Camp Out

The suggestion of any overnight venture with a bunch of insane (and gay) Girl Scouts was stomach-churning to me in the extreme, but me and my mom had already committed to being there, so we wanted to see it through. I was at the end of my rope with this clique, in the same way I practically decided overnight (to my rather detached and then suddenly overly-aggressive parents) that I would not pursue anorexia nervosa with a bitchy all-girl ballet troupe for a living, like, after the very first lesson, but they needed years to work out their overreaction to kids in tutus, which I understood, to a point. I'm really cute! This felt like that: I knew what was going on, but they needed "time to process it", which was our family's go-to phrase for mental disabilities and serious learning impairments.

Such is the way of life for the healthy children of sick parents, and, besides visits from my grandparents, I didn't know any other types of experiences at home, because all of my classmates and friends growing up had similar stories (or worse) to add as fuel to our group's fire. We hated our home lives, but children can only do so much, not that it stopped our parents from using us however they saw fit, which was poorly and often. My mom's neighbors in her current senior neighborhood are the exact same way: crazy angry city parents suffering from serious disorders who back up one another over, say, the health of any other type of human being on the planet, give or take a few acceptable life forms like their plants, because in "DivaLand", they must always come first, or abuse will surely follow.

"Yeah, Diane!" Ruth calls out to me working for my mother, like I always do. "That's what children are for!" And that's how they see it: they're sick (and now old, too) and we're not, so they will tap us until we crack, if we stick around, in between hours of free labor. Then, you co-dependently cycle through your circle to bleed other people dry, which doesn't work, because they're sick, too. So, it's back to me? NO! I'm so shocked! It's like a really bad play that's repeated over and over again, and any events or activities attached to them as a generation played out more or less the same, which made us tired of parenting them as children, which, as far as I can tell, is unique to Generation X. Nonetheless, they we were: at a horrible overnight with a fucked-up troop of gay Girl Scouts and their crazy butch "leader".

It was to be borne with as little drama as possible, but with manic depression flowing as freely as the soda that sustained these raging bitches, we were kinda doomed from the beginning. Not that I needed anymore confirmation about these types of things. Sigh...parenting is really hard in childhood, you know? I felt like I needed coffee with my mom and the other parents just to get through the night, and I don't need caffeine to remain aware mentally, which means I'm forced to undergo rigorous feats of endurance, yet again, that I did not need to repeat. My ethnic background and my home tribe of Acadian boys had pretty much set me up for country life, anyway. I didn't need these fucking chicks, and they hated that, too. Becoming overly attached is a sign of involvement in the "Mental Patient" world, and we knew how that play ended, too: badly. For you.

With this mindset of gritted teeth backed by true grit, it was simply a situation made to be borne out by me, however it happened, and I just hoped none of the country queers (and their pampered city parents) died or tried to kill each other throughout the madness that would surely ensue, because that's what madness does to people and their children, gay or not. The mothers were set up in a cabin, and my mom had already bitched about that to the Nth degree with her own act that spanned three curtain calls, because before she had MS as a convenient excuse to freak out, she used a hypothetical "bad back" and "pre-arthritic condition" that was possibly osteoarthritis (so interesting!) that she could deliver expertly when it was needed for her comfort, like sleeping on the wood floor of an old tent in a sleeping bag, like I did with the other children in the troop. But, not her. Oh, no.

She explained in great detail how she had several unique conditions that required special treatment, like a pad to sleep on and her own bed, which she got, while I wondered who would try to kill a girl first in the big tent at the camp. It wasn't long before I found out. There was movement along one side of the tent that sent the already-hysterical girls screaming like it was their big scene in a "Jason" movie, except it wasn't. It was probably a snake attracted to the lights they insisted in shining after "lights out", because of their night terrors, also a greatly understood part of the their tribal culture that was easily assimilated by their types of brains. Yes! Had to be it! I sighed, took a look, decided (what I already knew) that they weren't worth talking to, and then went to find my mom at her continued coffee klatch that was "hardship" in Diane-speak.

She decided that it was worth checking out, after she had abandoned me to sleep there on my own with those crazy bitches because the floor was "too hard", even though she had a stiff wood board installed beneath her mattress for firmness at home, with a gay little step-stool on her side of the bed, so she could get into her prized "antique" bed. I knew about it from every angle, because all of my young life I was forced to help her with everything, included flipping her orthopedic mattress, adjusting the wood slats under the bed, changing the sheets (of course), and adjusting the wood board. She had to have light-proof shades, the birds were also too noisy by her window, and she had a bevy of water-bottles, cold compresses, pills, special pillows, and other accoutrements attached to her bed-rest days that included hoarding piles of papers on my father's side of the bed that she would then dump onto the floor at night, until he finally forced her to go through it.

I didn't expect much courage from her, is what I mean to write to y'all. And she didn't disappoint me, as she played the "city mouse" frightened by the woods at night to a hilt. We talked it over as a group (sort of), and after my mom was also similarly reassured that they were bat-shit and overreacting to normal nighttime stimuli (like noises and movement) as a means of entertainment, she left after finally suggesting that maybe the boys from an overnighting Boy Scout troop were pranking them by pulling on the tent flaps, and that was it. Boys?! NOOO!!! "My mother specifically said I was not to interact with boys!" It sent a shiver of terror through the group that was way worse than a snake sighting, but I was psyched. I could use my flashlight to signal for help! Heck, it was better than having to go through the torture of picking an "outhouse buddy" with some chick in a full-on house bathrobe, metal mouth retainer, and bunny slippers. Fuck, man...where's my badge for that? None was forthcoming.

But, I'd made my point with Diane, and the next morning's pancake breakfast cinched the deal for me, forever. We were done, and my mom had a tale of torture and abuse that included severe back pain with lots of <insert her brand of medicine here>, and a total lack of sleep because the mattress was "lumpy". I got closure, and an end to enforced gay girl groups for me, for the rest of my childhood. It was quiet, I cried a lot in my room from the sheer loneliness and isolation of it, but at least I could read, and since that was considered an "educational pursuit" by my upwardly-mobile parents, they couldn't be seen as ripping that away from me, under my grandparents watch. All I had to do now was make it into college. And wait. There was always a lot of that to spare. Just hunker down, and wait it out.

Scouts Honor

My dad was the Scoutmaster for my bro's Boy Scout troop growing up, and it was awesome. We did really fun things like canoeing, wilderness hiking, and history tours that became treasure hunts to find the most building markers in Philadelphia at nighttime, which kind of felt like that t.v. show "Sleepy Hollow". I learned about camping (always pack extra white socks for makeshift bandages, and triple-wrap matchbooks in foil and plastic for waterproofing), orienteering (moss almost always grows on the north side of a tree, but always carry a working compass anyway), reading trails and the landscape, but I mostly knew that anyway. I was the best scout my dad ever had, until I joined "The Brownies" and then "The Girl Scouts".

Then, the pace slowed to a crawl, and there were no boys around. At all. There were absolutely no menfolk or boys around anymore; just a really "butch" troop leader who'd adopted two kids with "her" "husband", which was jarring to me outside of a girls-only softball practice that I did not attend outside of school hours. Ya dig? Country queers were deeply closeted back in the day, but we knew who was who anyway because we knew "gay", even as very young children. For instance, at Chestnut Grove elementary school in New City, his name was Patrick, and he was (is) a very nice, quiet, devoutly Catholic Irish-American boy with a blue pen type of birthmark. In junior high, his name was "Bryon", and he did funny things like foil bullies from pulling on his pants for wedgies and compose sonnets on the fly while pursuing an acting career in the city that he continued for years.

In high school, "the gay kid" was Pete and he's an awesome painter, albeit with a lifelong appreciation of goth music and/or the lifestyle, but I digress. We're talking about lesbians. In our school, her name was Gina, and she was famously found in bed with her "best friend"—a petite, highly-freckled Irish-American girl one grade behind her—by her mom the summer before we all left for college. Unlike the average suburban "sports dyke" though, Gina was (and is) the real deal: an all-star athlete who attended college on a basketball scholarship, not that it ended there. She played almost every sport that we had a team for, like volleyball, track and field, baseball, swimming, etc. So, we knew "gay" and we knew the real deal, too, not just the awkward "closet case" lurking around doing vaguely "faggy" stuff. We were "out" with each other about who were were, because we were all we had back then as a generation.

Still, the crazy dykes in my troop surpassed even my sophisticated New York understanding of gay culture. They were fucking horrible. They were cliquish to the extreme and insane, and instead of feeling ashamed about it, they reveled in their loud queerness like the assholes they were. My mom loved it. Unlike, say, dancing or art, she could excel in this. My mom remains one of the bitchiest gossips I have ever met in my life, and she's also kind of an "art fag", too. She loved the little cliques she could giggle with like a kid, over weird shit like different colored strings that were made into bad crafts no one really likes. That's a fucking badge for chicks in this troop?! The good sportsmanship of my father and my brothers had wrecked me on this gay girl experience, and nothing less as a scout would do.

I made it through Brownies easily because I really liked the illustrations that came with the handbook for me to read, plus my friends were part of that troop, but once the local "closet case" took over, she upped up the manic energy a few gay cheerleader notches, and I couldn't take it anymore. My mom immediately bonded and then sided with the gay girls and their dykey troop leader with the crew cut, to laugh about me behind my back and make fun of me, which is what she did at home with her sisters anyway, so why did I need to earn a badge in it? I really didn't. Plus, did I mention there were no boys? Like, no men at all, and that's hell for a straight girl, man-ladies. Turns out that hell for a totally heterosexual woman is a bunch of bitchy, bipolar, deeply closeted queers in a homocentric Girl Scout troop in the 'burbs, with no room for escape. Buckle up, boys. It's gonna be a bumpy ride.

Zombification

All of my life I've known that there's something wrong with some people, even as a baby. I've seen it in animals, too. My fluffy white dog loved almost everyone, except the crazy dyke who "dated" my mentally ill aunt in secret, much like her silent hoarding habit. Our adorable little princess doggie would immediately bristle, baring her fangs aggressively and raising her hackles in anger, and she was right. That bitch was totally fucking nuts (she died from a deliberately bad surgery done years ago), and psychosis is something most life forms pick up on. I don't want you to think that you need special superpowers to know "crazy" when you see it or feel it, because you don't.

Anomalies in our human world are fairly easy to spot, like the disordered dykes who wander around the local public library thinking they can stalk me on the sly by pretending to have a real interest in our community. By the way, say "hi" to the camera, bitch! We also note license plates to go along with your cars' make and model, because we all know each other here in Rockland County, so thanks for making it easier for us to spot you. Bitch.

Dead people are like that, too. They have a hollow feeling to them that permeates their entire being, often with a seriously bad smell to go along with their mental static (http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2015/10/michelle-hat.html). I don't want you to think that I'm prejudiced against serious illness either, because my mom is the most disabled person I've ever met, and I've tended to her my whole life. It isn't just sickness that needs fixing. It's like there's something rotten deep in their soul.

Psychotics know we sense them as a disturbance in the force (life force, that is), and so they continue this weird gay dance of circling around human life on the periphery, until we notice the quietly lurking nut-job in a corner of a room, punching a black hole into our days and lives. They will cite loneliness as an excuse for sabotaging the peace and quiet of our happy days, but that's a total fucking lie. Psychos hurt people because it takes their minds off the innate badness that's seeped into the core of who they are. It's their essence that offends.

Back in art school, we had a friend who was like that. If you didn't enable her obsessive compulsive addictions, she lashed out at you and then tried to build a consensus around the shaky justifications she needed to cover up her bat-shit routines, like an incessant cleanliness that was (and still is) directly linked to her mental illnesses, and not a bunch of dirty dishes in the sink of a college house. My friend Cheryl, also significantly problematic like a lot of the people I met at school (what else do you call a professional graphic designer in her 30s from a professionally artistic family who decides to compete with a group of working class kids in art school?!), felt it in Lisa, too.

"It's like there's this hole inside of her <she would gesture to her midsection> that she's always looking for you to fill for her", and that was dead-on. She was so needy that it was too extreme to be around her sometimes. If you had a male friend hanging out, that was even worse. She'd try to poach him from you or the group barely after introductions had been made, like we were in a deranged competition that only she knew about, which I guess she figured gave her the "edge" she needed to "win", but at what we were never really sure of. Need I tell you that she is a former cheerleader, bisexual, and manic depressive? No?! Right! Because you already knew that, just like I did, and so did our hip art school friends.

She'd hit on gay men to see if they would "turn" for her (totally delusional), or pretend she wanted to kiss girls at the bar to put on a big gay show, if a lot of people were around and not talking to her; anything for attention. She had the requisite art-fag hairdo (http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2015/09/art-fags.html) to go along with her overly trendy outfits, decorated with stupid hats and pilgrim shoes with too-big buckles, using a garishly bright red lipstick made for you to notice how unusual her lip shape was, cleverly accented with slightly darker lip-liner. She just tried too hard about shit no one gave two fucks about, which drove her to even more abusive behavior.

And it never ended with her. If I introduced her to a single guy, I could count on Lisa to either A) hook up with him or B) try to later on. If the guy was my boyfriend, I could rely on her to make "subtle" overtures to him in front of me that I had to prove in this wild series of ever-escalating head games that were designed for her to decrease her mental static by using me, instead of taking medication and going to therapy. If she was flat-out busted by the entire group for her machinations and schemes, she'd shrug her shoulders of any blame by saying that "if he was really into her, he wouldn't have slept with me! That's her problem", because she had that line at the ready in case she was caught. After awhile, it didn't matter if the life-form was male or female, just easy or drunk enough for her to manipulate.

My oldest brother bought into the Yuppie world hardcore (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuppie), which meant that he has trafficked with some of the biggest scumbags on the planet, in the world trading center of downtown New York City. He describes the dead people he's worked with as "sketches"; outlines of people roughly drawn, without any real detail filled in. We were all pretty much saying the same thing after a certain point in our lives, and it was this: dead people were everywhere, and we could prove it. We've seen them and talked to them all of our lives. I can see dead people. So can you! How's that for a rainy day like today? Beware, humans. They're everywhere.

http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/articles/closet-psychological-issues-being-and-coming-out

The Buddy System

Soldiers Holding Hands: It is not unusual in many societies throughout east Africa for men to display their friendship for one another by holding hands in public. Two soldiers on patrol in the streets of Bujumbura, Burundi nonchalantly express their affection for one another. Geordie Mott from Halifax, NS, Canada

My best friend from high school and I formed a friendship pact the summer after our graduation, drunk and high as we were on the beaches of New Jersey, because were were going to be roommates as freshmen, and we were looking forward to freedom, school, boys....or maybe that was just me. I tried back then to be as discreet as possible about my liaisons, taught as I'd been by many years of envious abuse that my looks (never to be openly discussed) were in the same category as my rampant heterosexuality; something to be hinted at, glossed over quickly (for your comfort), and then summarily dismissed, lest it cause anyone else in the room with me embarrassment over something I couldn't control then or now.

It was oddly secretive, which aren't my personality traits, but I considered good social manners and politeness towards my friends to be very important, because we all came from disastrously broken homes that were rife with crazily violent outbursts, followed by those mellow periods that marked our parents shameful lives. It also followed cleanly along with those typically deeply-ingrained patterns of manic depression that we "wrote the book(s) on" as children, because we studied it up-close and personal, and not by choice.

We continued our comic routines about our fucked-up parents well into adulthood, and some of us even have their native New Yawk accents down pat (uh, yeah, me). Our brilliant timing and high sense of comedy made for strong bonds between us; everyone in our crowd loves a good time. Having fun with my friends was something that got me through the rough spots even when we were badly banged up by other people's problems. It was in this common spirit of preserving a well-maintained equilibrium among the mental anguish around us that made the difference between our success and failure, alone as we were.

So, me and my best friend devised a few necessary ground rules to cover us through those first few rough patches we would inevitably have during our first year in college. We were accepted into our schools of choice, proving to nasty detractors (and family alike) that our intelligence wasn't just some crazy person's bullshit hype, something our hapless parents have denied to our faces all of our lives (they have to be smarter), despite mountains of evidence to the contrary. Karen's parents took their pride all the way home to an early grave, which was a type of winning in their twin books of life's massive stand-offs and epic show-downs. They'd rather die from cancer and addiction than admit we were winning, which we are, and we knew it because we had to always justify our existence to the madness of their minds, despite our freedom from their decision to meet, mate, and marry.

We were independent way too soon, and we knew that, too. There would be no rescue for any of us from any of our failures (as individuals, or within a group), because our parent's were the first people we knew who hurt us badly. In response to their insanities, we became perfected, which they hated, too. It was the perfect love/hate dynamic for a disordered generation with no real ups-or-downs. It was "Easy Street" all the way for our softer parents, which is exactly why we went to school with a lot more focus than most 17- and 18-year old's matriculating within an excellent working-class school in upstate New York. We had jobs, some money, and a strong sense of self... and that was about it, besides all of the ideals we knew we had to enforce to create the change we needed to exist out there in the world.

The first challenge for us to address was our rather infamous party skills, ones openly displayed that were duly noted by friend and foe alike, and isn't that life itself? Know thyself first, then know thy enemy second, and we did. Karen was hurt early on during our last summer home by a group of friends who turned on her while they "played house" and we drank on the beach around boys with bonfires, and then I got hurt later on in the season by a man in his 30s looking to "score with a hottie", which meant someone else existed in his head besides me, probably someone made-up and far from reality.

We hammered out the details, though, behind the backs of people we were meant to cut off from, because they couldn't keep up. In between peals of giddy laughter at our new-found freedoms, we planned for the inevitable backlash that always followed on the heels of our frivolities, like partying on a beach in summertime and then being dropped into the coldness of a Canada-like deep freeze for college, in a simulacrum of opposites that we could do nothing about but accept, because we grew up swinging between other people's polar extremes. We knew what to expect, hurt as it was inevitably designed to do anyway.

But, we didn't die at school, and believe it or not, that can happen at any time, which we accepted as gracefully as any teenage woman could. I contracted a serious illness from a tick bite during a walk through the woods my second month at school, after first tangling swords with the "Duke of Puke" and then meeting my first real boyfriend, though today's concept for kids is to stay safe, like we tried to do. One of our few precious rules was to "never party alone" which we intoned to any kid reasonable enough and sober enough to listen (or care about). We didn't save everyone, but we fought hard for our generation, the very one you as Millennials (or more charmingly known as "Gen Y" by their inept parents, as in "Why did I have kids?" Indeed! Why did you?) hold us to the highest human standards one can have for their elders, which is the right thing to do.

Always have a drinking buddy, never go to a party alone, don't party by yourself (in case something should happen to you that requires immediate medical assistance), and never walk home at night in the dark. Stay safe, loved ones. The woods are full of wolves...and Generation X. Welcome to the "New World Order"! It's time to survive, and it's time for survival skills, because "survival skills are paramount to success" (yes, another saying just like my...NOOO!!! My Dad says that!) So. Survive. I want you to survive. Then, we can thrive. And that's another one of our motto's, too. Survive, then thrive.

https://www.nspcc.org.uk/

https://www.nspcc.org.uk/preventing-abuse/keeping-children-safe/staying-safe-away-from-home/. Every childhood is worth fighting for.

Over Hill, Over Vail

"Gore Creek Drive - Vail, CO" by Nick Csakany.

On the way to Vail, I tried to prep my largely impatient punk-rock boyfriend about the pretentious twitchy qualities that mark my oldest brother and his wife, but...what to say? It was like trying to describe the desolation my father had exiled himself to, deep in the wastelands of western Texas, that he pitched as a false paradise to anyone who listening; it was, by its very nature, a contradiction in terms. Some things (and people) you just have to see for yourself.

Because Kent was a brilliant man, he and I got on really well as friends, and that was the main bond between us, way beyond any temporary romance he and I may have had. We just "got" each other and the worlds we came from, in the present tense. When I told him about Jim's trendy Internet "start-up", the very first question Kent asked me was: "Why are they pissing away all their money on family vacations for the executives and their entire families, on one of the wealthiest resorts in the country?!". Uh....because they're corrupt, dude. I was always embarrassed by the obvious nature behind my brother's greed. It unnerved me, which is what he likes about money: it's power that's fleeting but satisfying, to the right type of mind.

We didn't share his fascination for all things rich, white, and insane but Jim came about honestly, meaning, he picked it up practically from birth. As far back as we knew him, Jim has always been attracted to the wrong types of things. Give him real food, and he wants fake. Take him to a cousin's overly extravagant wedding you know he can't afford, and Jim wants a pass to the country club just so he can grovel to get in, and then pound wanna-be joiners over the head with his success. It sucks, and it doesn't feel like how family should feel, but that's the world he wanted; it's also about as far from the lessons any true Acadian should have learned a long time ago as it could possibly be, but that's how it is.

Corruption isn't for just the insanely rich. It also infects anyone aspiring to it, the way a suicide wreaks havoc on anyone near the crime scene, in a blast zone of evil that tries to eat at the healthy life around it, or so the perpetrator wants you to believe, like the cartoon victim who lies to the very end, denying it every step of the way. But, Jim's taste for ostentation and bragging far surpassed his need for discretion, and that's what I fall back on during his worst times: he'll snap out of his "money haze" to see the truth of how it really is. After all, his kids are dark as fuck! They ain't passing as "Anglo" at family reunions anytime soon, and isn't that why he and his wife avoid them? I know he knows that, deep down inside, where his ancestry tucked away all the good stuff that no raving lunatic can ever snatch away from him, no matter the amount of pretty guises.

Sure enough, as soon as we hit the first steep hill into town, there was Jim's insane "tanorexic" of a wife running uphill in the snow with my nephew in her "runner's" baby carriage that cost a mint, and immediately upon seeing her, we both bust out laughing. That crazy bitch could always be counted on for being just what we know her to be: stupid as fuck, and deeply programmable by any corporation that needs available drones for rent. You see, her womanly "baby fat" struck the wrong chord with the obviously gay and very butch woman she reported to, the one who barked at her whenever she felt like it (day or night, weekday or weekend, during office hours or while on "vacay"), so she could have the pleasure of seeing my brother's wife lick her boot-heels, in one of the gayest female displays I have ever seen in my life, but that bitch is beyond cray-cray. We all know it.

Not one of our friends and family like her, and we have a HUGE family. Not. One. Person. She is one of the rudest, nastiest, viciously aggressive cunts we've ever had the misfortune to meet in my family, and we're New Yorkers. Know what I mean? Like many a company of underlings and "yes-men" I've worked my way through, that's exactly what every total ass-kissing MBA really wants: to trap each other in a cycle of cowardly cringing and then furious lashing out, in one of the sickest examples of "making it" that humans currently have. How is that success? It isn't, but that doesn't stop them from tap-dancing all the way to an early grave with fully loaded pockets.

Sure enough, their trip was by-the-book: a grossly over-priced "villa" that every executive booked his family into, so that was the first thing we heard about, their plush "suites" in a hotel resort. Oh. Kent and I exchanged knowing looks during their delusion opening stump-speech; they do realize we actually live in Colorado full-time, right? Like, their insanely over-decorated tourist trap for dumb out-of-town white folk is our everyday. They must know, right? After all, my brother went to an very impressive and really expensive Ivy League school for his business degree. They must know, no? 

No. That wasn't the facade at all. As soon as we asked them astute questions about re-investing in chancy Internet start-ups, my brother's wife began her real drinking of the day, early as the afternoon was. As we watched her skinny tan arms slinging it back, the jig was already up. Ohh....that's it. It's a bank scam! Huh. Funny, or did my bro not remember that our "Pops" (her annoyingly cutesy name for my father that we all hated for its falsely intimate Southern hokey charm, because he disapproves of her the most, first and foremost) actually spent his time in the banking system as young man working at The Bank of New York, and then as the owner of The First Bank of Lockney, because I sure did! I remember his lessons quite well, because I know how to listen, and that's an essential skill in business.

After that, me and my man tore through it proper. We spent our time as far away from the madness as we could, and as actual Coloradans, it wasn't difficult for us to disappear into the landscape. We booked a snowboard lesson with a pathetic stoner on a wildly dangerous "bunny" slope designed for maximum casualties. Those dumb shits actually put small children on the same hill as a 250lb 6' Scotsman on a seriously sharp blade edge, because if you can maim your customers while draining their wallets, what better way to score huge bar tabs from "weekend warriors" in their designer casts, made by the hotel doc who loves all the "powder" he can get? Heavy on the hints, natch. 

And that's actually what my man on the real did, after I couldn't take the dip-shit surfer lingo from some blond kid who just wanted to get high for free while giving away absolutely nothing in "how-to's" that were cleverly disguised as "snowboarding lessons" for the dumb, rich, and insane, like the generically spoiled Generican she must surely be. Sure enough, I couldn't do it, especially with toddlers on skis whizzing past us, so like any really good mother, I bailed on a set-up made for accidents soon enough. My man didn't, as is his nature, so I got the pleasure of watching my death-metal rock g-d plow into that fucking idiot who was, in order: severely under-weight for a real athlete, too short for her job with full-grown adults, falsely blond, overly tan, and a truly dumb, naive youngster in over her head.

I saw him (safe at my cafe table a good distance away, with my gear already off and soaking in the warm mountain sun) knock her off her feet and straight onto her back at full ramming speed, as she stayed down on the snow holding her arms across her chest for a good long while, with the wind knocked out of her. Ha! My man! That's what a real Scotsman-on-ice does as a "novice", honey! Knocks ya right off yer feet. It was good fun, and she called it quits after that, beat right down to her feet by an actual man with a penis. They were some brilliant moments, though, like meeting my brother in the village at a cool lunch spot, high off really good beer, free as we were from his overbearing hexan-hagen* to order actual good German food that we love, in the perfect setting for it, without his wife's anxious fretting over her non-existent "back fat" that she manufactures on cue to escape notice of her eating disorders (yeah, we know).

Or, seeing the lights of town wink on one-by-one magically, lighting up the quaint village in a town awash with sparkling snow and pretty lights, with cute lil' baby Jimmy and his adorable chubby cheeks red from the cold, as we watched a few ice skaters make their way leisurely across the small rink at sunset, as happy in this world as any other place on G-d's green earth, and isn't that our way? Bring on the snow, then, and a cheerfully roaring fire. I've got the really great stories to tell, over a strong lager in a tall-necked glass. Not her, though. She has this disease that makes her fingertips turn white. 

Best that she go to her fucking "feng shui" designed condo in her native Florida, where she can simply tan and diet in peace, in an "vacay" second home that was bought during my active time in MMA, because it was in foreclosure, thus could be had for a song-and-dance during someone else's most difficult times, financially-speaking, of course. What a coincidence, don't you think? Or is it just more genius marketing "synergy" by one of the former female corporate "greats" of the world"? Hmm. That's for you to decide, my liebchens.

* https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Biest

Chameleon

http://wiki.waveborn.com/becoming-so-good-they-can-t-ignore-you

Competitive media companies tend to be bitchy hot-spots for gossip, as employees fight it out among themselves for the most coveted positions within a house according to their appropriate levels, or not, as the case may be. You think some of the books you read are freaky? You should meet some of the people who make them....shudder. Bookish types tend to be somewhat anti-social: think of a mad scientist who just HAS TO clean every beaker in the the lab twice or thrice to guard against invisible alien...er, germs, and you're there.

Many well-read people are simply addicts with a bent for technical and highly repetitive labor clothed in sheep's garb, but take away their main "jones", and they're like any other addict; snarling nasty vicious beasts. I love reading as much as the next professional publisher, but take it away from me and I know I won't freak out, miss it as I may, because I'm in such a phase right now when it's more important for me to produce work through writing than being your passive audience.

It's the same thing for most well-trained artists who go through different phases of productivity based on many factors that include time, money, inclination, location; same as any other field, with the exception that there is no one to pass the buck to, which makes for much more difficult productive periods than the average "joe", but such is life. Because we create content long before the public has access to it, our companies (and lives) are filled with intrigue and possibility which, in the wrong hands, makes for a potent cocktail that people not born to the work can't handle.

I see bound galleys at garage sales all the time, but it's one of the most unethical acts a publishing professional can do, because leaking a book early to the public deprives everyone in the work queue the right to earn off it as a property, the way that buying bootleg DVD's is serious intellectual theft, but catch any drunk at the bar on Friday night, and you've got a thief looking to score, hot to brag about his "already seen it" status to other junkies who use it as leverage, too. Why not just wait? I always liked waiting to see something, like being pleasantly surprised on Christmas morning, not that I need to have the element of mystery to enjoy anything. I'm happy with "spoilers" that deprive media junkies of their high, because I'm a mature adult who understands that there's tons of available content for just about any person out there in the world, and as such, I accept that I probably won't be able to get to all of it, so why try? Just relax, and enjoy it.

But, some people need dirty nasty secrets to hold over one another as bribes, just like assholes in a typical office do. We all know them: they're that shifty-eyed kid who sneaks onto your email behind your back, so he can develop some "strategy" to foil your genius without you knowing it, even though he (and every other person on the payroll) is utterly dependent on you for income, thus breeding the hatred that envy inspires. I dated a typical ad guru who knew all the tricks of the trade: hire brilliant but vulnerable people like, say, a single woman living paycheck-to-paycheck in the city, just one small check away from bankruptcy but famous anyway, even though you should, like, NEVER say it to her face or she'll, like, know it and stuff, and there goes secrecy as a strategy!

So, I know all the big personality types who peddle our wares, grudgingly as "no-talents" tend to be as a group, but also utterly dependent on us, and isn't that why they turn on us? It's a pretty easy formula to suss out, much like the reason the retarded bully in the playground hates everyone: simply because you're there, and because his father's a mean drunk, so they're set up to be that way. Anyway, during our brief time dating (most of which the ad guy spent in competition with the other man I was dating), he asked me a lot of leading questions about the "other man" disguised as "support" from the modern guy looking to "score" with a beautiful woman. After a quick while, it actually became a pseudo-gay relationship between the two of them through me. He also thought it was bitchy fun to "out" a well-known and highly respected actor to me, simply because I knew his work well and the women he's collaborated with creatively, like, say an infamous Broadway actress with very curly hair (thanks for not selling out "soul sister") who can pass for my doppelganger at times.

I was nonplussed because lots of people are gay, to which he became a little twitchy about it, "Oh, oh sorry...did you have  a 'crush' on him?" Uh, no...never really thought about it before. "Because if you did, I'm so sorry!" Yeah, no sweat, dude. Actually, we were in downtown Brooklyn on a warm day, and I was thinking about pizza at a "famous" place that's always crowded with tourists, and as a native New Yorker, I never fucking wait on lines for our food, like some gimmicky tourist trap meant to gouge the unsuspecting. I cook better than most people anyway! He seemed curiously let-down that I couldn't give a fuck about some artist's sex life, and why would I? What does it have to do with me? It's the same thing at work: why would I give a fuck about who sleeps with who, and when? I make the work, they sell it and give me the profits I earn through my own labor. It's a pretty effective formula for craftspeople that's worked since we thought of it many moons ago.

It did give me a lot insight into why people like him sell-out so quickly; it's the fear that the money will dry up, once we figure out who they really are, which isn't true for experts like myself. Like my mentors told me, do your job well and that's your security. You don't need all the bullshit. If you work hard, you'll succeed, and that's always been the case with me, because nothing beats hard work. Anyway, after he and I necessarily drifted apart because he couldn't figure out how to work with an open honest person like myself, I noticed that he drifted out west, after his ex-wife moved there with his one child, the same woman he loved/hated by alternately craving her sex and then cheating on her to get her attention, like a ten year-old in crafts class off of his Ritalin. Really? Skirt-cashing the very woman he despises? Oy....strange are the ways of the disordered classes.

Anyway, I'm counting on him cyber-stalking me today without telling me how much he loves my work (and that happens every day, too), so let me take this time to ease his mind: back in the day, we "the knowing public" also knew that Liberace was gay, as we did about Richard Chamberlain, George Michael, and the fabulously feminine Boy George, and you know what? We love their music and their art anyway, because as Steve Martin once famously said, all you have to do to be a master artist is work harder than anyone you know, and "be so good that they can't ignore you". Ain't that the truth? There...now it's out there. The truth is out there! See you on the flip side of life, kids, and all the other "minors" in my audience. I see you!

http://bit.ly/1SBWvgb

http://bit.ly/1SBWvgb 

The Man Who Liked Men

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_Man

I've worked with just about every type of human currently on planet Earth (twice, thrice, and more than nice), as part of the exclusive media elite of New York, and I studied alongside them, too, as part of the intellectual elite who attend the world's finest schools, rife with the wealth, power, and privileges the children of the richest families so often have. It's given me a wide range of deviant behaviors to observe (and fight) that even the most hard-bitten city detective would have a tough time beating me on, and that's also part of the point: working through the highly competitive and very selective environments that are so difficult to gain access to, they bring on a severe case of "the crazies" for people who are not mentally equipped to work at that level. It causes "freak outs" in the most showily aggressive and publicly hostile ways, which are necessary for us to take action against.

Underneath the cover of work, there's even wild accusations of corporate espionage among employees, ones that quickly followed on the heels of my official apprenticeship, and that's part of it, too: knock out the really gifted folks who threaten anyone in "the game" who can't perform well without using deceit. When I broached the supposedly large gap that existed between the worlds of manufacturing and art, they called me a "spy" on both sides of the fence for being brilliant enough to work technically as well as artistically, which was in direct conflict with company practices at the time, because I was the first classically trained artist to work in both the production and design departments at St. Martin's Press, and the harassment didn't end.

I "sucked" at design because I didn't know computers like the highly experienced graphic designers who couldn't draw expertly like me and my friends who'd studied many art forms could do. When that didn't work, the lead art director laughingly mocked me for not knowing computers like he did as an expert his 30s (I was in my early 20s at the time), by making all of us take some personality test that was rigged for assigning the name "Marie" as that of some stuffy old secretary, because I came into the department as a manager who could perform many job functions, unlike the diva designers who plead ignorance to anything they didn't want to do.

Like any old scam appearing daily at offices for the disordered worldwide, I actually came out ahead of the game through my proficiency and humility to absorb any type of task that was needed for the job at hand, and that was part of the point about my apprenticeship, too: I can do anything better than you, even when I'm robbed of your clear advantages in some sort of fix or "double-cross". When trifling co-workers couldn't hack at me though the work flow, they re-doubled their efforts to con me into social situations disguised as those mandatory horrors known as "the office party", in desperate efforts to get me drunk and spill the beans, which I always did, because more than one wise person told me repeatedly that if you never lie, you have nothing to hide, and that's the truth.

But, that didn't stop 'em from firing hard at me over the years. One of the best cons was a bitchy Eurasian gay girl in disguise, working her typical "art fag" hairdo and expensive designer clothes for all it was worth by sleeping her way through the office staff, girls and boys alike. Oh, I staved her off at arm's length like I know how to do in my sleep, which took 'em awhile to sort out amongst themselves. The industry types in the know rigged a mandatory job requirement for me, making me work oversees with her as their lead production editor (untrained in German, on foreign-language computers with European power sources), because the openly gay woman from the U.S. design team was openly sick, and she constantly threatened discrimination lawsuits that they told me they were afraid of behind closed doors, even though the company had other "out" gay people working there.

It put me in direct line of this editor's abuses overseas in English, which was a new one for me, working as I did alone in a supposedly German-language-only design studio that's a classic isolationist technique for the chronic abuser seeking to attack. It was desperately done, but I knew the deal ahead of time, because it took me six months to find work, a long time for someone as experienced as me, but that's an economic downturn for you. On my first day of work, I saw the gay designer and her manager savage each other in the hallways by violently cursing at each other, after which I immediately called my father to report obvious workplace abuse. He told me I "had to" work there because there were no other jobs out there, and since it took me "so long" to find a job, I had no choice. He told me to "keep my head down, and my mouth shut", which I dutifully transposed onto a small yellow post-it as the anagram "HDMD" in thick black pen, and taped it to my work monitor so as to remember his sage wisdom, which was noticed by the staff around me, though it oddly went unremarked on by the very same employees who seemed to be verbally abusive about any other thing, wherever I went.

In fact, I'm so good at keeping my cool, I became famous for it. Christina, the arty in-over-her-head provincial with the ready strategy of promiscuous office sex, made me her friend by force, which is a common enough technique when the work thing doesn't quite pan out. Her and her friends from Boston put the heavy hand on for inviting me out, so much so that I knew it was a corporate strategy for getting the personal goods on me, so as to use by attacking my psyche through office attacks that would be hard for me to prove, which it was, and which I won at anyway, but that's a story for another day. She tried to set me up one weekend with her guy friend who had trouble dating, and who was also working the online dating scene hard, just like I so happened to be doing at the same time. Huh...what a coincidence.

We had a day at the beach outside of the office that went bad, because my obvious female sex organs in my sexy, black, halter-top bathing suit freaked out their friend, which Christina explained away as the current "skinny fetish" that was all the rage in ads. He even told her she should work out those thighs of hers to sculpt away ugly body fat (she was a size two), because anything over a size four was "fat" (duh, Marie), as she eyeballed me derisively over crepes in some trendy Village hotspot. Oh. Poor me....I wonder if I can cut weight as an athlete? Huh. I did it to blend into their social structure, strict as their group's rules were about appearances back then. It all came apart at their very next party during a holiday Fourth of July weekend, when I innocently inquired about whether their friend liked me or not. Uh, no. They squirmed around me for awhile, until I overheard their skinny blond (and very tan) friend say that he didn't "like anyone over 'a buck seventeen'", in a thinly veiled reference to their group-sanctioned anorexia that has never been my real scene.

The jig was finally up at work when the gay female designer gossiped with us during one of our production meetings (we were all seeing each other socially outside of work by then: I even went to Diana's lesbian-friendly birthday party at a tech-themed bar!), by huffing over this same editor's revelation that the very same guy she tried to set me up with had met a short-haired blond woman online, and that they were dating. It was going really well! Oh, yeah? "So....she's dating men again?!" Diana seemed a bit taken aback by her reveal about her male friend's new girl. "That's funny", she remarked in an offended way, "because the last time I saw her, she was performing as a man in drag shows on the lesbian circuit." 

You could hear a pin drop as the wanna-be, art-fag-with-no-talent from Virginia froze in our little circle of female-only media employees discussing million dollar licensing for a German publishing company on a low-paying teacher's salary. "Haha!" Christina turned bright red, "Oh, really?"  Within months, she'd be back at work overseas (I broke the scam open on that already, because they couldn't prove it was worth the money for me to go there to work), but as an editorial lead (she'd forced out by then the woman who hired me by using all of us to "gang up" on her, though in truth the poor woman was simply incompetent, plus I already knew the group of girls would turn on me, too), Christina felt she had all the power in the world to abuse me until I left for a book publisher, figuring she had won. Whaddya think, New Yorkers? C'mon. Give it to me straight. I think can handle it.