muffy bolding

My name is Muffy Bolding…and I am a yarn snob.

For Mother’s Day a few years ago, along with a priceless poem from my teenage son, I was gifted with two drop-dead gorgeous necklaces and a pair of earrings (all garnet — my faviest of faves), an entire legion of my beloved ol’ school Fisher-Price wooden Little People to add to my increasingly burgeoning collection (if you have any laying around the house that you wish to sell or dispose of, drop me a line!), and the following…which is just the most exquisite object I have ever seen. It occupies a place of great honor in our living room — right on top of our old Danish Modern china cabinet that contains my also beloved collection of Pez dispensers, now about 500 strong.

She is just so lovely…you cannot even imagine. I smile and marvel at her beauty every single time I pass her by…and sometimes even affectionately reach out and stroke her spleen:

This dress exacerbates the genetic betrayal that is my legacy.

I was unexpectedly contacted last year by a charming young woman who told me she really loved my work — particularly my poem, “Librarian.” She also asked very sweetly if I had any other poems or essays of mine that I might send along to her…because she was doing her finals project on me in her English class.

Now, I’m not sure if you fully understood the completely outrageous and unbelievable nature of what I just said:

She was doing her finals project on me in her English class.

HA!

For her finals project, she needed to explain the theme, purpose, structure, metaphor, word choice, rhythm, and sound devices of my writing…and its context in American culture and history.

Knitter PLEASE. I am the daughter of criminals, courtesans, cocksmen, and carnies. I am a high-school dropout. I come from a rambling, felonious, working-class family of eleven brilliant, hilarious children, several of whom are dead, addicted, incarcerated, or crazy. I’m a shitkicker and a thief. At the age when most kids are learning to tie their own shoelaces, I could unload a handgun as big as my fucking arm with deadly precision. I like Nancy Grace, demolition derby, Bob’s Big Boy, Supercuts, and watching a really good freeway chase on TV. Every morning, I liberally mist Jean Nate drugstore bodyspray onto my pulsepoints and onto my cooter. I am from Fresno, for chrissake.

I wrote back thanking her for her lovely letter, and sent along a bit more of my work. As an old broad who NEVER misses the opportunity to spout about GIRL POWER, I added that if I, as a woman, have learned one single goddamned thing in my dangerously improbable existence, it is that ANYTHING is possible. The mere fact that I am STILL ALIVE, RELATIVELY SANE, and NOT MAKING MY LIVING FLAT ON MY BACK FAT is inarguable proof of that. I also offered her the advice that I give to every young woman I meet who is just beginning her journey in this place:

Fear NOTHING. Fear NO ONE. Know that you are POWERFUL BEYOND MEASURE — NOW. Not twenty years from now. RIGHT NOW. Every single day of your life, wake up, look in the mirror, behold your UTTER PERFECTION, throw back your head, belly laugh, and go out into the world and take what is yours — because it’s ALL YOURS.

She wrote back that she had printed up my letter and hung it on the mirror in her bedroom…so that not a single day would pass where she would not think of my words and use them to help guide her along her way.

I don’t think I have ever been more genuinely honored, humbled, or blown-away by anything in my entire life.

KILL IT, Little Sister.

(Wee Feral Gunslinger Girl brilliantly done in blue ballpoint ink on a book tile by one of my favorite motherfucking artists on the planet, Gabriel Liston.)

If history teaches us nothing else, it teaches us that Rasputin really needed to wash his ass. It also teaches us that he was hung like a Budweiser Clydesdale. He sought god, but found only Russian perma-frost peasant poon-tang — which in some circles, I suppose, IS GOD.

From the SWELTERING Summer of 2006:

Earlier this week I spent four fabulous days on location in Orlando, Florida on a television shoot for Disney.

First, please allow me to say that it was my very first time there and Florida is a lovely place; all green and lush and tropical. The sunset doesn’t look like that in California; it was so perfect that it almost looked like a huge, fake CG sky. Unbelievably gorgeous.

However, having said that…please allow me to also say that although Gregory wasn’t there with me to test it out, I can only hypothesize that the following is true:

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS SPONTANEOUS SEX IN FLORIDA IN THE SUMMERTIME…

because, let me tell you, you can take a nice, cool shower in the morning and expertly maneuver some really good Coast soap all up in that motherfucker, but five minutes after you walk out into that HIDEOUS HUMID HEAT…your muff is a SWELTERING NASTY MESS.

That’s right, you heard me correctly, my friends:

Florida is The Land of The Sweaty Cooter.

Never in my entire gottdamned life have I ever experienced such an outrageous assault on my personal hygiene. Just so you know, I keep my shit all nice and trimmed up. Further, I am one of those biological mutants who NEVER sweats anywhere (aside from my upper lip and hairline) — and yet I had to change my chonies like three times a day. I don’t know how you people hang with that horseshit. I simply could not live there on the muggy fucking surface of the sun and go on about my day and then have my husband impetuously say, “Hey, baby — let’s bang around” without my first playing a quick and meaningful game of “squat-hop-in-the-asparagus-patch” with ol’ Mr. Bidet.

The heat and humidity were literally appalling. My poor, dear muff…she still hasn’t fully recovered.

So, thanks for the wonderfully verdant shooting location…and I take off my hat — and my drenched granny panties — to all you Floridians out there who are far heartier than I.

Now, please excuse me whilst I spritz some chilled Jean Nate onto my undercarriage…and execute a graceful grand plie over the gottdamned fan.

Once again…from the sweltering Summer of 2006:

The very best part of being on location (well, aside from the coke and hookers — and snorting the coke off the asses of the hookers) is staying in luxurious hotel rooms. Ah! The room service! The thermostat cranked to 50 degrees whilst I disingenuously call down for more blankets and pillows so I can pretend it’s winter! My very own bed! The absence of surly teenagers asking me for Starbucks money and a ride to Starbucks!

And so it was this trip. After a hard day at work, toiling in the heat, we would head back to the hotel rooms, put on our jammies, and get our fucking room service on: pizza, nachos, chicken strips, cheeseburgers, and on and on, ad nauseum (quite literally.) This trip, thanks to that JonBenet killer-wanna-be, we also got to do the perpetual CNN tango. Lord, I love me some vapid, endless, meaningless news updates…that contain absolutely NO NEWS! Needless to say, we were glued to the screen. Though I fervently believe that guy isn’t the person who killed that poor child, I must say he is one of the ugliest bastards I have ever seen. That pasty freak looks like he was eaten by a wolf and shit off a cliff…but I digress.

On Saturday night, we locked the thermostat on ICE AGE, ordered up some grub, and dialed in The JonBenet Channel. And then, the Emmy Text Messaging began. We laid around, commiserating about our sweaty cooters, and watched the insane chief of police in Bangkok (the biggest market for kiddie poontang in the fucking world) tell us how the 38 year old John Mark Karr and 8 year old JonBenet Ramsey had been deeply in love before her tragic and untimely death (you gotta be fuckin’ kidding me.)

In between completely pointless updates, we waited, with bated breath, to find out if our friend, Leslie, had won the Emmy in the category in which he was nominated: Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series for Will and Grace. He was most definitely in good company — Jon Stewart, Patrick Stewart, Martin Sheen, and Alec Baldwin — but we kept the faith. When we finally got the call (or the text, rather) that he had, in fact, won, it was absolute and total bedlam in rooms 4614 and 4616. A cantankerous 300 year old security guard even had to come and beat on our door to tell us to shut the fuck up.

Leslie, you old hooker — we love you.

Another of our Jackal bretheren has nabbed a statue — and we couldn’t be prouder.

ps) Unfortunately, the coke and hookers thing is a total and complete fabrication: my fatass was in my footies and in bed by 11:00. I’m a real fucking lady, I am.

Every once in awhile, the lines blur and the standard rules fall away. Race, class, economic status, athletic genius, and world renown matter not in the least — along with the fawning adulation by annoying white pricks who, only a single generation ago, surely would’ve called him “boy” to his face and demanded he serve them tea in the clubhouse…instead of paying him millions of dollars to tee off in their boring, mindless, reverential tournaments. This fine and graceful athlete has shattered all preconceived notions about who belongs kickin’ ass out on the green…and who belongs delivering double-highballs and finger sandwiches to complete assholes back in the dining room at the country club.

But you know…when he crashed his SUV that night in December, Tiger Woods found out that none of that really matters. The only thing ol’ Tiger knows now is that if you stick your double-bogey into the birdie of a woman other than your wife and your wife finds out about it — BE PREPARED TO HAVE A 5 IRON BROKEN OFF IN YOUR ASS, my friend.

From the sweltering Summer of 2006:

For my birthday on Monday, my friends took me to Downtown Disney in Orlando for treats and eats. The treats came first: I got a Sleeping Beauty playset (complete with The Prince, Maleficent, and all three Fairy Godmothers) and a Tinkerbell dress-up set with 6 different outfits (think Polly Pocket with pixie dust and a temper.) I could not be more pleased with my haul and cannot stop playing with all their tiny, plastic asses. When it comes to gifts, my friends are so on-track that it hurts.

Our tummies all aflutter with gastric juices, we then headed for the digestive side of the street and ended up at some marginally upscale Italian restaurant. After scouring the menu, hoping to find just a big plate of pisghetti instead of some weird, specialty concoction (when it comes to Italian, I like to keep it ol’ school and ON-TRACK), I came across a seafood dish with a hilarious name that had me belly laughing OUT LOUD — so much so that when our fabulous, raging bulldyke waitress asked for my order, I proudly announced that although I just wanted to order the spaghetti, I would henceforth be officially adopting the moniker of one of their specialty dishes as my new stripper name:

Snapper Bruschetta.

Homegirl blinked, ran a quick hand through her mullet, stared at me with HUGE eyes like she couldn’t believe what I had just said, and started to BELLY GUFFAW OUT LOUD. And then, well, that was it — it was ON.

The meal was a HOOT…The Jackals were in rare form. And afterwards, because Jimmy had covertly notified our girl that it was my birthday, she and every gottdamned waiter, bartender, busboy, and hostess in the joint marched over to our table carrying a little chocolate cake on a large white platter — onto which had been carefully written by their in-house pastry chef: SNAPPER BRUSCHETTA. And then, in front of a full restaurant of bemused patrons, proceeded to loudly and proudly sing:

“Happy Birthday, Snapper Bruschetta…Happy Birthday….toooooooooo yooooooooooou!”

She told me afterwards, “You guys are the best table I have EVER waited on — and none of us will ever again be able to hear someone order the Snapper Bruschetta without smirking and thinking of you.”

She got a $100 tip.

I got the best birthday dinner ever.

Good trade.

From the Muffy Bolding “Just Fucking Say What You Really Mean” Files:

In old movies, when a man and woman get back to her place and she coyly tells him to help himself to a drink while she goes and “freshens up” — what she really means is “You start gettin’ liquored up, motherfucker, while I go squat in the bathtub with some really hot water and a bar of Lux soap so’s I can wash my possibilities.”