GOD DIES

"No one ever came to me and said, " your a fool. There isn't such thing as god. Somebody's been stuffing you. It wasn't murder, I think god just died of old age.And when I realize he wasn't anymore. It didn't shock me. It seemed natural and right.

Maybe it's because I was never impressed by a religion. I went to sunday school. And I like the stories of christ and the christmas star. They were beautiful. They made you warm and happy to think about. But I didn't believe them. The sunday school teacher talked too much in the way of my grade school teacher used too when she told us about George Washington. Pleasant, pretty stories, but not true.

Religion was too vague. God was different, he was something real. Something I could feel. But there was only certain times I could feel it. I used to lie between cool, clean sheets. After I'd have my bath. After I had washed my hair and scrubbed my knuckles, and fingernails and teeth. Then I could lie quite still in the dark with my face toward the window with the trees in it, and talk to god. " I am clean now, I've never been as clean, I'll never be cleaner. " And somehow it was God. I wasn't sure it was. Just something cool and dark and clean.

That wasn't religon, though. There was too much of the physical about it. I couldn't get that same feeling during the day. With my hands in dirty dish water. And the hard sun showing up the dirtiness on the rooftops. And after, a time in at night, the feeling of God didn't last. I began to wonder what the minister meant, when he said, God, the father, sees even the smallest farrow fall. He watches over all his children. That jumbled it all up for me.

But I was sure of one thing, If god were a father with children. that cleaniness I had been feeling wasn't God. So at night, when I went to bed, I am clean, I am sleepy. And then I went to sleep. It didn't keep me from enjoying the cleaness any less. I just knew that god wasn't there. He was a man on a throne in heaven. So he was easy to forget.

Sometimes I found him useful to remember, especially when I lost things that was important. After slamming through the house, panicky and breathless from searching,I could stop in the middle of a room and shut my eyes."Please god, let me find my red hat with blue trimmings." It usually worked. God became a superfather that couldn't spank me. But if I wanted a thing bad enough, he arranged it.

That satisfied me until I began to figure that if god had loved all his children equally, why did he bother with my red hat and let other people lose their mothers and fathers for always? I began to see that he didn't have much to do about hats or people dying or anything. They happened whether he wanted them to or not, and he stayed in heaven and pretended not to notice. I wondered a little why God was such a useless thing, it seemed a waste of time to have him. After that he became less and less, until he was nothingness.

I felt rather proud that I had found the truth myself, without help from anyone. It puzzled me that other people hadn't found out too. God was gone, we were younger..We had reached past him. Why couldn't they see it? it still puzzles me.

LOVE IS THE DRUG!!!!!

It's been a opera. It was more than an opera. It was gore theater and I was the leading lady. I became obsessed with angels and ballerinas things of grace and beauty after Sonny and I broke up.I would cry about every fifteen minutes.I was a make-up nightmare. I wanted to be the swan in swan lake, and flutter, crumple and disappear.

Imagine this: Your peaking. Your in your youth. At the prime of your life. You've finally met someone and your In love with him. You have a best friend. You have a soul-fucking mate. And he's the best fuck that ever walked. And he wants to have babies. And what you want is babies. You've wanted to have a baby forever...

And he understands everything you say. And he completes your sentences. And he's lazy but spritual. And he's not embarrased about praying, about god, jesus, none of it. He fucking thinks it's all kool. He wants to be enlightened. everything.

And there's even room for you to fix him, which you like, cause your a fixer-upper. He's perfect in almost every fucking way. The only fucking happiness you've ever had. And then he starts slamdancing with Mr. Brownstone(herion)....and it all gets taken away from you.

He was in a coma for twenty hours and I was hysterical throughout. I mean, they had two tubes in his nose, two in his mouth, things coming out of every available artery. They had to put the glucose through his neck that night, all of his life functions including pissing were done by a machine.

I mean, I've seen him get really fucked up before, but I've never seen him almost eat it like that. And I knew that night as I layed with him praying that he wouldn't leave me that I could never see him like that again...and that this would be the end of our story...I've been a zombie for eleven months now. For so long in my relationship and afterward, I've been in isolation, oblivious to everything but my darkest hedonism and darkest hours.

I have to start feeling my heart again. I'm finally returning to the land of agoraphobia trying to purge myself of my vitriol for every man that has hurt me in the past...I did Lady Macbeth...all right. Now it's time to get back with the living....

A SLOW DISEASE

My dad went to vietnam when he was 19 years old. I think it bruised his soul. There are some things the human mind should never have to comprehend, some things the body can never forget.

He doesn't talk about it. Actually, I guess, I've never asked. I hate to imagine his puppy young eyes absorbing all that rain and mud and blood. The jungles must have seemed like a slow disease that would continue to arrest his and so many other hearts the rest of their lives.....

THE BEAUTY MYTH

When I was a small child, I had an enormous potbelly. It was impossible to tame. I loved it. It was glorious and smooth and stuck out of everything I wore. No T-shirts could cover it; no Tuff-Skins could tame it. It was plump and lunar, like someone had cut the moon in half and sculpted it to my small self.

I was still quite young when I began to catch on that a belly wasn't something to be desired; it was something to be ashamed of. Girls wanted breasts; to wear earrings; to cram their feet into uncomfortable shoes. Potbellies were not in demand. They were not even considered attractive, and everything I saw, heard, and read reminded me that being attractive was the point of it all.

I've decided to not let body image control my life. I want to focus on feeling healthy and attractive, not on some fictitious, unattainable standard of beauty. .....so DAMN THE CRITICS!!!!!!

THE METAMORPHIS OF THE BLONDE ONE

I can understand how Elvis and Johnny Cash and countless other performers got addicted to sleeping pills. Working the night shift for over a year now..the days meld into one another and it becomes increasingly more difficult to sleep. It takes me hours to fall asleep even after working all night..all of this is complicated of course by my desire to have a little bit of a life of my own. Just to watch t.v. or make phone calls or write which I find essential to my well being.

consequently, for me, life begins at night. And I have to find time to watch movies, catch up on world events, write..The dead of night is the only time I seem to be able function now..just finding time to lay on my bed and stare at the ceiling and let my mind wander..is sometimes scarce now..then I will have two days off..and the cycle will begin all over again. Elvis doesn't have to come back from the dead to tell me this is where sleeping pills begin to look like an attractive option..I've been taking them on and off for over a year..not everyday..but more often than I would like.

The cumulative effects of sleep deprivation are hard to cope with. My internal clock is so messed up that without sleeping pills it is sometimes impossible for me to sleep at all. The problem is the pills sometimes make me feel sluggish and my mind gets fatigued, making me susceptible to worries and neuroses that usually don't haunt me when I'm well rested.

But I gotta do what I gotta do, as do most people..So I guess I should stop whining and be thankful I have a job at all...WTF whining is the walmart way....so I guess I do fit right in...:p......

FIGHT GIRL POWER

Wanna know the dumbest thing I've ever heard of? Girl Power. Feminism, as in we crush all barriers died, some other time when I was a baby. What happened then? Everyone got scared to be a feminist. Feminist were angry and unattractive. So some mediocre magazine editor decided feminisim needed remodeled into a marketable concept. Just what is up with girls, anyway.

It's something about being beautiful. That's what it is. We want to be happy, to be surrounded by boys who lend us their sweaters and girls who share their slurpee's, always with a party to go to, always with someone to call, and the way to do that is to be beautiful, right? That's what everyone tells us. We want to excel and achieve.

and I'm not saying boys are any better, they just have better luck. Guys can be crazy offbeat dreamers and everyone will like them more for it. Their supposed to be stubborn and rebellious. It's sexy when boys tell the world to go fuck itself. Example:( Sid Viscious, a dirty skinny bass-totter who made a career out of being offensive and bleeding on people. He's the twelfth most requested dead guy on the internet.)

But that kind of behavior is just not profitable for a girl. Look, they want our money, that's what this whole thing is about. Capitalism is the biggest house of mirrors in the world, because everyone is trying to tell us we "need" something. What we need to do is to perfect the skill of cash warfare. Don't buy shit. You know what shit is...Anything in print that is kind enough to tell you how to be perfect, and smart enough to show you a picture of what perfect is. Seventeen magazine is shit. Jane magazine is shit. The Girl Power movement is shit. So let's you and me not be targeted. We can be the big movement of women not buying shit. There's plenty of things to spend our money on..food, college, a kick ass bass guitar..

We do and can kick ass without being "pretty", and maybe in the distant future- like when we're seventy and sitting on top of the fortune we amassed in our youths by our inventive and roguish business instinct-society will have changed and we can date 20 year old models..but until then things are gonna be ugly...

Hey, we shall overcome, okay?

INDEPENDENT WOMEN VS. MALE DOMINANCE

The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct objects the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let the facts be submitted to a candid world.

1. he has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise.

2. he has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice.

3. he has withheld from her rights which are given to the most ignorant and degraded men-both natives and foreigners.

4. having deprived her of this first right of a citizen, the elective franchise, therby leaving her without representation in the halls of legislation, he has opressed her on all sides.

5. He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead.
he has taken from her all right in property, even to the wages she earns.

6. He has made her, morally, and irresponsible being, as she can commit many crimes with impunity, provided they be done in the presence of her husband. In the covenant of marriage, she is compelled to promise obedience to her husband, he becoming, to all intents and purposes, her master-the law giving him power to deprive her of her liberty, and to administer chastisement.

7. He has monopolized nearly all the profitable employments, and from those she considers most honorable to himself. As a teacher of theology, medicine, or law, she is not known.

8. He had denied her the facilities for obtaining a thorough education-all colleges being closed against her.

9. He has created a false public sentiment, by giving to the world a different code of morals for men and women, by which moral delinquencies which exclude women from society, are not only tolerated but deemed of little account in man.

10. He has endeavored, in every way that he could, to destroy her confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect, and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life...

Now, in view of this entire disfranchisement of one-half the people of this country, their social and religious degradation, In view of the unjust laws above mentioned, and because women do feel themelves aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of the united states.

We anticipate no small amount of misconception, misrepresentation, and ridicule but we shall use every instrumentality within our power to affect our object.....

ARE MEN NECESSARY?

I don't understand men.
I don't even understand what I don't understand about men.
They are a most inscrutable bunch, really.
I had a moment of dazzling clarity when I was twenty-six, a rush of confidence that I had cracked the code. But it was alas, an illusion.
I think I overcomplicated their simplicity. Or oversimplified their simplicity.Are they as complicated as a pile of wood? Or as simple as a squid?

I was loathe to accept the premise of Jerry Seinfield, who claims that men are really nothing more than extremely advanced dogs who want the same thing from their women as they do their underwear, a little bit of support and a little bit of freedom..

I was more prone to go with the thesis of James Thurber and E.B. white in their seminal 1929 treatise, IS SEX NECESSARY?, that the american male was the least understood of all the male and that more attention needed to be paid to his complexity, the importance of what he is thinking and what he intends to do, or at least what he would like to do..

How often do you hear it said that the little whims and desires of a man should be cherished, or even listened to? You don't hear it said at all. What you do hear is that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. A thing like that hardens a man. He may eat his spinach and say nothing, but he is being hardened just the same.

Thurber and white don't date the start of the troubles between men and women to the snaky eve. They contend that things got bollixed up in the 1920's when the female came face to face with the male. The American male's repugnance to charades, which is equaled, perhaps to his repugnance to nothing at all. Goes back to those years the authors explained.

I know women are disorienting to men, too.

In the final analysis, thurber and white, decided matters went irretrievably awry during the jazz age when flappers began to imitate men, smoking, drinking, wanting to earn money(not much but some) and thinking they had a right to be sexual. all these strained attempts at equality they contend destroyed the mystery of the sexual tango, the sexual charleston, if you will.

This spurt of cocky independence faded and over the decades women lapsed back into domesticity and deference, until their only avatars were perfect gingham moms such as Donna Reed, June Clever, and Harriet Nelson. Then came the Sexual Revolution....

But back to me...I came of age during the third wave of feminism...the do-it-yourself..the riot grrrl movement of the 1990s..and despite my undying support of this said movement..I didn't necessarily fit into the movement itself..I hated the dirty, unisex jeans, no make-up zoned outta your head looks...

In the universe of eros, I longed for style and wit, I love the art decor of the 1940s..movies. I wanted to live the life of a screwball herione like Katherine Hepburn wearing a gold lama gown cut to the bias, Cavorting with Cary Grant, strolling along fifth avenue with my pet leopard.

In those days I assumed we were sailing toward perfect equality with men, a utopian world at home and at work. On my twenty fifth birthday my mom sent me a bank book with a modest nest egg she had saved for me. I always felt that the girls in the family should get a little more than the boys even though, all are equally loved, she wrote in a letter. They need a little cushion to fall back on. Women can stand on the Empire State Building and scream to the heavens that they are equal to men and liberated, but until they have the same anatomy, it's a lie. It's a mans world today more than ever. Men can eat their cake in unlimited bakeries.

I thought at the time that she was being old world, like my favorite jade, Dorothy Parker, when she wrote:

by the time your his, shivering and sighing, and he vows he passion is infinite and undying, make a note of this lady...one of you is lying...

I thought the struggle for eglitarinism was a cinch, so I could leave it to my earnest sisters in black turtlenecks and birkenstocks. I figured there was plenty of time for me to get serious later...little did I realize that the sexual revolution would have the unexpected consequence of intensifying the confusion between the sexes..

OLD AGE

I think love is the most beautiful thing in the world. And I don't give a fuck cause I have no original ideas. you'de think I was reprimanding myself and revealing my horrible dark side, by saying that, but what I was really saying is it's an ultimatium..Life or Death..and sure maybe I'm being extreme. but you walk around and tell me, things aren't extreme, jesus, I've seen a man jack off to a gap window display, so don't tell me love isn't important.

And maybe you didn't "get" that series of lines, that's okay. Most of them are subtext designed to impress people who know too much about art, all you need to listen to is the twelve percent that contain the words "fuck" and "ass." Because we all need to know about the relevant things, because we're all looking for the complete definition of love. If only we could look up our enclylopedia britiannica and look up love and "Know." But love is not that easy..

They say that cupid loved "my so called life," and when the show was cancelled. Cupid cried and cried and cried. And decided to fuck up all of humanity. And this is why China has trouble with it's birthrate, and arkansas rhymes with date rape, and iraq is iraq, and the fat lipo-sucked out of california could be it's own island.

But this isn't about geography, it's about love. the bane of my exsistence, the reason I hate valentine's day and halloween, which is about ghosts, and I think you know where I'm going here, I'm going to the land of boyfriends of halloween's past, and maybe I've only got five ghosts in this land, but that doesn't mean they don't bring their friends. who are the ghosts of boys who have rejected me, because boys rarely travel alone in this land. Sychler is from this land.

I used to kiss him, while listening to "the Cure's "Just Like Heaven" now I don't see him anymore and that song makes me sad. Why must we associate music with our love lives? I'm not trying to be profound here, I'm just saying music takes me back..way back. And I can't explain the memory process involved in that. Because I'm not a pyschology major.

Maybe I should open up my sensitive side, but really the sensitive side sucks, I've been there. You can only imagine the kind of sweaters they make you wear, love is not fair, war is not fair, and I don't care what anybody has to say about any of that. This is not the direction I wanted to take this, And maybe I shouldn't have said any of this..Woody Allen taught us that marriage is a death trap...I'm almost as old as his girlfriend.

I don't have any answers and I'm looking for help from anyone..because love has me fucked and dying, and maybe that's sentimental, but what's wrong with sentimental?

to self: Fuck You..I'm okay.

You see I can't decide what I need, much less understand what I'm saying...~~~~~~~~~~

FEMININE FACINATION!!!

My relationship to fashion-and fashion magazines-has always been a love-hate affair. As in, I love them and they make me hate myself. Unlike women's "service" magazines, which get me all contemptous, magazines like Harper's Bazaar and Vogue get me all flustered and insecure and giddy, not unlike the first day of school, when I was scared I might not rate and thrilled to think that I might.

In fact, with their brilliant photography and other worldly models and delicious and highly improbable clothes. Harper's and Vogue are the ultimate bitchy high school. Reading them longingly, I'm reminded of my favorite line from the movie Healther's.." Jealous much?!"

I hope your not expecting to read about how fashion is evil , because while that might have some truth to it. Vogue and Harper's Bazaar are annoying-even infuriating- I can't stay away from them long. And as I cast about why I love them so, I realize I adore them for the simple reason that they acknowldege a universal truth: that fashion far from being all about the enslavement to men is an elaborate performance girls put on for other girls.

Let's face it who really cares if men like your clothes? " looking good!" or " Hey baby!" mean very little coming from the mouth of someone whose idea of attractivness and fashionability is Kim Kardashian. But there's no greater compliment than a sidelong glance from another girl, who has massive style to check yours out..and when she does your hoping she is thinking.," where did she get those boots? that's a kool jacket, wish I had one!" not because your a competitive little bitch. But because getting noticed by a fellow style grrrl...is meaningful. when a woman facinates you, it means something..

Except in those instances when it's dangerous and infuriating. When it's like she is studying you. like in "all about eve." Eve is sinister because she admires margo so much, she wants to become a better margo than margo herself. That is a ultra-uncool move on the the part of girls..remember admiring other girls style...but please don't steal it..create your own...besides spending all your time wanting to be someone else is a waste of who you are...

But however you get it, wherever you get it, don't forget to get your female facination...cause fashion is fashion..style is style..and GRRRLS YOU GOT STYLE!!!

LOVE IS A MIX TAPE

The mix tape is just another piece of useless junk that "he" left behind. A category that I guess includes me. I should have gone to sleep hours ago, but instead I'm rummaging through old boxes that he left behind..I found this tape with his scribble on the label..SPINABIFFIDA.

I pop it into my boombox on the kitchen counter, pour some coffee, and let the music have it's way with me. It's a date, just me and "him" and some tunes he picked out. We met when I was twenty-one years old. We drank some bourbon and talked about music. We traded stories about bands we liked, and bands we'd seen live. He loved white zombie..so did I. I loved the pixies..he hated the pixies..I told him that night I would make him a mix tape..and he would change his mind on the pixies..and it worked.

Falling in love with " him" is not something you walk away from in one piece. I had no chance. He would wake up in the middle of the night and say things like why don't they have commercials for salt like they do milk? Then he would fall back asleep, and I would lie awake and give thanks for this alien creature beside whom I rested.

We had nothing in common really, except we both loved music. Music brought us together. The whole world got cheated out of "him", I got cheated the least, but still I wanted more of him. I wanted to be his girl, forever and ever. I always pictured us growing old together.

For a while there, I thought "he" was my hero, have you ever had a hero? Someone who says, I think it would be a good idea for you to steal a car and set it on fire then drive it off a cliff, and you say, automatic or standard? It didn't take long for us to get tangled up in each other's hair.

Boys take up a lot of room in your life. I had a lot of room for this one. He had more energy than anybody I'd ever met. He was in love with the world. He was warm and loud and impulsive. One day, he announced he had found the guitar of his dreams at a local junk shop. I said, "you don't even play guitar." He said, " This is the guitar that's gonna teach me."

When I was with him, I thought there was no other place I'd rather be. I could count the places I would not want to be. I've always wanted to see Italy, but I'd rather be here with him. There was no other place I'd rather be than with "him" sipping coffee and watching the leaves fall, listening to that song...

I thought to myself, if he breaks my heart, no matter what the hell he puts me through. I can say it was worth it. Just because of the way he makes me feel at that very moment..nothing better. Out the window is a blur and all I can really hear is hair flapping in the wind, and maybe if we drive fast enough the universe will lose track of us and forget to stick us someone else.....

QUEEN NARCISSUS

I have the best taste in this town. My bedroom is peach. Faux Victorian. I finally have an eiderdown quilt. 30 years. I deserve fresh flowers...I can barley write even this I am so uninspired. I want neckrubs so bad that I don't even mind giving them.

I swear I'm soul sick, not dead because of my taste and love of texture and smell but almost dead. This is the most I've written this week, which is unusual for me..My intellect..ha ha..it's a weapon, kiss my ass just like morning sickness. Don't you dare DISMISS me because I'm a woman.

Look, I'm not politically correct..and I'm not the voice of a generation, So Fuck You~~and I'll still be bleaching my hair at 59!! I can play Lady Macbeth, wait and see..SINCERLY QUEEN NARCISSUS~~~~~~~

MY CRUSH ON CONGRESSMAN PAUL RYAN

I have developed a thing for congressman Paul Ryan. So I was relieved to find that my friend Kat too has a crush on the congressman. We're like soul sisters. I knew I couldn't be the only one who watched him on television conveying his passion for conservative ideas like he was homecoming king. The photo that kat has in her closet was a shot from a unusual tour he took in July to India and the city of Taj Mahal.
Where he and the Indian Prime Minster arm wrestled over the disputed territory of Kashmir.

It was on this tour that congressman Ryan won a special place in our hearts. He has proven to be agressive politically, personally sentimental, and throughly hypnotizing..whenever the congressman turns up on t.v. me and kat turn into salivating puppies and purring kittens..when he does show up Kat boyfriend yells at her your boyfriend is on t.v.

Congressman Ryan made a impression on me last spring, when he admitted I think my natural side is best. I just behave normally, what I like, I like. Whatever I don't like, I don't like. He said he didn't really like pop bands, " I find them very stupid and silly."

I recently went to a rally where congressman Ryan spoke, of cutting the deficit, creating jobs, and returning to the roots of conservatism..he's intelligence spoke to me loudly..When I got back to my hotel room I saw the congressman on C-SPAN..and I was admiring his stylish frameless glasses, I wondered silently what he should do with his hair..and I know that in a living room on the other side of cincinnati, a boy named Ryan is yelling to his girlfriend, Hey Your boyfriend is on T.V.!!