Vive Le Hate

 
While some women had terrifying brush-ups with serial date rapists and other ghouls that haunted the free site Craigslist during its heyday, I famously dated an international explorer and one very lonely celebrity chef. Neither was a good match for me, but I got pretty close to some decent relationships. Francois was an insecure Parisian businessman who convinced himself that I only wanted to date him because he was rich. Au contraire! The sex was as good as his West Village apartment, paid for every month by his firm.

Our first date was on a snowy evening to see "Le Jazz Hot" that I thought boded well for us both. But, soon he was doubting our age difference and language skills (neither true obstacles), and the discrepancy he saw in our looks. He called me a "Petite Modelle" (mannequin) during our first few beers together, astonished that a woman as beautiful as me was single, and therein lies the rub. He was a bit too thin perhaps, with a receding hairline and stained teeth of a European kind, but it was workable enough for me, though his insecurities were not.

At first, he insisted on seeing me more often, which meant I had to hurry home from work to walk my dog and then trek back to Manhattan for our dates. It was a good thing I was in my 30s and more motivated. Then, when that accommodation became intolerable, he said he would pay for my car service rides to-and-from his place, even though technically he had no money. Oh, mon dieu...then, he made a big deal out of taking the subway to see me in "le suburb de Brooklyn". I began questioning his judgment even more. He chipped away at our relationship like a gay man caught kissing a drunk girl for kicks at a soiree. What gives?

He mined the false construct of the Brooklyn 'burbs all the way to calling me "une salope" for my last name (so suburban), then ridiculing his limited palette sexually ("go find a lesbian to do the 'lick lick'. I am macho"!), to finally excluding me from a dinner party for his middle-aged friends because they would only speak French. That was after he accused me of pretending not to be fluent "en francais", so I could get out of reading his bad murder mystery he supposedly wrote on an intercontinental flight while sitting next to a showgirl from "Le Moulin Rouge" who obsessively counted each bite of food she ate because she was paranoid about getting fat. 

"So cute!" he said to me, as he pulled a bowl of chips away from me sitting on his piano, while rebuffing my amorous advances, citing that we should have dinner instead. He unraveled the strands of our relationship one-by-one to avoid an entanglement, because he told me the only successful long-term "affaire de coeur" he ever had was with a married woman whose husband didn't care if she slept around. Oh, how droll. I think I was supposed to be impressed by his utter lack of ability in handling a woman full-time, but, sadly, I was not. As I sussed out his neuroses one at a time, he just threw more obstacles in the way, culminating in a date "with a friend" that he suspiciously gave me the street address to after a series of texts, so I could find him with a pretty older woman with dark hair and eyes who was obviously interested in him, then fly into a jealous lover's rage.

We had our final mis-en-scene in the posh MeatPacking district of Manhattan. I dressed him down for encouraging these behaviors deliberately to get my attention, while his co-worker awkwardly waited down the block to see what would happen between us, finally coming up to us as we were walking away to say her "au revoir". Out of all these negatives, came the results of one inconvenient test that was absolutely positive. He told me Frenchmen were deliberately seeking to replenish their dwindling bloodlines outside of the country, then moving back home to retain custody that would actively cut the foreign-born mother out of the picture, and that was the last straw for me. It was preposterously abusive. You can only jerk around a smart New York woman so much before the "wild child" in her comes out, and that really threw him for a loop. When my patient French Catholicism was finally exhausted by all his trying immature antics, this mama did what any sane woman would do: I ended his line of succession forever. 
Tell me, where's the sin in that?

http://m.nydailynews.com/entertainment/gossip/kelly-rutherford-loses-custody-children-ex-husband-article-1.2466812

I Got the Will (Drive Myself Sleepless)

Most common "gym rats" are notorious addicts looking to divert their angst-driven energies into something else besides cocaine and alcohol, and the endless sleepless nights that accompany serious bouts with manic depression. When I trained in martial arts, the sales pitches mirrored the mentality of their community comprised mainly of high school drop-outs, with the occasional two-year college program for a sports-related major thrown in for a better salary, which meant that they tried to sell me on their type of packaging. I didn't "train" to lose weight from the holidays or from over-eating, I wasn't there to get ready to go to the beach for the summer (I'm a native, yo! My routine is: wake up, brush teeth and hair, put on a suit with a cover-up, grab a towel, and LET'S FUCKING GO!!), or counteract my hypertension and/or hyperactive disorders. I was actually much weirder for them.

I was there because I'm a fighter, and I fight everyday to make the world a better place through my works. I know! It was like I was so fucking alien and strange to them, that the sports kids working the joint finally gave up talking to me (a great sign that they finally "got it" about me), or trying to use some tired sales pitch to "get me" to buy more classes. I either have the time, money, and inclination, or I don't. There simply isn't anything some junior can do or say to me that will "get me" to do anything, which makes Gen X the most hated marketing demographic the modern world has ever seen, giving me and my friends a great deal to be proud of, as it reflects our angry young punk view of the world. "Fuck you! Feed someone!" <middle finger> You know? Just get real with it, already. I don't need your tired ass tryin' to pick my pocket, muthafucka. I already ride the subway every day.

That's how I felt about it back then. If you're not adding value to my life, you're gone from it. I didn't have anything leftover to give. I was already making beautiful books for the public as fast as I could, at a cut rate price point that was way below market-value, giving the rest away to rent, food, medicine, clothing, and some fucking gym(s). They weren't putting money in my pocket, you know? It was all one way with them, so no need to be so fucking coy about it. Anyway, it was a "no harm, no foul" kind of situation for me. You don't go out of your way to mess with me, then I will show up, take your class(es), train, and then leave.  That's what I give: a perfect, static-free ride that puts money in your pocket with my attendance. What more do you need?

But, that's not what an addicts sells. They always want more. Way more. When I "leveled up" to my brother's harder martial arts school for the seriously wealthy wanna-be and those athletes who are supported by their deep-pocketed fandom, I knew it was risky just being there. My brother routinely lies about how much experience he has as a martial artist with a lot of disposable income, and artificially lowers his belt rankings whenever he feels like, so he can appear more like a beginner, and win against more gifted fighters with less experience in class and in competition. He's also a lot bigger than most dudes, which makes him less injury-prone in BJJ, and he likes to hurt people. Badly. He's a dude with some serious issues.

And so, his "pro" school reflected this warped world at an insanely jacked-up rate, with a lot more intensity than the average McDojo at your local strip mall. Know what I'm sayin'? Our gi's were embroidered with the word "competition" emblazoned on them already, regardless of a student's level or skill, just to let newcomers know that they're all seen as "fresh meat". And the kooks were quick to come-out. My flushing mechanisms were well-honed by then, so I knew crazy bitches would try to hurt me. What can I say? I was already injured. I popped my own meniscus (already damaged) and my partial ACL tear to a full one at my own discretion, doing a class drill common for BJJ but killer on your knees. Most addicts immediately get surgery (and more than just one or two knee surgeries, these are hard-bitten junkies, after all), but I didn't have the time or money to do so.

Besides, ACL replacement surgery is this harmful roll of the dice where you can either 1) receive a cadaver graft (!!!) from a recently expired person, and hope it takes to your body post-surgery without rejection or 2) get a graft made from a ligament lifted from another part of your body, and then keep your leg almost completely immobile for an entire year, and that's before the grueling PT part of your rehabilitative process even begins. Oh, and then you re-tear and re-injure your knee soon after resuming MMA/BJJ training, anyway. It just buys you another year or two in the game.

Huh? Say wha', muthfucka? I ain't in this business gettin' rich! There was absolutely no reason for me to undergo some serious life-threatening procedure so some out-of-town muthafucka can nurse his growing bank account (including his posh pad in Rio), just so I can pretend to be some bad-ass bitch. I rehabbed my knee injury at the YMCA in Brooklyn, because I had to do a similar thing after my first knee surgery from my dog walking accident with Ted. And then, like my doctor said, I just changed sports. It was hard to do, but I did it. I did Tai Chi, an aerobic kickboxing class (for amateurs), swimming, weight lifting, yoga, Pilates, bag training, and running on the elliptical. Problem-solved.

I still have some knee instability, but I have a professional knee brace for more intensive sports (like, say, downhill skiing that I don't do), and a series of other types of commercially-made knee wraps to compensate for rough times, like spring, when the weather turns really wet and humid. Always bothers my knee. C'est la vie. Here I am still writing to you, and that's what really counts in my world. My life story is what I trained to be a sensei* in, not your broke-ass view of the world, rife with crime and drugs. Feel me? I'm not a gym toy or a work-out machine for a bunch of screw ups to use at their discretion, pro career or not. Seek yo' gym fodder elsewhere.

After my real agenda became known, the intensity of the "hard sell" upon the other gym clients became more intense. If they slept a decent 8-9 hours worth of sleep a night, then they were characterized as "shiftless and lazy" in some classes because (in the words of one famous athlete) "your competition is training while you sleep!" Uh, excuse me? That muthafucka in the UFC was out bangin' last night at some club with a bunch of ugly-ass hookers, and I know that because I saw the footage live on entertainment t.v., whacked out on coke and his own self-created case of OCD. Get the fuck out! 

But, the more susceptible people around me took such wildly-made and totally irresponsible claims to heart. For them, their newly adopted sport held the zeal of a recent religious convert, pouring their emotions about their lives into something that could be as banal as sweating it out on some funky blue mats on a Monday evening with an out-of-shape fat dude in a bright headband sporting a really bad attitude because he isn't a real athlete, or fighter, or warrior. The reality behind any kind of training is the regularity and repetition of it, though with the more advanced classes and sparring sessions of MMA, that boredom is alleviated by the harder challenges each fighter faces, whether they be emotional, financial, mental, psychological, or physical. 

At the end of my stints training in other people's places, I came out with the exact same sense of self that I had before (and after) my MMA training: if I work hard enough, I can do anything. Of course, age and injury visits us all at some point in life, but the awe the other martial arts students in class had for me—and my relative maturity, in comparison to theirs—in those highly stressful fight sessions (regardless of age), pointed out anew to me what every art and design studio I'd ever worked for already knew about me: that I was already a "black belt" in life, and that I'd been one for a very long time. It wasn't something you could buy, or earn at some gym. And dip-shit, get a good night's sleep. That's mandatory. See you out there!

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensei

for Cassius

Sleepless by Soul Coughing

I got the will to drive myself sleepless
I got the will to drive myself sleepless
I got the will to drive myself sleepless
I got the will to drive myself sleepless

So much time is cashed
So much smoke is wasted
Sudden disappearance
And the air is thick and cool

And I can't approach myself
Skidding over this perdition
And now I'm out on the veranda
When I should have gone to school

I got the will to drive myself sleepless
I got the will to drive myself sleepless
I got the will to drive myself sleepless
I got the will to drive myself sleepless

Well I call for sleep
But sleep it won't come to me
Shuffling in the hallway
I can hear him on the stairs

And I hear his lighter flicking
I hear the soft sigh of his inhale
And the whole width of my intentions
He exhales into the air, yea

I got the will to drive myself sleepless
I got the will to drive myself sleepless
I got the will to drive myself sleepless
I got the will to drive myself sleepless

I got the will to drive myself sleepless
I got the will to drive myself sleepless
I got the will to drive myself sleepless
I got the will to drive myself sleepless

I got the will to drive myself sleepless
I got the will to drive myself sleepless
I got the will to drive myself sleepless

Skeedunt, stunt the runt
Smoking Buddha blunt
Skeedunt, stunt the runt
Skeedunt, stunt the runt
Smoking Buddha blunt
Skeedunt, stunt the runt

I got the will to drive myself sleepless
I got the will to drive myself sleepless, sleepless, sleepless

I got the will to drive myself sleepless
I got the will to drive myself sleepless
Sleep, sleep, sleep
Sleep, sleep, sleep
Sleep, sleep, sleepless

Positivity Princess

Much like the word "healthy", the word "positive" has taken on an insidiously modern marketing meaning that degrades its usage, as is common for the average English speaker who understands commerce without having enough poetry in the soul to make an actual difference about how we feel. Anyone who takes on serious issues that are complex are derisively referred to as "Negative Nellies", so closely monitored must the "Thought Police" of the world be, in sullen reaction to mature adults. I'm often a favorite target for passive-aggressiveness because I am not typically "wrong" about anything, because it's part of my job to know you, which is also quite often followed by a schoolyard taunt of "Know-It-All" delivered as a sulky potshot given behind my back (in yet another nod to my power as a mother), in a never-ending posture that is the typical defensiveness of passive-aggressors.

I can digest content that's dark, troubling, scary, tough, difficult, or "grim" (as one hapless library clerk noted), because in the land of dissociative disorders, your closed-door horrors are the messes of the world for other, much more gifted people to clean up, much like your child abuse and domestic violence. One crazy design manager superficially characterized my cover designs as "gritty", which is pathetic and pointless to a native New Yorker working among blood-thirsty sharks, in the fiercest urban jungle on the planet. Huh...ya think? Uh, yeah. Life is gritty at times. She didn't last very long because she sucked at her job, which at one time meant styling chapter openers for a typographer to set and print: not exactly a set-yourself-on-fire kind of job, intellectually-speaking.

Noticing that a publisher like me can process those very acts of human horror wrought daily upon society (often directed at the infirm, elderly, and the very young) is the highest compliment you can give a master artist like me, because it means we can handle the subjects that you can't. Turning away from the darkness hidden away in the human soul does nothing to address it properly, let alone help problem-solve it out of existence. It's another reason that I'm consistently surprised when the ignorant uneducated drunk in our neighborhood has an arrogant sense of superiority over, say, someone like me. Only the craziest fuck on the block would try to place oneself above me, because they tap out of life on the regular over, say, walking beyond the corner to carry actual groceries, let alone being smart enough to sort trash properly, as is legally required. Checking out from life and realism means you can't do shit in human, and that's a serious fuck-up to me.

"Negative" has become the playground taunt du jour that refers to anything the mentally ill deem unfit for their lazy contemplation, in a twisted distortion about what a true sense of self means, essential as it is to be successful in this world. How much can you check out of life? You'd be surprised. Don't like your sister-in-laws keen observations about your eating disorder? Call her "mean" and cut her out! She's not fit to be in your bisexual bipolar cheerleader squad anyway (and thank G-d for that)! Don't like your niece noticing your wild hoarding disorder? That's okay. She once smoked a pot cigarette, so she's schizo, too (doesn't work that way, duh). Desperately insecure about your abilities and capabilities? Well, shame people into a dysfunctional tense silence that does nothing but abuse, so that you can feel better about your alcoholism behind closed doors.

I'm sure there's a book or a movie or a program somewhere that addresses what you lack, as a lifelong coward. That's okay. I'll fight your battles and win them all, by your lack of failures. In truth, it's the lack of a well-rounded life that presents itself most glaringly. The chick who can only handle rom-com's? Gay, deeply closeted, insane, and into cat hoarding. It's the art of reading people that I mastered a long time ago, like scoping out the musicians at a recording studio by their lyrics, clothes, and attitudes. I really didn't need to hear their bad Goth audio tracks in progress to know that the lead guy from the band dressed in all black and heavy eyeliner sitting at my art director's desk with devil art had some "issues" to work out (another carefully guarded, softly peddled euphemism for madness that's supposedly "rude" to say out loud in any real, honest way). By allowing the seriously ill to demonize our maturity and range of emotions, we allow them to manipulatively control us, which is not a warrior's way.

And that's what it's really about: their mental problems, not yours. It's a clinically immature way of saying "I know you are but what am I" over and over again until you feel you block out the world that seeps in anyway. It's a desperately deceitful way of guarding against improving through applied learning from an advanced understanding of the world's knowledge, which is real power. If I know (because I read the book) and you don't (because you're knitting the same cat hair sweater over and over again), then I win, and here's the kicker, because I always do. I'm not afraid to shine a light in the hidden corners of the human psyche, the same way the NYPD cleans up your gruesome murder scene involving a two year-old and his teenage mother, or a WWII vet relives the horrors of concentration camps, as they tenderly buried the corpse of a woman holding her child in your gas chambers of the world. Because it's real. That's why.

"We want the airwaves, baby!"

A bunch of loud-mouth, no-talent "nobodies" from Queens, N.Y.

 
Part of any genuine rebel movement is acquiring attention, sometimes by any means necessary, although the intention is to always have a firmly authoritative foothold on your audience's consciousness, which falls outside of a teenager's general parvenu. It's the main reason that my first outsider culture, punk, had to grow up. Heat, energy, and movement is fast fun, but after awhile, noise just makes your head hurt. Musicians with long legs in the game learned to play their instruments properly, and after my wild excesses of high school and college, I was sick of the stupid drunk parties. Raping frat boys and vomiting girls are not people one aspires to be around as an adult.

And so I moved on from my infamous New York State party school because I had enough, and I was bored with easy classes. It was a mature decision, and it cost me a lot to make it: studio credits well-earned but not accepted in the Ivy League, friends not confident enough to make it on their own without my constant steadying support, plus a boyfriend or two. I considered it (and still do) and great bargain to become educated, because the kids who couldn't follow along with me would be hangers-on, anyway. They'd hate my new life, studies, and interests. 

It opened up parts of my personality they didn't know (or like). My person changed, grew, and adapted, while my old friends peaked, stopped growing, and then just stopped, sometimes living. It made them extremely nervous around me, and they sought to sabotage my new life violently; a new life that was shifting in front of their eyes. 

One friend accused me of having a totally new signature as proof of my extreme changes, though in reality, it was brought on by being constantly busy as an apprentice in publishing (which she then mocked by prank-calling me at work to say that my new house was for nobodies, a sure sign of threatened youth) and my easy adaption to adulthood. My hand continues to develop into a busy-person's scrawl, not unlike the handwriting of a doctor who writes all day long.

Another friend wanted to sabotage my new group of friends by sleeping with a guy who used to date this girl I set him up with at school, then flirting with my boyfriend while he hung about my aunt's place, looking for a life in the city. In any case, I evolved past all of them, which was their great fear: not being able to ride on my coattails any more for the free fun ride.

One of the worst let-downs (though not totally unexpected) was my best friend from high school and SUNY, who decried me as a "sell-out" for my beginning salary of $17,500 a year at St. Martins' Press; a place I could only afford to work and compete with trust fund English Lit majors by using my aunt's place as a crash-pad. She tried to position it as someone who was looking out for my best interest as a children's book artist, though in reality, she wanted an object to show her students in class, to boost her rep as a new teacher.

The RISD girl was even worse. After giving her a place to stay that was huge and practically rent-free, she also chafed about my new learnin' and a-changin' and a-growin', by ripping out some ad from The New Yorker about a therapist specializing in "creative" people who stopped producing, because she couldn't torpedo the new production and design skills I was learning in the city if she didn't have layouts and drawings to look at.

It didn't stop at work or at home, either. Once I reached the coveted Art Department as a Manager who could do business and book design, the claws came out of the bitchy SVA show-pony crowd, which told me (yet again) how threatening I was to them and their system. 
A well-known Creative Director (then, an Art Director on the rise) has never stopped gunning after me. He bragged about setting balls in motion to harness, control, then humiliate, demean, and fire me at work by trying to position me with a lower skill set than the other one trick ponies at the stable. He told me dismissively in front of a group of designers that my name really meant "Secretary", after reading some pop culture book on name meanings (and repeating it often), because I was behind the slick city crowd in desktop publishing skills, but way ahead in life, and art. It was unnerving.

But all the madness I went through was purposeful and driven, though not always clearly defined enough for my competitors. How do I know it worked? You're reading it right now, because I AM THE MEDIA, and I have made it all the way to the top. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, suckas. Shout that from the mountaintops, baby.

"Generation X" by Doug Copeland for St. Martin's Press (© 1990's): produced by Twisne Fan, Marie Doucette, and Curt Alliaume in several consecutive, co-running, differently-colored versions. 

"We Want The Airwaves" 

Nine to five, and five to nine
Ain't gonna take it, it's our time
We want the world, and we want it now
We're gonna take it anyhow

We want the airwaves
We want the airwaves
We want the airwaves, baby
If rock is gonna stay alive

Oh yeah
well alright
Let's rock
tonight
All night

Oh yeah
well alright
Let's rock
tonight
All night

Where's your guts and will to survive
And don't you wanna keep rock 'n' roll music alive
Mr. Programmer, I got my hammer
And I'm gonna smash my, smash my brain!

We want the airwaves
We want the airwaves
We want the airwaves, baby
If rock is gonna stay alive

Oh yeah
well alright
Let's rock
tonight
All night

Oh yeah
well alright
Let's rock
tonight
All night

We want the airwaves airwaves
We want the airwaves airwaves
We want the airwaves airwaves
We want the airwaves airwaves
We want the airwaves, baby 

Happy Birthday to Me

When I was growing up, birthdays were rare breaks from my very strict norm. It was the one day (read that again: ONE DAY) of the year when I was allowed to choose what we had for dinner as a family, and what kind of cake would be served as dessert. As I got older (say, around 7 or 8 years old), birthdays became trading opportunities for my brothers to petition me with (ahem, more like, try to strong arm me into), by giving up my birthday dinner for money. If I switched out my usual spaghetti and meatball dinner with something more palatable to them, ("So boring! You pick the same thing every year!"), something they preferred, like spare ribs, they'd give me an extra $10 or $20 bucks for my birthday, which was really money for the Christmas gifts I'd spend for them, and they knew it, because it came up quickly on the heels of December 17th. Everything in our household was up for negotiation: my birthday, my gifts, my privacy, my body, even the food I waited all year to have free from strife, or so I thought. 

We were desperate for these few scant "outs" from our daily lives, which my parents could not tolerate as well, because they bartered between each other over just about everything, like a couple of spoiled and highly deprived children. It was excruciating to endure and bear witness to, and so, birthdays lost their luster eventually, too, just like everything else in that house did, quickly becoming another day to me, and a very abusive one that was rife with potential conflict at that. In short, I grew up, even when the people around me couldn't or wouldn't, stuck on just one speed or another. You want my cake that badly? Sure, take it, I guess. I mean, what the fuck?! It's readily available food! What gives? They became greedy, grasping, rabid animals in the face of this one freedom we had among the crushing grinding reality of our day-to-day life that my parents so hated. So, as I matured, it went: first, it was my simple chocolate cake with whipped cream and canned peaches that my grandmother had perfected over the years, next it was my humble pasta dinner so that I could have money to buy the few things I wanted, needed or liked. In short, I became a mother, as the people around me began pushing and pulling against one another after I caved into their stronger desires. 

At the end of the day, it was just a spaghetti and meatball dinner, covered with tomato sauce and coated with grated cheese on top. Shit, I could make that any time I wanted to, with some advanced planning. I was already a master chef by age ten, absorbing and inhaling my mom's few scant cookbooks in the pantry, because she considered cooking a plebeian chore for lesser minds, far beneath her "advance degrees in science" kind of mind, a skewed and warped view of her "feminism" loudly pronounced through a wedding gift titled  "The 'I Hate to Cook' Cookbook" that sat on the pantry shelf in accusation. It spoke to her desperation for some kind of legitimacy, one that she would never really be able to achieve on her own, given the problems inherent with her brain chemistry. She wasn't bashing against oppression. She came up against her own inequities, and creative cooking was just another one of her shortcomings that she cleverly hid, saying that baking was more precise and to her liking, because the measurements were like her lab concoctions at work, which were so much more important than us and our dinnertime. 

And so it went throughout the years, as I watched these days ripped away from me one by one in a type of silent horror show, like the throwaway milestones they had become to my family. First, it was the food I liked, then my gifts were traded for money given grudgingly, shoved at me from across the kitchen table, or thrust hastily into my hand as we passed each other by in the hallway, on my way to my childhood bedroom. My supposedly big adult years became birthday bashes they could use to manipulate one another with, and also use against me to dominate me with their far more pressingly petty needs. I knew it went haywire one year, when I found myself eating grossly over-sweetened cake that I did not like nor want, in my grandmother's overheated apartment, that I grew sick over with a painful food headache from yet another forced ingestion that had to take place in front of my very sick godmother, to placate her mental illnesses through her viciously depraved sweet tooth that she angrily substituted over actual medication, in tribute to her before I was finally allowed to reach my intended destination of a Sushi dinner my sick mother paid for with her birthday coupon, which she promptly screwed up by falling down on a slight sidewalk incline to the restaurant the moment I was distracted by opening the door for her in the bitter cold night. 

Whenever I folded in family, they ruined it gleefully and spitefully, right in front of my face. My brothers took away my 40th from me cruelly as well, co-opting the play I wanted to see with one of their selections instead, picking the restaurant and meeting place, booking a hotel for their families' comfort and enjoyment by pushing me into a forced engagement that I hated every minute of, culminating in my nephew taking and eating the birthday cake right off my plate in front of them without bothering to ask anyone about, that they pretended to ignore. In families with rampantly untreated mental illnesses, I was simply another pawn they tried to pass around abusively, as a covert excuse to hide their real intentions. Such was force of their hatred against me.

The next morning after that 40th birthday debacle, I found myself sick and throwing up into a tote-bag that I had bought from a breast cancer charity in honor of my cousin's successful battle against Stage Four Lymphoma (I bought her one for Christmas, too): on the subway, and in full view of fellow passengers, because I no longer drank as much alcohol as my family did anymore (I was well into MMA training at the time), stumbling through a full-blown snowstorm, stopping to heave in big gulps of cold air so as to not get sick again in public, desiring only to climb four flights up a rundown Brooklyn townhouse to an apartment I could barely afford but made due with through my salary by finding a rare rent stabilized place in a good, safe neighborhood. 

I knew something had to give, and that something was me, because they would kill me if I allowed this to go on. Certainly, they had bankrupted me until I had nothing left except myself to give. And so it went on: over these preceding next few years, I fought battle after battle with everyone in my family, as they deliberately turned their backs on me one by one, during my time of greatest economic need (which had never happened of such duration and acuteness before), to finally, in this year, achieve the real success my family has always needed. How did I do it? By allowing them to bash me bloody, body and soul, pushing my body and brain to its' limits, to achieve the actualized success of a self-sustaining kind, the type my people have always needed, by becoming a leader who is a force to be reckoned with, and on to the destiny I have always been fated to be, recounted here as a Queens' true life tale about the real Game of Thrones.

This year I will order food that I want, off the menu of a female warrior who runs her very own kitchen, cooking her very own type of food, in this town we call home, paid through blood, sweat, and tears covertly disguised as a paltry birthday lunch on my mother's dime, long overdue and sorely lacking. Finally on this day, our day has come. And so as my birthday approaches, so does our day together. As a united people, we will move forward through the power of a forceful realization felt in my body and soul, a queen to be linked and joined to her destiny at long at last. Enjoy this 17th day in winter in remembrance of me and on the house, to be always paid by me through The House of Doucette. Long may we reign, in peace and in victory. Amen to you, my children, from your ever-loving Mother in Christ, who is also Marie the Beautiful, Marie the Strong, Marie the Brave, and Marie the Brilliant, the very words you spoke near me to invoke the spirit that will be here forevermore. We have won. The fruits of my success will be yours to savor eternally ever after, on this 45th birthday of mine in the year of Our Lord 2014, the 17th day of December will forever and always be known as my true Mother's Day because it is for you, my people.

My 39th birthday at my grandmothers' house, December 17th, 2008. I made a minor typo in the photo caption when I posted it on Facebook back in 2008, which was immediately pointed out to me in typical "clever" hipster fashion as an error, unsolicited as it was by a older and supposedly more powerful man from my employed publishing past.

Fame and Fortune (Football and Farming)

When I was growing up, my dad used to say "if you have to choose between fame and fortune, you should choose fortune". Of course, he said this as a tentative, new businessman sensitive to humble origins, during a time when having our last name meant near-constant hazing and bullying on the mean streets of New York, especially on a rough, working class block in BedStuy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedford%E2%80%93Stuyvesant,_Brooklyn), where standing out doesn't help you out at all. It hurts, sometimes a lot. Such is the fate of being just one among many; they (the people in our surroundings) have a lot more common ground than us, and we had our fair share of bullying and beatings during childhood, too.

Me and my brothers fared no better than my father did in the 'burbs or the country, and widening out our territory only drew more attention my way. My dad has chosen to be, as he puts it, a "big fish in a very small pond", tucked safely away in a extremely rural corner of the globe, where he retreats when life and family obligations become too demanding for him, but I have chosen to stop running away from the fates, which find me no matter where I go. I know. I've tried.

So when I see a story that centers around the good things that attention can do, my interest is piqued. When it uses fame and fortune as a leverage for the best things in life, like charity, farming G-d's green earth, and giving back, I'm sold. Farm, faith, and family? Never goes out of style. See for yourself. (Thanks, to Jason Brown).

Because I said I would.

Over the years I've worked with just about every type of person on the planet; such is the range of my widely dispersed gifts that are given generously, in a city known for its cosmopolitan ways in the utmost. So welcoming are we (and sympathetic) to the world's woes, that our fair city has been vulnerable to attack after attack—in the name of freedom and liberty—but such is the price we pay for opening our hearts and our world to anyone who seeks peace from war-torn lands ravaged by societal woes like avarice, greed, hatred, and bias. It's no coincidence that the biggest gift from our French allies is a lady dressed in the robes of Ancient Greece, the first serious culture to live by laws; not as it applied to everyone, but it was the beginning of our shared longings for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

I am not immune to suffering, which stands almost equal in strength (and often surpasses) the wealth of my gifts, which is not something I often talk about at length, because I encounter such great weaknesses and suffering as I go about my day that my own needs are pushed aside for another day, when (like any good mother) I have the time to cry in private while I nurse my own wounds alone, in some form of a solitary peace that's coupled with great longing. There's nothing quite like the pain of a mother's anguish, and because of the fractured and severely dysfunctional nature of my upbringing, it's sharpened my empathy and compassion to a fine point that's still surprising to me, so often am I perceived as just an average single white woman. But nothing could be further than the truth. Rough childhoods make for scrappy fighters who live very adult lives very early on, making me far more mature than most retirees I meet, and I've met many older seniors during my time here on earth.

It's in this capacity as a great listener—tolerant of hearing about the most violent extremes—that attracts the troubled to me in droves, most often the seriously mentally ill, which is also present in my immediate family. I grew up with it and survived it, which makes me sort of like a snake charmer to a sick person's demons. I've learned when not to take on the woes of the world, because like many Americans, I am also facing the most harsh state of bankrupt finances I've ever encountered in my life, and I officially entered the working world at age 15, which is evidenced in my long storied past with Social Security. I've also worked technically "off the books" much earlier than that (to escape those pesky child labor laws), something which I've referenced before, when I mentioned a worker's permit that I got from the principal of our elementary school at Chestnut Grove, so I could help my brothers with their paper routes.

My experiences, education, background, and natural prowess have shocked the most seasoned con artist, to the point that I felt driven to record such life stories here with you, the reader, so often am I accused of "making it up". It's unusual, and I know that, because I've seen the looks on countless faces, but the most interesting responses are from the sick people who think we are engaged in a lying contest about who can make up the greatest "fish tale", which is kind of innocent and sweet; it tickles a mother's fancy to be lied to by someone who is incompetent. It's mostly harmless gobbledygook, but one woman with BPD was honest enough to try and delve deeper with this walking talking encyclopedia (me) that somehow mysteriously showed up at her job one day, seemingly out of nowhere. No matter how many times we told her that I was a very advanced art director—widely known for my publishing expertise—she couldn't quite wrap her mind around it. It troubled her, and it also made me a magnet to her, like a shiny object she couldn't put down. I fascinated her, and she used me as a source of entertainment and engagement so she could check out of her disassociated reality for awhile.

Most often she was confused and foggy, especially when she went off her medication. She surveyed the office almost every day about something unrelated to books, like petty boy troubles or minor incidents with girlfriends that baffled her as a woman of 40+. It was as unbelievable to me as I was to her. How? She asked me a wide variety of questions that covered an enormous range of topics, but that's my job, just like it is in my family: to have the answer, and so I did. One day she asked me covertly about what it felt like to be me, a common thing for people with serious identity disorders. I must have felt like a Rubix Cube in human form to her, so many times did she ask me "Why this?" or "Why that?" I can recall one conversation like it was yesterday, so profound were (and are) the depth to her needs. What is being trustworthy and why did I seem to have it? She questioned the very nature of my authority over her and the other people in our office, so I broke it down like this: 1) Did she trust me? She said that she did. OK, great. 2) Why was that? She had a frown on her face. Oh. That was a much harder question, but like any gifted mom, I already knew the answer, so once I led her down the right road, I set her up to be receptive to the information when I gave it to her.

She trusted me because I made it that way. Oh! Right! She brightened up a bit, after I fed her the answer in bits. She, and the other employees, trusted me at my word because I laid down a pattern immediately upon the start of my employment there, like a background rhythm to all my business dealings: I said I would do something, and then I did it. I said it, then I did it, over and over again (providing proof when necessary), so that my honesty and integrity never really came into question or under fire, so quickly could I provide evidence of it. Their reliance on me was understood like a second nature, and it allowed me to serve them more easily, without argument or discord. My opinion was asked and the right answer was given, over and over, as many times as they needed it, in as many forms as I could provide.

Just as I am now under fire for having the audacity to become a publisher in one of the worst economies since "The Great Depression", by borrowing against the future of my own success. I will continue to provide you with the highest quality content I can give you, free of charge, because such is the fierceness that I attach to my vocation. And just like the pattern I establish everywhere I go, I made a promise to myself many years ago that I would give back as soon as I could, if I ever found myself in a position of power and authority, with as much as I had, until there was nothing left to give. So, that's what I will continue to do: publish however I can, for however long I can, despite the battles I face. Because I said I would.

www.becausisaidiwould.com