Ask me what I was doing last night at 6:09 pm.
I was sitting before my computer at work eating Swiss Miss hot cocoa powder out of a foil pouch. With a plastic soup spoon. Initially I had opened it to eat just the mini marshmallows. But then I kinda got sucked in.
I am a big fan of dried marshmallows. At the Mall of America there is a cereal bar with nothing but General Mills products, and once I sat at that bar and ate a whole bowl filled with nothing but Lucky Charms. JUST the charms. Known as “marbits,” for those who care. The fella who developed them came up with them one day by tossing some ripped-up Circus Peanuts onto his oat cereal, then shouting Eureka or something. He died in a car crash years later. I know this because I wrote a play that takes place in a bowl of Lucky Charms. I did a lot of research for it.
Ask me what I was doing at 5:43am last Sunday morning.
Taking a photo of Crackus on our way to the subway.
Ask me what I was doing at 6:48am the same day.
Enjoying the day's first smoky light seeping into the new Central Park Home Depot. 8:30am?
Drying and defrosting our tired wet cold selves at the best brunch place on the upper west side, preparing for Round Two in the park. Please note how the ever-festive Kiki matched her shirt color thematically to the day's activities.
Ask me what Christo and Jeanne-Claude were doing at 11:22am...
Getting filmed by me. Very badly. (Click it.)
My toes and thighs are tingling... I just rode home from work on my bike. My BIKE. I love my bike. This is the first day I've ridden it since I got it back from the police precinct (you may remember my mishap last October). That is one creepy place. I took some footage of the garage from whence my little bikey emerged, in case you're interested.
I usually ride into the city over the Brooklyn Bridge, and come back over the Manhattan. The Brooklyn is prettier but has too many clueless pedestrians who get in my way... and this is especially difficult in the winter because you can't flip people off while wearing mittens. And the Manhattan bridge has that gorgeous downhill curve that peels out into Cadman Plaza... it's a long luscious high-speed arc that curls you into a snail-shell and shoots you straight into Dumbo. This feels great after you've been racing the Q-train on the downhill, grinning deleriously at the faces of sleepy post-work people in the train who are possibly wondering what that red-faced drooling freak on the bike outside is looking at...
So yeah, my man in the freight elevator was at work today. We actually had a conversation. It went something like this:
HE: You thirteen. You thirteen?
ME: No, twenty-four please.
HE: No, not the floor. YOU. You thirteen. You thirteen?
ME: Um, no. No.
HE: Fourteen?
ME: (smiling nervously) More than fourteen...
HE: NO. Your coat, your bike... eighteen?
ME: No, I'm older.
HE: NO. Eighteen. Eighteen.
ME: Older.
HE: No, no.
ME: ... oh, ah. Okay.
For the record, I do look pretty young, but NO WAY do I look thirteen. Wishful thinking on his part (zee seek fook). I suppose I should be flattered or grateful to him for shaving off ninteen years from my life, but honestly? He was SO INSANELY FAR OFF that if I HAD told him my real age he might have been disgusted with my freakish non-youth. So don't tell him.
When I get famous like Tony Bitchass Kushner, I'm gonna hire some little genius to make me a real live machine modeled after this. And then I'll hire Irene Cara to sing a song about it to revive her career. And I'll throw a CD release party, but shroud it in mystery by inviting only my mom's friends from her nurses' training days. And then I'll start a revolution by forcing the inhabitants of my brownstone to secede from the union, and fund it by opening a concession stand on our corner that sells chocolate dipped strawberries, chicken-liver paté, and lime-flavored sports drinks.
Dream big, young grasshopper.
We'll send aloof, coded emails to each other all day. Beneath the words we type will lie a bed of burning coals, but neither of us will mention it. We'll agree to call one another that night.
We do. I don't like talking to you on the phone, you are quiet and I always load the silences with rusted nails. But we do, and it's done. We'll meet on our bikes outside your apartment at 8, your shitty apartment next to the junkie, we'll meet there tonight outside your door, behind the 7-11, we'll meet there.
We do. Head out on out bikes, the sun bleeding low behind the Hollywood hills, we ride along Sunset Boulevard, you ahead of me, I'm staring at the checked shirt you bought when we went shopping at a thrift store on Melrose long before we ever touched, I'm staring at your back and your heels in sandals and your hair blowing back, and a song by The Wedding Present is playing in my head as I pedal, and somehow I know this ride is not happening, that you are not happening….
We turn into the strip mall and lock our bikes to a post, enter the red dark bar and order Wild Turkeys without ice, and I understand this is the moment I will learn how to be a drunk, I am doing it for you like I learned to drink my coffee black, like I dyed my hair black, like I changed the way I walk, everything is drenched in you and I can't bend from it and I don't care, and if the not-caring is the worst of it then I know I will be fine… but it isn't…
Sitting across from you in the bar at a small round table, I am smoking all your cigarettes and twisting beneath your silences and I am making my eyes screech with mischief hoping you'll ask me what all the noise is about, and I suddenly have the sensation we are still pedaling with the sunset behind us, but now the road tips down and our feet fly from the pedals and the pedals spin furiously, and the sky goes black and the cars disappear and all I feel is the terror of not stopping and LA is hot against my skin and you with your checked shirt flapping open before me, and nothing will stop this terror…
We have finished drinking. We have finished smoking. We leave the bar. Now we are back on our bikes riding toward your shitty apartment, our wheels wobble because we are drunk and now I am riding in front and I am standing on my pedals and the wind in my face tells me all I need to know about this night… it tells me the sex will be bad because we've been drinking too much…. it tells me I will wake up on your carpet next to you, long before you do, and I will stare at you until I've lost my fucking name… it tells me we will not have breakfast together on your balcony that morning, nor the morning after…. and if I had any sense I would ask that wind to tell me the story of the rest of you.
But I do not.
Hire me. Or send people to hire me. I'm a good designer. I did this. And this. And this. And this. And even this. I also do web design and T-shirts. I know code and stuff. My resume is here.
Even if YOU don't need my services, you probably know someone who does. So make my dreams come true, okay? (Send all inquiries to sheila@savagecandy.com.)
And while we're at it, who's lookin' for a good play?
I was rejected for an enormous grant this weekend, one administered by the people I work with... they had absolutely no say in the decision, but the rejection letter was signed by someone I know. A form letter. Just a signature. Mailed to my home. Granted, she *may* have forgotten she knew me. Or perhaps she was embarrassed and didn't want to acknowledge the ickiness. Or maybe the world doesn't revolve around me. But that's unlikely.
To add insult to injury... it's MY job to post the list of recipients to the website. The mother fucking opprobrium...
(Am I the only woman out there who spits on her rejection letters before she tears them up?)
Moving on... I met a would-be rival this weekend, on a visit to NC. She is the new BBF of my old BBF Patricia. Here is the first I heard of her, in an email back in March of 2004:
"...she works at a groovy artsy college in the mountains... she and I have found ourselves breathlessly chatting for HOURS at various parties over the past two semesters... she's quite brilliant... she does funky Freudian stuff with Victorian novels... "
Which of course made me outrageously jealous. Mainly because I miss Patricia so much, and they get to have the couples-dinner-party social life I long for with Patricia and her husband. But also because she is a formidable literary scholar, which is a long-lost aspiration of mine.
And so I MET HER, finally. Spent an hour choosing my outfit beforehand, nearly choked on my mango cocktail when they pulled up to the house... I had no doubt I would like her, but strangely, the actual face-to-face made my jealousy evaporate. It was like meeting the new wife of an ex with whom you are still very much in love... but then you find out she is awesome, and somehow it makes everything okay.
On the ride to the airport yesterday, Patricia used the word "blogosphere" four times. Each time she said it she cracked herself up more. One small reason I love her so much.
PS: I like this gal's stuff.
I'm thinking of the way your back curves like a swan's neck. I'm thinking of your laugh (sometimes a mollusk, a lathe, a light blue foam). I'm thinking about the foods you love, the temperature of your bathwater, the flurry of white flakes on your pillow. I'm wondering what is making your brows crumple right now. I'm trying to remember the moment I realized you were no longer ingestable. When you are not an orange crayon, you are an avalanche. You blow me open like a poppy. I'll toast you from miles away, and drink you when I've arrived.
So don't prick me. I'm far too small. I'd probably bleed forever.
The next time you ask yourself, "Am I rad? Like, REALLY rad?" just document one new experience you have per day, for a whole week. If five out of seven of them are transcendent, then you are officially rad.
I'd have to say that I am officially NOT... wanna see?
FRIDAY: Ordered liver and onions for the first time ever, at a Holiday Inn. The dish was highly recommended by the waiter, who had a terrible nerve problem in his hands. They shook violently and perpetually, which was incredibly stressful each time he brought us drinks. Radness=-2
SATURDAY: Ate my first piece of French Silk pie. I thought it was scrumptious at the time, but in retrospect it was the company that was yummy and not the pie... Good people throw one's tastebuds way off. Radness=0
SUNDAY: Dropped a half-full cup of lukewarm Starbucks coffee on a large man in a tiny airplane. I've dropped beverages on people I know before, but never a complete stranger. He and his wife were very nice about it. Radness=5.5
MONDAY: Took a new walking route through the city, from a store in Stuyvesant Town to a restaurant in Soho. I was carrying a newly purchased birthday present for someone I love, so I was in a fantastic mood. The city is so much prettier that way. I should buy more presents. Radness=6
TUESDAY: Put minature marshmellows in my coffee. Not as fun and whimsical as I'd hoped. Radness=1
WEDNESDAY: Slipped sweatpants and a sweater over my pajamas and went grocery shopping in my neighborhood. Would have been fun and whimsical if I'd changed out of my pajamas AT ALL that day. Radness=8
THURSDAY: Grated some zuccini and garlic and sauteed it together. Grating zuccini is very satisfying. But I didn't drain it before I put it in the oil, so it was pulpy. Pulpy zuccini is not satisfying. By any means. Radness=0
Maybe next week I'll be radder. *sigh*
I spend far too much time analyzing the posters in the subway. I really scrutinize them, unless the platform is crowded, and then I get embarrassed because really, the posters are not that interesting.
Or are they? Let's take a tour...
Granted, sometimes the graffitti makes the image. What IS that on his head? Cowboy hat, boobies, a butt? The artist did it to three of these posters at my train stop, so apparently there's a message...
Those CUNY schools and their ecstatic students... if I had known nirvana could be found off the 7 train, I wouldn't be in so much debt.
I am obsessed with her elbows.
This woman's outfit upsets me. And I always do a doubletake to make sure she has feet. I mean I KNOW she has feet, but why did the designer hide them? Are they HIDEOUS? Or is there something mildly offensive about the way she matched that powder-blue right down to her toes? (FYI, powder blue does NOT signal financial success, BMCC...)
Beard-n-blacktooth; a classic.
It warms me to think that the Queer-Eye guys are privately concerned about evil real-estate developers in Brooklyn and other NYC civic issues...
"A west side staduim... a Brooklyn stadium... luxury housing on the Williamsburg waterfront... meanwhile the subways are fucked up, crime is coming back, there's not enough money for housing or security against terrorism..."
How ignominous to be obliterated by the freakin' shuttle!! I mean at least use the Q train for chrissakes... the J/M/Z even...
Not a poster. but delightful nonetheless...
Some subtle social commentary at a construction site in Queens...
Also not a poster... but please observe the photos of spaghetti-eaters. Is that the ABSOLUTE MOST FUN one can have while eating noodles and sauce? And is euphoria guaranteed with every plate? Because if so...
This dude should get his money back.
I'm in Louisville once again. My pieces for the festival are going over incredibly well... they seem to have a good mix of humor and edge, which I think is what the staff was hoping for. The other writers' pieces are also very strong. And the apprentices are rising to the challenge. It should be a fun, wicked show.
Right now I'm sitting at a desk in one of the artist's apartments that ATL provides. I was up until 4am working on the one woman show and, despite all the goodness coming from the weekend's rehearsals, I am a little morose ... in part from want of sleep, but also because this place seems to magnify my career limbo. As if I needed more fuel for my nervous energy.
It isn't a secret that theatre is not a particularly rewarding industry. When it goes well, like today, it is delicious. But it also makes one very hungry. And there are only so many morsels out there, and the same frickin' people keep gobbling them up...
And so Soph and I are starting a band. A complete labor of love with no expectations and therefore little chance for heartache. We'll do a jazzy, punky, downtowny, literary, triphoppy, electro-Slavic kind of thing. The kids are eating that shit up nowadays.
Don't think we can do it? Check THIS, biatch. That's me on vocals and Soph on piano and cymbal. All we gotta do is add some juice and lay down the Slav, and we are like BULLETPROOF.
When I was eleven years old, my parents decided to take us on the only family vacation we would ever have, to Downingtown PA. They got two rooms at a motel for a week, one for the three kids and one for just them. I have no real memory of why they decided this would be a swell place to take the family. I remember them asking us to run off and amuse ourselves in the attached recreation center, or in the lobby, or with our new Colorform set, while they stayed in their room. I remember we never left the motel the entire week. It was raining.
I remember being profoundly bored. I would go to the rec center and see how many weird ways I could run on the treadmill. The Commodore’s "Night Shift" was playing on repeat the entire time, and no one was ever there. I would go there by myself most times, leaving my brother and sister behind in the room to watch TV.
On my third day there, I was surprised to find a girl standing by the Pepsi machine outside the rec center, drinking from a can. She was skinny, face full of tan freckles, reddish-brown hair that came down to her shoulders, and a green terry tank top. She looked me up and down. “My parents stopped here for the night because of the rain,” she said. She asked how old I was. "Eleven." She told me she was fourteen. She asked if there was anything fun to do around there. I told her about the rec center. She wasn’t impressed.
“Do you smoke?” she asked. I was many years from smoking, constantly living in the shadow of my parent’s disapproval. But for some reason I was desparate for her favor. So I told her I did. "Can you get us some?" she asked.
My parents were furiously dedicated smokers, buying cartons of Vantage 100’s and lighting up first thing in the morning before their bowls of Special K. I ran up to their room and knocked on their door, waited a moment, then walked in. They were each lying side by side beneath their covers, looking sheepish. I said I needed toothpaste, walked into their bathroom, retrieved two cigarettes from the pack they kept in their toiletry bag, and exited.
My new friend seemed pleased. “Marlboros?” she asked. I nodded, wondering if she could actually tell the difference. She pulled out a disposable lighter. The color matched her shirt.
It was her idea to sneak into the maintenance closet, since there were "no smoking" signs in the lobby and she didn't want to stand outside in the rain. The closet door wasn’t locked. We slipped inside. I remember metal shelves, a bucket, a mop, an industrial vacuum, and no place to sit.
We lit our cigarettes. She laughed at me as she watched me smoke. I knew I wasn’t doing it right, but I couldn't bring myself to imitate my parents. They held their cigarettes high up in their knuckles and gestured casually with their hands, never ashing accidentally. Also, they inhaled very deeply and could talk with it in their lungs, breathing it out slowly as though they were underlining their words in thin gray sheets. I balanced my cigarette low at my finger tips, and when I raised it to my lips I took shallow puffs and held the smoke in my cheeks for only a few seconds.
She smoked like a real smoker, with pleasure, releasing silvery streams from her nostrils. This would have turned my stomach if my parents had done it, but from her this gesture was the picture of sophistication. We must have been talking, but I can’t recall any topics. I do remember being scornful of my family, possibly calling my brother and sister losers, hoping this was how one established coolness with an older girl.
We finished our cigarettes, me stubbing mine out half-way through, she smoking hers right down to the cotton. She dropped it on the floor of the closet and pressed the tip of her plastic sandal down on it. Then she flicked the lights out and I felt a hand on my breast, or what was struggling to become a breast. I was so shocked I couldn’t do anything, not move, not breathe. I remember feeling embarrassed that I had not yet begun wearing a bra. Then she kissed me, and I tasted the ashtray of her mouth along with some candy-like residue, possibly the sugar from her Pepsi. Then she flicked the lights back on. She was laughing. I thought I must have looked terrified, and was certain I had kissed her wrong and blown my cover.
Then she said, “Thanks for the smoke.” And she left. I didn’t follow her. I stood in the closet by myself for maybe ten minutes. Then I picked up her cigarette butt and left the closet, throwing the butts out in the garbage outside. I walked to the rec center and sat down on the treadmill and listened to The Commodores over and over and over, my chest burning, my mouth tasting like cinders.
She must have told me her name, but it is lost. All the minute details I’ve retained unmarred for twenty years like a bug in amber, but this one item is completely wiped out. Perhaps on my deathbed a synapse will misfire and I’ll wheeze out her name. If you happen to be there, please write it down for me so you can tell me about it in the afterlife.
Have you ever had a very mild crush on someone who you see pretty frequently, and the crush is not remotely worth destroying your relationship over but just powerful enough to be interesting/annoying, and you can't tell anyone, not even your blog, because you know this certain someone will read it, as will the person with whom you are in a relationship?
Ha! Me neither!
Speaking of crushing... I think about this video all the time. I moved it to my own server to assure it wouldn't disappear off the face of the web. If anyone is interested in joining me in August for a spiritual re-enactment, I'm already planning a pilgrimage to the holy site.
I also want to share with you that I have spent the past half hour on the most disturbing website ever, staring at pictures of decapitated and yes, CRUSHED people. I find it almost comforting (almost) to think that something so imponderable can actually be captured on film. Like, if that's the worst thing that can happen to a human body, and I can actually look at it without bursting into flames, then maybe I shouldn't be so fucking scared of it.
How's that for riffin' on a theme? (I'm here all week, ladies and gents...)
Oh, in Sheila's Art News... I had a small reading of my Ulysses adaptation yesterday at The Lark. It did not go well. The play kind of sunk. It had lovely moments, but as a whole it's difficult to grasp, and it didn't help that the actor saddled with the biggest comic load was too hung-over to be funny. The play felt like a dirge rather than a carnival ride. And after a week's worth of no sleep and brain-busting table-work, it was such a let-down.
In other words, I was crushed. (hee)
