Three Rivers Anthology

It's All About Sex

noreply@blogger.com (Dark and Twisty) — Sat, 04 Aug 2012 02:45:00 +0000

I will not be kissing my wife in front of a Chik-fil-A tonight nor anytime soon. Although I may kiss her at Eat n Park or Emiliano's or one of the other restaurants we frequent. I don't know. It all depends on how I feel. I can tell you this, we won't make out.  I hate it when you're out somewhere, and that sweet couple who just a moment ago was holding hands suddenly is all tongue and spit til you're finally like "holy crap, get a room!"   I hate that.

I guess I'm just old fashioned.  Nowadays it's all boycotts and Huckabee appreciation events, kiss-ins and chicken sandwiches. <Sigh>

I really am old fashioned. I was raised Catholic, went to Catholic school and attended church every Sunday. My sibs and I were taught the importance of family and country.  My sister's a nurse in the Air Force. One brother's a cop, the other's a plumber. I've worked my whole life, taught school, worked with seniors, helped community groups, voted in every election.  I own a house and love my neighbors. I'd like to shoot a gun someday.  And I'm married, but only in Canada.

Sunshine and Happiness and I can't get married here because we both have who-ha's which makes some folks think we're perverts or pedophiles. Or that we have a gay agenda to indoctrinate the youth of today which in turn will bring the wrath of God down upon us all.  Some also believe because I'm a lesbian, I have no style, a bad haircut and wear sensible shoes.

I'll cop to that last one.

So old fashioned, God fearing, traditional marriage proponents want to protect themselves and their children from me and Sunshine and Happiness because if we (and our who-ha's) can get married what's next? Meanwhile married folks are participating in:

intercourse in the missionary and 63 other positions
(or so says the Kama Sutra)
anal sex
oral sex
role play
S&M (Have you READ 50 Shades of Grey?)
pornography
premarital sex
monogamous sex
sex with multiple partners (divorce and remarriage)
sex with multiple partners (adultery)
sex with multiple partners (swingers clubs)
sex for pleasure
sex for intimacy
sex for fun
sex out of a sense of obligation
masturbation
celibacy

Unmarried folk and gay folk participate in these things too but straight folks also sometimes have sex, 14 kids and a reality TV show which I and other gay folks cannot do without third party involvement.

And THAT (to me) is what's really at the crux of this whole "traditional" marriage thing. When straight couples stick thing A into slot B they can biologically reproduce (sans medical/age issues) without outside help. Sunshine and Happiness and I not so much. My friends Rich and Joe when they put thing A into slot C, not so much. Which makes a sizable portion of this country believe us to be unnatural and an abomination.

As for straight folks - some women are infertile, some men are sterile and what may I ask happens after menopause? These folks can put thing A into slot B, not procreate and they can still marry.  And men and women who don't intend to ever have children get married all the time. As for gays, we can choose artificial insemination or a surrogate mother. We can adopt and foster children where it's legal. Or we too can choose not to have children at all.

Which leads me to conclude this argument about traditional marriage vs gay marriage is really only about who-ha's and ding-dongs. Who has 'em and who doesn't, where they stick em and what happens when there's not a thing A to put in slot B. It makes traditional marriage proponents squeamish. And because it makes them squeamish  they go all fire and brimstone on our asses. The only way my marriage would be OK with traditional marriage proponents and I could have sex with their seal of approval is if my who-ha was a ding dong.

And all the kisses in the world ain't gonna be able to change that.

We Are Penn State

noreply@blogger.com (Dark and Twisty) — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 23:11:00 +0000

I've been thinking about my childhood lately. Things like the storefront one of our neighbors had connected to his house. Freddie's is where my family went to get Town Talk bread, milk, Dolly Madison treats, penny gum and on special occasions chocolate ice cubes for a nickel.  I was partial to the candy necklaces I could fashionably wear and lick at the same time. Freddie's had an awesome comic book rack and the cigarettes were kept behind the counter along with aspirin and other things only adults could buy like x-rated mags.  Freddie hung a sheet between the store part of the house and his actual living room from which emanated the incredible smells of homemade sauce and the sounds of Bonanza.   Sometimes if the curtain blew open just right I could see Mrs. Freddie with a table tray in front of the TV eating her spaghetti. This mixing of worlds fascinated me.

A ways away was the neighborhood fire station which had a big red metal Coke machine. I loooooved that Coke machine. The firehouse doors were usually open and kids could take the change they'd collected delivering papers or scavenged from Dad's couch cushions to get an icy cold Coca-Cola sweat dripping down the green sides of the glass, bottle refundable for a nickel,. Sometimes the firemen who sat smoking on the metal park bench in front would let us climb up onto the truck, hang from the back, put on their helmets, try on their boots and if we were lucky sit in the cab and honk the horn.

We attended the local Catholic School walking with our book bags which were not knapsacks but actual suitcase looking things and metal lunchboxes that scratched our legs as we walked. My family attended mass on Sunday and my classmates and I went to morning mass on First Fridays and regularly scheduled weekdays. In my homeroom everyone knew everyone else. We were a group, a collective, special. It was the same students first grade through eighth. We knew who would be in the turtle row, the rabbit row, who would get boxed around the ears by the nuns, who would volunteer for extra work. We felt sorry for the public school students who didn't have the one true faith and collected pennies for the pagan babies in our pint sized milk cartons. It was familiar and safe.

During the summer we spent our time at the local pool playing with the teenage boys who would pick us up and throw us like sacks of potatoes to splash into the deeper water. Or they'd pass us around like dolls from one to one another putting us on their shoulders, jousting with each other to see which of us would fall first from our perch.. My favorite game was jumping as hard as we could on the diving board for height, distance, momentum and doing cannonballs trying to hit the lifeguard on duty with the splash. I grew up with a pair of enormous identical twins, older and desired by the girls who tried to bounce the bolts from the board's sockets and who always inevitably won.

At home we watched Leave it to Beaver, the Little Rascals, Mayberry RFD and Matchgame 76. We ate dinner as a family, did our homework and were in bed by 9.  Life was simple, I was innocent.

All of the above is true.  And not.

My childhood has a dark and twisty side, a shadow if you will. There is an underbelly of shit that got stuffed up in the attic, down in the basement, anywhere it could be shoved while my family struggled mightily to maintain an illusion of all is well rather than face reality which scared all of us. The reality of my childhood is one of love, presence, God and community. It is also one of abuse, alcoholism, mental illness and cruelty.

I have spent the better part of my adult life struggling to heal from the things stuffed up in the attic and basement. On bad days I'm not sure I'll ever be whole. On good ones I feel joy and gratitude.  I continue to make progress and one bit of wisdom I've gleaned is my nostalgic recall of the innocence and simplicity of my childhood is fantasy. Life's complicated. Good and evil exist side by side. When I was a kid though the evil was never acknowledged, the elephant in the room. And because it was not acknowledged or called out of hiding it perpetrated itself. with impunity.   As Edmund Burke once said "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."

Which brings me to Penn State. Joe Paterno, Graham Spanier, Tim Curley et al. stood by passing the buck from one to another while Jerry Sandusky continued to steal from boys who trusted him as a father figure any hope of a physically, emotionally and spiritually whole and healthy adulthood.  It is also true Penn State espouses academic excellence, personal/social responsibility and the dignity of others as ideals to be upheld and has produced thousands of graduates, including former football players who have gone on to become solid citizens and to lead moral, upstanding and successful lives.  These things coexist. Good and evil. Light and shadow.

Along with thinking about my childhood I've also been wondering if I were the janitor who witnessed Sandusky performing oral sex on a child in the locker room would I have blown the whistle?   What if I knew it meant the loss of my job? What if I thought no one would believe me, a janitor at the bottom of the institutional food chain, my word against that of a revered coach? What if I told myself, surely someone else knew about this and would do something? What if I feared Sandusky would sue me for libeling him after no one believed me? Would I have called police? Would I have intervened? Would I have had the courage to act?

No one likes looking at evil. By it's nature it makes good folks want to turn away, run, hide, do nothing and hope someone else will step up to the plate.

I'm afraid that if I were the janitor I would have just kept on walking. We all have good in us. We all have a shadow. I need to look in the mirror and see what is there, unflinching not turning away and accepting what I see. I need to acknowledge the shadow in me and then pray that by the grace of God I will do the next right thing. Because what the mirror shows me when I dare to look is.....

We are Penn State.

The Squirrel Cage

noreply@blogger.com (Dark and Twisty) — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 05:32:00 +0000

A friend of mine refers to her head as a squirrel cage...

Fat Hamster

I prefer the term hamster wheel myself, because my thoughts go up and down, around and back while I spin furiously in one spot wondering why I can't get anywhere. AA tells me the way to make this insanity stop is to take an action. You know the saying, move a muscle, change a thought?

Seriously though. There has got to be a better way. (Ice cream maybe?)

I'm thinking about the hamster wheel because right now my head is in an existential, dark and twisty place (which is why I'm writing this post.) Well, you say, that's not moving the body. Hey look Mrs. Smarty Pants, my fingers are tip, tippity-tap, typing away, so HAH! Movement. TAKE THAT! (And at least it's not ice cream)

Anyway here's the thing. There's a person (herein to be known as X) in my life who looks and acts pretty normal, appears to be a competent person and has done nothing to me but in spite of that I feel like there's something not quite right, something amiss. I feel malice, ill will and contempt emanating from X in waves when I'm around but no one else seems to notice it. Everyone acts as though they genuinely like X. And this makes me feel crazy because I'm afraid X has everyone buffaloed and is going to hurt someone I care about....at some point.....in the future. Ahem.

Now I'm a highly sensitive person and just a teeny tiny bit tightly wound. You're shocked I know. I know. Fact is though, as hard as it is to believe, I am extremely sensitive - to light, to sound, to smell, to vibrations, to shellfish. You name it. And I'm hypervigilant. I react internally to the moods, feelings and energy of others. So presently I'm reacting all over the fucking place. Literally the hair on my arms is standing on end and I have the heebie jeebies just thinking about X. It's almost like I expect the human skin on X's head to flap back revealing a reptilian one that's licking it's nonlips and going "yum, yum."

Consequently, there's not much contact between X and me to be sure. But sometimes we do end up in the same room and inevitably on these occasions as I'm sitting, listening to a speaker and not paying much mind to anything except what's being said I'll look up and BOOM there's X leaning forward, arms crossed defensively, staring straight at me with a hostile/contemptuous expression that seems vaguely ominous. It makes me uncomfortable because it feels like a challenge or maybe even a threat. Being the submissive that I am though, instead of confronting this, I immediately look away. Most of the time if I dare look back X eyes are still drilling holes in my head.

What sucks though is that as much as I want to spin in one place in my little hampster wheel for forever, as I go over and over the things I think are wrong with X , I am sober enough to know that, wait for it, wait for it....

It's not about X.

"It is a spiritual axiom that every time we are disturbed,
no matter what the cause, there is something wrong with
us."

X is just a mirror. As Pogo once said, "I have seen the enemy and he is us." So it's me who needs to change not X. Time to stop blaming the mirror. Time to move a muscle - change a thought.

See how that came around? Well I'll be damned. It works. It really does.

SMASH

noreply@blogger.com (Dark and Twisty) — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 18:37:00 +0000

I'm so excited.

Sunshine and Happiness makes her dance debut this evening at the Grey Box Theater in Lawrenceville as part of a showcase for various up and coming choreographers in Pittsburgh.   Now those who know S&H know she is a total ham and that part of her bucket list has always been to be on stage, preferably in a play, preferably as the star despite the fact she's never acted a day in her life and can't stay in the correct octave EVER jumping from key to key. But.....

My girl can move.

To catch you up sweet peas, in the beginning of January S&H's life took a turn and so began an odyssey of doctors and specialists with the final professional opinion being....her butt is broken. Gratefully the condition is not life threatening and it's under control.   One change we had to make though is that now in addition to being sugar, flour and processed food free, we can no longer have gluten. Soon, soon sweat peas I will be noshing on dandelions from the garden, but I digress.  (On another note, I really wish I knew how to use commas.)

Anyway, S&H also isn't able to continue power workouts, kickboxing or karate. (too much impact on broken butt)  Does anyone know how many endorphins these things produce?

Workouts, karate, kickboxing = happiness and sanity.
No workouts, kickboxing, karate = much unhappiness/divorce.
S&H without endorphins = Dark and Twisty lite.

We needed to find endorphins and we needed to find them FAST.

Our first endeavor was to join join a gym /water aerobics class. We found that these produce some happy brain chemicals. Next S&H found an elliptical/cross trainer to run on. (at every opportunity I might mention)  And voila' -endorphins. Yay! I climbed on S&H's elliptical the other day just to give it a try and after a grueling, oh, 2 full minutes I said "to hell with this crap," and headed to the pool.."   Still though not quite enough dopamine

So she joined a country line dancing class.

And then Dragon Boating.

Finally, finally (drum roll please) she found SWAG. Ladies and gentlemen we have a winner.   SWAG if you're not familiar is Sweating with a Purpose - a mix of salsa, traditional African and hip hop dance which apparently produces tons of endorphins. Sunshine is back baby!  Never have I seen such joy. Never have I seen such a glow. Never have I seen such sweat.

And so tonight .....the debut .....in a real theater.....in public.   Yeah it's only 6 minutes long and an unpaid gig but I am so proud. so excited for her.

So relieved.

Shake your groove thing Sunshine and Happiness. Shake that thang.

Click here to see S&H practice performance - S&H comes in at 1:43

Please watch and give my girl some love!

Time Wasters

noreply@blogger.com (Dark and Twisty) — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 01:20:00 +0000

Gonna try this blogging thing one more time. It's Sunshine and Happiness' fault I haven't written. She got invited to join Pinterest and I got invited to a new addiction. I don't yet have my own account but I puruse hers daily - usually more than once. It's kind of like when I stalked everyone from her Facebook account years prior to actually creating one of my own.

But Pinterest is more insidious because its got all those pretty pictures and I don't have to even read if I don't want to. I've gotta stop looking at sunrooms, gardens, shihtzus, funny shit, recipes and the like or she and I are gonna end up on an episode of Hoarders. The housework it is a -piling up. As it is I hardly have any time to update my Facebook status, play Word Shaker and check my tweets.

Just kidding. I never joined Twitter. I couldn't say anything in 140 characters if you paid me.

Acceptance

noreply@blogger.com (Dark and Twisty) — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 01:10:00 +0000

Ummm, 17 actually.

OK, I made it to my first water aerobics class, participated, got my heart rate up and didn't die, though I wanted to. When you hide from your body for as long as I have and pretend that you don't have one, it's kind of a shock to realize that yes in fact you do have a physical self and yes you have somehow become middle aged and yes you are going to be REALLY sorry if you don't wake up and start moving ASAP.

My body is a TRAIN WRECK.

But pain is a great motivator and I'm moving again for the first time in, oh, a decade and a half, I kid you not. I swear I looked in the mirror the other day and thought to myself, holy crap, I'm not just a floating head. Where did all of THIS come from? I have enough ass, belly and boobs to create a lifetime supply of soap.* (Barb - that's a Fight Club reference. See still Dark and Twisty!)

No one clued me in though that I was going to have all sorts of unpleasant reactions once I began to move again. (I can't even call it working out because I can barely keep up with the 80 year olds) But I am almost 20 years on the wagon and I kind of remember sobriety didn't feel so good at first either. The key I think is to accept where I'm at and not judge or beat holy hell out of myself, which in the end will not be effective and will only keep me from doing what I need to do. This is how far down the scale (or up as it were) I've gone and I just need to accept it.

By the by, the last time I went with S&H to the gym, in addition to the water aerobics, I attempted to ride a stationary bike. This particular bike had a computer screen upon which one could see a virtual track and a pacer bike with the idea being to pedal and steer and STAY ON THE TRACK. First Sunshine and Happiness had to help boost me onto the seat and then I couldn't keep my feet in the little footie thingies (which reminds me of the last time I had my gyne exam and I almost got my foot caught inside the stirrup because instead of placing my heal on it like you're supposed to, I tried to shove my foot through it. My doctor almost pissed herself. She was like, "it's not a damn bicycle.") Anyway I digress.

Turns out I wasn't able to pedal and keep myself on the track while watching my heart rate and rpms and I had to keep stopping to pull my shorts out my ass due to the friggin seat being up my anus. Soooooo, I don't expect I'll be riding a real bike anytime soon.

It seems this whole getting my body to move thing is going to be an adventure.

A really, really, long one.

D&T's Natural State

* It's possible to make soap from liposuctioned fat (just in case you didn't see Fight Club.)

I Never

noreply@blogger.com (Dark and Twisty) — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 22:14:00 +0000

As God is my witness, I will never be hungry again

I walked everywhere when I was young. My family never owned a car so unless where I was headed was on a bus route, I walked. To school and to the store. To the homes of relatives and to church. Up and down the avenue with our bags. On display to all of our neighbors. My father the Bagman and his brood.  Man, I HA-ated that.

It was though good exercise.

Because my family never owned a car, in addition to my constant fear of running into someone or something, due mostly to perceptual problems and frequent drunkenness, I never learned to drive.  When I was 30 and sober however, I thought that perhaps it was time to face my fear and finally learn. However, as I've mentioned before, I don't know my left from my right, am directionally challenged and am phobic about someone like me controlling a 2000 pound machine. So I did what anyone would do and I went to a therapist. There I practiced with a paper plate in place of a steering wheel as Kathy, my therapist would yell out "left," "right," "right" "left" "left" and I would try to turn the paper plate in the correct direction. Kathy also taught me how to deep breathe when I got paralyzed because, you know, it's not good to be going 60 mph and suddenly freeze. Eventually over time with the help of said therapist I was able to call the Will Rogers School of Driving. Will Rogers in turn sent me a young woman who was a driving instructor by day but made her real money stripping in a club at night. This 19 year old would regale me with stories from her evening gig while I would muddle through our driving lesson, hitting curbs, driving in the wrong lane, turning the wrong way and practically totalling the car while she completely ignored me, while telling me about the tips she earned at the Cricket the night before. I didn't care though because no sane person would let me use their car and the Will Rogers School of Driving provided me with a vehicle on which to learn and my stripper/instructor would pick me up and drop me off for each lesson.  Also, did I mention STRIPPER INSTRUCTOR?

One day out of the blue, my stripper finally decided she'd had enough and that she and I should go and test for my license. We drove to New Castle and wouldn't you know it, I pulled the big butch state officer as my test instructor. You know the one who scares the crap out of all the high school kids and flunks them for not coming to a complete stop. This though was fortuitous because she had an affinity for me. She passed me even though I botched the parallel parking and forgot to brake going down the hill at the end of the course sending us flying into the parking lot. In the end I got my very first driver's license and Officer Krumpky's phone number.

Anyway, afterward I bought a second hand Chevy Beretta built like a tank. All the better to protect me when I ran into things. And long story short, this is why I relate to Scarlett O' Hara. Because on the day I got my license and picked up my car I said to myself "As God is my witness, I will never walk anywhere I can drive to again." And I haven't. For oh, like 17 years.

I also haven't exercised in those 17 years because, you know, IT HURTS and as a result I have become fat. Really fat.

I don't say this with pride, far from it but someone once said, "the truth shall set you free but first it's gonna piss you off." So yeah I'm fat.

Until now being fat never really hurt bad enough for me to do anything about it. Unfortunately, no one told me that if you are fat, when you reach middle age you feel as if you are going to break in two. My joints are so stiff and my cartilage so worn that I creak like a mo fo every morning when I get up out of bed. I used to laugh at my Gram and my mom when they complained about their arthritis. Let me tell you, I'm not laughing anymore.

So...though I once said I would never walk (or exercise) or put on a bathing suit again, I joined a gym and have registered for water aerobics.  I was told that water aerobics is good for fat, arthritic people. I attended my first class on Sunday and again received a dose of humility.

When I registered for water aerobics this is what I had in mind:

However, when I arrived at my first class, this is what I found:

Reality. It's a bitch.

I Am the Neighbor Who Won't Give the Ball Back When The Damn Kids Next Door Hit It Into My Front Yard

noreply@blogger.com (Dark and Twisty) — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 22:58:00 +0000

Actually I don't even have a front yard. Truth be told, I have no next door neighbor kids who play ball on the front street. My Dark and Twisty self just woke up cranky today and out of sorts. For all intents and purposes, today I am a crank, crankity, crank crank.

There is a game plan worked out though for when this happens (just in case you ever want to borrow it.)

And it goes something like this....(take me by the tongue and I'll know you. kiss me when you're drunk and I'll show you) Oops. Sorry. Got a little carried away.

Obsessively sing Maroon 5's Moves Like Jagger. Check Facebook. Post inane comments. Surf youtube and look for clips from the Hunger Games. Get Rickrolled. Read email., skim blogs. Check FB again.

Avoid housework. Step over laundry on floor and think briefly about meditating. Put tea towel over dishes in the sink and step down on garbage in can so as not to have to empty it. Shove recyclables that roll out onto the floor when cabinet is opened precariously back inside on top of the pile where they will immediately roll back out the next time. Look at the dog bowls and wish to God they knew how to get their own food and water. Think briefly about showering. Decide not necessary.

Procrastinate. Look at clock. Limit self to 15 more minutes on computer. Think briefly about using weights to exercise. Think briefly about meditating. Steadfastly ignore healthy thoughts and give self another 15 minutes. Blog. Look at clock. Give up all pretense of doing anything productive.

Oh, and I almost forgot - Complain.

Me: Kids today. Pop culture. Technology. Music. I don't get any of it. Grumble. Grumble. Bitch moan. Holy crap. We need to move. Have you read the paper? The neighborhood is going to pot. Pout. Fret. I think I'm getting a migraine. Did you see the wind blew Carla's gutters off and down the street. It's supposed to be like that again tonight. God I hope nothing happens to our roof.. Wait, what? What did you just say?

S&H: I have never in my life met anyone who loves to complain as much as you do.

Me: It's true.

If there's one thing I am masterful at, it's complaining. I am a champion. Maybe the all-time champion.

Because I am cranky, and when I am cranky I can be self-destructive (and fritter away an entire day) when S&H left for work she made me promise I would be good to myself . So I promised and then proceeded to go upstairs and waste time looking up every melancholy song I could find.

Melancholy Song

But now I seem to be running out of steam. I'm finally tired of being cranky. So I'm rethinking that shower, those weights and maybe even some meditation. It's time to get my ass in motion. Yeah. Yeah. Take some action. Move my body. Have some face to face social contact.. Perhaps put on clothes and redd up the house. Yeah. yeah. That's what I'm gonna do.

In just about 15 minutes.

LOST

noreply@blogger.com (Dark and Twisty) — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 23:20:00 +0000

HAVE YOU SEEN THIS PERSON

DARK AND TWISTY BLOGGER

DISAPPEARS FROM BLOGOSPHERE

Adventures with D&T

noreply@blogger.com (Dark and Twisty) — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 23:35:00 +0000

Mr. Magoo

Growing up my family didn't have a car so we walked everywhere. To school. To church.  To the grocery store. There we would load up on stuff and walk down the avenue arms full of bags. Because of this my father's nickname was Bagman or sometimes Billy Bags. This embarrassed me so I pretended he ran numbers for the mob.

As a result I never learned "car things"  like that there's a defrost button or a release on the shift lever, or a NEUTRAL.  Who knew it wasn't necessary to keep a rag under the seat to wipe the steam off the windshield? Or that you have to push the release button in when shifting from park to drive so as not to strip the transmission? And WTF is neutral even for anyway?

Once upon a time, my driving teacher instructed me to get into the left hand lane in order to make a left turn.  I promptly complied crossing the yellow line and moving into the lane of oncoming traffic because... you guessed it.... IT WAS ON THE LEFT HAND SIDE.

Yeah. I'm THAT person.

Anyway, recently I started making deposits (for S&H) at our local bank. Each time I'd drive there, park, go inside, visit the teller, chat, make the deposit, say "have a nice day" and leave. The parking situation is really tight though and some days I'd drive around and around before a spot opened up.  Other days I'd park blocks away and walk or sometimes just leave and come back later. So...did I mention that the bank has a drive through window?

One day, not much different than other days, I thought, I suppose I could use the drive through." Brilliant, that.

Convenient Drive Through Window that I Never Thought to Use

So I drove up, the teller greeted me, I popped the deposit in the drawer, got my receipt, said "have a nice day" and drove off quite proudly. The only blip was that I accidentally "tapped" the car in front of me because, you know, I lifted my foot off the brake while leaning out the window. WHATever. That's what bumpers are for.

Later after several successes it was evident that now I'm cooking with gas and it's time to try transacting at a DIFFERENT bank. Confidently I rolled up ready for business and the first thing I see is this:

Intergalactic Tube Thingy

No worries though. I'd just watched the guy in front of me. Seemed simple enough.

Teller: Hi may I help you?
Me: (hitting the red CALL button) I need to make a deposit.
Teller: O.K. go ahead.

So I put the deposit in the tube and wait. And wait. And wait. A full 15 minutes. In that time I managed to text some friends, play with the heat, listen to the radio and watch 3 other cars pull in, make transactions and leave. Initially I assumed the teller was helping them and would get back to me but as this didn't happen I began to get irritated. I'd been there WAY before those other cars and she hadn't even sucked my deposit up the damn tube yet. Boy was I HOT. I decided to give her a piece of my mind and glaringly looked over at her, when I, for the first time, noticed a green SEND button. Right next to the red CALL button. Right on the bottom of the intergalactic tube thingy. Which I'd never pressed. Hell, I didn't even know there was a SEND button.

Me: (sheepishly pressing the red CALL button) Ah, should I send up my deposit?
Teller: (in exasperation) Well YEAH.

Yikes. So I pushed the SEND button, whoosh up went my deposit and the rest went swimmingly.

You'd of thunk at this point I knew everything there was to know about how to do drive through banking but you'd of thunk wrong because the NEXT time I used a multi-service drive through I again waited for 15 minutes because the teller never said "Hi may I help you," (like they always do INSIDE the bank) and I thought it'd be rude to push the green SEND button to give her my deposit before she was ready. Eventually I realized no such indication would be forthcoming (I'm quick like that) so I pushed the red CALL button and asked her if I should send up my deposit. And once more, a completely flummoxed teller said with much annoyance, "Well YEAH."

Additionally I thought that the communication between me and the teller was like a walkie talkie so I pressed the red CALL button and held it every time I replied. Who knew that once the teller turned the MICROPHONE on she could hear me regardless?

Me: (pushing red CALL button upon which a buzzer sounds inside the bank) Are you ready for my deposit?
Teller: Well YEAH.
Me: (pushing red CALL button thereby causing buzzer to buzz AGAIN) O.K.
Teller: Here you go. Have a nice day. (thinking to herself - now get the hell out of here)
Me: (pushing red CALL button, making buzzer sound one last time) You too.
Teller: (in her head) Oh dear Lord, thank God she's gone.

Yeah. I'm THAT person.

Obsessions of the Mind

noreply@blogger.com (Dark and Twisty) — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 23:13:00 +0000

Lizzie, a friend of mine, told me this story.....

Over the weekend, I went to see the movie War Horse with my wife and some friends.  What a heart wrenching movie. If you go, bring tissues. Animals are so much better than people. Loyal. Faithful. Loving.  Go see it. Anyway, I just wanted to tell you that when we got home from the theater and for the rest of the damn night I just could not stop thinking about that horse. Brushing my teeth. Lying in bed. Drifting off to sleep. There it was. The horse. The next day at breakfast I said to my wife, "I can't stop thinking about that horse. Are you thinking about that horse?" My wife looked at me calmly. "No," she said.

That happens to me all the time. It doesn't happen to Sunshine and Happiness.  I'd still be thinking about that horse because I have a sticky brain. Thoughts get stuck. Images get stuck. Ideas get stuck. Feelings get stuck. And for me it can be mighty difficult to get them unstuck. Also for me, the things that get stuck tend to be things I'd rather forget about. The incredible horror this world and human beings can dish out. All of the things I am afraid of.   How I can't seem to stop ending sentences with prepositions.

The other day I was flipping through the hundreds of cable channels that we now have and haven't yet cancelled and upon what do I land? I see the movie Untraceable on the cable guide and click on it. Now if you're not familiar with it, the premise of this movie is one in which a serial killer who knows people (who are both curious and drawn to the dark side of things), will log onto an "untraceable" website where he conducts violent and painful murders LIVE via the internet. The higher the number of hits his website gets, the more people who log on, the quicker and more violently the victim dies. Not quite The Princess Bride.

Now I'd read about this movie and had successfully avoided it for 3 years. It has notoriously gruesome murders graphically rendered. Additionally, the movie's conceit that individuals, knowing that they're anonymous and unaccountable, will purposefully log onto a sight called "killwithme" in order to watch a human being die is not the kind of idea that needs to be "stuck" in my head. Talk about snowballing down into the dark and twisty. Everything I fear about myself and human beings in general and our capacity for evil, apathy and darkness is front and center in this film. And here I am in real life, watching this movie to be entertained. So I KNEW, I was AWARE that the morally right, emotionally healthy, SMART thing to do (for me) would have been to turn off the TV or at least changed the channel. But you know what I did. I continued to watch.  I became captive to a horrific, stomach churning, disturbing murder scene and just like the anonymous folks depicted in the film, I couldn't look away. Talk about meta.

And afterward I was sick and disgusted with myself for my self-destructiveness because then you know what happened? As consequence for my behavior and for making a bad choice, the sticky brain thing happened. I continued to see the murder scene as I walked the dogs. I saw it lying in my bed. I dreamt of it and woke up with it in my brain. I'm thinking of it now as I type. And I feel sick each and every time I replay it. The only good thing (sort of) is that my brain doesn't seem to be able to become desensitized to this crap. I'm horrified every time. So right now because I hurt I will avoid any and all media of this type...news, novels, video sites, movies. Until I dip my toe in the water (flip through the cable channels and land on, oh, say SAW VII) and the obsession begins again.

I used to do this with alcohol. I would drink self destructively. I would start, know it was a bad idea, unhealthy, hurtful, possibly fatal and I would do it anyway. People would advise me to stop and I would say, OK but just one more. Then I would get sick, disgustingly sick and swear off the stuff and avoid it like the plague. Until I felt better. And then I would do it all over again. The more I fed the obsession to drink, the more I drank.

I think I'd better stop feeding this one. I'm sure It's A Wonderful Life must be on one of those hundreds of channels somewhere.

Lessons from 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Dark and Twisty) — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 01:42:00 +0000

Disclaimer: This post contains adult language, sexual content and in general dark and twisty stuff. I am not kidding. Proceed with caution.

At first as I looked back on 2011 I thought to myself, "hmmm I've not really learned much of ANYTHING this past year." No big life lessons. No great awakenings. Nothing revelatory. There just really didn't seem to be much of anything at all.

This made me grumpy. Well grumpier than I usually am.

I mean in my book, shouldn't I at least be able to think of one thing I'd learned, even if it was small? And so because I couldn't and because it made me grumpy, I continued to wrack my brain. Wrack. Wrack. Wrack.    And.........    Nothing.

I decided to try again a bit later....  Wrack. Wrack. Wrack.  And...... More nothing.   Then just as I was about to give up resigning myself to eternal grumpdom, I came upon a Dear Sugar column in The Rumpus.    And it was here that I found it. Something revelatory, something miraculous, something big.

Below in its entirety is Sugar's column Baby Bird.

Dear Sugar,
WTF, WTF, WTF? I’m asking myself this question as it applies to everything
every day.
Yours,
WTF

Dear WTF,
My father’s father made me jack him off when I was three and four and five. I wasn’t any good at it. My hands were too small and I couldn’t get  the rhythm right and I didn’t understand what I was doing. I only knew I didn’t want to do it. Knew that it made me feel miserable and anxious in a  way so sickeningly particular that I can feel that same particular sickness rising this very minute in my throat. I hated having to rub my  grandfather’s cock, but there was nothing I could do. I had to do it. My grandfather babysat my older sister and me a couple times a week in that era of my life and most of the days that I was trapped in his house with him he would pull his already-getting-hard penis out of his pants and say come here and that was that.

I moved far away from him when I was nearly six and soon after that my parents split up and my father left my life and I never saw my grandfather again. He died of black lung disease when he was 66 and I was 15, the same as his father had, both of them coal miners.

“Do you remember how we used to have to jack him off?” I asked my sister one day shortly after he died. We’d never spoken of it. I’d never said a word about it to anyone. I was ready for my sister to say no, for everything I remembered about my grandfather and his cock to be an ugly invention of my nasty little mind.

But she said, “Yeah.” She said, “Wow.” She said, “What the fuck was up with that?”

There was nothing the fuck up with that and there never will be. I will die with there never being anything the fuck up with my grandfather making my hands do the things he made my hands do with his cock. But it took me years to figure that out. To hold the truth within me that some things are so sad and wrong and unanswerable that the question must simply stand alone like a spear in the mud.

So I railed against it, in search of the answer to what the fuck was up with my grandfather doing that to my sister and me. What the fuck? What the fuck? What the fuck?

But I could never shake it. That particular fuck would not be shook. Asking what the fuck only brought it around. Around and around it went, my grandfather’s cock in my hands, the memory if it so vivid, so palpable, so very much a part of me. It came to me during sex and not during sex. It came to me in flashes and it came to me in dreams. It came to me one day when I found a baby bird, fallen from a tree.

I know you aren’t supposed to pick up baby birds. I know once you touch them their mama won’t come back and get them, but this bird was a goner anyway. Its neck was broken, its head lolling treacherously to the side. I picked it up and cradled it as delicately as I could in my palms. I cooed to soothe it, but each time I cooed, it only struggled piteously to get away, terrified by my voice.

The bird’s suffering would’ve been unbearable at any time, but it was particularly unbearable at that moment in my life because my mother had just died. Her death was ugly. She was only forty-five. And because she was dead I was pretty much dead too. I was dead but alive. And I had a baby bird in my palms that was dead but alive as well.

I knew there was only one humane thing to do, though it took me the better part of an hour to work up the courage to do it: I put the baby bird in a paper bag and smothered it with my hands.

Nothing that has died in my life has ever died easily and this bird was no exception. This bird did not go down without a fight. I could feel it through the paper bag, pulsing against my hand and rearing up, simultaneously flaccid and ferocious beneath its translucent sheen of skin, precisely as my grandfather’s cock had been.

There it was! There it was again. Right there in the paper bag. The ghost of that old man’s cock would always be in my hands. But I understood what I was doing this time. I understood that I had to press against it harder than I could bear. It had to die. Pressing harder was murder. It was mercy.

That’s what the fuck it was. The fuck was mine.

And the fuck is yours too, WTF. That question does not apply “to everything every day.” If it does, you’re wasting your life. If it does, you’re a lazy coward and you are not a lazy coward.

Ask better questions, sweet pea. The fuck is your life. Answer it.

Yours,
Sugar

So that's it. Thanks to those who have loved and supported me through all of my WTF moments. Happy New Year Sweet Peas.

Christmas

noreply@blogger.com (Dark and Twisty) — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 01:19:00 +0000

(We had this exact tree when I was a kid only we sprayed snow from an aerosol can all over it. And pretty much everything else.)

OK, so I just elfed myself. And posted it on Facebook. Good Lord, I'm not sure what's going on with me. But it was fun and made me laugh. So go. Now. Get thee to the Office Max website and elf yourself. I highly recommend it.

(Tiny cardboard churches, houses, trees and stores with cotton for snow underneath. Just more things to spray with aerosol snow)

I've been thinking a lot about Christmas's past (past Christmases? Christmas' past?) Oh hell, you know what I mean. And I've found myself getting all choked up and teary eyed. Eh? Who is this and where have they put Dark and Twisty? It's unsettling is what it is. Because you know, sniffling and snuffling are not conducive to being Dark and Twisty. AND because was a time I hated the holidays. That's pronounced Haaaaa-Ated by the way. Emphasis on the Ate.

HOWEVER.

This past weekend I was at the mall with Sunshine and Happiness strolling (that's right strolling) from store to store and oh, hey, is that Bing Crosby singing White Chrismas? And all of sudden my throat tightens up and I'm fighting back tears. Thank God it wasn't Loo loo loo Night from A Charlie Brown Christmas or I'd a been done for. I managed to pull it together and we next wandered into Roxanne's Dried Flowers and BAM, right there in front of me laid out beautifully were all of the holiday ornaments from when I was a kid. Only now they're called vintage and they cost a royal mint.

Vintage Ornaments from my Childhood that Cost a Royal Mint

And ho, wait, there it was again. Again. That twist in my gut and a twingy bittersweet feeling. What the???? Then on the way home we were looking at the houses decked out in lights and came upon a house that was decorated with those really old and heavy, lead paint covered Christmas bulbs we used to have on our live tree way back when and I seriously thought about calling my therapist.

Poison Lights

BUT, I think I know now what's happening to me. God help us all, I think I'm actually starting to LIKE Christmas.

Sunshine and Happiness

Not So Dark and Twisty

And maybe, just maybe, my heart's even starting to GROW a few sizes. Merry Christmas everyone.

The Funny Papers

noreply@blogger.com (Dark and Twisty) — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 16:55:00 +0000

Stephan Pastis

Bwaaaaaha ha ha! Touche'

Loneliness

noreply@blogger.com (Dark and Twisty) — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 03:54:00 +0000

There's walls made of steel
There's walls made of stone
But none are so strong
As the walls made of fear alone

Maura O'Connell

But I'm chipping away at it......

Although I am perfectly fine with my own company and enjoy being by myself I sometimes struggle with loneliness. Balance eludes me. It's embarrassing but I either have no boundaries at all, indiscriminately disclosing random intimate facts to perfect strangers or I put up walls that keep everyone out. Including Sunshine and Happiness.

In 2005, Frank Warren created Post Secret, an art project in which people are invited to anonymously mail in their secrets on a homemade postcard. Select secrets appear every Sunday on the PostSecret blog. I read this blog every week and both of these postcards are from the site.

And I have the sense, though I can't quite put my finger on why, that somehow my loneliness is related.

Camp Pemberton

noreply@blogger.com (Dark and Twisty) — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 01:20:00 +0000

Our Crooked House

Sunshine and Happiness says I was holding the camera at an angle when I took this picture. For the record, I wasn't. Our house is just really crooked. A good friend of mine always says when you start out as broken as he did sometimes the best you can ever be is a little bent. I guess then it's appropriate this is where I live. Crooked? Bent? What's the difference.

November

noreply@blogger.com (Dark and Twisty) — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 00:37:00 +0000

I love November. It's my favorite month. I love Thanksgiving, I met Sunshine and Happiness on a beautiful November day in '98 and the anniversary of my last drink is November 13th. However, the whole Penn State debacle and its mishandling by the powers that be, the youtube video of the Texas family court judge whipping his 16 year old daughter with a belt and the 2012 election campaign commercials (already!) started to put a real damper on MY month. To combat this downward spiral I took some photos of Sunshine and Happiness' and my home.

Ornamental cherry tree in front of our house

Thanksgiving Turkey Flag flying in front of Camp Pemberton

View from our back porch

Ah........now see. I'm loving November again. Happy Gratitude month everyone!

The Old Neighborhood

noreply@blogger.com (Dark and Twisty) — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 02:18:00 +0000

Kanai Funeral Home - Greenfield Ave

Doesn't the above building remind you of a haunted house? I've always been afraid of it AND it contains dead people which just makes my point.

So this is where I spent last weekend.

My dad's father died and the viewing and funeral were on Friday and Saturday. My grandfather was 96, married 73 years and died with his wife by his side. He lived long and well and though I am sad for my father and my grandmother it was the longest weekend of my life. And I have had some long weekends.

I don't mean to sound callous. I know I needed to be there for my father and to pay my respects. It's just that revisiting the old neighborhood and spending large amounts of time with my family falls on the scale just below having needles stuck in my eyes.

So this is what it was like.

Conversation overheard as I was kneeling in front of the casket.

Senile family member: "Who's in the box?"
Unknown relative: "That's your husband."

Conversation between Sunshine and Happiness and my Aunt Helen:

S&H: "Hi I'm Sunshine and Happiness, Dark and Twisty's partner. Good to see you again."

Aunt Helen: "Oh, I remember you." Sharp heal spin giving S&H her back, abrupt end of conversation. I don't think she's big on the whole gay thing.

Discussion early on at the funeral home.

My mom: "Would you be comfortable doing the eulogy? "

Me to myself: "Wait a minute, my grandfather has 3 sons and 2 daughters. Why is she asking me?"

Me outloud: "Why are you asking me this? Shouldn't Daddy or one of the kids be doing it?"

My mom: "None of them know enough about your grandfather to write one."

Me: "So why are you asking me?"

My mom: "Because they asked me to do it but I don't know enough about him to write one either."

Yikes. No eulogy for Grandpap.

In making the arrangements for the wake my family tried to reserve this place.

Formerly Mike's Bar

This just so happens to be the bar where I became an expert on alcoholism. My own.

Luckily, it wasn't available so here's where the wake was held.

Rock Bottom. A dueling piano bar. And appropriately named.

As evidence of this I shall relay one final ditty.

When we entered the bar, we sat down, settled ourselves and ordered a coffee. Suddenly with no warning a wild eyed, wild haired woman sat herself down right beside us. I had no idea who this woman was but she started inserting herself into each and every conversation and making absolutely no sense at all. It was obvious that she had some kind of mental illness and so I just assumed she was related. Then as S&H was fixing her coffee, the woman turned and looked at her and asked her for several packets of sugar. S&H passed them to her at which point she promptly tore them open, threw her head back and poured them down her throat. Then she started mainlining Truvia. I kid you not.
Now I can be a bit slow so S&H had to clue me in that this crazy woman was a junkie who apparently was detoxing. Come to find out she lives across the street from my grandparents and just decided to show up. So I spent the rest of the buffet guarding S&H's purse.

Rock Bottom indeed.

Purple Rain

noreply@blogger.com (Dark and Twisty) — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 16:28:00 +0000

This video was posted on a friend's Facebook page.  She asked if we could do the hand motions with her and all of a sudden I was 19 again.

I don't have many good memories from my drinking days but this is one. It was a hot summer night, my friends were back from college, we were together and acting all goofy and drunk. I remember the movie theater having those old red velvet seats and I think we were in Monroeville. The movie onscreen was often fuzzy and the acting absolutely horrible but Prince, Lisa, Wendy and Apollonia were yummy to look at and the soundtrack was AMAZING.   I also remember my gaydar spiking when I saw Lisa and Wendy onstage. Oh AND Prince.

Due to my drunkenness I didn't quite follow the story. You'd have thought I was watching Memento or something but I didn't care because it was one of those perfect drunks. You know the kind where you stay just crushed enough not to lose your buzz but not so much that you're puking out the car window. I was happy.   The group of us, my younger sister and her boyfriend, (I remember he had on a Big Pecker's Bar t-shirt,) my friend THE RINGLEADER and her boyfriend, a redheaded guy named Flame, and an assortment of other folks from the Island of Misfit Toys thought we were being sneaky and chose a row off to the side of the theater against the wall where we were sure no could see us pouring vodka into our pops.

Partway through the movie, BP, (the guy in the Big Pecker's bar shirt) became totally pissed with me because as I was passing him an extra large Pepsi doctored so that it tasted just like turpentine, I somehow managed to drop the entire thing in his lap along with my popcorn. Not sure how THAT happened. I think neither of us wanted to let go of the alcohol and were pulling in opposite directions when the whole thing went down. He then refused to speak to me for most of the night. Big baby! He didn't get that wet. Later that night he and said friends stood outside my bedroom window at 2 in the morning and howled like wolves until my mom (who could be quite scary) went out on the porch and threatened to throw a pan of water on them.  Or come down and kick their asses. I can't quite remember which.

During the movie we stood up in our row, (I think my sister was standing on top of one of the seats) danced and did the hand motions to I Would Die for U.   I was 2 moves behind throughout the entire song and it felt like I was playing Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes and was losing. I may have fallen down afterwards. I don't know.  Later we went to McDonalds and bought like a bajillion cheeseburgers singing "let's go craaaaaazy, let's get nuuuuuuts" over and over and over. Maybe I did puke out the car window after that. Hmmm.

It was one of the happiest times of my life.

Thanks for the memory Donna.

Knowing Your Limitations

noreply@blogger.com (Dark and Twisty) — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 22:39:00 +0000

I would be the goat.

Dear Sugar

noreply@blogger.com (Dark and Twisty) — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 00:06:00 +0000

In my last post I was wrestling with what I believe. I'm a "Why?" kind of person so when awful things happen, my pattern is to try and figure them out as if there's some "right" answer that could possibly explain tragic circumstances. I know it's just that I'm afraid and trying to feel some small bit of control over situations in which I'm powerless. I know I'm just trying to avoid the reality that sometimes life sucks.

A friend recently experienced an unimaginable loss. She's handling it with grace. Me, not so much. I'm angry and when I'm angry I push away. Hard. (my apologies to Sunshine and Happiness.) When painful things happen I intellectualize to not have to feel. I retreat into my head and I start thinking. As always, this is a bad, BAD, very bad thing.

Here's what Sunshine and Happiness says when bad things happen and I get angry and all up in my head, " Hello, honey? It's not about you."

Despite S&H's wisdom, for the past few days I've not only been up in my head but also all over Google and Facebook. That's because I find that playing on the Internet is a nifty way to not have to feel stuff. While avoiding my feelings I found a link to a FB page called Grief Beyond Belief, a brand new site that provides faith-free support for non-religious people grieving the death of a loved one. It was there that I found a link to the following advice column:

Dear Sugar

I’m writing this from my little couch/bed in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit at Egelston Children’s Hospital in Atlanta. My husband and I just found out that our 6-month old daughter, Emma, has a tumor and she is having brain surgery tomorrow. I am scared that I will lose her. I’m scared she could be paralyzed or her development will be messed up and she will have a hard life. I’m scared they will find out the tumor is cancerous and she will need chemo. She’s only a little baby.People have poured all their thoughts and prayers into us right now but to be honest, God is farthest from my mind. I’ve never been super religious but now I find myself doubting His existence more than ever. If there were a God why would he let my little girl have to have possibly life threatening surgery, Sugar? I never in a million years thought that my husband and I would be in this situation.

I want to ask you to pray and all your reader’s to pray, to a God maybe I’m not sure I even believe in anymore. Pray that my baby will be okay. And that we can walk away from this and forget it even happened. I have written you before about different things, which now seem so stupid and silly. I just want to get through this with my husband and daughter and look back and thank God that everything is okay. I want to believe in Him and I want to believe all the prayers being said for us are working.

Abbie

Dear Abbie,

I know everyone reading these words shares my relief that Emma came through her surgery so well. I’m sorry you’ve had to endure such a frightful experience. I hope that the worst of it is over and that you will be able to “walk away from this,” as you put it, and to keep walking—far and fast—into a future that does not contain the words tumorand surgery and cancer. I agonized about whether to publish your letter. Not because it isn’t worthy of a reply—your situation is as serious as it gets and your doubts about your faith in God are profound and shared by many. But I couldn’t help but wonder who the hell I thought I was in daring to address your question. I wonder that often while writing this column, but I wondered it harder when it came to your letter. I’m not a chaplain. I don’t know squat about God. I don’t even believe in God. And I believe less in speaking of God in a public forum where I’m very likely to be hammered for my beliefs. Yet here I am because there I was, finding it impossible to get your letter out of my head.

Nearly two years ago I took my children to the Christmas pageant at the big Unitarian Church in our city. The pageant was to be a reenactment of the birth of Jesus. I took my kids as a way to begin to educate them about the non-Santa history of the holiday. Not as religious indoctrination, but as a history lesson.
Who is Jesus? they asked from the back seat of the car as we drove to the show, after I’d explained to them what we were about to see. They were four and nearly six at the time. They’d heard about Jesus in glimmers before, but now they wanted to know everything. I wasn’t terribly literate in Jesus—my mother was an ex-Catholic who spurned organized religion in her adult life, so I had no religious schooling as a child—but I knew enough that I was able to cover the basics, from his birth in a manger, to his young adulthood as a proselytizer for compassion, forgiveness, and love, to his crucifixion and beyond, to the religion that was founded on the belief that Jesus, after suffering for our sins, rose from the dead and ascended to heaven.

After I finished with my narration, it was like someone had served my kids two triple shot Americanos. Tell me about Jesus! became a ten-times-a-day demand. They weren’t interested in his birth in the barn or his philosophies about how to live or even what he might be up to in heaven. They wanted only to know about his death. In excruciating detail. Over and over again. Until every ugly fact sank into their precious bones. For months I was compelled to repeatedly describe precisely how Jesus was flagellated, humiliated, crowned with thorns, and nailed at the hands and feet to a wooden cross to die an agonizing death. Sometimes I would do this while making my way in a harried fashion up and down the aisles of the hoity-toity organic grocery store where we shop and people would turn and stare at me.

My children were both horrified and enthralled by Jesus’ crucifixion. It was the most appalling thing they’d ever heard. They didn’t understand the story within its religious context. They perceived only its brutal truth. They did not contemplate Jesus’ divinity, but rather his humanity. They had little interest in this business about him rising from the dead. He was not to them a Messiah. He was only a man. One who’d been nailed to a cross alive and endured it a good while.

Did it hurt his feelings when they were so mean to him? my son repeatedly asked. Where was his mommy? my daughter wanted to know.

After I told them about Jesus’ death, I wondered whether I should have. Mr. Sugar and I had managed to shield them from almost all of the world’s cruelty by then, so why, for the love of God (ahem), was I exposing them to this? Yet I also realized they had to know—their fascination with Jesus’ agony was proof of that. I’d hit a nerve. I’d revealed a truth they were ready to know. Not about Christianity, but about the human condition: that suffering is part of life.

I know that. You know that. I don’t know why we forget it when something truly awful happens to us, but we do. We wonder why me? and how can this be? and what terrible God would do this? and the very fact that this has been done to me is proof that there is no God! We act as if we don’t know that awful things happen to all sorts of people every second of every day and the only thing that’s changed about the world or the existence or nonexistence of God or the color of the sky is that the awful thing is happening to us.

It’s no surprise you have such doubt in this moment of crisis, sweet pea. It’s perfectly natural that you feel angry and scared and betrayed by a God you want to believe will take mercy on you by protecting those dearest to you. When I learned my mom was going to die of cancer at the age of 45, I felt the same way. I didn’t even believe in God, but I still felt that he owed me something. I had the gall to think how dare he? I couldn’t help myself. I’m a selfish brute. I wanted what I wanted and I expected it to be given to me by a God in whom I had no faith. Because mercy had always more or less been granted me, I assumed it always would be.

But it wasn’t.

It wasn’t granted to my friend whose 18-year old daughter was killed by a drunk driver either. Nor was it granted to my other friend who learned her baby is going to die of a genetic disorder in the not-distant future. Nor was it granted to my former student whose mother was murdered by her father before he killed himself. It was not granted to all those people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time when they came up against the wrong virus or military operation or famine or carcinogenic or genetic mutation or natural disaster or maniac.

Countless people have been devastated for reasons that cannot be explained or justified in spiritual terms. To do as you are doing in asking if there were a God why would he let my little girl have to have possibly life threatening surgery?—understandable as that question is—creates a false hierarchy of the blessed and the damned. To use our individual good or bad luck as a litmus test to determine whether or not God exists constructs an illogical dichotomy that reduces our capacity for true compassion. It implies a pious quid pro quo that defies history, reality, ethics, and reason. It fails to acknowledge that the other half of rising—the very half that makes rising necessary—is having first been nailed to the cross.

That’s where you were the other night when you wrote to me, dear woman. Pinned in place by your suffering. I woke up at 3am because I could feel you pinned there so acutely that I—a stranger—felt pinned too. So I got up and wrote to you. My email was a paltry little email probably not too different from the zillions of other paltry little emails you received from others, but I know without knowing you that those emails from people who had nothing to give you but their kind words, along with all the prayers people were praying for you, together formed a tiny raft that could just barely hold your weight as you floated through those terrible hours while you awaited your daughter’s fate.

If I believed in God, I’d see evidence of his existence in that. In your darkest hour you were held afloat by the human love that was given to you when you most needed it. That would have been true regardless of the outcome of Emma’s surgery. It would have been the grace that carried you through even if things had not gone as well as they did, much as we hate to ponder that.

Your question to me is about God, but boiled down to its essentials, it’s not so different than most of the questions people ask me to answer. It says: this failed me and I want to do better next time. My answer will not be so different either: to do better you’re going to have to reach. Perhaps the good that can come from this terrifying experience is a more complex understanding of what God means to you so the next time you need spiritual solace you’ll have something sturdier to lean on than the rickety I’ll-believe-he-exists-only-if-he-gives-me-what-I-want fence. What you learned as you sat bedside with Emma in the intensive care unit is that your idea of God as a possibly non-existent spirit man who may or may not hear your prayers and may or may not swoop in to save your ass when the going gets rough is a losing prospect.

So it’s up to you to create a better one. A bigger one. Which is really, almost always, something smaller.

What if you allowed your God to exist in the simple words of compassion others offer to you? What if faith is the way it feels to lay your hand on your daughter’s sacred body? What if the greatest beauty of the day is the shaft of sunlight through your window? What if the worst thing happened and you rose anyway? What if you trusted in the human scale? What if you listened harder to the story of the man on the cross who found a way to endure his suffering than to the one about the impossible magic of the Messiah? Would you see the miracle in that?

Yours,
Sugar

And by the grace of Sugar, I found the answer I was looking for.

A Dark and Twisty Fool

noreply@blogger.com (Dark and Twisty) — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 01:17:00 +0000

Any time I use my intellect to pursue God I start down a bad, BAD, very bad path. When I try to figure God out I end up confused, sad, angry and sick. You know why? I am not equipped to figure God out. Who knew?

As a child I was raised Catholic. At home, at school, in church, I accepted everything I was taught. One of those things was not to question because all is mystery. As a child I was exceptionally good at this. I did my best to be obedient, I trusted and I believed in all that is good and right in this world. I kept it simple. And I was happy. But somewhere in there I grew up. And I started to think too much.

Now I believe that I have a good heart. And I know the difference between right and wrong when it comes to my own actions. I may not be able to judge your heart or your actions but my insides always tell me what the right action is for me. I trust that. Unfortunately I have lots of practice ignoring my insides.

My head though is a different story altogether. My head is wired for dark and twisty, complicated, catastrophic, negative, destructive thinking. My thoughts often don't start out on the dark side but this is what happens. I start trying to figure things out in my head. Right there a red flag should go up because without fail I am about to snowball down the aforementioned bad, BAD, very bad path. Self knowledge leads me nowhere. And it's worse when I think I have knowledge about you and that I have you figured out. When I am absolutely sure I'm right it is a given that I am wrong. This is why I have good people around me. To set me on the straight and narrow.

And this is what happens every time I try to figure out God. Seems my God chooses to remain a mystery and no matter how hard I spin my wheels all that happens is that I tire myself out and make myself unhappy. I judge myself because I don't understand God. Because how am I supposed to believe in Something I don't understand? All of this is to say that faith and belief are extremely personal and not something that can be proven. (or figured out) One thing I know though is that I can't ever trust my screwed up mind. I have to go with my insides.

And here are the things my insides tell me.

God exists
Evil exists
I don't understand why evil exists and I've not been able to find an acceptable answer or one that can comfort me. However, I believe that God cries with me when I am in pain.
I believe I receive guidance when I allow myself to be open to it.
I believe that though I need God's strength to accomplish anything, He won't do for me what I am capable of doing for myself. Case in point, I asked God for years to help me trust Him. And then I went about my business and when something challenging happened I became frightened and refused to trust. Finally, one day, after I'd cried to her yet again about this, Sunshine and Happiness said to me, "Look you just have to say, God, I trust you and then act as if you do. That's the only way to learn trust. God can't do it for you." Damned if she wasn't right.
I believe I have a choice every time I am faced with a situation about whether I am going to turn toward the light or go the dark and twisty route.
Going the dark and twisty route never leads me to my Higher Power. It never brings me serenity.
I am of 2 natures, both saint and sinner, capable of both good and evil.
My God wants me to choose to go toward the light. It's just that sometimes I don't want to.
I have a purpose in this world.
Altering my mind with alcohol, drugs, food, co-dependency, etc. moves me away from God and my purpose in this world.
Gratitude, doing the next right thing, engaging in relationship, prayer, meditation and being of service to others bring me closer to my Higher Power and peace.

I started thinking about all of this because I haven't played guitar in years but for some reason today I dug it out. I plucked and plunked along but the only song I could remember was God's Own Fool by Michael Card. Now I've known this song since my college days and since college have had a mixed reaction to it When I read the lyrics I'm put off because I don't like proselytizing. I don't believe that there's only one way, one path to God and I cringe at those who push this idea onto others. Christianity as an organized religion at best leaves me cold and mostly just makes me angry. Intellectually this song embarrasses me. And yet ....

My heart says otherwise.

God's Own Fool

Seems I've imagined Him all of my life
As the wisest of all of mankind
But if God's Holy wisdom is foolish to man
He must have seemed out of His mind

For even His family said He was mad
And the priests said a demon's to blame
But God in the form of this angry young man
Could not have seemed perfectly sane

And we in our foolishness thought we were wise
He played the fool and He opened our eyes
We in our weakness believed we were strong
He became helpless to show we were wrong

And so we follow God's own fool
For only the foolish can tell
Believe the unbelievable
And come be a fool as well

So come lose your life for a carpenter's son
For a madman who died for a dream
And you'll have the faith His first followers had
And you'll feel the weight of the beam

So surrender the hunger to say you must know
and the courage to say I believe
Let the power of paradox open your eyes
And blind those who say they can see

And we in our foolishness thought we were wise
He played the fool and He opened our eyes
We in our weakness believed we were strong
He became helpless to show we were wrong

And so we follow God's own Fool
For only the foolish can tell
Believe the unbelievable,
And come be a fool as well

Life After

noreply@blogger.com (Dark and Twisty) — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 23:19:00 +0000

For Donna.....

Down below the surface of a quiet pond lived a little colony of water bugs. They were a happy colony, living far away from the sun. For many months they were very busy, scurrying over the soft mud on the bottom of the pond. They did notice that every once in awhile one of their colony seemed to lose interest in going about. Clinging to the stem of a pond lily it gradually moved out of sight and was seen no more.

"Look!" said one of the water bugs to another. "One of our colony is climbing up the lily stalk. Where do you think she is going?" Up, up, up it slowly went....Even as they watched, the water bug disappeared from sight. Its friends waited and waited but it didn't return...

"That's funny!" said one water bug to another. "Wasn't she happy here?" asked a second... "Where do you suppose she went?" wondered a third. No one had an answer.

They were greatly puzzled. Finally one of the water bugs, a leader in the colony, gathered its friends together. "I have an idea". The next one of us who climbs up the lily stalk must promise to come back and tell us where he or she went and why."

"We promise", they said solemnly.

One spring day, not long after, the very water bug who had suggested the plan found herself climbing up the lily stalk. Up, up, up, she went. Before she knew what was happening, she had broke through the surface of the water and fallen onto the broad, green lily pad above.

When she awoke, she looked about with surprise. She couldn't believe what she saw. A startling change had come to her old body. Her movement revealed four silver wings and a long tail. Even as she struggled, she felt an impulse to move her wings...The warmth of the sun soon dried the moisture from the new body. She moved her wings again and suddenly found herself up above the water. She had become a dragonfly!!

Swooping and dipping in great curves, she flew through the air. She felt exhilarated in the new atmosphere. By and by the new dragonfly lighted happily on a lily pad to rest. Then it was that she chanced to look below to the bottom of the pond. Why, she was right above her old friends, the water bugs! There they were scurrying around, just as she had been doing some time before.

The dragonfly remembered the promise: "The next one of us who climbs up the lily stalk will come back and tell where he or she went and why." Without thinking, the dragonfly darted down. Suddenly she hit the surface of the water and bounced away. Now that she was a dragonfly, she could no longer go into the water...

"I can't return!" she said in dismay. "At least, I tried. But I can't keep my promise. Even if I could go back, not one of the water bugs would know me in my new body. I guess I'll just have to wait until they become dragonflies too. Then they'll understand what has happened to me, and where I went."

And the dragonfly winged off happily into its wonderful new world of sun and air.......

From: "Waterbugs and Dragonflies" by Doris Stickney

All That is Dark and Twisty

noreply@blogger.com (Dark and Twisty) — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 22:03:00 +0000

I could tell you I was drawn to FX's new cable series American Horror Story because I loved Connie Britton as Mrs. Coach Taylor in Friday Night Lights but it would be a lie. Although the marriage of Coach Eric and Tami Taylor (Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton) was a thing of beauty, the unfortunate truth is that I am drawn to anything remotely dark and twisty. This is a surprise, I know.

Sunshine and Happiness and I don't have cable so I had to intentionally seek the show out on Hulu. This is a bad, bad, VERY bad thing. I'm sensitive, an empath, obsessive and an addict. NOT a good combination. The question of the existence of evil has caused me distress since my childhood because I always wanted to know "why?" As there is no acceptable answer to this question, it then begins a nasty cycle of anger, fear, despair, depression, more fear, and onward and downward until I am curled up in a fetal position on the couch afraid of my own shadow. When I start upon this particular path Sunshine and Happiness will try to stop me by shouting "Honey, go towards the light!" However, she does have to work at least sometimes, which leaves me alone to my own devices.

Given where this particular line of thinking leads you'd think I 'd avoid dark and twisty like the plague. Au contraire mon ami. I am a good alcoholic. If you advise left, I turn right. When you caution "I wouldn't drink that if I were you." I chug it right down. If you, say, recommend that it might behoove me to avoid, oh, anything I will run right for it. My therapist calls this a "reverse phobia." She thinks I'm drawn to the dark and twisty in an attempt to exert some wee bit of control over it because I'm so afraid. I wonder sometimes where she got her degree.

So today, for example,while reading the paper, I came across this story of a woman who kidnapped disabled folks, chained them to a boiler in a basement, made them live in their own waste and only sometimes fed them, all so she could steal their Social Security checks. This same woman served four years (four freakin years!) in prison for the murder of her sister's ex-boyfriend. She confined him in a coat closet with no food or water until he starved, again so she could collect his Social Security check. Oh, and her sister heard the guy screaming and banging against the closet door but did nothing to save him. Yikes! Sociopaths and our justice system frighten the hell out of me. And yet I will turn on the TV and watch those horrid police procedurals, surf the Internet for autopsy and accident photos, read true crime stories and movies like Henry:Portrait of a Serial Killer til the cows come home.

So although I should have folded up the newspaper and put it away right then, I did not.

Next up on the news agenda, the story of a woman who cut the freakin fetus from a stranger after clocking her on the head with a baseball bat and binding her with duct tape. Have I mentioned that psychopaths terrify me? After this story I did throw the paper away.

However, instead of going to do my morning meditation (like I should have)I logged on to Facebook, you know, just to check in to make sure I didn't miss anything important and someone had posted about the Chinese toddler who was run over twice but left to die in the street by 17 bystanders. And it was captured on surveillance film. This video is actually posted at the Gawker site for anyone sick enough to want to see it but even I Queen of all things Dark and Twisty, could not bring myself to watch. Can you even imagine being present and standing by while doing absolutely nothing as a two year old dies in the street? The human capacity for apathy scares me most of all.

So watching American Horror Story makes me feel guilty. Gore, torture, murder, abuse, crime. This is entertainment? I read the paper. I watch the news. I live in the world. And I know that for some unlucky individuals this horror is real life! And yet I choose to indulge and end up feeling like crap. I do know though that I have a choice. I can choose to fill myself up with the dark and twisty or I can move toward the light, although I'm never really sure on a given day which I'll choose.

Once while at a spiritual retreat struggling with my alcoholism, anxiety, depression and despair I became desperate. Nothing seemed to matter and I just couldn't pull myself up from the pit. As I was meditating I asked God for help and I came upon this passage:

"Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable -- if anything is excellent or praiseworthy--think on these."

Philippians 4:8

There it is. There is the answer. Ask for help and choose to focus on the light.

And I will. Right after I watch the second episode of American Horror Story.

Super Bass

noreply@blogger.com (Dark and Twisty) — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 15:23:00 +0000

Sophia, age 8 and Rosie, age 5 from Essex, England LOVE Niki Minaj. They visited the Ellen show on Wednesday and performed their version of Super Bass. I haven't been able to get the "boom, badoom, boom boom, badoom, boom he got that super bass.." out of my head yet.

Here's the original version that landed them on the Ellen show

Eventually there will be a Sophia backlash (HATERS!) but for now I'm just wondering where I can get a tiara, ballet shoes and pink frilly princess dress for myself???