sister, can you spare a lane?

OR: "why are some lesbians so anti-social?"

this past June, i attended a Gay Pride event at a bowling alley with my boyfriend, his straight twin brother and my best friend. The group of lovely lesbians in the lane next to us asked if we wouldn't mind moving somewhere away from them - they wanted to create a "ladies only" space.

seriously? "ladies"?

i know, love and respect a handful of delightful woman-loving females. MY lesbian friends seem to be the exception to this "ladies only" law.

i've thought about this on-and-off since June and come to the conclusion that some lesbians would prefer a lesbian-only world. perhaps they are even secretly planning some type of vagina revolution?

so much for "strength through diversity"...

although i'm not as upset about this anymore, i refuse to not have the last word. so here's my comment:

southern hospitality

in theory it was a great idea. use the three-day 2003 MLK holiday weekend to drive non-stop from Troy, NY to pre-Katrina New Orleans- for dinner. we justified the trip by planning to stop in Mound Bayou, Mississippi to document the site for the School of Blues 4th year vertical studio.

i remember Shakti and Steve and Chris were on the trip. i'm unsure but i think Adam was there, too? there must have been 1 more person i'm forgetting?
whose car did we take?

i've no idea who navigated (not me). i think i even managed to squeak through the 60 hours of driving without taking a turn at the wheel...

what i think about now is what a shipwrecked bunch we must have seemed when we landed in Mound Bayou (we never made it to New Orleans). there were dozens of photos documenting the entire town. who knows if any of them still exist- maybe in a forgotten shoe box in the back of one of our closets (not mine).

the pictures didn't capture the best parts of that trip:
the brusque waitress with the bandaged knuckles in the Tennessee diner
the home cooked feast made for us in Mound Bayou by complete strangers (best fried chicken ever !)
waking up parked outside of Hershey Park (closed for the season) because Shakti wanted to see the place

this remains to this day, by far, my best use of Martin Luther King Day.

things you should never do after having a root canal

my post-endodontist, pre-gelaterie shopping spree at Target yesterday left me with a beautiful belt (2 sizes too small) and great new underwear (2 sizes too big).

oh well...

gold lamé

there was a time (while living in a supply closet in a Harvard dormitory for example) that i wouldn't have considered any outfit for a "night out on the town" complete unless it shimmered, glittered or sparkled.
the gold lamé blouse/coat/jacket was my favorite at the time; but there was also the sparkly silver top made of steel wool and christmas tree tinsel, the sheer shirt with the rhinestone bauble buttons (that i gave right off my back to Chris from RPI one night at the Power Company), the green silk blouse with the victorian ruffle collar, and the most famous- the silver pantsuit (i'll have to remember to make a separate entry about this outfit that includes Cole's boom-boom skirt).

my closet can still be raided by just about anyone (size, gender and age not being a real issue), but that resplendent metallic sheen i was once so fond of can now only be found in my collection of Sal's Boutique neckties.

what ever happened to that pair of panties?

i remember my lack of inhibition, my inability to behave appropriately, my desperate need to be the center of attention.

Camp Uncas, 1992?
we were invited to use the sauna (i remember Jason being there and the owner and my boss). an outdoor sauna on a lake in the Adirondacks. there's something primal about the memory that will always make every other hot tub or hotel jacuzzi seem like a pale reflection of a greater truth.
perhaps that's what inspired me to create a dance to make the stars come out.

just me in my underwear (my favorite pair, the pair i stole from Joe Marco, the kind with the cloth waistband before that was really popular), stomping the ground shouting out Violent Femme lyrics, arms flailing legs kicking.

Jason was a good enough friend to join in (this must have happened before i drove his car off the road and halfway down the mountain and totalled it- that was awkward!).

i've changed so much- i could never do this again. not the same way.

pass me a wishbone

i want to be taken care of. not in the way most people mean. maybe there's a better phrase for it...

i want someone in the waiting room. waiting. worried about me, helping me make important decisions.

doesn't seem like a big deal when i write it here. but it is.

beaches

Siobhan is at the beach. thinking of the beach may take my mind off the pain in my teeth while i wait for a specialist to call me back.

i wonder if she's at the beach we skipped off to that one summer in 1993 with Bill Bowen's blue car?

i don't remember the trip there.

i don't remember what i did when i was there.

i do remember the part of the return trip that involved standing by the side of the road because Bill Bowen's blue car got a flat tire.

What ever made him decide to leave me his car keys when he went away is truly beyond me at this point.

i think i may have agreed to water his plants until he got back or something.

i don't remember how we (who was "We"?) got back to Troy.

i think i left the doughnut on his car and told him it happened "locally" and never mentioned that trip to the beach again...

angry inch?

i'm about 80% sure my iPod is sentient; or at least has some method of bioelectrical communication with my brain.
i'm sitting here trying to recount the time period in 1993(?) surrounding having two of my wisdom teeth removed (inspired by the excruciating painflul reality that one of the remaining two has decided to emerge), and my iPod starts playing "Angry Inch" from Hedwig.
yup- sassy little gadget.

granted, the angry inch busting through my gums isn't anywhere near as dramtic as Hedwig's. there will be no rock operas based on my upcoming oral surgery, but i have to give the iPod a little credit for it's seemingly irreverent relevance.

what i remember most about the first time i had wisdom teeth removed:
1. i was too drugged to write a check afterwards and never paid off the balance of what i owed the marvelous dentist i never met with the amazing experimental painkillers (50% was due up front so he didn't get totally screwed).
2. 4th year vertical studio was my Hare Krishna and Rubenesque Woman phase. I recall Ken finding me staring out the window with a long strand of drool connecting my chin to a sketched cross section of my School for the Blues in Mound Bayou, Mississippi (he sent me home).

...and that's about it. two weeks = two memories.
maybe i slept a lot?

ORIGINS: 1989

is there anyone else out there who remembers this?
unfortunately, i've forgotten all the names.
my memory only pulls up blurry outlines of the others.
i remember watching a Monty Python movie, but i'm not even sure which one.

it was purely a circumstantial designation.

prom night in a small town; a group of teens out for a walk.
lights, sirens and 5 police cars full of cops with guns aimed at us transformed us into something else.
VANDALS, according to the astute law enforcement team that had set up the blockade to catch us.

we knew that wasn't quite the right label though.
we didn't match the descriptions of the true culprits and were eventually allowed to go.
hopefully not a surprise to you, the reader (not yet, anyway).

we became DESPERADOS.
Des`per*a"do\, n.: a person urged by furious passions, and regardless of consequence; a wild ruffian.
it was just another description we didn't match.

at the time, i thought the title and the solidarity of our mistaken identity would tie us together forever. today, i can't even remember if i ever saw any of them again...