Pool Hustler's Daughter

Kiki Barrish Decides to Fall in Love

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 18 Jun 2021 16:18:00 +0000

A cacophony of birdsong woke Kiki Betty Barrish. Her third floor apartment of an Art Deco three-flat was cocooned in -young by nature's standards, but old by human years - sturdy Oak trees that dangled a labyrinth of healthy branches, heavy with snowflake shaped leaves, reaching for the sun. The giant windows that faced these treetops from her living and dining rooms appeared as framed, museum masterpieces with fleshy and fat Van Gogh brushstrokes of every shade of green. Towering above the roof, shading and keeping her apartment cool in the summer, these trees were home to Hummingbirds, Finches, Robins, Cardinals, and the occasional Woodpecker- OCD in his or her or their choice of pecking place - always appearing on the street corner(her balcony rested above the corner and often made her feel like Shakespeare's doomed Juliet, The Pope or the Queen of England while standing on it) and always before seven am. The Woodpecker, Kiki surmised, must be a loner, like her, used to tolerating long hours alone, trying not to be too annoying, too "big" of a personality when mingling with other birds across her street enjoying the gentle water from the fountain. For Kiki,the fountain made the softest, soothest sounds and could only be heard by disciplined meditation and focus from her balcony after shutting the rest of the world(honking horns, dog barks) out. Although a solitary creature, the Woodpecker was born with a sharp beak that had a calling that nature demanded be answered. If Kiki woke before dawn, there was a single bird call that played on repeat, like a skipped, favorite vinyl record at the end of a good, long night that put a smile on your face when you remembered it. This song was loud, louder than the jarring didact of the Woodpecker that she'd grown accustomed to. This desperate cry, in the dark of night - under the stars, under the moon, was a different kind of call that struck a chord inside of her just as she floated helplessly out of her dreams. It was unmistakable. This was a call for love. This call was truth to Kiki. It was as if the bird wanted both everyone and no one to hear it. This sound was relentless, unwavering, and like the pounding beneath the floorboards of Poe's Tell Tale Heart, driving her slowly mad. Kiki thought soul mates existed - more than one, most likely - and she had convinced herswelf that she would find hers by the sound of his voice. Like a lullaby, or how Bryan Ferry's voice affected her late at night while trying to fall asleep. Or something like that. This voice would calm her. Finally. Calm had eluded her. Kiki only imagined that love would feel like that. It was a hypothesis. You see, Kiki, awake on the lumpy sofa, staring at the cobwebbed ceiling and trying to avoid grabbing her Iphone/warm milk bottle beside her for comfort - had never been in love. My bird call, Kiki thought to herself, is easy. Fleetwood Mac, Rumors album, Songbird. That pounding in her heart, too loud to ignore, hidden under dusty, splintered wood, had been pecked away at over time. Those damn birds, she thought. That morning, Kiki, hearing the winged messagengers so loudly that she wanted to scream, said, "Enough! I hear you!" That morning, Kiki Betty Barrish, tired of ignoring nature's call, decided to fall in love. She decided to fall in love. Kiki Barrish decided to fall in love.

Terri B. (My Mom) in Food

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 23 May 2021 17:52:00 +0000

Homemade Sweet Tea Pancakes Blueberry Pancakes Marianara and Italian Bread with parmesan cheese Fried Eggs Chocolate Buttermilk cake Chocolate Ganache Birthday cake Chocolate Chip Cookies Brownies with cold milk Chocolate Fudge cookies Truffles Shrimp Scampi Shrimp de Jong Waffles Waffle Ice Cream sandwiches Vegetable Beef Stew Beef Strogranoff Beef Wellington Roast Beef Roast Turkey Baked Chicken Ciopino Biscuits Arroz con Pollo Puerto Rican beans with a Hamhock Fried plantains Strawberries and Cream Sliced Cantelope and pineapple waiting in the fridge Whipped Cream Lamb Shanks with oregano, olive oil and lemon potatoes Drippings' gravy Pumpkin bread Banana Cake with buttercream frosting Stuffed, fried meatballs White rice with a boiled egg on top, chopped with salt and pepper Deep dish pizza Pink buttercream frosting flowers piped onto my birthday cake Pineapple Upside Down Cake German Chocolate Cake Key Lime Pie Lemon Meringue Pie Chocolate Cream Pie Chocolate Meringue Pie Coconut Cream Pie Strawberry Whipped Cream Pie Nilla Pudding Banana Pudding Apple Pie Blueberry Pie Beautifully Braided Hot Challah with butter Cinammon Rolls Lukumades Shrimp salad on Pepperidge Farm small rye toasts Giardienere Broiled Steak with garlic Mashed Potatoes with butter and garlic salt Theirs Kuhn's Delicatessen boiled ham and German Potato Salad Fannie Mae Trinidads Conte De Savoia prosciutto, capicola and provolone thinly sliced Dairy Queen soft serve cone dipped in chocolate D'Amato's sausage Sicilian pizza D'Amato's Italian bread Ricobene's breaded steak(when they were small-time) Rolf's Patisserie(anything) Vitamins from Sherwyn's Belden Rueben with no Russian Dressing Crab Legs and Frog Legs from The Half Shell Far East Shrimp Fried rice, Shrimp Egg Foo Young and Shrimp with Lobster Sauce John Barleycorn Burger with Cottage Fries Terriyaki Chicken during Old Town Art Fair weekend Big Apple Italian Sausage Leon's Fried Chicken and french fries dipped in hotsauce Ricky's Club Sandwich New York Bagel and Bialys Vittori's Italian beef Bacino's Stuffed Spinach Pizza Lou Malnati's Sausage Pan Pizza Her Pantry and Fridge Lipton Tea Bags Strawberry Jello DeCecco Farfalle Pasta Bertolli Olive Oil Canister Land o' Lakes Butter Hellman's Real Mayonaise Buttermilk Flour Sugar Powdered sugar Nestle's Chocoalte Chips Corn Starch Baking Powder Eggs Sweet and low Heinz Ketchup French's Yellow Mustard Pickeled relish Sara Lee Frozen Pound Cake Morton Salt Honey Lemons Pastry Dough Royal Chocoalte Pudding Virginia "Country" Ham Celestial Seasonings Cinnamon Apple Tea Box of Ice Cream Cones Hershey's Chocolate Syrup Hershey's Chocolate Powder Haagen Das Ice Cream Hills Bros Coffee Half and Half Bob Evans Pork Sausage McCormick Food Coloring Lid Dark Chocoalte Bars Jay's Potato Chips Jiff Creamy Peanut Butter Smucker's Strawberry Jam Gummy Bears Malibu Rum Bordeaux Asiago Scamorza Cracker Barrel Sharp Cheddar Bagel Dogs Brownberry Natural Wheat Bread Sliced Peaches in Syrup Green Giant Frozen peas Green Giant Frozen corn Cans of Ceamed Corn Green Giant frozen rice medly with peas and mushrooms Green Giant frozen mized stew vegetables with green beans, corn and lima beans

High Society Part I

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 29 Oct 2019 20:44:00 +0000

High Society

My mother called me Princess. She still calls me Princess. My mother wanted to be a Jewish-
American Princess. She was not. She was a Daughter of the American Revolution and a
Protestant tracing her lineage back to the first English boats that landed on the coast of Virginia.
My mother wanted me to be a Jewish-American Princess. I was not. So she sent me to Temple
for preschool and enlisted two radiant and childless Jewish women; one our neighbor, and the
other the wife of a pool hustler, to be my Godmothers. One had a family that escaped the
pogroms of Russia and landed in federal housing on immigrant flooded Taylor Street in Chicago
surrounded by Italians just like my father. My other Godmother hailed from a family in LA that
survived the Holocaust; she lived on the road hustling pool with my father in the 1960s when she
was a rebellious, flower child teenager. The former was a never gonna get married, Mary Tyler
Moore/Cosmo Girl skinny with alabaster white skin and black hair that she wore in pony tails
like Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. The latter was a blonde, curvy Stevie Nicks with a penchant
for high heeled boots and suede fringed jackets. It’s fair to say they were both half in love with
my father. Everyone was.
Freddy, or Freddy the Beard, my father, was the forgiver of sins and accepted you as you
are – imperfect. The real you. He knew humans craved acknowledgement. This was one of
the many ‘secrets of the universe’ that he learned from a lifetime spent in the pool room. Like a
King, he could dub you “human.” Like Jesus, he could proclaim you “saved.” Often, the last
resort for many dark and shady, subterranean ne’er do wells. His basement or attic often
functioned as a bare bones rehab clinic. Tony “Passages” in Malibu, this was not. There were no
hot stone massages and fruit smoothies to make your stay pleasant. You got a stolen Holiday Inn
towel, a bucket and a gallon of fresh water. Your pleading screams for help were ignored until
you were clean and my father would reward your sacrifice with a home cooked Italian meal and
some positive motivation. This was one of my father’s many callings
in life - to redeem the unredeemable. He longed to prove that he and others like him, could beat
the odds. Gamblers survived on second chances. There’s even a scientific term called “The
Gamblers fallacy” which is the belief that eventually you’ll win. I’ve grappled with this theory
my entire life.
My Dad required many chances – and he always seemed to get them. He escaped death
nine times like an ambidextrous, acrobatic alley cat. Beginning with a long hospital stay with
Rheumatic Fever as a child, two near death car crashes (one where he was the only survivor),
getting hit by a car, a snowmobiling accident, an earthquake, a hit placed on him from a
Columbian Druglord. Of course, more often, he needed second chances when he lost
money gambling and we couldn’t pay the rent or buy groceries. He believed in the ability to
reinvent oneself and metamorphose. He believed in good magic and had studied eastern
religions and reincarnation, Carlos Casteneda and Shaman, had mediated and done yoga for
hours. His mantra was, “Life Ain’t on the Square” and that he was a magic maker. He was. Good
magic and a belief in The Universe providing for us always was our family religion. When it
comes to The Secret, we’re The OG.
My father had many loyal friends and followers because he was often their
Savior and that added to his power. Often, he was their last stop until they absolutely gave up.
He had learned these rudimentary detox techniques when he was only twenty and went to NYC
for the first time with his backer Sugarshack Johnny. Sugarshack said they had to sober up Port
Chester Mickey and take him on the road with them to make some money. When he was clean,
he made lots of money. No one knew who Mickey was, which meant a lot fifty years ago, as
there weren’t any phone cameras, revealing identity, so hustling was easy.
So, as my Dad told it to me, he and Sugarshack walk into a despicable and downtrodden
shooting gallery out of Taxi Driver somewhere in the Bronx and carry a catatonic Portchester
Mickey into a hotel room and handcuff him to the bed. My father was miserable, listening to
Mickey’s begging and screams, but after a few days of sweats and hallucinations, their prime
pool hustling stake horse, Port Chester Mickey, emerged from the darkness and lowest form of
human existence, a completely different person: Clearheaded, friendly, and focused – an athlete
motivated to make money on the road hustling pool to take home to his mother. He wanted to
buy his mother a Cadillac like Elvis had done before him – and he accomplished that. Port
Chester Mickey transformed from Mr. Hyde back to Dr. Jekyll and this experience taught my father
that humans are capable of anything. You can beat the odds.
Wanting his only daughter to escape our Clark Street castle tower and ascend to the
highest ranks of society was my father’s greatest desire, as it was my mother’s. To laugh in the
faces of those downtown Chicago suits who rejected him as a smart but poor kid, looking for a
“straight” job. I was revenge and hybrid voodoo project. And it worked. My Fairy Godmothers
loved me as if I were their own flesh and blood and they were “in” on the grand social
experiment my parents were hatching. Like Moses, I was the baby in the bulwark basket sent
down the Nile to have a better life and change the world. Or at least, our little, subterranean one.
As I boarded the school bus that took me to nursery school, my mother looked me in the eyes
and said, “Jewish men make the best husbands.” I was only three and couldn’t dress myself yet. I
nodded and climbed the tall stairs up to the bus and had fun that afternoon spinning a dreidel
with my friends. When I came home from school, there would often be hot Challah waiting for
me as a consortium of chain smoking pool hustlers, card mechanics, at least one porn producer
and other ghoulish creatures sat around devilishly devising my future like Macbeth’s witches
circling their cauldron:
Double, double, toil and trouble
Tis time, Tis Time
My father would often time me putting puzzle pieces together beside grown men who,
whether on drugs or drunk, I always seemed to beat. The United States puzzle was
where I shined, and I still love puzzles. My performances, sitting Indian style on our giant, off
the truck Persian rug, in front of an audience of black balled bohemians who chain smoked
filter-less cigarettes and sipped from goblets of Carlo Rossi red wine; clearly proved my community's hypothesis that I was
a superior human and destined for greatness. I submitted to my puppet masters and enjoyed the
warm, braided honey bread that melted the butter and nourished my tummy.
My mother, a swimsuit model and hippie, had an outhouse and a pet goat growing up and
did not attend college. She was on her own starting in high school. My father, a first generation,
Italian-American pool hustler, ate impoverished polenta every day on the south side of Chicago,
and, although he won many contests and Scholarships and graduated two years early with a
free ride to the University of Illinois, he dropped out after a few weeks to return home to his
parents’ tiny apartment with a potbelly stove and baby sisters to devote his life to pool. Although
he still read a book every day and studied vigorously, he never had a job other than playing pool
at the pool room or on the road. If pool wasn’t bring enough money in, there were always card
games to play and pretty and tired horses to bet on at the race track. Hearing “And they’re off!”
filled my heart with both excitement and dread. The only bugler I could actually stand was
Montgomery Clift in From To Here to Eternity, a film based on a book by one my father’s
favorite writers (James Jones). My father loved everything about being a man, and being in the
company of great men, and according to my father, James Jones knew how to write about real
men.
Although my father studied everything from history to science vigorously, and claimed
under six minutes to finishing the New York Times Crosswords, he never held a square job a
day in his illustrious life. He told me he was discouraged from getting a square job due to the
discrimination he faced applying to jobs downtown in the 1950s. On multiple occasions, he’d
receive a perfect score on an evaluation test, show up for the interview and then not be offered
the job. Finally, someone at the Chicago Sun-times newspaper, pulled him aside and informed
him that his strong accent(he was from the Bridgeport neighborhood of Chicago and it was
filled with d’s instead of t’s and ain’ts instead of isn’ts) as well as his shoes (he wore expensive
leather shoes imported from Italy that his family scraped enough money to provide for him) were
the real reasons he wasn’t getting hired. Needless to say, he never applied for another square job
again. He wouldn’t change himself for anybody and gave square society the old Va fangool and
went back to the pool room. You could be whoever the hell you wanted to be in the pool room. It
was a meritocracy.
My Dad didn’t want to perform manual labor like his relatives. He wanted to earn money
using his smarts. And in the pool room he did use his smarts. To this day, he’s known as the
smartest pool player that ever lived.
When I was a young child, my father told people that I was going to Vassar. I was going
to Vassar for college and then perhaps a “Finishing School” on the continent. You know, like my
fellow blue bloods Jane Adams and Jackie Kennedy. He would tell people this with an East
Coast Lockjaw affectation as if we summered in Watch Hill, Road Island with the Armour
Family. We lived in a mob owned building on Clark Street behind a bus stop, beside an alley,
wedged between 2 methadone clinics. My parents often had to eat beans and rice to survive. We
lived above a formal Japanese restaurant, Kiyo’s, where Geishas with white pancake makeup
served rich business men and where I would play and sometimes hide inside a closet filled with
beautiful silk kimonos. The pool room was only a few feet away, through the alley. That’s why
we lived there! Our neighbors were two other pool hustlers and a Puerto Rican transvestite who
did our hair for cash and called me “Lola Falona.” If my father was flush with cheese from
gambling, he would take me to Kiyo’s for a treat to eat a bowl of exotic Abalone soup which cost
$5 a bowl and was considered a luxury in the 1970s.
My father wanted me to get used to the High Society that was my destiny.
When I asked for a second bowl of the incredibly delicious yet expensive Abalone soup, he
laughed victoriously, loving that I was asking. A Princess, Indeed.

Naples

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 09 Sep 2019 20:16:00 +0000

I'm only 15-tall, skinny and awkward, long dark hair with golden highlights from the sun, wide brown eyes wearing spaghetti strap, short tank dresses that show off my legs and sandals that tie around my ankles. Short, unpolished fingernails, pink lip gloss and tanned skin. I have a reprieve from my summer language camp and find myself in Naples with a much older boy(20) who talks about music and keeps giving me tapes to listen to in my Sony Walkman. He has an apartment rental for a few weeks and our conversations are long and spirited-he’s practicing his English with me and I am still a shy introvert. While he speaks passionately about Japanese art and Husker Du, I stare at his eyes and think about how no one in my family has eyes like these and they seem like a revelation, like pots of blue paint from a painting, or from the blue sea nearby. Something about his blue eyes and the fact that he's Dutch keep returning my thoughts to Van Gogh's Starry Night. He has huge hands with the softest skin and long, fat, smooth fingers not adorned with any jewelry.

The first day we have coffees with lots of sugar and walk everywhere around town while worn and angry men stare and old women dressed in black shake their heads. My feet hurt and legs ache from all of the walking but he is fine company and teaches me things even I was not aware of in the city and he grants me time within a few churches with blue stained glass like his eyes even though he tells me he's a lapsed Catholic. At the end of our first day together, he walks me back to the dorms, as I am ferociously hungry, and awkwardly gives me a hug goodbye where I inhale his earthy scent deeply as our sweat mixes like paintbrushes upon our cheeks.

The next day we have bread and chocolate and coffee and head to the beach. He always seems to be smiling and interested in everything he passes and finds an appreciation in even the smallest of details. He is tall with dirty blonde hair and long, muscular legs. He has very round lips. He is much more comfortable than I am walking around a foreign city even though I know enough Italian to get by. We walk together down the circling, cobbled roads, passing Vespas and tiny cars and smelly animals and pizza shops keeping a distance of a foot or two apart.

When we get to the beach he is not shy about his body and takes his shirt off quickly to reveal light skin to my dark skin. It's almost pink. I'm wearing a black one piece bathing suit that ties around my neck and am insecure for the first time ever in it. He stares at me while I take my dress off over my head and lay down on the thin towel on the rocky, shell filled beach. We both lay on our backs and listen to our Walkmen and close our eyes. He taps my shoulder and asks me if I want to swim and I agree and we hide our Walkmen under the rocks and slowly walk into the calm, cool blue water. I'm at his side but a few feet away dodging small, dark skinned children and floating seaweed. Once we get deep enough, it is just the two of us, upright, swimming and we are looking at one another and the waves are pulling us closer together. Wave after wave rocks us together and we decide to lay on our backs and float. The salt water stings my eyes so I close them. The waves push our floating bodies into one another again and we both swim upright this time and smile at one another quietly. I swim back to shore and lay on my stomach, not sure if I can look him in the eyes when he comes back to our towels. I don't care that my butt will be sticking up in the air to greet him when he gets back to our towels.

"Do you have a boyfriend?" he asks after walking out of the water and standing above my towel. Stunned by the question, I say "No." I ask him if he has a girlfriend and he waits and then answers, "No." We both put on our Walkmen again so we don't have to talk anymore and let the sun warm our skin and lull us into an afternoon nap. When our stomachs start growling, he taps me on the shoulder again and says, "lets go back into town and eat" and we roll up our towels into our backpacks, put our clothes on over our swim suits and our sandals back on our feet. As we walk up hill into town, the city is coming alive with families and tourists looking for wine and dinner. There are musicians dressed in folk wear standing outside and beckoning us to walk into their establishment. We pass them. He's a fast walker, even up hill and he grabs my hand in the crowd to keep me close to him.

He asks me if I like the tape I've been listening to all day. I say yes, and tell him that the Smiths always play at a dance club I go to in Chicago. I tell him it's a "juice bar" called Medusa's so I'm allowed to go and that it closes before curfew. I ask him if he likes the Sade I have given him and he says yes, and I warn him that I listen to Diamond Life every night before I fall asleep at home, so it might put him to sleep, too. He leads us into a pizza parlor and we each buy a slice of pizza for a few lire. He is brave and orders a red wine and I have s few sips. He asks me if I want more. It's dark now, and he walks me back to the dorms and we stand in the vestibule outside of the entrance gate to the school, which is barley lit by gaslights leaving faint shadows on the cobblestone street in front. I thank him for the day and for the music and take the tape out of my Walkman and hand it to him. He holds the tape in his hands and just stares at me and I try to look away as I can't seem to make any words come out of my mouth. My mouth is so dry that I can't even lick my lips once before he leans over and kisses me. He grabs me by the sunburned shoulders and pushes his tongue into my mouth. I'm not sure what to do, so I open my mouth and touch his tongue with mine gently and begin to circle my tongue around his. I think this is what I am supposed to do but I'm not sure and I lean into him as he grabs my upper body in his arms and holds me like that while he slows down his kisses and even kisses my cheeks and my nose and my forehead and hair and shoulders and I am letting him. He pushes his pelvis into my thin dress and I feel that he is hard and I am utterly dumbfounded as to what to do next as my stomach feels like I am falling down an elevator shaft and that I might fall over. I push his chest backwards and he looks at me worried he might have done something wrong and completely aware and slightly embarrassed that his body has betrayed him and afraid I may be scared of him now. We both catch our breath and I open the gate and close it behind me and say goodnight.

I spend the rest of the night in my dorm bed tossing and turning and feeling that sensation of his lips and his tongue and his hard on over and over and over again as if it is happening over and over and over again and I notice that I want to feel those feelings again because they feel so good - he feels so good - and my body wants more of his body and I am unsure if my body has betrayed me too and therefore he shouldn't be embarrassed but I am unsure if I will ever see him again, but at least I will be able to go back home to Chicago having kissed a boy - a northern European boy who looks and talks and acts like no one I have ever met before and who makes me want to know more about him and listen to him tell me about all of the things in the world that mean something to him - whether its music or soccer or art or movies or food - things he loves - and I wonder if I could ever be one of the things he loves, because I want to be one of the things that he loves.

The next day I start to pack my luggage for my trip back home. I have coffee on campus and write in my diary all about the boy I have met in Naples. I can't stop writing about him. I giggle to myself in the corner of the veranda of the school writing about him and I wonder if anyone thinks I look ridiculous giggling to myself. When I leave the dorms for lunch in town and to buy souvenirs for my family, another Dutch Boy is standing by the gate and he asks me if I am Catherine, the Aquarius girl from Chicago and I say yes and the boy, Frank, tells me that he's Mateo's friend from home and that he wanted to ask me to go to their party at their apartment later that night. Some of their friends from school will be in town and there will be beer and wine and music. "Will you promise to come?" he asks, and I tell him I am leaving in two days for home and that I might have something to do at the school before I go but that I'll try, and he writes down where to go and laughs and says something in Dutch and leaves down hill on a bicycle.

I take a bath at the dorm and put on a white dress and a headband to hold back my long hair and my sandals. I decide it is safe for me to go to the party. It's still early in the evening and I am much safer with a group of Dutch boys than a group of local Italians. I would like to see Mateo once more. Even if it is just so that I can have his address to send him letters. I love to write letters and I wonder if he loves to write letters, too. He doesn't even know this about me yet. I find the building in town and walk up two flights of stairs to the apartment. The street is bustling outside the balcony and music is blasting- Depeche Mode. I get up to the apartment which has two giant rooms with beds, a bathroom and the balcony. I am the only girl in a room filled with 15 college aged boys drinking Pilsners and I do wonder if I should be worried and turn around and leave. I start to walk toward the balcony as I don't see Mateo in the bedroom and then chicken out and turn around. Before I make it all the way out the door, his friend Frank stops me and says something in Dutch and then in English, "No, you can't go! You just got here. Mateo, Mateo!" and then I hear more Dutch which I am clueless in deciphering.

Frank leads me by my arm out onto the balcony where five tall Dutch boys are smoking cigarettes and drinking beer and talking loudly. "She's here!" Frank yells and I see Mateo, leaning over the balcony, smile widely and say" hello!" "hello" I say back. Mateo says something else to his friends in Dutch, as does Frank and the boys leave the balcony, laughing. It is just Mateo and I standing on the balcony looking onto the busy street below. "I'm leaving soon" I tell Mateo, "May I have your address? You know, to send you a letter?" "Yes, yes, of course" Mateo answers, just let me find a pen and paper. He rushes off the balcony, leaving me there alone with my back turned to the apartment before he taps me on the shoulder yet again. "Here" he says, "And may I have yours? Just in case?" Then I write my address down and smile back at him. No one has ever asked me for MY address before. Will I be getting my hopes up to think that he'll write me back?

He hands me a glass of red wine and I drink it quickly. I'm nervous and don't realize I should just sip it slowly. "Do you like this music?" he asks and I say, "Yes, I went to see them in March" and there was hardly anyone there at the concert. Now they're number one on the charts. They play on the radio every single day. I may have liked them more when they were a little less popular." Mateo laughs. Frank walks onto the balcony and starts speaking to Mateo in Dutch again. "We're going to the beach!" he says and "Be back later!" and pushes Mateo in the chest. Within seconds the music is turned down low and we are the only people left in the apartment. I drink more wine and we sit on the floor of the balcony in our bare feet and tell one another about what we love and what we want to see and do in our lives. There is so much excitement and naïve confidence, but excitement and passion, nevertheless.

I have three more glasses of wine and Mateo has three more Pilsners and the music turns slow and calm. It's my Sade tape. This makes me happy. Mateo says "Excuse me" and goes inside the apartment. I slowly bring myself up from the floor of the balcony and venture inside the apartment. I call his name. "Mateo?" and walk the perimeter of the apartment, unknowingly passing the bathroom which has the door open where I see Mateo standing with his short pants pulled down slightly and his appendage in his hands, "Oh, no!' I think and tiptoe, red faced, back to the balcony.

I stand inside the apartment just behind the open balcony doors, unsure of what to do.

Mateo taps me on the shoulder, yet again, and this time, when I turn around, he starts kissing me with a hunger and I am happy about this as I am hungry for him too, something deep down is so hungry for this young Dutch boy, with his spy novels and Rolling Stone magazines and dozens of mix tapes, and giant toes and hands and appendage, and we learn how to kiss and we learn how to kiss one another and its ok that he pushes himself hard into my dress up against the wall of the balcony and I run my hands all over his warm and muscular body and grab and pull on his long hair and I feel like I have a fever, in the hot summer heat of the southern Italian night, and I don't want him to stop and I feel pulled into him more than with just my body but with my guts and now I feel my heart soar and see in his blue sea eyes and brave smile that his heart is also soaring, and that we are still floating as we were in the sea water but floating together off the floor and feeling lighter than air, we are soaring so high with happiness and desire.

I want more and he wants more and our blue and brown eyes are red and tearing with exhaustion and happiness and the release of two young people who have found one another in a big, giant world.

My Life in the Gulag

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 21 Aug 2019 18:56:00 +0000

My life in the Gulag

My father was loud and he was tall. He smoked a lot and always smelled of smoke. He didn’t bathe every day. He said that dirt was good for his immune system, all kids should play in alleys, and less shampooing prevented baldness. He was often sweaty and his blackish-red thinning hair matted down on top of his olive skinned head. He wore Fruit-of-the-Loom white v-neck t-shirts splattered and stained with red marinara and gold olive oil. He wore V-neck shirts because he feared choking. Crew necks went in the garbage. The palms of his large, round, hands, that he often held my smaller ones with, had long life and love lines filled with blue chalk. His eyes were black as night. I used to think he could see in the dark – like a leopard stalking its prey. Or later, like the giant eyes watching the valley of ashes in Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby- omnipotent, sometimes sad and disappointed, but very very much alive. His eyes contained a rich vocabulary which easily translated into any language. His eyes could convey anything he needed them to, especially in an emergency or across a room to a backer if he was hustling. His false front teeth, bought in an alley through the dental black market and necessary after an often retold childhood swimming pool accident, would occasionally dislodge after sucking the marrow off the corner of a pan fried pork chop bone or from chewing white gelatinous grizzle which he claimed was as scrumptious as foie gras. He had a broad, barrel chest, warming you quickly in an embrace, and before Run DMC, wore multiple, thick gold necklaces easy to throw down into the pot during a Pinochle game or across a pool table if he ran out of cash to gamble with. If he was home, he would put his thick glasses above his head while reading a book close to his face and occasionally bite his nails. He claimed reading without his glasses(he was near sighted) would relieve him of needing reading glasses in old age. He was right. My brother and I both bit our nails, as did our mother. I don’t know if it was out of nerves, mimicking our elders, or genetics, that we followed in their footsteps. I tend to think of it as one way to control oneself, or their environment. I was forever trying to control chaos both outside of my body and on the inside. I like to think of my young family as sitting atop the giant rocks at the Lion house at Lincoln Park Zoo. My father, with his giant mane and strong, furry tail, pacing back and forth, restless from the domesticity, roaring at strangers, protective, yet scaring the shit out of everyone looking at us. And us. My brother and I, smaller, slightly smarter, wiser, more observant, licking our paws obsessively, and fearful of the giant chasm at the end of the green grass, separating us from the humans staring at us, taking pictures, pointing. I could see them, and they could see us, but no matter how hard I racked my brain, I would never be able to solve the great problem of making it safely across the ditch and over to the other side, the better side, or so I thought. I tortured myself with longing and deep, deep desire to be a part of a crowd, any crowd, other than ours. I was a traitor to our pride. My mother, a beautiful lioness, lied helplessly at my father’s side, having officially given up on escape. Then, my father would expel another giant roar causing me to shiver with fear and close my eyes waiting for it to end, as I started licking my paws again until I felt clean, I could never feel clean enough, and until my stomach returned to normal. It was always my stomach which hurt first.

Chics Dig Music Too

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 19 Aug 2019 16:34:00 +0000

I did have a Kraftwerk LP in 1984 and Fun Boy Three's "Our Lips Are Sealed", went to see Depeche Mode in March of 1985(Book of Love opened) and danced to "Dreaming of Me" before "People Are People" hit the airwaves, and owned Ministry's "With Sympathy" Album and danced to "Work for Love" at many a juice bar before even reaching high school. I saw Front 242 summer before ninth grade and was at the Revolting Cocks/Ministry concert ON Halloween 1985. I also bought my New Order "Blue Monday" on a twelve inch. I was a true Goth when I was twelve. I loved Souxsie Soux.

I memorized every song from New Order's "Low Life" Album before starting freshman year of high school. I waited outside the Ambassador East Hotel for hours to see David Bowie when I was nine or ten. When he did finally appear he was wearing purple leather penny loafers - I will never forget them. I accosted Joey Ramone for his autograph around the same time as I remembered him from "Rock and Roll High School" and we were "hiding out" from murderers/thieves at a Holidome out in the boonies for few days. I stopped watching MTV after Kurt Loder pronounced Kurt Cobain the new John Lennon. Every time I hear Nirvana on the radio I stick my middle finger up to the sky. I hate Eddie Vedder - he is way too crunchy for me - and a Cubs fan. Kesha is the anti-Christ and a sure sign of the Apocalypse. I delivered my son to John Coltrane's "Love Supreme." I saw Frank Sinatra Live with my father at "Chicago Fest" when I was six.

At supposed "80's" parties I'm waiting for "World Destruction," "The Dominitrix Sleeps Tonight." or my beloved Heaven 17's "Let Me Go." but am instead hit with Cyndi Lauper. I can't even listen to New Order's "True Faith" or "Bizarre Love Triangle" because they nauseate me. I want to hear their "Temptation" instead (a song probably on my top ten deserted Island IPOD shuffle). I do like those lyrics.

Our famous DJ - DJ Scrappy(Jonathan Gilbert) - would go to clubs in New York and bring the music back to Chicago and play at a Juice Club called Medusa's. The door man was a seven foot, 300 pound gay man named "Sugar." My good friend and classmate lost his virginity to a prostitute in the back of a car in the alley of Medusa's in exchange for a bag of weed. Scrappy always ended the night with Data's "Living Inside Me," Blancmage's "Lose your Love." or Fatima's "Hassan"(my favorite). I always got prime scaffolding one way or the other. Then, of course, there was Chicago "House" music, but that is another conversation entirely. I lived just a few blocks from "Wax Trax" records and would go there every week. I agree it wasn't New York, but Chicago felt mildly important back then.

One of my modeling jobs was runway work in eighth grade/early high school for a vintage store named "Kitsch" which is how I earned my annoying Chicago nickname (besides the fact that it turns out I am overly sentimental). I removed the "s" to make the name my own. The store was owned by an Amazonian black woman named Gloria, who is now an 80 year old Yogi, who could give Iman a run for her money. She was close friends with my best friend Margeaux's mother, who was also a vintage designer and had that escaped from Texas, been married five times before she was twenty one, Jerry Hall thing going on. They moved every nine months or so, slept on Futons and drove baby blue and powder pink nineteen fifties convertibles that rarely started. They were the epitome of bohemian life and probably the coolest "Artistic" people I ever came into contact with. Refer or incense was always burning. Their whole house was vintage - her mother wore a MONKEY fur coat! They were vegetarians! Their record collection was outstanding - Kraftwerk, B52s, Roxy Music and Velvet Underground. When Margeaux and I would clean up after one of her parent's all nighters(my parents were there too) there would be glitter everywhere. When her mother would go out of town, we would have our own parties. One of which we hung naked Barbies by their necks from the ceiling, wore her mother's vintage kimonos, played Kraftwerk "The Robots" over and over all night long while serving Kool Aid and Vodka and charging $3 a pop at the door. This was the summer before freshman year of high school, and I was only thirteen, did not have a bra, nor a menstrual cycle, yet. If being a never-been- kissed, too tall, skinny thirteen year old in a kimono dancing to Kraftwerk on vinyl, smoking four inch Moore's in a Chicago apartment in the summer of 1985 isn't cool, than I don't know what is...

Donald Sutherland Reminded Me

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 18 Aug 2019 18:58:00 +0000

My Fantasies have changed
They’ve returned to making love
All the way
Filled
Hearing Merry Christmas
I love you
And exchanging homemade Christmas presents in December
That delight
And surprise
And stir
And make one feel alive
Creative gifts
That light bonfires on our favorite beaches which fill our shoes with sand
Inspiring
Better than a sailing ship across the Adriatic
While you watch me float ‘round pregnant on blue water
Soaking up the sun
Carrying our beautiful baby boy in my belly
Your image
And honesty
And monogamy
And bravery
Bravery I do have
I had it when we met
But alone on my raft lost at sea I forgot
until I saw the map of brilliant stars back in the sky
And saw the bonfires on the beach, red and rising
And I followed a friendly fish back home to Upstate House
Upstate House
Where magazine photos transform into cloth, steel, marble and paint
Where we soak in long, hot baths and listen to African jazz or Bon Jovi in bone white tubs long enough for our long legs like in London hotels
Upstate House
With floor to ceiling windows looking onto a perfect green pitch where pink peonies you planted bloom
I let you choose it all - at our Upstate House- the paint colors, the fixtures, the floors, the sofa we hold each other on, the book shelves that together we fill as we grow old, the stereo you play and tell me your favorite childhood stories with
And I am grateful
I admire your taste, your hard work
I just make the Sugo and set it on the dining room table you also chose
You pull out a chair for me
I read aloud to you a story about us
Our alter egos
Who are divine beings
Superstars
Celebrities
Incredibly well dressed
Sexy motherfuckers
Gorgeous
Like when I leaned across the pool table
And you felt the arrow strike
Sometimes you lay me across the dining room table
On my belly
After a bottle of Trader Joe’s Italian red wine
You swear is good
That you carry in your backpack on the F train

When I wear a French white dress
And your favorite high heels
You like that
You like my body waiting on the table for you
And I like making you happy
It makes me happy
And filled
In one way
An important way
Donald Sutherland reminded me
Of those feelings
Of being filled
That fear and tragedy buried
My light
Worth millions
Of sparkling stars against a black sky
And fine Belgian chocolates melting on my tongue and swirling against red wine you poured me
And sweet furry Peaches glued to my mouth bought at the Bodega
And lighting bolts
Not knocking the wind out of me
And supernatural signs
And clever connections
And feeling like home
Sutherland is an old man
But could be any man
MY MAN
A young man
In my eyes
I am grateful for him
His long, lean legs in a tight, tailored, Italian wool suit with soft socks sitting on a medieval hotel bed just before we ride a Venetian water taxi and hook pinky fingers together like fish
And get married
His hypnotic, underwater blue eyes
His puffy, parted lips wet with Whisky
His giant, warm hands like baseball gloves
From Yankee Stadium stained with hot chicken
His deeply intense stares, protecting me
His quiet, heroic laughter which makes his body shake
And all the good kissing
Youthful
You know the kind
Endless
Tingling
With multiple, shared smiles
And erratic heartbeats
And nervousness
Which is only natural
For a first time
It’s the next step
In this vast sea
Or luxurious bathtub
we share
that I could give birth
Or drown in
But then I’m brave
And I relax
And now I’m floating
It’s pure bliss
Like an American girl at the beach with a boy in Naples wearing walkmen and sharing mixed tapes
Or like Jane Fonda tugging the back of Klute’s jacket after visiting the fruit market on a New York Street at night
Just being near
And sometimes being led
Or held
Is so simple
And so nice
It’s not much to ask for
But at the same time can be a lot to ask for
Geographically
Legally
Financially
And I get that
But simple
And natural
Ah, yes
It’s not hard work
It’s a gift
We never had to work for
But were given
Like when we’re quiet
like mischievous mice
On that hotel bed
Except for our breath
Twirling tongues
Gasping for air
Inhaling lungs
Like nitris
Light headed
It’s all automatic
Synchronous
When I touch his skin
Or he touches mine
And our tongues never detach
Like octopus tentacles
Stuck and suctioned
And dipping into one another’s
Mouths like we’re feeding baby birds
With his hair matted down with sweat
Boyish and vulnerable
With potent, bulging, blue sea eyes
I caress the soft, oily cheeks of his face
Tasting delicious and salty like sardines
And his behind
Raised and bare with glowing white skin
As I glide my fingertips under and over to his slim tummy
Which tickles
Against his giant mess of grayish, curly hair
Like Zeus
Hiding what I want
A gift he wants to give
A lightening bolt
As I give myself to him
A star
Illuminated
He knows it is a gift
I know he knows
It’s my everything
It’s the very best
Amplifier
Around
McIntosh, of course
Sending surreal sonar
Across waves and roaring winds
Even the smallest animals hear
Even the nocturnal ones
Buried beneath earth
Or the largest land mammals
Hiding in caves
Or playfully rolling in the dirt or snow
Eating bamboo
Our song is carried around the world
And back to us
We are the presents
For our Christmas

Goosebump Goddess

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 12 May 2017 17:34:00 +0000

"Tell me, the dream, again..."

"Well, it's night, and New York is particularly quiet. It's not necessarily late at night, it's just the neighborhood that's quiet. Maybe it's a sleepy street in the Village, but more often than not, I think it's Brooklyn"

The therapist thought, never in a million years would I think I would hear a dream that took place in Brooklyn. Times have changed.

"Okay, Brooklyn" the therapist answered the girl.

"And, I'm holding his hand. I can't see his face. But he is dragging me - up the stairs - to his apartment."

"And the apartment, what does it look like?" the therapist probed, bored at this point, and thinking about redecorating her house in the Hamptons.

"There are tall ceilings. Wood floors. And a mattress - on the floor - with white sheets."

"Do you feel safe? In this apartment?"

"Yes."

"Do you see a man's face?"

"I told you already. No. I don't. Or at least...I used to not see one."

"Does he speak to you?"

"Yes, but it is garbled. I can't understand everything that he says. Some - but not all. It's a dream, you know?"

"What happens, once you are in the apartment?"

"The man takes my bag or suitcase, whatever it is that has my belongings in it. He carries it for me and puts it up against a brick wall. He drags me to the mattress."

"Do you have...sex...with...this stranger?"

"NO - we don't have sex...right then... And he's not a stranger. Technically not a stranger."

"Technically?..."

"That's what I said. I do - I mean, we do know each other."

"So, you're friends?"

"Yes - I mean - it's fresh...it's new...but old at the same time. Do you understand what I am saying to you?"

"I think I do. You mean you think that even though you just became friends, you already feel like you know him?"

"Yes. I...think that's what I mean."

"Why don't you sleep with him...in the dream?"

"We're...not in love...yet"

"Is that important to you?"

"God, yes, very important."

"Are you mad that you are not in love?"

"No, because I think we are...falling..."

"I see...there is potential"

"Potential, yes. We are both...falling..."

"What do you do...then? On the mattress?"

"I told you. We listen to music....It's not the type of music to make you think too much. It simply makes you...feel good. And...relaxed...Peaceful. It's gentle. He's...big...but gentle."

"Well, on the mattress...does he touch you? At all? Do you touch him?"

"We just listen to his records and hold hands. We listen to the music. We listen to each other breathe. We listen to each other's stomach gurgle...maybe once or twice. We are hungry. I think we forget to eat something. That is all."

"You mean to tell me you spend a weekend, lying on a mattress on a floor, in Brooklyn, listening to records, holding hands with a man, who is new to you, but not so new, and the two of you stare up at the ceiling with all of your clothes on? "

"Yes. Although sometimes we feel the vibrations, from his speakers. They are large and old fashioned. The beats from the music pulse into the wood floor and shake the bed occasionally. They are the speakers I remember having as a young woman. They were bigger than some refrigerators. Those giant speakers, and listening to music - Sterolab's song Cybele's Reverie specifically -lying on the wooden floor of my first apartment. Well, it is one of my fondest memories of being a young girl. And I relive this memory...with him"

"A man who you just met, but feels like an old friend?"

"Yes, well - familiar. He is familiar because of these dreams that I have already had..."

"And the two of you are alone in the apartment.."

"Well, not technically alone...he...has a cat"

"Okay, there is a cat"

"Yes"

"Is the cat friendly?"

"Yes, the cat is happy that I am there."

"Is the man happy that you are there?"

"Yes. I...believe he is. In fact, I know he is. He's just good. I can't explain it more profoundly than that. He's good."

"But you...and this man...in the dream...you're dressed...what are you wearing? Is that something you remember?"

"Um...he's wearing shorts being held up with a belt and also a worn-down concert t-shirt. There are Sambas lying beside the bed, on the wood floor."

"Sambas?"

"Soccer shoes"

"Oh"

"What.., are you wearing?"

"A dress. Thin, silk, dark colored. The hem is above my knee. It has buttons from top to bottom. I am not wearing stockings. It is Spring - or summer - obviously - the boy - I mean - man - well, he's wearing shorts, isn't he?"

"I see."

"I've been having this dream for...I don't know, at least three years. If not longer. But there has never been a face...you know...on the man? Well...not...until now"

"I see. You know who this person is, don't you?"

"Yes, I do know who this person is."

"You've been having this same dream for three years. And now this strange man, who's not a stranger, has a face. And a name I presume?"

"Yes, he has a name. It's...foreign. And I probably pronounce it incorrectly."

"Does this...make you happy?"

"Happy...and angry. I don't know if he has ever had a dream about meeting me, before we met?"

"Just because you dreamed of him, before you met him, doesn't mean he has to have dreamed about you before he met you"

"I wish he had"

"It's not essential to him loving you. We all fall in love differently. Remember that"

"I will"

"Has anything changed other than seeing the man's face, in this dream of yours? It's obviously incredibly special to you, or you wouldn't keep having it, for so many years"

"Well, on the last night, of the weekend, he takes off his shirt and places both of my hands on his belt buckle, and he helps me take his shorts off."

"Are you conscious of him being naked?"

"Well, he's not naked. Like, I told you. He's in his boxers. Or at least I imagine him to be the type to wear boxers."

"Do you undress?"

"Well, he unbuttons my silk dress. I told you, there are many buttons on the dress. But he is patient, and unbuttons them all."

"And now, you are naked?"

"No - I told you! We are not naked! I am just in my bra and underwear! But, but, I am shaking now. I'm nervous. I want to tell him to touch me, but I don't. I have Goosebumps...all over my body. And I am wet...between my legs."

"O-kay. You started telling me the dream, this dream you've had for awhile now. Well, the details..."

"They have started to get filled in...And...I didn't think the details would ever...get filled"

"I'm starting to think you want to sleep with this person."

"I think you're right"

"But you just said, you have to be in love. He has to have dreams about you, just like you have dreams about him."

"I know."

"Do you...do you have an orgasm in this dream?"

"Well, I don't say a word...in the dream. I just...I just...take one of his hands...in my own...and place it in between my legs."

"You do?"

"He kisses me, softly, and my lips are trembling, and my legs are shaking and before I know it...I'm..."

"Cumming?"

"Yes"

"Do you wake up right then? From the dream?"

"No."

"What happens next?"

"He smiles at me"

"He smiles?"

"Yes. A big and silly smile that makes me feel warm...on my insides. Just like the first night that we met. That feeling. The warm feeling. On my insides, that first night. Well, it surprised me. I think I made him also feel warm on the insides, that first night. I think it surprised him, too."

"That's sweet"

"Well, he's sweet...and passionate. The kisses and the smiles...well...they put me at ease...I won't say that Temptation being his favorite New Order song had anything to do with it..."

"I'm not sure his liking the same song is enough..."

"And he hates Cat Power. And I love Cat Power. Why on earth does that excite me? It excites me a lot!"

"Did you kiss him, the night you met him?"

"No, but, at the end of the night, he threw his coat on and squeezed me in his arms and ran out the door. Like...disappeared in a cab, within seconds..."

"So.."

"Well, he was nervous, I don't know, maybe he was just under the weather, but I just, well, I had this feeling he was afraid he might kiss me that night..."

"Afraid to kiss you?"

"I don't know...afraid something might happen. Afraid of what he was capable of. Not that I...well, would ever make the first move. I just...liked the way it felt to have him sit beside me. I hoped he would hold my hand or something, under the bar that first night. Maybe just wanting to hold hands with him is how he became the face of the man in my reoccurring dream."

"Are you in love with him?"

"Well, that night, I...I was sober. I even told him, I don't drink too much so that all of my decisions are deliberate...and made from an authentic feeling...not from...alcohol..."

"And?

"Well, the bartender made some kind of a quip and I answered him by saying something like, I wish I liked someone enough to sit and talk with them for hours"

"And what did the man sitting beside you say?"

"He just said wow, I think, and sipped his shot of Tequila. Then I looked up at the clock above the bar and realized I had just been talking to him, for hours..."

"You didn't answer my question. Are you in love with him?"

"Well, I think, in the dream at least, I love him."

"Does he love you...in the dream?"

"Yes....He does...love me. He loves me even though I find the slightly sociopathic Husker Du song Diane to be a great love song. Maybe, he loves me because of that reason."

"Did you ever cum from this dream before?"

"No, never before"

"You have never cum in this dream before? The dream you tell me you have been having for three years? The one where up until this point you do not speak, nor ever get naked? The one with a man without a face?"

"You are correct."

"The dream with a man who always has a record collection, a cat, and soccer shoes. The man who has an apartment in New York? Maybe Brooklyn?"

"Yes. I know. It sounds crazy - although the cat detail is brand new. I am still trying to wrap my head around it. And he has a Caveman like quality. At the end of the day, I am old fashioned and need to be won. Need to be possessed."

"You think this man, who's face has finally appeared in your reoccurring dream is a Caveman?"

"Well, he eats Wild Boar"

"The fact that he eats Wild Boar makes you think that he is a Caveman?"

"Yes, a Caveman with a sophisticated palate. Imagining him asking an Italian Butcher for Wild Boar pleases me, immensely."

"Wild Boar?"

"Yes, Wild Boar. And I think it is indicative of him having a deep-down Caveman like quality. Like he could hit me over the head with a wooden bat and drag me away with him. Kind of like the Husker Du song Diane but - without a rape, or knives..."

"I am not familiar with Husker Du"

"Oh, it's just a band. From my youth. And Diane happens to be one of my favorite songs. He sent me an acoustic version. I loved it. Goosebumps."

"Goosebumps?"

"Yes, Goosebumps. He is a very sweet Caveman. Wouldn't really ever hurt me - physically. Just the initial bump on the head, some dragging. Would put ice on the bump, and feed me Ibuprofen and some brown liquor until the swelling went down."

"Wow. You have some interesting fantasies."

"Remember, I am a writer. In the Stone-Age romantic genre."

"Does this man, the one with a face now. The one who you liken to a Caveman because of his foray into Game meats. Does he remind you of anyone you have met before?"

"No, not at all. That is the best part about him. He is completely unique. And brand new. I hope he thinks I am also unique, and brand new."

"Now is that the end of the dream? Your climax? Knowing you love one another?"

"Well, not...exactly"

"Not...exactly???"

"Well, I roll on top of him and kiss him fervently."

"And then..."

"Well...I have sex with him"

"Is this the first time you have had sex in this dream?"

"Well, yes. The first time. You know...from our speaking before...I have not had many lovers...hardly...any...But I always wanted...someone to teach me... about sex...it might be him...I mean...I want this man to teach me about sex. But I want him to love me first."

"You've changed"

"I think I have - or been changed, at least. In fact, I feel like it is out of my hands and I am just watching it all happen. And I am enjoying watching it fall into place."

"Sex - just the one time?"

"Well, no. A few times...I can't seem to get enough of him...And once I think I've had enough, he starts to touch me again..and it starts all over. But I welcome it. I welcome him. Like I said, we're hungry."

"And that's the end of the dream?"

"Well, no, not exactly..."

"What do you mean, not exactly?"

The therapist looked at the clock on the ceiling. The session was almost up. This girl - today - was exhausting. She had been talking in circles. But at least her dream wasn't boring. The therapist looked at the girl- sitting in the chair in front of her - and she was smiling, and quietly...content.

"I kind of want to hear him tell me - You're it"

"You're it?"

"Well, yes, its the opening line to Sonic Youth's Teenage Riot"

"Is this another song?"

"Yes. Another song. Music is important - to me - and my writing."

"You want him to tell you - you're it?"

"Yes, just like Kim Gordon."

"Kim Gordon?"

"And then I will tell him - you're it."

"Listen, I don't know who these people are that you speak of - Kim Gordon? Sonic Youth? But what you are saying - telling someone - this man who was in your dreams for three years, who now has a name - foreign - I think - and a face - and soccer shoes - and a record collection - and an apartment in Brooklyn - and..."

"A cat, he has a cat"

"Well, it sounds romantic. You know, telling someone - you're it"

"I know"

"You know?"

"I like this dream."

The therapist looked over this girl. This girl who was talking in circles. This girl who was smiling. This girl who was quietly content.

"I... see that you do."

The girl in the chair stood up and started walking toward the door to exit.

"I...I think this dream...it's...just...the beginning...And, I like the way I feel right now. I'm not in any rush...I like waiting...I hope he doesn't mind waiting...for me..."

"Let's wait and see what happens" the therapist advised, cautiously. Her stomach was growling. She hoped there was a Protein bar in her desk drawer that she could eat quickly before her next appointment arrived.

And then the girl - who was actually a woman(but who felt like a girl - when she thought about the boy - who was actually a man) made her way out the door of the office, skipping slightly, and feeling warm on her insides all over again.

"

Tall Al's Last Race

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 08 Jan 2017 16:19:00 +0000

It’s a gorgeous, blue sky mid western summer day. Around 2:30. I am overlooking the balcony of Arlington Race Track yet again. How did he get me here? Stuck, of course, until the last race, we never leave before the last race, even while the scent of my grandmothers spaghetti and meatballs lingers in my nostrils from coffee with her this morning, we will not make it home until six. I hope that with a few hundred dollars more than when we started forced to eat our dinner in microwave shame while the rest of the family eats dessert. And it is only the third race!

Promise of father daughter time coaxed me here this morning, but Pops ignores me from the minute he gets his binoculars out till the time he falls asleep-forcing me to drive in the traffic- on my one day off from work no less-hopefully not having had to spot him a few dollars for gas. I kick my feet up and attempt to ignore the banter of “Mother Effer” next to me.

I have no sympathy for my father when he talks in this rabid like fashion. I just laugh and tell him to get a real job and start paying some fucking taxes. The race ends and the tickets are shred to bits and thrown into the stands like confetti. Pops looks over at me and we both laugh. But the laugh is bittersweet. There is something missing from our day at the races.

Al. I picture him in the straw hat with the bristles coming unwove at the top. A cowboy, in Wranglers belted up to his chest with a pair of worn-in boots. If he was crashing at my parent’s house during racing season and the weather was still cool then he would add a wool sweater to the ensemble, snagged on the bottom, and a light jacket. Tall Al: a simple man, with simple needs and simple tastes.

He liked black coffee. Didn’t say much, didn’t even curse.

Al: sweet, sensitive and mysterious. Good luck at any track. His last name was Lamoreaux-French by blood- a bona fide Louisiana Cajun. Shrimp Remoulade was his favorite. My mom, a fellow rebel, used to make him Key Lime Pie.

How a man grows up to spend his life living in fleabag hotels and boarding houses following the horse circuit, I have no idea. You have to love it, I guess, and have a lot of patience. Never heard the man feel sorry for himself once, even if he lost, which believe me, was often.

I recall only three occasions where I came close to see behind the surface of this great man.

First, was at the dinner table. Tall Al was way over six feet tall and weighed maybe a buck thirty or forty – on a good day. However, when you sat a plate of food in front of him he tore off a loaf of bread with such enthusiasm, that sitting beside him, you enjoyed your own food that much more. Al showed the world what eating should be like. And he always said after he ate that it had been a good meal. - always. That is because he made it a great meal.

The second chance I had to glimpse the inner life of Tall Al was when he suggested a Mexican restaurant on the corner of Chicago and Damen Avenues that had great Huevos Mexicanas. Tall Al, my Pops and I went there after the track one day. Scared, I felt, driving up to the restaurant located in a notoriously dangerous neighborhood: no gentrification, just graffiti. Al lived in a four flat tenement building, with immigrants having just crossed the border wallpapering the rooms. Al did not mind this, however. You see, when you live on the road, it is the road that is your home, the vast expanse of America, and not the small room, cot and neon light outside your window in a Hispanic ghetto in Chicago.

So, we walked into the restaurant, sweltering from the heat and humidity, and find it empty. The radio sings to us in Spanish, but very modestly. Al, uncharacteristically assertive, leads us to a booth to sit down at.

“The food here is great. I come hear all the time.” Al announced. He used eleven whole words to express himself. I was astonished. He could camp on my father’s couch for weeks without uttering more than a hello and nodding when fed. Eleven whole words! Moreover, his voice had a tone to it I had never heard before. Some little boy had infected the scarecrow body of our Tall Al putting a twinkle in his eye that I thought came to him only when presented with a plate of food or a pile of cash from a teller.

At the time, I was not very hungry, still nervous about the neighborhood, reassuring myself that Pops would take care of me in case some speed-induced gangbangers ransacked this little cucina in frenzy.

Al started tapping his feet in anticipation. Tap, Tap Tap….

Then SHE walked in. With the smile and innocence of an angel, no makeup, just a plain peasant dress and some silver jewelry - a woman of about thirty, her hair up because of the heat. This pretty lady soon rushed over to our table, assuming she may be in trouble for not seating us promptly. Spotting Al and recognizing him caught her off-guard and she slowed her pace towards our booth. She finally makes it over to the table and the two speak softly to one another, both blushing. Then she walks away. Never asks us what we want to eat. She just nods and smiles at Tall Al and that was enough.

This was his moment - a romantic moment. This is Tall Al we are talking about here, remember? I was shocked. Tall Al, with his sandpaper face and Camel Unfiltered smoke smell, glowed. Yes, glowed. I learned later that he ate here ritually just to see the beautiful, non-judgmental Maria. Then he would walk upstairs to his Spartan room and little cot and dream of this woman and dream about her food.

I looked to my father to see if he had noticed this revelation or not, but instead he sat slumped in his chair reading the next day’s racing form. For the first time ever, I noticed the dynamics between my father and Tall Al change. Al became the powerful one, the energy source, and let me tell you, he looked wonderful! I never fathomed that Al even cared for women, belittling his capacity as a man. Never once had I seen him with a woman or heard about him with a woman. Or, for that matter, even raise an eyebrow if something provocative was ever said or a set of knockers passed his eyes view. It is not that I thought he was homosexual, just asexual, that when he committed his life to the racetrack he gave up the idea of having a wife or family. It’s as if he had to be completely disciplined and devoted to his passion, his work, his life, in order to win, the formula or Manifesto he concocted in his head as a young man on the Bayou after petting his first Filly and cashing in his first winning ticket one bright Louisiana day.

The man was a saint to me, the only vice he had were those Camel Unfiltered, I told you he was simple. Always let me sit in the front seat of the car while my Pops was driving. Making money at the track to buy a big house or luxury car did not draw him. No, Al merely needed enough "cheese" so he could stay on the road, make it to the next town for the next season, for the next batch of horses that would keep him moving, dreaming, striving…Movement was his life, and stopping anywhere for too long was no good.

The third memory I have of Tall Al was the night in Hot Springs Arkansas when we went out to dinner to celebrate the big score -20G’s- the two of them -Al & Pops- had achieved together after chasing a big score for at least twenty years. Pops ordered fat steaks oozing with blood and started getting really cocky and orders a bottle of Dom Perignon. Anyway, Al wasn’t saying much, as usual, and I remember getting drunk with my girlfriend from the glasses of champagne Pops kept filling for us. Al just sat there, while Pops jabbered on loudly, with a smile on his face and look of inner satisfaction and accomplishment that lit up the room. Al was patting himself on the back now, telling himself “A job well done, young man.” That day gave birth to a story that would be retold, elaborated & remade for many years to come, as I am doing right now.

Shortly after our Mexican lunch, Al had a stroke, and because he had no family, of course, my father nursed him at his house, which would always be a refuge for hustlers and road men who had no where else to go. My father took care of his dear friend and tried to bring him back to life. It was to no avail, unfortunately, and Al’s one vice got the best of him and he was diagnosed with lung cancer and sent to the VA hospital for treatment. His friends would bring him spy novels over there, for another secret was revealed, Al was an avid reader, those long hours on the bus and train developed his interest.

I remember hearing the telephone ring while I slept, the morning that he died. I knew, laying in bed upstairs that it was the hospital informing Pops that Al had gone in his sleep during the night. I could hear the crack in my father’s voice when he said “thank you” and hung up the telephone. Then I walked downstairs and found him in that solemn state. The VA hospital would bury him, for he had no family, and as much as my father would have liked to, there was barely enough money for that month’s mortgage, much less a funeral. There would be a rich, Italian dinner he would make for all of Al’s pals, to reminisce and toast him, but that would be it.

I was sad when he Tall Al left us, for he was a character that floated in and out of my childhood and I loved him dearly. I felt better knowing that he had at least that one big win in Hot Springs to brag about, a meal he could feed on when malnourished for confidence and a smile, that I had the pleasure of witnessing. That I got to be a part of what was perhaps the greatest day in this mans life. I felt better that he had the vision of that striking waitress to keep him warm at night.

Now days, Pops plays the track with a vengeance. He is obsessed with it now more than ever. I keep telling him, it doesn’t matter how many handicapping books you read or how many numbers you program into a computer, you can’t bring that mystical selflessness about horseracing that Al had back.

Every once in a while I join my father at the track. As much as I know he loves me, and likes having me there to sit beside him and sarcastically mock him, I know he wishes Tall Al could be there instead, and I wish he could be there for my Pops, too.

'Twas the Night Before 40 Introduction

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 08 Nov 2016 17:40:00 +0000

The song "Que Sera, Sera" had been playing inside of her head all day. That night, after feeding her two young children organic macaroni and cheese, she loaded the dishwasher (being careful not to put plastic inside of it) and began to sing the song aloud. She liked the sound of her own voice. Did anyone know that? Her grandmother, mother, and even her young daughter often secretly hummed a tune in the kitchen. It was in their DNA.

She wondered if "Que Sera, Sera" was the first hit song to come out of an Alfred Hitchcock movie? She wanted to know if Doris Day had been sexually harassed on "The Man Who Knew Too Much" set the way Tippi Hedren had been while filming "The Birds." They were both blondes, but Day was a girl next door with a matronly figure, whereas Tippi Hedron smoldered on the screen and could certainly have set fire to the film reel with just one look. Both her daughter, Melanie Griffith, and granddaughter had great sex appeal, too. Must be in their DNA, she thought.

She was curious if America's Sweetheart, Jimmy Stewart, had ever cheated on his wife? Her great-uncle had been a bombardier with Jimmy Stewart in WWII. Bombardiers made her think of Joseph Heller's "Catch 22" and also the actor Alan Arkin. She wondered how old Arkin was now and how he and British actress Judi Dench felt about winning best supporting Oscars for such short screen times. She slammed the dishwasher shut and quickly dried her hands so she could get these burning questions answered via a Google search on her Iphone.

She was getting drowsy. The two Melatonin plus the herbal anti-anxiety pill Ashwaganda that she bought from Whole Paycheck were starting to kick in. She remembered the six months of her life when she was on real anti-depressants (Zoloft) and anti-anxiety medicine (Xanax). She was just 23 years old. How could she have been so scared at such a young age?

She turned off the houselights and grabbed her cup of Celestial Seasons "Extra" Sleepytime tea with an obligatory shot of whisky in it. She started drinking it when she was on the anti-depressants which felt like speed inside of her 23 year old body and caused her to have trouble sleeping at night. She thought about how "Clerks" filmmaker Kevin Smith took a supporting role as someone who worked for Celestial Seasons in a film starring Jennifer Garner and Timothy Olyphant. The movie name escapes me, she thought, another Google search. Her father used to watch Olyphant's TV show "Justified" before he died. He loved Hillbilly culture. "Rebels" he called them. She thought her father was so brave. He loved danger, and lived a life without regrets. He rebelled against the ordinary and the comfortable. He lived his life with purpose. Life, to him, was a great adventure. She yearned for her own, adventures, and to have a purpose. She wanted to be a writer when she was younger but gave up that idea because of lack of money and had been sidetracked. She knew she wasn't the first, nor the last, to claim this defense.

The shot of whisky in the tea in order to calm the nerves or the tummy was a trick she learned from her grandmother, the same lady who sang aloud, and alone in the kitchen, and had old English heritage. She wondered if non-organic tea was really bad for you. She drank a lot of tea and felt close to her grandmother when she held the hot cup in both of her hands. She often thought about dead people as if they were still alive, in the same room with her. She had conversations with them - in her head.

She walked down the hall to her bedroom, which was dark except for the reading light beside her side of the King size bed. Her daughter, dressed in Alice in Wonderland pajamas, slept on the far right side of the bed. Her toddler son slept on long pillows and a blanket on the floor beside her side of the bed, thumb in his mouth.

Her husband was out of town for work that week and the kids often slept in her room while he was gone. She was lonely most of the time and their warm bodies and warm love made her feel less lonely.

The radio was on and the volume was set to a low, white noise. She loved talk radio. She loved falling asleep listening to the radio. Sometimes, she was surprised how it impacted her dreams at night. She could have multiple dreams in a single night and then wake up either emotionally exhausted or exhilarated. The best dreams were the ones where she let go and admitted what she liked, what she wanted, and pushed to get what she wanted. Dreams where she was sexy, sometimes having sex. Dreams where she was a female James Bond and her super ego was saving the world and saving herself. Dreams where she felt powerful and important and making her mark on the world.

Tomorrow was her fortieth birthday. Remembering this caused a sharp pain in her tummy and she went into her bedside drawer and popped another Melatonin in her mouth which she swallowed down with red wine remnants from a crystal goblet from her wedding registry that had been sitting there souring since the night before.

She felt regret.
She felt guilt.
She missed her father. There would be no call from him first thing in the morning.
She missed her youth.
She missed creating.
She missed having fun.

Why had she always been so afraid...of life? Of saying and acting without needing the approval of others or a bright green go light to turn on? How had playing it safe actually...kept her safe?

Tears streamed down her face, and, trying to muffle her sobs from her sleeping children, she turned up the sound on her alarm clock radio, a relic from college, from a time when she was on the verge of coming out of her shell but...didn't. Not entirely, at least. She played it safe. She had always been too scared. A scaredy cat. Wah, wah, wah, she said aloud, mocking herself. Debbie Downer over here, she thought.

Ira Glass began to introduce the guest on his radio show, "This American Life." She turned off her lamp light and asked God, her father, Buddha, any and all holy spirits - the universe - for a second chance. She wanted to wake up tomorrow and say yes.

There were so many things, so many...at least ten...that she had wanted to do...before she turned forty...

Day of the Dead 2016 - The Dago Version

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 01 Nov 2016 16:04:00 +0000

How do you make important life decisions when your Consigliere is dead?

This is the problem I face.

My father was a walking encyclopedia who also believed in magic and spiritualism. He defined human nature as the axis of the earth, to which all life revolves around. To understand human nature was to win at life.

He balanced the rational mind(espoused by his hero, Ayn Rand) with a surprising, irrational one(he meditated, studied past lives and learned quantum leaping just before he passed away.)

I went to my father to help me solve every one of life's problems. Whether it was a corrupt landlord(don't pay last month rent), a high fever(enemas), a broken down car(he'd send his friend with a tow) yet most of the time, the answers came down to how to handle other people. You know, like Don Corleone, in The Godfather(I would have given anything for him to have left this world picking tomatoes from his garden with his grandchild by his side.)

My father always respected what the other person wanted. He said this was the biggest mistake a person could make...not listening. This advice helped me excel at my sales career. You have to ask what someone really wants - even if it seems embarrassing - and try to give that to them. One client just wanted someone to sit and talk with for an hour every week to break the monotony of their work day. Done. One wanted a $1500 laptop for a 1.5 million dollar order. Done. Another, fame - his name in lights - in a Wall Street Journal article. Done.

My Dad was a great listener - even half asleep on the sofa with the Bears on and his Dachshunds barking - he had super sonic bat ears.

Whether you wanted to earn a million dollars, partake in a threesome, or commit a murder - he would acknowledge your desires (as crazy and as far fetched as they might sound) and give you a platform to defend those desires and then give you your due(no one could calm down a crazy person better than my father.)

Once the acknowledgment was out of the way, he would say, "let's talk reality now" and push you in a pragmatic direction. My father, like LBJ, was a great pragmatist, making keen observations from his bathroom library. He always thought that even the loser in a situation should walk away with just a little something - just a taste. Keep in mind, a lot of his life lessons were learned in the pool room, where one can easily find themselves broke, when on the losing side of things, and in the dead of winter, someone throwing you a nickel for the bus home is a lot better than having to walk.

My father also enjoyed challenges, the more complicated the better, because he took great joy in overcoming them.

A few of my father's favorite mantras:

Desire pushes action

Even early twentieth century self-help guru Wallace Wattles devotes two chapters to this premise. Stanley Kubrick's Dr.Strangelove...

If you're depressed, try and accomplish one task a day and work your way up from there.

You must be active, you must stay busy.

Most people wouldn't jump off a cliff, if they could push someone else off instead

Get rid of the toxic people in your life

If you're broken-hearted, you must "torch."

Find a jukebox bar, get drunk and listen to sad love songs and cry for a week. But only for a week - any longer and you're a masochist.

Fuck them, fuck those mother fuckers

Trademark Freddy - Never give a shit about what anybody else thinks of you. A lot of people are scared to see you accomplish what they cannot.

Be in charge of your own life

Never let anyone else make decisions for you. You must be in control. Unless you're giving in to the universe to allow for magic.

Some people are dangerous. Stay the fuck away from them.

Some people create their own bad luck. Some peoples' only pleasure in life is saying no or hurting you(aka sadists.)

Never, ever give power to considerations when trying to achieve a goal

If you need to have all of the answers before committing to a goal, you've already lost. It doesn't happen like that. The goal comes first.

Change the game

Change the variables and put yourself in control of your reality.

Accept every form of generosity that comes your way and accept every opportunity to help someone.

Be over the top with being grateful to others who do nice things for you. My Dad performed at least 3 good deeds every day.

Don't give up on people, yourself, or a situation so easily.
Just because it hasn't been done before, doesn't mean you won't be the first. Everybody deserves a second chance.

The only way you know you're getting paid back money you've loaned, is if the guy you loaned the money to still knows exactly how much he owes you.
A lot of people still owe my Dad a lot of money...

Never be one of the masses. Be an individual.

Always use your head and question what's missing. Think for yourself.

Stand out, be a rebel, wear crazy clothes(my father was famous for purple polyester bell bottoms), be loud, be unforgettable, like a tiger in the jungle

Stand tall, have good posture

There's a scientific reason applied in the service to standing tall. You hone into your own power and emit that power to others. It automatically makes you feel better about yourself, more confident.

Never deny yourself pleasure in this life

You'll regret it.

Every single day I have a question to ask my father - a problem that requires his unique services in order to be solved. Every single day I try and predict the best version of what he would say.

No one in this world had my back the way my father did. My happiness and fulfillment was one of the utmost priorities of his life. He was never too tired to answer my call, come to my rescue and talk me off a metaphorical ledge. He never let me give up on myself. That's why I feel like I owe him to hang in there and achieve everything he ever wanted for me. It's a lot of pressure, but I'm trying(I hear him yell, don't try - DO! Commit, commit, commit!)

He made you forgive yourself if you made a mistake. He gave you permission to move on.

He absorbed any humiliations

He admonished guilt

He thought life was a divine gift, and if you weren't making the most of it, if you weren't enjoying it, you were letting yourself, and the world, down.

Every single day, I try and listen to my father.
Every single day, I try and teach my children the lessons I learned from their grandfather.

He told me that life ain't on the square...

In my dreams, he often gives me advice.

In one dream, I travel back in time(something my father believed in) and cure him of his illness so that he can be with me today to help me - to spoil me with love, affection, gifts, listening, my favorite foods, to teach me new things, to watch sports with, to pick up the kids from school, have them sleepover and to take to the pool room with, and, most importantly, to regale me with stories of underdogs - Davids defeating Goliaths - that always made me stronger, smarter, more powerful and inspired me to take on the world!

I miss our mutual awe and acknowledgement of all the pleasure and joy that's available and of just how amazing life can be!

I try hard to hear this voice, his voice, guiding me.

My Consigliere.

My Pops.

Every single day, I miss my father.

Photographers Danny Lyon and Helaine Garren both captured American Outsiders

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 03 Oct 2016 17:12:00 +0000

I had the great pleasure of catching the Danny Lyon photography exhibit at the Whitney museum in NYC. Lyon was a Brooklyn kid who attended the University of Chicago and shot a lot of his best work around Chicago. He's most famous for his series "The Bikeriders" and also a short series on Uptown Chicago in the early 60s. Just a quick note - the history of Uptown includes a large Hillbilly contingency(I think there might be one honky tonk bar left.) You know who told him to shoot in Uptown? Hugh Edwards, famous Art Institute of Chicago photography curator and professor. He's mentioned in the exhibit at the Whitney. You know who else was Edwards' student? The late Helaine Garren, who captured the outside world of Bensinger's pool room and my father in 1972. Hugh Edwards was so taken with Helaine's work that he purchased a large stack of her photos. Danny Lyon is known for capturing "outsiders" in America, and you know what, Helaine Garren, a peer of his, achieved the very same damn thing with pool hustlers. Here's a photo from the Lyon's show(on its way to San Fran next) called "Navajo Boy." Once I saw Hugh Edwards name up at The Whitney, and saw this pool photo, I felt Helaine with me and that I owed her so much for teaching me about photography and the great Danny Lyon of which she was a huge fan. Can we all agree that Helaine Garren and Danny Lyon are on par with one another? That Helaine deserves her own, "aha" moment, even if it only arrives after her passing? Helaine Garren is the High Art Godess of Pool and deserves proper recognition. In honor of her New Year, I pledge to keep educating the world with how remarkable she was, and how special, alive and important her gorgeous works of art are. She deserves her own Whitney show, her own book and her own acknowledgment. It's her time. I just wish it had come sooner, but, thank god, art is forever...Danny Lyon's excellent photograph, "Navajo Boy" is on the right, Helaine Garren's photograph of my late father and Peaches is on the left. They're side by side like they should be - peers...XXOO

A Million Ways to Die in Carcassonne

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 18 May 2016 15:29:00 +0000

A Million Ways to Die in Carcassonne by: Catherine Bentivegna Adami

Première partie: Les chaves-souris

My arrival in Carcassonne, France began with a scream. Yep, that’s right, a scream. Well, also, one, long, drawn out, “What…the…fuck?” en anglais. The website stated that there were only two blocks to walk from the train station to my hotel yet that same website failed to prepare me for the most frightening five minutes of my life. This was a far cry from the pastel colored, Les Parapluies de Cherbourg MGM inspired musical sound stage I had expected to stroll onto singing the Academy Award nominated song “I Will Wait For You” followed by a triple cheek kiss from a young Catherine Deneuve.

THANK GOD for Mark Zuckerberg, because without him I might be mort. Seriously. The only thing that kept me alive (other than my children, right?) was my mission to write (when I could finally get a decent internet connection) a Nietzsche themed “that which doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger,” zero star Expedia review, titled “You may as well have told me to wear a head scarf at a Trump rally” that I would most definitely post on my Facebook page.

So, there I was, in the South of France, near Les Pyrenees half dazed and cranky from spending all day riding rails beside exquisitely dressed men and women. I mean, even the Dame de Billets was wearing a Louis Vuitton scarf and Joy Eau de parfum. Yes, the French were a people that I envied not only for their good looks, svelte figures and depressing, realistic filmmaking, but - more importantly- for their far superior (at least Bernie tells me so), Socialist system. You mean I didn’t have to work eighty hours a week for a decade to pay off my student loans? Is France where the Four Hour Work Week guy grew up?

Suffering from jet lag, I was forced to walk around like a zombie because of my fear of hallucinating on Ambien. It was dark outside, I hadn’t had a sip of Bordeaux in a whole thirteen minutes, and I was starving. One of the hardships of European travel, don’t you know (Frommer’s always omits this) is feeling self-conscious about eating a lot - in front of people. Especially fresh, mouth-watering delicacies impossible to find back home – many, without pasteurization! I believe, on the European continent at least, les Americains are forced to adopt binge eater behavior. Like, you buy dinner pour deux (or so you tell the serveur) and shove it, truffes and all, down your throat with your bare hands, in the lift that you barely fit into, alone, before someone sees you. Or, you knock over un petit enfant in better shoes than yours in the train aisle in order to sit next to a blind, eighty year old Madam granting you a few uninhibited moments of cramming chocolats noisetiers into your mouth with oxygen breaks, undetected.

A complete one hundred and eighty degree turn from how they approach meal portions is when it comes to drinking alcohol. In this instance, excess is not only okay, it’s celebrated. I mean, if you’re not slurring your words while a guy named Guy funnels aperitifs et digestifs down your throat (or basically the French version of an upside down Margarita), you will stick out like a sore thumb(note to Frommer’s – something else you’ve missed.) One person, regardless of waist size, can guzzle down Champagne, four bottles of vins de Bourgogne and a Cognac and nobody bats (foreshadowing) an eye! They give no fucks. Are you starting to understand the impetus behind the New Orleans credo Les Bon Temps Rouler?

Another place you can be uninhibited in France is in the bedroom. Their tricks of the “tongue trade” made them the hit of English aristocrats back in the day. You may as well indulge in this area, too, granted your boyfriend/girlfriend/husband/wife/life partner/soulmate/boo/Dominant will let you. May I remind you that history’s most famous “home wrecker” Anne Boleyn was trained at French court before meeting King Henry the Eighth?

When it comes to insulting my home country, America, the French are also quite skilled. To be fair, I enjoy reminiscing about the good old days of the Vichy regime and the colonizing of Africa and Asia. Thanks for the Vietnam War, guys! I say. They really like to hear that. Nobody’s innocent here, I tell them, wagging my pointer finger at them like Napoléon making a speech in front of his troops before being exiled to Elba(where the hell is that place, anyway? Is it on a map?) America, is place where you can be un cochon, anytime you want, in the comfort of strangers, also les cochons. My own gastronome version of liberte fraternite egalite. Evidence of why America is still great.

Back to my story – okay, so, it’s late evening, I’m tired, and all I want to do is relieve myself in the privacy of my hotel room. “This toilet has been sanitized for your protection” is one of life’s great love letters, isn’t it? After a few minutes in my room, I figured I’d be drooling on stiff, bleached bed sheets dreaming of French actor/filmmaker Guillaume Canet, lover of Edith Piaf star - Marion Cotillard. I like to imagine Guillaume sur un cheval(he’s a famed equestrian), sneering, in that special way only a French man can, in tight taupe pants with a riding crop in his hand…I’m reminded of the French designation, ”experts in the tongue trade” and get all Molly Bloom Irish, “Oui , je l'ai dit oui, je veux dire oui ! » Note to self : Download Belle De Jour and The Story of O from Criterion tonight.

So deeply was I enjoying my own fantasy world (what’s new?) that I failed to notice the, um, oh, one or two hundred blood thirsty bats (or so it seemed - nothing at all like those benign Looney Toons crows I grew up with) huddled together and scheming on long, thin branches above me, licking their tiny, sea lamprey lips who, after a single, large gust of wind, race toward me, en masse, thirsty for my sang americain.

I rolled my suitcase quickly across twelfth century cobblestones, like a Cathar running from torch wielding Catholics, while simultaneously dodging sub-standard French automobiles (you might get cheese and wine right, but cars, I don’t think so!) With these cascading black creatures only a few feet from my head, squeaking loudly and contemplating their obvious kill shots (there’s a lot of meat on me, fyi) I almost went so far as to jump off the medieval bridge I was hyperventilating/panic attacking on and hide beneath it. Luckily, I remembered how Pablo Picasso’s mistress Marie-Therese nearly died from an infection from river rats. River rats. Scratch that, I told myself. I could never pull off Anne Hathaway’s Fantine short hair. Nope, bats over rats. It sounded cooler.

Before ever arriving at my writers’ retreat, completing my masterpiece, and getting reviewed in the Sunday New York Times Book Review, I would be eaten alive by a swarm of stylish (they are French) bats. You never know, my gambler’s fallacy voice told me, having read far too many Young Adult books as an adult - these might be vampire bats and - listen up - you might live forever! Remember Only Lovers Left Alive? Maybe one of these blood suckers is actually smoking hot vampire/British actor Tom Hiddleston? You could star in a Jim Jarmusch film!!!

What tortured me at that moment, other than the thought of having all of the blood sucked out of my body from tiny bat teeth – was how my story would be told on the evening news. Would I (much skinnier without the blood inside my body, obviously) make the glossy cover page of Hello magazine next to the God of mischief himself Tom Hiddleston? Or - would a TV producer drop "A Medieval Town Massacr"e for a story on Khloe Kardashian’s overexposed workout routine? Will the Kardashians ever let the rest of us hard working people (I know, I know, Oprah said they work a lot) win the news hour? Was this my coda?

The Doors’ Jim Morrison (he’s buried in Paris you, know?) began singing…”This is the end…Beautiful friend”…

I imagined my thirteen year old son, a scholar and lover of all creatures both real and supernatural saying, “I mean, what are the odds? EATEN ALIVE? How diverse does my family seem now? My mother was EATEN ALIVE BY BATS. IN FRANCE. ON HER WAY TO A WRITERS RETREAT. That woman just wrote my Harvard application essay for me. Thank you, Mother!”

And then I saw Alfred Hitchcock, or his ghost probably, walking his tiny ghost dog who took a real shit on the sidewalk, making a mandatory appearance in the Hitchcock film that was now my life. Hey, where was a phone booth when you needed one? So that I could run into it, and hide? Then it hit me - there are no more phone booths. I’m dating myself even suggesting a phone booth. Vieille femme! You’re done for!

I made it all the way to the glass windows outside the Hotel Terminus restaurant where I watched couples eating dinner over candlelight. I read on the train that this area of France is packed with people who escaped Franco so I start yelling, “Ayuda! Ayuda!” hoping they speak Spanish. The hotel appeared super “old timey,” as my daughter likes to call it, and, slightly sinister, like - a good place for Mia Farrow to give birth to Satan. Nothing glamorous. They scrimped on the velvet and did a half-assed job cleaning what I presume are blood stains in the marble foyer. Alright, F. Scott Fitzgerald may have taken a leak here, on his way to a much better hotel. Hemingway may have killed a man and then wrote a few misogynist passages. Henry Miller may have slept with a Chambermaid and not paid her. Alice B. Toklas may have stolen a recipe for her cookbook.

Screaming outside the restaurant window, I was like a Gerard Depardieu (post Le Dernier Metro) homeless guy who has a heart attack on the New York City subway platform and who everyone assumes someone else will give mouth to mouth resuscitation to. All of a sudden, hipsters don’t like beards for some reason(?) and not one of them wants to go near the guy because he smells like urine and looks like poverty. He’s been broke ever since losing his car window washing business on the Bowery during the Giuliani administration. Now he can only afford the ninety-nine cent menu at McDonald’s, hence the clogged arteries. Not one person will help him.

Absolument the hotel diners think, cutting into their rare steak au poivre with a fancy Laguiole knife, watching thick red liquid slowly ooze onto their plates while sampling the wines of the Languedoc region. Someone else will save this enormous, hysterical Americain before her eyes are feasted on by bats.

Trying to cover my face before it’s nibbled on – I suddenly remember Box Office Giant of American Seventies Cinema – the blonde haired, blue eyed, man of few words, the actor Steve McQueen. That’s right – Steve F’cking McQueen. He shot the racing film Le Mans in France in 1971. Supposedly having snorted all of the cocaine available in France, he woke his wife up in the middle of the night with a pistol in his hand, talking crazy, like any six pack ab sexy/reform school survivor/war hero/Stella Adler student/Paul Newman rival/Sam Peckinpah muse high on drugs might do. And you know what saved their lives? BATS. That’s right, the chateau they were staying at was filled with bats, flying squeaky squirrels who all of a sudden, out of nowhere, scared Steve and brought him to his senses. Without les chaves souris there would be no Bullitt, no The Getaway, and no Towering Inferno (ok, maybe that shouldn’t have happened.)

I stopped screaming. I was en route to a writers’ retreat. In France. For a week. Avec du vin. Avec beaucoup de vin. Sans enfants. Without any responsibility other than to decompress, restore, and write. Located in what is known as the “Rainbow Valley,” I was going to see and hear a waterfall every damn day. Fresh, mountain, spring water flowed here. Words flowed here. Could anything be more magnifique? For a mother? A writer? After forty?

Inspired, I pulled hard on the brass handle of the giant door of the Hotel Terminus. Fighting off gale force winds, I began to taste the Duck Fat Dinner for three that I would eat, while guzzling aperitifs, digestifs, and three bottles of wine, sitting down, in front of witnesses, at the restaurant that night, not giving any fucks. Un beau cochon americain.

With my hard earned cli in my hand, and wide, still intact eyes, I gazed lovingly at the old timey lobby, missed my children, and welcomed my next, aventure spectaculaire.

A Time For Firsts

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 16 May 2016 17:37:00 +0000

I'm feeling good
I'm feeling oh so fine
Until tomorrow, but thats just some other time

- "I'm Waiting For My Man" Velvet Underground

Growing up with a constant fear of the rug being pulled out from underneath transformed me into a control freak, albeit a "laid back" one. A "planner" my father would remark, misses out on "spontaneity." In general, I stayed out of serious trouble. I was never caught for curfew or brought in for police questioning.
"What squares I have as children" my father would tell his friends.
Growing up a "pool hustler's daughter" I always had more than one "emergency" exit.

The first month or so of freshman year at university, you can usually identify those that will return home with a degree, and those who will be sent back home to attend community college. Not all, but many kids growing up in strict or conservative households, once their parents drive away from the dorm, become the first in line for a beer bong at a frat party, deflowered, or cheating on their sweethearts back home. Who wants to inhale this unidentified substance? I do! If they are truly rebellious, having stewed deep dark family secrets for the past seventeen or eighteen years(emotional abuse, anti-psychotics, adoption, abandonment, Al-Anon membership, a pregnancy or worst yet incest), distance from home can be both a tremendous relief and also a time for expressive rage, for all past wrongs, as this is the first time in life, each young person is forced to deal and get to know his or her true self. In hindsight, college is far more about survival then it is about academics. Yes, we all know the economic value of that degree, may even actually LIKE anthropology, but there is tremendous value to be found in successfully completing four years surrounded by every imaginable danger and vice without the guilt and discipline of living under an adults roof. And these vices are ten fold in New Orleans. To put it in perspective, even Dub-ya had to graduate Yale, and don't think that was easy.

At an early age, I was counseling my mother on her marriage and promising her that she was "not" fat. My father I would have to beg to "change your spaghetti sauce stained shirt" and "get a haircut." I was a master storyteller. If my parents were screaming or breaking dishes, I would take my young brother for a long walk around the block. "They're in therapy" I would tell my nosy Lincoln Park neighbors "they are supposed to let it all out." Thank goodness for the dime store psychology I learned on the Phil Donahue show.

I had thought of myself as "metropolitan" when I began my freshman year at Tulane. I had been a social drinker since the eighth grade, using a fake id to get into nightclubs at fourteen. I was always chosen to answer the door when we ordered in beer from the local pizza place. I would put my hair up in a towel and throw on a robe, somehow thinking I looked older this way(I was tall) and told the driver it was my apartment and I was getting ready for a party. The driver could have cared less, but I needed a "back story." There were so many go-rounds to acquiring alcohol in a big city like Chicago, that I knew them all - eating at an ethnic restaurant #1(girls are already pregnant and married at thirteen in some cultures, how bad can a margarita be?), have it delivered by a pizza parlor or liquor store(nobody wants to carry a case of beer up three flights of stairs only to have to carry it all back down), or the old faithful: pay a homeless person to buy it for you. Heck, I had been buying beer in my PAJAMAS with Clearasil on my face and a scrunchy in my hair at the White Hen Pantry at the bottom of my father's apartment building since I was thirteen. Although the eighteen year old drinking age in New Orleans intrigued me, free vat at the frat house was not going to make me go all Clockwork Orange - yet.

I had no desire to do drugs when I got to Tulane. The only time I had really smoked pot was when I was thirteen, at a party at a condo just off north Lakeshore Drive. It was the summer before freshman year in high school, and whatever I did smoke was laced with something(or I was just a wuss). It was hot that night, and I was sitting on the window ledge of the second story apartment. I took a sip of Tsing Tao beer and a few seconds later, I got this head rush and almost fell out of the window. Had it not been for an older, stronger, Israeli teen from Lincolnwood, I might not be writing today.

I shared a taxi with my girlfriend who was living with me at the time and another girlfriend who would later become a silicon lipped, weight obsessed television and film actress. I don't know how, but I think I got caught in the plastic seat covers. The street lights as we zipped down the expressway were so blurry and making me nauseous. My girlfriend who was staying with us brought me down to my King Size bed in the basement of our apartment, knocked on my mother's door and said "Catherine needs to talk to you" and ran down into her own bed and hid under the covers.

My Mom came down the stairs and I told her exactly what had happened. Everything sounded like the "Bionic Woman" or "Six Million Dollar man" - you know that noise when they fight in slow motion and use their super powers? Oh, yeah, and I was hallucinating. My Mom, sitting up in my bed, asked me what I was seeing, stroked my hair and smoked a cigarette in the dark.

I eventually fell asleep and when I awoke late the next day, I felt fine. My Mom made me one of her famous home made breakfasts and took me clothes shopping for high school, which I would be starting shortly. She did not punish me, nor tell my father and we never spoke of it again.

Did I mention my parents were a bit unorthodox? Not many parents say "You will NEVER be as cool as we are." They also never felt it was their job to "rat" on their children's friends. Growing up was hard enough without having a few adults you could be honest with and trust to keep you safe. They wanted to be those parents. Drugs were around our home and social circles growing up, so in order for me to rebel, I didn't do any. In fact, when I smelled the wacky tabaky outside our front door only to find my hippie mother dancing to John Lennon, I was mortified.

Upon leaving my father's Streeterville apartment with my high school girlfriends on a Saturday night he would hand me a key, a twenty, and request a kiss on the cheek. If he asked me if I would be drinking I would say "Champagne, maybe." Champagne always sounded so much more acceptable than "Southern Comfort" and my parents always snuck me a little champagne on New Years or if we went out to a fancy restaurant, like the famous "Bakery" on Lincoln Avenue, for dinner. When the girls and I would be half way exited out the front door, my father would yell from the living room "Oh yeah, and, don't do any drugs" and howl with laughter.

I learned about early twentieth century anti-immigration sentiment in college American History class. Yes, these immigrants could learn the English language and even dress like Americans, but were they TRULY Americans on the inside? Conservative America feared(still fears) their ascension in society. Although I am a Daughter of the American Revolution(DAR) on one side and a third generation Italian American on the other, I could kind of relate to these early immigrants. I always felt like I had to make sure I was an intriguing mystery as I mixed among different socio-economic classes, different geographies of America, the world. I could dress the same and talk the same - luckily my Mom spoke perfect English - as my father was south side "neighborhood" spewing colorful "dems, does, ders and aint's" with rapidity and an occasional "cocksucker" thrown in for good measure. That first week of college, an ex-communicated Mormon girl from our floor came back from a "rush" party and told us how a future sorority "sister" blatantly asked what her father did for a living and how much money he made. Any desire for acceptance into the Tulane Greek system was squashed right there and then for me. I would remain an outsider. "Oh, your father is a pool hustler? How exotic!"

So, for some amazing reason, I managed to last four years of high school and four and a half years of college without doing any hard drugs. All of my friends respected my choice and I could avoid participation very easily. I had put cold rags on the foreheads of my girlfriends freaking out on acid in high school, wiped up vomit from the face of a friend sitting on the ground outside Molly's on the Market on Decatur in New Orleans post-shrooming, found tissues for bloody noses, been the recipient of back rubs or found ice cubes for xers, even ridden in the cab of a pick up truck transporting a six foot long water bong, but I had somehow kept clean.

With only a week or two left of my Tulane University experience, I found myself in a chilly December in New Orleans, about to say goodbye to all I had loved. Many of my friends I began school with had left for home, although I was lucky to still have a few around. Some were younger, or fifth year Architecture students or just fifth year like myself. I lived in a barren side apartment of an old Victorian mansion on the South Carrolton streetcar line near Oak Street. My living room had a single chair and a small TV I had owned since I was ten which only carried a few channels - Fox being the best. This was great as I had to watch "Melrose" and "90210."

I had a gigantic bedroom with floor to ceiling windows and an unusable fireplace. I only had one lamp in the bedroom and the whole house was extremely dark. The kitchen was as long and narrow as a matchbox. I rarely entered it as I was deathly afraid of finding a giant palmetto bug or cockroach in there. I was broke as can be, as this extra semester was not covered on my scholarship and my father limited my allowance. The only food I could buy was instant white rice and soy sauce which I ate for both lunch and dinner. If I was really living it up, I would spring for a green pepper, which I would fry up in olive oil and eat on top of the rice. All extra money went toward ice coffees, occasional partying and cigarettes.

I can't emphasize how depressing it can be that fifth year of college. Yes, you are so happy to still be in college, in a beautiful town, in beautiful blue sky warm weather, but you feel like, regardless of friends still there, as if an era has ended, like in my recurring dreams where I go back to Tulane in my thirties and I feel melancholy as my friends are all gone and I don't feel like I belong.

Any way, I had some regrets about college, and living alone in that dark apartment, starving to death, metaphorically and literally, I decided I needed to accomplish a few "college" experiences so I could leave college feeling like everybody else. One of these experiences was doing drugs. I had been offered every substance on the planet, been the only person not on drugs among a hundred at a party, I had said "no" to drugs. This was my time to say "yes."

I gathered my best girlfriends who were also still in school with me and we went down my list of options. We created a pros and cons list of each drug, their cost and any side effect. I knew I did not want to hallucinate, as I never forgot that thirteen year old scare, so magic mushrooms, acid and the magnanimously popular ecstasy were out. Marijuana, I had tried a few times, but was just not as much of a risk, and I was always afraid of lacing or hallucinating. As far as we knew, no one hallucinated on cocaine, but they did have heart attacks - as recently as Sam Kinison so I was wary. Okay guys, I said to my pals, sucking up my mortal fear - lets do some Blow! I cannot tell you how excited people who love drugs are to see someone do their favorite drugs with them. All the girls told me what to expect and went ahead and made the purchase. We were going to take the streetcar all the way down to the French Quarter and par-tay!

One of the girlfriends brought the "package" over to my apartment so we could all partake. Since I had no furniture, no one "hung out" at my place for very long. We found a mirror and laid out the "lines." All the girls tried to teach me the proper way to inhale the powder through my nose. It felt quite intimate actually, I mean I am sticking a dirty dollar bill up my nose - yuck! I remember the salty taste in my mouth but started smiling and laughing a bit. I knew I needed a cigarette. All the girls told me that I wouldn't really get drunk tonight, so watch out as I might suck down twenty drinks without noticing. When we arrived at the beginning of Bourbon Street, four young hotties sashaying down the middle, they all asked me "Do you feel it?" "Yes! I feel like a million bucks!" I exhalted. The Quarter and my big ass had never looked better. I barely felt the cold and was grinning from ear to ear. The best part was that I was not hallucinating - my biggest fear not realized. My heart was indeed racing but I managed to keep Sam Kinison's face out of my head. I was too happy. We headed to OZ, the gay dance Club on Bourbon which had the best DJs in town. It wasn't too crowded, but the Gays were not pleased with more heteros taking up floor space. The girls kept pulling me into the bathroom for more "bumps" but I didn't feel like I needed them as often as they did. They had told me I would never be as high as I was those first two hours, but I was still having fun all the same. It was the middle of the week and I stopped dancing on the floor of Oz, among glow in the dark, muscular, hairless, speedoed men on the top of the bar watch a drag queen belt out "Total Eclipse of the Heart" in a black robe, blond wig and platform go-go boots. Not to sound cliche, but it was a religous experience. All my insecure thoughts were zapped from my head that joyous eve. It was amateur night at OZ and you could tell the performer was a bit nervous. So was I.

The rest of the night went by so quickly, I am sure we hit Cafe Brasil on Frenchman in the Marigny and some how back to campus around dawn. I remember walking home on empty South Carrolton that morning, people walking to work or out for a cup of coffee, and me all dressed up, still smiling, still awake(a rarity if you know me), stopping at the Italian bakery on Oak Street. I bought two glazed doughnuts and ate them on the street enroute to my house, looking up into the sunny, and slightly less melancholy blue New Orleans sky.

I remember an eighth grade field trip to a forest preserve a few hours outside of Chicago. Late in the day, 90 kids met at this beautiful, grand canyon like rock formation with an algae filled waterfall at the end of it with crystal clear water at the bottom. Eighty-nine thirteen and fourteen year-olds - one guy who looked like Prince and rode a purple banana seat bike was thought to be seventeen - climbed up the slimy rock and jumped down the six foot waterfall, getting soaking wet. And I just stood there - as if my skinny Guess jean wearing, thirteen year old self was a chaperon WATCHING. I remember my classmates calling me to join them and then quickly forgetting me as they easily got caught up in the group euphoria of non-thinking time and just plain old messy fun. I can remember the argument in my head - the battle actually - should I stay or should I go? My heart wanting to go,but my feet cemented into the muddy rock below. I just watched, "too cool" everyone guessed.

On the long ride back on the school bus, I tried to block the giggles and screams of the wet mess of adolescence rocking all around me. I turned the volume up on my water-proof yellow Sony Walkman to blast Yaz's "Only You." I leaned my head against the glass window watching the farm houses pass until I could see the famous Sears Tower skyscraper in the distance, knowing I had missed out on something special. I felt incredibly guilty, but I also felt safe.

10 THINGS I WON’T DO BEFORE TURNING 40: SLEEP WITH DAVID DUCHOVNY

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 12 May 2016 15:00:00 +0000

I remember the first time we met like it was yesterday. I was up late one night in bed, alone, summer before senior year of college, contemplating why I was alone, and having fun remembering all of the reasons why I should be alone. I was a twenty year old virgin.
Racing through the channels on my television, I stumble upon “The Red Shoe Diaries” movie on Showtime. The click that launched a thousand ships. Our first date. There you were, clean cut and handsome, bemoaning the loss of your love, who, as it turns out, was a really big slut. I wanted to be your really big slut. I liked the look about you; you were handsome, and had that whiny, East Coast, know it all voice that I swoon for.

You were like my boyfriend, you know, like Jesus is to the nuns. Would not have survived my nearly entire decade of celibacy, alternately referred to as my "twenties," without you, and our, "nights together."

When the "X-Files" movie, based on the successful tv show, was finally released, I was there on opening day, of course. When Duchovny's celibate character, FBI Agent Fox Mulder, and the also celibate, FBI Agent Dana Scully, finally kissed, I felt, vindicated.

“Come on, let’s go.” The thirty year old boy I was with told me. It was our second date.

“I’m staying, I’m seeing it again. I have to see them…kiss again. I can’t wait for the DVD.”

“It’s not that good of a movie.”

“Not that good of a movie? Who do you think you are; Pauline Kael? Okay, this relationship will never work. Goodbye.” I say guiltlessly, turning back to the concession stand for another bag of popcorn. I mean, I had already worked out twice that day. I didn’t feel like I was letting go of much, with the boy. Our first date was at a five dollar falafel restaurant where he insisted on tap water and separate checks. I would live…to see David Duchovny again.

“I feel like…I have a chance,” I told my girlfriend over coffee,
“He has already proven that he can fall in love with an Italian American woman, like his wife Tea Leoni, and he is a nymphomanic. He’s indiscriminate with his lovers, this ups my odds.”

“I just saw David Duchovny on the treadmill yesterday,” her friend interjects. This is the friend who likes to walk around naked in the locker room and bend over while talking to you. Fine, you’ve had electrolysis! Some of us are destined for a life time of waxing, so what?

“He’s in town shooting a film with Minnie Driver.” the friend continues. I hated Minnie Driver, too. She deserved to be dumped by Matt Damon live on Oprah.

“You know David Duchovny is just like me; half Scottish, half Jewish. I feel like we are destined to be together, like we have a connection” the hairless bitch stammers.

“Not on my watch!” I yell back. “And put some panties on in the locker room!” I finish, stomping away from the table, leaving without paying my share of the bill, just to punish her, for even trying to infiltrate my territory.

I had almost met David Duchovny countless times; at a Malibu Dr.'s office, the Dodgers Skybox, when he hosted "Regis and Kelly" - twice.

If he could love "Larry Sanders," then, why not me?
_______________________________________________________________________

When we finally meet at St. Mark’s Bookshop in the Village, Duchovny sits in a corner reading an US Magazine eating Kale soup. His hair looks amazing. He's not wearing that ridiculous earring like Harrison Ford. Thank God.

“David,” I begin, “I’m Cece. Your agent told me I would find you here.”

“Hi, Cece. Care for some soup?"

“No thanks”

“I’m a pescatarian. It’s basically a vegetarian plus fish.”

“I think I figured it out, thanks.”

“So, Cece, why are you here?”

“Well, I’m your biggest fan and want to sleep with you before my fortieth birthday,”

“Really? I’m flattered, but we just met. I hardly know you.”

“Like that matters? I thought you were a nymphomaniac?”

“Fine, you can try and give me a hand job,” he says. “My anti-anxiety medication keeps me pretty limp though, fyi.”

“I’m the only person who actually saw your film, "House of D," with Robin Williams as a retard, and all I get to do is give you a hand job?”

“I’m afraid I’m late for my two o’clock; the life of a sex addict. You know, I’m booked most of the day.”

“I love you, David Duchovny. I thought you’d read me Irish poetry and then let me sit on your face?"

“That’s my four o’clock.”

“Then kiss me!”

“I only kiss women I love.”

“Kundera? You’re going to throw Milan Kundera in my face? I know you were a Lit major at Princeton and all but do you even know who I am? Do you have any idea who you are dealing with here?"

If we are gong to have a literary battle at some point I want to dig my feet deep down into the trenches and get my fists pumped up.

“You’re nothing like the man I love. I hate you, DAVID DUCHOVNY!” I yell.

I grab my Agent Provacateur bag and Good Vibrations UPS box and start to head toward the door.

“I’m out of here you low brow, stinky Vegan!”

“Pescatarian!” he corrects.

“Whatever!” I answer back, annoyed.

I grab the US magazine out of his hands and hit him over the head with it multiple times. I enjoy this.

“Ouch!” he says

I throw the Fox Mulder figurine I bought at Toys R Us nearly fifteen years ago, and held tightly to, on my first trip solo across the Atlantic, while nearly overdosing on sleeping pills, at his head, and miss. Then I throw an economy bottle of lube at his head that at five pounds could double as a hand weight for bicep curls. I finally make contact – with his face.

“Jesus, Cece! That one’s gonna leave a mark” he says, covering his right eye with his hand.

Then I throw the only thing left in my purse – a box of Magnum sized condoms. Overly ambitious, I know, but that Internet video of him in a bathtub…

“I’m smarter than you, David Duchovny, Mr. Ivy League, Big-dick, New York bastard. And I just ate a burger 30 minutes ago – rare!”

I stick my tongue out for extra emphasis.

“You’re a live wire aren’t you, Cece?”

“I’m just a disappointed fan” I answer.

David Duchovny blocks the front door so I can’t leave. He is taller than I am and his cashmere sweater smells like….Wild Alaskan Salmon and…Warm Chocolate Chip Cookies.

“Wait, stay and I’ll cancel the rest of my afternoon for you.” he offers.
“You will?”
“Just take me to that burger place? The thought of red meat is getting my nipples hard. Then I’ll sleep with you, okay?”

“Oh, alright, then.”

We hold hands and take a taxi to Bryant Park in search of some beef.

______________________________________________________________________

Sitting outside, surrounded by autumn leaves and Peeping Toms, Duchovny downs a double beef patty with bacon and French fries. I sip on a Chocolate shake.

“The sex addict thing, it’s just for publicity,” he begins, “It keeps me in the press. I really just go to the GAP and try on jeans during these so called appointments.”

“So, then, the well endowed thing is also a gimmick, for the press?” I ask.
“Oh, no, well, actually that is true. That’s why I’m always at the GAP. My life’s quest is to find the perfect pair of pleated pants.”

He licks the bacon grease off of his fingers, one by one.

“I kind of don’t like to talk about it – my size and all – it brings up, “flashbacks” you know?” Duchovny continues.

“Flashbacks?” I ask.

“I…well, I nearly smothered a girl to death at a Club Med recently. She’s pressing charges and we’re trying to keep a lid on it. We’re lucky because no one even knows what a Club Med is anymore.”

I slam my hand down hard on the table, nearly breaking it.

“Wait, stop, you meant to tell me that your dick is so big, that you nearly smothered a girl to death?

David Duchovny just shrugs his shoulders.

“And we haven’t met until today, because?”

“Well, I’m not allowed to touch or be touched by a woman for the next nine months, or at least that is what my lawyer tells me. I’m hopped up on anti-anxiety medication from the stress of it all, couldn’t get it up even if I wanted to. Sorry.”

Goddam timing.

“Thanks for the burger. I needed some iron in my diet. I’m practically anemic. Can’t make it through another Iron Man without it” he continues.

Goddam Vegans; I mean… Pescatarians.

“Hey, would you like to come over to my place and watch Masterpiece Theater? I have some gluten free Vegan pot brownies in the freezer?”

“I…guess so.”

And then limp dick David Duchovny grabs my hand in his and flags a cab for us on Sixth Ave.

We spend most of the night in his apartment reading aloud and laughing at his unfinished dissertation from Yale. I had bribed his academic advisor months earlier to print me a copy. I practically knew it by heart; even the dated CBGB references.

‘“Let me guess, you’ve probably never been with more than a handful of men…” he begins.

I hope he doesn’t hear me swallow.

“Maybe less?” he tries again.

“You’re wrong, David. I’m a big slut. And I’ve got the tramp stamp to prove it!”

Then I try to lift my shirt over my head to show David my lower back, but I have an extra large head and I get stuck.

“That’s not a tattoo” he corrects.

“I’m sorry I lied to you. It’s just a scar from a botched epidural.”

“Sit here” he says and grabs my behind with both hands and sits me on his lap. Frisky, I think, getting excited for a second, but then remember there’s no chance we are hooking up tonight. Bummer. I pull my shirt back down, embarrassed.

“Pick a book, any book, and I will read it to you.”

Now this, this gets me hot. How did David know this is my biggest fantasy –including the brownies?

I grab “Franny and Zooey,” the less obvious choice, on his Salinger shelf, and sit back down on Duchovny’s warm lap.

“I heard you were the most well read actor in Hollywood.”

He reads me – the whole book – downing two bottles of Chateau Margaux and eating the whole plate of brownies. Without the stress of a hard on, I kind of relax in Duchovny’s arms and…fall asleep. Goddam narcolepsy.

And then Salinger’s last words:
For some minutes, before she fell into a deep, dreamless sleep, she just lay quiet, smiling at the ceiling…

Brownies finished and candles burned down, I wake up to Duchovny gently kissing my forehead. God, he smells good. Like fresh Red Snapper.

“I… should go” I say as I turn my head trying to wipe the drool away from my chin without him noticing.

I start to gather my things but Duchovny remains sitting, looking up at me from his leather chair. I don’t like it when men stare at me. It means they want to know the truth. Or even worse - have me take my clothes off.

“It’s just a smokescreen?” David pinpoints.

“What?” I ask.

I still have a bad case of the munchies and will for sure be hitting a Bodega on the way home for a ham and egg sandwich. Since there’s no sex on the agenda, I can go ahead and feel comfortable stuffing my face.

“Your writing. I read your blog.” he says.

“For reals?” I ask.

“Yes, I liked it. But, the language, the sexuality, it’s all bullshit, isn’t it? I can't even tell if you actually like sex. What are you trying so hard to hide, Cece? For reals?”

Goddam Genius he is, this David Duchovny. No wonder he got a perfect score on his SAT Verbal. He “gets" me, for Crissake. This is better than sex and I bet I can still get my money back for the “Debauchery Box” I ordered online from Good Vibrations. I hear they have a liberal return policy.

“I’d rather not talk about me. I’m really baked from your sweet Hollywood Hash right now. And the Psych 101 analysis is freaking my shit out.”

“Still hiding" Mr. Know it all answers.

“You’re smart, David Duchovny, not just a dick on a stick. You deserve your Ivy League pedigree. Now I know why I’ve always loved you. You are smarter than the average bear”

“You’re good at deflecting, aren’t you? Maybe one day, you’ll tell me who you really are. What you really want.”

“Forget about me. You’re the Golden Globe winner.” I say.

“Alright, then, Cece, One Day” he offers.

“I just want…people to remember my writing. I want to get under their skin...”

"So, you're an exhibitionist," David deducts, "Just not with your body."

"Maybe." I kind of answer him, rolling my bloodshot brown eyes, annoyed to no end.

Goddam Hollywood Hash. He's got me singing like Ethel Merman here.

David walks me out front in his flip flops at dawn to catch a taxi back home. I make sure to put his new IPhone 4s in my purse; just “borrowing” it. He’ll forgive me for it, later, I'm sure. It’s a fair trade for the giant orgasm I’ve been robbed of.

“I’m glad we finally met, Cece” Duchovny says, sweetly.
“Me, too, David. You’re alright, you know that? You turned out not to be one of those goddam phonies. Without you, I would have never made it to thirty. You were the wiscracking, literary, sex fiend East Coast boyfriend I always dreamed of. I owe you.”

The cab pulls up in front of us, and the street is so quiet, all I hear is the engine running and the radio.

I turn my head to listen, "The World's A Mess; It's In My Kiss." It's X - Duchovny's favorite band.

And then he leans over and kisses me, square on the mouth, with some force, only making me mourn his impotence even more.

“You broke your rule!” I tell him.

“That burger is making me feel dangerous...” he teases.

Goddam know it all men with New York accents. Goddam Salinger.

And then I climb into the cab, close the door and roll down the window.

“I’ll keep watching you on "Californication.” I say.

“Do you want to see it?” he asks coyly.
“It?”
“Me?” he confirms.
“Um, yes?”

David Duchovny leans over and kisses me once more. He unbuttons the top button of his GAP pleated pants and slowly pulls down his zipper.

My mouth starts watering, but I blame the THC.

“One Day!” David teases; smiling, pulling the zipper back up and buttoning the top of his pants. He waves goodbye and walks back toward the brownstone laughing; his black right eye even more prominent from the bottle of lube thrown at his face, hours earlier, now that the sun is rising.

“Goodnight, Cece!”
“Goodnight, Asshole!” I yell back, out the cab window. My chest still flushed in anticipation. The cab screeches off onto First Ave.

One day…story of my life…

Goddam anti-anxiety meds…
Goddam Club Med Whores…

Divine Intervention

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 06 May 2016 15:32:00 +0000

Divine Intervention

This week marks seven years since I was laid off from my 15 year tenure in high-pressure sales. This was my first job out of college and it ended when I was 37 years old. My new boss, who was younger and had once been my peer, asked if we could meet. I asked him if there was anything serious that I should know about, and he answered “Nope, just checking in!” as giddy as a KGB officer knocking on your door with a silencer, who says, “It’s okay, Madam, I just want to talk.”

I was laid off within five minutes. I had been given the old bait and switch.

I finished college wanting to go to grad school and write, but I owed Tulane 14 grand and they would not release my transcripts until I paid this. Plus, I owed Sallie Mae and a few credit card companies who so graciously gifted my unemployed self, thousands of dollars in credit. I was twenty-two years old and buried in debt. I had to dig myself out of that hole, and so I begrudgingly moved back to Chicago and started this job. By the time I received my transcripts (and my diploma!) at age thirty, I had to pay for my wedding and there was a baby on the way. The dream of being a writer felt done for. Caput. I would never get those years back. At work, I felt like the impetus for others to buy their dream cars, their dream homes, summer homes, homes abroad, and diamond bracelets for their wives, but who was helping make my dreams come true? I wanted to be a writer. I didn’t need much. I grew up with few financial resources and I could get by with very little.

My life in those fifteen years had gone 0-100 MPH every single day, and the days – 40, 60, 80 hours a week went by way too fast. I could never enjoy my children, much less a vacation or a day off without being planted in front of a computer or at an Internet café (bear with me Millennial) every day writing proposals. My post-partum, short lived four day work week always ended up being five. My grandmother died while I was on the computer in the business center at my hotel visiting her. I was at a funeral and one of the partners in my office insisted on a con call and sent me an obtuse email, refusing to spend five minutes to answer a client’s question. I repeated, “I’m at a FUNERAL.” No response.

After being laid off, I wondered – what’s next? I felt old. Who was I? I was so numb. All the time.
I wondered, was it possible to slow time and reignite the playfulness of my youth? To feel, alive?

Shortly after joining the ranks of the unemployed, thieves stole thousands of dollars of work clothes, nearly my entire wardrobe, from the back seat of my luxury SUV(I get misty eyed just remembering both the clothes and the car). Divine intervention? My friend, who is an independent filmmaker and knew of my life-long passion for writing, did not comfort me after the loss of my exquisite Piazza Sempione trench coat (like I had hoped he would) and instead said this, “Thank God you were robbed! You need to make it hard to go back to the way things were…”

The way things were…like fearing that I was accidentally going to crash my car into the viaduct on the highway…every single day…so I could stop racing…no one was going to tell me to get off this track…how many laptop keyboards could I destroy with my fists or cellular phones accidentally get thrown out my second floor window? I needed Divine intervention…

A few months later, I beat out 12 candidates for another high-pressure/paying job where I would make even more money than before. The recruiter said “I must have you!” but I just had to meet his boss, who was flying in especially to meet me. I was going through these motions because I thought this was what I had to do, rather than what I wanted. A girl without a familial golden parachute. A girl who had to feed and clothe herself. A girl who to this day still thinks she might end up in a woman’s shelter and has made numerous friends promise that she can live in their garages or guest rooms if it came to it. A girl who feared risk with every fiber of her body.

The day of the interview I had a terrible bout of what I assume was again – Divine intervention. I was throwing up and experiencing diarrhea that only Judd Apatow could possibly understand. I was so nervous and dehydrated that I could barely talk, my face looked slimy and green, my teeth were chattering and my limbs were shaking. I drank a cup of coffee, thinking it would wake me up, but instead I had gut wrenching stomach pains and was sweating worse than Mark Wahlberg after the seventh take of a sex scene in “Boogie Nights.” Even my normally cheery mother was rendered speechless when asked, “How do I look?” When she dropped me off at the interview, I told her to circle the block. My spasm filled guts told me this wouldn’t take long…

I sat in the conference room as my limbs jerked involuntarily and as sweat dripped from my forehead and onto the table, and then my dress, even though the room was a crisp, cool 60 degrees. The group of people assessing me were still wearing their coats and even sweaters and I was burning up so badly that all I yearned for was stripping off my constricting clothes and emptying the water cooler bottle above my head and over my naked body, in the hallway, followed by an old fashioned, satisfying, mouth open and drooling, nap, on the drenched, industrial grey carpet, like a happy hippo in a mud pit.

There was a girl sitting directly across the table from me with long dark brown hair, in glasses and a pant suit. She was me, fifteen years prior. I saw the blank expression on her face, the pale skin, the lack of vitality, one might say, misery. Like, the last girl Prince would write a song about. I thought this nightmare might be a Sartre, No Exit situation where I would be stuck with these disappointed corporate honchos, including my bitter, younger doppelganger, talking only in buzz words, for eternity.

I won over the boss, right off the bat, with my damp palms when we shook hands and then by laughing inappropriately and surprisingly somewhat fiendishly. Like when Tom Hanks hears his adult voice for the first time in the movie Big. I was possessed by a demon. I thought I might faint. I squinted as the fluorescent lights blinded my eyes. Sounds vibrated from soft to excruciatingly loud as if I had accidentally ingested magic mushrooms during Mardi Gras. My throat itched and my voice was hoarse like in a nightmare where no words can come out of your mouth. As if I could even remember a single word in the English language?

Everyone at that table wanted this Bataan Death March of interviews to end. The meeting only continued, I believe, in order to avoid a potential lawsuit for discriminating against a woman who lost control of all bodily fluids. You know how HR likes to cover its bases!

My insatiable thirst could not be quenched for water, which I kept pouring into my glass and spilling all over the table like Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas being asked about that Coke can during the Anita Hill hearings. The liquid just made me have to run out of the conference room and into the bathroom and I seriously considered making my home there in the stall permanent. My children could come and visit me on weekends, couldn’t they? The artificial scent of ocean breeze forced through the vents every five minutes wasn’t so bad. I never wanted to leave the security of that bathroom stall. I never wanted to go back into that conference room again. I never wanted to go back to that kind of life, again.

This layoff was my one chance to be…me again.

The interviewers got suspicious. Was I a dope fiend going through withdrawal? That’s certainly what it felt like. Shedding those clothes and that old life was incredibly painful. 15 years at the same job is a long time. Longer than my marriage or college - it was significant. Love it or hate it, I grew up at that job. To this day, I still dream about it.

I was pretty sure my mother was going to have to take me to the Emergency Room once I collapsed into her waiting car outside the office. I was too weak to even pull the seatbelt over my chest as my heartbeat was irregular and I was breathing heavily like those annoying marathon runners on the treadmill at the gym. The phone rang. The recruiter said (as nicely as my new boss had when asking me for that meeting) that he didn’t recognize the person in the interview and that his boss was going to take a pass.

Didn’t recognize me? I had never been so happy to hear that I was someone different.

I immediately remembered my friend from college, the tough talking New Yorker who had asked me seriously, a few years before being laid off, "Where have you gone?"

I hung up the phone and the speedy carousel spins started to subside. “Thank god, they took a pass!” I told my mother with the enthusiasm of someone about to receive a life-saving organ, “Thank God! Those people were trying to KILL ME!”

This layoff was my one chance…to go for it! To create the life that I had always dreamed of. To actually, live a life, you know, that I could defend, like in an Albert Brooks movie?

Seven years ago, I would not have been able to defend my life. Today I can. Thank you, universe, for that layoff.
I am different than that girl in the conference room seven years ago. I sold my luxury SUV and went to NYU to learn my craft. Older than my teachers and classmates, I savored eating 99 cent pizza slices every day and sleeping on the love seat with my best friend’s one eyed cat in her small, air conditioner-less studio. I’ve ridden on a night bus to NYC streaming Asian beauty pageants filled with exotic food eating immigrants (that I’m convinced doubled as an opium/knock off purse smuggling operation) fearful of falling asleep lest I wake up without a kidney. I won a free week writing in France and slept in a twelfth century house to the sound of waterfalls! Saw the American West for the first time on a week-long train ride and marveled at our enormous, magnificent and beautiful country. I know my late father and grandfather smiled at me from heaven when I passed though Glacier National Park in Montana. I perform at open mikes(and I'm over forty!)

I’m a writer! A writer. I live a writer’s life. Many many sacrifices have been made, but it has all been worth it. My father told me I have to believe there is no other alternative. My first novel is being published next month, and at a snail’s pace I have made it to the finish line of my transformation, of being different.

Let me be clear, many people came out of nowhere to help me realize this dream. I’m the result of people buying me a meal, coffee, letting me spend the night at their homes while traveling, introducing me to programs that I could apply to and encouraging me every single day. People who I’ve barely had a conversation with will pull me aside or email me and tell me how much my journey means to them, how my story may have moved them, how they live vicariously through my bare bones travels and adventures. So many friends have provided me with a golden parachute of sorts that’s made up of their belief in me.

I cry every time I think about that. My people are divine.

My higher self(you know, that person you always thought you could be?) has been realized. I’m comfortable in my own skin(well, more comfortable than ever before!) This is huge! Sometimes its like people are meeting me(i.e. the girl I always dreamed of becoming) for the very first time.

Risk, I found out, is good for you. It's how we all grow.

Since being laid off, I often hear, “You’re so passionate! When you talk about your writing, you get so excited! You emit JOY!”

Isn’t joy and bliss an ingredient of youth?

That’s right, my life is an adventure now. Every day offers the possibility for another great story to be born.

My kids tell me that I inspire them and they often tell me about their plans for life after college.

I've had the opportunity to go back in time, and to return to the path that I was on when I was twenty-two, that I had left open, and untraveled, but now I'm travelling that road with the wisdom, gratitude and life experience of maturity - to know how good I have it. Second chances are possible and sometimes Divine Intervention is necessary.

I hope some of you get laid off - at least those of you that need it – like I did - if only for the chance to look in the mirror, smile at someone you've missed - your true self, your higher self - and say “Yes! I knew you were still there!”

It's never too late!

TO BE IN PRINCE'S ENTOURAGE

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 21 Apr 2016 22:00:00 +0000

By the time I arrive at Paisley Park, my fingers and toes are numb, having just climbed a twenty foot mound of snow on all fours over a fence and into Prince’s sacred recording compound. There's a fifty degree below zero wind chill and my stark white faux fur jumpsuit does nothing to keep me safe from the elements. It's Minnesota…in March.

When I reach Prince’s mud room, there's nothing but bags of salt, rubber boots and enviably separated recyclables. At least one hundred bottles of Yoo-hoo in one bin. Guitar Center, Target and Ulta Beauty plastic bags in the other, a Costco sized cardboard box of Altoids.

“Take your shoes off” a tall black man with a bow tie tells me.
“Are you Jerome?” I ask.
The guard just rolls his eyes, annoyed, returning to his crossword puzzle and continuing to sip a Red Bull.
“Take your shoes off. Prince just polished the floors.”

I delicately place my snow boots next to a pair of high heeled purple cowboy boots my toddler might fit into.

At the end of the mud room there's a door, with hanging white beads. Behind those beads is a purple light. I think, why not “Blue?” You know, like the song? It doesn’t matter. The purple light...like a moth to the flame... I...must...go...there...

“Where do you think you’re going?” the man, refusing to admit he's Jerome from Purple Rain, asks.
“In…there?”
I point toward the beaded doorway.
“What’s the password?”
“The password?”
“Yes, the password”
Although still trembling from the cold, dressed in a purple satin negligee, I take a deep breath and smile. I've got this.
“What,” I answer.
“What?”
“The password is what.”
"What?"
"The password is what! You know, like you told Morris Day in the movie Purple Rain!" I yell.
“I told you I'm not Jerome. Are you trying to mess with me? Are you even black?”
“Not that I know of!"
“Are you Latin?”
“Si, Si. Ciao Bello! Come sta?” I answer confidently.
“You're speaking Italian.”
“No, Hablo espanol! Taco, burrito, Corona. Tony Orlando?”
“You’re not Spanish.”
Like an MI6 agent, I changed accents quickly.
“That’s because I’m from Scotland and I’m the great love of Sonny Crockett from Miami Vice. You’ve Got The Look, Jerome!”
“I’m NOT Jerome! Do you even play an instrument?”
“Are you kidding? Of course, I can play an instrument! I'm a percussionist.”
I tap my lilac painted nails on Not Jerome’s brand new IPAD screen. He is not happy.
“Do you believe in God?” he asks, seriously.
“Oh, absolutely. I believe in Jesus Christ as my Savior. Can I save you? I forgot to ask you when I first walked in the door. Thanks for reminding me. I forgot my pamphlets.”
“You need to leave Miss, and you know what, you don’t look 29!”
I grab my white fur snow suit and bend over to place my foot into the first pant leg, preparing to leave. I hope Not Jerome is looking at my backside while I have time to come up with something. I notice that he's still frustrated by his crossword.
“Wait, wait, I don’t want to leave yet. Being in Prince’s entourage is on my list of things to do before I turn forty, I mean thirty! I swear I will cleanse my naked body in the waters of Lake Minnetonka. You’ll just have to drive me there. I’m afraid I told my cabbie to go.”
"You're a dreamer and a fool," the man denying that fact that he is Jerome tells me.
"Yes, I do dream a lot. I'm always so brave in my dreams; sexy, witty, a problem solver. I usually wake up in the morning slightly melancholy and exhausted." I respond.
“I’ve heard enough, you’re outta here. You could never be in Prince’s entourage.”
"I thought admission was EASY here, remember?" quoting song lyrics that made me hopeful.
I spy the crossword with my third eye for a quick second and I thank god for having fed my brain meaningless bits of pop culture since infancy.
“Rhoda” I scream.
“What?” In denial he is Jerome asks.
This is when being the daughter of a white Baby Boomer mesmerized with television becomes an asset.
“Spinoff of the Mary Tyler Moore Show? Thirty Across.”
Not Jerome hesitantly writes the word in.
“Fine, you’re in," Jerome concedes, happy to have beaten his all-time best record for finishing the Friday New York Times crossword. He couldn't wait to regale Prince with his victory tale later that morning over pancakes. Prince, a virtuoso since early childhood, was rarely impressed.

It's even more beautiful than I could have imagined, once I saunter through those white beads and into the heart and soul of Paisley Park.

I hear from afar, my most favorite lyrics of all being sung.

Girl, you got an ass like I’ve never seen……

Weak, I tell you, weak in the knees, I was, trying not to slide across the freshly polished floor.

I’m drenched in purple light and follow what looks like the yellow brick road into a large Drawing Room, with a dance floor, and mirrors on the walls. I am reminded of the Kiss video.

At the end of the yellow brick road there is a giant pedestal, with a golden throne atop. There he sits, in all his purple glory, Prince, in tight black pants, and a purple paisley satin scarf around his neck, drinking Yoo-hoo, and with tiny feet dangling off his chair(I'm envious as I wear size 11.) A young girl dressed as a belly dancer stands beside him with a hand held mirror. Prince turns his head toward the mirror to fix his hair every few minutes or so while he speaks.

“And you are?” his royal highness asks.
“Cathy B.”
“Cathy B.?”
“Yes, like Sheila E. She's my cousin.”
"What's your style?" Prince asks.
"Oh, you know, Nasty Girl/Sex Shooter living in an Erotic City wanting a Love Bizarre."
“Do you believe in God?” he asks. This line of questioning is getting old fast.
“Yes,” I answer,” when I bought your album, for the first time, with your picture on it, I thought I was looking at the face of Jesus. The older girls made me memorize and recite the lyrics to Dirty Mind at slumber parties or else they would put my hand in warm water while I slept so that I would pee myself"
“I’m flattered, but you didn’t answer my question. Do you believe in God?”
Then I try to throw him for a loop, “Only when I hear your music, Prince. Your songs, the dirty ones.”
“The Dirty ones? But you know I stopped playing those in concert. I'm a man of God now.”
“You were a man of God when you wrote those songs. At times, those lyrics, those melodies, well, they make me have…visions. You have indeed provided me with numerous religious experiences...and, of course...orgasms.”
“I’m glad my music affected you so, Cathy B., but unfortunately I can’t play those songs anymore.”
“I'm deeply saddened by that decision, Prince. I'll never be able to take a bubble bath and not think of The Ballad of Dorothy Parker. Pure poetry. And It from Sign O' the Times, well, way to put it out there! Slow Love and Adore can’t be on that list. They’re just too damn beautiful - precious works of art, really. I could live without Head, since when it plays, it sets up, well, and you know, probably from experience, expectations for an evening? I don’t want to disappoint or vice versa. And the line All good things they say never last, and love isn’t love until its past from the song Sometimes it
Snows in April, from the album Parade? Well, I hate the month of April, you and T.S. Eliot are on the same page for that one. April is truly, the cruelest month. The critics, they really tore you a new one over Purple Rain’s follow up film, Under The Cherry Moon, didn’t they? So unfair!
And Sexy Mother Fucker I can’t even begin to tell you…that should have sealed the deal with the Kennedy Center honors as far as I'm concerned..."

“Okay, okay, so you like my music,” Prince says, trying to shut me up. I'm wasting his time.
“I think you are a musical genius,” I tell him looking into his seductive and all-knowing brown eyes.
“Tell me, Cathy B. Why are you here?”
“Why am I here?" I ask back, "Great question, Prince! Well, one of my items on my to do list before turning thirty is to be in your entourage.”
“Thirty?”
“Yes, thirty. All I need are a few sit ups and a spray tan and I am good to go. My biracial heritage slows the aging process...”
“You can’t be black.”
“But my soul is. And you let Sheena Easton in and she’s not black!”
“Sheena can do the splits!” Prince screams back at me, with a fire in his eyes.
“Listen, Prince. If you want to see an ass shake, then I’m your girl!” straight out of the Purple Rain playbook, that one.
“Fine, but make it quick. My mani/pedi starts in a half hour!”

First Prince asks me to sing.
It was just like my American Idol audition, all over again:

I ain’t saying your helpless but sometimes, sometimes, those are the things, that being in love’s about…

Prince winces at the sound of my voice and opens his mouth wide for some Lutefisk that is hand fed to him by the teenaged belly dancer. The Patchouli incense burning throughout the room does nothing to diffuse the smell of the stinky fish. In the purple light, Prince begins to resemble less like my idol, and more and more like Brando at the end of Apocalypse Now. He puts on black mascara in front of the hand held mirror while chewing loudly on the white jelly like substance. No wonder Paisley Park has a fence around it.

Then Prince asks me to dance.

But, I’m wearing black fishnet stockings, and he just got the floors polished, and…well, I slip and fall right onto my back, hitting my head, hard. I hear my Wendy and Lisa inspired hair spray hair crunch against the wood. I see stars until I determine it’s just a disco ball hanging from the ceiling above me. I pull myself back onto my feet quickly, just like my personal trainer always tells me to. I need to demonstrate quick reflexes. I fear Prince might question my age again...

“How white are you?” he asks me, giggling. The Yoo-hoo Prince was just drinking shoots right out of his nose.
“A Daughter of the American Revolution, actually. Do you like crust less finger sandwiches?”

“I need you to be exotic, Latin, bi-racial, a musician, a singer. I only work with the best.”
“I mean I am Mediterranean. I can put a curse on your friend in the mud room, you know, the one who is pretending he is Not Jerome. I just need a goat…and a switchblade.”

“Enough!” Prince is getting kind of pissed now, I’m wasting his time, and he needs another Yoo-hoo.
“Jerome!” Prince yells from his golden throne.

I knew it! I heard from the Paisleyvineearlier that day that Morris Day of The Time loaned Jerome out to Prince in exchange for paying off some of his gambling debts to the Minnesota Mob. Another life ruined by a fixed Pakistani Cricket game.

“Get this girl out of here! She’s CRAZY. And get me another Yoo-hoo, Dammit!”
Jerome strong arms me now, wearing a bow-tie is not indicative of being a nice person, I determine. He drags me by my giant feet while my satin teddy slides across the shiny, sparkling dance floor. I feel like I am about to drown in quick sand. My dream of being in Prince's entourage before turning forty has been ruined by my parent's lack of paying for song and dance lessons as a child. I couldn't wait to blame them in person and of course, tell my therapist all about this "breakthrough."

“You’ll regret this Prince!” I yell. “You suck Purple Ass!” I scream mid-drag. “And so do the Vikings!” "I could never root for Brett dick pic Favre!" "Even for you, Prince!" “I’m glad Warner Brothers took your money!”

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 19 Apr 2016 16:06:00 +0000

First look at my debut novel, On Elizabeth Street! Available June 4th!

Billiards Digest November 2015 Cover Article,"The Epitome of Cool"

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 19 Apr 2016 15:50:00 +0000

An essay on my late father, Freddy 'the Beard' Bentivegna, David Mamet, Helaine Garren and the pool room that inspired Walter Tevis to write "The Hustler" - Bensinger's Billiard Academy

http://www.billiardsdigest.com/new_current_issue/nov_15/bb_index.php

Spotted Dick: Chapter One

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 11 Sep 2015 21:18:00 +0000

November, 1989

“Please don’t send me to the Gulag for saying this,” the elderly man whispered across a
splintered wooden table tucked away in a corner of the local police station, fearful memories of the
early Soviet occupation still replaying in his head. The never ending rapes of German women and girls,
relocations, more train rides that did not end well. Comeuppance, perhaps? These were not financial
reparations by any means, but psychological and spiritual revenge. It was about submitting and being
dominated. The farmer, now mayor, did so peacefully as a lamb, in order to return to some semblance
of sanity, which to him, was working in the fields. It was physically exhausting, yes, but also a
calm and soothing way of life, and he worked at it doggedly, like a cart horse with blinders on. To the
mayor, stability- through ignorance - was bliss. His current responsibility- a man – recently moving
into his small, East German town, that he ruled, for show only(or so he thought) was ruining that bliss.

The station was a converted barn that once housed livestock and emitted a pungent porcine
odor, especially when the doors were closed and windows shut as they were that afternoon to keep out
the cold. A peasant farmer descended from a long line of peasant farmers, the old man had long been
counted on to not think too much, ask any questions, or complain, yet he found himself complaining
today. If it wasn’t for his hysterical wife beating him with a broom the day before and insisting he do
something about the crisis in their small town, he would not have sent the urgent message to Berlin. This
was a man who’s only affectation was an occasional cup of real coffee to help him through a long, hard,
work day – one of the perks of being mayor. He did not drink, nor smoke, and other than the coffee,
which, how could you blame the guy for wanting real coffee, could not be “bought.” He loved patriarchy
and deferred easily to his younger superiors, such as the well-dressed man who sat
across from him. This obedience was why he was the incumbent mayor for the past thirty years.

It was cooler than normal that November and the gloomy grey sky outside and chill in the air
made one think it was about to snow. Only massive amounts of cigarette smoke could mask the stench
of the old slaughterhouse. The Lieutenant, who sat across from the old man, winced after the smell
entered his large nostrils and proceeded to light up. Feigning interest, he force himself to stare right
back at the mayor, who was wearing a soiled and dusty tweed coat, with brown dirt visible underneath
his seventy-five year old fingers, the remnants of having picked turnips out of the ground just that
morning, his jet black hair slicked back with sweat and grease, trying to make a good impression, his
cobalt blue eyes red with dust, beads of sweat forming above his brow and descending down the deeply
cut lines of his bright red cheeks and a nose rosy with burst capillaries, “but he’s horrible.”

The mayor looked around the open police headquarters, hoping no one else had heard him.
“He is a…special case, yes,” the Lieutenant agreed, nodding his head.
“Comrade, please forgive me, I want to do my part for the party, I do, really I do. I will do it,
gladly, but it’s just that we’re a small, quiet town of farmers, working hard to produce for the people of
East Germany. We’re old fashioned and simple and know not of city ways - especially sex, drugs and rock
and roll. The people here, they hate him.”

The Lieutenant, twenty-five years younger than the mayor, had won awards for calming down
shaky and scared snipers on the East side of the Berlin Wall. That’s why he had been hand-picked by
Moscow to work a “special case” some fifteen years ago - he webbed words laced with catnip that never
failed to seduce and subdue the listener. He didn’t care much for politics. Politics – Fascism specifically –
had been the ruin of his entire family. How could his parents have been so foolish as to believe in
anyone other than themselves?

In person and by his military service record, the Lieutenant appeared to be the most devout and
by the book spy for the Stasi - the East German Secret Police where everything was green-lighted and
under direct order from the KGB in Moscow, but every single thing Lieutenant Kristopher Schroeder did
every single day, was for himself – period. It was the only motivating factor in his getting out of bed
every morning – to take care of himself – to survive, like he did selling metal scraps he stole from
abandoned farm equipment to buy food after the War ended and he was homeless, orphaned and
alone. His nanny had spoken both Russian and Polish to him as a child, so Kristopher spent most of his
time in the Russian quadrant of Berlin hustling in the black market. It was a relief to speak a language
other than his mother-tongue, German. There was something about disassociating himself with Hitler,
Fascism, mass destruction and death – that warranted a new beginning. The Soviets promised they were
the peace keepers. Most East German citizens felt they had no choice but to be there, “on the other
side” but some, like Kristopher, wanted to be. The “old” Germany was marked with so much failure. At
least the “new” Germany, on the East Side, for what it lacked in freedom and civil liberty, it made up
for as a place to break free and begin again for those who remembered the past, a humiliating past.
How much longer would this East side last? Where would he go if the wall actually fell as was predicted?
What new set of liars would he have to bow to?

He hated his parents, he hated his grandparents, his aunts, his uncles, his cousins, all fools, he
would tell himself. Even with all of this sour bitterness, like the taste of molded bread he ate huddled
fireside in the freezing cold next to shattered glass and empty cathedrals in the decrepit and
post-apocalyptic looking Berlin, he didn’t want to hate Germany, the land, the salt of the earth people,
the peasants, like this mayor, people who worked with their hands and whose downfall was their
susceptibility to be used as simple minded minions serving a blood thirsty cult not of their own
invention, of which they would pay the price for generations forward.

He was a great, great, spy - the best – and turned the most sought after assets from the West to
his side, the peace side, the East side. He allowed himself to be led by this new group of blind
politicos, but he would never be the fool. He knew exactly how the system worked and he would not
invest or sacrifice anything into it, that he did not receive back two-fold. He leveraged his talents
for his own good, his own personal prosperity, and definitely not on behalf of a mustached charismatic
leader, a buffoon. Even the new, mustached buffoons. No, Kristopher existed only for himself. His only
responsibility being one over the hill, ex-pat Englishman, causing trouble for the folks of yet another
quaint East German town, a one-hit wonder, seventh in line to the Earl of Glastonbury, Lord Richard
Lionel Albert Wickham aka Spotted Dick.

“Mayor,” the Lieutenant began calmly, “thank you for being so candid with me. I told you to
contact me anytime you needed me, so here I am, all the way from Berlin, just to see you!”

“And him, The Englishman – I hope. The people…”

“Yes, him, too.”

“Good, thank you.” The mayor seemed relieved. He wondered if the Lieutenant understood that
he neither needed nor wanted to be so important to his country - to the fate of world peace – the fate
of communism in the East. He just wanted to be left alone with his chubby, raven haired wife who kept
him warm at night.

“I will do what I can to get a handle on the situation. I will. Oh, and, I’ve brought some coffee
and that anti-itch cream you like for your wife.”

The Lieutenant opened his brief case and passed the two items across the table. The mayor
went to grab them and the Lieutenant placed his hand, like a Lion’s giant paw, on top of the mayor’s
hard worked, wrinkled, calloused hands.

“You are providing the most important service in all of the country. Remember that. I chose you.
(he had to remember the Mayor’s first name but blanked for a moment, too much vodka on the train
ride that morning - Boris? Karl?)There will be parades and a statue of you in the town square one day. Understand?”

“I, I just don’t understand how he could be so important to peace?”

“Don’t worry about understanding. That is what the party is for. Just please keep him safe and
happy a little while longer, that is all, I promise. Believe me, I know how difficult he can be, I, myself,
have been waiting a long time for him to finally be useful.”

The Lieutenant ceased clutching the mayor’s hand and lit up a cigarette.

“Thank you comrade. Especially for travelling all the way here. It is a great honor to serve this
great country. To help bring peace!”

“To peace,” the Lieutenant nodded, exhaling cigarette smoke across the scratchy table. “Peace.”
Yours and mine, he thought.

New Excerpt from: A Pool Hustler's Daughter: A Head for Numbers

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 02 Aug 2015 15:57:00 +0000

There was just enough caffeine in Frankie’s iced mocha to keep her alert enough to teach her last class of the Spring semester at Columbia University – Calculus II. Comprised of mostly high achieving eighteen year old’s who completed AP Calculus in high school, the class was full at fifty today as everyone seemed to show up to review for the final. Not considered the most inspiring of teaching assistants, the material seemed so basic and simplistic that she had little empathy for the kids who she knew had been granted large financial aid packages and were struggling – a racket just like any other, her father warned her, just at the federal level, even Murder, Incorporated doesn’t get this much juice…

“That’s five thousand dollars you just wasted on an incomplete! Do you know how long you have to work and save to pay off seven thousand dollars after years of compound student loan interest, less taxes? Maybe you’re not cut out for pre-med,” she would yell at a student matter-of-factly, her nickname, “Atila the Hun” having preceded her. She thought she was telling it to them straight, she thought she was doing them a favor, teaching them something valuable – inside knowledge. The loan system was “gaffed up” to fuck them. I’m going to teach you all the gaffs in the world so you can avoid them – the secret knowledge – her father told her – the world, the system ain’t set up to do you no favors, remember that, you make your own magic…at least if you know how something is gaffed up, you gotta chance to beat it…

No one took numbers or money more seriously than Francesca ”Frankie” Giovanna Jones aka The Pool Hustler’s Daughter. Not only had she experienced first-hand the blood, sweat and tears that it took to acquire money, but she also knew the agony of student loan debt. This was technically her ninth year at Columbia University, she was taking her orals in ten days to defend her PHD dissertation on the Mobius Strip, and she was almost two hundred thousand dollars in student loan debt. A promising career as an attractive yet curmudgeonly Ivy League Math Professor would do very little to eliminate those debts. This debt pounded loudly under the floorboards of her dark, Poe tortured mind. How would she ever pay it off?

She had already tried her hand at high finance through a summer internship at a Wall Street clearing house. She liked the pace of the number crunching and the dividends her skill set could provide for her in expensive New York City, however, the cat calls and endless inappropriate touching from male “colleagues” that came to a head – literally – under the table at a reserved celebratory dinner for an eighty year old partner named “Chip” at the Union League was the last straw. Frankie promptly ended her career the next day after spiking her sexual assailant/mentor’s coffee with ex-lax and locking the door to the men’s bathroom, an old pool room stunt her father had once told her about. Yes, she was vengeful, she was half-Sicilian after all and she felt her blood boil on occasions like this one. This “mentor” was lucky he had gotten off so easily, as it would only take one phone call to her father’s childhood friend The General to have him wiped off the face of the earth. In fact, she couldn’t even talk about this incident in front of him, The General was so proactive in protecting her, just like she was his own daughter, that she never wanted to get his blood boiling unless it was an absolute emergency. Yes, it was much safer to handle situations like this one all by herself. Didn’t growing up a Pool Hustler’s Daughter arm her with the ammunition to do so?

The only way Frankie had seen six figures cash come to fruition was from gambling – on the ponies, on the pool table, over cards. She didn’t even like to gamble. Even though she was naturally talented at it as a near-math genius, it was excruciating for her. This didn’t stop her father, however, to take her on a tour of the casinos in Las Vegas, under the guise of a special trip for her eighteenth birthday, to capitalize on her ability to count cards. Little did her students know that her image was on every computer security database at Casinos across the country after her and her father’s little “tour” ended. They were lucky enough to have had The General negotiate a deal to give the cash back as long as she didn’t gamble in a casino again, which she was more than happy to agree to. Yes, you only want to bring The General in when you really need him.

That was the last time Frankie had spent any significant time with her father and instead buried her head in books and rarely left campus in that little enclave of upper north west Manhattan, except to borrow clothes from her glamorous and well-taken-care -by-a-sugar daddy-former model-mother. Every three months or so she would have thrilling, flirtatious, sexually inspiring yet chaste and confusing lunches with her “square” ex-boyfriend from undergrad who always wanted to “check in” on her when he came to town. Even though he’d moved on from her and her desperate and dangerous subterranean society - she thought she still made him happy – she hoped she still made him happy. No one ever smiled at her with their eyes before him. No one ever made her blood boil – that way – but him.

Frankie had been walking around like a zombie most days from lack of sleep prepping for her orals. She had a slump around three in the afternoon and required something sweet. Summer came early to New York City and the temperature hit the mid-eighties in the last weeks of May, so she armed herself with an iced mocha. In the winter months, she would order peppermint mocha – hot. Her father, a pool hustler, was a nocturnal athlete and had to stay up for days gambling. When he was younger, in the seventies, he took amphetamines, or would drink ten cups of Greek coffee shop coffee and then power nap. In fact, she had never known her father to be able to sleep longer than three hours at a time.

Frankie tried to nap, and she did once in a while. Her Aunts called her father narcoleptic as he could fall asleep at the drop of a hat. Bombs could be exploding, sirens wailing, horns honking, phones ringing and he would not be woken. Frankie could be at a nightclub and the same thing. Boom, Boom, Boom the music blasted out of speakers and at the snap of fingers, she would be in a near coma, drooling on a cocktail table, her face covered in her mass of thick, honey hair.

Frankie was only twenty-six years old and therefore, not much older than her students in the class. She tried to appear mature and dressed accordingly, masking her curves, dirty blonde hair and David Bowie eyes by no cleavage, her hair in a bun and thick glasses. She needed them to know she was the leader, the Alpha, the leader of the Pride…She had to finish and complete tasks. It might have been her OCD pushing her to do so, but it was her father who had beaten this into her head on many an occasion. She never discussed her goals with anyone. She only talked about something she had achieved after she completed it. When asked by friends and colleagues what she was up to, she always answered, “You know, being productive.” She would never say “busy.” Busy was for losers, her father taught her, you’re productive.

Hustlers received no points for trying or for level of effort. The pool room was a results based economy. You had to win at something (a game of some sort) or pick a winner to get paid. That’s it – cut and dry math. This paradigm replicated itself in Frankie when it came to her academic career. No breaks to travel, just more classes after her father’s card counting fiasco. School was expensive and her responsibilities cost her money. Everything cost money from rent to her iced mochas – everything had a monetary value. Her time was valuable.

At age ten her father asked her to explain the value of a fifty dollar jean jacket that she wanted, tell me the value, he asked. If Frankie could prove her sincere, deep desire for said jacket, he would buy it right then, right there, on the spot. If she could not convince him of her passion for that jacket, she would leave the store empty handed. Remember, Frankie, even though I’m your father, I’m technically you’re backer. You need to be 100% invested or I’m not backing you. Okay, you’re my daughter, and not a pool player, so I’ll lower that standard to 90 percent…when you want something baby girl, be committed, he would press her, be relentless…

Mad Men Season Finale! SHHH!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 15 May 2015 17:14:00 +0000

Wow, I just left Matt Weiner's screening room where I was fortunate enough to have seen the last episode of AMC's "Mad Men!" Yes, that's right - the last episode! Prepare yourself for some spoilers!

So, Don Draper has returned to McCann(no, not the band McKenzie Phillips, silly!) and is again sitting in that large Board Room(it's called Bored room for a reason!) refusing to take any notes on Coca Cola while twelve other Creative Directors, all male, in similar suits, and pomade hair and stale cigarette smoke, compete to see who can ask the copy writers and art staff the most provocative and knowledgeable questions. It's a contest that takes place in this Board room nearly every single day and Don Draper will have none of it. Roger Sterling is pretending to listen to this bullshit while secretly admiring a Playboy magazine under the table, on his lap, trying not to piss himself. Pete Campbell is smiling and trying to get along with everyone while thinking, "my family is the oldest one in this room" and, "I can't stomach this new money" and, "I wonder if anyone knows that Au Pair is buried below the swing set in Gramercy Square Park, ha! I am one of the few who have access to a key..." Media bastard Harry Crane is also sitting at the table, passing Lobster Thermador and scotch gas every ninety seconds, so bloated with a pasty and pimpled belly layered with butter fat rolls that he cannot button his jacket, scheming to blackmail more women to sleep with him in return for professional favors. Ted is leering at Peggy lasciviously just to screw with her head, as he is prone to do, because he is a sentimental sell out who pretends to be real. Peggy, on the other hand, has been relegated to sitting at the "kiddie table" with the small wooden school chairs and the remaining black secretary who is taking notes and trying to cross her legs in such a way so that no one will be able to look up her short skirt. Don's devoted secretary Meredith is under the table, giving Joan's throw away Ferg a blow job, as we all know she is willing to do anything to please.

Suddenly, the head of McCann, Jim Hobart, enters with blood stained Bergdorf Goodman pants. There is a machine gun pointing to the back of his head being held by none other than Joan who is an army green jump suit beside Patty Hearst, who is also in a jumpsuit and brandishing a weapon. Ben, having recently been broken out of the nut ward at Bellevue, is holding McCann's scrotum in his hands.

"What can I say, he likes to cut things?" Joan giggles.

"The ghost of Hemingway, who is now a Martian, that speaks to me through computers, told me to do it!" hollers Ben, "I'm going to die a virgin, aren't I?"

"Joan? What are you doing? Stop this!" cries Roger, "Stop this, immediately! You're going to give me a bad trip!"

"Oh, shut up, Roger! You could have forced McCann to pay me all my money and you didn't. You keep bragging about your time in the Navy, but all you keep showing us is what a limp dick pussy you really are. You couldn't stand up to a midget. By the way, do you even know that women are capable of orgasms??? Peggy and I used to give them to one another all the time in the coffee room while your drunken asses were taking naps!"

"How do you think we could get through the day surrounded by you assholes?" Peggy laughs.

"NOOOO!' the remaining Admen in the office scream, in what appears to be camera induced slow motion, as the men reach for their hearts that have now been staked repeatedly, Alfred Hitchcock-shower-in-Psycho-style, after imagining such an erotic, girl on girl scene taking place right under their noses, after all those years...it is an emotional pain so severe that causes at least one Ad Man to just drop dead at the table those goddamn selfish bitches his final thoughts...

"Wait, wait. Seriously, this is awful" Peggy begs, "You know I have nothing else in my life except this job! And my rat infested New York City apartment building that will one day be worth twenty million dollars!"

"Wake up, Peggy. You've got Stan Rizzo! He might be the only real man in this entire hell hole and he wears suede fringe vests!" Joan screams.

"Joan, seriously, you're going to hurt someone!" Peggy argues.

"I'm going to hurt someone?" Joan asks and then fires five rounds into phony Ferg without batting an eye.

The blonde bouffant from Don's secretary Meredith is covered in blood.

"Get the fuck out of here, dipshit," Joan orders as Don's secretary runs out screaming, "Stop justifying misogyny!"

"Please!" the head of McCann yells, "I'll give you the other half of your money!"

"Please, what? I thought you said you were going to hire less women? Give them less power? Don't you want women to be "fun"? This, this, to me, is having fun!" Joan cackles.

"Joanie, you don't want to do this! Think of Kevin, your son!" Don argues in his smooth talking, take your panties off voice.

"I am thinking of him. I want him to know his mother has BALLS. His mother died for something. I want him to grow up in a world where his daughter gets paid just as much as a man. I don't want to wait another fifty years for this to happen! My God, can we get a woman president of the United Fucking States already? Israel is less than thirty years old and they've got Golda Meir!"

"You're right, Joan. You're goddam right." Peggy agrees.

"It's time to say, Sayonara boys!" Joan orders, swinging her machine gun around the room, taking out Creative Directors like Bunnies in a Carnival shooting game.

"Please," the head of McCann orders weakly.

"Here's your fifty percent, cocksucker!" Joan yells as she shoots fifty rounds into the head of McCann and then throws his bloody scrotum back in his face.

"You're mad!" Pete Campbell yells, "At the very least, get rid of Harry Crane. You know we all can't stand him! He's from Wisconsin for Crissake!"

"Gladly!" Joan yells and shoots Harry down, and the room immediately starts to smell better.

"Thank you!" Pete answers, "I told you all that Joan would be a great Partner!"

"Roger, you can live, but only because Caroline, your secretary, would be out of a job," Joan concedes, "and I don't think you can even wipe your own ass without her around."

"What about Kevin?" Peggy asks.

"You're going to raise him for me, Peggy. I'm going to provide you the redemption you deserve for giving up your kid. Just make sure that Kevin knows what a hot piece of ass his mother was," Joan requests.

"I will" Peggy agrees, "and she was."

"One of the upsides to being Office Manager is that I was able to reconstruct all of your life insurance policies to be payable to the National Organization of Women, The ACLU and the NAACP. And Peggy, you are now sole beneficiary of Burt Cooper's estate and can start your own goddamn advertising company. It's the best thing I ever got in return for sleeping with an aesthetically inferior, bald, middle aged man."

"What about me?" Don asks.

"What about you? This whole fucking show has been about you! I'm sick of you! We all are! You pretend to care about people but you really never did a goddamn thing for anybody but yourself. You could have been the moral conscious of this show and you weren't. You could have stood up for so many of us and you didn't. You don't need to jump out that window, because I'm going to push you!" Joan yells, and with that last remark pushes Don out the window. Joan unzips her jump suit and flashes the remaining men and women in the room her million dollar breasts. "You'll never see the likes of these sweet titties ever again! Long live Betty Freidan!" her last words, and with a giant, peace-with-God smile, jumps out of the window onto Madison Avenue.

Cue music.

24 Hours in the life of a Pool Hustler's Daughter

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 30 Jan 2015 17:49:00 +0000

I happen to be a woman who loved her father - adored him - and my father was a pool hustler.

For the past ten years, I've had to accept the fact that my father would not be in town for my birthday. Why? Because every year, late in January, he was relocating to Derby City for his buddy, Diamond Billiard's genius visionary, Greg Sullivan's pool tournament, The Derby City Classic. Greg realized that pool is about characters and action and he’s done everything to promote those two most exciting elements of the game. Pool players don’t want to wear tuxedos, and they don’t want to play low-risk/reward games.

Even Minnesota Fats, the most recognizable name in pool lore, could never win a game unless there was high risk, with the chance of high reward. My father, Freddy "the Beard" Bentivegna, had the same mentality; most hustlers in the “secret society” do.

And Greg’s made it a meritocracy where the pool bug or amateur also gets the chance to rub elbows with the world champions – which is thrilling – and fulfills the deepest desires of the revelers at the tournament – to be a part of something, “big.” Derby City operates more like an old fashioned pool room, where everyone has a chance of winning, making their mark, with an affordable entry fee. Who knows who you’ll pick to play in the first round??? Just the opportunity to play a world champion fuels the fire of many entrants. This is America, there’s always the chance for upward mobility. And "desire rules the world," according to my father.

World Champions and pool bugs, legends and neophytes, now had the chance to all convene at one location and make one interesting and democratic roux…and it reminded the old timers of the glory days of the famed Johnston City...

The fact that this event was in Kentucky (or across the river) was another motivating factor for my father to attend, because anyone with half a pool brain knows Kentucky (like Chicago) is where the world's best bankers are born and bred. Those kids - like DCC 2015 Banks Champion Shannon Daulton, grow up playing banks. Since my Pops was not only a player, but a scholar of the game of banks, "the Foremost Pool Scientist of America," the author of “Banking with the Beard,” he spent most of his pool life learning and perfecting this particular game culminating in his instructional books and dvds on his website bankingwiththebeard.com. Knowing how to bank balls is a great asset in almost every other game offered on the tourney ticket.

My lord, the old man even had a theme song, written for him called "Banking with the Beard" that you can listen to on his website. His motto was “Bank on, Brother!”

I had not attended this tournament before this year, because, like most children of gamblers, I held a superstition that I might distract my father from winning games. I often stayed in the hotel, or at the hotel pool, while games were going on during a tournament, or when he was hustling. My theory was that when I did this, I helped him win a lot of money. He told me I never affected his play, so it really was my own nerves that got in the way. Like most little girls, I always wanted my Daddy to win. It was the one day I decided to stay at the hotel, and not accompany him to the racetrack, that he returned that day with forty grand. This happened when I was a tween, and I never forgot it. There was also the time when I was around six years old, that my Dad got into a fight at the basement at Bensinger’s in Chicago(the other guy punched first) and my Dad had a bloody nose. Between these two incidents in my formative years, I tended to not stick around when my father was gambling.

The last official tournament I attended was in South Philly in the summer of 1990. I was eighteen and on summer break from college and my father convinced my brother and I to drive to Nashville for the pool expo there and then on to Philly for the one-pocket tournament. Of course, we were only included on this trip because my father didn't want to do the driving, so we took turns driving his decade old giant green Cadillac gas guzzler while he reclined in the spacious back seat, timing himself while completing New York Times Crossword Puzzles, speed reading books, and constantly asking us to pull over for something to eat or drink. If I was his backer, rather than his daughter, I would have probably left him on the side of the road, he was such a pool prima donna.

When we arrived in Nashville, he spotted Minnesota Fats immediately and my Dad grabbed me and introduced me, "Fatty, this is my daughter." I was in awe. All the other players swarmed Fatty, just as my father always preached, that the man had a magnetic personality. Fans hung on his every word – the way he told stories in such a unique, hilarious and captivating way. Who knew my father would also be in possession of a similar gift? He also told me that Fatty was good for a "bite" i.e. twenty bucks for a player to get some action, and always had pretty "broads." "How do you think he gets those broads? Like…pageant winners?" my father would ask me, his extremely insecure progeny, “Fats ain’t no great looking guy!" he joked. “Personality!" he shouted, "Personality!!!"

Our next stop was South Philly, which I will have to write about separately, as it was such an incredible experience - from the mobbed-up pool room - to the decadent Italian meals and retro neighborhood that made you think it was 1945. Better than any “Rocky” movie. In one incident, our Cadillac had to come to an abrupt stop as the car in front of us braked suddenly and an angry Italian man got out of his car with a tire iron in hand to threaten the driver ahead of him. "Brings a tear to my eye!" my father said, watching the "Mean Streets" like, drama unfold, "It's like my neighborhood was 50 years ago. They're like civilized now, like Yuppies compared to these eggs. Philly’s like a time machine."

The other highlight of that trip was hanging out with Cornbread Red, Jersey Red, Johnny Irvilino Grady “The Professor” Matthews, and Jack Cooney - my unofficial pool godfather. So, yes, an extra-special week 25 years ago was the last time I went to a pool tournament with my father. And it was so magnificent and magical, that I never believed it could be topped – until now.

This year, I would go to my first pool tournament without my father, who passed away June 18th. Everyone told me my father "held court" at Derby City and it wasn't until I walked over to the main arena at the Horseshoe Casino, that I began to feel…important…and my father’s importance. DCC's King himself - Greg Sullivan - was like the sweetest grandpa (who might rob ya’) that you’ve ever met; I can’t begin to tell you the generosity, hospitality and kindness his wife and daughters lavished me with. The mantra was that “it’s not the same without him.” I could barely walk two feet without a pool “hustler,” star champion or “bug” to come up to me to give their condolences.

Shannon “the Cannon” Daulton barely had a minute to himself after beating Efren Reyes in the banks tournament before he walked up to me to tell me how much he loved my Dad. He was still wiping his brow and catching his breath, a Kentucky boy who had known my father since he was a child. A champion who my father inducted into the One-Pocket Hall of Fame. And you bet he was at the dinner that night (before he won the Banks championship two hours later!)

Then there was Cornbread Reds son-in-law who said “they don’t make ‘em like those two anymore!” We shared how funny Cornbread and Freddy sounded when they were yelling at one another – Cornbread with a thick southern accent and my father with a thick Chicago accent.

The Candyman made sure to tell me a story about how he found a game and told his backer he was going to play “Freddy the Beard” and his backer told him he wouldn’t back him.

Legends Truman Hogue, Danny Diliberto and Billy Incardona told me the best stories about my Dad and had me in stiches. I mean, they had known each other since they were kids! That’s when the pool bug gets you, I guess, when you’re a kid. It was the first time, in a long time, when I heard people besides my Dad speaking in the pool hustler’s language that my father so eloquently teaches the world in his “Encyclopedia of Pool Hustlers.” He was the “nutz.”

Everyone – even vendors- wanted to remind me that they were in my Dad’s book. My father always emphasized how important it was to acknowledge other people. Confident people can do this. Jealous people can’t. My father tried to acknowledge as many as he could in “The Encyclopedia” and made it his mission to give credit to integral people in the world of pool and pool hustling that may have been forgotten. It was my father’s passion for showing respect to those who passed on, especially, that drives me to provide the same service to him and his legacy, today.

The onepocket.org Hall of Fame dinner almost didn’t happen this year. Onepocket.org’s Steve Booth was worried who could take over the Master of Ceremonies role, who get the pool players to show up, make sure everyone voted for the next inductees. But he held the course and the dinner took place. When we all started crying during the memorial, Steve said not to worry as my Dad “used to cry through the whole thing.”

What a great night honoring my Dad, Fred Bentivegna, at the Hall of Fame dinner in Derby City. My father was inducted in 2006, but he was also the beloved emcee. There were so many world champions and top players in attendance last night, paying their respects to the 'old man, I nearly fainted: Efren Bata Reyes, Scott Frost, Shannon Daulton, Nick Varner, Mary Kenniston, Truman Hogue, Alex Lely, Ike Runnels, Danny DiLiberto and William Incardona just to name a few. Pool documentarian Angel Levine...

It began with a beautiful slideshow narrated by my father’s roommate and DCC partner, John Bosnak; then my Dad’s theme song, “Banking with the Beard” played, while Steve Booth narrated the pool pictures(yes, my father has his own theme song!) Lots of smiling, reverence and love. Scott Frost's speech in honoring my Dad, and how he gave him confidence, touched my heart deeply. Billy Incardona and Danny DiLiberto speeches made me laugh and cry. When Danny D. and my Dad lived in Florida in their early twenties, they used to Karaoke to Frank Sinatra. And Billy got Efren to agree that my father taught him how to play one-pocket. Billy said he was the "most loved" player from Chicago. A "brilliant man" and "articulate." Angel Levine called him one of her father figures in the pool room as a teenager who, like his buddy George Fels, of whom the Straight Pool Tournament has been renamed for, was a "scholar and a scoundrel."

What an honor to be present for 87 year-old “The Squirrel” and Greg Sullivan receiving their awards. They were so touched by the evening - and so modest! Thank you to The Squirrel’s son for wearing my Dad’s “Banking with the Beard” t-shirt, too.

My pool hustler family chipped in and bought me raffle tickets and I won a priceless, signed by all of the Legends pool cue to hang on my wall. Either the fix was in, or my father provided the magic from above to make all of that happen.
Once the ceremony ended, everyone returned to the arena to both watch and play in the televised tournament. And Shannon “The Cannon” Daulton ended up winning the Banks tournament! Oh, my Dad was somewhere up above just loving all of this…wishing he could have gotten a side bet in or two(or three.)

In Derby City, I had the luck of being immersed in everything my father loved, his passion and life’s work, and surrounded by people, sights and sounds that all tie me back to him. It couldn’t have been more perfect. Without my father, I still have this exciting and stimulating world of pool – my extended pool family – from his brothers and sisters in the pool world – to the fans that just want to meet me, call me, write me to talk about my father and how they would have given anything to meet him, or, to tell me that one conversation with my Dad was unforgettable, “Riveting,” “Hilarious,” “Helped my game.”

My father was fascinated by people and different cultures and was somewhat of a chameleon when he was in a pool room. When he was around Hillbillies, he talked like a Hillbilly and dressed in overalls and drank moonshine and shot pistols. The FX show “Justified” where they dramatize modern day gunslingers in Kentucky warmed his heart. He told me, from the sofa, watching from his projection screen, “this shit is real, Catherine!” He could always count on a Hillbilly mobster to hide him in the country if someone was looking to kill him. In return, he would cook Italian food for them.

When he was around Jewish guys, he would kibitz, speak Yiddish and get angry if he wasn’t asked over for a high holiday or get steered to a good deli. He refused to pay for fatty meat. He would needle Jewish girls who dated Christian boys. “ I’m going to rat on you to your mother!” he would tease. And then they all called him every year Christmas morning like clockwork to wish him a happy holiday. Like clockwork. His yarmulke got a lot of mileage.

When he was around black guys, you would have thought he’d been born at 63rd and Cottage Grove. He dressed like a Dandy with loud silk shirts and crocodile loafers from Chicago’s famous Taylor Street and Maxwell Street and spoke with a modified southern/Chicago south side accent. The clothes, with the Cadillac, and Muddy Waters playing, made him look like an Italian pimp. He called middle aged black guys “Pops” and told them they reminded him of his old man. They always called each other “brothers.”
When he was on Chicago’s “black” south side learning bank secrets, World Champion and Hall of Famer, Bugs Rucker told my Dad he didn’t have to worry about being shot at when he was with him, as he told my father, “I know all the gangbangers, don’t worry.” Then one time, Bugs and my father were being shot at as they exited the pool room, and they were forced to jump behind a car to safety. “I thought you said you knew all the gangbangers!” my father yelled, catching his breath. “Well I obviously don’t know those mother f***ers, Freddy!” Bugs retorted.

His mimicry came from such a place of reverence and excitement and playfulness that it never came off as offensive. It was fun, and everyone loved him for it. Remember, my father wanted to experience everything life had to offer – and I do mean everything…He used to call Chinese restaurants and fake a Chinese accent and demand he get the “special mushrooms” only the Chinese customers were served. He always wanted to be “in” on everything – even fungus.

My point is that my father could get along with anybody...and that's why he had so many friends. And he could get on an intimate level with with even strangers...quickly. Pool rooms are, and always will be, a meritocracy...

My father took a lot of “beatings” in the pool world – real, metaphorical, and financial - but this twenty four hours in Derby City was the first time I thought I was “robbing the joint.” There was such an excess of love and respect coming my way, around every corner. I couldn’t buy a drink and people literally cleared the way for me to see the televised bank finals in the arena. I didn’t have a moment to myself as there was always a new smiling face wanting to tell me about my old man. Maybe it was just the fact that I look a little like him, that is comforting to his friends.

Pool cue maker and player Bobby Hunter approached me while I was drinking coffee. “I came in fourth in the Banks tournament! And I don’t even play banks! Can you believe it?”

“Wow!” I said, “That’s incredible!”

Bobby lived with my father for a while, as did so many pool players, cue makers, backers and hustlers. I never knew who was sleeping on our sofa growing up. I was always annoyed because they stayed up all night and slept all day, so I usually had to tiptoe though the living room. The one exception was Champion Ewa Mataya Lawrence who got her own bedroom and bathroom at my father’s tony high rise apartment building where Mr.T also lived. My father’s house always had a revolving door, where you were fed a giant lunch everyday like you were in Italy. When Bobby moved out, he created a gorgeous, jewel encrusted pool cue as a gift.
Bobby visited my Dad while he was in the hospital this summer and I could see the love in his eyes.

At Derby City, Bobby pointed to the ceiling with his pool case and solemnly said, “I think your Dad had something to do with it. Fourth place! I beat Bustamante! Your Dad would have loved this. LOVED THIS!”
I thought Bobby might cry, I mean, I was starting to. So many of these players wanted to talk to my Dad about their game, but he wasn’t around anymore…only I was - a pale substitute - an amateur of pool if there ever was one. I was never a student, knew none of the secrets…

I know they call Efren Reyes “The Magician” but I’m not so sure my old man wasn’t also a magician. Not only could he grease the wheels of everyone he met, but he had a hand in all the gifts that came my way in Derby City. All the smiles and hugs – and a pool cue I will cherish forever. It's my first one...

Pops, you fulfilled your greatest wants and desires though your passion for this sport of pool, through this lifestyle, through these people. You mattered. You do matter. And will matter, for many, many years to come.

There’s one thing I notice about pool people – they smile and laugh a lot. I attribute this to my father’s philosophy that “pool keeps me young.” Willie Hoppe was one of his idols and he thought he had chosen one of the only sports you could win at both eighteen years of age, and sixty.

Last year in the Derby City tournament, at seventy-three years young, my father won and advanced far enough to be “in the money.” He was right about pool. And I am so glad.

Pops, thank you for making me a Pool Hustler’s Daughter. I’m sorry if I didn’t appreciate it when I was younger, but I love it now. LOVE IT!

Your life was so full and large and loud! You influenced and brought light and laughter and inspiration and comfort to so many people in so many ways. Your words, encouragement and actions and writing changed lives. You made sure, before you left us, that the world knew exactly who you were!

You've left a giant footprint on this world. "The Beard was here." That's for god***n sure. We should all aspire to such greatness. You always aspired to the exceptional. And your legacy is exceptional.

Freddy the Beard was real. That superhero you dreamed of being as a sickly child - you became. You were realized as a human being - fulfilled. You did it. You did it!

Larry Schwartz told this priceless story at the dinner. On the drive back to Chicago from Detroit, hustling pool, they stopped to get something to eat. They only had twenty bucks between the two of them. Larry was starving and starting to order the food and my old man, The Beard, ran in to try and stop him before it was too late. “Cancel the order!” my father yelled. “What?” Larry asked, stomach grumbling. “I need the bankroll to buy these comic books.” The year was nineteen seventy and Larry was maybe seventeen and my Dad was thirty. Poor Larry had to forgo his meal, and my Dad scored the comics (which my children now own as part of the Beard's vast collection.) Now, try and tell me, seriously, if pool doesn’t keep you young?

Eastbound and Down

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 09 Oct 2014 14:51:00 +0000

I didn't choose my college, my father did. I had my heart set on the East Coast - turtlenecks and tweed, boys who spoke Lockjaw straight out of "Dead Poets Society" and whose family crests were discreetly planted in the mud room at the front door. There would be winters at their cabin in Vermont, where I would learn to drink scotch neat by a roaring fire under a hand-me down cashmere blanket, where my beau and I would innocently rub each other, clothes on, but nothing more, as that was what massage parlors in Chinatown were for. The help would later donate the worn blanket to an orphaned horse named "Ophelia" put to pasture at a mothball infused Greenwich, CT estate after her owner, a brash seven year old named Claire Motague, decided that riding "gave her a rash" and left her smelling like a "Port Authority bathroom," or at least that's what she heard her stepmother say to her father, before refusing to have sex with him. Weekends would be spent taking the train into New York City visiting friends who dropped out of college and now lived with their parents, who never seemed to be home, at any hour of the day(were they even alive? I wondered) and who were waiting to hear back on acceptance into English schools abroad before desperately booking a "Trek," to at least appear busy and/or on a spiritual quest. How much pot do you think I can fit into my girlfriend's maxi pad on the flight overseas?

I would bump into filmmaker Whit Stillman at an overpriced café on the Upper East side where I would confidently pronounce everything in Italian rather than French and ask him for an autograph and offer important responses like, "I concur" and "that's a gas, old man!" I would ask him to hire me to help write his next screenplay and he would say, "you're out of your mind, please leave me alone, where's Guiliani with the police?" But what I really want to ask is if he would let me act and star in one of his films - f**k Chloe Sevigny. And Prague. I'd pitch the awkward girl who overcomes a subterranean upbringing and excessive Kate Bush, to find love with someone with better teeth and a bigger bottom than Ethan Hawke, but just as deep, damaged and witty.

Summers on the East Coast would be spent hearing nautical terms while lathered in Saint Tropez oil while dropping ice cubes into gin and tonics, which eventually grow on me and I realize taste better going down, than coming up. I would press my pink Lilly Pulitzer dresses daily.

I would learn how to eat crustaceans daintily, the secret being not at all. I would change my last name to ethnically neutral "Bennett" and wonder if one person would make an Austen reference, so I might actually have something to talk about that mattered - Georgian Society romances. I would mind my own business when my friend's parents were caught having affairs. I would start sentences like "I read in the Journal today..." I would know the names of at least three members of the royal family - any royal family would do. I would try not to get them mixed up with names from the Five Families.

At parties, friends would share how their ancestors "built this city" - and then, wait for it, "not with their own hands, of course!" Then I would raise my hand, because we would have something in common finally, and I would add, proudly, "and my ancestors dug their graves!" I would talk about my stocks - of toilet paper - you never knew when the dorm was going to run out. Then I'd speak of my yearning for a child with seven names, refill their old fashioned glasses, and we'd be Kosher again. They'd ask me to define "Kosher" and I'd wave my hand and say "Fuggetabout it." We'd talk about boats again. I'd try to resist winning all of their money gambling on non-racquet sports.

So many people owned up to their neuroses on the East Coast, they were bound to have the best analysts, right? Who did Woody Allen's kids see?

I wanted a conservative, upper crusty, take this UK-handmade pipe and smoke it, type education - the Blair Warner treatment my hippie/hustler parents owed me, but alas, it never happened - an Argyle sweater in the window of Brooks Brothers that never was mine. My father said Tulane was the best school I was accepted at, and "you always go with the best." I argued, "But Dad, at the racetracks on the East Coast, I could have sat in the good seats!" He said I was "too uptight" and that I "needed to loosen up." I had no idea what he was talking about and hoped he wouldn't find out I'd emptied my college fund($400) to pay for all of my monogramming. East Coast college of my dreams - we could have had it all, we could have had it all...

Tina Fey vs. Mindy Kaling: The Battle to be a Comedy Queen

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 30 Aug 2014 17:23:00 +0000

Like most forty-something women I grew up with an idea of what women in comedy "looked like." First there was Carol Burnett, who was so modest and provided guttural laughs from behind our 1,000 pound television on many an occasion in the 70s. Carol Burnett was never holding hands with Gloria Steinem chanting "We Shall Overcome" in front of the White House, nor was she bragging about her ancestral linkage to Susan B. Anthony. She was just...funny...and silly...very much a girl, a woman. There probably were very few job opportunities for women as funny as Carol Burnett - an awkward Stork, face contortionist who could sing and/or belt out Tarzan's call on occasion. A few women had already had variety shows prior to Carol, like the immensely talented Judy Garland, but that was not a comedy show, and instead made you want to grab a vodka on the rocks and a bottle of pills from the heartache of not only love, but of just being alive. In sum, it was a real downer. When I watch reruns of the Carol Burnett Show and I see the camaraderie of her comedy troupe - Harvey Korman, Tim Conway and Vicki Lawrence - the laughs they often tried but failed to hold back, I kind of think that's the epitome of great comedy - Pleasure. Those comedians were enjoying themselves. I often see that in the best Late Night TV show hosts, when they are honestly cracking up at their own writing, I know it's going to be a good show. Carol Burnett's Scarlett O'Hara has to be a top ten TV comedy scene of all time next to Seinfeld's "The Contest."

The only predecessor as powerful on television to Carol Burnett, was Lucille Ball. Lucy had a mix of Carol Burnett and even the questionable darkness of a Judy Garland. Lucy was old fashioned and yes, she might have the balls to "throw it all away" just for a man. Lucy probably had the most understated beauty of all female comediennes and if you look at her early movie studio stills from her youth, you're just like "Wow!" The whole IDEA of Lucy, was a self-deprecating, delusional woman who in the end is the second fiddle to a man. Wait, isn't that the formula of EVERY funny female on television? Oh, how she wanted to be on Ricky's show! Or stab to death with her felt pen one of her annoying, sexist bosses(in later shows) during "dictation?"

Wait, women aren't funny? REALLY?

And Imogene Coca on Your Show of Shows (odd looking, clueless) Gracie to George Burns(clueless.) Being clueless seems to be a key to getting a job as a woman in comedy.

The other example of a female comedienne was Phyllis Diller. I have no idea why I always gravitated toward this tenor voiced Madam. I always looked forward to her on Bob Hope's variety shows(again, am I making a point here that I miss variety shows?) I had heard that Phyllis Diller was actually a looker in her day, but purposefully made herself look ugly on stage. That was the only way she could deliver jokes. I do give her credit for wanting to be known for her material, rather than her looks. Ba-dum-bum.

Another one of my all-time favorite comediennes is Cloris Leachman. I like her because more often than not her comedy is absurd - costumes, accents and dirty jokes. I know my love for her stems as repetitive viewings of Mel Brooks movies as a young child, but she was also a fabulous foil to Mary Tyler Moore on the Mary Tyler Moore show, and you had the chance to see how beautiful she was.

Madeleine Kahn was used as Mel Brooks sexy ingénue. Now she was a tiger, she was so gorgeous. She was the perfect middle ground between sexy and absurd. And I appreciate Mel Brooks(for like a thousand reasons) but I do appreciate him for not being misogynist in the least bit. He made so many jokes about sex and even dumb women, but he never hated women(as some hard up male comedians do) and almost always showed the male counterpart in the wrong, or being a rascal. And he gave women great roles. High Anxiety is a masterpiece of epic proportions.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus is still the epitome of a beautiful comedienne. She was next generation Madeline Kahn but she is in on all the fun that all of the boys in the room are having. And I think she was the first to usher in jokes around the comic actress and her sexuality, which is standard now.

I guess I differentiate comediennes and scripted comedy actresses. I feel like comediennes are the ones who did a tour in improvisational comedy, or at the very least, have an innate ability to be funny, without a script, and I'll leave it at that. Lucy Ball was a scripted actress, yes, but the direction of her characters in terms of physical comedy and looks and sounds, was all her own.

The first movie I ever saw that made me think women were awesome was "Private Benjamin." I didn't know at the time, that it had been written by a woman, filmmaker Nancy Meyers. Goldie Hawn was amazing in this film, and let me tell you, to watch an entire film, any film, about a woman and her story, was spectacular. A woman owned the whole film. That was BIG. I was totally okay with her being neurotic and self-absorbed. In the end, she didn't want to be second fiddle to a man.

Another great scripted actress was Bea Arthur. Even as a child, I saw Maude in her pant suits yelling at Arthur and thought, "My God, I am going to look like this woman one day." I followed her to Golden Girls which was filled with sex jokes delivered by middle aged women, because its just too scary to hear sex jokes from women you might actually want to have sex with. Thank you, Chelsea Handler, for remedying this situation for us.

And then there were the women who surrounded Bob Newhart.

What I like is how today we have multiple offerings where the show revolves around the woman - 30 Rock and Parks and Recreation and The Mindy Project. That is progress. Roseanne Barr was brave, and had a show around her, but I just never got her comedy, so I have to "put her on a shelf" for now. I have too many morbidly obese hillbillies in my family eating mystery meat sandwiches, so her show just hit a cord too deep for me. She couldn't make me laugh, unfortunately. But she did make a lot of money. Good for her.

Designing Women? Another successful show based around women for a change but way too political, too scripted for me. Not comediennes.
Murphy Brown took some time to get used to. I always saw Candace Bergen just for her looks and her not-so-secret affair with Steve McQueen. But she proved everyone wrong and managed to exceed expectations and be funny. Cheers to her.

I don't know why I put Joan Rivers and Chelsea Handler in the same category, but I just do. They are not meant for scripted television. Although Joan went to Julliard, she knows she couldn't cut it as an actress. They don't attempt to be Rhodes Scholars and are always the one to call out the Elephant in the room. They are manly women. They intimidate men. This is a different phenomena than the "clueless" woman who is second fiddle to a man. These women have balls and scare men. And it works for them.
Sometimes I think Chelsea Handler's writing is one part Sweet Valley High and the next moment Hustler.

I like that Joan Rivers and Chelsea Handler exist. They are not shrinking violets. Okay, I'm still upset Carson never forgave Joan Rivers for getting her own talk show. She did owe him - a ton - there is no doubt, but she was being given an opportunity to be the first female late night TV host. Not a guest host - the host. This was huge for women everywhere. It just had to happen for progress, sorry.

My Dad was on the road a lot as a pool hustler and he always kept comedy tapes in his car that I heard over and over. Like RED FOXX. Do you have any idea how successful his comedy album was? It's hilarious. Every single Richard Pryor. I'll never forget the line of his, when he's recalling visiting a prison with Gene Wilder, and Richard Pryor has to explain that men in prison who have sex with one another are not gay. And at home, always with the Mel Brooks. In my mind, great comedy always had a little sexiness to it, perhaps an undercover political statement, because of Mel Brooks. Mel Brooks was never afraid to make a fool out of himself. Even when he won like a thousand Tonys for The Producers, he still had the balls to try new material, make people uncomfortable, make himself look crazy. I love that. And don't think I forgot that his wife was an Italian girl, Anne Bancroft.

I can't begin to tell you how many dreams I had growing up where I was starring on a sitcom. Especially with Jason Bateman in it. This definitely puts me in the category of delusional, which is essential to comedy. I still dream entire film scripts.

Catherine O'Hara is probably another underrated comedienne who knocks it out of the park every time. And I miss Parker Posey and wish I saw more of her on television. She was a pleasant surprise on her guest spot on Louie.

For sanity sake, let's just skip over the NBC television show Friends which I pretend never happened. The only actor on that show that I felt had any innate chops was Lisa Kudrow. But again, lets skip it.

There was a lot of scripted television - Alice, Rhoda, etc., that definitely got some laughs out of me which starred women, but, again, I don't see those actresses as comediennes. They didn't live and breathe comedy. That's my differentiator. I'm attracted to the cult of comedy personality!

Let's get to what this essay is really about. Who would dominate in a mud wrestling match - Tina Fey or Mindy Kaling?

Okay, I feel like I owe Tina Fey so much, like a million, billion thank yous just for being successful and for this I mean, showing the world that women comediennes can make money for producers and networks. This alone is worthy of a statue in Central Park. However, and I do mean, however, I cannot relate to Tina Fey. But I can however, relate to Mindy Kaling. I feel like Mindy Kaling is someone I could actually have a drink with. Like I could make a joke about choking on a big dick and she would laugh and buy me a girlie drink. Tina Fey would probably move seats, roll her snotty eyes at me and say "I hate dicks" and ask "Where's the Souvlaki?"

So, difference #1 is that I think Mindy Kaling likes dicks and Tina Fey does not like dicks(perhaps other than her vibrator.) I don't trust women who don't like dicks. Like, it would be hard for me to go into business with a lesbian, for instance, because who could I talk about dicks with over the water cooler? Okay, maybe strap-ons.

Mindy Kaling is all woman. She oozes feminity. She is a delicious and delightful dark angel. If any man tried to finger Tina Fey their digit would turn into a popsicle and break off. If someone(and I'm saying one hell of a lucky guy) had the chance to finger the magnificent Mindy Kaling(and I'm not saying she's that type of girl, as I know she's extremely picky) their digit would emerge sparkling and shooting Harry Potter magic wand lightening bolts while tasting of the sweetest cinnamon and cardamom elixir that only Charlie and his Chocolate Factory could manufacture.

Every time a finger goes into Mindy Kaling, Slum Dog Millionaire's soundtrack begins to play and you feel the urge to dance, perfectly choreographed, with large groups of people.

When you finger Mindy Kaling, she enthusiastically sticks her tongue down your throat and says "I love this, MORE!"

When you finger Tina Fey, she sighs and says "you know, I'm wearing my Depends undergarment right now."

I WISH that Tina Fey was actually one of those geeky girls who wears glasses and flannel and granny panties who secretly like to be tied up and spanked. The girl guys around the water cooler(I heart water coolers, FYI) whisper, "No, dude, she's a Tasmanian Devil in the sack...and I've got the scars on my back to prove it." But I don't think she's secretly a horn dog. I don't know, I just don't.

How can you not like sex, Tina??? You need to sleep with some more guys, pronto. I'm telling you - it gets better. I'm just mad that you think you need to be an asexual cross dresser with IBS to get men to like you, buy you Meatball subs and/or laugh at your jokes/write you giant paychecks. WHY?

Mindy knows how to bridge the gap between smart/sexy/funny. She just does. She is a romantic at heart. I HEART that right back, sweetie! Not only are her television characters in love with love, her personality on social media suggests this as well. She thinks its fun and kind of cool to be a girl. To try on clothes and makeup, take pictures of yourself and to compare yourself to celebrities. And I'm not saying this is because Mindy attended an Ivy League School and Tina Fey did not (okay, shh, it might have something to do with it.)

Mindy Kaling is fun and looks like she's having fun. Like Carol Burnett. Carol Burnett would never let a camera shoot her with her pants down on the toilet or pretend to shit her own pants for laughs. Even Phyllis Diller wouldn't stoop that low! Tina Fey makes the prospect of being a woman like the worst thing in the fucking world. Maybe I'm delusional here, and that's her whole theme, but I like being a woman. I don't want to be a man. Why do I have to look like a man - and not even a cool man but the Steven Wright of men - in order to get laughs.

Tina Fey is the worst Frenemy you ever met before in your life. Mindy laughs with you, not at you. There's a difference!

Listen, both Mindy and Tina's range is limited as actors, I get it. Please don't make me watch Tina Fey in one more dramatic scene about a lost puppy - or a long lost child. I don't want to see it. You make me want to give up on life, Tina.

Mindy makes me feel energized, giggly and as bubby as her. I want to wear pinks and purples and paisley patterns. And it has nothing to do with Mindy being in her thirties, while Tina is in her forties. Like I honestly feel Mindy doesn't only want to be famous so she can punish everyone who ever cut her from the basketball team. Tina, you act like your desperate vengeance on those who wronged you in childhood will never be satisfied. That you will never be able to smile, but not because of an insecurity regarding a smile on your face, but because if you smile, than you have to admit you are actually happy and grateful for all of your millions and new Uptown digs and private school for the kids and "first look" at scripts and endless producer credits.

My father couldn't stop talking about Amy Poehler and how funny and adorable she was and "The only Liberal I could love." Like she was the second coming for Christ sake. "Tina Fey is a hideous dog" he would say and hock a luggie.

Mindy looks at her opportunities every day and is like "This is so AWESOME!" I want to wake up like Mindy Kaling, super high baby doll voice, size eight and loving it, selfies galore on my phone, praising my parents in public every day, believing in love and most of all feeling like my self-confidence is just that - a result of how I feel about myself rather than what other people tell me all of a sudden(Classic Tina.)

I'm all for the Mindy Kalings of the world. I want to go to a party with you. When are you NOT smiling?

I DON'T HATE PEOPLE LIKE TINA FEY DOES. I DON'T HATE WOMEN LIKE TINA FEY DOES. And most of all, I DON'T HATE DICKS LIKE TINA FEY DOES. I want to spread joy around the world. And the importance of water coolers. And selfies.

Lena Dunham has been removed from this conversation. I CAN'T EVEN GO THERE. We're not even in the same league, and by league, I mean the pedestal that Mindy Kaling(my new best friend) and I now occupy.