I heart New York

There are 13 million people living in New York City and only one public bathroom. It's inside the Starbucks on Broadway and Canal. Just the one. It's really a problem. The line stretches out the door.
Balancing this but also contributing to the problem is the willingness of deli employees to add sugar and cream to a cup of coffee. Waitresses in the South, if you asked them to do that for you, would eye you as if you'd requested a backrub or asked them to cut your meat. Here, it is taken for granted.
After four cups of such coffee I find myself waiting in a long line at Starbucks, where I must purchase another cup of coffee in order to use their bathroom. I am used to my cream and sugar being added for me, and it annoys me to find out that although we are in New York, Starbucks refuses to do it.
As I wait in line, a man with one long dreadlock begins to get agitated behind me. His long mass of hair is matted like the substance a cat might puke up. It reminds me of when we cut open owl droppings in seventh grade, I imagine I can see tiny bits of mouse skeleton, although it's probably just bagel.

" You bitches can't cut in line!" he says suddenly.
" We've all been waiting."
" They're going to keep stealing from you until you're blind."
" I'm going to pee on the seat." I say.
"Whore."
" Lunatic."
I can say these thing because I am in New York.
He mutters something about cutting someone. I consider letting him go in front of me but I really have to pee.
We are walking to the Museum of Modern Art when we see an overturned cart covered in pigeons.
" Bagel massacre." Cece stops to take a picture. I wonder how many pigeons it would take to lift the cart into the air and fly away. I would like to see that.

No one looks up in New York, no one except the children. I try it once and I feel reverse vertigo, like the buildings will fall down into me. I do it a second time and a drop from someones air conditioner high above me falls directly into my eye.

We are in the MOMA,and my art history books have come alive. I see every painting, they are like old friends, in fact I don't remember anyone from art school like I do these paintings. I didn't come here then, I couldn't afford the ten dollar entrance fee.
There is an installation by Joseph Beuys, a German pilot shot down in world war two over Siberia. Villagers covered his burned body with fat and wrapped him in felt, healing him, then hiding him for two years. His work is made of wax and fats, odd substances next to things he fashioned out of handmade felt. Once, after the war was over, he locked himself into a glass room and held a dead hare, allowing people to come and look at him. This particular performance piece is the best metaphor for pain I can think of. Here, this is what's inside me.

Another time he was locked into a room with a feral wolf, when they were finally let out after a week they were great friends. Here, I will take this from the inside of me to the outside. Look.

There is Picasso's masterpiece Demoiselles of D'Avingnon, which was so shockingly pornographic a woman passed out at it's unveiling. Imagine what it would take to elicit that response now.

I saw the round, sexualised sculpture of Hans Bellmer, who escaped capture by the Nazi's by only a few minutes. Upon hearing the SS break the door down he jumped out of a second story window and ran, miraculously evading capture and winding up safe in America.

I see messy, welcoming assemblages by Robert Rauschenberg next to similar ones by Jasper Johns. One of my teachers told me they were lovers at one point. They lived in new York on 4 dollars a day, eating canned tuna until they got famous. Rauschenburg is known to order up crates of grapefruits, sending them to his friends, when he finds one he likes in a supermarket. You can see that generosity in his work and I like him for it.

Underneath everything we create is the longing for fertility or fear of death. Except the surrealists, God knows what they're trying to say.

We are staying with Cece's aunt and uncle in Brooklyn. Before we entered the house she told me that he used to work for the UN.
" He was friends with all those people who died in Rwanda. He's kind of traumatised. Don't take it personally if he doesn't talk." I promised not to, wishing I could be told his story but knowing it would never ever come up even if I stayed in their house for a hundred years.
In the morning over bagels cece asks her uncle what he is writing.
" Just a little piece on genocide." He whistles.
Oh, she says, we are going to buy fake purses in Chinatown.

When we emerge from the subway in Chinatown she buys a giant dragon's head and carries it on her back through the streets like her kill. It's meant for two men to parade through the streets underneath it on the Chinese New Year. I buy a smaller, hot pink version for Ruby. It's displayed next to a giant barrel of swimming frogs.
" Are those for eating?" I ask the tiny, ancient woman who runs the shop.
" Yes, very good with garlic. No credit cards."

We have Chinese food with a man I used to love, a long time ago, who I haven't seen in ten years. He is a famous director who always wore the same black turtleneck. He is wearing it for lunch. He tells me that he's made a film with some footage of me from a night long ago when we swam on the beach. I remember that night, the terrifying pull of the tide, the moonlight shining white on the blue water. I know that it will be beautiful.
" They're showing it at the MOMA next week" he says, his mouth full of chicken.
" Can you send me a copy?"
" No."
So I will have to imagine it.

I walk all the way around the reservoir in Central Park with my friend Josh. His current job is an illustration project for a woman writing a book of cat poetry. He draws the cats in overcoats beside the Eiffel Tower, as Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca.
" A tabby in a fedora, huh?"
" It pays the bills."

Austin is sometimes stiflingly slow. It's called the retirement center for the young, and it does sometimes seem like no one ever really does anything but drink beer and swim in the creek. If it is a closed circuit here, New York City is thrillingly open. People stream in from all over the world. I saw a man in a full head dress. I saw a proud, stunning woman in African ceremonial garb, Indian women in saris, girls with Mohawks and gold teeth. Tall buildings where fortunes are made and lost, galleries full of art that will pierce you with it's beauty, immigrants singing in the subways, music echoing off the walls of underground caverns, trains speeding by them. Everyone going somewhere, on their way to do something. Anything goes.

I would like to thank the Academy....

Next to my computer lies a small beige rectangle of paper with the email address of a literary agent. I was given the card on Saturday morning. For a year I'd been trying to make a connection with someone in her field. For ten minutes I sat across from her all I could do was make small talk about the weather. My mind was blank.
" It's raining right now in New York." she said.
" It's usually not this hot here. There's a big difference between 90 and 105."
As I got up to leave the table she casually invited me to send her my book. If it was good, she would try to publish it. If it wasn't ready, I could send it back to her in a year. That was it.
" How did it go?" The woman who organised the conference cornered me." What happened?"
" I don't know."
" Well, what did she say?"
" She said to send her my book?"
" The whole thing?"
" Yes."
" They usually only ask for a chapter."
" I'm just glad I didn't throw up."

Because, on the way to this conference an hour before, I was absolutely, completely 100 percent positive I would not be winning this contest. I was, in fact, more than a little annoyed that I would be sitting in a hotel ballroom, not sleeping in, watching some other idiots win a contest. I tried to get out of it for three days. Jeff wouldn't hear of it.

They made all of the finalists stand up at their round tables so everyone could stare at you for long minutes until the winner was announced. I scowled at Jeff. I just wanted to sit down.

Then they called my name and I had to walk in front of three hundred people to stand beside a podium and hold a piece of paper.

" I have to get out of here," I kept repeating that one little phrase as the other winners lined up beside me." Gotta go, gotta go gotta go."

I was sure that my name had not been called and everyone was wondering what that strange girl was doing standing at the front of the room.

" Are you okay?" One of them whispered." You look sick."
" I hate being up in front of people. I might run out of here in a minute. Cover me."

There is no greater discomfort for me than having a bunch of people staring at me. Directly below that on the "Fuck This" scale is having to talk to a bunch of strangers all at once. But I have to, all the time, to make a living as an artist one has to have at least passable self-marketing skills.

" Look at me! I'm so special! Me, Me, Me, look at what I do!" I hate it, hate it, hate it.

We were ushered in to a smaller room, each of us meeting with the literary agent who'd chosen our work to win in the first place. To get published, one first needs to get signed with an agent. The agent then sells your book to a publisher, who markets it and packages it and gets you into Oprah's Book Club so you can make a million dollars and spend the rest of your life writing best sellers in your home office overlooking the ocean. Or at least that is what a writer hopes for. This year I have sent 52 letters to such agents, with no responses.

She was about 25, calm and poised. I had spreading circles of sweat under my arms,I hadn't brushed my hair and I felt as though I might throw up at any moment during our conversation.
" I have no idea what I'm supposed to say to you."
" Thank you is fine."
" Thank you."

So we talked about the weather. Now, every day, I think about my book. When should I send it? When will I ever feel like it's ready to be read by such a woman? It could be brilliant, it could be a piece of crap-I have no idea.

For most people that experience would have been a glowingly positive moment to look back on and take confidence from. For me, it has opened up a new world of anxiety. There is something in that book that will piss off every person in my family. There are people I love, mainstays in my life, who didn't make it in. My best friend called me last night.

" You better make me look cool. Don't make me a tard baby like in that short story last year."
" I cut you out."
" I'm not even in it?"
" No. You weren't necessary to the bigger story."

She is pissed. She is coming to visit me from across the country next weekend to campaign for her character.

" This is not a love letter to your parents and your friends," My high school English teacher told me that last year, inspiring me to be more honest in my storytelling.

This morning I went to the used bookstore and bought a half dozen memoirs. I do this every month or so. I like to see how other people write their stories.

There are always what looks like 20 copies of "Tuesdays With Morrie" on the shelf. It seems that a lot of overweight women who have gotten thin have decided to share what it was like for them being fat. I always see a healthy selection of books people have written about their fathers, although no one writes about their mothers. Your mother is known quantity, your father is more likely to be a mystery that needs exploring, or at least that's my theory. I saw 6 copies of James Frey's book, which I guess no one buys because we all know it's a big lie since Oprah kicked his ass on national television. I wish he would write a book about writing a book full of lies and lying about it being true to everybody, even Oprah. I would read that.

There are always books about growing up in a third world, war torn country and coming out all right, which I can't read because they make me too sad. As I browsed I imagined my book on the shelves, how strange it must be for all these people to be able to go into any bookstore and see that. I thought about my title, and wondered if I would buy it if it weren't mine.

I guess it would depend on the cover.

My Very Own Death

I've been thinking a lot about how nothing lasts. For some reason what used to be an abstract idea has now been pushed to the forefront of my thoughts. Maybe with the introduction of effective antidepressants the struggle of keeping my head above water each day has subsided and I am beginning to realise, through enjoying my life again, exactly what i will lose.
" Since I've been happy I've been thinking a lot about death." I tell my psychiatrist. She grins.
" That is normal. Happy people have more to lose. Depressed people just want it to be over already."
And it's true, there have been times in the past when each second clicked by, so acutely painful that I felt I couldn't stand it.
Now the events of my life are moving in a broad green river. I stand at it's edge, immersed in wonder at each ordinary, precious event.
I don't know if it's a good thing to be acutely aware of time passing throughout the day or not. Each moment is marked in my heart as the clock ticks. While I am running errands or driving I am often taking time to just be aware of the breeze on my skin, of each tiny hair on my arm moving, of every inhale and exhale as my lungs work tirelessly to keep me here. I am a miracle.

It's a weighty obsession, and I'd rather not be doing it, but it seems out of my control. When I was younger the rest of my life seemed to stretch out forever and I spent my time as though I was rich with it, lavishly wasting it on worry and desire. Now time seems to speed through me. Even though I assume that I have at least 30 years left, maybe more, it's begun to seem short. When you are happy time moves like a brush fire.
Since I don't believe in an afterlife I've been struggling to come to terms with my extinction. It's hard to swallow. I try to encompass millions of years of evolution before me and the eons that will follow me. I try to actually see it in my imagination, try to understand something so incomprehensible. I can't, of course, but the exercise succeeds in pointing out how small and brief I am, which is freeing. I don't worry about the state of our finances or my wrinkles or my lost sapphire earrings. I don't worry about much at all, but watching Ruby playing in the sun, remembering to feed the dog and lock the door.
Don't get me wrong-I am not 100% serene about this. It terrifies me. But it seems like focusing on this moment, right now, neutralises the fear.
Recently my friend, someone I love fiercely, was informed that her eye cancer has returned. She must drip a chemotherapy solution into her eye four times a day.My mother's friend, not much older than she is, has just been diagnosed with lung cancer. My father has been at the edge of acute Hepatitis C for ten years. He has ten percent of his liver function left. While he waits for a transplant he takes cooking classes and invents complex machinery I don't understand. They could all outlive me if I make the wrong decision on I35 this afternoon. We are all, every minute, working on our own death.
I'm reading the Golden Compass, a series that was made into a movie. The actual books are children's stories about a girl who is on a journey to kill God. It's so blasphemous that I'm surprised no one boycotted it. In the book they visit the Land of the Dead.

" See, everyone has a death. It goes everywhere with em, all their life long, right close by. Our deaths, they're outside, taking the air: they'll come in by and by."
" Doesn't it scare you, having your death so close by all the time?" said Lyra.
" Why ever would it? If he's there, you can keep an eye on him. I'd be a lot more nervous not knowing where he was."
And everyone has their own death?" said Will, marveling.
" Why yes, the moment you're born, your death comes into the world with you, and it's your death that takes you out."
"Do you know when they'll tell you it's time to go?"
" No. But you know they're close by, and that's a comfort."

Strategies for coping with someone who watches sports all day long-

Put the same Nina Simone song on repeat as loud as it will go in the other room.

Stand directly in front of the TV and announce that your vagina "looks weird today"

Sit next to him on the couch and read Pablo Neruda poems into his ear.

A straight pin applied directly into a basketball will cause a slow, unnoticeable leak of air.

Embroider "-Insert Team's name here- Suck" on his favorite work shirt.

Tell him you heard that Tiger Woods is a closet gay.

Call in a bomb threat with the local police.(Get a hobo to call from a payphone)

Weld the golf clubs into a post modern sculpture and present it to him on Father's Day.

Caulk the holes in the bowling ball.

Change the channel to Spongebob then "lose" the remote.

Bedazzle his Golf shoes.

Cut out erect penises from a gay porn magazine and mail them to him anonymously every few days.( That doesn't have anything to do with sports, it's just fun)

Both Ambien and Xanax dissolve tastelessly in water ( or beer) Take him down.

Call his mother and tell her he bet the grocery money on a basketball game. Ask her for a loan, then tell her a good time to call back( middle of the game) Answer the phone. Hand it to him.

Sign him up with the Mormons, the Navy Recruitment people and several credit card companies. Tell them when to call your man. You know when.

Paint all the golf balls pink.

Save Me

A few days ago one of my very favorite customers sent me a book he'd written about God. My first reaction was, "Oh no, a client sent me a Jesus book!"

What an incredibly sweet gesture, one that would be completely wasted on me because I don't have The Religion. Really, I'm not sure if it's possible for anyone to be less spiritual then me. I believe in nothing. Yes, I know, you think you saw a ghost at your Aunt's house that one summer. Not buying it.

It's not as though I didn't try. I was raised to believe in reincarnation, my stepfather was a Yoga Scientist-which is basically a Hindu that does yoga to be closer to God. When he had a psychotic break and "remembered" his past life experiences as my lover I got over that religion pretty fast. Like that day. Guess what? In my past life visions you always stayed the fuck away from me. Let's do that again.

But I still didn't give up. I went to church camps and bible studies. I saw a "pastoral counselor" I did sweat lodges. I prayed with hundreds of seekers in saffron robes at a Krishna temple while people in helicopters dropped thousands of marigolds on the grounds. I meditated in the same Buhddist temple that Richard Gere attends when he's in New York. I visited some Russian monks in Plano who dabbed my forehead with myrrh freshly weeped out of a painting of the Virgin Mary. I did peyote in front of a statue of Mary in a church deep in Mexico. It had once, long before I got there, wept blood.

I never felt anything. So I gave up. I read some books about science, geology and biology, dumbed down accounts of how the stars were born. I read Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins and I suddenly thought-It's okay to be this way. I can stop trying to have this religious experience that everyone else seems to enjoy. Once I let go of that, I felt oddly free.

I'm pretty happy with my (non) belief systems, but I sometimes get annoyed at religious people who think their lives are so much better than everyone else's just because they know where they are going after they die. Especially annoying is when they think they know where I am going after I die ( starts with an H ?) They get annoyed at me too though, when I tell them that "Jesus is delicious"
Hey, you eat him with the wine, not me.

So I look through this book, because I just adore the man who sent it to me, and really underneath it all a little touched he would do that. If someone you know writes a book, you have to read through it.

What I discover is that this is the happiest family I have ever seen. I mean genuinely, wholesomely happy. Usually if people are too benign I am the first to assume there is a slave in the basement, but not this family. They glow. They gush in a way that would be mawkish if it wasn't so obviously sincere.

They write heartbreaking little stories about how much they love each other and why. The kids even did it! The teenagers! Every page I turn is more positive and loving than the next. It's all about how happy they are to love Jesus and love their family. The dad writes pages of stories whose underlying theme boils down to- "I am the luckiest man on earth to be with my wife" and "I love my babies." I know it sounds maudlin, but it wasn't. It actually made my eyes tear up.

I'm so jealous of people like that! I forget about them in my insular world of sarcastic, black hearted Democrats, but there are tons of them out there-being nice and loving Jesus and respecting their elders. Really, I think they're right, they do have it better than I do.

They have a manual for what to do in any situation(planting two different crops? Considering adultery? You're covered, just look it up)
They have an invisible buddy who guides them through life, a nice dad in the sky who will (sometimes) answer their prayers. Best of all, they don't have to contemplate the endless chasm of psychic death which looms over the rest of us like the edge of a cliff.

So Jealous.

I would love to sleep that well at night. I would love to live a life without uncertainty. No wonder they are so nice and happy.

But it's like my dog trying to be a hairdresser, or my mother trying to send a text message-it's not going to happen. You can't make yourself believe something just like you can't will yourself to fall in love. IT JUST DOESN"T MAKE SENSE TO ME. I can't get beyond how stupid it all sounds if I use my brain to think about religion-any religion-any belief system based on something I can't see. If Jesus sent me a unicorn, the deed to a beach house and a hailstorm of live frogs-I might still be skeptical. It's in my nature.

But as I read through that book I found myself longing to convert, just to be inside the warm glow of this family. We would become friends, because they'd brought me to the Lord. My sarcasm would be replaced with mirth. We'd go to after-church brunches with Govenor Rick Perry. Everything would be simple. My ambien and xanax and halter tops would be given to the homeless. Even my teeth would be whiter.

But you can't fake it, and I just can't do it. I am stuck in the Land of Apostates, smoking cigarettes while I cuss out whatever unfortunate telemarketer that made the mistake of calling here. My daughter will no doubt become a precocious teenager at thirteen who wears black and jimmys her window open so her pot dealer can deliver the re-up while we sleep. I will continue to swallow antidepressants that keep the thought of my eventual death and extinction at arms length.

You can damn well bet I am keeping that book, though. Instead of converting, maybe I can just paste pictures of our faces over theirs. Jesus won't know, right?

100,000 dollars?

This week's contest winner was minlinhe, who answered the walrus question with this answer-" Hmm, well, I think it would all depend on whether said walrus lives in your house. If you live with the walrus, then it would just be much easier to put out than deal with the temper tantrums that follow. You know, the snorting, thrashing, bellowing, glass breakage and down-right nasty behavior when the walrus is sexually deprived." This one made me fall on the floor.
Here is the next dress to be given away. It's a 68, up to a C cup, it's pretty stretchy, might go up to a 10 I'm not sure.
Here is the question---Would you walk into your job naked and read ten minutes of your seventh grade diary for 100,000 dollars? You can never tell anyone the reason why you did it.
Good Luck!

I Need Directions To Kansas, Please.

Last week I discovered that my memoir was chosen to be a finalist in a really cool writing contest. I had forgotten that I entered it and when the letter arrived at my mom's house I assumed it was just a newsletter from the Writer's League and told my mom to trash it. Weeks later I randomly opened a newsletter in my email inbox and saw my name. I had to read it about 30 times before I was sure that I really saw it.
If I win I get 30 minutes to talk to an agent about my book, and since the agent decides who wins you kind of have to assume that would lead to representation.
In typical fashion,when I started to write about two years ago I immediately jumped to writing a full length book.

" Write a short story" said jeff." Just write for yourself"

No, No couldn't do that. Had to pick some ridiculously ambitious project and kill myself trying to finish it. It was only after working on it for 18 months that i found out how difficult it is to get a book published. It's somewhat like moving to LA because you just know you'll get a break and become a famous actor. Good Luck.

This book has caused me enormous greif. Most of the time I don't know why I even started writing it in the first place, except that in some manic phase I decided to. Now I've told everyone I'm doing it so I have to. It's forcing me to confront crippling insecurity I didn't even know I had. Writing about family history, and trying to be as honest and objective as possible, is embarrassing. I think a lot about writers I love, Augusten Burroughs, Ellen Gilchrist, Sedaris; and I wonder if they had to cut out the part of themselves that cries out for a more self serving justification of life's events. Imagine your grandmother reading your diary, then sending it to everyone you know, that is writing a memoir.
A reader can sense fakery from a mile away, I know. I read 2 or 3 books a week. The ones I love, the ones I will read again and again until I know some passages by heart, are excruciatingly honest. Even fiction demands honesty on the writer's part. That and sharply well written prose.

I read somewhere that to make great art one has to end up betraying their past. I think that means an artist, no matter what the medium, must sever from their unconcious the voice of their mother, their spouse, their children; to create something truly authentic. There is something bulletproof about creating something beautiful. When I am painting I am able to seperate myself from my own story and spin out this incredible joy from what I see developing in front of me. If it's the absolute best I can do, I know it. When I am finished I think about it throughout the day like a new love. Nothing anyone says about it matters to me.
I don't have that confidence as a writer yet, but I am beginning to see some of that euphoria when I edit through my own paragraphs. I still cringe and shy away from some passages, but I know if I want it to be a good book, the kind I would enjoy reading then I must learn how not to flinch. Jeff, more than anyone, has taught me about honesty. he showed me that if you are completely open about who you are it is somehow perversely invulnerable. If you have no secrets then no one can expose you. If you are comfortable in your own skin no one can embrrass you. This is one of the ways I have set myself free as an adult.

And there is something about all of this that reminds me of my ongoing coming of age project. I remember trying to "find" myself in my twenties. Then suddenly I realsied that I already AM myself, like Dorothy having always had the ability to go home just by clicking her heels.

Writing about yourself and your past stamps it into permanence in a way that speaking can't acheive. I am tempted to finish my story and keep it to myself rather than confront sending a little piece of my life out into the world like constellatioins of thought and memory for strangers to judge. I honestly have no idea what i will do if i win that contest. Maybe I will pass, and shelve the memoir, bringing it out to reread every five years. Maybe I will find myself successful in my endeavors to seperate my voice from the judgements of others. I only have to click my heels twice I've heard.

Just take it bitches

This weeks giveaway is the forest nights dress pictured here. It fits sizes 2-6( very stretchy)and ties in the back. All you have to do to win is write a comment to this blog about this topic--if you had to choose between having sex with a walrus or sever having sex again-which would you choose and why?
Good Luck, the winner will be chosen randomly in one week.

By the Skin of My teeth

I collect human teeth. I have a ziploc bag full of them ot far from where I sit now. No matter how many teeth I'm in possession of at any moment, I always desire more.
It started when I got my own wisdom teeth out in college. The doctor handed me a tiny blue bag with three molars. The bag was not unlike the ones that acid and Ecstasy came in when we bought them on the street in high school, except it was filled with my teeth. Long wicked looking roots spiraled out of short bodies of bone. I immediately went home and glued them onto a previously ordinary collage.

" I love that" I thought.

I started asking everyone I knew if they had their wisdom teeth. If so, were they using them? Could I have them? Friends brought them to me, wrapped, on my birthday. I asked every dentist I went to. The hygienists raised their eyebrows at the Doctor and they turned the nitrous way up.

My desire for more teeth only grew after I had two of my own extracted, followed by nine root canals and many little fillings. I'm sure there is a deep subconscious connection between having the decay rate of a prisoner or a mental patient and collecting teeth. Maybe I feel like I'm replacing what's lost in my skull. Maybe it's comforting knowing that I can superglue some dentures if society collapses due to a supervirus and dentists are all gone- holed up in bunkers, unavailable to me for my endless appointments. My friend, whose hobo teeth rival my own in levels of complex decay, lost her two front ones and couldn't afford to replace them for a year. She used two Lee Press On Nails and some Polygrip to form fake front teeth. It fooled everyone. That is creativity.

I was sitting in the dentists chair this morning on laughing gas, thinking about the nature of laughing gas, when I realised how exactly my nitrous experience is the same to every other one I've had. I think the same thoughts, my vision spins in the same back and forth vertigo, the lights on the ceiling are the same brand in every office. I feel vaguely like they're silently mocking me. The doctor says the same things to the nurse and I hear them as if under water. I feel nauseous but don't want it to wear off.

The dentist holds up a palette labeled Resitin Monoplast. It has dozens of little fake teeth coming out of it's semi circle base like spokes off a wheel.

" I'm not going to paint on the coffee stains that your other teeth have, okay?"

Um, thanks? Now I will have one brilliantly white eyetooth?

He holds each one to my mouth and squints. I realise that he is an artist who works in teeth, just like me. He matches their color, sculpts them with his sinister little drill, making sure the shape and texture are just right. I consider telling him about my bag of teeth at home, flaunting it. Guess what I have?

I don't because I'm desperate for these people to like me. If he is jealous of my molar stash at home he might decide to brush on a lot of those coffee stains. I sent my last dentist some cookies once, just to suck up. Then I thought I was being funny when I emailed them after a root canal and asked

" Why did you torture me with excruciating pain? Were you drunk? I had to go to the ghetto and buy some smack just to get through the night"

They sent back a response that said only-"I hope you are joking."

" Why did I do that? I loved those people. Now they think I'm crazy!" I asked my friend Carli.

" I don't know, you're compulsive."

" But, how could anyone not know that was a joke? Seriously?"

" Sunny, it's so inappropriate."

" But it's so funny!"

And it's true that, once I think of something funny enough to make me laugh I have to say it, write it or send it. There is no other alternative, no matter what the consequences. It's what made me tell my pregnant friend that the Greek food she was eating caused spina bifida, it's what makes me tell Catholics I wish people had more abortions. I can't help it.
So now I floss and brush even more fanatically than before because I can't go back to the old dentist who thinks I am a ghetto crack whore who implied he had a drinking problem.

This morning on my way to the new guy Jeff said wearily,

" Try not to offend this one okay?"

" Jeff, it wasn't my fault!"

" Just try, ok?" He gives me the look he uses on Ruby when she's about to go visit the "Sad Chair".

" I will. The new dentist will love me. You'll see."

And this afternoon I will be calling the Cookie Delivery Service. I will be taking no chances this time.

Merger at Lala's

Yesterday I saw The Oldest Whore in the World again outside of the laundromat. She was rocking her usual Geriatric Bratz style with a half shirt that revealed an alluring criss cross of C section scars. When I walked in to get my smokes she yelled out across the lot to a grizzled looking hobo on a skateboard.
"Shit or Get off the Pot!"
" Hey Joan I'll stand wherever I goddamn please!"
In between them stood my favorite Middle Eastern shopkeeper with a puzzled, but cheerful, look on his face. They were still yelling as he followed me inside.

" Lookey here at this titty asshole!"

" I was in Vietnam!"

I wondered if this was good for sales. Most people don't feel happiness deep in their heart at the display of psychosis like I do. I love that whore. I wave at her when I drive by. I offer her antibacterial hand wipes on my way to the car.

"What are they fighting about?"
The shopkeeper, Omar, shook his head.
" They fight over who can stand on the corner. They have a competing business." And looked me in the eye meaningfully, as though the whore's line of work was a secret.
So, either the toothless skatepunk hobo was a gay prostitute or she has a side business dealing meth. I wondered which one it was. It seemed really unlikely that a gay man, no matter how hard up, would touch that man. The gays are generally pretty fastidious.
On the other hand, if Grandma had a thriving meth lab then wouldn't one assume she'd lay off the whoring? After a lifetime of standing in front of the laundromat, maybe one day she'd wake up and say," Enough! I am making good money selling meth, I've seen enough strange penises for one life, I'm going to learn how to knit."
I wondered if I should offer my services to them as a business mediator. Maybe they could do a time share, or team up, split marketing costs, take turns watching out for police cars. After all, their customer base was so different, there wasn't a question of competition. They could go in on business cards together, passing them out at the perpetually Christmas themed bar next door.They seemed so compatible deep down.
Personally, if it came down to it, I think the Number One Oldest Whore in the World should get the corner. She has seniority, she's clearly doing a better PR job since everyone for blocks knows about her services. She puts a lot of effort into brand recognition, there is a consistency to her daily display.
The Hobo Skateboarder, on the other hand, is just an upstart. We all sometimes wake up and flirt with the idea of being a gay prostitute for a day, that doesn't mean you can just go stake out any corner you like, buddy. There are channels.

As I drove away a peaceful calm spread over his face as he urinated into an outside trash bin. I saw him flash a sheepish smile at my whore, who was gripping a smoke between her teeth as she played Ms Pac Man. He flashed that same smile at me as he shook the last drops of urine from his exposed penis. As the drops caught the last rays of the setting sun, I sighed and thought-Maybe there would be peace after all.

Latest Photo shoot for Rubypearl

My friend Shelly Reese took some really pretty photos of my new dresses so since I don't really have anything to write about today I thought I'd post them. I'm such a sucker for good photography!

If you love something set it free

I'm really lucky because almost everything I make sells within 6-8 months. The dresses that don't sell that hang in my closet with no home, begin to annoy me. No matter how much work I put into them, or how much I originally liked them, they are suddenly like a house guest who refuses to leave. " YOU again?" I think as I pass by them on the way to sew something new and exciting. So I put them on Clearance or donate them to charity, just to get them out of my sight.
Now I'm obsessed with blog giveaways so I've decided to start giving one away every week. There are two giveaways this week to start it off. On both sites you have to become a follower on their blog and then comment about the dress. At the end of the week they will randomly pick a winner and I'll mail out my old friend to you. So much fun.
The contest for the small medium dress is on http://www.whwywfashiontips.blogspot.com
the one for the medium large is on http://theglamorouswahm.com/

Next week I'll do it on my site. I don't know why I love these so much--personally I never win anything, which is why I have no interest in gambling. I did win a game of Cranium the other night, but that could be because we were playing against a drunk and a retard.
Anyway, good luck! Write to me if you win.