(femmephane)

Doubtless I would produce a brood of three– each with her own porcelain appendages by puberty. “Mom.” One would explain, as she tapped demonstrably at the glass eye with a ceramic fingertip. “Hey,” i would joke carving up a thigh for dinner, “it could be worse. You’ll be immortalized in glass.”

For me it is just the shoulder gone but I can’t be sure how much of my children I would feed Demeter before the gig was up. Public schools and appointees of the court are a far cry from a celestial dinner table and more likely to, say, gouge out their eyes than cope with the cannibalized.

It’s mothers day.

I went to a baby shower yesterday. Everyone got drunk at two pm and by five there were only six of us left. We decided it had been a success, stayed until midnight and looked up “baby shower” on wikipedia to see if we had done it right when we learned there had only been one parent (of forty guests) in attendance. All of our gifts had been guesses except the beach volleyball set– that one was a sure thing.

J’s ex’s grandmother died yesterday morning. J said lots of things like– Only One in Her Family to Survive the Holocaust, Lost her Whole Family and So Made a Whole New One, and I Loved Being Part of That Family– I Miss Being Part of Her Family. I don’t find it touching– these big loving chains of women and it mystifies me that you do. The intra-continental dynasties, the orgies of juridically sanctioned, feminist-approved history, cultural celebration, obsession with the family line: surviving, thriving, loving. I’ll show you what oral transmission really means.

Perhaps I am not moved in the same way that J failed to appreciate the gravity of something else. It is the same as when JK, recently informed he has become unwelcome in his family’s homes, asked if he should fly home and stay in a hotel to visit his parents and sisters. J said: Fuck No- Why The Fuck Would You Do That. I only wept later and said– But of course he should. But I don’t want to give bad advice.

I know.

Now more than ever I know I can neither offer up that family nor promise one in the future. I am so young that she thinks, perhaps, I will grow into wanting to make a family. The party was full of people excited about the prospect of baby. Baby will love you. You will love baby.

It’s mother’s day and today I know it’s not just animals who eat their young. It is also the cursed and the clever. The sacred and profane. And the certainty doesn’t come from my experience as the victimized young.

Or maybe a curse is compelling enough to warrant life. Especially the kind of lonely life that family can never satisfy. This must be what queer means. Once everyone’s actual families come to town I am lost again.

This week, for example: mother’s day, my parents’ birthday, senior gala, my final address to women’s studies, graduation. All of these things beg guests, dates, family, and I can’t find any. The thought of doing the week alone makes me feel like I have eaten something rotten. We had planned to have a graduation party. But when my most beloved guests could not come (or failed to RSVP completely) I opted out: NC who was there for two years of the hardest stuff and always promised, my dear brother, my dear sister, Ken, Nora, and J– who can come for the ceremony and the party but nothing else.

Sure. I understand. But I don’t. Whether or not this is what family means, I don’t want one.

“You have to find some people to come on Wednesday,” my adviser reminds me as I tie up her wet hair, “everyone except for A will have family there– and a bunch of friends.” What is this private school public torture?

In anticipation of it all I remind you again: I will not become the family you or I want. I promise.

There’re still five vials of the sperm she’s saving for anyone who wants them. J suggests again and again that it be me. But Pelops would have made a lousy matriarch and even Antigone couldn’t have cared less about her own offspring.

I’d rather rent a room.

After years of aspiration and experimentation I have finally found the environment in which the alluring US Weekly is completely intelligible to me: treadmill. It’s good. I feel temporarily assimilated into an otherwise impenetrable (sorry) girl-world. You never know when you’ll have a chance to reap the benefits of your showbisdom by mentioning the new Pitt-Jolie house (therapy), talking about star “post baby bodies” (Angela), or listing all the celebrity couples with a 12-year age difference (this one actually failed).

However, since the writers’ strike ended I have found myself lost amidst all this tv coverage. These magazines are no longer talking about banal mega-celebrities like Halle, Will, and Miley, but have instead gone back to banal reality stars. I was ready for Gossip Girl. All is well with Grey’s Anatomy. And if anyone ever decides to do a piece on Hugh Laurie and Lisa Edelstein, I’m all ready. Unfortunately the coverage is going to shows I’ve never seen and they’re either ones you have to watch in order to (presumably) enjoy  gossip about (American Idol) or just things that I’ve never heard of.

For a while it was okay. I could just read over the Dancing with the Stars and Next Top Model. Still, something wayward blossomed on the glossy horizon. Her name was Lauren Conrad.

I spent a couple of weeks looking at her picture and nodding along as if I knew who she was. Every time I saw her picture I just pretended that she was Christine Taylor– the actress who played Melody on that classic Nick sitcom “Hey Dude.” Please, I’m not insane. Just willful. Look:

Every time an article would mention Conrad’s age I would just hum loudly or act like the number referred to something else. All this to get out of Google-for-the-answer– or perhaps to prolong that killer-cacti song in my head. But, as you all know, you can not actually elude Google-for-the-answer. You can only postpone it. Which means that I’ve just seen three whole episode of The Hills.

I am aware of the fact that I just had to do some garbage-watching in order to make other garbage more interesting. And I’m into it. And not in a completely performative way.

Also– something else came out of this whole thing. I hate to restart blag with kernals of truth etc etc but now have to. I have found a perfect way to access unadulterated, idealistic girl-advice. This hypervisible information is actually invisible to me. It seems I don’t know the girl-maxims or the girl-morals. It’s a whole world of indoctrination that I seemingly missed. At least I, female-friendlessly, missed a lot of it. Which is good and bad but whatever it is, The Hills is the solution.

You actually get to SEE one character start dating a total asshole and her friend say generic supportive, get-rid-of-him things. You see the character’s confidence rise as she threatens the boy saying something to the effect of: since you are a rude asshole maybe we shouldn’t see each other any more. And he replies: well, we can do whatever you want, but remember that I always liked you for you and I never wanted YOU to change at all. And she actually gets weepy. And then Lauren Conrad’s all like: I love you, you are my friend, wtf though.

I have to go finish mainlining these messages about loyality and assholes. It is so overdetermined it’s almost a Greek myth.

marking my return to the blaggosphere. with love. and with photo credits for jte.

Dearfew, he tells me, means Curfew For Your Dear Ones.
Oh, I admit. A Dearfew. But I won’t let him play the word. It’s raining, we’re below ground, outside you can smell the river.

She Will Miss You, I mention. By now he is eating my melon, balancing wet feet on top of wet sneakers, and I am looking up to the street.
Will You Miss Me? he asks.

I want to stay underground, sheltered together. I wonder if there are any large stones left over from Easter to roll over the door. I already cried for so long about it last night and yesterday morning and before that when I got home from Nora’s. I am angry that she’s broken the news to me but not at her and not at him. So I drank too much over fennel cupcakes and tamales. My bike slid and tipped. I Didn’t Drink That Much, I remind myself, toppling in psychosomatic rigor. But I can’t stop swerving. I can’t hear the street. If a car comes up behind me I won’t be able to move. It will surely hit me: merely incidental. I do make it home.

How do I answer him? He has become a shivering, distant, play tree. Every once in a while a set change brings him back and I wonder when he’ll be folded over again for storage. I cannot follow or predict the plot. I don’t know what acts he’ll show up for. Just sometimes he comes back to read a book and say hello, tell me six or seven stories, show me photos. Go. Except, this is no drama and when he goes, nothing takes his place.

I asked Anne Carson and she told me, once and for all:

On Shelter

You can write on a wall with a fish heart, it’s because of the phosphorus. They eat it. There are shacks like that down along the river. I am writing this to be as wrong as possible to you. Replace the door when you leave, it says. Now you tell me how wrong that is, how long it glows. Tell me.

And I mean it, too. But Greek breakfast yielded no spare fish hearts. I’ll give it to you in invisible inks instead:

I love you. Don’t go.

I asked you what the organs are for. One by one. The gallbladder. The pancreas. The spleen. And you said. Stores Bile. Gives You Cancer. Makes Blood, no– Bone Marrow Makes Blood But Something With The Blood.

I give you everything I know in return. Nothing. Patrick Swayze. You Can Live Without A Spleen. (A fact I know only because someone else in my life failed to.)

Just an hour later I know more about what those organs do. They swim to the top of my body and clamor, begging you. They are the lesser begging organs.

Please don’t go. Please. And close the door behind you when you do.

I’ll Say Hello To My Mom For You. He says before we go.
And Your Sister. By which I mean, please have them both say hello to you for me, if you are anywhere at all when you are not here.

Please don’t get me wrong. I want you to have yourself. I asked her, again, for you and she said:

On Major and Minor

Major things are wind, evil, a good fighting horse, prepositions, inexhaustible love, the way people choose their king. Minor things include dirt, the names of schools of philosophy, mood and not having mood, the correct time. There are more major things than minor things overall, yet there are more minor things than I have written here, but it is disheartening to list them. When I think of you reading this, I do not want you to be taken captive, separated by a wire mesh lined with glass from your life itself, like some Elektra.

You know I can only offer you prepositions and inexhaustible love. And those are good wherever you are. For you, I hope, life will be less tragic. Who needs another Atlantis?

Maybe, in many years, I’ll remember that he used to come for a while. During those times: every night I expected him to turn to me and say I Have To Go Home, I’m Late. But night after night he wouldn’t. Until one when I hear, from someone else, that the time has come. He Has To Go. He’s Late. I am heartbroken but knew, of course, that he always had a Dearfew.

“I used to be worse but my wife is a litigator so she makes me follow all the driving laws now.”

“Maybe J would be a better driver if I became a lawyer. Or an officer-of-the-law.”

“She also made me donate my body to science.”

“What? That’s disgusting. What if they use it to test cosmetics or something else lame like that. Donating your body is no good. It’s too general. You want to be sure about where it’s going.”

“Oh, I just thought it was kind of cool, I never thought about it going so some lame cause. That is a little weird.”

“Yeah, I’m donating my body to religion. I totally want people to channel a goddess through my dead body and then ritually eat my decaying flesh.”

“So you’re actually donating your body to Tantra then, not just ‘religion.’”

“Totally. Well, what would the Catholics do with it? Staple it to the church wall as a condemnation of homosexuality?”

65 pages since Monday at 9 am.

20 more before tomorrow at noon?

yes. I’ll call you when I’m free. I promise. 4/11.

The purpose of our project. To link the word and idea of gentrification to something insidious and terrifying that looks like it might be able to turn the world into a drone-run planet (despite the incredible power of Will Smith.) That way, when you are about to make “easy” decisions about where to eat (eh hem, Bloc 11) or where to live or where to put your hipster-infant-clothing store, you will be bombarded not with guilt, empathy, or ethics.. but with terror of colonization and dominion.

The method: Pavlov, Youtube, Blag tip-offs.

Without further ado…..

we ask that you please VISUALIZE GENTRIFICATION

*if this works, I’ll be looking for suitably terrifying videos to pair with other malicious problems.

** for a more productive evaluation of the video, see lolAJ. but don’t keep linking between us. it’s gross.

I’m running an hour a day already.
I don’t know what to say then. I would have suggested exercise. I suppose you could do it more.
Yeah.
What about swimming? I find that really helps me out.
Okay.
Baths. Meditation. It’s hard at first but it gets easier.
I think I’ve reached the bath daily limit.

Forget the earth. I don’t know who for.

These aren’t medical suggestions. The only medical suggestion is medication.
Hmmm.
I think you’re too fragile for that right now. These are just some things that work for me.

I don’t want to yell at her. I want to bring her red bean rolls and glow-in-the-dark plastic dinosaurs. Last week I hallucinated stand-alone radiators popping out of ever puddle of light in the periphery. I was sure that the drinking water was poisoned. I kept buying bottles of juice and then decided that the water in juice was bad, too. I would have to keep hydrated in other ways. Through osmosis. A fresh water mountain well. Where are the cacti of my home?

Colorado, I want to cut off your spiny top and drink from you.
Colorado, can I scurry along your desert ridge at night– undead, eyes yellowed?
It’s my year after all: Year of the Rat.
You wouldn’t know it: at this rate.

And not only that, I also felt love, emanating from a stuffed elephant. That’s right. I silently enumerate them on my fingers. 1) Hallucination. 2) Paranoia. 3) Love.

NC used to collect those little stuffed things. She thought they were so cute. I thought we might as well throw them away. Now I take them out, line them up, pet them. I would get rid of them but they’re loving me. It would break their batting hearts.

What is the cute threshold?
Is it fuzziness?
I don’t know. Is a tennis ball cute?
I think it’s eyes.
A tennis ball would be cute if it had eyes.

She talked to her friend in a cab on the way uptown. I was against the window in a a black skirt and boots.

What do you think? She asked me.
Oh I couldn’t hear you guys. By which I meant: you never explain yourselves to me and it’s so often a test.

Later someone asked me about that skirt. I bought it on one of our first dates when my zipper broke at Urban Outfitters.

Why didn’t you just ask for a safety pin or a staple?

What and idiotic question.

Three times in six weeks I have had fevers at night. Once for four days. Then a week. I’ll let you know when this one ends.

It’s too painful to lay still. I complain that my breath is burning my lips.

What will I do with all of this? I ask her.
Why are you so attached to going to graduation? Maybe you shouldn’t go.
It occurs to me that I only want to go so that I can walk around kicking over mothers’ purses into the wet grass, accidentally knock over brothers when I turn too quickly, step on men’s feet.
Maybe she’s right. Maybe I have too much resentment to graduate.

At a party, a week ago, I descended the stairs in lead of 6 butch dykes to find tens of white college boys lined up along the stairs. I was in sage sequins, high heels, rage.

Wow. Look at all these pricks.

I announced only for their benefit.
There was a muttering.

Of/to other cretins: perhaps, since you feel so perfectly capable of seduction, I will seduce you. It will be just like Hard Candy except I Really Will cut them off. I will be your very last lesbian, honey.

Colorado, let me spill his into a stringy masses on the plains. Opaque– I hope. Something wet to look at over the meadows. Or perhaps I’ll just wipe my hand clean, unceremoniously on a row of library books. Castrato al dente.

Colorado, I miss you, baby.

Strange* advertisement for a Lesley University summer semester

on the subway.

The copy reads “Passion, Potential, Purpose.

Enhance your skills– enrich your world!”

It certainly leaves me wondering what these summer classes are all about. Black and white photography? Ethnographic research?  Diversity?

*By strange I mean weird.**

** By weird I mean racist.