Reservations Advised

Here's the next installment of the novella. Thanks for the reading!

Reservations Advised

Josh comes home, his arms full of gifts from his students, most of them an upgrade from the traditional teacher presents I remember from my youth -- the soap and candies bought at Rite-Aid by my mother in a last minute haste to make a good impression on the nuns and teachers that taught us for a woefully inadequate salary at Regina. Those gifts must have seemed like another indignity, suffering that they could offer up to Jesus if they had the presence of mind to do so. Our parents did not put much stock into God, but my dad was not about to pay the tuition for a school like Josh teaches at now and so Josh and I ended up at single sex Catholic schools -- Notre Dame and Regina, both still in operation with much of the same staff.

I dig through Josh’s goods, happy to find all sorts of exotic desserts -- cashews dipped in white chocolate, a tray of baklava, Godiva chocolates. There are also gift certificates to Starbucks, Barnes and Nobles, a few local restaurants -- a good haul to be sure.

I still receive the Regina newsletter, notes about who has died or married, the birth announcements, the calls for reunions. While I enjoyed Regina, I have no desire to return to the tired school cafeteria to sip pop out of paper cups and see what forms of hideousness have visited former beauties, powerless against time, gravity, and the inevitable toll having babies takes on the body. I try and keep in touch with my girlfriends from those days, but their presence becomes most pronounced at Christmas when cards with the Blessed Mother holding the Savior of the World litter our coffee table. The cards fill me with a weird longing and I would say a Hail Mary if I could remember the words without my father’s inevitable joke crowding them out -- Hail Mary, full of grace, let us win this stock car race. As if we were going anywhere.
Our parents will be here in a few days. They will not be staying with us, but have chosen much grander accommodations in a bed and breakfast in Grosse Pointe, a thing that has always struck me as the worst of both worlds -- the crappy parts about having to make conversation and observe social niceties and their having to pay for it. But my parents enjoy what I would find irritating and I for once am glad for Josh’s snobbish ways, his refusal to unpack the trash bags in his room. I used to nag him about the bags, insisting that it must make things hard to find whereas he always claimed he could get at anything he needed. And I cannot help but think that our relative downward mobility cannot help but depress our parents who came from little and ended up with a big house and stock options, new cars every few years. In this way, we will never be them, a small comfort I cling to when one of my mother’s expressions appears on my face and terrifies me.

At Regina, the nuns often referred to Friday as the day of sorrowful mysteries even though we could tell there was nothing sorrowful in their demeanor as they rushed out of the teacher’s lounge, as eager as we were to get away from school. Even now with a mildly erratic work schedule, I still love the feel of a Friday afternoon, and I’m feeling happy having popped a Vicodan from my recently replenished supply -- a trip in which Roman had his associates around so it was a purely monetary transaction, all manner of bullshit with his boys taking precedence over blow-jobs, and I pour myself a glass of champagne to keep the good vibe going as long as I can before the game face/good behavior part of the holiday begins. On the stereo, Stevie Ray Vaughn sings about the sky crying. I think about calling Mark to have someone to hang out with tonight, although Josh does not appear to be going anywhere. Coley has not been here in over a week, making me believe she may have decided not to return to her own vomit, the proverbial fool in her folly.

The phone rings and sure enough, it’s Coley as if I’d conjured her up with my thoughts. I hand it to Josh even though he’s making an I’m not here motion with his hands. Let him clean up his own mess. I know they’re at the very least on the verge of a break-up because I feel a way of kindness toward her and pity.

I sip my champagne, trying to listen to Josh’s conversation which is mostly a Morse code of grunts and one clear word laced with a warning, Don’t.

"Don’t what?" I ask as soon as Josh gets off the phone.

"Do you listen to everything I say?" he asks. It’s early evening, but already dark so I light some voodoo candles for ambiance.

"Yeah, all two words. So what don’t you want Coley to do?" I’m having a lot of trouble getting the Road Opener lit so I drop the match inside the glass and hope it makes contact with the wick long enough for it to catch fire.

"Come over tonight." He picks up a book, signaling the end of conversation.

But it is not the end. Within minutes Coley is at our door, clearly having called on her cell phone in transit. She looks awful -- no make-up, unkempt hair, and a huge pimple has forced her to leave her nose ring off. I can see her waiting for someone to let her inside, but Josh isn’t moving.
"Let me in, asshole," Coley yells. "I know where you are."

I set my glass down and get up for the door, saying nothing as she pushes past me.

"I need to talk to you in private," Coley says, motioning me away with her hand.

"Can’t you guys go somewhere? Why do I always have to move? There’s Johnny’s Ham King II restaurant down the street if you’re looking for somewhere really romantic," I say.

"Fuck it, you’ll know soon enough. I’m pregnant."

Never have I been so relieved to have a tiny mountain of Vicodan at my disposal. When this one wears off, I will most certainly allow myself another one tonight although the second never packs the punch of the first one. Now Coley’s pale complexion, the vomiting, the pimples, all make sense. My last appointment of the day was with a pregnant high school junior who had taken three pregnancy tests at a Coney Island by her house so she would not be caught with the tests or leave any traces behind. We only confirmed what she knew in her bones.

"Josette, I think we’re going to leave for a little while," Josh says, putting on a pair of old running shoes. I look at Coley and try to will her away, but just because I can conjure her up doesn’t mean I can make her disappear.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"It is true that we cannot be free from sin, but at least let our sins not be always the same.” St. Teresa of Avila

Cocktail Hour
Drinking reading suggestion: The Art of War Sun-tzu

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Friday!

The Fringe On His Tiny Sleeves

I found a Count Chocula doll the other day, a teeny-tiny replica that I purchased with much glee in my heart. My Count comes apart without much effort -- his hands are always falling apart and the fringe on his tiny sleeves also are removable so I keep him in a Ziploc baggie lest he become amputated or lose his sleeve fring. Sometimes I take him out to hang out with me as I write or eat, but he always stays in the baggie. Protected and suffocated, the Count stays new and intact or at least able to be whole should I choose to reattach his parts. In the interest of full disclosure, I must say that I usually don't. It's fine for him not to have his hands insofar as I know where they are. I seldom know where to put my hands in real life -- in front of me or behind, at my sides, chewing my nails. I often find them clenched, as if braced for an invisible punch when I'm trying to relax.

Once at a party where I knew no one, I was with my then-boyfriend, many years my senior, and someone said, Aren't you quite the trophy! I didn't say anything, not one word. I didn't feel like a trophy; I was struggling to find a job, struggling with the relationship about which everyone and their asshole cousin said, He doesn't love you enough to marry you (I was loathe to admit how correct these pronouncements were), struggling with my writing career, rejection after rejection -- the "this was so close" kind of bullshit that drives writers to drink and madness. When I got home, I took off my party clothes, rinsed off the make up that I always wore, and thought about how I liked to be inside the house, in my writing corner, an aclove off the living room that served as my office. I loved it there and never wanted to go outside. In that particular Ziploc baggie, I didn't have to be judged or evaluated; I was not the subject of envy or scorn. Nobody found me wanting, underqualified or overqualified, and I knew where to put my hands -- on my keyboard, writing the stories that someday someone, God willing, would want to read.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"A man is only as good as what he loves." Saul Bellow

Cocktail Hour
Drinking music suggestion: At Last Etta James

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Thursday!

The Lonely Dolls

Dear readers,

I'm posting a few pictures today from a new series I'm working on about dolls. I'll be back with writing tomorrow! Happy Wednesday to all!

One Hour Left To Live

Years ago, Miles Davis played the Bluebird Club in Detroit, the doorway of in which I am sitting. He came to the big D for an extended time to kick his heroin habit and on the nights he played, he walk a mile in the snow with his horn to play for the waiting crowds because although he was not yet famous, he was still Miles, and people knew him and he knew people. Even when he became famous, he'd come back to the Bluebird to play for a nominal fee, never forgetting the owner's kindness during this rough patch.

It's safe to say that Miles didn't like that many people; he had a legendary temper and a deep streak of misanthropy that I kind of like. When asked what he would do if he had one hour left to live, he said, I'd strangle a white man very very slowly. I have often had the same sentiment given certain men's actions. But I like the phrase, He never forgot the owner's kindness. When we are in our hour of need and things look bleak, we never forget the people who took a chance on us when things weren't so great. I like to think of Miles walking through the cold Detroit winter -- years later he'd probably ride in limos and stuff; he'd never have to tough it out in quite the same way again. But he'd probably never see anything as harsh or beautiful as what he saw on the way to the Bluebird; he could write music about that cold truth for the rest of his life.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"Do not fear mistakes. There are none." Miles Davis

Cocktail Hour
Drinking music suggestion: Kind of Blue Miles Davis

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Tuesday! And happy birthday to my lovely sister Beth! See the post right before this one.

Happy Birthday To Beth!

Happy birthday to my sweet sister, Beth! And much thanks for all the love and support she brings to my blogging endeavors, particularly in the way of telling stories and taking pictures.

Something I No Longer Remember

This weekend I saw a picture of Amy Winehouse, the new British Janis Joplin, bleeding through her toes into her lovely pink ballet slippers, a result of shooting heroin through the spaces between them. This is the kind of gruesome juxtaposition that stays with one for a very long time, the innocent and damaged, an epic trainwreck so very young. I have her cd, of course, a birthday present from my ex-husband who says I remind him of her. It's not my voice which is one of the worst, both in speaking and singing. And the unfortunate part is that I know words to almost every song I hear which brings up a cosmic joke -- why do all the people with terrible voices have excellent memories for song lyrics? I can't help but be entranced by Amy -- her huge beehive hair, her tiny little body, that bad British orthodontia. She cuts and starves herself by her own admission and sings like she came straight out of Motown. What's not to love about such reckless self-destruction and beauty all in one package?

Of course, you can't live very long in this fashion. You have to slow down the freefall. I can remember a lot about being married because I was such a mess. I wasn't shooting heroin or singing about being a wicked girl, but I was living in a state of constant worry and fear, shell shocked by the bad turns that my life had taken, those turns finally catching up with me. I couldn't see my way out of my troubled mind, that trap stronger than any prison door. I, like Amy, loved pink ballet shoes and had a picture of them on my wall with an inspirational saying, something I no longer remember. But the shoes were pristine, never worn, like my own pair that stayed in the back of the closet, waiting for the right time to debut which never came because what I figured out is that I'm a lot more comfortable in high heels, even if I trip and fall, because I can always blame the shoes and not my own wobbly walk or the fact that I'm not watching where I'm going.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"Good and bad - this is the story of my life." Martha Reeves

Cocktail Hour
Drinking magazine suggestion: Ms. Magazine

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Monday!

The Sadness Of FM Radio

All week long I have been haunted by Talk To Me, a brilliant understated movie in which Don Cheadle plays Petey Greene, an ex-con turned famous Washington D.C. disc jockey. The film documents his release from prison and subsequent friendship with Dewey Hughes played by Chiwetel Elijofor. Greene's star rises in that predictable fashion of movies and life, but he tanks on the Johnny Carson show, the moment that Hughes has worked for to make him famous, a vicarious thrill shown in sad splendor when Hughes takes a spin in Johnny's chair when he thinks no one is watching during dress rehearsal. The two part ways after this debacle of disappointment, but get together in the end before Petey G. dies an early death from hard living. In the interim, Hughes finds his own voice in radio and dumps the Uncle Tom outfits for the occasional dashiki. Even so, he still watches Carson late into the night. His soul is, for all intents and purposes, split. This formula is nothing new, but at the end, I found myself oddly affected by the eulogy at Petey's funeral, a rehash of his old radio sign off, and found myself trying not to cry like during E.T. when I went with a group of friends and prided myself on being the toughest one, all the while digging in my hand, physical pain replacing the emotional turmoil.


The movie has funny parts, lots of them, but it can't shake the feeling of something lost, wounded and broken. "Sometimes I miss that itty-bitty room with the record player and the phone," says Petey when he starts to make it big, a man who is in over his head. We miss it too, I'm afraid, the fleeting beauty of the radio whispering in and out of our days. There are so many voices we grow dependent on, the reliability of which is always in jeopardy because of the demands of life, the toll of addiction, the sure finality of death. When we hear something wonderful and new and true, we know it won't last because it can't. Petey often plays Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come," one of the most hopeful and saddest songs I know. It's the kind of song that you listen to when you're alone in an itty-bitty room, the big world outside, and you know that at some point you have to step into it and nothing will ever be the same again.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn." Charlie Parker

Cocktail Hour
Drinking essay collection suggestion: The Honeymoon Is Over edited by Andrea Chapin and Sally Wolford-Girand

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Sunday!

We Gain Weight As We Get Older

Once a friend of mine got mono and dropped about fifteen pounds. It was 1996, and he showed up to our Shakespeare class in acid-washed jeans. "I knew if I kept these, they'd fit again." All proud, he squeezed every ounce of himself into those old jeans, clearly a relic from the halcyon eighties, and his stomach inched over them, creating the dreaded "muffin" stomach that fashion editors worn against. To add to this effect, my friend was about an inch shorter than me with red hair, causing many unkind souls to speak of leprechauns in his presence. But he didn't seem to know he was short and he didn't seem to know his jeans were too new to be retro, too old to be cool, and just plain butt ugly. Even so I admired his confidence, but not enough to give into his advances. Just out of my marriage, I did not take his lines all that seriously, "You're hair looks great. Are you using a new conditioner?" My buddy Hank laughed heartily at this one, but the weird part was my would-be amour was correct. I had just switched to a summer conditioner with lemon and thyme. Who says men notice nothing?

One day the debate before class turned to the behavior of artists, whether it was exempt from the rules of regular morality. Never a fan of society's rules, I came down on the side of the artist. Sure, Beethoven could be a jerk, but can you write the "Ode to Joy?" Hank agreed with me, but he would never test his argument given that he was one of the truest romantics/cynics I knew and could no more be unfaithful or immoral than he could drive. Our little friend in the acid wash drawers said that he thought the whole thing sucked, this license to sin, but that he wished he could write something that would let him off the hook whenever he wanted to do something bad. Hank, legally blind, but able to see enough to critique said, Those pants you've worn every day for a week are a sin and you should be punished. In his defense, Mr. Mono said, I just got into them. I haven't been able to wear them for years. Not missing a beat, Hank replied, There's a reason we gain weight as we get older and it's to stop us from wearing old bad outfits. I looked down at what I was wearing, a flowered sundress that I wouldn't touch these days, garishly decorated with big green flowers. I was a garden in those days instead of a grave, and I made pronouncements easily with the grace of someone who knows that things will come back.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"It's not a good idea to put your wife into a novel; not your latest wife anyway. "Norman Mailer

Cocktail Hour
Drinking memoir suggestion: A Life In Smoke Julia Hansen

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Saturday!

The Better Part Of A Year

I once knew a absolutely beautiful woman in her thirties that got engaged to a real asshole (objective reality, friends -- I only report the news; I don't make it) who had been playing her off another woman. He'd take my friend out to dinner and pretend to respect her too much to sleep with her, then sneak over to another of my friend's houses (who was in her mid-twenties) around midnight and have sex with her before making his classy four am exit. This went on for the better part of a year and like most of these deals, the real mystery was what two lovely women saw in the guy who appeared on his best days to be a seething pool of recessive genes. Add to this the fact that he was younger than both women. And both were hopelessly in love with the twerp.

The heart of our alliances is a complicated matter in the best of times. The women in this triangle knew each other, but didn't know how much they had in common. They couldn't stand one another (Both being diplomats, they called each other "that stuck up snotty ass bitch" and "that trashy big boobed tramp") and often could be found shooting each other death glares at parties. When my one friend won the prize of marriage with this gem, she went around showing off her ring in the way that women have done for years, the hand out, squeal of delight bullshit that so grates on the nerves. "It's beautiful," I said, because it was when it came my turn. She took me aside. "I keep having nightmares that he's going to leave me for a younger woman," she said. "Anyone can be beautiful at eighteen, but I'm still pretty now. That's what I keep telling him in my dreams." Of course, I knew her dreams were the least of her problems. And I had been eighteen and not pretty at all. My friend had been lovely her whole life, the kind of beauty that a person longs for. But I smiled and said I thought everything would be fine and she looked at her ring, that symbol for so much and polished it against her dress so it could gleam even brighter for the next person who would see it.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"I don't like movies that are trying to preach and trying to tell you how to feel." Don Cheadle

Cocktail Hour
Drinking movie suggestion: Ain't It Wonderful Sam Cooke

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Friday!

Change Your Luck

A Spell To Change Your Luck

Stop making your bed. After all,
you're going to get in it later, pull
up the covers, read a book, the one
that changed your life. Maybe you
found it by your old lover's bed inscribed
from someone else. I'm not saying
this has happened to me; it's not a first
person thing. The copy you have is worn
and maybe nobody else knows why you
like it, maybe you don't even know. You're
somewhere else before too long. You are
alone and asleep. Anything can happen.

I'm Not A Magician

When I moved to Detroit, I didn't work in my field, so to speak. I worked as a social worker, a receptionist, and a car show model among a few other tepid gigs of that order. Vogue it wasn't. The modelling jobs, such as they were, consisted of going to the ugliest office in all of the world that was papered with xerox copies of head shots and littered with pantyhose and hairspray bottles, the stale smell of make up in the air. It gave me the creeps for reasons I couldn't articulate as did my boss who had legs so thin that I often thought she might be a man. She sucked down Diet Coke from the big two-liter bottles and chainsmoked while evaluating us. "You're prettier than a lot of my car show girls," she said to me. "Great legs, but we have to do something about your hairstyle. And your make-up. Although your foundation looks expensive." The next person didn't fair so well, "Honey, you are just way too fat and your nose looks like it's been broken. I'm not a magician."

I didn't do much in this field given that I'm way too short and the whole thing was demoralizing. Too tall to be a gymnast, too short for other things. The story, it would seem, of my life. The worst was the car show. The year I experienced it was one of an epic blizzard that made getting to Cobo Hall a wretched hellish journey. I stood around for hours, touching cars. I hate cars. Except my car Snowflake. When I got home to him, I looked at him with great love. He would never be a model car, but he was mine. Love changes everything. Under its gaze, the plain becomes spectacular and everything else falls away.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"I don't deserve any credit for turning the other cheek as my tongue is always in it." Flannery O'Connor

Cocktail Hour

Drinking television suggestion: Saving Grace

Benedictions and Maledictions

Happy Thursday!

Just Add Water

I have a few cookbooks in my house, as decoration of course, and my favorite one contains various writer's favorite recipes. The best one comes from Joyce Carol Oates about adding water to a can of Campbell's soup. It explains how she wrote so many books -- the woman can cut out the unimportant crap and get to it! I used to be able to cook a few things, but have forgotten everything important about it including all the ingredients. I have managed to remember an entire score of ways to waste time that I could be writing so I guess I'm not that ahead of the game. I have a very clean house when I'm writing; I make dentist's appointments. I convince myself that such things matter.

Recently saw an article about "healthy" cocktails, mixing perfectly good vodka with muddled cucumber and whatnot. People interviewed claimed that this provided a good dinner substitute, that they felt superior to regular drinkers. I suppose it's a little less rough on the system than Jack and Coke, but still. I wouldn't touch a muddled cucumber with a ten foot fork except to put on my eyes to get rid of the circles underneath them and what those are from, well, it's from staying up so late to write. Yeah, that's it! I'm a fiction writer, after all.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"I have a thing with the camera. The lens is unconditional. It doesn't judge you. "Debra Winger

Cocktail Hour
Drinking literary website suggestion: http://www.opiummagazine.com/

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Wednesday!

And Still We Are Not Saved

When William Faulkner passed out drunk on a radiator, incurring second and third degree burns on his back that would pain him for the rest of his life, someone asked why he drank so much. "Because it's fun," he replied. Ditto with his contemporary Hemingway who pulled down a chandelier on his head, scarring himself when in a similar state of inebriation. "I like it," he was reputed to say. This is probably the only time these two opposite stylists expressed the exact same sentiment in such few words. Although addiction runs in my genes, I don't quite have the propensity for that level of drama, although given that I am clumsy (I spill drinks before I start drinking and once walked into a bar in Wichita Falls and promptly fell head first into the floor without so much as a drop in my system. When I looked up, I saw a picture of James Joyce! That little bastard's head was right there, thinking of Dublin, no doubt.), I wouldn't doubt that I could perform similar trick to the chandelier one. My only real claim to any kind of infamy is that my grandfather once got put in the same dry-out hospital as Art Pepper, the great jazz musician. Neither had any money at that time, although Art had talent which my Grandpa Charlie did not, and the clinic, located in west Ft. Worth, had all the ambiance and soothing qualities of prison. No equine therapy for them!

William Styron wrote that writing is hell, that drinking is hell, and that you write the best you can through your hangovers. The picture I have of him above my desk shows the man looking quite worse for the wear, not a happy dude, despite all his success. Sometimes a person will ask me if I enjoy writing. I think of one of the first ideas I had for a book. I was six years old and had just heard the parable about the seeds, the one where some of them land on rocky ground and don't take root, some that land and don't get any water, some that grow, but are choked by weeds. Some seeds do grow, though, and he who has ears, well let him hear! I could see the harvest, so meager already. So much of what we do is futile, hopeless. But I keep throwing the seeds and water them with whatever is on hand.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
If I don’t practice for a day, I know it. If I don’t practice for two days, the critics know it. And if I don’t practice for three days, the public knows it.” Louis Armstrong

Cocktail Hour
Drinking music suggestion: Heroin Hates You Iggy Pop

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Tuesday!

Fade With Time

Sometimes after a long day at work (an eight hour day at an office as a secretary, cleaning houses in the evenings), my mother would come home to find my grandmother, her mother, passed out drunk at the dinner table, playing cards everywhere, the tell-tale bottle of whiskey back in the cabinet, its level considerably lower as evidenced by the black magic marker line my mother had drawn on the bottle as an attempt to figure out how much her mother drank. My crafty grandmother figured out that she could move the line around by erasing it with fingernail polish remover but sometimes she got so wasted that this little bit of espionage went out the window. Beer did not count as my grandmother often had this for breakfast, lunch, and dinner -- the oatmeal hour had become the cocktail hour. She was by and large a happy drunk, and this enabled her to forget about my grandfather. She moved in with us after he died, having endured many years of his abuse, and her face looked like a pugilist, the cauliflowered ears, the scars that did not fade with time.

My mother tried to control her, but couldn't. They fought all the time, loud fights in French that I couldn't understand. My heart broke for both of them -- my exhausted mother who tried so hard to keep everything going with her many jobs and her desperate need for the love and approval she seldom got and my broken grandmother with her tiny social security checks that she spent on alcohol and cigarettes, the only freedom she had in this word. Why can't she change? my mother would ask everyone late in the night. But true change is miraculous, road to Damascus shit, the blinding, the pull to something greater than ourselves. Although we are changing every minute, if only in our hearts, a place that nobody can see. My mother would put her mother to bed like she was a child, telling her to wake up and get moving, that it was late, even if it was only early evening and the night was a long way away.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"It's not true that life is one damn thing after another; it's one damn thing over and over." Edna St. Vincent Millay

Cocktail Hour
Drinking music suggestion: Great Days John Prine

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Monday!

Happy Birthday To Angela!

Here's a belated happy birthday to my dear beautiful friend Angela, pictured here with me and wonderful, lovely Steph at her sides.

Chant Perfomance

Here's Bradley on stage -- Go out and buy his cd!

You've Been A Naughty Girl

The only thing more depressing than the staged intimacy and expected fun of a bachelor party is its modern day little friend, the bachelorette party. I have managed to avoid these gatherings and before my own wedding went to see The Prince of Tides, not something I recommend either. But like all bad things, I did get roped into one of them in the late eighties when women's liberation had taken a dark turn from Andrea Dworkin's grim pronouncement about having relations with your oppressor, ie, All sex is rape, to the freedom to enjoy pleasures your male cohorts did such as strippers and cocaine. Also, you could now wear suits with huge shoulderpads as a way of making your waist smaller. (Did anyone ever think this worked?) But I digress. The bachelorette party had the de riguer party favors, penis-shaped erasers and whatnot, and was held in an apartment decorated with neon beer signs and littered with cigarette butts. Martha Stewart Living it was not.

The party's big feature was a stripper who came to the door, dressed like an extra from Midnight Cowboy. He did the standard handcuffs, you've been a naughty girl routine for the bride to be who by my calculations was about three months along in her pregnancy. She didn't do the tequila shots that the other bridesmaids offered but instead she nursed a few Lone Stars, proclaiming that one last night of partying wouldn't hurt. Midnight Cowboy didn't hang around long, but did ask if he could use the phone so he could call his boyfriend to tell him he'd be late getting home. I didn't know anybody at the party except the friend I'd come with, a friend of the bride from high school. "That could have been worse," she said when we left as a consolation, sometimes the only one there is.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"I have been all things unholy. If God can work through me, he can work through anyone." St. Francis of Assisi

Cocktail Hour
Drinking website suggestion: Post Secret

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Sunday! I'll be posting pictures from the Chant show later tonight.

You're The Woman I Married

My sister watches a diabolical and addictive show called "Ten Years Younger" where a person volunteers to stand in a soundproof glass box while people guess his or her age. Usually, the person is made as ugly and plain as possible, goes through a makeover, and gets put back in the box where people talk about how young and hip he or she looks, usually ten years younger! This formula of battering down the ego (how does it make you feel when that kid said, You look like my mom! You've got that old look! and the woman sniffles and cries), a complete ten day makeover (teeth, skin, hair, clothes -- weirdly the clothes are usually ugly as all get out in the guise of being what one might "really wear," (complete with kind remarks like, "You're arms are fat so you'll want to wear a shawl to cover" which only serves to make the person look like a matron with fat arms), and then an unveiling where you're shown your old bad self and then you get to see your new self. Of course, your family gets to see the new product and ooh and aah. "You're the woman I married," a husband might say. As if the haggard and drawn model was an imposter, someone masquerading as his wife and mother of his children instead of the product of several years in this role.

Everyone loves transformation, and I am no exception. Given that I don't change much (I've worn my hair in the same style since childhood, still wear clothes I had in high school, and generally slop on whatever make-up is at hand), I like the magical aspects of looking different even more. But with no bravery in my soul, you won't see me in some glass box, even if it means getting my teeth fixed for free (at present moment, I'm on my way to writing a Martin Amis type memoir about them), my skin refreshed (a real draw for someone who spent all her early years slathering that well known beauty aide Crisco on it to get a tan), and some advice on how to make my eyes bigger, my nose smaller, my lips fuller. Having ended up in a home economics class during my junior high days for a week before moving to something even more ill-advised (music), I learned a little about making myself look better for my husband, whoever should he be, that living mirror, the prince that would kiss me awake, the man who would take me out of the glass coffin if I didn't have the good sense to never put myself in one in the first place.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"I believe in running through the rain and crashing into the person you love and having your lips bleed on each other." Billy Bob Thornton

Cocktail Hour

Drinking movie suggestion: The Bad Seed

Benedictions and Maledictions

Happy Saturday!

Live Free Or Die

When I was in college, a well-known African-American fraternity practiced branding, burning their letters into the arms of the members, a psychic reverse from slavery and painful, I imagine, as all billy hell. Tattoos were just becoming popular at this time and seemed exquisitely painful to me given that the only tattoo I had ever seen up close was my Grandpa Charlie's one which had been done in prison with a broken ballpoint pen. It said, Live Free Or Die, a joke I suppose in jail or a more likely a wish burned into his body. I couldn't imagine a cattle prod taken to my skin and marvelled at the men walking around with their Greek letters, never to abandon their allegiance. The letters said more than say, a t-shirt. They said, badass, take back the night, they said I am a person who can endure pain, pain I have chosen because let's face it, we all endure pain, but most of it is inflicted on us from others until we learn to do it ourselves without help. Most of it doesn't look as cool as a brand.

A friend of mine's new amour asked him to take the pictures of his ex off the walls of his house, a request he honored quickly, dubbing the process re branding. I love the expression as it encapsulates the nature of a relationship in so many ways. You want to eradicate the past instead of having the past eradicate you. You want your picture on the wall, nobody else's! When another friend of mine complained about an ex being in a displayed group picture, her boyfriend said, What do you want me to do? and she said, Cut that bitch out. He didn't, of course. You have to endure certain things; you just do. I think about the scar tissue around the fraternity brothers' brands -- some of them burned clean, but others formed huge keloid scars, obscuring the meaning of the letters, leaving only the evidence of what had happened on a fateful night where they had bonded to something for life.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away.” Elvis Presley

Cocktail Hour
Drinking music suggestion: A Little Less Conversation Elvis

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Friday!

You Should Write A Story

Once an acquaintance told me that he was having sex with Hitler's great grand-niece and couldn't continue because if birth control failed, he'd be responsible for a relation of Hitler being born. I didn't fully believe him (how in the devil had he happened upon Hitler's kin in west Texas?), but I kind of did. If anyone was going to have an intriguing sex life full of love and misery, fraught with crazy decisions, it would be him. My buddy was a terrific writer, one of those people I idolized when I was a baby writer, a tragic star in graduate school (when I was a lowly undergraduate) who kept going in and out of mental hospitals, sort of a Texan version of Richard Brautigan meets Kurt Kobain. He read at a place called Joe's Diner once a month during open mike night, and people would stand in line to see him read in a way that say, they didn't for Schizophrenic Pete who performed his epic masterwork, a poem of couplets called "Taxicab Tom." Here comes Taxicab Tom, vroom vroom, Pete would yell. Joe had the good sense to open with the worst and save the best for last as to help beer sales at the end of the night. Although given the opening line-up, I'm thinking a beer would have been mighty fine under those circumstances.

"What do you think I should do?" my friend asked (I'd upgraded myself to his friend by this point in the conversation given that he was talking to me about his sex life) and looked at me with his big blue eyes, eyes that could give a person a fright. I'd gone from fan to confidant quick and didn't know what to say. I don't put too much stock into bloodlines -- I think people are pretty much assholes (if they go this route) for a variety of reasons, only some of them involving whatever genetic stew they get from their parents. But Hitler, man, that was bad to nearly everyone except the Coors family who didn't mind naming their kids after the fuhrer. Thinking fast, I said, "You should write a story where it happens." That was the last time I saw him given that he overdosed on pills a few months later, fresh out of the latest snake pit. I don't know if he ever wrote the story, but here's a small part of it, for what it's worth.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"The greater the lie, the greater the chance that it will be believed." Adolf Hitler

Cocktail Hour
Drinking nonfictin suggestion: Against Love Laura Kinipis

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Thursday!

Can This Marriage Be Saved?

I bought a book the other day, a veritable bargain at two dollars (hardcover), the premise of which is that Americans are taught to work at love, that this work ethic destroys the very essence of the thing itself, and that marriage is a doomed prison, the opiate of the coupled masses. I'm not going to rant and rave about marriage and prisons (it's too early and too hot to have been drinking -- readers, fear not, the air-conditioner has been restored and I won't be stabbing myself now, a real consideration less than an hour ago when I was yelling to my companions, It's as hot as a chicken box! We're all going to broil like chickens!), but I did find the idea of working at love as anathema to it as thought-provoking. I work at almost everything in life -- nothing comes all that naturally to me except complaining, sitting on my ass, and spending money. I work out, work at teaching, work on my writing, and so on. I work myself into a tizzy and that's before I make it out the door each morning.

The debate about whether one can work at love reminds me of whether or not writing can be taught. I suppose what I would say is this -- confidence can be taught, strategy can be taught. Thank God some things can be learned! But desire can't be taught, not in love and not in writing and not by fricking Dr. Phil or Can This Marriage Be Saved? And desire it tough because although I may desire to write a story, that initial excitement is replaced with a deep horror when I understand how hard it will be to make a reader to understand another world. And I suppose that's the case with love as well. So we build our worlds, such as they are, and we try to make it work. Or not. Some are merely castles by the sea that come down with the first wave or a date at Red Lobster with some truly wretched teenage pranksters at the next table, making fun of your date's outfit. Which is not to your liking, not really, no matter how much you try and let it go and make it work.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"There are two ways to live your life -- one is as though nothing is a miracle, the other is as though everything is a miracle." Albert Einstein

Cocktail Hour
Drinking movie suggestion: Loverboy

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Wednesday!

When The Lights Go Out In Texas

Dear readers -- due to untimely power outage, will post later today.

You Name It

I knew my mother was dying when she told me that she'd read somewhere that one could make a family out of one's friends, that it was the modern thing going and then handed me a book of my baby pictures. My immediate family is small, extended almost non-existent given their collective propensity for early death, and I wasn't married, didn't have any children, so I knew my mother felt she really had to grasp at straws -- -she was always more of a blood person. Didn't really trust outsiders, although she had oodles of close friends herself. My friendships were my primary relationships and a lot of my friends were connected in a large unit that Hank referred to ironically enough as "The Family." He coined this term because someone in the group was always upset with someone else, and he thought perhaps we could get group rates on therapy. Soon enough, he was hosting kung fu night with many of my exes, another peculiar collection of folks that decided that hanging out together and watching people beat the shit out of each other might be fun. I'm guessing it was since I was never ever invited. Such dramatics, such secrecy!

But I digress. I saw many old friends this weekend, thought about all the things we'd been through together, the weddings, divorces, funerals. Thought about how lucky I am to have never valued romantic love over friendship, not really, because what good is dating if you don't have your friends with whom you can tell every excruciating detail? These phone calls resemble the passion that a rabbinical scholar serves for particularly difficult parts of the Torah -- And then he said, I'll see you later. Do you think that means I should call him or wait until he calls me? What do you think later means? This week or next? You get the idea. Only a close dear friend could endure these talks. If this energy could be harnessed, we could all study tort law or learn to macrame. But instead we are friends to others, one of the highest callings ever. Once my friend Angela and I were waiting at the terminal for her plane to board (pre 9/11), and talking about depression and low self-esteem, bad men, you name it, and a man came and sat down in front of us, a very large man with his pants hanging halfway down his substantial rear end. Way beyond plumber's butt, this had gone into a realm all its own, and we started to giggle since he seemed so happy and relaxed. "He does not have self-esteem issues," Angela said. We laughed and laughed and whenever I'm feeling blue, I think of the man with his pants at half-mast, think of us not taking ourselves so seriously anymore and if that's not the gift of true friendship, I don't know what is.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"The best mirror is an old friend." George Herbert

Cocktail Hour
Drinking memoir suggestion: Dog Days Mark Doty

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Birthday to my dearest Angela! I will be posting some birthday pictures of all of us at the Chant show this weekend.

Fine From The Outside

When I lived in Texas, I used to run about three miles a day, even in the stifling crazy heat, used to run by a woman's university (Better dead than coed! read the signs when the state tried to force them to accept men) and an eating disorder clinic, ran past a KFC and my ex-boyfriend's house. I'd always pause when I got to the eating disorder clinic because sometimes they'd do nature therapy (which consisted of them sitting outside and talking about their feelings instead of sitting inside and, umm, talking about their feelings), and I wanted to see how I measured up, if I was skinnier or fatter than the girls who had been sent away for help. A lot of the girls looked really sick, but many of them didn't -- the bulimics seemed fine from the outside, but if you looked at their knuckles, you could see the tell-tale scrape as the finger caught at the teeth before going down the throat. Although the more sophisticated ones used toothbrushes to make themselves vomit to avoid scarring -- the irony being that their stomach acid would eventually rot their teeth. The hardcore anorexics had a hunted, haunted quality about them, purplish skin, emaciated frames; some had small feeding tubes inserted in their stomachs through their belly buttons, the first mouth for us all. For all the days that I ran by the clinic, my temptation to rubberneck never subsided. The treatment was hugely expensive, and I was fascinated by people far gone enough to require it.

I stopped running outside eventually, moved away, got another route. Despite all the propaganda about the joy of running, I never felt it. It remained a dismal way of keeping down my weight, of making sure that I didn't let myself change. Never got that endorphin rush, never felt that my mind was clearer or my ideas better afterward. But I did stop looking at everyone else after a time, did stop caring if I measured up to the fitness standards of the hospitalized. The clinic, as I remember it now, looked generic and lovely. It could have been anything -- a school or church -- from a distance. It could have been a place anyone could afford to go.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"You know, it's not the world that was my oppressor, because what the world does to you, if the world does it to you long enough and effectively enough, you begin to do to yourself." James Baldwin

Cocktail Hour
Drinking music suggestion: That Which Divides Chant

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Monday!

Sick In My Own House

Here's the last part of the story. Thanks for reading!


I don’t have to be at work until ten so I let myself sleep past Josh’s early rise, hearing the muffled sounds of him doing his morning rituals. I do not hear Coley, but when I do wake up feeling odd from the lack of hangover, I spot her car. Josh has chosen to let her sleep, probably so he didn’t have to talk to her. I can’t bear the thought of letting her stay without us, locking the button behind her after she’s pillaged the place looking for whatever she can find that’s private so I make as much noise as I can to make sure she gets the hint.

"Could you be any fucking louder?" Coley asks as I drink my Dr. Pepper. She’s dressed in Josh’s t-shirt and looks a bit worse for the wear, generally my role.

"Need anything?" I ask. "Hey, thanks for taking my spot last night."

Coley’s face drains of color. "What do you mean by that?"

"My parking spot. I had to park on the street right in a big pile of snow."

Coley gets a bottle of water and sets it down. "Josh told me I could park wherever I wanted."


She looks relieved -- what does she suspect happens here when she’s away?

"Touching. Are you planning on joining us for another Christmas of fun with the folks?" Truth is, as much as I don’t like Coley, I wouldn’t mind the distraction her presence would inevitably provide.

"I think I’m going to be sick," Coley says and takes off for the bathroom. She and Josh must have had quite a night. She returns, dressed and looking paler than before, keys in hand.

"Off so soon? Why not stay for a little chat," I say.

"I’d prefer to be sick in my own house," she says. She looks like I feel most of the time so I let her off the hook and watch as she brushes just enough snow off her car to be able to see her way home, a place I’m thankful to already be.

Things don’t change at work very often, which is much of the reason I like it. This could be 1976, or 86, or 96. Women’s troubles by and large don’t change, only the methods of dealing with them do. Today, I have a small break before my first appointment so I check my e-mail which yields nothing from Kevin, but a short one from Mark asking how I am. He does not mention the ecstasy or going out, says all the dull things about being tied up with schoolwork, busy beyond belief. I choose not to reply, deciding his busy ass can wait and I look at what’s before me today. It’s going to be a long one and I think of the weekend looming ahead and how much harder still it will be to have all the time slots in the world not decided by someone else.

I get home, and Josh is sitting by the television, drinking a beer. No sound is on, but he’s not reading anything, either.

"Mom and Dad called," he said. "They are coming for four days -- one day before Christmas Eve, leaving the day after Christmas."

"The day after Christmas cannot come a minute too soon. That’s the real holiday."

Josh sips and looks glum while I feel glad that I’m home and can have a drink since I abstained last night. And the four-day visit isn’t awful. I had expected five or six. But then I remember Josh’s face and begin to understand how long and strained those four days will be, that it might stretch to more because they’ll be so worried and pissed off. Near Halloween when the stores had started to put up the holiday decorations, a woman turned to me and said, There will be no fucking Christmas this year, do you understand me? At the time I nodded, making the assumption that she had cracked under whatever pressures her life had dealt her. Now I think she was a prophet or at least I wish she was.

I empty my bags from last night, trying to figure out who will get what in the final Christmas tally. As for presents, I haven’t had all that much luck, although for years I wore a ring I received for Christmas on my right fourth finger, long before the advertisements about how empowering it was to buy jewelry for yourself, the perfect answer or complement to a traditional wedding ring. My ring was from a man, one I didn’t marry, a fire opal, something that sparkled in the sun like a superhero’s secret power source. Only recently did I learn that fire opals are reputed to be fatal to love. The man that gave me this gift died in his studio amidst all the things he had created. He drank turpentine and waited. He didn’t leave a note, only a chart detailing his daily weight fluctuations. Despite his physical beauty, he had once been fat and had destroyed all pictures of that phase except his driver’s license. I believe he could still feel all that weight that had been shed, like a coat he could never lose, like I still feel the ring, a phantom circle that refuses to be broken.

"Is Coley coming tonight?" I ask. I’m too tired to leave if she is. I’ll just retire to my room and try to read myself to sleep, and failing that, Valium. I will not go out, the temperatures having plummeted today, so cold now that even the snow refuses to fall. I can hear the wind moan against the sides of our duplex and it seems so delicate, like everything could come crashing down at any second.

"No," Josh says. His no conveys more than he thinks -- he sounds resigned and sad, as if he can’t control anything, as if she’s calling the shots which I suppose she is if only because of his refusal to take any action, the most passive form of sabotage there is.

I walk to the kitchen to look for a snack that will serve as my dinner. "Do you want anything?" I know Josh wants another beer, but is loathe to fall into the cliché of a man asking a woman for a beer, even me his sister, to bring him one.

And true to my prediction, he gets up and grabs a beer from the fridge. I try to decide what I want to eat, but nothing seems right. I can hear my mother’s voice saying, Do you think things will change if you keep looking at them? I don’t, but I still look. Across the alley, our neighbors have strung a tiny strand of white Christmas lights in their window.

"Look, Josh," I say, pointing to the lights. "We should put some lights in our window." He doesn’t say anything, just moves into the living room. I stay where I am for a moment longer, enjoying the lights that shine for my pleasure through no effort of my own.



Michelle's Spell of the Day
"Is there no way out of the mind?" Sylvia Plath

Cocktail Hour
Drinking memoir suggestion: Cherry Mary Karr

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Sunday!

Black Shows Everything

Installment two!

When I get home, I put my bag down and crash into the chair adjacent to Josh who is watching the news and reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

"I always think I’m going to like him more than I do," Josh says, motioning to the picture of Hunter S. Thompson on the book jacket.

I shrug and take off my boots, still coated with salt from the streets. Black shows everything.

"Coley’s coming over tonight," Josh says.

So I guess that relationship picked up momentum, which is more than I can say for Mark and me. He has not phoned or e-mailed since the ecstasy debacle and maybe this will be a pre-Christmas dump, which will save me the trouble of having to pick out a gift without having to worry about seeming either too little or too much and perhaps a cheery note -- Thanks so much for fucking me once or twice a week for two months to take my mind off my married ex-boyfriend and his son who I seduced after breaking into his house over Thanksgiving weekend, and here’s the new White Stripes cd for your trouble! Which is not to say that would not make an excellent present for someone. Giving something to a new lover is not the same as say the gift exchange at work where we draw names and have a strict price limit, all of ten dollars which really narrows it down to one of the higher priced items at Dollar General. And thinking about Mark’s increasingly hypothetical present makes me wonder what to get Josh.

"I was thinking that maybe I should go back to school, get an MFA in sculpture or fiction. I could write a masterpiece, like Yellow Leg, the Incontinent Wolf," Josh says.

"Aren’t you going to get dressed for your date?" I ask. Josh has on a pair of sweatpants and a Free Leonard Peltier t-shirt. I can’t imagine that even Josh wants to be that casual.

"You don’t like my looks?" he asks.

This is the closest he’s ever gotten to asking me how bad the grin beneath his mouth looks. Some people assume he’s been in an accident, but the precision nature of the cuts give him away. I do not know what to say, and I think how stupid of me not to have prepared for this moment.

"You always look the same to me," I say. It’s not exactly true, not is it a lie. Before the cuts, Josh had a face that could break your heart. Now it does break your heart.

"I’m staying like I am," Josh says. "Coley and I aren’t going anywhere."
Even as strung out as I feel, I don’t want to stay here now. I put my boots back on and grab my coat.

"There’s some things I forgot," I say to no one, since Josh is back to reading, something he wants to like but can’t.

I drive away, unsure of where I might land. I could do my first round of Christmas shopping since all the malls stay open until ten, or I could go to the Rustic Cabins where Mark works, order a drink and feel out the ground situation even though that would be breaking my promise not to drink tonight if only to prove I can go without it. I should stick to that so I decide to drive by Kevin’s again since it is sort of on the way to the mall. Nothing has come of the afternoon I broke into his house and slept with his son, drank half his scotch. I wonder if Christopher bothered asking his sister about me and I try to imagine his surprise when he realized I was not who purported to be. Did he spend time trying to figure me out or did he count himself lucky to find a half-drunk girl in his father’s bed, a girl who would have sex with him and leave without telling her his name?

When I return from the mall, having bought a few things and a beautiful dress for myself off the Damaged, As Is rack, I see Coley parked in my spot, forcing me onto the street. I take my few bags and fight my way through the big mound of snow and I can feel my feet get colder with each step. I’m home late enough that it appears Josh and Coley have turned in for the night because I hear nothing in the entire house except the loud hum of the refrigerator. Setting my bags on the kitchen table, I peer into the cold empty space before realizing we don’t have anything I want.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"I think the highest and lowest points are the important ones. Anything else is just...in between. I want the freedom to try everything." Jim Morrison

Cocktail Hour
Drinking nonfiction selection: The Merry Recluse Caroline Knapp

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Saturday!

Damaged, As Is

Dear readers, I'm going to post the next installment of Something To Do In Bed for the next few days. Thanks so much for reading!

Damaged, As Is

The ecstasy Mark gives me makes me want to touch everything, a reaction that he predicted and then vomit, which he had not. For years, people had given me downers, the type of drugs that allowed your inner bodyguard to handle the world, a way of not engaging, Buddhism in a small water-soluble dose. Mark and I have been seeing each other for almost two months and while he is comfort, the sex has become routine, all those ways in which we disappoint each other constantly in bed with us. I lean over the toilet and feel everything come right up. Our relationship, such as it is, seems unfortunate.

So there’s the story that probably isn’t going to have a happy ending, although I imagine we’ll keep it going through the holidays, if only to avoid the misery of having to break things off in the midst of all that relentless cheer. Despite all the hassle, I love Christmas, with its corny red and green. The only part I dread is that Josh and I will have to endure our parents for a few days, and I’ll be forced to call upon Roman again for more pills to get me through those predictably long hours and to take the edge off their reactions to Josh’s facial mutilation, his most dramatic action to date. That is their real Christmas present, although I will do what I always do -- a bottle of perfume for my mother (one of those heavy eighties scents she wore when I was a child) and a gift certificate to Borders for my father. I will tell him -- this way, you can get what you want. Now that he is an old man, it doesn’t sound quite as ominous when he says, getting exactly what you want, now that’s the best kind of present a father could ask for.

Josh comes home from work before I do, the day at Planned Parenthood stretching well into the evening, even though we stopped letting people sign the list at four. Two people quit this week, most importantly, Rebea, an aspiring voodoo priestess who has saved up enough money to move to New Orleans to become an official religious, the training taking almost an entire a year. On her last day, Rebea came to work dressed in a blindingly white cotton dress and white turban, an outfit way too thin for the bitter Detroit cold. She smoked cigars at her going away party, a half-hour affair tucked in between lunch and our weekly staff meeting. We drank Vernors out of paper cups that someone had decorated with a magic marker and a cake from Farmer Jack’s with thick white frosting that said, "We’ll Miss You, Rebae," the last two letters transposed, proving that even in fifteen years, nobody has to learn to spell your name right.

People toasted her with our thin cups and Rebea said, To Oshun, may she guide me on my journey. Nobody knew who the fuck Oshun was except me because they sell candles for receiving her favor at Knight Light. Oshun is the voodoo goddess of love and her color is bright yellow. Rebea lit another cigar and even though we aren’t supposed to smoke in the break room anymore, nobody said anything. Rebea has worked here as a nurse for almost fifteen years, the one who gets called in the room when the doctor was examining someone because there always has to be a witness to make sure nothing untoward happens. My mother was a nurse for thirty years, and I’m sure she had to do the same thing many times. Too bad she never thought to bring her work home.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"I am against nature. I don't dig nature at all. I think nature is very unnatural. I think the truly natural things are dreams, which nature can't touch with decay." Bob Dylan

Cocktail Hour
Drinking music selection: Tomorrow's Sounds Today Dwight Yoakam

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Friday!

The Darkness Before The Dawn Thing

I went to a yoga class at the behest of a friend who works at the said studio as a massage therapist. Dressed in the same leggings I have been wearing for the last fifteen years (as much as I love clothes, I refuse to spend money on work-out clothes because I hate working out and don't care how I look when doing so) and a Made In Detroit t-shirt, all black. The class involved a lot of props which is not how my regular yoga teacher rolls. The teacher had it in for me immediately, calling me a "real life yogi" (are you fucking kidding me? I'm flexible which is a far cry from competent) and started in on my posture. "You're compromising the pose," was her mantra for me, and I wanted to say like children of divorced parents often do to their parents' significant others -- You're not my real yoga teacher! My friend, totally uninterested and non-athletic (she's one of those evil people who can eat everything, gain no weight, and has no interest in working out) barely moved her legs, to which the instructor said, Beautiful, beautiful! The class moved at the pace of the ceiling fan which lazed around at the slowest speed (for the record, it was the coolest ceiling fan I ever saw -- two old-fashioned fans attached to either side of the blades), and the teacher came up to me at the end and said, Bet you never had a yoga class quite like this one before. True enough. We had to take affirmations from a bowl at the end, and I ended up with one from Richard Nixon -- We could "share" our affirmations so I did because even though it came from old Tricky Dick, I liked it. "Only if you have been in the deepest valley can you know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain." Another woman who had been through several cancer surgeries shared a poem from Basho about his house burning down enabling him to see the moon. I told her that he wrote it after his child died, from a place of deep despair which pleased her if not the "yogi" in charge. Then a gong sounded, class ended, and I was shocked to find that I had not even broken a small sweat.

So I thought about the darkness before the dawn thing (I'd accidentally taken five affirmations, all stuck together and that seemed to be the motif of all of them), my central theme in some ways and despite the gong, the picking, and the strangeness of the new setting, I felt at ease. Years ago, I would have felt awful in such a place, awkward and strange, not liked, insecure. Now I couldn't stop smiling which is such a creepy sensation for me that I cannot say. But I had my affirmations, all five of them, had gone through a strange treatment called an ion cleanse, which consists of putting your feet in a tub of water and having the toxins sucked out. I'm all for toxins going bye-bye considering how many I put into my body on any given day. I looked at yoga clothes that I would never wear and never buy, thought them beautiful. Smiled again at everyone, not in that you will love me kind of way, but in that you already do and it's okay if you don't. Not quite a miracle, but maybe it is.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that." Martin Luther King, Jr.

Cocktail Hour
Drinking memoir suggestion: The Mistress's Daughter A.M. Homes

Benedictions and Maledictions
My dear friend Bradley of Chant fame (see sidebar for his wonderful website) is playing at Andy's Bar in Denton, Texas for his cd release party this Friday. Check him out if you're in the area! His show is like no other!

Call And Response

I resist change, improvement, growth, or grace of any kind. It makes me nervous, upset, fucks with my sense of self, my tenous grasp on reality such as it is, and threatens to unmoor me. The way I scare myself is writing and as ways of scaring one's self, it's pretty slow going. You'll never catch me jumping out of a plane, riding on a little boat on the Amazon, or handling a snake. The animals on the Amazon, someone says, butterflies as big as birds. Do I need this?! I can barely endure the evil squirrels that assault me as I make my way to my office. I think of some of the places I have been most myself -- my office at home, classrooms where I'm the student, used bookstores, churches, clothes stores. Make no mistake -- transformations happen in these places. But the spirit resists what it does not know. Humiliation, for instance. Although I am intimately acquainted with this one. Anxiety as well. Outright panic. Sure. Love among the ruins. Most definitely. So I guess I have been changed, even in Half-Price Books.

As a child, I saw gold trees everywhere. They were popular in the eighties, those teeny-tiny trees with gold-plated leaves that tarnished in time. But when they were in their prime, boy did they sparkle! That's what I remember anyway.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"There's a mystery to writing, and you don't really know where most of it comes from." Neil Diamond

Cocktail Hour
Drinking art book selection: Black Panther: The Revolutionary Art of Emory Douglas by Danny Glover, Kathleen Cleaver, and Amiri Baraka

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Wednesday!

Whatever Nirvana You Desire

Upon occasion when my friends fall into the foul clutches of depression, malaise, and existential despair, they turn to the self-help dude with the big head (I'm talking physically) Tony Robbins. His jumping around terrifies me, as does his can-do attitude. Many have turned to the pharmaceutical cure -- the first person I knew on Prozac used to dress all in black and do performance pieces where she'd crucify herself while Depeche Mode played in the background (okay, "Hungry Like The Wolf" wasn't fabulous, but to crucify yourself? You should save that for Wham!). For me, depression means an excuse to listen to Dolly Parton, write self-indulgent poetry (I hate you/ you not-talking man person/ Do not publish any more thinly/ veiled autobiographical poetry/ about me anymore, you jerk . . . well, that sort of thing), and read drink recipe books with the passion usually reserved for studying for the LSAT. Shake, stir, don't bruise the vodka . . . I love this sort of thing. If that doesn't work, then I listen to Lou Reed for hours on end. If "Venus In Furs" doesn't cheer me up, nothing will.

It would be nice if life were like a movie, where at your lowest point someone came along to change everything, to make your black and white into technicolor (and no, dating Ted Turner does not count on this score). I'm thinking about all the plots where a simpleton, preferably someone mentally-challenged (someone dying will work in a pinch or a holy fool of sorts) comes along to teach the main character a valuable life lesson or at the very least a zippy new skill so that you can get the girl, the job, whatever nirvana you desire. You don't have to crucify yourself in a poorly-made, ill lit video. Although that might make a good movie as well if there was ever any progress. But real life generally doesn't work that way, no plot, no arc. You just make it up as you go along and hope you meet who you need, no matter if they have something to teach you or not.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself." Miles Davis


Cocktail Hour
Drinking nonfiction selection: Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Yourself Courtney Martin

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Tuesday!

The Largest Honky Tonk In The World

I went to Billy Bob's recently, billed as "the largest honky tonk in the world." I remember it being a huge-ass deal when I was a little girl, and my parents and their friends would get dressed up and go, someone almost always drunk enough by the middle of the night to ride the mechanical bull. I could think of nothing more stupid given up that I had been raised with the tragedy of listening to country music and Buffy Saint Marie. Could hardly stand it when the media took to its urban cowboy phase. And don't even get me started on line dancing to incredibly banal songs like "Achy Breaky Heart." I longed for disco, Tony Manero's Manhattan, to be Marlo Thomas and if that couldn't happen, well, Germaine Greer would work. I could not see the beauty and tragedy of Texas even if I had obtained a lot of its obnoxious attitude, the old Fuck You, I'm From Texas t-shirt attitude, the we were are own country once, that independent spirit that made it possible to go to high school with boys who wore ten-gallon cowboy hats and Wranglers along with boys who wore plaid skirts and safety pins, like something out of a Sex Pistols video. These groups did not mingle, but they did coexist peacefully enough. Texas is a big state, lots of room. That's one thing it has going for it.

It's rare that you love something when you're in it. When I returned to Billy Bob's, it was in the middle of the day, a time when the action is light and there's almost nobody but tourists. You pay a dollar and roam around the big empty space with the great gift shop. There's a ton of posters of people who performed here -- I admit to touching Willie Nelson's picture for good luck. I admitted to myself that I thought it was pretty cool. I could see my parents in their younger incarnations here, dancing and cutting up. Some of the same people still play there until this day. When I stepped out into the bright Texas sun, I smiled. I'm not really that Texan granted. But the sky there looks like nowhere else. It's pretty relentless, the sun is a real pain in the ass. So maybe I'm a little Texan after all.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his own image. " Joan Didion

Cocktail Hour
Drinking music suggestion: Honky Tonk Girl Loretta Lynn

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Monday!

They Call Me Mr. Tibbs

Once at an Allman Brothers concert, Greg Allman kept saying "Thank you, good night!" and would proceed to play another guitar solo. This, of course, makes for the ultimate Allman Brothers experience except that Hank and I were exhausted and kept wanting the wrap-up to be a real one. But it was as real as a Baptist preacher ending his sermon (Old joke -- what are the sweetest words to a Baptist? In conclusion . . . ), and we went home saying Thank you, good night! over and over, laughing about it. The phrase became the code for it's time to go, something we could use in crowds when it was time to wrap it up. Still use it when necessary although the actual night is forgotten by everyone but me. But that's how language is -- it morphs way past its origin into something else, the most living and versatile thing there is. I think about how much I speak in code, much of it derived from The Sopranos -- ie, Pine Barrens (for a situation in which one bad idea leads to another leads to a huge mess where communication is impossible) or FICA (how Tony was busted about his Russian mistress by a jealous employee who fights with her over a tiny bit of money -- one small stupid detail that reveals your deception), or this from Carver's story "Gazebo" -- "They can do their dirt at the Travelodge." (meaning a situation where your personal life has taken such a bad turn that you can't do your job and people will have to go elsewhere for help).

My favorite two terms, though, come from the military. I often speak of snafus (situation normal all fucked up) and fubars (situation fucked up beyond all recognition). I find myself in both all the time, as do we all. Or maybe there's people who never do -- I don't know them, of course. Sometimes I wish I did, but I suspect they would, how to say this delicately, annoy the fucking shit out of me. Love depends on speaking the same language. I recently had a dream where I was watching Sidney Poitier play Virgil Tibbs where he yells, "They call me Mr. Tibbs." I'm going to adopt this into my lexicon, a way of demanding a respect of sorts and also calling upon an entire mythology that will keep me away from people too young to remember important things, things like In The Heat Of The Night. If they don't, they can do their dirt at the Travelodge. Because God knows, I'm probably busy in the Pine Barrens, worrying about someone reporting some FICA-like detail that will bust my ass before I can whisper into the ears of my companions, Thank you, good night.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"Silence is just so accurate." Mark Rothko

Cocktail Hour

Drinking music suggestion: Ghost In The Machine The Police

Benedictions and Maledictions

Happy Sunday!