It's been Mardi Gras here in Nawlins for weeks and the battle to get places was an annoyance and a surprise to me. The Internet got clogged. My phone wouldn't dial out. This was my first Fat Tuesday. Willa Wonka beware, Fat Tuesday spared me no calories. I ate fried oysters, a candy bar, bread pudding, jambalaya, chocolate lava cake and I'm not kidding. The only thing that compares to Mardi Gras is burning man. Indulge me:

 

The year I went to burning man, I stayed for thirteen days and it poured rain. It was kind of miserable and fabulous in its chilling way. I was overwhelmed and exhausted. I was filthy, cold and wet. We waited in long lines to pee. We slept fitfully with earplugs and woke up to Patsy Cline blaring from a loudspeaker to do it all over again. I found my burning man soul mate: a diabetic drummer with a girlfriend. But the art was so good it eclipsed the mud. Here in Nawlins, the beating heart of the city is so magnetic, the weather is immaterial.

 

Mardi Gras 2010 was similar to an extent: Crowds into the 50,000’s clogged the streets to watch floats drift by pulled by trailers and vans. The floats were impressive and gawdy: Casinos and dice and masks and much bead chucking.  Cupid floats with people in ball gowns and the owner of the Saints who carried the trophy. It was a happy year for New Orleans. The floats were crafty, but it was the parades that made me feel like I was in the bar scene in Star Wars. Specifically, St Anne's parade.

                     

 

Like burning man 2000, Mardi Gras is anti-commerce and more about art, spectacle and the human spirit. On fat Tuesday, the only thing you are allowed to do is party. Nothing is open.  When it’s time to eat, you crash a party, walk upstairs and eat platters of jambalaya, bread pudding and etouffee.

 

 I joined my pal Lexi to dress up and march in St. Anne’s parade in the Marigny with her local friends: brilliant, kooky artists who’ve been sewing their costumes and making wigs since the 70’s.  Beat poet and revolutionary 60's dude, John Sinclair was eating cereal at the kitchen table when I walked into Mary’s house.

 

Mary and Carol are regal women and they take their costumes very seriously. There are boats for hats in her house and lavender and pink wigs. There are parasols with skulls and ribbons.

 

On the street the freak show was magnificent.
 I was too busy dancing to take many pictures, but one highlight was the wooden Storyville on wheels with dapper men in panty loons and cravats, and women in much corsetry and striped stockings walking beside the wood structure.

 

Me? I’ve been wearing the same outfit for three days. I tried to find a gym and it was a joke, a battle, a pipedream. I’m stone cold sober, but I feel like I’m on acid. I borrowed a costume somewhere between Liberace and disco Ozzy: layers of black and silver glitter.

       

 

 

I stood by and listened to Mary tell Carol to dump her ashes into the River when she dies. They were twin angels of death. 

 

                

This the part of St Anne’s parade where we march to the River and watch people in costume dump the ashes of their loved ones in the river. I crouched on some rocks and watched a couple in bird costumes kiss (lovebirds).

 

A humpty dumpty whose body was the wall and his head the egg, leaned against a rail near the stairs on the edge of the river. A red man in a magicians costume threw his hankerchief in the water.  I asked Barry, a photographer dressed as the Pope to get it for me. He hung onto a metal rail and dipped his cowboy boot in the water and the magic red and silver hanky is mine.

 

A woman in a green glitter octopus costume dumped a coffee can full of her loved ones ashes into the river.  Tears fell and some of them were mine.

 

I’m in New Orleans freezing my tits off with 800,000 tourists here for Mardi Gras. I heard that one of the clubs I work at on Bourbon, “Rick’s Cabaret” shut down on Super bowl Sunday because the strippers took to the streets to celebrate. They had dancing to do but it wasn’t inside Ricks. I live for stripper revolutions.

 

They are talking about snow tonight. I’m not prepared for this kind of cold. My flimsy California hipster sweater wont’ do. I don't even have a parka. I can hardly wait to strip down to my spandex and prance around in my underwear. My only hope is the shivering masses will want me to thaw them out tonight; that they will seek refuge in a cozy redhead. Wish me luck tonight.

 

 There's parade tonight called "Muses" that celebrates women. According to my friend Lexi, women decorate shoes and throw them to the crowd instead of beads and it’s less obnoxious than other parades. Am I the only one that thinks this sounds dangerous? I’m a shoe whore, but that doesn’t mean I want a spike heel thrown at my head. Sounds like a migraine waiting to happen. Instead of getting shoes thrown at me, I think I’ll take my chances on Bourbon tonight and celebrate women on poles, and make money.

(Newsflash: I just heard the parade was postponed until tomorrow night. That's how they roll here in Nawlins)

 

Like I mentioned, I'm here to make money. I’m mercenary. I’m no Mother Theresa, but my friend Kenny called me with a charity project called Karma blast where it's members fund things around the world. One thing they accomplished recently was they built an orphanage in Tibet. They decided their US project would be to renovate a church, Synagogue or cemetery chapel that still has a congregation-and was damaged during Katrina.  They want to invest money to fix a roof and fix damage that hasn’t been repaired due to lack of funds.

So, I’m here to seek out a church that needs help and still has a congregation.It’s an opportunity to contribute to a city that has embraced me and paid me ridiculously well to be here.

 

The connection between stripping and church isn’t so hard to see. You just have to squint:

 

 #1 Strip clubs are places of worship. I tried to talk Kenny into funding a strip club that we could call “The Church of Big Daddy’s” since big daddy’s shut down.  People love strippers because they’re hot and lovely to watch, but they also demonstrate the things in us we like to hide: our desires our nakedness, our lust.

 

#2 Strippers offer a kind of redemption. I’ve said it a thousand times. Guys love to tell stripper secrets and confess their deepest regrets and then finish it off with a high voltage lap dance. I feel like I should carry around some sweet wafers and offer them to guys whose secrets I hold in my garter.

 

#3 Like Jesus and any religion, strippers can be an escape from the drudgery of our lives. They act as a salve for the pain and loneliness that we carry around. Other things can serve this purpose, like music, cigarettes, nitrous, sugar or time release oxy's but with strippers you don’t have the ringing in your ears, the crash, the puke, the buyer's remorse or the acne.  Just a thin shellac of glitter on your neck and the ghost of cheap vanilla, nothing anti-bacterial wipe won’t wash away.

Newsflash: I'm doing great in New Orleans, so I'm donating $100 for every 1K I make here to Dr's without Borders for Haiti relief. If anyone knows any other grassroots organizations who are responsible and great, let me know.

photo by Romy Suskin

Years ago, I met a guy named Oliver through mutual friends. He was at least 6 2” with full sleeve tattoos, dark hair, blue eyes. He was good looking not like generic hot dude cute, but like rock and roll refined; equal parts messy chain wallet cool and expensive dork. I think he was a guitar player and his Dad wrote songs for Elvis. He was sober a long time and he rode motorcycles. He owned things. I’d never dated anyone who owned things.

 

I met Oliver for breakfast on Sunset Blvd and we talked easily and deeply about our fathers, about sobriety and about break ups while we nibbled cheesy eggs and chugged weak coffee. 

              “I feel like I’ve been breaking up for years,” I said.

              “It’ll surprise you,” he said.

 

After breakfast, I straddled him on the back of his vintage Triumph motorcycle with my chest against his spine. I don’t like riding bitch. I made an exception.

He drove up and around Mulholland drive into the warm Los Angeles air with the sun blazing through eucalyptus trees. The ride and the talk about our distant fathers and breakups made beginnings seem possible and the past petty. He stopped at a pet store somewhere on a hill near a park where I held puppies and pet kittens.

 

    We left the pet store we went back to his place and we made out on his giant bed. He had a Jacuzzi in his room but it wasn’t obnoxious, just a large beautiful bathtub with a panoramic view of the canyon thick with trees. He had several expensive collectible guitars on display in a bright kitchen. He noticed me suck in my stomach as I took off my shirt.

            “I’m not afraid of your curves,” he said. I wanted to fuck him but we only kissed and rolled around on that bed for a couple hours. I was told by my straight girlfriends to never fuck on the first date if you like a guy.  After a while, he drove me back to my car. I was high on adrenaline. My skin vibrated, scraped raw as if I were an egg about to be dropped from a rooftop. Overexposed. Fragile.

 

Before the date with Oliver, I’d broken up with my hip-hop hairdresser boyfriend, a guy who lived out of milk crates and moved bags of weed out of a yellow Tupperware container in our one-bedroom, Hollywood sardine can, which always smelled like a skunk slaughterhouse. We’d struggled on my bartender, stripper cash and it was my bed we’d slept on for nearly six years. After separating our pets and plants, I finally drove my things and his cat away in a U-Haul. We howled like we’d both been declawed all the way to my empty apartment.

 

Oliver never called me again.

 

The next time I saw him, he held a baby. He got back together with his ex. I saw them at our mutual friend’s wedding brunch.

 

The “Oliver Standard” became the type of guy with some stuff to offer; a guy I’d have to be raw and honest with. A guy who impressed me. Intimidated me. Made me a little squirmy.

 

After Oliver didn’t call I sought refuge in someone who was thrilled to be with me.

Like the marriage of coffee and cigarettes, I went great with his heroin habit. I was never intimidated by him or made nervous by his accomplishments. Instead, I applied to grad school and did bachelor parties on the weekends, while he held up women at ATMs for dope in my 1978 Chevy Nova. I knew he loved me, but he loved heroin a lot more.

 

Years later, another gentleman caller of the “Oliver Standard” variety showed up:

 

I got nervous and pushy. When I’m intimidated, I either shut down or play ringleader, both come from the same set of fears. Both chase people away. I don’t know which happened first. The chemistry was great and connected. Fragrant. Profound. He’s funny, smart, primal and rhythmic. An impossible handful.  Green eyes like electric olives when the light hits. Erotic. Sophisticated. Flighty.

 

Neither of us sought anything heavy-handed or monogamous or whatever. Neither of us wanted to be pressured. But, I forced myself on him then made amends. Twice. In two days. Then he bolted like an arsonist still holding the match from the weird high-maintenance girl. 

 

Timing is everything. And reading someone is like playing music. Knowing when to back off. Knowing when to pounce. Knowing when to listen and when to shut the fuck up. When to dance. When to be still.  When to disappear.

 

I know when a guy wants me. It’s what to do when he doesn’t want me that makes me puke. Pull my hair out. Run naked into oncoming traffic looking for someone to fuck. Anyone.

photo by romy suskin

 

Listen. The egg’s already broken. I’m well versed in slime. I know how to clean up my mess and move on.  But there are shells in my teeth and the taste of eggs I can’t shake. The Oliver Standard ends up with a skinnier version of me, a girl who’s six months clean and living with her parents without a self supporting bone in her body.  A girl who has a book published. A pretty, Italian comic. Or, he ends up with his ex and a baby and a tidy life in Laurel Canyon.  Or he walks off with the blonde who talks baby talk.

Or Nothing.

A hundred hungers seeking flight; All of us wanting the same fucking thing. To feel more alive.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sunday January 17^th

 

Ricks Cabaret is in the thick of Bourbon. I bought a fishnet t-shirt at the Hustler store from a sweet fag to cover my tats for the audition. “Where do you work that they make you cover them?” he asked.

            “Everywhere,” I said.  He laughed and gave me the stripper discount. The important thing is to get in the door. Show management you can make money and you’re not going to get into fistfights with the other girls, get drunk and pass out or piss off customers, then you can walk in whenever.

 

I heard VIP rooms go for $500/for 3o minutes at Ricks and girls Mack in the multiple Gees. I want to see if I can clear $1500 on a busy night later in the week when the car show is in town and the Saints play against the Vikings. They’re on a winning streak here and the locals are ecstatic.  

When you walk in from the mob scene of fat people and drunks that is Bourbon Street on any night, the dark light makes any 30-year old with four kids look fourteen. I met a couple of those right off the bat.  Girls next door with no makeup and greasy hair. Girls that have Southern accents, bubble butts and husbands at home.

The stage at Ricks is a real bruiser: a postage stamp; rough to maneuver, like ice-skating on a platform. If you slip it's all over cause there's no bar to catch you so you better know how to fall into the splits.  It’s tiny and made of marble so it’s real slippery and there’s no pole. It’s about showing not performing, like a formality or an afterthought. I like poles where I can entertain and build the clientele from up there. The stage at Ricks is a waste of time. The one at the “Hustler” club goes up two stories so I want to work there one night just for the two-story pole.

 

My audition was three songs. They wouldn't let me play my own stuff, which sucks. It’s all top 40 up-beat bullshit on Bourbon. The DJ did have some Iggy Pop and old Bowie though so he humored me with “Ashes to Ashes,” “Passenger,” and “Rebel, Rebel,” a nod to my first audition ever in San Francisco where I danced to the Ricky Lee Jones cover of “Rebel Rebel” in all of my vintage kinder-whore speed freak glory. The shirt over my fishnet job had hooks and eyes that kept getting caught and stuck, so I finally tore it on stage and removed it. I hoped the fishnets covered the tattoos enough.

 

After all the paperwork was signed, I got on the floor around 6pm and there were only five girls on rotation. I danced several times on "The Bruiser" and now have lemon-sized marks on my knees and thighs. Today it's about Epson salts and Arnica gel.

The audience dances go for $20 and there’s no touching, because the key is to get them in the back for $60 per song, then eventually upstairs for the real money. Nothing major goes on upstairs, according to my friend. There are cameras in the rooms and they fire girls who cross the line. I crossed said line in the $60 area when I danced for a married couple from Florida. The chick lifted up her shirt so I did a little teaser for her dude-just some nipple tweaking-no big whoop. I guess everyone stays clothed in the $60/ area, even if they’re a hot blonde MILF from Florida. I was scolded. The floor man let it slide cause I’m new.

 

 I didn’t push the half-hour rooms for the $500/30 min. I have to summon the courage to get those dances. It’s so much fucking money.

 

The guys that I danced for were from Florida and New York last night. Under 40 hipsters. Kings of Leon fans. Surfers. Not guys ready to spend $500 on the half hour. Guys that get smitten.  Guys that show me pictures of their two dogs. Guys that tell me I look like their ex-girlfriend. They never asked my age. They did ask me out. I declined, like always.

 

The manager’s nice enough and probably doing the Cocaine diet plan. He was amped and loved to hear himself talk. He’s a bald guy from Albuquerque and I like guys from there so we had some laughs while he ate overcooked lasagna with a plastic fork.  On the slow Sunday night I still cleared nearly seven hundred clams. But next week, I want to bust a Gee at Rick’s Cabaret. If other girls can do it, so can I.

Friday 1/15/10

I’m in the Big Easy again to dance. Didn't get any real sleep.Woke up at 5am for 7am flight out then went straight to Bourbon Street to work at Larry Flynt’s club, Penthouse: by far the most swank club in the quarter.  Lanterns, three stages, two bars, Penthouse suites that go for over $500 an hour. I got hired cause I have an “in” with the house mom. When I got on the floor, there were groups of guys at tables, not very welcoming.  The key is to break through, penetrate the circle, but tonight my game was shaky because I was so tired and the guys in groups are more interested in posturing for each other than getting dances. They're busy pretending they don't want us. Towards midnight I’d cleared about three hundred bucks.

 

The tables were full of drunk convention guys from Texas and bachelor parties. Kid stuff. Penthouse girls do the Vegas thing: Lots of fake tans and bleach.

 

I have to cover my tattoos at Penthouse, which is stupid because the guys love my tats. They always ask to see them.  It works for me to be niche girl, but this is the South so to management, tats just read “trashy biker.”

 

My thing is to find a guy who’s alone and talk a while, get the stories rolling before he gets blown out and distracted by the onslaught of the crowd, the girls and the smoke. The problem is I was so tired my head’s in five other places, still, I made conversation. Stick to them like gum. Lots of eye contact, big warm smile. Cliché redhead jokes. Buzzed on an energy drink that tastes like carbonated baby aspirin,  friend Morgan lead me tothis customer/friend of hers. Local girls have a harder time because when clients become friends, they don’t buy dances from you anymore.  The mystique is gone like you’re their wife or their wife’s hot friend. The guy was very cool, young-ish and gave me two bennies for 40 minutes. It’s a topless dance situation in a private room upstairs with curtains and couches-the whole nine. I lucked out, the guy was easy to read and didn’t have much to say so I walked with about $400 and bowed out early. My goal is always 1K. I won't quit till I make it.

 

 

Sat 1/16/10 Tonight it’s the big Saints game so I’m headedto Visions: Where the Locals Go.

 

It's Pissing rain and cold but the city's hopping cause the Saints are playing the Cardinals. I cabbed to Visions. I like to get there early and clear a couple greenbacks by the time the night girls roll in. You’d never find Visions if you weren’t in the know. It’s my little gem in East NOLA by the railroad tracks.  Local girls don’t welcome outsiders, but I slid in last May and they warmed up to me. They didn't wanna hire me. I didn’t take “No” for an answer and kept my head down and always tipped out my manager on the sly. Now I walk in whenever and it’s all the same friendly faces. I love the DJ’s Tony and Johnny. They know how old I am and give me respect. They like my music cause it’s not hip-hop. I play the weird stuff like  “Death in Vegas, Goldfarb, Nick Cave and old Bowie.”  Visions is blue collar and more work. My knees are scraped and my thighs always sore after a 9-hour shift at Visions. It’s a real stage show. You make good cash on stage because you dance on two bars and guys have to tip while sitting at the bar or they’re asked to leave. It’s all local boys all the time and the Saints won tonight so it was guys in football jerseys howling, lots of tequila and shy Alabama types. Truckers. Missing teeth. Fat guys with wives at home bored stiff.  But they don’t just hang around and drink, Visions guys want to be entertained and they’re there to spend.  I wanted a G tonight,  but the gorgeous girl from Florida was there too, and she snagged a guy I had been working on-no matter. I still cleared $700. Going to go into Rick's Cabaret tonight and audition. My friend Laura Jackson says it's easy street. It's all about biding time to write.

  warning: this blog is explicit and pumped up for dramatic effect. Read at your own discretion and enjoy at your own risk.

Some girls shove cupcakes in their mouths and those hot dogs wrapped in obscene bacon on Sunset Boulevard when there are holes punched through their hearts. I wander into hotels and casinos and offer my body to strangers for money. Not my whole body, just a little bit of it.

 

    Maybe because I’m the girl in second place. I'm the Almost Girl. I’ve been runner up my whole life and am troubled by this. I crave attention and something sick happens to me when I don’t get it.Everything’s complicated when you’re this raw and yucky. Even casual encounters hurl me into Walgreens for Rolaids. I’d sooner douse myself with gasoline then be rejected by a man. I’ve got to win. Even when I don't.

 

   Growing up, I was nominated for things but never won.  Like “best looking,” “homecoming queen,”and I was a contestant in a reality TV show to win $25K which I promised my mom half the winnings for her chemo and radiation bills. It was down to the final two. Me and one guy. In those last sweaty moments before the panel, the producer whispered to me, “You’re about to win a lot of money right now."

   I sat in the metal chair, waiting.  I was high on adrenaline like it was happening to someone else. But, I lost to the surfer kid who lived with his fisherman Dad.

 

     Mom died after that and there went the beach property in Humboldt that I was supposed to inherit.

 

    Recently, I’ve leapt from the topless clubs on Hollywood Boulevard to Craigslist. I offer the promise of a happy ending to an otherwise dismal life for men who travel alone during the holidays. After all, the holidays mean things to people. There's obligation, anxiety and volcanic loneliness.

    People need to be touched and that's a fact.  Touch is the first and final language and it’s the one thing computers haven't  figured out how to replace. Casual, profound touch book ended by cash. No fights or let downs. No disappointed wives or nagging kids.

 

     Sometimes, I show up alone. Sometimes with my friend, Elle for one excellent hour of manufactured intimacy. Their loneliness bleeds into mine just long enough to give me a hit of the attention I crave, like a baby after the nipple. Together with Elle, we provide distraction, entertainment and a hand job in the sessions. I’ve not had to go hog wild with my pepper spray yet.

 

    Christmas night we had a client at The Four Seasons in Beverly Hills, where Brittney Spears and Paris Hilton smear fois gras on rice crackers and get shit-faced. A tall white guy with silver hair answered the door at the end of a long skinny hallway. There's construction paper on the floor. They're remodeling.

 

            “You are amazing. Such beautiful souls,” he was tower of flesh, covered in tiny scabs.  What’s wrong with him? I thought, coveting the fruit bowl piled high with ripe figs and greasy pears. My mouth watered. I didn't eat dinner.

            “There’ sooo much love. So much love,” he said. His eyes watery.  According to Elle, he’s a powerful attorney. Oh brother, I thought.  A new age attorney.

    There was something wrong with his skin. It hung on him like sick flabby meat before it’s tossed down the garbage disposal. It made me sad and grateful to be alive and not have cancer or some skin disease.

 

 I held him tightly in a three-way hug for as long as possible. This seemed to be what he was after, at least, for a few quiet moments. I got sad and the bright room went dark.

 

    We got undressed. I like to keep my shoes and fishnets on for as long as possible.

Elle likes to be naked. He wrapped us up in his pale freckled arms. He had grizzly hair on his neck, chest and in his ears. He laid on his back. A beached whale sunk in soft sand with his belly out, big as a watermelon.

 

            “Are you married?” Elle cut to the chase. She has methods with married men. She likes to help teach them to bring their wives to a better orgasm. It's stuff she learned in that crazy sex cult she was in for years in Nor Cal.

            “She passed away two years ago.” He didn’t look sad. He closed his eyes on the soft pillows that have that posh memory foam stuff. “You’re so amazing,” he said again. His voiced reminded me of soft crying.

            “Do you mind if I dim the lights?” I asked. Lighting is everything and I’m prone to migraines so bright lights make me cringe. I love dimmers. I’m a stripper. I make a big show out of taking off my clothes and tease it out some. The lighting has to be right. We draped and dripped our limbs over him on the bed.

    That’s when I saw his feet: His big toes were rotting off at the edges, the skin chewed up. His toes were eating themselves and turning black. He had no arches at all. The blackened skin spread up his calves in violent, splotchy little bruises like tiny prunes up his legs. The surfaces of his stomach was freckled and paper thin. I wondered if he hurt. Jesus, I thought. This guy's got Diabetes or leprosy.

 

    Elle’s great at keeping the fantasy going. She talks dirty.“I feel like you’re inside me,” she said in his face. Her hands were behind her back. She pointed to his junk. This was her signal to me to look at him more closely. “What’s your fantasy?” she asked our man. He ate this up:

 

            “I’m a kid in class and my teacher calls me into her office. She wants me to take my clothes off for her. She draws me and photographs me. Then she demands I play with myself. I hear girls giggling.” Elle giggles. It’s creepy but not as creepy as his cock, which upon close inspection I find the reason why we haven’t touched it yet with our coconut oil. His cock had little warts on it, tiny little red pustules. Angry red strawberry skin at the shaft. Elle's still giggling like a horror film.

“Will you suck it?” he asked me. His eyes open slits now and his mouth open. He looks like a chubby salamander in a trance.

 

            “Well, sure, but you have some reddish spots and it looks like even warts which can lead to HPV,” I said, crash landing the buzz-kill. I play it safe. I'm an HIV counselor.

 

            “No," he said. "The doctor said it’s just age. Promise. And. I have a blood disease." He stroked his cock.

"It's sensitive at the shaft," he said. I’m thinking this guy thinks we are stupid bimbos. I’m thinking about the money.

 

            “A promise isn’t enough,” Elle said, her face close to our man who was losing his smile. I'm glad she has a way of being submissive and tough. She has the body of a twelve year old but she's direct and mature.

  “Do you have a condom?” Elle makes herself more available than I do. I’m there for the money. I watch the clock. She’s into energy work and the shaman thing. She says I work too hard and I don’t think she’s wrong but I just can’t shirk my blue-collar roots. This is a service job to me.

 

            “There’s more money in it for both of you,” he said. I jumped up at this and jogged to the bathroom,which was like a mini-spa resort. Huge shower and billion thread-count towels. Two virgin white robes hang from the door, which I consider stealing.  Several glass bottles of Evian. Guest soaps that cost more than my car.

    I found two types of condoms, one with lube and one without. I think, for oral, the best tasting one will be without lube. They don't slip and slide when I put them on. I reached into the fancy basket.

Four hundred bucks, I thought. Merry Christmas, darling.

 

 

 

My friend Stephen’s great article in the New YorkTimes:http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/20/fashion/20elliott.html?_r=1&ref=style&pagewanted=all

   

made me think about Christmas memories.

 

I've never had a Xmas tree before until now. My apartment smells like a pine

Forest and I love it.

                                         

 Someone I love, a friend, (its complicated by the fact that he is my ex-fiancé) brought

 a shoe box of great homemade ornaments over and we decorated the tree together. One of the ornaments has "Bobby" written on it because my great friend Rob made it when he was a little kid.

                   

                     

  Afterward, we tossed some pillows and blankets on the floor and watched "The Hangover." I've never enjoyed Xmas in Los Angeles. It's always been depressing to me to be in Southern California, possibly the most un-Christmas-y place on Earth. It was easily 80 degrees the first year I moved here, in 2003.That year, and most since, I’ve ditched LA to Northern California to escape th emerciless sun, rent a car, fly. Get the fuck out. Then I thought about other Xmas' and running has been a theme:

 

My parents hated each other after they divorced.I was a pawn between them.

There was much screaming and guilt. Meaning, when I visited one, the other would get jealous and grill me for details then badmouth the other one. I would run from one parent to the other, an endless game of emotional ping-pong.

 

Sometimes my Dad would spend Xmas in Hawaii with his new family. I wasn't

Invited, unless he had visitation that year.  When I did go, I was miserable and had

little in common with his newly Christian,baggage-free family who got better gifts and

way more attention than I did.

 

Xmas in SF in my 20's included snorting lots of meth and running around the

Mission in a corset and little else looking for more. I avoided all things

 family and Xmas during the meth years. But there was one Christmas on meth, where my friend Patrick M. and I drove in the fog and rain to Humboldt, in the middle of the night. I had been up for days. I don’t know why Patrick allowed me to drive and he was probably scared shit less. I was too numb to be scared. I weighed thirty pounds less then, shaved my eyebrows and pierced  my tongue and septum. The truth is, my family loved me but I did everything I could to stay away.

 

There was another Christmas in LA where I had Typhoid fever and didn’t know it. I had a 104 fever off and on for a month before I finally went to the ER. My boyfriend and I spent that Xmas with my best friend and her husband and their two cute dogs. We had a great meal,prepared by my friend, who was more like a sister. We’re not friends anymore. We had so many parallels it was like we mirrored each other in spite of ourselves, like a two-person sorority, we were both strippers who lived in SF for years and even fucked some of the same people. We had the same sarcastic sense of humor. No one has ever made me laugh like that. Literally, we went to the same schools and studied the same things. Both of us wanted to be writers. I think it was Amy Hempel who said something like,“After you tell all of your secrets and spill your blood and guts to someone,you can’t be friends after that.”

 

Then she pulled away and I heard hurtful things, gossip and snide remarks and I saw who she really was. Sadly, Amy Hempel was right.  Now I have other friends whose talent I believe in and who believe in mine.  We share the spotlight and support each other and our work. That's a gift.

 

This Xmas, my wish is to contribute more to my good friends, in order to return to them the love and support they’ve given freely.The only running I want to do is on the treadmill.

 

 

Happy Holidays Los Angeles, 2009

 

 

My big brother's alive. He's not in prison and not under a bridge in a van.  He called me on my birthday so I had his number. I found him. He lives in a house with a couple other people who are hardly ever there, according to him.  He's always been unpredictably predictable. Or, he's erratic enough to be reliably insane. When he babysat me as a kid, it was a spontaneous party at our house involving cheesy 80's heavy metal music and lots and lots of alcohol. He usually took my Dad's car on joyrides where he sideswiped ten cars, but he always got caught. In that way, he was never too lucky. He held up a hot dog stand with his finger in his jacket once. It was the place I always got a milkshake after a trip to the dentist. Now he's raising my niece who is 50% Karuk Indian and she just started preschool. I hope he'll stay out of jail for a while.

                            After my Dad's house in the Redwoods-
 

   I went to stay at my mom's place in Samoa-the Arcata side of Humboldt where the crab boats are docked in the Marina and surfers shiver in the freezing rough waves. My mom's house was built by my Step Dad and my Grandpa in 1992. There's a pasture out back with horses and the chilly beach is two minutes away. My mom always had horses around her and you can hear the ocean from the deck. The air is  windy and cold and wet.      
As a teenager, we always skipped class when the sun came out and went to the beach. The beautiful Mormon boys surfed in black wet suits and their cars were always full of sand. Sometimes we were cruel. We'd sneak up on our friends who were camping on a date and scream bloody murder in black knit hats in the night. But, what's a couple of blood curdling screams between friends?


     
                  Samoa Beach                                                                                                                                   Willow

For my birthday I met up with a friend who I've know for over 30 years. She was a Madonna impersonator and provocative rebel in High School (Janelle Elam).  Now she's a cop and a mom. We ushered in the last phase of our thirties over lunch in Old Town and discovered play dough together when we were two years old. Our mom's were best friends.

         

          The Stripper and the Cop                                                             The Barbie Cake Karen made!

To celebrate the last year of my thirties, I went to a casino on an Indian Reservation (Blue Lake) where the world famous circus school is also located (Del'Arte).  At the casino, the rules don't apply. You can chain smoke and play slots next to dread locked meth-heads and drunk Indians. There's a big Karaoke bar with a huge stage. How's a girl to resist? I killed it to "Creep" by Radiohead and then a little Joan Jet and the Black Hearts. This is the wild west and the part of Northern California few know by heart, but those of us who do, never forget...

        

Marina Dec 2009

The REAL Northern California.

                       

         

                                                     

        

I’m in northern California where the bedrock of the economy used to be lumber and fishing but now it’s pot. I’m in a Redwood forest surrounded by blue sky and crisp sunshine. The air is fresher and cleaner than anywhere, even SF. Humboldt is where the ocean and redwoods rendezvous. It's lush.

                    

    

I’m here to enjoy the luxury of turkey and to visit with family members I don’t ordinarily spend time with. Now that my Mom has passed away, visiting Humboldt is bittersweet. My  focus is not so much on the loss of her, but on the men in my family and deepening my relationships with them and other family members.

 

But as you know, where there is family there is family drama. Tell me yours.

 

In my family there are pill poppers and bible thumpers,Vietnam Vets and progressives. My brother is usually homeless or in prison, my Dad's is Rush Limbaugh's wing man, my step brother's a Hesher.

My Dad is convinced we are headed to an apocalyptic socialist nation and that Obama is basically Hitler.

 

I don’t know where my felon brother is and I lost his most recent phone number. He’s an addict who sometimes lives in a van with his 3-year old daughter. He has a talent for having lots of kids and then abandoning them.The last time I saw him was in an apartment he shared with a woman who ran to buy drugs with the twenty-dollar bill I gave him. Next time, I'll take him to the store for milk instead.

 

This September, I was under investigation by the state of Virginia to possibly foster both of his daughters who were removed by the State of Virginia and put into a group home there, due to the neglect and abuse that happens when a parent is addicted to Meth. One is a fourteen-year old cutter and both suffer from emotional problems and learning disabilities.  I wanted to take one of them, because I want kids. But, I live in a one-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles and I’m a stripper. The teenager would need her own room and I can’t provide the constant supervision and room that she needs. It was a hard decision to close my file for now.

 

 My step dad,Chuck, picked me up from the Arcata airport, which is comparable to a greyhound bus station: basically a parking lot with some sliding doors.

He’s getting his hip replaced on December 10^th.We walked in old town Eureka by the bay where boats are docked for winter. We strolled into art galleries and used bookstores.  He’s addicted to his pain meds. He pops Oxy’s like popcorn. He’s concerned about the process of detoxing and he’s scared to get the hip surgery.

                        

 

Old Town Eureka caters to tourism, but we just don’t get the foot traffic other places do, which adds to the sleepy quality of old town Eureka with its shabby Victorians and empty stores. I wondered how small businesses were surviving. Many of the storefronts that were landmarks when I was a kid are now gone, replaced with other earnest restaurants and clothing stores, trying their luck at survival. The biggest export that Humboldt County is it’s youth, according to my Dad, a staunch conservative. We agree on very little but I agree with that statement. Unless you’re a nurse or an attorney, I can’t see how people survive here.   

            

 

Then I went to my Dad’s law office later that evening, to meet him and my step-mom, who has CMT so she walks on leg braces that are very futuristic and barbaric and the same time. She’ll be in a wheelchair eventually, loosing her muscle strength to the degenerative nature of the type of muscular dystrophy that she has.

In the spirit of gratitude, I’m happy to have the freedom of good health and sobriety and to live in a city where there’s work. And I’m happy to be able to see the sun shine through the redwood trees from my Dad’s office.

 

 

   I don't have any pictures but I have this awesome publication:

http://www.blackclock.org/blog/2009/10/20/black-clock-11-makes-mysterious-connections/

 

 A lot of my friends have more than one name, more than one identity, nay, a duplicity of identities. It began with nick names, then friends of mine changed genders and the whole identity spectrum became more colorful and confusing than ever before and the codes of sexuality more elaborate and difficult to decipher. I feel like I need an instruction manual to follow the latest fad in Trans identity that I will playfully call "Disco Tranny."

I'm not kidding, some of my friends have gone through more names than underwear in the last ten years. The Trans community is tied for the sex worker community in the quest for the Genis Book of World Record for the most names. Personally, if you count legal and illegal name changes, nicknames and stripper names, I'm at 21. If you have several names that you go by, I want to hear from you.

Is it that we just don't like the names we were born with? Or is it about a declaration of our individual identity that we are so in love with in the US? Or-is it about hiding?

  The digital craze brought the possibility of every person having their own free website, thanks to My Space. It also brought identity theft, blogs and porn names galore, burlesque names, Second Life and Twitter. Two competing forces collided suddenly; the desire for recognition was equally matched with the desire for privacy.

But like I've always said, "You can run but you can't hide." If someone wants to find you they will. Eventually. Which brings me to the ever creepy and ever magical world of Facebook. I was talking to my friend Christina (who has never gone by any other name than Christina), about how strange it is to hear about deaths of friends via Facebook.  I had two of these "updates" in two days from people I hadn't seen or talked to in twenty years. And I had to tell a girl who lived with us as an exchange student and now lives back in India that my Mom died of Cancer over Facebook. There was a painful intimacy about that conversation, yet a weird time warp technological distance. Time had passed but it also stood still. People I loved had died. And I could respond so fast, on Facebook with sympathy and memories to share.  Or, I could attempt to avoid death some more- under another name until someone found me again in ten more years.