here today

 

Storm Large

 In my eagerness to share the story of the box, I forgot to talk about last Friday night.

Last Friday night I went to a party expecting to see a transvestite perform Billy Idol covers.  Fun, yes, but what actually took place was much better.  Storm Large & The Balls took the stage - wait - first I should describe the opening act - March Fourth: 

March Fourth is a marching band made up of people who actually play instruments and some dancers and stiltwalkers.  All of them wear old-time marching band uniform bits & pieces mixed in with just weird shit they found at the back of their closets or maybe their grandparents closets.  And glitter.  Lots of glitter.  The stiltwakers dance, the musicians howl and the whole thing is amazingly fun.  They prance and leap and play the shit out really fantastic marching band music. 

Storm Large is not a man.  She is a woman with really large shoulders, upon which is tatooed "LOVER" in gothic blue.  She's blond and pretty and sings barefoot while showing much cleavage.  She's hot and she's wild and pretty much OUT OF HER MIND.  Storm Large hocks loogies from the stage.  She fucks the mike.  She growls and grunts and screams and whispers.  jesus we had good times and I'm so glad Ben convinced me to really go out because my internal nature likes to tell me I should stay home where it's safe and predictable.  But when you leave the house sometimes the place you're going to has a full bar with free drinks and a singing marching band and a barefoot blond howling White Wedding inside a photography studio with hippi kids running around and fun wacky Northwest types making it all a very good Night Out.

yeah.

Posted by: 120pages at 10:58 | link | comments |

the box

 some days ago, a box appeared on our street, dumped there on the sidewalk instead of in someone's garbage can.  a big empty television box.

I ignored the box hoping that it would go away.

but it didn't.  instead, it gradually filled with garbage.  it became a garbage-filled box sitting on the sidewalk a few feet from where I like to park.

last night I cleared out my iMac and gave it to Ben's evil sister-in-law who is a writer and whose computer recently crashed & in crashing, deleted everything she'd ever written.  And while I dislike the evil s-i-l, I would not wish that on anyone.  ten years of writing gone in a moment.  that is some bad karma coming back to bite her in the hard drive.  but it is not my place to judge and so I offered her my beloved iMac.  First I had to clean it because this is not the kind of person who should have personal information about me.  She is evil and not to be trusted.  I cleared old letters, old short stories, bad poetry and then got to the emails. 

that's when I started drinking.  and I didn't stop until I'd read every last email between the ex-husband and myself. painful painful painful.  kept on drinking right through dinner with Ben's family and the handing over of the iMac.

was thoroughly drunk out of my mind and hopped up on old bad energy & dealing with Ben's crazy family when we arrived home to find The Box and all it's contents strewn about our front yard.  the yard that I spent all weekend working on. all weekend planting my quince tree and some lavender seeds and a wandering hydrangea and something called a Dark Star.  All Weekend.  I am not an outdoor girl.   I am not a gardener.  But I love and adore my house, my little house on a crummy street that other people like to use as a dump.  My house has a retaining wall and a steep yard and so to get The Box and all the garbage up into my yard would have taken some serious energy and bad intent. 

I jumped out of the car while Ben was still parking, climbed up into the yard and threw the box and the garbage into the street - screaming like I had completely lost it.  And I had.  I screamed at the tough high school kids standing where the box was earlier in the day, I screamed at the ex, I screamed and I threw and Ben stood at the top of the yard and didn't try to stop me.

I screamed while I cleaned it all up.  I screamed about my shitty car, garbage on the street, how much I love the neighborhood, that my parents were social workers and that I spent ten hours pulling weeds this weekend.   I walked over and screamed up close to the tough high school kids.  I was out of my mind, out of control, not myself.  

so, yeah.  don't dump your box on my street.

Posted by: 120pages at 12:45 | link | comments (4) |

nice hands for a dentist

 my dentist is not normal.   not normal in the sense that he has nice brown eyes and laughs at my jokes. 

he is also open to prescribing ativan which I need to get through any moment involving needles.  otherwise I pass out.

what creates a dentist?  at what point in dr. nice hands life did he say to himself, "dentistry is for me?"  and "What I'd like to do, more than anything, is poke around in people's mouths while they try to figure out where to put their tongues and how to get the saliva into the small white sucking tube"?  Ben thinks they do it for the days off.  I think they do it for easy access to drugs. 

dr. nice hands is some sort of hypnotist.  one session with him and I found myself agreeing to more procedures - all of them expensive, painful and involving needles.  Ben thinks I'm doing it for the easy access to drugs.  I think dr. nice hands laughed at my jokes and really cares about the health and well-being of my teeth.

tonight:  a free party with a marching jazz band followed by Storm Large and her Balls.  I believe Ms. Large is really a man.  I do know that she does Billy Idol impersonations and that I'm going to dance and forget for one night that I have this job and that on Monday I'm getting a cap on tooth number 9.

Posted by: 120pages at 14:09 | link | comments (1) |

my cube

 I've been getting soft.  Last week I actually heard myself saying that work isn't too bad.  That this isn't such a bad job.**  Granted, that was to my mother.  My mother, who, once I'd landed a job with actual benefits, listed this event as one of the highlights of 2002 in her Christmas letter.  Right next to surviving skin cancer.

**ISN'T SUCH A BAD JOB?  I work at an insurance agency.  This is a terrible job.

So I printed out all of Emerson's "Self-Reliance" and stuck all 14 sheets of paper to one wall of my cube.  Then up went photos from my travels, sad shots of Lucy and the kicker, a list of screenplay contests that I hope to enter this year and this time I'll make it past the second round of at least one of them.

I don't want to get too comfy, you see.  I need Emerson shouting at me from the wall behind and me in shorts standing in the St. Lucia rain and Lu wearing a birthday hat wishing I were home writing and keeping her company.  I don't want to get too comfy because then who would I be?

Not a writer.  Not at all.

Posted by: 120pages at 15:45 | link | comments |

company retreat

I had to wear a red bandana and try to win points so that my team, the Loch Ness team, will get first place and my team mates could scream and jump up and down while I wished I were anywhere, anywhere but on Mt. Hood, in a rec room, wearing a red bandana. My task was to problem solve and I did it in 15 minutes and it was supposed to take an hour which pissed off my crazy HR boss and so when I had used a different code other than the one suggested on the internet site where she found the problems - she refused to give me credit for my version even though mine was also correct. My team, the Loch Ness red bandana wearing team, got second place and Starbucks cards. At the end of dinner they played a clip from Jerry Maguire - the one where Cuba shouts "show me the money" and everyone shouted "SHOW ME THE MONEY" while they handed out the bonus checks. I have to get a new job.

Posted by: 120pages at 11:57 | link | comments |