muffy bolding

Someone once asked me if I believe in or appreciate romance. The answer is yes, but I suspect it’s probably my very own brand of romance. As in, if my husband forgets my birthday or our anniversary or Valentine’s Day or whatever –- I could give a fat rat’s ass. Fuck off. Unless you’re 16 years old, all that dire, forced, commercialized horseshit drivel drives me insane with disgust, anyway.

For me, romance is belly laughing and traveling together and eating yummy grub and watching awesome movies and having amazing discussions and just enjoying the living shit out of each other’s every goddamned breath.

Romance is setting off on great adventures together — even if that adventure is just to Trader Joe’s in Eagle Rock for stevia and gorgonzola cheese.

Romance is being there for someone — even when all others betray or abandon them. It is being both bold enough and devoted enough to stand alone with them against the onslaught of those who would disparage, subdue, or attempt to destroy them.

Romance is encouraging the other person to seek their heart’s desire — whatever and wherever that might be.

Romance is encouraging them to be exactly, precisely who they are every minute of every day — and celebrating that freedom.

Romance is looking at the other person and knowing, to your marrow, that no matter how much time you will have together in this life, it will never be enough.

Romance had nothing at all to do with this shot I stealthily fired off at the grocery store at 5:30 pm on Valentine’s Day a coupla years ago. Despite the Brooks Brothers shirt, the cashmere vest, the $400 Italian loafers, and the top-of-the-line black Mercedes S-Class parked right outside, homeboy looked fucking terrified:

Romance also had nothing to do with this shot taken at See’s Candy a few minutes later. Along with the smell of marzipan and milk chocolate, dread and fear hung in the air like an unholy mist. You could just sense the many anuses puckering in desperate terror all around you:

This poor sap looked like he was waiting in line for a prostate exam:

Those pictures don’t show me romance; those pictures show me obligation, submission, and perhaps even a little annoyance.

Now, for me, this is romance; someone patiently sitting vigil at your hospital bedside for days and days whilst you emerge from major surgery and face the uncertain possibility of the dread cancer; and then that same someone consequently frolicking about with you like a giddy jackass on amyl when your oncologist tells you, this house is clean:

As for me, I subscribe to the David Sedaris definition of true love. It’s not always what you do that shows how much you love someone; it’s often what you don’t do:

“I was reminded of just how lucky I truly am. Movie characters might chase each other through the fog or race down the stairs of burning buildings, but that’s for beginners. Real love amounts to withholding the truth, even when you’re offered the perfect opportunity to hurt someone’s feelings.”

I am the luckiest girl in the world.

“When an actor comes to me and wants to discuss his character, I say, ‘It’s in the script.’ If he says, ‘But, what’s my motivation?, ‘ I say, ‘Your salary.’” — Alfred Hitchcock

Knitter PLEASE. Ronald Reagan — along with any modern revisionist bastards who actually attempt to front that that ol’ babbling, bumbling, hen-pecked, pussy-whipped meathook was ANYTHING even remotely resembling a “Great Communicator” — CAN FUCKING SUCK IT.

C’mon, people, let’s cut the shit. That ol’ boy was OFF TRACK, he COULDN’T FUCK, and YOU ALL DAMN WELL KNOW IT.

Question: Remember when you were a little kid walking home from school and you’d always see several old, crusty piles of WHITE DOG SHIT on various lawns along your journey? How come you NEVER see white dog shit anymore?

*Sigh*

I guess I’m just feeling a little wistful today about the absence of some good ol’ fashioned CACA BLANCA in my life.

Carry on.

“Before I begin, I would like to say what an honor it is for me to be invited here to read my work for all of you…and to ask that you please indulge me for just a moment. Um…okay. ME? Reading at the same ‘Women Who Write’ as HARRY FUCKING HAMLIN? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME WITH THIS? Mr. Hamlin…I just want to tell you that when I was a teenager back in Fresno, I TOTALLY used to make out with my ‘Clash of the Titans’ Perseus pillowcase every night. Even now, when I watch you — and THAT MOUTH — hack off the clawed hand of Calibos in that swamp…dude, seriously…it makes my toga MOIST. This is like a total dream come true for a trashy, scandalous Fresno girl like me. So, thank you, Miss Vicki, for giving an aging fan girl her ULKIMAKE FANKASY.”

And after I was all done with my reading, I curtsied like a Parisian hooker, scurried back to my chair right next to The Man of the Hour, and when the applause died down, I loudly and proudly inquired of our HOT Indomitable Hostess:

“Okay, I did it, Miss Vicki. Can I make out with Harry Hamlin now??”

When I was a teenager in Fresno, California, I went to see, “Clash of the Titans” at the Fig Garden Village Cinema with my friends. Afterward, as we emerged into the scorching San Joaquin Valley sun, I remember thinking three very specific thoughts:

1) That Ray Harryhausen was a motherfucking GENIUS. His brilliant stop-motion camp is one of the great entertainment obsessions of my life. I will giddily and shamelessly watch his films anytime, anyplace, amongst any company. They just make me happy.

2) That, “RELEASE THE KRAKEN!” would always and forever remain a main staple of my schtick….er, vocabulary — and it has. AND HOW.

and

3) THAT I REALLY, REALLY, REALLY WANTED TO MAKE OUT WITH HARRY HAMLIN. That fucking mouth is LEGENDARY…the stuff of which teenage girl dreams are MADE — and apparently, talking to all the delightful Nancy Boys who exist alongside me in our very own L.A. Moveable Feast — SOME TEENAGE BOYS, as well. Uh…can you say, “Making Love”? HOLY SHIT.

In exactly one hour from now, my humbled, incredulous, Fresno self will take my place beside Mr. Hamlin at a reading at the HOTTEST literary salon on the West Coast, both of us invited there by the HOT Mabel Dodge of the New Millennium, Miss Vicki Abelson.

Thank you so much, Miss Vicki…for making a Fresno girl’s dreams come true. I shall try my very best to make you proud.

For once…I am just speechless.

.

One of the most blissful and monumental memories of my childhood is sitting next to my father, Tom, in the dark of Strasenburgh Planetarium in Rochester, New York — gazing up at the stars and out into the infinite universe, my small hand tightly holding the hand of the man I loved most in that universe…and who loved me in return with equal, singular devotion. Along with the very first time I held each of my children on the day of their birth — this memory is my “Happy Place.” It is where I go in my head when I need to feel safe and enveloped in utter, buttery love.

Saturday night, I made my way to yet another planetarium, to once again gaze up at the distant stars — only this time, I had my darling and adored husband, Gregory, on one side of me, and my darling and adored gusband, Jackie Beat, on the other. As I held their hands, looking up into infinity, I thought of my Daddy in New York, and I felt at one with everything…completely filled with amazement and boundless gratitude at my great fortune to live a life filled with such loving, supportive, brilliant, fascinating men.

I surely must have been born under a lucky star.

Many thanks to my delightful friend, Miss Jackie Beat, for making me belly laugh so fucking hard last night that I squirted urine into my white cotton granny panties on AT LEAST four separate occasions!

And it is only for YOUR entertainment, Miss Jackie, that I would so brazenly and shamelessly ask the ADORABLE 6’5″ GINGER VIKING HIPSTER BOY BEHIND THE COUNTER IF HE MIGHT PLEASE PACK TWO SCOOPS OF THE DELICIOUS RED VELVET CAKE GELATO INTO MY VAGINA…TO-GO.

I love you!

I spent yesterday doing what I pretty much do everyday — writing on the latest movie screenplay (am even approaching the homestretch — hurray!), and then spent last night workshopping some writing with my glorious girls, Miss Becky Thyre and Miss Helena Harvilicz, along with the delightful Herr Gordon Henderson. As my adorable teenage Baby Goat would say with a sassy flip of her impossibly-silky, yard-long Pantene hair — it was SO RICH!

The day was full and ever-so-satisfying. Like some chubby, ancient Eliza Doolittle with skin-tags, a gunt, a Fresno pedigree, and a ticking clock, I always feel like I could dance all night, so to speak — and practically did, seeing that I came home over after our meeting and immediately wrote some fucking more, like a keyboard harridan obsessed. And today, I am RIGHT BACK TO IT. Enough of this gathering rosebuds while she may horseshit; I am done with consumption. Now it’s all about creation.

But as I sit here now, tucking into my first cup of delicious coffee and snuffling the skulls of my two gorgeous chihuahua honey-pies, it just hit me full force — what a GLORIOUS way to spend one’s time: Creating entire worlds with people whom you both admire and adore.

I’m like a blitzed spigot, an engorged breast, a dysenteried bunghole, an open vein. For good or for bad, there is no stopping it, I’m afraid.