Six weeks ago, under the “Special Instructions” section of my Last Will and Testament, I quite literally added an ironclad codicil that — if they wish to partake of my simolians — at my funeral service, all of my future gorgeous grandchildren are required to gather props, don costumes, and take creative, irreverent selfies with my corpse before they shove my fatass into the ovens. The more absurd, offensive, and seditious, the better.
THINK I DIDN’T?
On your own blog or Facebook page, list five things that you are NOT:
1) I am not down for the neglect, abuse, torment, suffering, or destruction of ANY living, breathing, sentient being. Dogs are my gods. Pearlie Mae is who I worship. THINK I DON’T?
2) I am not ashamed to admit that kindness and beauty make me mighty verklempt. Just ask ANYONE who knows me. I BELLY CRY on a dime.
3) I am not someone whom you should treat service workers poorly in front of in an attempt to impress me. I will reach over the vegan nachos and kill you with my bare fucking working class hands. Trust me, I wake up with chunks of rude, arrogant, classist, classless pricks like you in my stool every morning.
4) I am not ashamed of anything, and, aside from harm coming to those that I love, I am not afraid of anything. Of ANYTHING.
5) I am not thin, willowy, statuesque, or gazelle-like, nor will I ever be. Nor do I give a shit. Now hand me a fistful of that Del Taco, bitches.
An Old Hooker and New Mama. I remember that when this shot was taken, my beautiful, tiny, newborn son, Hunter (yes, named for the Good Doctor, himself), was mewling just out of frame, causing my milk to immediately drop, causing me to pull my knee up so it wouldn’t read in the photo. If that happened now, not only would I NOT block the camera from capturing it…I’d proudly present those awesome titties with both hands…just like ‘ol Carol Merrill introducing the goddamned prizes on “Let’s Make A Deal.”
Chateau Marmont, Los Angeles, 1994.
Here I am, politically canoodling with my old pal, former California State Assemblyman, Mike Briggs…at what I do believe was his election night victory party, 1998.
Yeah, don’t let those boyish, clean-cut, prep-school looks fool you: I don’t give a shit WHAT he says or HOW he votes — ol’ Briggsie is a actually a VERY cool Democrat hiding in GOP wolf’s clothing and I told him so from the very beginning. We first met when Fresno Lampoon — a CRAZY BALLSY monthly satire zine I was writing and publishing with a friend — went INSANELY VIRAL with both those in charge and those in-the-know. In its pixilated monthly pages, I ruthlessly, shamelessly, publicly called him and all his fellow city councilmen out on their horseshit political maneuverings — including most presciently calling out their fearless leader, Mayor Jimmy Patterson, on not paying his power bill, Blockbuster late return fees, or downtown parking tickets in a timely fashion — HEY! JUST LIKE PLAIN ‘OL FRESNO TRASH LIKE ME! — only I somehow did it SEVERAL MONTHS BEFORE THE ACTUAL STORY BROKE IN THE BIG FANCY FRESNO BEE. And I hadn’t even known anything about ANYTHING when I wrote it! I JUST PULLED IT OUTTA MY TENDER ASS! HA! Lucy certainly had some ‘splainin’ to do after THAT, I assure you.
Because nobody before us had had the ovaries to do anything even REMOTELY like it in our fair hamlet, we got letters all the time saying that there is NO WAY a woman could write like I did, and that I just HAD to be a man frontin’ as a broad and just WHO the fuck was I. This, of course, made me smirk with delight NO END.
Our fearless, intrepid, little zine came shooting straight outta nowhere and caused a BONAFIDE sensation that sent shockwaves throughout the city — but instead of kicking our fatasses, or even suing us for slander, we got invited to lunch at city hall, ride parade floats, and even have our own radio talk show with the freedom to say or do whatever we wanted (which, as told here for the very first time EVER) we politely declined, seeing that the offer came from one of the most rabid, right-wing, Rush-lovin’ stations in the state. WTF?
Anyway. Me and Briggsie. He is SUCH a mensch.
Dirty Politics and Dirty Whores. Just like peas and carrots.
PERFECT.
“Don’t bear your sins: Confess them. Don’t wear your hair shirt of pain: Throw it off, redesign it, and give it to someone who might need it for warmth. I grew up in a society that asked us to keep quiet and take our rages and our desires and our questions into the house, to a dark, back room. This is suicide. Pour your rages and your questions into your life, into your work. Share with others. It’s a glorious moment when you discover that you share the same history with others. When your work fits into the soul of another — well, that’s why we do it.” — Tennessee Williams
“Kicking Bird: How many?
John Dunbar: Like the stars.”
— One old friend inquiring of another as to the numbers of white men yet coming to The West, “Dances With Wolves”
Despite being a Pound Puppy of several ethnicities (Sicilian, Spanish, Mexican, Filipina, English, Irish, Greek, and, as most recently discovered, Sephardic Jew), as well as the fact that Iron Eyes Cody, the weepy chief in the old, 1960s “Don’t Litter/Keep America Beautiful” television commercial, was my great-uncle, I am not even a tiny bit Native-American (and, by the way, neither was he. But, that’s another scandal unto itself.) Not a single drop. However, for reasons that have never made themselves quite clear to me, when I was a little girl I had a recurring dream that I was (I believe that I was, anyway, as I never actually saw myself) a young girl living in an Indian encampment. Sometimes I was a member of a plains tribe, nomadic horse warriors, like The Sioux, and sometimes I seemed to belong to a tribe from a colder, wetter place with canoes, thick trees, and tall mountains, perhaps The Iriquois or The Nez Perce.
In these dreams, which I had consistently, oftentimes several nights a week all throughout my early childhood, I picked berries, scraped hides, tended fires, tended children, danced and laughed with my sisters by a river, bore witness to ancient rituals in smoky, firelit wooden longhouses, fled and hid in tall grass from terrifying enemies, and sang and spoke joyously in languages I did not know or understand in my waking hours. For several years, it was as though I divided my time here on earth between two separate, distinct lives — one at night, and a completely different other during the day.
For a significant portion of my childhood, these dreams consumed me — enough so that I would go to the library at Figarden Elementary School and obsessively seek out and check out every book on Indians they had. Books about every tribe, every chief, every battle, every ritual, every massacre, every injustice, every diseased blanket, every promise ever broken — which was ALL OF THEM. Checking these books out numerous times. Over and over again. Back to back borrowings, with no return in between. Learning, searching, seeking, remembering. I did this enough times that the school librarian actually became concerned for my mental and emotional well-being and contacted my parents — who, to their great, passionate, distracted, young, half-a-dozen-other-children-and-tempestuous-marriage-having credit — could not have cared less what their eldest daughter was reading (as long as it didn’t interfere with her scraping hides, picking berries, and tending to children in THIS life, of course) and told her to just let me check out whatever the fuck I wanted as many times as I fucking wanted it. And, trust me, I did. AND HOW.
Many years later, I very nearly had to be carried out of the theatre after seeing, “Dances With Wolves” and was both ecstatic and devastated for weeks afterward. Seeing it was like being in one of my dreams from childhood. Seeing it was like being ten again — though ten in WHICH life, I do not know.
Anyway, I just told you ALL that — just so I could show you ALL THIS. I am irreverent as hell. I am endlessly offended by people being ENDLESSLY OFFENDED. But, I just wanted to say that even though I myself am not Native-American and can not lay any claim whatsoever to the blood of the indigenous people whose land this was LONG BEFORE IT WAS OURS, trust me:
THIS MATTERS.
IT DOES.
Unless we honor, respect, preserve, and acknowledge the ORIGINAL AMERICANS…we, as Americans, are NOTHING.
Where do I sign?
“Nothing is worse than to finish a good shit, then reach over and find the toilet paper container empty. Even the most horrible human being on earth deserves to wipe his ass.”
— Charles Bukowski
Quite literally one of the finest, most astonishing, most fearless actors of our time or any other. I just watched him in his expertly wretched turn as the toady, grotesque, pretentious Freddy in “The Talented Mr. Ripley” not two nights ago…and was stunned anew at his nuanced brilliance. There are MANY celebrities and movie stars out there today, clotting up our cultural consciousness with their vapid visages — but SO FEW real actors. Hoffman was a REAL ACTOR.
Like many extraordinary creatives, he both battled AND danced with his demons. From what I am hearing, he had lately been dancing. May he now find the peace in death that so ruthlessly evaded him in life.
Such a tragic loss to us all, but most of all to his partner, Mimi O’Donnell, and three young children. My thoughts and prayers are with them today as the hopes, wishes, dreams, disappointments, scrutiny, and compassion of the entire planet bears down on their little family. May they find peace, as well, with what is left behind.
Requiescat in Pace, Philip Seymour Hoffman.
Two decades ago — long before the endless legions of Mommy Bloggers writing about childbirth like they were the first ones to EVER do it, long before mainstream celebrity culture FETISHIZED babies and motherhood — there was Ariel Gore and her alternative parenting magazine, Hip Mama.
Hip Mama not only changed my life as a poor, isolated, profoundly radicalized mother and writer living in Fresno, California…it changed my life through the many priceless friendships it enabled me to forge with other radical mamas all over the country — mamas who, all these many years later, remain among my oldest and most cherished friends.
There is this WHOLE POWERFUL COMMUNITY OF US — a VAST NETWORK of loyal and loving mamas — spread out all over the world, who, to this day, still support and help and adore each other. These amazing women — and they know who they are — are beloved to me. I would not be the person I am, the mother I am, nor the writer I am without them. They were there for me — ALL FUCKING IN — when no one else was. We have watched our children and each other GROW UP.
And the one who made it ALL possible…is Ariel Gore — who, after a five year hiatus as editor and publisher is BACK FULL FORCE. Having received my first issue of the new incarnation yesterday, I could not be more delighted and excited.
Thank you, Miss Ariel. You changed my life.
So, Mamas and Dads…what are you waiting for?
SUBSCRIBE!
PRINT LIVES!
All of my life, I have inexplicably loved the date January 17th. For no reasonably apparent reason. I’ve just always liked the color of it, the look of it, the feel of it, the sound of it. Yes, 17 itself has been my most favored and fortunate number since I was a kid — again, for no reason other than when I see it or say it aloud, I feel and hear a very audible click in my brain. And, yes, it is the awesome Miss Betty’s White’s birthday and yes, there are some fascinating, historic, esoteric, skullduggerous activities that went down in a certain small village in the South of France of which I am obsessed and in which the date January 17th plays a significant part — but I didn’t know about all that nonsense until I was in my 20s, long after my love affair with 17 began. So, I guess what I am trying to communicate to you is that my whole preoccupation with January 17th is rooted in nothing tangible. And, yet, it is a calendar date which has always felt somehow solid and silvery and fated to me. Drenched in potential.
Par for the course, this January 17th, was monumental. A day I will never forget. Through the grace and largesse of an old friend who is also a writer, a most amazing thing has happened to me. Nothing short of the realization of a dream — a dream I have had since I was a sensitive, odd, observant little girl growing up in Fresno, California…in a place and in a family where being a sensitive, odd, observant little girl most certainly assured my fate as an infernal, eternal outsider. My doom there in that place was sealed and, even as a little girl, I knew it. So, I set off on a great quest out into the vast, endless world, looking for my place and for my pipples — and I found them…and they found me. AND HOW.
Anyway, my unimaginably good news is that thanks to my old friend and colleague, Maia Rossini, sending a most generous and unexpected email on my behalf, I am now represented by one of the most fancy, passionate, brilliant literary agents on the planet. On Thursday said fancy, passionate, brilliant literary agent read my work and on Friday, January 17th, said fancy, passionate, brilliant literary agent picked up the phone and called my fatass from New York City…and whilst I was standing, incredulous, 3,000 miles away in my kitchen in Altadena, California — sporting an ancient green Target schmata with frolicking pink elephants, white cotton granny panties, and an unwarshed bagina — she offered this infernal, eternal outsider a most welcome and astonishing place at The Table.
UNFUCKINGBELIEVABLE.
Needless to say, I am thrilled beyond belief and grateful beyond measure for the spirit of art, grace, hilarity, sisterhood, and generosity that radiates out from Miss Maia Rossini and infects the world with its awesomosity. Rest assured, I shan’t forget this, Maia. EVER. Thank you.
And to all those who cynically insist, ad nauseum, that women or writers or particularly WOMEN WRITERS never help each other professionally?
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK YOU.
I am here to patently tell you that they do. And I am here to tell you that, if and when I am in a position to do the same, just like Maia Rossini, I WILL.
COUNT ON IT.
So, anyway, it took me all that to say simply THIS:
To those of you who have shown me and my work SO much treasured and helpful support by believing in me and ruthlessly emailing and commenting and messaging me, demanding a book from my fatass…
IT’S COMING, MUTHAFUCKAS.
FINALLY.
BONAFIDE.
I am aware that this really is just the first step in a long, complicated, arduous process — but, in this moment, I am SO HAPPY and just wanted to share that with my friends. So, thank you all for indulging me and celebrating with me. Truly.
I feel just like a fancy, big-city working girl twirling around in my peacoat and throwing my beret high into the air in joy and jubilation. Not just because all of this bookstuff opportunity is really and truly happening to a scandalous Old Trollop like me — but even more so because I have such loyal, true, and amazingly generous friends who have my back fat NO MATTER WHAT. And that, to me, is THE GREATEST GIFT OF ALL.
I really am the Luckiest Slut.
Now, if you’ll excuse my scandalous fatass…I have to retrieve my beret from the filthy gutter and write a motherloving book.
She’s gonna make it after all.
muffy bolding 