out to the hallway every two hours and asked again to speak with a doctor. Turned up my headphones but not too loud to hear her. Asked again what had happened. Asked again what would be done. Seethed that no one had answers. Or seemed to be in a hurry to get them. "You have two choices... just keep an eye on it for the next ten days or we can take her into surgery in the morning" chirped the resident from the OR phone. Only interns were not too busy to talk in person at night it seemed.

Fast forward to several incredulous phone calls later and the moment where the guy who has gone to school for 20 years to become a practicing Brain Surgeon looks at me and says..."That's a good idea...maybe we CAN aspirate instead", trying to hide his dissapointment at not having a surgery scheduled. When you spend your whole life cutting people to make them better I guess it does feel out of the box to look for other options first. Still... guess it's a good thing I watched all those Grey's Anatomy episodes. Guess it's a good thing I used the word "Aspirate" rather than the phrase "Can't y'all just suck it out?" Seriously though? The BRAIN SURGEON is taking my advice? I had to call my aunt who has been less than nice to me throughout all of this. I needed a second opinion. Just in case. No way did I want to be responsible for accidentally killing my own mother. Much as I try to avoid talking to this aunt these days...she's the only thing comparable to a medical opinion I can solicit at will.

I guess that says something about how much I trusted her perpetually on vacation surgeon. It's not his fault. He's a good guy. Hospitals should just let them out of the OR once in a while to interact with people. I think the lack of human contact makes them inaccessible emotionally. It's a weird job but it makes them even weirder that they are so freaked out by patient's families. Sick of them sure...but scared? Tese guys go to work and get covered in blood all day. They hold lives in their hands. A family phone conference induces palsy and eye wandering. I guess it's true we all get different gifts in this life.

I gave the surgeon my aunt's number and asked him to call her. He returned seconds later to announce to me and my heavily hallucinating mother that my aunt agreed that the procedure was safer than the alternatives (waiting to see how it panned out or doing yet another surgery...the third in as many weeks). However, she apparently asked him to to remind my mother (or, in his words, make sure she Understood) once again, while he was standing there holding a foot long needle, that her condition was Terminal.

Wtf?

I held her hands through the insertion of the first needle while she cried in pain as the numbing agent dripped into her skin at an excruciating rate of one drop per year. I let her dig her nails into my palm while he inserted the Really, Really Big needle. I stroked what was left of her hair while he pulled six huge syringes worth of dried blood and goo out of her skull. I wiped her tears as she struggled to remember the details of what she has been told daily since arriving. She has a brain tumor. Prognoses poor.

Her illness doesn't allow her to distinguish fine details between radiation for palliative care or treatment. Some days she doesn't remember the specifics. Some days she rememebrs my father's pain as he died of cancer in both of our arms. She thinks it will be exactly the same. The doctors and I know different. With her...it will be much quicker. And possibly more painful. No promises have been made. Out of love and a sense of futility, I will spare her that information. We will take whatever comes. We will get through it together. I will let her shred the skin from my palms from now until it is over. She cried and said over and over, "I'm Scared" while my heart broke open.

My anger at the insensitivity of this is not mitigated by the knowledge that my aunt's need to control a situation is a way to manage her own grief. Self righteousness aside... nothing from this moment until my mother's last is about anything but her. Those of us who are left...we have time to deal with what this does to us. My mom doesn't. This is it. It's all she gets. Our process can wait. I believe that it should. My beliefs have finally stopped at a place where I can truly call them core values. There is no gray area in this for me. There is no intellectualizing it. This is what people feel when they talk about morality. This sense of what is right vs what is wrong. This idea that despite the variety of individual beliefs and practices involved in a situation at the end of the day there is still a Right way to behave. A compassionate, human way to treat a person who is dying. A belief that increasing their suffering for reasons not truly benefitting them is unconcionable.

The need to make sure that my mother Understood her condition may have seemed important in the moment to the person who will be alive to live with this loss. It seemed important enough to request that the doctor remind her once again of her death sentence. It left the woman I will always love more than any other in the world in a fearful and vulnerable state, seconds before undergoing a terrifying procedure. It may have made someone feel better but it certainly wasn't my mother. Seriously...it's a HUGE needle. And you watch it go in. Taryn held me up so I wouldn't pass out as I watched the surgeon manipulate his hand around the liquid flesh of my mother's soft spot. "He's touching her brain" played over and over in my mind, punctuated with my mother's fear and my own hot rage. Guess I'm back at the anger stage.

When the doctor first called I certainly hit bargaining head on. It's back and forth...hating people who don't get it or somehow make it all worse then back to making every conceivable deal with God and my dead relatives...begging on my mother's behalf for better quality of time, however much of it is left. Praying she will spend it in the comfort of her own home with her faculties intact. Hoping against hope that she feels no pain. That she doesn't suffer. That her last experiences are joyful ones with the people she loves the most. I'm not crying yet. Not much anyways. I'm still stuck somewhere between numb and invisible. It's keeping me upright. It lets me get through conversations where my mother thanks me and Jasper profusely for being here, crying because she knows how hard it is. Because she did this for my dad. Because it's not the kind of thing you want anyone you love to go through. Because you are so grateful that someone does it anyways.

Here, a day later, watching closely from the awful bedside chair that has become my home it feels as though everything of the world is far away. It's all irrelevant. Bills, food, leaky faucets, the Future...they mean so little to me right now. Nurses order me to sleep and work out. I order myself to eat something besides cheese or ice cream. Jasper made me a bagel egg and bacon sandwich this morning which I considered a compromise. I am resigned to the fat of grief that settles on my ass when these things happen. This time, I know it's coming. This time, I know what to expect. I hate that I can even say "This Time.."

Nurses exclaim "Oh good, you aren't freaking out!" every time they show me how to use a lift, or insert a needle, or change my mother's diaper. As if freaking out was an option. As if my inner compass hadn't already been dropped from the roof of this fucking hospital, sending it's needle spinning endlessly, no direction to hold it's attention. Life is minute to minute here. Hours are a luxury. Everything changes. All of it is hard. Freaking out is what other people do. Because they can.

Mom sleeps more than I would like, trying to heal from her setback. Her voice is clear though and her appetite is back so I try to remember to thank god and the dead relatives for small favors. Maybe it was all they could do for me today. Mom tells me she is dreaming of Leslie and I know they are near. Talking her through it. It's not a good sign when you can talk to ghosts. Well, it's not a sign of longevity anyways. I fight to stay numb. And thankful that she won't go forward alone. I'm catching up on Law and Order, punctuated with bursts of panicked hallway waving as I try to flag down the last of her doctors before weekend hospital policy dictates that all her care be taken over by the fresh crop of 12- year- olds who began their residencies 9 days ago. Just out of med school they are nice enough but I'll be damned if one of 'em is putting a needle that close to my mother's brain if she needs the procedure a second time.

I am spending most of my time writing thinly veiled e-mails to the family begging for a little more respect for our grief then we are getting. Asking nicely over and over again that our decisions and relationships be respected. E-mails are interrupted constantly by nurses needing blood or announcing that mom's potassium levels are too high. Taking samples, taking blood, taking away her ability to sleep for more than 20 minutes at a time uninterrupted. I never knew how capable of anger I am until all of this. I'm the girl who flashes on a person then wants a hug three minutes later. This slow burning sense of injustice, of having been lied to with every birthday card or "I love you" from relatives who now spend all available energy making the end of the world feel even worse; well, it makes me understand better when folks tell me that they just don't really like people. It gets worse everytime I have to ask for better hospital care. Everytime my brother ignores my texts and doesn't call her here in the hospital. Everytime the world shifts just enough to remind me that all adaptability issues aside...I shouldn't get used to this. This will will end. It will end too soon. So many things in the recent past...they were all the Last Time. The last walk. The last dinner. The last argument. The last standing hug. The last time I thought parts of our family actually loved me. Personally, I always thought people were inherently good. That given half a chance they would live up to that truth in their own nature.

I think that maybe I was wrong. And now I have to live with that loss too.

Finally Free...

2010-07-01T20:34:00.000-07:00

The word came down from on high today, funneled through the twitchy nosed little rabbit of a social worker who has been hovering around mom's doorway for days asking us all how we feel and then seriously waiting as if for an answer. Mom's been sprung. She's being released from the hospital nearly a week early. She's not being released because she's gotten better. She's being released because the pasty-faced tool in a cubicle somewhere who happened to pull her file at the insurance company decided her gains just weren't significant enough to warrant spending any more money on her treatment. I guess going from paralyzed and tube fed to eating steak and doing Brazilian butt lift exercises (albeit with much coughing, grunting and effort) doesn't count as progress when you're just a number on a page. Dear god please let the Obamas and tea partiers alike figure out how we can be middle class and still afford to get sick and have cubicle people think of us like they would their own mothers. Down with cubicle medicine! Up with humanity!

Or you know, something to that effect.

Despite the initial fervor with which I protested the reasoning behind her release, it turns out there there are a few bright sides. The first is that because she is being released at what is called a Max Assist level (unable to care for herself in any way) the insurance company will end up paying for the equipment and nursing care needed to make her life (and mine) much easier once she is home. Here I can continue her PT and get her up to better mobility by myself with all of the help we would be denied if I otherwise left it to the hospital to do. Funny system this one. Moreover, her type of tumor requires swift and decisive treatments upon discovery. The sooner she's out...the sooner the doctors can start doing what it is they do...provided my mother is interested in what they have to offer. We aren't quite there yet. The painkiller hallucinations only stopped about 12 hours ago... a few more days might be needed before asking her to do any major quality of life (and death) decision making.

Amazingly, even after a very conciliatory e-mail yesterday practically pleading with the entire family to lend as much support and encouragement to her as they could over the holiday weekend, the phone didn't ring once today. Luckily Julie showed up to take the edge off things. Julie, with her tattoos and diamond studded teeth, brought a huge smile to my mother's face when she showed up today, all smiles and jokes, clippers in hand. Mom couldn't wait to be rid of the awful "surgery mullet" the doctors had left her with. She assured all the nurses that she was fine and not to worry...Julie was in control. The time had finally come to ...gasp....grow out her natural hair color...and to do that she had to start from scratch (Reason 1894 why my mom is my hero). The older woman in the next bed over couldn't quite wrap her head around the whole scene...bizarre that it was. Mom, supported by two nurses, unable to sit up on her own, draped in a towel while the most tattooed punk rock chick in Sacramento shaved her head completely bald and my girlfriend and I looked on, cracking jokes and talking about desserts. I guess we've always been in our world this family. We let people in and out by standards of our own making. We are unique in this way. And very, very blessed.

I'm kind of mad I didn't have my camera for the whole scene. I thought the ones of mom and I playing pinball at Musee Mechanique were good. Mom was a little peeved too but said I could do portraits when she gets home. I'm looking forward to that. She never let me take her picture before. Now, she poses at the drop of a hat. Or hair as it were. It seems more important than ever to do it now. Not just because time is short either. It's just that she's so real and unguarded these days. It might be the only time I ever get to put the Real her, the one we kids so rarely get to interact with, in any sort of tangible and lasting form. Save for her wedding photos that is.

The photos of my parents on their wedding day are like nothing else I've ever seen. They exude love and happiness and an excitement for their future together, away from family pressures and expectations. More than that though, they look like ... Love. They look like Life. They look like the face of God himself. My parents married against all advice at the ripe old age of 21. Their honeymoon was the road trip that happened when they packed everything they owned into a tiny car and drove west until they hit ocean. They went as far as they could from their families and expectations and the lives they had known in order to build a new one of their own design. Together. All they had was each other but it was exactly the right kind of foundation.

Their kind of love is the only kind in my eyes. The kind that didn't fight. At least not often. Didn't stress about petty things. Was completely intertwined with no sense of awkward codependency. They were like swans. Mated for life. Primal and connected at the base of their souls. Once my father died there was no question that my mother would ever ever date again. Once you've had love like that there is no point in anything else. I consider myself inordinately blessed to have witnessed it. My parents together were a true miracle. A blessing from the universe on anyone who saw it. My brother and sister and I... we were the luckiest of all. We were formed by it.

All my life I have looked at those photos from their wedding...Polaroids, taken with a friend's camera as an afterthought. (My parents thought the most important thing about a wedding was, well, the part where they got married and committed their souls to each other for life. Fancy that.) I often wondered what happened to them after that day. How they went from young and smiling and blissful to middle aged and worried about bills or my hair color or the PTA booster requirements for Melissa's Field Hockey team. I wondered where that smiling girl was every time my mom and I had a fight when I was a teenager. Every time I thought about leaving Sacramento. Every time I vowed I would never come back. That I would make something of myself. That I would be rich and successful despite her concerns over my style or tattoos or our fights over my proudly nontraditional life. Strange but, now that I'm back for the second time to care for the second half of the dynamic duo that created our family... I guess I have to admit I was wrong about what success meant to me. My whole life I thought I needed money or a great job or an apartment in NYC to be happy. I've had all of those things. Now, here in the place I couldn't wait to leave, loving and caring for the person I have fought with the most in my short life, I feel as though the biggest success in my life is learning the lesson my parents gave us every day about what it is to love and be loved in return. This is what it looks like. This is what it feels like. Broke, jobless, and having left NYC far behind... I know a little bit of their secret. And it is worth any sacrifice.

Now...here...at the end of her life...that girl in the photo smiling at my dad like he is the only other person on earth is Back. She cracks jokes with the nurses and keeps me in stitches with a sarcastic wit I have never really seen in action before. She embraces my tattooed friends and the love of my life... dread locked female that she is. My mother is the most complex person I have ever known. Her beauty is wound tight around thousands of tiny personalities, each part of which makes up the larger whole. Her strength is in her ability to adapt...to change...to show parts of herself and to be vulnerable while taking on the world...with her armor on. I am more like her than I ever thought. And I am so proud to be connected to her strength and her vivacious beauty in that way.

On her wedding day my mother had to wear a wig. She was recovering from a car accident in Mexico from which she nearly died. She saved herself though...and her wedding dress. So determined was she to marry my father...one was not happening without the other. He stayed by her side while she recovered. Keeping watch and pulling her through. Still, she always hated the fact that when she said "I do" to the love of her life, she did so secretly bald, with new pink scars down her skull to hide from everyone. My mother didn't do weak. Or fragile. Or limited. She was Untouchable. Now, almost 40 years later, she is lying in a hospital bed, her head once again shaved, a new ragged scar running down in between the crisscrossing network of fine white lines that map her last brush with death. She, like my father before her, survived something huge when she was young. She, like my father, will succumb to the cancer that has invaded her body.

Like swans who mate for life, my mother is ready to join my father. That's what she said a few weeks before her diagnoses anyways. It is is the only thing giving me the slightest comfort. This idea that they had a destiny and it was meant to be lived out together. That one without the other is only half... that they will somehow find each other again and neither one will be lonely. They always made me think of that Plato myth of split apart people who spend their lives searching for their other half. Somehow, by some stroke of Fate or design or even pure dumb luck, my parents each found their other half at an age when most kids are running around with a beer in one hand and a one-night stand in the other...trying to find themselves.

I picture my parents sometimes, together again, heading endlessly West on a road trip through Heaven in a 1963 Chrysler convertible. No luggage. No tents. No cigarettes in hand. Just that beautiful and familiar bucolic smile on each of their faces, hands held together on the gear shift Thelma and Louise style as they speed off, together again and Finally free.

Smoke Em If You Got Em...

2010-06-28T21:14:00.001-07:00

I woke up to the sound of unpaid contractors and saleswomen with flowers. Hammering and doorbells and clicking high heels preceeding unfamiliar perfume and an apologetic glance. Then the bomb dropped. Then there was a plumber who couldn't finish the job today and half a dozen calls from well-meaning but really freaked out friends I had to calm down. (Why would anyone expect me to be good at that right now?) Then there was a not so well-meaning relative who wanted to fight and said some nasty things and yelled. I hung up. Then there was the hospital where mom was hallucinating and yelling at me for stealing her job and not telling anyone about an imaginary bicycle crash. Then my relationship needed tending. Then my sister called. Then my brother did not call. After three messages. Then there was some good news. Rehab for mom and an okay to eat pureed real people food. Virtual food she called it. Then there more phone calls. And more to do lists. And a friend who couldn't make it for dinner.

It was a Foxhole Day.

There will be many more of them, I know, so I am trying not to overreact. In fact, I'm not really reacting at all. That's one of the great gifts of evolution or God or whoever is responsible for our capacity to bear up under the most incomprehensible of circumstances. When it's all too much...you just go numb. Everything gets very clear. And very easy to understand. I think it has something to do with a biological response to being chased by tigers. Or bears. When one is being chased by a hungry tiger, no emotion gets in the way to cloud judgement. There is nothing but adrenaline and an instinct for self-preservation.

Right now I am running across the jungle floor and there is a big drooling tiger on my heels. He looks a lot like unpaid bills and indifferent nurses and family with low EQ's. I am calm. I am clear. I will survive the attack. I am undaunted by his meaty breath and the claw marks down my back. There is no doubt that I will live another day.

Screw you Tiger... my instincts are sharper than your claws. Self preservation is What I Do.

My uncle is a military man. He gets things done. He is who I call when something is too big for me to fix. He is who I called when no one else would listen that something was wrong with mom. It was the right call to make. Right now, he's got the financials. The big side of them anyways. I can pay the gas bills and the cable. Grown up money...well, I guess I'm just not there yet. His wife, she's a rock. She makes it okay to fall apart for a minute or an hour. I hear her voice telling me to pray. To eat. To sleep. To drink what I want. It's so comforting to have each of them in my corner, here at the End of the World. Who would have thought that when Armageddon hit I would seek out Religion and Militaristic know-how. Guess I can still surprise myself. I always sort of figured I'd be one of those dippy people who threw an end of the world party and invited everyone and went out in a blaze of expensive treats and drugs I was always too scared to try when it looked like there was still a future on the horizon.

Here I am now though, hunkered down and watching the world burn around me. Going toe to toe with foes with familiar faces. Saying goodbye to sense. Goodbye to hope for a peace treaty. Goodbye to the idea that it would somehow all work out as long as the fences held. Here I am hiding out in a foxhole, with a bible and a gun by my side. How American.

It is utterly unlike me to back down. I am fighting everyone and everything so hard. I am fighting for my mother. Her dignity. her wishes. Her sense of humor. Her right to a shower. Her taste for sweets. Her love. Her hallucinations. Her right to be alive in her own way as long as the universe will grant me her presence. I never thought I would have to fight so hard for anything. Even when my dad was sick...and then dying. I didn't fight then. I just loved him. Loved my mom. Loved my sister. Loved my brother. All I had then was sadness and love. All I have now is fierce love of an unexpected kind. It is protective. It is the deep rooted sense that this kind of love... this love is worth fighting for. This love is a reason for things. It could change the world. it can make life. It is singular to mother and child.

I miss my sister and brother daily. They made the shock of this easier to bear somehow when they were near. It was easier to handle the 1000's of details of a situation where literally everything that could go wrong did when I knew I had them close...watching mom sleep and carrying her soul peacefully through whatever hours I could not stand guard. I can count on my sister here in this place. My brother is predictable and safe. I need them by me while it all goes up in flames. I'm not sure how to do this without them... soldiers by my side.

I am prepared to fight for her...body and soul. I will see my mother out of the world and on to her next journey. I will let her go when the time comes and wonder if she really is seeing my father when she finally calls his name and lets go...leaving me to deal with whatever life is left in the rubble. Leaving me to rebuild. To start over.

Again.

I possess the ability to do this. I will need help. This time I know how to ask for it. This time I know how to let go of that which does not serve the greater purpose. This time... I have faith.

They say that in foxholes men find love or they find religion. Me... I guess you could say I'm finding my own strength, supported by something big and eternal like love and certainty of life's circuitous route.

It wasn't my choice.. this kind of ending. It wasn't anything I ever wanted to have to do. Nonetheless, duty calls. Love waits. Cycles continue. The fight goes on. From here on out, the only rule is Smoke Em If You Got Em... because who knows what will be left of us tomorrow.

Once More...With Feeling.

2010-06-24T21:26:00.000-07:00

Miraculously, my mother survived not one but two brain surgeries in the last 24 hours. She's always been tough. I'm in The most uncomfortable chair known to man in a dirty double room with a nurse who doesn't seem to know what is going on. It's a far cry from the Angelic smile and sweet concern of Nurse Monica before surgery. I guess the nurses they give you once yer missing pieces of your skull and have to wear a helmet are less concerned with sensitivity to their primarily unconscious patients then with keeping them alive. This one seems indifferent. The days just run together now. I think I slept at home for two nights after five in the hospital before surgery. That's a week. Maybe. After she came out of surgery (7 1/2 hours straight of actual procedure) she wouldn't wake up. Not really. She had a small stroke that makes her left side weaker than ever. It's hard to understand her when she speak-slurs. I am learning her new language quickly though. After hours of loud nurses with ponytails yelling inane questions that she couldn't answer they decided another surgery was key. Personally, I wouldn't wake up to perky girls with high ponytails yelling and poking my sternum either, but what do I know? They're the brain surgeons. They took her back in to the OR and cut away a piece of her skull to allow her brain to swell without damage. She has a soft flat spot, a scar and a wicked shaved mullet. She also had a surgery which brought her blood pressure down and got her talking to me again today, cracking jokes with a droopy smile in between morphine naps and tow wiggling antics for every nurse in the joint. They each had to see it with their own eyes. She squeezed our hands and gave a thumbs up. It's amazing what you can be grateful for. I was falling down with gratitude to see her in there. The shell is different but there was mom... smart, funny, easy and full of humor. The woman I always knew was in there who wouldn't let me know her until I was grown. One nurse brought a helmet while I was wiping Betadine out of my mother's eyes. "Put it over there" I motioned quickly, terrified she would wake up and that I would have to explain to her that a piece of her skull lay in a hall somewhere in a freezer bag with a freshness date and a bio-hazard sticker on it. It was bad enough when I had to tell her that despite surgery and pain...she still has cancer. I hustled the plastic bag full of her shaved hair into my purse before she could see it and realize how much they took off and made a quick escape as they came in to insert the feeding tube. Bathing a helpless parent or changing their diapers is one thing; their dignity is intact if you have enough respect for them and the situation. Seeing them helpless and in pain and being unable to relieve it... well that's just unbearable. I wasn't going to stay tonight. After yet another miserable conversation with a family member who has decided to be less than helpful in our hour of need, I had planned to go home and get very drunk with my Aunt Claudia... another angel in disguise. Instead, my previously sleeping mother woke up with a start as we all started to leave. She grabbed my hand and slurred "Stay". There's not much question about what to do after that. Another aunt tried to talk me into heading home and it just made me sad. How is it possible for people to love and live in this world and still fear devotion? It makes me wonder what sort of empty pockets live in them...what sort of cavities have been filled by other, less fulfilling ambitions. My sweet sister offered her laptop and went home to exhaustion. I want so badly to take this from her. To feel it for her. To spare her this. I am helpless to do much but lean on her lightly and be grateful for her presence. She gets it. It's 10pm. She can't breathe. Her face is swollen as is her neck. The nurse is blissfully unaware that she is clearly allergic to something...seeing as how none of these things were true an hour ago before the three IVs. The oxygen tube seems to help but the rage in my palms if palpable and pulsating. The urge to hit things grows stronger by the second. This kind of love makes it hard to see past the need to protect, to heal, to comfort...at any expense. I wish so many things were different. Wishing does no good. Prayer is helpful but I fear coming out of here a crisis convert so I try to limit it to relevant life-saving emergency procedures and random hope for a miracle cure once or twice a day. Funny how much a person with no religion can lean on pure faith when they need to. More proof that my Sundays are better spent baking. More proof that the people in my life who are devoted to God the way I am devoted to my mother are the farthest thing from crazy...regardless of the opinions we were raised with. I have to say, I find it interesting that the relatives who have shown up for the liberal lesbian couple caring for a mother in cancer crisis here are the Right Wing Christian Republicans. The liberals are far away... waiting for engraved invitations. Funny how much endings and beginnings challenge our assumptions about what takes place in between. There are no powerful thoughts or prayers or mantras tonight. Tonight there are just awful chairs and creeping exhaustion and loud nurses with agendas other than mine. Tonight there is false sweetness in my voice while I beg favors of water and an extra blanket from the harried nursing staff as I dazzle them with willingness to place an extra pillow under my mother's feet. "Most families don't do that" she said. Care confuses them. It confuses our relatives. I am confused by the confusion. This is what people do. It's what feels human. Respectful. Appreciative. Loving. It's all we have to give each other at the end. Comfort and devotion and a little dignity. It's how I hope to go. It's what we All deserve. Here, in the hospital, staring down both barrels of inevitability it's 10:42 and a new nurse has decided that the guard posted bedside down the hall for the dying convict shouldn't be sleeping anyways and requisitions his guest bed for me. Water is found and an eyebrow forced back down when I shrug off the streak of my mother's blood on the only available pillow in the room. A clean pillowcase is found. The world looks a bit kinder and I dim the lights, ignoring my stinky socks and chafing jeans. I might even get to rest a bit tonight. Which is a good thing because tomorrow, insurance paperwork calls. I will need all my strength. Lying here in the not ever quite dark, with the beep and hum of machines, I count my mother's breaths. I note when they pause. I catalogue her snores. The sounds of life emanating from her body are my anchor. Together we will get through the night.

Waiting.

2010-06-21T07:22:00.000-07:00

It's the fifth day in the hospital with mom. On the coffee, bagel, potato chip and stress diet. Sleeping in 2 hour nap cycles in the fold out chair by her bed. Trying to be smiley and entertaining while the vampires in white coats come for her blood every eight hours and collapse yet another vein. If there is such thing as hell....it looks and smells like a hospital.

They are going to shave her head today. Small metal x's on sticky backs will line her scalp, telling the surgeons where to cut. Not for nothin, but after 16 years of advanced training and a decades long career, it makes me nervous that it still comes down to guy's ability to stay inside the lines.

My mother got married in a wig. Her head shaved and covered in scars after a car accident in Mexico. Her stories of survival; bloodied and broken, crawling out of the mangled car with her handmade wedding dress in hand to claw up the cliff they had just rolled down to get help. She never says what happened to the driver. My mother rarely discusses the dead. That dress hung in the corner of that hospital room while my 20-something year old mother held my 20-something year old father's hand and dreamed about their life together.

Fast Forward.

My father died four years ago yesterday of lung cancer. She never left his side. She slept on the floor by his bed holding his hand and woke up with him every morning. For six weeks we rarely put on clothes or showered or slept. She would shoo me away ever night and I would sit on the stairs just out of eyeline and listen to him breathing. I remember thinking how incredibly devoted this love was that they had. Thinking how heartbreaking that when the time came for my mother to join my father, there would be no one here to do the same for her.

Except me.

After six months of progressive confusion, irritability and failed doctor's appoints. Six months of fear and ignored appeals and the certainty that her symptoms indicated early onset dementia, my mother was diagnosed and hospitalized with an aggressive brain tumor. Tomorrow they will try to cut it out. They are buying time.

I sleep by her bedside every night. I hold her hand. It's too soon for this.

Grief is still at bay somewhere behind exhaustion and Anger and...well, hope. Hope for more time or an easier end or a sneaky miracle tomorrow in surgery where it all turns out to be something fixable. Where the end of the story is that I move in to help her rehabilitate rather than the other option.

We need more time. I need more time. There's too many things that need to be made right. Too many things left undone. It's too soon to be so alone in the world. Neither of us is ready for that.At this point, it's a matter for god and a team of surgeons. My faith is shaking.

Drinkin the Kool-Aid

2010-06-09T11:29:00.000-07:00

After nearly 30 years of telling anyone who asked that I could and would live anywhere...anywhere that is, except LA. I wanted weird...artistic...interesting; LA as I understood it (which is to say not at all) was full of shiny plastic people with limited artistic sensibilities.

These past few months I have finally spent some real time in the city, working here and soaking it in. Hypocrite though it may make me... I am in love. The weather, the palm trees, the people who jog early in the morning with their tiny dogs and tinier shorts...New York has nothin on weird and interesting compared to this place.

It's been a long time since I felt this relaxed and was this busy at the same time. This city, it seems, is actually designed for people like me. People doing 18 jobs at once and chasing big dreams and working 17 hour days while still expecting to have a life. This city allows for all of that and still wakes me up smiling to sunshine and good coffee and plants everywhere. This is without a doubt...the next place I will call home.

The women here are incredible. You see them everywhere; in hotels, in cars, trotting down the sidewalk, all of them courting some concept of foreign beauty, throwing log after log on the fire of their fading feminity. Collagen lips and fake tans... it's fascinating. In New York..well, you only really saw it like this on the boys. It sort of feels like I've moved to another country... the anthropologist in me wants to know all about it. The journalist in me can't wait to photograph it.

At least in New York people seem to have an appropriate amount of shame about the unbridled vanity that leads them to the doctors door, nervous and sweaty and begging to be filled, plumped, scraped or cut. Frankly, it's a little S/Mish... I get it. It's sexy in a way. Painful and maybe a little indicative of some self-hate issues but hey... everyone's got a little. But down here it's different. It's like the act of surgery isn't even about achieveing a believable result. It's about the act...and maintaining some sort of proof that it was performed. It's as if the women on doctor's doorsteps here are neither nervous nor shamed. They are bursting with excitement and an unbridled enthusiasm for the the Joan Rivers look. I can picture them, crawling into expensive Italian leather chairs saying things like "Okay doc...Fill er up." as they purse their lips or pull down eyebrows deemed a little too expressive to prevent wrinkles.

I suppose it's one way to achieve that poker face I don't have. Still... I think maybe no flesh eating disease in my own forehead. Not yet anyways.

Strangely, I seems to know a number of people here. People from other cities and other times in my life...most of whom I've known for five or even ten years. It feels like family in this strange land... in a way I haven't felt since I moved to New York. I'd forgotten how much I missed that sense of connection...even to people I haven't seen in forever.

To celebrate Jasper's new chart position (#5 on Billboard Dance Charts!) we decided to a little positive affirmation of the "Drive through Beverly Hills and Covet" variety. Something about sunshine and trees and my baby sitting next to me in this beautiful place...well, it gave me a vision of what I want my life to look like in ten years. I am finally, ready to commit to making that life happen for us.

Zen Maintenance

2010-05-04T09:07:00.000-07:00

I've never been one for slowing down. Anywhere I've gone in my life I have zipped there and back or on to the next all in the span of seconds. There have been lots of adventures and heartbreaks and weird shit most people wouldn't believe if I told them and strange pockets of stillness when momentary beauty, a snail in the sunlight or deer on back country roads have caught my attention held it... just for a second.

I remember the day of my father's funereal, driving to the local cemetery and seeing a Huge buck, grazing under a tree on our neighbors yard on the way. It only took seconds to turn the corner past their house but when he lifted his head and looked at me, the world stopped. It was just me and my dad and this deer. Just looking at me.

I have moments like that all the time where I feel so connected to things. Where everything is all the same and it all makes sense. It doesn't last but it's comforting. It's something like the Zen idea that we are all One and that everything is everything else. We are all made of the same life force, the same energy. The reverence and respect for life inherent in that is something I can feel....I can even talk about it. The Practice of that reverence....seems like a waste of that energy to me. Seriously, what good is being superman if all you ever do is empty your head. And we are supermen. Like the woman said..."Our greatest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure..." Why waste all that power to change the world by just contemplating it all the time?

To be honest, I've never really liked Zen Buddhism. All the slow walking and chanting in monotone. It makes me itchy. And angry. And I get upset easily at the idea that life is misery and the only cure is detachment. Most Zen masters would tell me I am wrong...that they are not detached but rather equally invested in all things. Except...not their own emotions. And not in any physical way. It's all about feeling and Letting Go. Thinking...and Letting Go. For someone like me...that's just insane. So much of our lives involves being battened around by forces beyond our control like a ball of yarn for a giant (and often bored) supernatural kitty. Why in the world would I want to cultivate a non-attachment to people and things that make me happy when I know that they are only mine for a minute. And that's if I'm lucky. Why not try to suck all the pleasure I can out of each before they go. Because everyone eventually goes.

Or on a grander scale, why waste all of the awesome creative poewer inside of us by not using it in whatever ways we have been gifted. Not everyone wants to cook in silence or mindfully meditate on watercolors....some of us are better at sewing glitter on leather or creating brash loud personalities that make other people feel good. Some of us were born to wear wigs and shout and shoot guns and drive convertibles and raise hell (RIP Molly Ivans and Leslie Kitselman). How is it possible that those things, dancing in the road with car headlights and rocking out with a bottle of whiskey and your two best friends...how is it possible that those aren't as reverent and respectful of the life within us as sitting quietly and watching the grass grow.

As with everything in life there needs to be balance. The thing about balance is...you gotta have Both. Of everything. Whatever it is. you gotta have Both in equal amounts.

Fuck thats hard.

Maybe it's slightly manic of me but the idea of a monotone Peacefulness all my life bores me to tears. I want Passion. And Adventure. And great big swooping excitements. I've been in California for four months. I have gardened. I have yoga'd. I have talked to birds and watched butterflies and made friends with farmers. I have slowly walked and meditated and Let Go. I have gone days without makeup and now consider rolling all the car windows down and rocking out to the country station a suitable substitute to a hair dryer. I am so far from uptight right now I can barely see it.

The results.... not Peace. Not enlightenment. Just an overwhelming sense of being stuck in molasses and soooo ready to get moving again. I needed this. Vacations are important. Time off in the quiet is good. But it's not a lifestyle for me. I'm ready to go back out in the world. Make a fortune. See Lebannon and Kenya and Italy. Photograph everything. Get Attached to people. I'm ready to be the anti-Zen again for a while...although maybe with a little more effort at quiet time now and again.

To do this...

I Need:

•I need a job. That Pays me on time and doesn't involve a crazy boss who wishes I were her best friend, therapist, AA sponsor, or doormat.

•I need to know my family is okay without me

•I need to make time to cook, grow things, yoga, run etc.

I Want:

•I want to stay in California for now. LA is looking good. Maybe SF. No, def. LA.

•I ALSO need time for crazy parties and bars and one night flings and adventures with my love.

•A space that is mine and a place for my artistic endeavors to be AS IMPORTANT as the ones that pay my bills

.... I guess this is what people mean when they talk about balance.

For years my concept of balance has been Go Hard until you can't do one more thing then collapse and get better. Repeat. That's pretty much the urge gripping me now. I'm better...fully recovered from 3 years straight of going hard. Ready to go again. This time though, I think I want to introduce it slowly, finding a place where I have both at once. And this time, rather than start by flinging myself into a new social scene or committing hours of time to a new dance club or group of old forgotten friends....this time I want to start with work.

Work is important. What we DO is important. At the end of our lives it adds up to a big chunk of who we were and how we spent our time. I want all of my work, from now until I'm done here (hopefully a long, long time from now) to add up to something meaningful. I want to leave behind a body of creative energy for people who come later, the way other people leave behind children....who grow up to be people like me. It's my biggest gift. I want to use it.

Next step in this sticky molasses process of figuring out my life:

•How to I get to a place where work isn't a hobby? Where what I can do is valued and paid for, and can help support all of those important balance-y things like housing and yoga and my crazy cooking habit?

Zen would tall me to just get okay with things turning out however they will without trying to control everything. I'm okay with that sort of...but how do you make changes or achieve things or accomplish any of your ambitions without exercising a little control or flexing a little muscle sometimes?I think I'm as far with this as I'll get today. Trying to let it sit in my head and think on it. Meditate if you will. Zen style. Answers are coming slowly but they come.

My J's....

2010-04-22T08:14:00.000-07:00

Recently I was blessed to spend two weeks with two of the most inspirational artists I have ever known. Each of them is impractical. Wild. Dancing to the beat of their own drum. Or ukelele. Depending on the day. They remind me that sometimes you just have to go for it. Sometimes, you have to spend every dime, quit your job, fly 3000 miles to meet a total stranger or tell the entire world to kiss your ass cause yer doin it anyways. That is my point of inspiration for today. That is real. It is true and it is what makes them so delicate and strong all at the same time. That is who I've tried to be for decades and they manage it effortlessly. That is god-given and it is beautiful. It is, in fact, visionary.

Hanging On...

2010-04-19T09:17:00.001-07:00

It's bizarre how my brain can do such acrobatic flips sometimes. Like Tony Hawk, that hot day when I stood on a pier in San Francisco next to his wife and tried to pretend I knew what a 180 was. ESPN thought it was impressive. So did a host of sponsors and video-game designers. I was looking at something else when he did it...the crowd maybe, or his new baby, drooling in the sun. Either way, when I looked up again he was on the other side of the ramp and the roar was deafening. It's the same in my head. From one passionately held idea or belief to it's direct opposite my thoughts catch air, twist and contort into some new rationality, leaving the rest of me just a step behind, never seeing the actual flip or trick, just looking up at the sound of the applause and trying to catch on quickly.

I spent my first 18 years Hating Sacramento. My only thought, my life's mission was to Get Out before I ended up like everyone around me. Before I popped out four kids and settled down to a boring job and a dilapidated shotgun house and a yard that always needed work. I had to leave before my life settled into a rut, before I could see every day of my future until death, before I tacitly agreed, by virtue of my presence here, to semi-poverty and near-constant exhaustion as an acceptable mode of existence. Leaving was how I would avoid government checks and drug habits that spanned decades rather than a few experimental years or high school boyfriends that became husbands or worse yet, ex-husbands and Saturday night get togethers fueled by cheap beer and memories of how great life was at 16. Getting Out was the solution. Getting Out would get me some other kind of life I was sure. I've learned since that sometimes you need to be a little more specific about your destinations.

Fast forward ten years. I Got Out. I went to college. I went to grad school. I graduated both. I lived in DC, Texas, New York. I fell in bigtime, wanna marry you, this is "The One," love. Twice. Both times with someone I didn't know as a teenager. I ran a marathon and went to London. I toured with the band, met movie stars and got a new career before I really cut my teeth on the first one. I quit drinking. A few times. I quit smoking. For good. I lived in warehouses and penthouses and drank 600 dollar champagne for breakfast with people I will likely never see again and squatted with punk kids with lip blisters and an aversion to bathing. I had one night stands and changed my gender. Then I changed it back to Drag Queen again. I lost people. I gained new ones. I maintained cordial relationships with all high school boyfriends. From a distance of 2000-3000 miles. I lived dreams I didn't even know I had. I am still waiting to live others.

Now, after a decade of running away I am right back where I started. I live in my brother's old room in my mother's house. I have nothing resembling a fulfilling or exciting career...just a semi-regular unemployment check from the government. My friends are still here. I still love love them. High school boys are still cute. Still hanging around. They look better than my 18 year old imagination had envisioned. Some of them anyways. I live here again. And I love it.

Roles have switched. I take care of my mother now, providing company, love, home-cooked meals and the careful acknowledgement of independence. I am like a PTSD patient home from war; recovering from New York. I twitch violently if someone rests the clicker too long on "High Society;" my skin crawls at the thought of going back just yet. Still, every trip to a suburban Starbucks sparks cravings for deli coffee from my neighborhood in Chelsea, every martini here is a disapointment. I'll drink whiskey for now.

The trees and chickens and wild turkeys here, lonely train whistles in the night...all the signs that used to shout so loudly that I was in the Wrong place and had to leave quickly before it somehow got me, changed me, made me boring or quiet and subverted me... all these things feel like bliss to me after so many years of taxi horns and subway shoving. The garden I hated to weed as a kid is my haven now, watching tiny leaves uncurl and promise new life generates hope, here in a place that once inspired so much teenaged despair.

Nonetheless, I keep running into my old fears. Literally. Everywhere I go it seems I see someone else who never left. Someone who knows me, who knows my face instantly here in this still-small town. Sometimes it's nice. Nice to be recognized or to know I live in someone Else's head. Sometimes it's embarrassing. I don't know who some of them are. What do you do exactly when someone is standing in front of you all smiles and knowing glances, like it was only yesterday that you were hanging out smoking something not quite legal in somebody's car in a parking lot in suburbia?

I left it all so far behind...so fast... that the truth is I don't remember a lot. I have ten years of new events in between. I stood in a store the other day staring at a girl who knew me. Looking back and forth from her to a boy from high school that I remembered well as they both smiled at me expectantly, waiting for some kind of squeal of recognition. I politely managed a "Hi, how have you been?" I asked the clerk what her name was as I left the store and for the life of me I have no recollection of who this person is. I'm sure we probably spent a lot of time together actually. Maybe we were even friends. It's hard to tell with some of them now without all the goth eyeliner and pink hair. Who knows... it's ten years later and those memories have been crowded out by sick parents and old jobs and lost loves and three states worth of friends I no longer talk to as often as I would like.

When I try to talk about it with anyone from here, they tell me I'm an asshole for not remembering. I try explaining that it's been a whirlwind...they tell me not to brag. It's a weird line to walk; adventurer come home or traitor who left and came crawling back. Either way I'm here for a while and I have to reconcile it somehow. I still don't want to live here forever. I still harbor a not-to-small fear of getting stuck or sucked in by life and waking up ten years from now too bogged down by circumstances and old choices to make new decisions for myself. I still have too many dreams of African safaris and Tokyo nightclubs that are as of yet unfulfilled to risk one wild night at the local bar with some boy I knew way back when or to get a local job for a few bucks an hour where I risk benefits and security and falling prey to the fear of living without those things again.

The kind of life I ran so far so fast from as a kid... it's not the kind of thing that just happens. It's the result of a thousand small, seemingly innocuous choices. Tiny losses of vigilance against ordinariness. Against security. Against the need to blend or fit or be just good enough to get by. These little losses stack up against you over time. Leave you with fewer and fewer options and adventures until one day, you're sitting in the same bar you sat in when you were 16, talking about your grand kids and how much the place you've lived in all your life has changed. It's not a bad life...it's just got a smaller field of vision than I would like for myself.

Maybe that's why fate brought me back after all these years... to make peace with all the things I ran away from. To let go of the part of me that judged this quieter life....without adopting it for myself. Except; it's so peaceful here. And it would be so nice to see a doctor when I needed to. And have a bank account. And a home that was mine. And kids do need a place to call their own. And I do want kids. I think. And that boy from high school is still cute. And I missed my girlfriends. And mom needs me. And homes here are a good investment. And I do need a job.

That's how it starts.

Cameron was sorting through the garage the other day looking for tools to fix the garden beds with and happened across a drawer in an old metal filing cabinet filled with all of the things my mother saved from my childhood. There is an oddly prescient sheet of paper with a little musing on it detailing my idea of what it would be like to live in this house alone, surrounded by dust and the memories of past Christmases and arguments; picking through the broken down objects relegated to the garage that were once a part of family life, once part of something bigger.

It could have been written by me, or by my father before he died, or by my mom...anyone really. It's scribbled in the kind of typewriter handwriting I used in 8th grade. Weird how dead on I was before I even really knew what it would feel like to lose people or places or be left alone in what used to be one kind of a full life. It's how I imagine my mother feels... all alone in a spotlight in an empty house; full of ghosts of the lives that used to be real here. You have to follow new lives...chase them down and wrestle them into submission and make them yours. Otherwise one day you wake up and everything you built, everything you counted on... could just be memories. Or in my case, just gone entirely.

So I am back, at square one, a different person entirely and doing what I've always done. I take pictures. I write. I archive and I collect. I make sure that the pieces of life around me get boxed up and preserved for some dusty future when I don't remember much and the people who come after know nothing about us all. I make sure that we won't be forgotten. I cling tight to people I love. I hold on to my home and keep a tight grip on my dreams. I am being dragged from my comfortable place into something new and for me... something scary. I am not good at being here. But I am learning.

And I love it.

Surrender Dorothy...

2010-04-08T11:24:00.001-07:00

When my parents planted these trees they were no higher than my waist. I was eight years old. 4th grade. We had just moved in to what I was sure was the ugliest house on the block. 21 years later both the trees and the house I grew up in, still take my breath away.

I remember watching my parents sweating over the house every weekend from my perch on the air-conditioned couch, clicker in hand, wondering what they were thinking. It was 110 degrees outside where they planted, pushed wheelbarrows full of bark and hammered redwood planks into place. The old battery-operated AM radio was always tuned to a baseball game. There are few things more boring to listen to in radio format than baseball. Even so, now, when I miss my dad, I can tune in to Giants radio and listen for the familiar crackling patter "Swing and a miss"... "And it's good!"... and I can see his face and feel his arms around me again. My dad loved baseball more than most. Hell, he even fought cancer all through spring training before he finally succumbed to it in June, TV silent in the background on one game...radio tuned to the Giants station on another. It's the sound of my childhood with people who loved me deeply. Still, I never got in to baseball.

Tomorrow is my birthday. It is the tail end of my Saturn return. I had this idea that I wouldn't be much affected by Saturn this time around, having suffered the loss of 5 close family members, one love affair, two jobs and the only place I had ever wanted to call home just a few short years earlier. It seems I was wrong. This time wasn't about loss though... it was about coming home. Too bad it took me all year to figure that much out.

Six months before my birthday last year I lost my job. I haven't found another one yet. In between I have tried to start a business, switched careers, have worked jobs that were a TOTAL disaster (see Micheal Musto's Jan. column if you think I'm exaggerating), have worked for free or pennies on the dollar...have worked my ass off in fact to reinvent my own wheel. During that time I have traveled to Europe, hung out in private NYC clubs, lived in an out of the penthouse (hence this blog), been kept, rejected and re-embraced by all factions of gay glitteratti and have moved homes no less than 5 times, loosing all my savings and many treasures along the way. The last one was the final straw. There was no money, no energy and no love left for New York to do it one more time. I packed it in, left the stuff in storage for the time when my love for the city rises to the top again as I know it one day will, packed up Jasper and myself, left the plants with family and got on a plane to mom's house.

I have done this twice before. The first time, my dad had just been diagnosed and I wanted to spend time with him. I left the crazy girlfriend behind and took the time to regroup. The second time, my mother called in April and said I should come home to say goodbye. I left love behind and headed home to care for him in the last months. I stayed a year because my mother needed me.

She still does.

I just didn't know how much until I got home again this time. I'm so grateful to have her in my life...grateful for the relationship it took us so long to figure out how to have. So afraid of ruining it by trying to help too much or overstepping.

It doesn't quite feel real sometimes. I'm watching friends pull away slowly as they realize how much is wrong here. Feeling that familiar spreading stain on my skin that I thought I scrubbed away and hid under glitter and smeary eyeliner in New York, San Francisco, LA, DC. That inky film that coats you top to toe and announces boldly that I come from a place with deep problems that can not always be fixed. That sad veil that coats the children of alcoholics and the wives of the terminally ill. That invisible thing that somehow Everyone can see that warns them away...tells them you are drowning, or that you have the potential too. Warns them that you are not going to save them because you are too busy staying afloat. This thing, this invisible declaration that we all try to hide... sooner or later it gets out.

We spend our whole lives trying to hide it. It's the non-secret that so many people have that nobody talks about. It's why my mom talks too loud on the phone, or throws parties at the last minute when she can feel a black mood descending. So she can have a reason to do what she does to cope. An excuse at the ready. A way to make it okay. Nobody talks about it because we know what happens. For all the lip service given to honesty and the strength it takes to recover, the truth is that people look at you differently when you say it out loud. You fall down a few pegs of society's ladder. Money can haul you back up again but you aren't ever respectable again. Just rich enough to do what you want.

For some reason admitting that the loss of everyone you ever loved made you lose hope, made a glass of wine seem like the only help available, made you inhospitable to help... it's impossible to say out loud. It just settles around a person like a fine dusting of despair. It makes a person glow ever so slightly with the absence of hope. Now I am wearing it on my own skin and everyone can see....and not talk about it. The same stain is spreading up my arms every time I bend down to pick up the broken dish or clean up after a particularly bad hangover. It hits my elbows and travels into my armpits and down my chest every time I open another bottle and grab a glass in response to the pleading look, the third request I have "just a little" to keep her company.

For the first time in my life I have what I always wished for as a kid. I'm needed. My presence is wanted. And I am failing. I'm failing because I can't just say the words "You need help." I'm supposed to be the help. Night after night as we struggle through broken dishes, bedtime, and the refusal to climb the stairs to bed to go to sleep alone my heart breaks for all the things I can't give. I have anger...lots of it. I am not ready to lose anyone else that I love. But finally, I have compassion too.

I have memories here. I have stains. I can sit outside of myself and watch friends pull away, shocked and scared at what they can see has happened to my family. At the future they can see for me. There is nothing but hard choices coming. Stay and clean up the mess... for how long? People have to save themselves. That much at least I have learned by now. What about stay and try to inspire hope? Maybe... but how long does that take? Is it possible when two people are so different? Leave and live with the guilt? Maybe. Nothing to leave for though. Not yet. New job will probably be the answer to that. Or travel opportunity.

Which leaves me somewhere in the in-between, getting along, managing, and trying not to let the stink of addiction and fear of poverty get too comfortable underneath my skin. Gearing up for the next round of scrubbing it off...thinking that this time it's gonna take more than glitter and late nights with the famous gays I knew when and drinking in expensive places I can't afford to do the trick. This is a Borax level, harsh chemical, bleachy clean that's needed here... or maybe something else entirely.

Maybe I'll end up with some sort of Buddhist peace with things as they are. Maybe I'll even come out of this being able to OM and meditate without dissolving in a puddle of self-conscious laughter. Maybe I'll get a new career and keep cooking for people and learn to escort bugs outside without ever squishing another one in this lifetime no matter how scary or how many legs it tauntingly waves at me.

Maybe this will be the great spiritual awakening of my life. I feel it there, that possiblity; hovering around me, palliative and soft. Religion is the Prozac of the downtrodden and all. Funny, I've got no interest in religion though. Nor do I Feel particularly downtrodden. Just tired mostly. Confused. And unsure of myself. Three things I hate feeling. Still, for the first time in years I take walks. I work out. I cook. I grow things. I write. I photograph. Every day that I spend here, isolated and away from the life I chose for myself I seem to grow a little more. I get a little stronger. I make something new. Suddenly I am a Creator again instead of just the organizing force behind other people's ideas. It's so strange that I let this go so long ago. Maybe, despite all of my fears and anger and worry, maybe I need this too.

I guess, as far as summing up goes, like I do every year before my birthday, this year I can't. I'm still in the thick of it. I did not accomplish last year's goals which included:

Getting a job

Seeing Tokyo

Resurrecting my typewriter

Finishing the three photo series I have outlined in my notebook and only just started

Applying for Africa grants

Finishing either of the two books I have been working on for the last six years.

I did however:

Decide on doing the work to make love last through even the wost of circumstances

Recover after a huge crisis/humiliation and keep moving forward

Learn to Cook

Decide on a new career and took steps to making it a reality

Start photographing my family

Start writing/taking pictures again

Fins a home

Expand the reach of my consciousness to things I still don't understand but can not accept that they exist

Remember how much I love to read

Learn to care for myself as much as other people

I think I probably ended up exactly where I am supposed to be. Other lesson learned... My powers of prediction are not always what they should be... Be Flexible. Given that, my goals for the coming year will be simple:

Get through it.

Go with my gut.

Create. In any medium.

Give what I have but keep something for myself.

Enjoy the people who are here while they are with me.

Love them all.

...and maybe find a job too.

Texas Girls....Part Two

2010-03-29T13:10:00.000-07:00

Texas Girls...

2010-03-29T08:21:00.000-07:00

Texas girls man... this lovely lady's girlfriend is what one might call my muse. I have taken non-stop portraits of her in every concievable situation for years. When her girlfriend came to NYC she asked her to stop by my tiny little flat in Chealsea to do some portraits. The funny thing is... now that New York is something of a distant memory, I love these images; partially for the wounded expressions and total lack of self-conciousness but also for the tiny touches of the apartment I can see. The view out the window, the clock in the mirror, the tiny gas stove... all of these glimpses into the happiest time of my relationship with J... it makes these images far more valuable to me than I would have expected. Thanks to my lovely model.... the gorgeous butch is my lovely Texas Muse. The lovely lady with the tattoo is her partner.

God Bless Texas.

SMIZE...the GLITCHmix. Tyra girl...you don't know what yer missing!

2010-03-26T16:41:00.000-07:00

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A bit more from Florida....

2010-03-21T19:09:00.000-07:00

Panama City Beach: The Beautiful Ones

2010-03-18T14:36:00.000-07:00

PCB "oh-ten baby"!!!

2010-03-17T10:50:00.000-07:00

"What's the craziest thing you've ever done?"

"What's the worst thing you've ever done?"

"What's the meanest thing you've ever don?"

If I had to answer any of the questions I just spent a week asking drunk kids at Spring Break in Panama City Beach I feel pretty confident that my answers would make some of the most shocking things they told us seem pale in comparison. I'm not proud of that. I'm not all that ashamed either. For every terrible and shocking thing I know that there is a good story that balances it.

After living for years with the goal of trying everything once and sometimes twice it would be sad if I didn't have those stories. I would have failed miserably in my mission to condense as much experience and adventure into one tiny and far too short life as possible. That said, I suppose it is a little unusual to have lived so many lives and managed to never truly choose one. There's something about the in-between that just fits for me though. Tightrope-walking between homeless and homecoming princess, between anti-war activist and Homeland Security policy writer, between down-home redneck and high-fashion producer, between GOP researcher and gay performance artist and landing somewhere in between married and utterly boundry-less when it comes to sex... and then there's all the things that I've already forgotten.

I've been comfortable on this line for so long... by it's nature though it pretty much keeps me alone in a crowd. It's hard to fit two people on a tightrope unless they are facing off or following one another. Side by side is a rarity.

The truth is, after so many years of chasing or falling into so many extreme experiences I finally feel zen about it all. I am without need to chase adrenaline. I feel safe in most situations. I am confidant in my ability to survive, well, just about anything. With that, comes something new. A new niggling feeling at the base of my brain that I have been unhindered by until just this second it seems. Perspective.

It was so shocking to watch kids doing the same things I have done and feel, well... shocked. It was even stranger still to be in an environment like that (drunk, loud, crazy, permissive...the list goes on) and to have no pull of recognition or memory, just gratitude that that part was over. When the hell did I get this old? I tried to talk about it a bit with the crew but being Queen of the Overshare didn't really help as they are more private people and I had to keep explaining where I been versus where I was now. It's the kind of thing you really need to talk to an old friend for...someone who knows about all your skeletons and all your closets. Thank god for T...

I've been sharing my secrets and posting my deepest thoughts in public for the better part of ten years now. I've heard every possible criticism of the practice, from private people who find it distasteful to know so much about me, to shallow-breathed sniping that I must really need attention. For me, the Art of the Overshare has always been about a commitment to honesty. I didn't grow up with people who share. They keep their darkest secrets and even their grocery lists under wraps. My family is full of those little things that everyone knows and nobody talks about. I think most families are. The difference for me is that I cannot abide secrets like that. I cannot trust anyone who I feel has lied to me, even if it was only a sin of omission. I guess I feel like, as long as I wear it all on my sleeve, the good the bad and the oh so ugly, then at the end of the day nobody can feel like they were betrayed. No one can say they didn't see me coming.

I think it's heartbreaking, all the emphasis we put as a species into making certain impressions, holding ourselves back, holding it all together. The most beautiful moments of the week-long beach trip were when for one tiny shining moment some hint of what these kids keep most hidden would make it's way to the surface. It was beautiful because they knew and we knew... it isn't going to last.

My favorite was the charming farm boy with too pale skin and that sallow sunken look that tells me his stimulant of choice isn't coffee, who sauntered out on the beach with a ciggarette perched neatly in the v of work-roughened fingers with a shiny tiara stting askew on his head, shouting to all the world that for today at least he was the Birthday Girl. That boy won't exist much longer. That boy will go home to his family and his life and his small Indiana town and his masculinity and he will learn to hide every sensitive aspect of himself. He will cry rarely and it will make his wife or his girlfriend feel special and alone the first time she catches him at it. They will never talk about it. He will live, lonely and locked up inside of himself because that is what men do in some places. And no one who is from one of these small places with high walls will ever tell you that that isn't true. They'll tell you that they don't mind it. That it's just life or maturity or how things are. They'll tell you that if you don't like it you are free to leave...just pack up your tiara and head on out to New York or San Francisco or anywhere where they like That Sort Of Thing.

The sad part of course is that after ten years of leaving my small town with high walls and jumping from DC to New York to Austin to San Francisco, Oakland, North Carolina, Conneticut, San Diego and LA all I have seen in these places are thousands of other refugees, tiara's proudly displayed, waving wildly in the freedom that is living alone on a tightrope surrounded by nothing but air.

You trade a lot for that tiara. Sometimes, you trade family. Friends. Security. Community. You trade certain kinds of love and understanding. You trade feeling accepted. Groupthink. The feeling that a place belongs to you and you to it. You trade protection and fear. You trade in a whole and complete human experience for a different whole and complete experience. And sometimes it takes a whole and complete lifetime to figure out what it all meant. Sometimes, it takes forever to rebuild new, tiara-loving versions of all the things you had before you decided you needed something else. Sometimes you never do.

It's not hard to see why people make the choices they do. It's just hard to know that the grass is exactly the same shade of brown on both sides. Running away or running towards something, it all lands you in the same place. And no matter what, you always get there on your own. Those moments of perfect freedom, acceptance, love and belonging while being truly and utterly yourself; that's what all those kids were chasing out there on the beach. They were smart kids who knew that those moments, for everyone, are fleeting.

Fleeting things need to be documented, written down, photographed and blogged about. Those fleeting things are my entire life. The preservation of them is my purpose. It always has been. I am not a storyteller. I can't finish a book to save my life. I am a collector. I see people. I hear them. I remember them. I know I've never met anyone like myself in quite the same way... I guess the blog and the stories and the ever-present Overshare is just me trying to collect my own moments in the hopes that when I am gone and the unsentimental amongst us have thrown out my things and divided up whatever money is left, that somewhere out in the world, on the internet or in a journal somewhere, there will be a small shiny collection of my own fleeting moments of trancendence that somehow managed to last, safely preserved, for as long as I would let them.

I feel tiny today....with a boombalati belly.

2010-02-01T09:41:00.000-08:00

The last time I was in SF, I spent the most blissful day in bed with my girls and J. The more time I spend alone out here the more together I feel...and the more I am really starting to understand that just because I CAN live on my own far away from my family, doesn't necessarily mean that I should.

I've been pretty focused on learning math, getting organized for the next chapter, going outside often and eating well. Well, that and seeing if I can coax my abs back out of hiding. They've been cowering under a layer of cheese and beer for years now...enough is enough fellas. Time to grow a pair and get out into the world. Not that I have any interest in developing, you know, a Situation, or anything. A stress-free bikini week in Florida will be nice though.

The funny thing is, when I focus this much on ME, I have a really hard time relaxing enough to let stuff out. I stop photographing. I stop writing as much. I had to Force myself to write this today. I even put it on the list! Note to self: Monday, write something. ANYTHING. Work out. Read a book. Do math. Relax and stretch.

I actually have to write it down. Relax. Write. Read. These are all vacation pursuits; things I love to do. Why is it so damn hard to give myself permission to do them? I have no job. Jasper is gone. I hove zero demands on my time. Why is it then that I have seen every episode of Criminal Minds ever made since getting here but have only finished one of the twenty uncompleted essays I keep on my desktop for When I Have The Time To Write?

I made new playlists for my iPod, skipping all of the songs that make me think of my dad. I'm still not able to listen to them without crying, even if some of them are my favorite bands. I bought cookbooks and am doing my best to follow instructions. I am cooking for my grandparents on Wed. I had no idea time could pass so slowly and go so quickly this way. I have 20 days until my test and my last three days (possibly for a lot longer than I am currently planning) in New York. I have only four or five people I Need to say goodbye too. I have one club to stop by and one particular thing to eat. I will be doing it mostly alone.

It seems that I keep going out of my own way to make sure that stays the case. Enough is enough. I am trying to give my Inner Workings the same speech as I give my abs. Grow A Pair and Get Out in the world. Go back to your friends, find something you love to do and just do it. Who cares where it is? There is no competition. You will not have failed if you don't conquer NYC and make millions of dollars and get it all published before you are 30.

I have the speech down. Now I just need a ball gag for the little voice that pipes up snippily every time I finish that speech. The one that says,

You Are A Total Failure and Disappointment. Period.

How the hell does a person go about getting that voice out of their head? Well, to start with, I tried to think of every place where I don't hear it. I don't hear that voice when I am in Tanya's tub or Marla's kitchen or reading Joey's letters. I don't hear it when I am eating cheese with Buck in the sun or driving in Gabe's car or listening to Corrie and Steph Joy talk about their lives. I don't hear it late at night when I am curled up in J''s arms or when I am walking by the river and I certainly don't hear it when I make Taryn cheesy pasta or sip beer in the sun with Cameron.

The only place I hear that voice is when I am in the places I always thought I wanted to be.

I hear it at work, on set, in big cities where people aren't really friends even when they say they love you. I hear it at fancy parties with boys in Gucci suits or capes while trying to ignore celebrities in the corner and naked boys on the bar. Most of all, I hear it now, when I am alone, feeling like I SHOULD have so many things that aren't here yet or when I think about the student loans that bought degrees I don't use, about the fact that I am technically homeless at that point, that I have no income, few job prospects and am not going to be carried through by anyone but myself. I feel that way every time I think about the ways we got broken and only partially put back together again without my dad. When I can't convince my brother that we are worth calling, or don't have anything real to say to my sister with a week between us. When I wake up here, in the attic, every day with only one phone call to make.

Between caring for myself physically Finally and opening myself up intellectually after Many years, I guess I still keep ramming up against the same place Emotionally that has always been there. Some stubborn, immovable, piece of my psyche that insists that no matter what I accomplish or what I do it will Never, Ever, be Enough. This has been true since the fourth grade. It will take some time to tell that piece to pipe down...it's wrong. Similar to arguing with religious zealots, some arguments you can't actually win with logic or rationality. That's the hard part of this one. It's about straight up faith and I keep coming up short.

Weirdly, this is the second time this week I have been struck with the sudden and intense realization that I have, what can only be termed, ABUNDANCE ISSUES. I noticed it first in the grocery store. More specifically, in my need to GO to the grocery store every two days to stock up on things I am "almost" running out of in the fridge, despite the completely full pantry. The end result... eating the same thing for a week for fear of rotting vegetables before realizing that I had made everything boring and predictable on purpose for fear of having nothing at all. Clearly, I have a thing about control too...but anyone reading this or who knows me probably already knew that. That one is not a secret.

The hysterical thing about it is that by trying to address the control issue I seem to have created the abundance one. I spent the last year and a half trying to let go. Trying to give up control. I lived with daily uncertainty, financial and relationship issues that resulted in flying on faith, trusting that it would all somehow be okay. I went wherever, met whomever and at the end of the day I assumed it would all work out. I fought it most of the way but did eventually get to a far more patient and pliant state of being. I also totally reinforced that when I am not in control of those things...my life falls totally and completely apart. After two years of fighting control issues I have 1. no job 2. no home 3. no real plans 4. scared and hiding abs 5. a very real fear of waking up at 35 in the exact same position but this time with the B-A-B-Y clock ticking and possibly missing out on something I always assumed I would have because I didn't get my shit together.

So much for stress relief.

Any reasonable person will tell me that this is about Balance. Frankly, I suck at balance. And I've never really been drawn to it. I feel forced into balance and that makes me want to lay down in the grocery aisle screaming kicking and insisting that no matter how it's served I don't like it and I'm not gonna have it No Way. I guess that's the problem. It's actually very similar to how I reacted in high school math class when I didn't get algebra. I'llNeverUseThisCrapWhyTheHellShouldIEvenBotherFuckThisINeedACiggaretteAnybodyCuttingGymAndWannaGoForCoffee?

Right. Fast forward ten years later and here I am, waking up every day and grabbing a math book, teaching myself what I could have learned then if I had just stopped fighting it so hard.

Still, I wish I knew how that button in my head works. Presto. Control Issues be gone! Abundance fears...Away! Baby issues, Tabled without stress! For now... I think I'm just gonna go take another walk and start planning the trip back home. I will try not to feel like a slinking dog with my tail between my legs when I think about heading that way. I will also try to view it not as a failing but as a choice, with new opportunities attached. I will try to remember how good it feels to be in a giant kitten pile with the people who have loved me for so many years without judgement. And I will try not laugh at myself for foolish optimism.

Baby steps I guess. Baby kitten steps.

Listening to lots of George Michael.....

2010-01-27T09:23:00.001-08:00

The thing about champagne is that the hangovers just last forever.

I'm in Conneticut. Duration of stay...about six weeks. Activities include working out, yoga, learning to bellydance, learning to cook without cheese or sugar, long walks to nowhere and not drinking.

It's something of a long-term cleanse for my soul. I hadn't realized until we got here (J is here too of course) how utterly soul-sucking the Champagne life can be. It's beautiful and bubbly and fun but here, over a year and a half later, it is easy to see what was missing.

I have a beautiful family in New York. I have limited sexual partners and a person who loves me for real. I have plenty of friends. I get to go to fabulous places. Now here's the rub... The family is only family when they aren't too busy (minus baby's daddy and the two most amazing men/ladies/queens in my life of course), the one I love has to double as best friend. For someone used to 10-15 BFF's at a time, that was rough. On both of us...and utterly unfair to her. Nothing is constant out there. Everyone is a potential traitor. Work is more about survival than creativity. If you do luck out and get a project requiring creative energy the odds are...someone else will take credit for it and throw you under the bus. The champagne covers up the fact that it's really a war zone. Truth is... I've always been more of an univolved observer so getting all up in it just hit me harder than most. I'm feeling pulled back to it but this time decidedly behind my camera lens again.

At first it was fun to play in nightclubs with J without being photo girl. Of course, it was less fun to be ignored UNTIL people realized I was connected to her. Then I got called Baby a lot and hugged by people on the street I didn't recognize or remember because I met them once at a party months before that I drank my way through. Everybody has an agenda. That much at least was clear.

I am more understanding of egos now...and decidedly less tolerant. My dream of living in a huge city and working in entertainment is shifting. I dream now about lots of money and a job connected to that world but with less armor attached. Fashion or entertainment or whatever but one where at the end of the day my job is about pictures, creativity, and making brilliant images happen. I am over the idea of working with or more specifically, just Working the people in my social circle which is also my work circle for the rest of my life. For someone as organized as I, it's hard not to have seperate compartments for those two groups. That is what is happening now. I'm sorting.

I think about owning a home now. I think about having a baby. I still want to see Africa and fly to Paris on a whim but I'd rather do it alone with J and a suitcase full of camera equipment rather than shoes for each borrowed outfit and a schedule of red carpets and "must do" events.

This is a re-evalutaion of EVERYTHING. And that's okay. This is the year...not last year or the one before but this year, that I will put something of myself out in the world in a meaningful way. Maybe it's this photo book I've been doing for years or the essays I am suddenly writing again or something I haven't even thought of yet but whatever it is, the time has come. It feels sort of like how women in labor describe the urge to push. It's bigger than me. It's just time.

Sooooo.....I am freezing in an attic in Conneticut, watching too much TV and learning math for an exam (which I have always hated) and chasing new opportunities. I am watching muscles grow and fat drop off my waistline and until today didn't once think to myself "Now I can borrow clothes again from B's styling rack!" I am watching acrobatic squirrels and doing yoga and am not attached to my phone or my laptop for any more than 20 minutes a day. I have seen my grampy twice and am letting myself appreciate seeing my father again in all of his siblings who surround me. I am reading a book for fun. For something I have always loved, it's been years since I had the time for this simple pleasure. I get to read the Times on Sundays and do crossword puzzles and not take calls from anyone with an Emergency related to clothes of why last night's one night stand hasn't called yet. I am just....well....here. And it's amazing.

Regardless of how I end up after all this the fact is....my 15 year old self was right. 30 officially marks the end of any excuses of being youthful. I turn 29 in April. I have one more year but frankly, I'd rather get a jump start on the next chapter. I'd rather wrap it up, publish the books and find some new subject to capture my eye. I want a savings account again. And a house that I know will still be there next week. I want to plan vacations where I don't have to work. I want a gym routine and tango classes and date night with J again. Especially now that I know who I am again. So much of me changed after my dad died....I guess New York was how I had to figure out those changes again. The problem is...I was chasing dreams I had befoe that happened and after...I just wasn't the same person anymore but not sure how to admit it.

We will be back in New York soon enough....but it's going to look a lot different this time around. And I can't wait.

This year is going to be an adventure...

The Champagne Life is Over For Now...

2010-01-03T10:47:00.001-08:00

For 2010 I think I'll be chasing the Glenlivit Life instead.

2009 was amazing. Rivington Penthouse. She Dick. London. Touring. Texas. Video on MTV. Fashion Week. Drag Queens that threw shoes. Moved 5 times. Missed major events. Went to fabulous parties.... basically it was a giant party.

And now it's done.

2010 is announcing itself as a more practical and serious time, with attention paid to incoming finances, and soul feeding and family rather than bubbly parties that leave headaches and hunger.

To that end...here it is, the official announcement. J and I are moving. Goodbye New York...hello San Francisco, Sacramento and LA! Sunshine and family and healthy food and yoga and some time to come down out of the heart-attack ready stratosphere of stress.

Hello 2010...I am so ready for you.

IT's ON...

2009-10-27T11:32:00.001-07:00

Jasper James

is now the official voice

of the NBA sponsoring KIA Sorento

WERK! oh yeah...and world.... this bitch is FIERCE!

The last of the loose ends...

2009-10-17T15:55:00.001-07:00

Sothese are the last of the Green Shows photos. Tiny girls, shivering in tinier clothes and still... ya gotta love the fact that they hide nothing when it comes to their expressions.

A few more Hanging Threads...

2009-10-17T12:24:00.000-07:00

This was my favorite of all of the fashion week shows. Gorgeous models, gorgeous clothes and everyone was so chill. It should be like that always!

Loose Ends and New Begininngs....

2009-10-17T11:25:00.000-07:00

HOUSE OF ORGANICS

Bahar Shephar Backstage AND Ashley Dupree (Yes Eliot Spitzer's Lady Friend)

2009-10-08T15:13:00.001-07:00

Models Eating at Lara Miller... These Bitches Don't Do Yoga...They Just Look Like That. Get Over It.

2009-10-07T12:48:00.000-07:00

So as most of you know...the Champagne Life has, in typical Champers fashion moved on up in the world...through absolutly no fault of our own. After one of those cringe-inducing roomate debacles we are so famous for we were left broker than ever with an apartment we couldn't afford, a deposit lost to the wind and two long weeks of bus journeys to find new housing. Then, the clouds parted and the voice of the universe (otherwise known as an old friend of J's) happened to be on the phone as I happened to bitch (again) about how much I hated apartment hunting and just Happened to need a subletter who didn't suck for her fabulous Chelsea Apartment. So...after five days of hellish moving that included tips to a basement in Conneticut and much purging of as yet unworn clothing from the back of a walk in closet we are now here...blissfully happy and loving life. Oh yeah...and I spent the day uploading pictures of size 0 lovelies cramming overstuffed burritos and pop chips into their mouths while watching yoga on tv and eating cheese. Yep. Just cheese. Goat brie straight off the ooey gooey knife. Today Rocked.

Backstage at Tara St. James-STUDY

2009-09-23T18:08:00.000-07:00

We Heart Models... Puja hits the Pole at Sub-Mercer...

2009-09-23T07:04:00.001-07:00

Backstage at Loris Diran....

2009-09-20T07:58:00.001-07:00

Loris Diran was one of my favorite shows of fashion week this year. Or at least it was the most entertaining backstage. Models were bleeding on dresses, all the pretty boys looked bored, others were hiding piercings or stuffing down fruit cups trying to hold it together, 9 different guys in 9 different expensive suits with clipboards were annoyed and rushing about at all times, the dressers were scattered everywhere and Everyone was a diva. (Except CK, Marlena and that guy from Heroes who was lurking in the corner. They were fun.) The audience was divalicious... see first picture... and endlessly fabulous. Even Milan and Marcus made appearances. About half of the Greenhouse regulars were there it seemed. After it was all over I ran outside to hail a cab to get to the next place and ended up leaning on Ice-T's car... with him and his AMAZING wife in it! Yay weird NYC celebrity sighting #3. I love fashion week.

Kelly Cutrone Is Everywhere!

2009-09-17T07:58:00.000-07:00

I walked in on the filming of her new reality show the

other day at the studio before the Loris Diran show. They had a fantastic designer set up happening... sorry I missed the show but as always, I had a camera! backstage :) I wish I knew the designer's name...

Backstage at Tomara Pagosian..new pics from me!

2009-09-13T18:46:00.000-07:00

Joeseph Marconi Shots from Wed... me and J get She-Dickulous!

2009-09-13T08:48:00.000-07:00

Okay... let's start with the obvious. Joe Marconi makes great event photos.

More importantly... GOD I LOVE MY LIFE!!!!!!

FASHION WEEK

2009-09-12T12:37:00.000-07:00

Reasons Why Fashion Week Is Better Than Fleet Week

1. Bagels. You can still eat them. In front of models if you are feeling particularly sadistic.

2. Watching the city get overrun by 9 foot tall space aliens with fun accents and cranky attitudes

3. Meeting the space aliens without attitudes

4. GIFT BAGS

5. Gift Bags.

6. Better Parties

7. An excuse to wear that wierd thing with the shoulder pads no one you want to sleep with ever actually wants to see you in but that makes other girls squeal in envy

8. The Shoes.

9. Photographers who lurk in bars and backstage at shows trying to lure in fresh meat for "test shoots"

10. Guys with business cards instead of invitations doing gladiator throwdaown match with bitchy door girls. CAGE MATCH!

Two for the Price of None

2009-09-11T08:36:00.000-07:00

ONE4LIFE Y'all....

So we kicked off fashion week with two back to back crazy nights (unfortunatly causing me to skip out on the Genetic Denim show tonight which, while AMAZING looking, is just not gonna happen when I have a 6AM show call tomorrow for Tomara Pogosian). We started on Wed at Sutra, the sexiest little place on 1st and 1st where Jasper and She-Dick - dressed as the sexiest boys ever- minus Theresa who just stayed her sexy self- put on a hell of a show and I got wobbly in my pink dress and had to carried home. Too many cocktails with too little food. Not making that mistake again for the rest of the week!

The crowd was fun...mostly a smattering of gay icons and local celebrigays. Kevin Christiano was there which was fabulous as I hadn't seen him since a chance bar encounter nearly a year ago... I LOVE how small New York is!

Met an NBA star and his fabulous partner and turned around at some point in the evening to drunkenly realize that J was talking to the cowboy from the Village People. Oh Mr Randy Jones...we do still love you. As these things go it was pretty much the usual fun and antics. Lots of pretty people. Lots of talented people. Sometimes they were the same. Sometimes not. Either way we had a blast.

The second fabulous event of the week was on Thursday for Dex NY's Fashion's Night Out party. For some reason...the love of champagne perhaps, I took a job producing all of DEX NY's fashion week events this year. Luckily for me... Dex is a sweetheart and the place is fabulous! The make-up they produce is eco-friendly and fancy and there is plently more sparkle then crunch for a place that prides itself on being healthy and enviro-friendly.

And when we say Fabulous.... we mean Brooke. On the left. The one staring FIERCELY into the camera. And the most amazing door-girl of all time. She showed up a whirlwind of orders. In her Very Expensive Shoes. Tossed off her Chanel Sunglasses and uttered the best greeting of all New York Time... "Daaaahhhhhlink, Could someone steam my dress?"

So Amazing.

The rest of the night was kind of a blur of friends showing up (Alex, Diana...y'all were fabulous too!) and crisis' to be handled. Somewhere in the middle of it all a great ruckus occured when Sanjaya 9American Idol Runner Up...I know... I didn't know who he was either) showed up with his possee. He was sweet, posing for pictures until I escorted him by the arm out the door at the end of the evening. Somewhere there is a picture of me kissing his cheek which would be really funny if it ever got sent to me by the guy who took it.

Overall the whole thing was a fun way to start the madness that is fashion week. Coming soon...PICTURES!!!

The Beautiful Life and The Champagne Life meet in the middle

2009-09-03T16:55:00.000-07:00

Sooooo.... the Champer's Life is awesome and all... but all I do is work for free these days. So I decided to see what life on the Other side of the camera was all about for a day and signed on to be a Background Special Talent or whatever for an episode of Ashton Kutcher's new show "The Beautiful Life". The Beautiful Life is what the Champagne Life would be if it ever got paid for the vast amounts of shit it does. But I digress. Let's start with Jessica Stam's gold rolex shall we? Or Ritchie Rich's most fabulous lapel button. Or perhaps we should begin with the crazy beautiful models, all of whom were amazing MILF's and decent conversationalists besides.

Or maybe... just maybe... we should begin at the beginning... with the complete sense of confusion and wonder that is the experience of walking into a room full of 50 or 100 other insignificant space filler such as yourself and realizing just how damn important EVERYBODY thinks they are.

I am amazed. I was amazed when the other BG's started bitching about food and lunches. I stayed amazed while they whined about their hair, their make-up, and their 3 seconds of camera time. I flipped to straight up incredulous when they all started talking about doing Gossip Girl and White Collar and all of these other shows... making it clear that standing around all day to be on TV near someone famous for 3 seconds was an actual job... And was the actual job for most of these people; all of whom listed Model and Actor on their verbal resume within a moment of meeting.

Now of course there were many bright spots throughout the day... the model (actually) that I talked to about her kid for an hour was super down to earth and lovely. I hope to drink cheap beer with her very soon. A couple of the PA's were awesome. Some of them were scary. And some of the folks involved reminded me why I want to make film. Those folks were Mostly the crusty old union guys in the back... rolling cords and telling dirty jokes while the rabid Chihuahua types ran around and sweated over the presence of a BG in the back room. That was kind of fun too I guess. The part where my passport fell in toilet cause I was in a rush... less fun. The part where I handed it to snotty girl #3 while being lectured on prop care... Way fun.

Overall... glad I did it. Maybe I will be less bitchy in the future when I am the one wrangling 50 some odd people that I consider useless too.... in fact, I know I'll be a lot nicer. Also... note to casting; If you have a scene with a room full of 9 foot tall space aliens with 0 percent body fat... DON'T Call an average height, size 8 girl in to be your pretend photographer only to tell her she looks bad in all of your shots next to the other girls. Seriously. It's your money...but sheesh y'all. There is just no need.

More than anything the whole event simply wet my appetite for fashion week. Come by and see me folks... I'll be producing many an eco-friendly show this year for Dex Studios. For free. Again. With a bunch of 9 foot tall zero percent body fat space aliens milling about while I try to wrangle them into where they need to be, secure that my roly-poly self is well protected by clipboard, headphones and camera with actual memory card in it from any unwarranted arch of an eyebrow. There will be 18 hour days, meltdowns, one crisis after another and enough work for a week to last the next six months.

But at least there's giftbags.

Farewell F*uck... the F Word is No More

2009-09-01T05:41:00.000-07:00

FUCK THIS! IT'S OVER... FOR NOW.

As far as funerals go, the last night of the F Word was spectacular. The drag queens turned out with picket signs, the go-go boys were oiled and ready, hot dykes shook scantily clad asses in the basement and everyone drank, ate, sniffed or licked whatever fell in their laps (or on the bar in front of them) all night long. Truly, it was a send off befitting any irish catholic policeman... if he was a closet queen of course.

The original Fierce Queen herself, Mistress Formika, sadly held court with the most divine attitude of regal resignation. Always a lady, she hosted the first, best and always version of what a queer party in New York should be.

Paisley looked fierce as all hell and was even nice to me... must have been the sentimental vibe coming through, and Miss Candi Shell was a vision in pink wig behind the bar. Gaysha's party, Choice Cunts, looked totally at home in the dirty boy's basement and I had to wonder, as I watched Jasper James scurry around, flitting between fag and hag and women with a y....

WHAT THE HELL?!!!???!!?!?

Isn't this why we all moved to this overpriced, rat infested jungle in the first place? Have club owners in New York forgotten how much it sucked to grow up in Any Place That's Not New York as queer teenagers with pink hair and safety pins in our ears and our stillettos hidden in the back of our closets? What the hell are we all doing here if we can't even get dressed up and throw a goddamn party once in a while?!

Now I realize that business is business but if last Friday proved ANYTHING at all it was that when queers of all kinds, with all kinds of parts join forces we can have a helluva time. And make money. Sooooo.... the only conclusion I can draw is that some folks in this city just don't like to see us all playing so nicely together.

Fuck them.

This is the F word. That's what it's about. We are who we are and we are Fucking FABULOUS. And if you don't like it... Fuck off.

This party will move. Or at least the idea for this party will move. It will carry on because it is the future of our community. Why? Because it's Better Than Gay bitches. It's inclusive. It's fun. It's a big crazy mess of all kinds of people where you can wear duct tape and disco balls if you like without getting sniped at by rich gay white boys or looked down on by the Prada lesbians just off work sipping 25 dollar cosmos. It's broke and it's queer and it's the artistic soup from which the life of this city springs and it will always find a way to survive... with or without a multi-owner collective co-op's bottom line.

That is the task at hand people... how to keep it going. As with most things in the champagne life...it's mostly just about putting in the love and sweat and tears to build it...then rebuild it when it gets kicked over. We've mourned. We've said goodbye. Now it's time to get up...dust off... git our wigs on and git to werk!

Party at new place..... details to follow. Come one, come all... come naked with two fingers held up high and your favorite fag, hag, or space creature in tow. See you soon...

xxx

The LA Standard

2009-08-23T11:04:00.000-07:00

Okay.. so as most of you know already, MTV released the music video I made with Ned for Jasper's song Rocket with a glowing review. A day late Vice posted some of my photos for their annual Porn Issue. Basically... I've been celebrating. In LA. At the Standard. What a scene...

Nothing has ever seemed quite so LA as the fashion show at the pool party yesterday. Lousy table service provided by "waaaaay too cool" waitress in a short skirt with no panties was bearable only because of the most fantastic scenery. The pool was covered in Sunglasses and cigarettes, girls in elaborate outfits stomping around it in four inch heels trying not to look at us looking at them. Cellulite-free thighs and perfectly sculpted asses playing with hula hoops and rubbing on the DJ who seemed to smart to fall for the oversized sunglasses hiding butter face. The whole thing made my brother seem a little queasy but I loved it. It had all the pretentiousness of home with none of the substance.

Fur coat no knickers all the way. I heart Trashy Fancy in a big way and this place is certainly it. Peepshow girl over the guest check in box stole my heart last night reading a cook book and rubbing her size 2 thighs together while licking her lips. Bless her heart.

Winding down a bit from celebration now and moving on to time with family style friends. Moving over to H's house for a few days to get some work done and hunt down some jobs...

I think I could like LA for a few months here and there. New York will Always be my home but the show on the west coast isn't as bad as I once thought. Who knows, a little bi-coastal living might finally bring some much needed balance to my existence. I'm ready to go home for now though. Missing Jasper terribly. I wonder if she would be into running back and forth with me. I can't picture doing it without her. Nothing's ever as good without your best friend.....

mau.

EXCLUSIVE: Jasper James' 'Rocket' Video Premiere

2009-08-20T18:31:00.001-07:00

EXCLUSIVE: Jasper James' 'Rocket' Video Premiere

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Champagne Life goes on Vacay...

2009-08-18T16:30:00.000-07:00

Soooo, the best thing about the Champagne Life is the way fancy things work out in terms of traveling. Most of my life is lived entirely on the barter system; this amends the lack of money but allows for fur coat no knickers lifestyle. It works out.

I got asked to take photographs for a friend for a scholarly article. Documentary style. My creative vision. Dream project right? Even though there was no money involved she agreed to a trade of sorts. Travel would be taken care of and art would happen in trade. I have to say... I think I'm getting the better end of the deal. I'm sitting in the cutest (totally hidden) Victorian B and B in the Mission...thinking about the hot tub and fireplace I'll be making use of later. Leaving for LA tomorrow for a few nights at the Standard then home to my honey and a HUGE celebratory dinner. Why the celebration you may ask? Well... MTV has requested exclusive intro rights to debut the music video I made for Jasper. It should be up today or tomorrow. Also, VICE magazine published some of my hot girl pictures from the porn set today.

I love VACAY.

Off to the Lex to see the ever-brilliant Fox Fisher and shoot more.

Next two days are all about the Rumpus.

PRAY

2009-08-09T06:42:00.000-07:00

So this incredibly talented Art Boy named Devin Elija took this FIERCE Grace Jones pic of Jasper -I styled it) and another amazing Art Boy Benjamin took the photo of Jasper and I at her video release party. Miss Carrie Cash (my amazing tranny crush-her hair's got me feelin Emotions) also took some fabulous ones here as well. The whole night was

this amazing confirmation for me of how many truly supportive and amazing friends we have here. New York is like that. It sneaks up on you. You can be going along, feeling as lonely as possible in a city where you are NEVER more than five feet from 20 other human beings... and then out of nowhere you turn around and you have friends like She-Dick and their non-drag counterparts, or Chah-Cha, or Ellie and of course, Don PV and Weston. Y'all Came Through in that way that only your family does for you. It's something that is impossible to thank properly but deserves recognition.

The night went off well... not flawlessly but with lots learned and the overall effect pretty great. Everyone Loved the video (Cause it rocks) so keep an eye out for the public release of that one. (My ass looks FIERCE in it too). AAAAANNNNNDDDD... we raised some decent money for Lake of Stars. oh yeah.. and Jasper's new remix hit Sheena Beaston in a big way. Word.

I love my life.

Parties...

2009-07-30T06:35:00.000-07:00

I love Parties. I love throwing them and going to them and getting drunk and cleaning up after them the next day. Or the next. Most of all, I love sticking all of the people I love the best in one room and watching them connect to each other. The feeling that I have of being a catalyst at times for the gay world becoming a smaller and smaller place by the minute... that feeling I think is a genuine sense of accomplishment. Not sure though. It's been a while since I accomplished anything worth feeling accomplished about.

I've spent the last 8 months unemployed and working every kind of freelance gig (for no money) that I can think of. I have produced films, produced porn, art directed fashion shoots, art directed stock shoots, photo edited, done PR for events, thrown parties and promoted them and of course, managed, maintained and otherwise lent all of my creative energies to Jasper James and the Better Than Gay Crew.

It has been more fun than anything else I have ever done.

No, the biggest thing to happen in my life ever is within reach and I am so hopeful that it will work out. I guess I figure that if my career isn't going to work right now some other part of my "Things To Do This Year" list should be addressed. I submitted Jasper to a festival in Africa (I have been dying to go since I can remember) and she was accepted. We are fundraising like crazy to be able to go... this Saturday we are throwing a big party at Santos Party House. Open Bar from 10-midnight for those of you scoring at home...

I just can't shake the feeling that I am at a serious crossroads. Time to make a plan and follow it. Make decisions. Make no plans and see where I land. I'm not sure what to do really. Just hope for the best? Not really my style.

Maybe I just need to finish this damn book.

Popping My Porn Cherry

2009-07-16T04:32:00.000-07:00

Champagne Life or no Champagne Life... this recession is kicking everybody's ass. Me for example. My unemployment runs out in two weeks with no job in sight. So I did what anyone in my position would do. I answered an ad to work as the AD on a new lesbian porn staring all my ex-lovers and favorite friends from back home.

Obviously.

The experience was intense to say the least. 17 hour days for a week straight make people act a little funny. The experience as a whole however was amazing. I think my boundaries were pushed a bit (those little dolls don't go There!!!) and I got to work with the most incredible talented team of people I have had the pleasure of working with in a while. The Director especially, normally a fashion photographer, made the entire experience about art and lighting and the kind of emotional push that comes with taboo subject matter.

As I work this week logging the footage I am struck by how little of it looks pornographic. The dirty stuff is all there but... well... it's just so damn pretty! It's more like film noir with no censors. Many a European director from the 60's is applauding. I can hear them.

It's been a week and so far the fallout is mostly just exhaustion and a total inability to stop screaming "Pussy Light On" whenever an appropriate moment arrives. You would be amazed how many appropriate moments there are for things like that.

Chasing more jobs and taking pictures. More soon....

FIERCE!!!!

2009-07-05T10:30:00.000-07:00

Wild Wild Night....

2009-06-29T16:18:00.000-07:00

MAINSTAGE AT PRIDE GOSSIP GIRLS AT FWORD FIERCE AS F*CK DANCERS AND ME WRANGLING EVERYONE @NOKIA

Oh yeah... here is the beginning of the insanity documentation. Nothing from the interview party yet...just Nokia, then FWord and of course my baby onstage at PRIDE.

So after all the insanity at Nokia.... most of which is currently entering the rumor mill with such speed there is no need to repeat it here... the Interview Magazine party was a whole other animal. Still gay but of a different kind. Lot's of fun, snotty fashion people and cute boys who looked at me like I had three heads when I complimented a crazy looking button but had no idea it was CRISTIAN LACROIX.. oooohhhh.... you would have thought I had showed up in stripper shoes. The horor. lol...

The best thing about fashion parties is sitting on a bench and watching all the models count the calories in their vodka and selzers, look disdainfully at the orange slice on the rim of the glass then chuck it away as if it might bite. Wait, no... the best thing about fashion parties is finding Gucci jackets balled up on the floor in dusty corners and forgotten. No...maybe the best thing about fashion parties is watching press take Jasper's picture and be so jazzed about her outft which we found for $2 in the best Brooklyn thrift store ever! Mine was $1 but no one cared. I looked a little "done" to be honest...wearing last night's eyelashes and hardly able to stand up after all the madness. It was the Standard though. No need for standing...plenty of places to perch.

Wait....I've got it! The BEST part about fashion parties is when they are over... hallway tantric love, too many pictures and Patrick looking gorge then 3am dinner with Ryan and his beautiful boy, talking travel and scaring everyone out of Diner. writing press releases and planning to take over the world. Top shelf only rule though kids... when we are kings y'all better pull yer own wieght. Go forth and make some fabulous shit so you can come too. Fun!

Overall a complete success. Passed out from exhaustion last night and am up and running again. 3 meetings today, a dinner party to plan and I still need to find a better way to pay bills then 14 hour days on film sets for no money.

1 steller Photographic Art Director with agency experience... available to a good home.

Insert visual of sad art folks behind bars in the pound... loved but unwanted b all those who just can't take on the responsibility right now. Shit y'all! Seriously? No wonder advertising has gone so downhill... just because your in house art director can make nice brochures doesn't mean she knows dick about getting you a 100,000 production set up for 50,000 with the best photographers in the world. And sweetie... I don't care who your stylist is, if your Art Director doesn't know photos... it's still gonna look a hot mess. (Really who let her wear that hat?!?!)

Okay, enough venting. On to the next. She-Dickulous dinner party, drinks with Alex, planning world takeover with Ryan and Patches and of course.... Farrad's release party next week. It's all still happening!

2 CELEBS, 1 CONCERT, AND A WHOLE LOTTA GAY!

2009-06-28T06:38:00.000-07:00

HIGHLIGHTS OF SATURDAY NIGHT

<<<

1. Cotton Candy and Mary Jane are like Candy

2. I changed a whole show in 10 minutes and She-Dick wore neon

3. Chloe Sevigny is sweet but perpetually bored looking

4. Leighton Meester thinks she is a tranny

5. Nokia was fierce!!!!

6. Ride home at dawn with Rich K

7. Thank god I brought 3!!!

8. Don PV can do ANYTHING

On to play Pride Today then...Interview Magazine party!

Okay so last night was too phenomenal to really know what to say. Luckily I like to talk so I'll try. First of all, I should have a damn make up artist EVERY day. I looked Good. Pretty princess in a onsie Good. It felt fabulous. Note to self though... those were 2 hour shoes... not 7 hours shoes. Next time bring backstage slippers.

Jasper totally rocked the house at NOKIA. One DJ, six dancers, video behind and three galactic back-up singin trannies. The press today looked good as well. Overall it was the most fun we have had doing a show in a long time. Maybe even since Debbie Harry! It sort of amazed me that we were the only ones with set lighting cues and staging directions. It was kind of fun though to be the tiny girl that marched onstage in a mini dress and in no uncertain terms told the 10 or 11 sweaty and rough looking union guys that they were just gonna have to move everything to accommodate us. They must have hated me... what can you do though? Also, how does a venue lose your music TWICE? Good thing I am so Type A...I had three copies of her disk in three different places. That is the policy from now on. Not one. Not Two. But three.

Sad we had to cut out early but Jasper had another show to get to and we stayed as long as we could. Walked outside and hailed a limo for the 15 folks we were rolling with. Hit F Word with the full force of some crazy Gay. Got caught in a diva meltdown backstage with a Nervous queen but escaped unscathed and without ripping her wig off. A success!

Ran into Chloe Sevigny backstage...why does that girl always look so damn bored? We were standing in a puddle in a sauna of 500 naked men wearing outfits that included a horse tail glued to a penis with a fan and Amanda Lepore's usual science project self... seriously? Bored? Not in this lifetime honey...it's all too amazing!

Leighton Meester came and declared herself a Gossip Girl tranny... (that was hilarious) before escaping the Gay to scurry back to her life. No chance to say hi but fine with that. Essence looked gorgeous and Jasper rocked the house with a repeat of ROCKET that got a pretty good reception form the house.

Got a ride with Rich and snarked at each other all the way home. Poured into bed around dawn and waaaay to hung over to be as awake as I am. Gotta get ready to do it all again today.

Happy Gay Day!!!!!