A Certain Disenchantment Sets In

My parents weren't much for sex education -- the only information I received was from an outdated set of medical encyclopedias that had been passed down from God only knows where that spoke of contraception as "tawdry, tacky, and potentially harmful." The sex talk of my teenage years was as follows -- Do you know what sex is?, my mother asked. Yes, I said. Okay then, my mother replied. I didn't mention that I'd already had a relationship of sorts with my high school English teacher, who was too depressed to be any great shakes in bed, but had taught me a lot about Frey tag's triangle for help with my fiction writing. You take your pleasures where you can! For my mother, a certain disenchantment had already set in regarding the life of the body. Her only other sex advice was simply that on your wedding night, you should procure a sleeping pill so that you can be fast asleep right after it's over so that you don't have to dwell on unpleasantness. Alas, it's the modern day equivalent of lying back and thinking of England.

There's a new book out that suggests that women prefer chocolate to sex and that women in our society are forced to fake a huge sex drive because that's what is expected of us, not because we really have desire for it. I haven't read this book and nor has anyone I know, yet a lot of my friends have read the reviews. The very suggestion seems to get a fair deal of attention from the menfolk I know -- fear that all the women they've, umm, known over the years have been disingenuous in that most freighted of sanctuaries, the bedroom. Even though I put this book in the category of other such brilliant tomes as The Rules: Time Tested Secrets for Capturing Mr. Right, I admit to taking a certain pleasure in seeing men squirm. So much of the bullshit we're fed is directed at women becoming old maids, not doing enough for men, for ruining their fertility, their lives, and their children's lives because of their selfishness, laxity, and moral turpitude. Men don't get their panties in a bunch over these books, I might add. But this new one upsets them. What if the hopped up women in the Frederick's of Hollywood get-up would really cuddle up with a box of Godiva chocolates and watch You've Got Mail? The last time I was on a plane, the man next to me spoke of his marriage being happy until the conversation turned to the nuns in the front of the plane. Married women would make good nuns, he said. They never want to have sex. This was well before the chocolate book. That's why I go out with the boys and bitch. It's easier than trying to get my wife to sleep with me. If I'd known about the secret of the chocolate book, I could have given him some advice about what to take with him to his betrothed. I don't think this is what anyone means by having it all, but hey, you take what you can get.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"When I got out, I look like Joan Crawford, the movie star. If people want to see the girl next door, they should go next door." Joan Crawford

Cocktail Hour

Drinking music suggestion: Too Bad Jim R.L. Burnside

Benedictions and Maledictions

Three more days until The Sopranos airs!

Happy Holy Thursday!

This Is What A Feminist Looks Like

One of the many ironies of my rape at the hands of for umm, lack of a better term, total douchebag, was that he was a self-proclaimed feminist, a man who would be honored to be compared to Phil Donahue. My dad, one of the most mild-mannered individuals to walk the earth, HATED Phil Donahue (my dad hated almost no one) and would shake his fist when he came on television and had a theory that he'd cast an evil spell over Marlo Thomas to get her to marry him. She's so adorable, he'd say. How could she fall for him?! I'd laugh -- Phil had done me no harm and while he could be self-serious and a tad condescending, he wasn't Satan and or the aforementioned douchebag. My rapist had a penchant for mind games -- to a sixteen year old girl, this was the heighth of excitement and home sweet home given that my home was a place where mind games were as exotic as macaroni and cheese. Even so, I was way out of my league with the new evil dude, the way a community theater actor would feel about being plunked down on Broadway without warning.

Even though I could do the song and dance, think Bob Fosse in All That Jazz, preparing for his day -- a handful of dexies, a few drops of Visine, and that crazy-ass smile -- It's showtime!, I didn't understand what would happen to me if I stayed. And what did happen to me when it was clear that I was eyeing the door. My first instinct when I met him was that he was an abusive asshole. Shock, surprise, I was right from the get-go. From the dredges of memory, I can vaguely recall a NOW rally we attended together. This was the late eighties and feminism was as fashionable as wearing lederhosen. Still, I supported the cause then as I always have. And so, it seemed, did the guy who would eventually rape me. I hadn't learned that Ted Bundy had worked at a rape crisis center, didn't understand the depths of duplicity and hatred that raged all around me. I don't remember much about the day except the presents I received from the Wicked One -- two pins, one that said This Is What A Feminist Looks Like and the other that said, Women Can Beat Men At Anything. Of course, these were sitting next to a display of pins about domestic violence and sexual assault. It would only be the beginning of a lifetime of mixed messages, ones I'd have to decipher for myself, although I have to say that I've never worn those pins or any others; I don't like the marks they leave in your clothes and how they can prick you when you least expect it.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"It's hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head." Sally Kempton

Cocktail Hour

Drinking essay collection suggestion: Grace (Eventually) Anne Lammot

Benedictions and Maledictions

Four more days until The Sopranos airs!

This Phone Is Tapped

At the social work center where I spent my days for a couple of years, I worked at a desk in the midst of controlled chaos, people coming and going. It wasn't just my desk -- other people used it too. One of my co-workers had taped up a frayed xerox copy of "A Letter To You From Satan," a poor man's Screwtape Letters for office culture. Satan Live From Detroit, Michigan, folks! It cracked me up, but I never said so since I wasn't entirely sure who had decided to hang it and didn't want to offend any of my friends. The worst note was from my passive-aggressive psycho of a boss which said, Personal Calls Are Strongly Discouraged. My boss had the bearings of a Nazi dressed like an elementary school teacher with a touch of Martha Stewart crazy thrown in for good measure. I'd catch her at the end of the day in full schoolmarm gear, riding the lone stationary bike we had in the rec room for the mentally disabled while smoking a cigarette. She looked far more mentally disabled than any of our clients (Remember professional language -- another note. Alas, nobody was a patient anymore!), riding alone in the gathering dark, puffing on her cigarette while exercising fully dressed in primary colors.

Like most places, there was a hierarchy in the office. Personal calls were only discouraged when they involved the poorest people who worked as aides for the dementia clinic. The bosses were free to talk to their real estate agents and nannies, free to tie up the phone line with the business of their days. I could call out if I was discrete about it as could my fellow office workers. But the aides got the shaft -- they'd have to beg to use the phone and pretend it was urgent, which it almost always was since nobody wanted to face the wrath of the Lone Bicycle Rider. Sometimes I'd watch her when she didn't know anyone was around. She could ride for a long time before I stepped out of the shadows and let her know she wasn't alone.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"There is, as any sane man can see, no real satisfaction at suceeding at something you loathe." Jerry Stahl

Cocktail Hour

Drinking music suggestion: Dirt Track Date Southern Culture on the Skids

Benedictions and Maledictions

Five more days until The Sopranos airs!

Nobody Has Been Here For A Hundred Years

The trailer to one of my favorite movies, Blood Simple, quotes Alfred Hitchcock -- "Killing someone is very, very hard and very, very painful." This movie contains the kind of morbid humor that I love, the first of the Coen brothers' oeuvre that would eventually include The Big Lebowski and Fargo. Blood Simple is a perfect writing exercise in that everybody looks at the same body of evidence and comes up with different conclusions that cause all sorts of mayhem. The real story is only known by one character, a slow-talking, wickedly funny Texan hitman who claims that if you cut off his head, I can still crawl around without it.

I suppose we an all get by without something before being left for dead. I was talking to a relative stranger the other day about one of my least favorite subjects, nature, and trying to be neutral, bordering on pleasant, lest I be looked at as a head case. "You can go to a piece of land and imagine that nobody has been here for a hundred years," he said. "That's amazing." Of course, my mind went to the brutal west Texas landscape and thought, "You can go places like that in Texas too and understand immediately why nobody has been there in a hundred years." It's Blood Simple land, the place we all come to at times, where you can't trust anybody, where desperation and loneliness penetrate your very pores. You don't need to come to a state as big as a country for the experience. After all, as our hitman says at the beginning of the movie, Down here, you're on your own. If you're lucky, someone else will dig your own grave, but it's just as likely that you'll do it yourself.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"When belief is painful, we are slow to believe." Ovid

Cocktail Hour

Drinking music suggestion: Midnight Love Marvin Gaye

Benedictions and Maledictions

Thanks to all my readers for the kind wishes for my one year blog anniversary on Saturday -- I'm going to have to think about the questions for the next year and get back to everyone when I come up with an answer.

Happy Monday and Happy Birthday to Marvin Gaye!

Six more days until The Sopranos airs!

Your Hand Cannot Shake

I started my reading life leaning almost exclusively toward nonfiction, from Cotton Mather to Linda Goodman's Love Signs. I didn't like novels or stories if they weren't true, probably because at a very early age, I created fictions to explain how I felt or what I wanted in a way that would make people feel less nervous, to keep things on an even keel. It surprises me not at all that I grew up to love fiction and had almost no ability for nonfiction until I hit my thirties. It wasn't that the material differed from my life -- much of it was taken whole cloth. But when I wrote it as it happened, it flattened and died, whereas fiction made it come, if not alive, at least a little more animated. As a lover of memoir, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to utilize the form. What was the essential difference between the two genres? I finally came to the conclusion that when you write nonfiction, you must be sure of your voice. Your hand cannot shake. You guide the reader through territory in a way that can't be melodramatic or sentimental. In doing so, ironically you become a character, someone that the reader looks to for explanation. A story makes no such demands.

One of my favorite essayists, Cheryl Strayed, who has written both has the following to say about the work. "I love the freedom to write both fiction and nonfiction. In each I draw from the other: in my fiction I mine the actual events of my life—often changing them entirely by the time the piece is finished—and in my essays I utilize the writing craft of a fiction writer, paying close attention to character and dialogue and setting to structure the piece so that I'm not just relating an interesting story, but rather crafting a work of art that has meaning beyond the personal or confessional." This makes complete sense to me. My life didn't seem to have an arc, as Christopher complains to Paulie on The Sopranos. I would explain one thing to someone one way, the same thing to someone else in another way. It was all true, but the truth isn't as cut and dried as we might believe. It's often much worse than we'd like to say so we tell stories to help our readers understand that in fact, everything will come to an end. It may not be a happy ending, but it's an ending all the same, and sometimes that's the best one can hope for.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted." Percy Shelley, A Defence of Poetry

Cocktail Hour

Drinking music suggestion: Young Americans David Bowie

Benedictions and Maledictions

Happy Palm Sunday!

Seven more days until The Sopranos airs!

Breakfast With Mark Rothko

Over my desk, I have a silver bulletin board full of pictures and postcards. The objects on the board, by and large, do not change. They were chosen as inspirations of sorts -- they include a tarot card, representing The Tower as Janis Joplin, postcards of Bonnie and Clyde, Ice-T, a memento from the Texas Rangers Museum that says, Live Free or Die, a picture of my friend Hank playing with an plastic orange skeleton, a photograph of the grave of Marie Leveau, and a host of other objects. For an entire year, I've written one blog entry a day and each day I look at a postcard of the painter Mark Rothko staring at a blank canvas, preparing to work. Some days this image pleases me; other days I find it terrifying. What could be more wonderful than to begin a new work? And what is approached with more fear and loathing? So I have sat in front of my computer and some days it's like breathing and other days is like running uphill with lead weights.

I cannot tell you what the optimum conditions for writing are -- the process is as mysterious to me as physics or balancing my checkbook. But it gives me a reason for getting up in the morning and that's a start. And sometimes I even dream about having breakfast at a diner with Mark Rothko; he's not depressed or suicidal. He's talking about his next great work and offers to pick up the check, but he never does.

Michelle's Spell of Day

"Live with the gods." Marcus Aerelius, Meditations

Cocktail Hour

Drinking music suggestion: Lovesick, Broke, and Driftin Hank Williams III

Benedictions and Maledictions

Eight days until The Sopranos airs!

Have Lots of Buckets Ready

Years ago, I read a book called Pigs in the Parlor by Frank Hammond and Ida Mae Hammond about demonic possession and what to do about it. Now this is the kind of thing I love in a self-help book. No life-coaching, bringing money to you with your thoughts, no manage your time, change your life, win friends, make yourself influential crap that only succeeds in making you feel bad. Pigs in the Parlor offers a glimpse into the deliverance movement which varies slightly from traditional exorcisms. Exorcisms are pretty extreme and are done under only the most dramatic of cases -- bloody writing appearing on someone's stomach, victims speaking in foreign tongues they've never studied, creepy shit of that nature. Deliverance is a Protestant idea (not a mainstream one) that derives from the sense that almost all sin is a sign of demonic manifestation. Have trouble not sleeping with everyone in sight? Demons. Eating too much? Demon trouble again! Not living your testimony? Blame a demon!

The authors' solution to these various manifestations of evil are to lay hands on the hapless Christian who has been inhabited and vomit out the offending demon into a bucket that has been thoughtfully provided for that purpose. Have lots of buckets ready, intone the Hammonds. You'll need them. I can understand the vomit -- if certain people laid hands on me, that would be my first reaction. And what a fantastic idea for your inner-bulimic! Okay, so I jest. I'll probably go back to reading the occasional tome about directing my energy in a positive way to bring about change and love. Although that's almost enough to make me vomit. So I guess the buckets are a good way to deal with things after all.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"I always wanted to be a gangster." Ray Liotta, Goodfellas

Cocktail Hour

Drinking movie suggestion: Goodfellas

Benedictions and Maledictions

Happy Friday!

Nine days until The Sopranos airs!

Mental Illness, Substance Abuse, TV Dinners

According to prominent sociologist Ken Kessler, living alone is dangerous. "It's the biggest predictor of early death and a risk factor for mental illness, substance abuse, TV dinners, and all kinds of bad stuff." I think this is, to put it mildly, a crock of shit. Bad enough that single people endure the endless sets of questions at family reunions and dinner parties -- So is there anybody special out there for you? Have you met someone yet? Yes, I have met lots of people in the course of my day as I am not a hermit. Now the soft science professionals weigh in with yet another dreary opinion about life expectancy, confirming the stereotypes of single women with only cats for companions as they grow stranger and stranger or men so emotionally stunted that they're prone to die alone, being abused or neglected by a hired companion as they drift into death's oblivion.

It goes without saying that marriage can be lovely, the sweet consumation of an overwhelming passion. I myself have always admired the Liz Taylor/Richard Burton model where they married and divorced twice, so crazy in love they were. One of my ex-boyfriend's had a tremendous admiration for the Ike and Tina Turner model. Do you think, he would ask rhetorically, that Tina was easy to live with? Never having lived with Ms. Turner, I cannot say. But I did know a little something about living with my ex. He didn't have Dick Burton's drinking habit or Ike Turner's propensity for violence, but it was, as one of my friends is fond of saying, slightly lower than Heaven. What can I say? I like a good TV dinner, Healthy Choice being my favorite brand.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"I told them that strange things happen," the Pistons' coach, Flip Saunders said. "We might as well try to get something crazy." (Flip said this right before Rasheed Wallace made a sixty-foot shot at the last second of the game and beat Denver in overtime! Go Pistons!)

Cocktail Hour

Drinking sociology book suggestion: Bachelor Girl by Betsy Israel

Benedictions and Maledictions

Ten days until The Sopranos airs!

Three Arms And A Lot of Blood

I almost never read the newspaper, but I did today and saw a story about two men who tried to kill themselves with a circular saw by cutting their arms off. No surprise, but the plan went off without a hitch until they realized that the fourth arm would be a bit of a stretch. They left a note with their apartment manager saying they were committing suicide because their business had failed, and they'd recently been diagnosed as HIV positive. The apartment manager called the police who found three arms on the floor and a whole lot of blood. Both lived to tell the tale, should they wish. The article suggested that the men might be having a mid-life crisis of sorts.

That's one way to put it, I suppose! I remember as a child that term was thrown around a lot as a joke, usually involving men dating much younger women, the cliched sports car as an antidote to the sure knowledge that we all die. I guess driving or sleeping with someone who wasn't born when you were in high school to induce a temporary oblivion is one remedy, certainly much less drastic than cutting off your arms. The worst insult these men would get for their actions of leaving their wives, wearing a few gold chains, or God forbid, a gold nugget ring shaped like the state of Texas was pathetic. That word seems like nothing compared to the reality of cutting off the third arm and realizing their was nothing more you could do except wait to die or be rescued and who can tell which would be worse.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"By daily dying I have come to be." Theodore Roethke

Cocktail Hour

Drinking novel suggestion: Torch by Cheryl Strayed

Benedictions and Maledictions

Happy Wednesday!

Eleven more days until The Sopranos airs!

The Way Of All Flesh

When asked how many husbands she'd had, art collector Peggy Guggenheim replied, My own or other people's? I once had a friend who juggled a husband, two kids, and an affair with a co-worker for seven years. She didn't, as they say, seem the type. Her hair was cut into an extremely practical wash and go style, and she never wore anything more revealing than a polo shirt with the top button undone. No Peggy Guggenheim, she did not revel in her infidelity, but it came to define her all the same. In time, her husband and her boyfriend went the way of all flesh. The affair, she told me, became as tiresome. If you want to lose weight, she said, the first year is great -- you feel like you're alive again and every day is a miracle. The rest after that is as tedious as a PBS pledge drive and as exhausting as working two jobs.

Questioned about his ability to keep his marriage together in Hollywood despite all the temptations, Samuel L. Jackson revealed the following -- I think about all the shit I have and divide it by half. That'll keep your ass straight. I have been a victim of infidelity a few times; it wasn't as apocalyptic as I'd imagined. I didn't start calling friends or loading guns. My guns are always loaded. But I know how these things end so I kept my cool. You don't, as they say, shoot a man who is already hanging himself.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"That's what an audience had to see to be fully engaged -- the threatened destruction of a human being and the rebirth of this person." Sidney Poitier

Cocktail Hour

Drinking novel suggestion: Painted Desert by Rick Barthelme

Benedictions and Maledictions

Happy Tuesday!

12 more days until The Sopranos airs!

Half-Measures Avail Us Nothing

One of Ted Haggard's first ministries in Colorado where he pastored (note the past tense) the largest evangelical church in the United States, was to go to gay bars and encourage men to come to church so he could "heal" and "convert" them. As Kierkegaard says, life can only be understood backwards, but has to be lived forwards. As a recently outed gay man himself, Pastor Ted as he was referred to by his flock, in retrospect, seems a little too suited for this role. Ted Haggard is many things -- duplicitious, hypocritical, brilliant, politic, wicked smart, a husband, a father of five, a user of meth, a man who hired a male prostitute. He is a little bit Icarus and has been brought down by his own hubris and recently the elders of his church that have given the word that he is not to go back into the ministry and instead have sent him to New Orleans, a city without an ounce of temptation, to study to become a therapist, my least favorite profession in this world. Ever hear of David and Bathsheba? What Ted has done is no different, I suppose, and now he's out on his ass. In addition to telling Pastor Ted that he could no longer preach, they claim to have cured him of his homosexuality in a mere three weeks! He is 100% heterosexual now thanks to the kindly ministrations of these men.

In the documentary, The Eyes of Tammy Faye, Pat Boone says, "Christians are the only army that kills their wounded." Truer words were never spoken. This excellent film tells the story of the rise and fall of one of the most influential Christian couples ever. I adore Tammy Faye for her beautiful spirit and her son Jay, a radical preacher who is as cool as cool gets. When my spirit flags (read all the time), I listen to his sermons in my home office on the internet, the place where I spend a large portion of my days. Jay has preached about Ted, has said that we are to love him. His own father got kicked out of the ministry for alleged indiscretions, personal and financial, and Jay and his family suffered greatly. Jay has a ragass crew of thirty people; his father preached to millions. But Jay has my heart, I'd forgive him anything. Pastor Ted is a tougher case; he's been a real asshole. But if we forgive only the people we love, we're no better than the tax collectors, right? So I'm trying. There's a lot of hate in my heart; people have done me wrong. But I've seen The Eyes of Tammy Faye, and she's had to forgive a lot of jerks. She's sick right now, very sick, but she's still doing her make-up, she's still trying to make peace with this world, with those who have wished her harm. Half measures avail us nothing, so I will try, I will try, I will do my best.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"Despair is simply a harsh blindfold pulled over the eyes of hope." Steve Turner

Cocktail Hour

Drinking documentary suggestion: The Eyes of Tammy Faye

Benedictions and Maledictions

Happy Monday, dear readers! Thank you for reading for so long -- I'm coming up on the one year mark on Saturday. You have kept me going with your love and support. I'm eternally indebted to y'all. (That's my Texas coming out, but don't forget, I'm really a Detroiter!)

13 days until The Sopranos airs!

Because I'm Good At It

When asked why she wrote, Flannery O'Connor famously answered, Because I'm good at it. I love the boldness of this answer -- no apologies, no self-deprecating bullshit. It ain't bragging, as one of my friends says, if you can do it. And she could. Seldom do I pick up a story of hers without seeing something new and brilliant. A comic genius, there's something totally awful, funny, and modern about a man who steals body parts for no reason -- I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die . . . Of course, her world view would have to take a dark comic edge -- the bleakness of her physical condition (a body ravaged by lupus) and the knowledge she would die young made her one tough customer. It allowed her to write one of my favorite stories, "Parker's Back" about a man who gets a tattoo of Jesus on his entire back to please his wife who is horrified by the representation that he will carry around for the rest of his days. How can one laugh about lines that allude to not trusting artists, about how they are always wanting to get into your business and whatnot. Not that I'm guilty of this, of course!

The biggest sin in O'Connor's world is pride. People are brought low by the distance of what they believe about themselves and what is proven under pressure to be true. Her refusal of any kind of middle ground, her characters drawn from the depths of despair, poverty, and pettiness, an attachment to a violent outcome -- these were her trademarks. A practicing Catholic in the mostly Protestant south, she once remarked on the act of transubstantiation possibly being symbolic, If it isn't the body and blood of Christ, then to hell with it. Her fiction is as real as it gets, a world of broken people struggling for redemption or against it. No middle ground. I can imagine her at her desk with her farm of peacocks making their horrible noises as she wrote. Some people think they are manifestations of God, while others think it's bad luck to bring one of their feathers in the house. For her, they were both and I'm guessing that she could not separate their beauty from the pain.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"God and the Devil were very far away. I used to pray, but now I seldom do. Still, I knelt at the open window, looking and wondering." Jean Rhys

Cocktail Hour

Drinking short story suggestion: "Feathers" Raymond Carver

Benedictions and Maledictions

Happy Sunday! And happy birthday to Ms. Flannery O'Conner!

14 days until The Sopranos airs!

Masks To Make You Real

Yesterday I walked into the past and took a look around, saw everything I remembered from masks to costumes to props, things people use to expose their true selves. I hadn't been in this store for at least fifteen years, but I saw it from the road and decided that I had to go inside. Four times the size of the one I remembered, it had changed locations, but not mood. It was creepy as all get-out then, creepy as all get-out now. My sister and I perused the various rooms. You could be anything, someone sexy or scary, depending on your needs or someone else's. Why, as a friend once wrote to me, limit yourself to one identity?

As for the store in the past, I loved going in there as a child every Halloween with my friend Melissa and her mother. Her mother bought us something we wanted each Halloween, and we'd spend hours deciding what that thing would be. My favorite was a mask of a hanged man -- we saw it one year, decided it was too scary, and then came back the next year, ready to get it. The mask looked so real that it still scares me to think of it. If you put it on, you'd looked as if you hanged yourself, right down to the realistic noose and rope burns. Melissa and I both wore it from time to time and agreed that it was hard to not feel the rope around your neck for a long time after removing it.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"Myths have staying power." Ray Bradbury

Cocktail Hour

Drinking novel suggestion: Mysterious Skin Scott Heim

Benedictions and Maledictions

Happy Saturday!

Fifteen days until The Sopranos airs!

I Fell Down The Stairs

I love the Raymond Carver poem where he describes getting drunk for the first time with a girl who spit on him. In the words of the great St. Ray, "I kept getting drunk and getting spit on for years." The first time I got so drunk that the floor spun was in college with my one and only roommate, Sarah. At the time, she was engaged to a rich Arab guy whose main contribution to their relationship consisted of teaching her how to swear in Arabic. We'd gone over to his apartment obstensibly to make a cake for his birthday, but instead ended up getting ass-out drunk on some cheap jug wine and peppermint schnapps while listening to old Bob Dylan on the boombox, the height of technology at the time. We drank from noon until five when she was supposed to pick him up from work. I did what all drunk dumbasses do which is pick up the phone and start to call friends who couldn't believe a control freak like me had whittled away a Friday afternoon under the influence of cheap liquor and bad politically-incorrect pizza as we had ordered a special from Dominos which I mangled -- the cheese will sober me up! and raided his freezer for popsicles.

Told my friends I was fine to drive back to the dorms, in fact, perfect, before collapsing underneath the staircase in a pile of laundry. Sarah tried to find her beloved's car keys. Bob sang on about being in his dream if he could be in ours. We finally pulled it together enough to make it out the door, no cake, no balloons, nothing. Sarah got a little hysterical -- her betrothed was not above beating the shit out of her if things weren't going well. Things are fine, I said. Things, of course, were not fine. Were in fact a fucking trainwreck. I can drive home, I told my friends. That popsicle sobered me up all right! Nothing bad happened, though. Sarah managed to pick up her betrothed after passing the exit three times and having him curse at her in English the rest of the ride home. My friends found me and picked me up so I wouldn't have to drive while I sang (the real tragedy of this story) out the window. The times, they were a'changing or so it seemed until the next morning when Sarah came over covered in bruises. I fell down the stairs, she said. Too much wine, she said. Booze, it seemed, could cover a multitude of sins.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"What a wonderful life I've had! I only wish I'd realized it sooner." Colette

Cocktail Hour

Drinking essay suggestion: "Quality Time Keeps Love Fresh" Lewis Nordan (printed in The Bastard on the Couch)

Benedictions and Maledictions

Happy Friday!

19 days until The Sopranos airs!

When Our Spirit Is In Shadow

My grandfather was named Charlie, never Chuck or Charles. When things got bad, he wasn't above pulling up stakes and starting over, usually in the middle of the night by the light of a lantern. He didn't think about what the neighbors thought -- I doubt the neighbors thought much of anything since he was the kind of badass that you did not mess with -- he'd soon shoot you as look at you. You little bastards, he'd say to me and my sister, his only grandchildren, a term of endearment of sorts. I was not a badass; I feared damn near everything about the outside world and indoors wasn't much better -- the internecine politics of all the houses of my childhood were enough to give anyone an ulcer. Anything bad that happens to you is your fault should have been stitched on a sampler pillow along with the dirty one in the trailer that said, God Loves You.

When people talk about legacy, I think about mine and laugh. You will not be afraid; you will be the last one standing. I sucked that philosophy down just as I did my Dr. Pepper from the gas station Flinstones glass I always used. I wasn't sure if I was in training for kindergarten or the Vietcong. Of course, this background suited me well -- if it takes twenty years, it takes twenty years, if it takes thirty, it takes thirty. We will not be defeated. You will lose yourself to find yourself. You will die to this world. This world will die to you. Make a way where there is no way. Or as Charlie would have said, Get out of my fucking way. Of course, I've cleaned it up. If I'm ever going to knit it on a pillow, I'd better use as few words as possible since I only know how to use a needle for one thing, inflicting pain on myself or others. Sometimes it's the same thing.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"I've waded through water and I've waded through mud/ To come to this place they call the bucket of blood." Stagger Lee

Cocktail Hour

Drinking movie suggestion: Hustle and Flow

Benedictions and Maledictions

Happy Thursday!

20 days until The Sopranos airs!

A Word Like That In English

Coleman Young, the late mayor of Detroit, upon being told by a Japanese interpreter that the same word in Japanese could mean many different things depending on how the speaker said it, Coleman Y. replied, We have a word like that in English -- it's motherfucker. Long-time Detroiters know Mr. Young's fondness for this word; dare I say it was probably his favorite? When asked what my favorite word is, I used to say melancholy. As a child, I loved telling people how melancholy I was, how melancholy the world felt, and so on. But if my grubby little feet were held to the fire, I'd have to say that my favorite word is evil. I use it to mean almost everything: happiness, disgust, delight, sympathy. You're so evil, I might say. If I hit you and laugh, this is a good sign. But if I say it with a flat intonation, like death not even warmed over, I think you're an asshole.

Stephen King wrote that if night didn't exist, horror writers would have to invent it. So it goes with evil even though I don't hear many people use the word anymore. I fear it's fallen out of fashion, like shoulderpads. One of my pet peeves is watered-down clinical language, although I'm as guilty of using it as anyone else -- ie, What a passive-aggressive motherfucker! I have to admit a fondness for old-fashioned language; nobody had poor boundary issues --they just got into your shit or fucked with your head. They were, in a word, evil. That's the kind of thing I like to say -- it can mean anything or nothing or everything. You can bring your own burdens to the table; there's enough food for everyone.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"Silence may be as variously shaded as speech." Edith Wharton

Cocktail Hour

Drinking music suggestion: Magic Potion The Black Keys

Benedictions and Maledictions

21 days until The Sopranos airs!

A Lake Filled With Garbage

When one of my friends landed a spot in Playboy (as a model, not a fiction writer -- that's my dream!), she sent her father a copy of the proofs. Her father was a deeply evil man who had once given me a serious case of the willies by undressing in front of me when I came over to pick up his daughter to go to Possum Kingdom Lake. My friend was running late, and I ran the hell out of that house, a house I remember well, decorated with all sorts of sayings from the Bible and Catholic saints left behind by her dead mother who had committed suicide a few years earlier. In a truly ugly turn of events, she shot herself in the head but did not die immediately -- instead she hung between life and death in an alley for a few days before being found and dying shortly after. My eyes scanned the Serenity Prayer framed on the mantle before making my escape. God, give me the courage to change what I can change . . . My car and I proceeded to wait further on down the road. These were the days sans cell phones -- timing was a bit dicier then. I never mentioned to my friend why I'd taken off so suddenly, and she never asked. I suspect she knew all too well.

I admired her act of aggression, sending her father the pictures. I'm not sure what the message was -- This is what you cannot have anymore or This is what you made me or something else entirely. He was a slight man, not someone anyone would have feared upon sight. Like many things lodged in my memory, I've often tried to use this incident in a story. I get stuck on where the story begins, but perhaps it begins in the lake we were trying to get to -- a lake filled with garbage and man-sized catfish, a lake surrounded by venomous snakes of every ilk, a place frequented by people tanked up on qualudes and Wild Turkey, looking for fun, looking for trouble. It's hard to tell the difference. The water is so dark that it doesn't give any clues to what it holds.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"At all crucial moments in our lives we want to speak without knowing what to say." Joyce Carol Oates

Cocktail Hour

Drinking movie suggestion: Office Space

Drinking short story collection: Faithless Joyce Carol Oates

Benedictions and Maledictions

22 days until The Sopranos airs!

I Shouldn't Be Doing Something Else

One of my ex-boyfriends told me that I'd be a great mother to a retarded child by way of a compliment. You're patient, you never stop trying to get things to work, he said. In the exact case, it was a crappy dishwasher, but I also sent his poems out for years. Most of them were accepted to small journals quickly, but one remained at large. It was a favorite of his, and I think nearly editor in the continental United States saw it. It finally got published in a journal that had illustrated it with a picture of an evil mangy-looking dog. Not the New Yorker, but it was something, right? What can I say? I'm Broadway Danny Rose! Anyway, the compliment did not make my heart race, but like many casual observations, it is true. Some people call this trait a revolutionary patience, some pounding your head against a wall, and others refer to it as this is fucking stupid, Michelle, give it up. But I can't. Once I set upon a path, I can't stop. This has served me well in my writing life, during the long deserts of little encouragement and adulation. All along the way, there are plenty of people telling me to give it up and do something easier and while I'm at it, a little more lucrative as well. Nobody in your life needs you to be a writer, and in fact most of them need you to be something else. But I hold the position that you should try to be around people who support you. It's one of the things I tell my students -- if people around you aren't encouraging of your writing (this does not mean they have to like everything you write, only that they like your writing in general), find new people. The world of endless rejection that the best writers face is hard enough.

My friend Hank used to say that if you do what you love, what you're passionate about, talent will follow. He taught himself the blues this way. He went from not having an iota of skill to being able to play Stevie Ray with the best of them. I've always felt best when I'm writing -- as Gloria Steinem once said, Writing is one of the only times when I feel that I shouldn't be doing something else. And when I can only sit and stare at the computer screen or piece of paper or I can't figure out what's working in a story, I don't know what to do except pray to the good Lord that something will come. It always does. I usually have to go to a dark place that I resist. It's a strange business, putting yourself on the page. Sometimes you don't like what you see. It stings. But like with everything else, that's how you know it's working.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"You can ask the people around me. I don't give up... and it's not out of frustration and desperation that I say I don't give up. I don't give up because I don't give up. I don't believe in it. " Johnny Cash

Cocktail Hour

Drinking movie suggestion: The Departed

Benedictions and Maledictions

Happy Monday, dear readers! I hope March is treating you well.

23 days until The Sopranos airs!

Cast Your Bread Upon The Waters

Sometimes I'll pick up my Bible and turn to a random verse as a way of divining the future. The Bible I use is off-white and old -- I got it as a Christmas present when I was twelve from one of my poorest friends and whenever I touch its cracked and broken front, I can't help think of her generosity. The gift must have been expensive, the widow's mite if you will, and it broke my heart then and breaks it now. My name, written in turquoise-colored ink, was written in calligraphy on the front pages and has never changed in all of these years. I'm not one for changes, even though I've never been wild about my first, middle, or last name. What I do is called Bible-dipping, and I got the idea from Running With Scissors. It's what the crazy psychiatrist family does to solve problems. My friend Shawn laughed himself sick when he heard this -- You're the only person I know that used that memoir as a self-help book. What can I say? I know a good idea when I see one! If nothing else, it gives me ideas for writing. I know most of the stories -- the lust, sin, salvation, war, demons, and angels are all my friends. I loathe the widespread misinterpretations of the Good Book to condemn people and fuck up their lives, but it's always been a comfort to me to be able to flip to any page and see people as messed-up as I am crying out for help.

Once in a bathroom stall, I heard a little girl tell her mother that she prayed to God for everything not to come up, but it did anyway. Her pink romper dripped of vomit. Her mother cleaned her up and told her that it's good sometimes to get the bad stuff out of you. I'd like to think so. But I also believe that you carry everything with you: our confessions and sadness, our fear and hope. Today I came upon the first chapter of John, the verse about how the beginning was the Word, about how the Word was with God and was God. What we say defines us, no question, and about the words that I have said, I have many regrets. I have cast my bread upon the waters and sometimes what comes back is only an echo of my own misery. But sometimes everything bad leaves me, and emptiness comes like a blessing and a curse, the clean slate on which I can start again.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us." John 1:14

Cocktail Hour

Femme Fatale in the Afternoon

1 teaspoon of chautreuse

2 teaspoons of cognac

2 teaspoons of lemon juice

a dash of bitters

Benedictions and Maledictions

Happy Birthday to my dear friend Stacey! And happy birthday to my dear Hank as well.

24 days until The Sopranos airs!

Flesh Wounds

One of my most beautiful friends was told by her then-boyfriend that her triceps were flabby. She'd been a model in Playboy, had worked as an actress, and by any standard, was gorgeous. Add this to the fact that she had huge breasts and a tiny frame and a face like Barbie and wherever we went, we could instantly get seated, free food, free whatever, and it wasn't because of my shy, mousy presence beside her. She'd been through one hellish ride in her life which also gave her character and made it tolerable to bask in the glow of such overwhelming loveliness without dying of jealousy. The boyfriend was a photographer and gave her some exercises to do to increase tone. Everyone thinks you're so hot, he told her, but I see some areas that could use improvement. She cried when she related this incident until I plied her with enough champagne to forget about those fucking tricep exercises and made her laugh about all the men we'd dealt with over the years, my favorite being one of her one-night regrets (my term for a one-night stand that you shouldn't have had -- perhaps most of them eventually go under that umbrella) that kept calling and coming to her house and begging her to see him again. We did it once, he kept saying, why can't we do it again? This argument, not up to the caliber of Clarence Darrow or Johnny Cochrane, sent us into fits of giggles.

To my sadness, she stayed with the photographer a little longer than was good for her, taking into account all of his poisonous comments for self-improvement, ranging from exercise to plastic surgery. He doesn't think I'm special, she told me. He sees the real me. I suppose this is what everyone is looking for, someone who sees beyond the polite masks we wear, our press, if you will. But it's amazing how easy it is to mistake cruelty for truth. She'd had such a hard life already that had formed her into a jewel, and all the exercises and make-up in the world couldn't change her heart, that damaged bloody fist that pumps despite anyone's attempts to make it stop.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"A single moment of being seen can make up for a lifetime of invisibility." Hope Donahue

Cocktail Hour

Drinking movie suggestion: Raising Arizona

Benedictions and Maledictions

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

25 days until The Sopranos airs!