Arena

Warriors have always been regarded by society with fear, awe, and a little trepidation. Would you want to get on the bad side of someone who could kill you ten different ways before your body even hits the ground?! It might make friendships and relationships a little bit trickier, but I like to think that it makes us more honest and respectable towards each other, because we're both combatants. After all, fighting is a legitimate (and fun!) sport of women competing against other women, not men. It isn't a fair fight, anyway. Men have the biological advantage because of their greater height, strength, and muscle mass.

That's not to say that a female black belt can't take out a larger, less well-trained man, because they do so in dojos around the world every day. It's just stating that two athletes of the same skill and experience who are of different sexes are not evenly matched, which is why we do not compete in arenas together....in this century. In the past, prisoners, exiles, and other enemies of the state fought their way to freedom in Ancient Rome's Coliseum.

It is an awesome site to see. It's much bigger than it looks in pictures, which makes its past more frightening when you think about how many people watched other people (and every kind of animal known to mankind) die very violent deaths, for so many years. It was their Metropolitan Opera, major Broadway musical, and giant concert stage, operating around (and between) fights to the death. There were side stages, dropped floors with hidden panels, rising platforms bringing up lion cages to the main stage, chambers for costuming with props, an armory, and a network of highly sophisticated, intricately complex irrigation systems that flooded a stage with water, to re-create epic battles at sea for "The Empire". 

The sheer spectacle and grandeur of it, even all these years later...to say that the Coliseum is impressive is a totally inadequate understatement. It wasn't just the size and scale of their stagings, either. Gladiatore were huge stars. You can still see graffiti in Rome scratched into the ancient walls that publicize and congratulate favorite fighters of the day. Cemeteries have stone tributes to enslaved warriors who won their freedom from the empire through the shedding of blood for sport, which must have sat uneasily on a cornered Christian's shoulders, new as they were back then to the pagan state of Rome. It's a good thing we believe in forgiveness and redemption, mes gendarmes, because death by mass suicide isn't in our credo either. Rest easy, warrior.

"Jits, bitch!"

I understand that some celebrities and other well-known personalities are often portrayed as targets for public aggression, but sometimes all that static is justified. I didn't need to see the entire video of a rapper trying to game some neighborhood kids to know that it's not right for a grown man to sucker punch a teenager, no matter how much a youngin' sasses back at you. Anyway, what the heck is he doin' trying to run a soccer game in their 'hood? He ain't from Atlanta. He's from Ohio (I checked), so why does he step up to manning their game? Is he a soccer pro? What's with the one-glove action?! 

What makes him qualified to step in and boss some kids around, kids who look like they're having a local game on their block, not some group team practice? Chill, mutha! And if you got grown-ass men actin' like children in your game, then do what this smart kid does: drop him in a tackle, take the back by holding your mount, then finish him with a reliable hold like the "rear naked choke". That's how you win without ever having to throw one single punch (might hurt your hand, yo!), and that is the magic of Jiu Jitsu, friends. Stay safe out there, kids. Urban jungles can be rough with the wrong crowd!  And have fun :)

http://www.afterschoolalliance.org/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_jiu-jitsu

Sweatin' with the Oldies

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

After I dumped yet another fucked up Irish-American kid who clung to me like I was his last drink of the night at closing time, I quit smoking and took up Mixed Martial Arts at the age of 37-going-on-38 shortly, with two pins in my left knee and much damage to the area, the result of a highly invasive knee surgery (with several DVT's afterwards) that I needed after my Giant Mal pulled me over during a too-early morning walk that was at the hectoring behest of the contentious out-of-towners living downstairs from me, put into motion to assuage their madness at life itself, none of which I controlled.

And so, unlike the rest of the typical New York crowd looking to bail out of their banal schedules at the slightest chance, I went without another drunken night at a bar (with people I couldn't stand), to train on the mats of the local McDojo that was close to my Manhattan office building, many months after the bipolar receptionist, her fat friend, and the pretty Puerto Rican kid had bailed for other places more rife with strife. I trained with their Head Instructor at the time, Sensei Jason Lopez, a man who excelled at grappling and wrestling in their style.

It was an odd time for their school, because they used to be a strip mall chain exclusive to the suburbs, now branching out due to the success of MMA as a sport, to keep up with area-wide demand for exercise programs, which was disastrous for the real athletes who paid a lot of money for expert instruction. They used to be a karate school because the Schulmann boys (two Jewish kids from Spring Valley in Rockland County) originally competed in tournaments, though even that was under a cloud of suspicion. They made wild claims with some myth that included an old Chinese man walking their Holocaust-fleeing grandparents over a rough Asian mountain chain to freedom, where they were taught many ancient mystical arts from their beloved Shifu, which made me laugh so hard when I read it online, that I was shocked by the crazies at their school who wanted it so badly to be true.

They had some bad burnouts at the Manhattan school, people dazed by the change from traditional katas to the aerobic exercise that characterizes the mixing of many arts, baffling as that was to their clientele who preferred the comfort of regularity without change. They simply couldn't keep up with the new program, and they knew it, which set up an "old versus new" student dynamic that turned ugly quickly. Of course, I was targeted by pretty much every person there, except the younger kids who wanted to date me, or at least rub up against me, if they could keep up with my schedule designed by Sensei.

Soon enough, the posers dropped away to form a small but dedicated group of training partners for me: some were good, some were bad, and some of them couldn't perform martial arts if their lives depended on it. For me, it didn't really matter. I just needed them to be consistent enough that they could hold the training mitts needed for my combos, or a kicking shield for our practices, and anyone can do that. It was in that spirit I found myself walking into an almost-empty studio one evening after work, because St. Patrick's Day often falls on a weekday here in New York, and I had a demanding art director's job that needed me to stay in business. My reputation had proceeded me, and that's not something you toss away for the same type of pint of beer you've been hoisting since at least your college days, though for my working class native crowd, it was often sooner than that.

They had a program with local law enforcement at the time of my training period there, though in truth they were looking for anyone who could be lured inside their studio space by some asshole kid with a "fauxhawk" haircut that they made stand outside on the sidewalk, handing out flyers to the passing commuters, because he was a total dick. I wouldn't buy a thing from him, and they knew that, too. So, I changed and waited upstairs with my gear on (like we'd been taught) , waiting for the current class to end so we could hit the mats at the sensei's signal, in a deep sense of order and respect that marks the true martial artist. After all, he was the one with the black belt who'd fought a thousand fights to be leading class, as he reminded us whenever he felt his crowd was drifting away in the wrong direction.

Schools with a lot of beginners need almost-constant encouraging from the staff, because amateurs without any real artistry lose heart without paying cheerleaders to rally them from the sidelines, in a paid show of support. With me it was totally unnecessary, and the staff knew that, too. They were, quite simply, blown away by me, choosing instead to give me a wide berth at the school while their lead guy taught me their classes. That night of St. Pat's was my favorite class, "Bag Training", because it was easier on my bad knee than the training that's typical for grappling classes (even with the padding), plus I depended less on the partner who held the punching bag for me. I had a "rep", as they say, which is typical for me everywhere I go.

The more frightened students who'd been coerced into classes they couldn't get a refund for, without serious injury or moving out of town (the Attorney General for New Jersey from years ago had to sue them as a chain, on behalf of the parents of injured children who never got refunds, as one Eliot Spitzer), made whispered deals in the locker room for training partners, to ensure some sense of control over what happened to them on the mats. I had no such luck, seeing as most of them women there avoided eye contact with me purposefully, to avoid partnering with me or having a conversation, so I just went with whoever didn't have a partner after sensei said "partner up" in class, like selecting kids for a hard game of dodgeball with lots of long-held grudges, except that this was the opposite.

Luck have it, I got a Mick who was enrolled with the cop's discount program, or at least that's what I remember hearing, and he certainly fit the description. During warm-ups, I got a good look at him as I sat on his feet while he did crunches. We'd been given instructions to hem the sleeves and pants of our gi's and baring that, to at least roll up our sleeves, which you wanted to do anyway, just to cool your skin in the hot dojo and get them out of the way. He'd chosen to ignore that rule, preferring instead to do the handy bachelor trick of ripping the bottom of his white gi pants into a ragged edge, giving them the appearance of floods. Further still, he was a receding hairline, salt-and-peppered, middle-aged man looking to keep up with his fitness, and I certainly understood the motivation behind that. Maybe that was part of the deal behind his bright kelly green headband, too.

Not only that, he had on dirty pants stained at the butt, also against dojo rules to always wash your gi before your next class and be freshly washed, so as to not offend your training partner. Ah, fuck that! Most of us developed the easy routine of (at least) washing our gi the night before (they were the lightweight kind), and then hanging them to dry, because packing your gym bag for the day is also part of the routine. He'd also decided to mark himself out even further as a NYPD Mick by sporting that same green sweatband around his constantly-sweating red head, in case we missed his remarkably pale pallor on the exposed skin showing below his ripped pants. Oh! Thanks!

It was with a great sense of irony that I rolled with an Irish-born male still sporting his native brogue that I could discern in the few short words he did speak to me on the night of St. Patrick's Day, while other Celts drank to exhaustion or vomiting, as he sweated with me on the bright blue mats. Could be worse, I though to myself, smelling him ripely for not the first time that night. We could be one of them on the other side of the huge pane of glass in that street-level studio, easily viewable to the drunks making fun of us as they weaved pass. We could be one of them wandering about aimlessly, in a city not of their own. Besides, I never forgot it, have I? Here I am working for all of you today at my local library, instead of some equally desperate office gig in the city, celebrating a weekday night made exceptional only through another rough commute made worse with the drunks who'd smell even riper on the evening bus out of town, if they weren't passed out already. I could be one of them instead. Go raibh maith agat.

 “May you have goodness.”

http://www.bitesize.irish/blog/polite-phrases-in-irish/ 

for R.S.
 

Sportsdyke

Infamous 80s hairdo known as "the softball haircut", or more recently dubbed the "Dyke-O'Mullet", as worn by my kind of lesbian, a man: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mullet_%28haircut%29

Psychological warfare doesn't just take place in offices, behind closed doors. Luckily for me, abuse follows me wherever I go! In fact, some of the weirdest behavior that seems to happen around me all the time was during my time on the mats of some infamous dojos, with or without athletic lesbians included, because (and here's the kicker), I'd be there regardless of the other people who may or may not be seriously dedicated athletes. Me? I just don't give a fuck. It's enormously expensive to train with elite athletes, and as such, I take it seriously enough (kinda like ballet as a kid), but better, because there's lots of dudes around, which brings me to another important point: I've done some of my roughest fighting with my brother Bernie, during that glorious time before he hit puberty, and when I actually had a decent shot at beating him or making him cry, which I hated. He was my best friend as a kid, and a beautifully sensitive boy who was bullied at school (he was called "pretty boy" a lot), which I also hated.

It's part of what makes him so angry, because he's always had great difficulty processing his emotions well, given genetic difficulties that he certainly didn't want or ask for, which gave him way more free passes at home and away than I had, but not by much. He gets crazy/angry quickly, which, as an experienced martial artist in the Super Heavyweight class, means I can't train with him in total effectiveness at the dojo for competitions, which he also reminds me about whenever I want him to spar with me. You know, he could do me a favor, instead of the other way around, but whatevs, Bern. No, I know! You pay a lot of money for "your time", too, and I'm so puny and weak, how could you get a decent workout for your money? Not much has changed between us in that sense over the years, besides his obvious big size over me. You think I'm kidding? He's bred one heck of a big boy who took to MMA naturally (without hard time on the mats) much more than his older, smaller, and way more experienced black belt brother in Taekwondo, and that bears a seriously strong thinking-over, too.

Which brings me to the other point about me and fight training; it's in the blood. I'm not a warrior because I choose it, or because I like some trendy fucking gym scene. It chose me. And my brothers. And my nephews....but I digress. What some crazy dyke thinks is a good rubbing around with her strap-on "bestie" while spending our time on the mat to play stupid fucking games with (BTW: thanks, Anne, for rolling with Peg while "dyke-ing" it up at TSMMA, while I tried to stay alive with you two fucks during grappling, you know, because you had a brown belt and Peggy has a black belt), is my real fucking sport. Wackos waste time, and time is money, so get a grip, moron.

Just do what I do. Wrestle it out like a pro during class (while I look at some of the more handsome gentlemen folk with actual penises who may be training) and then afterwards...well that's up to you and me and you-know-who, because that "Big Injun" I know (who happens to be just around the bend) is the best warrior ever, if you know what I mean. Like, the ultimate. Yeah, that's it! How catchy! Training with professionalism without the weird fucking head games that don't work is like being "The Ultimate Warrior", or something like that. I dunno. Maybe.That's what I heard, at least, from those people commentating live on t.v. during MMA fights. See you on the mats, warriors, and leave your fucking crazy dyke shit you think you're working out at home, okay? I don't give a fuck about it. It's "go" time! Happy hunting.

http://www.mulletjunky.com/

Welfare Burger

True punk-rock spirit, as evidenced back in the day. Keep on it, man.

It's hard for our brothers and sisters around the world to tap into our common consciousness, beset as they are in this world by the woes cast upon them through continued war, famine, and injustice. That's why it's so important for us to speak up whenever we encounter wrong, difficult as they may be to do at times, because we often traverse the worst adversities when we are at our loneliest low points in life, but just like that old Christian poem "Footsteps"*, it just seems that way from the outside looking in. It is then when you are carried by The Lord Our G-d, as His Most Faithfully Beleaguered in Faith. As so often happens in my life, outsiders see one reality when in truth, it's the exact opposite of what they presume it to be, and that very deception is what leads them down the wrong path.

I meat a bleary-eyed Ecuadorean the other day on the street while he was waiting for the bus. I'd noticed him from the other side of the street before, because he stared at me like I was levitating across the sidewalk in front of his apartment building, instead of me hatted up and running an errand, sans makeup. In fact, when we crossed paths, I explained to him that I spend zero dollars ($0) on my appearance. But, but...he sputtered, swaying a little on his heels, I'm so pretty! Now that you've gotten to know me better, that sounds funny, right? Like, asking Jesus when he got his last pedicure while he walks around poorly shod in a pair of old worn sandals, but I was charmed by my new friend.

After all, that's what he was raised to believe in. Pretty girl = easy street, just add (+) one man. Done deal! Of course, that's an absurd way to think, because I'm not a prostitute for hire based solely on my looks (not that I mind beauty as a visual artist because it's part of my world) but in many American cultures, beauty is mythologized to such an extent (especially if you're a drunk, divorced, red-eyed Central American grandpa waiting on a cold Northern sidewalk for a public bus that's on slow rollin' country time), that talking to someone like me seems like, how can this be true ?! Oh, it be, brother man. I assure you of that, esse.

You see, when you're out there in the real world, you don't just get a small slice of pie from the same place over and over again (my G-d, the horror of that!), you eat "the whole enchilada" as they say, and that's exactly how me and my crew play this game called life: like it's winning just to be here, because we come across a lot of "walking dead" out there; bombed-out, brain-dead folks just wandering listlessly throughout their days, so unconscious and unplugged from the world as it exists, waiting to die. A nightmare...and so, when we see something we don't like, we say something, because speaking up is an action that leads to other actions, even if at first it's just misguided thoughts (http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2015/06/say-something.html). It's all part of your training.

Most of my peers have already reached the type of early success that puts us in direct proximity to junior staff who need constant mentoring and teaching because we're tradespeople, and giving back to underlings is crafted into our lifestyles. I teach every day that I'm alive, even if it doesn't fit into your misconceptions about relegating learning to some far away classroom staffed by someone else, even though that someone else is probably someone I went to school with, here in New York, and I can also out-teach any day of the week. My creative hierarchies necessitated me into learning many many abilities so well just to stay competitive and on the job, that I can teach you in another language (in your native language, since you can't speak mine), using whatever tools you have handy.

After you do that for many years like we have, you develop a sophisticated routine centered around schooling. And so, when my Coloradan ex-boyfriend decided to take his act on the road by lecturing the Asian liquor store owner down the block from us in our Denver neighborhood, I couldn't have clapped harder for him in appreciation if I tried. It was one of my most favorite characteristics about him: that he used his power and prestige as a high-earning white man in our society to tell people what they avoided hearing through deliberately planned abusive neglect, by feigning continued ignorance about well-known facets of our American lives. On one such afternoon, I guess Kent had enough of the hypocritical bullshit, because he told me that he finally told the Korean owner what was up, and I was enraptured.

Kent liked to buy some booze to put into his little biker backpack that they make just for riders to squeeze liquid into their mouths during a ride (yeah, not the best use of it, but you don't know his full story and it is massively bad), so he could meander around town on the many bike paths that line the area in an inter-connected web that's the envy of older cities, though the common practice of compulsive over-exercise to cover up a serious mental disorder as it is used out west is a whole other article entirely. Suffice to say that he was familiar with the lay of the land, as he'd lived in town for many years, spending his days driving through he streets that he didn't bike, as a Master Electrician with his own junior apprentice to school in the trade.

I guess he figured he'd had enough of the shit show we'd seen play out unfairly in society over the years, because he and I talked about the judicious use of "mixed residential" zoning laws that are the mark of enlightened urban planning in newer cities like Denver, escaping the common traps most older cities succumb to, like the bust-and-boom, up-and-down patterns that characterize the instant ghettos and gentrified private parks with silver key access that define New York City life. We'd seen our native cities go down fast that way, like he had with the council flats in England, and I did with the projects in the city. Urban planning had created instant ghettos that insured encircled and entrapped cycles of poverty that no one could escape from, let alone a terrorized impoverished people who'd descended from the cruel mistreatment of corrupt plantation owners from centuries past.

We had enough, and it was reflected through his band's song titles about injustices that I felt keenly in my life, too. Kent told me back at our place that as he was walking back to the cooler for a cold drink, he couldn't help but razz the wealthy owner into embarrassment. We'd seen him cruise up to his immigrant business in the 'hood with a brand new Benz curbside, strategically placed as it was right across the street from public housing that was clearly demarcated as such with bolted-on plaques across the front row of old brick townhomes, across the street from his ghetto liquor store. Who the fuck did he think he was? What right did he have to come here and pick off the "po' black folk" with instant access to the very poison that killed them and their brains, by walling himself behind a plastic partition like some pussy?

Kent and I had seen him roll up in his fancy car in our urban neighborhood with his clean little prep school boy, all nice and pressed in his fancy private school clothes, but what right did he have to set up shop across the street from the poorest folks in town? Huh? Kent said he just stood there towering over this little guy and his small prep school kid. They played the whole smiling " haha...no speaky engrish" game with him that they'd been taught by the very people they bought the place from, with one very important caveat left unwritten but certainly lived out loud for the whole block to see: American assimilation is possible in one quick generation, you just have to sell out the more beset "minority" beneath you on the totem pole, even though there's no fucking way any Chinese-American can be a fucking minority, when China and the Americas are this fucking big. 

Nice try, though. "Kunta-Kente"**, you're my straight-up superhero, man! Don't ever change, bro, no matter how hard they grind you down. You're beautiful to me, baby. "Papa" this! We did, you know that, right? We really did show that small town what living is all about, be it with this century's immigrants or the very next ones. Still have your passport with your little boy Visa photo? That shit's adorable, kid, even if you did have a rough go of coming and going whilst traveling back and forth from "The Motherland", because someone (ahem, you know who) fluffed your fucking birth date on your kiddie passport, to give you a ride every time you exited and entered the country of your own free will. Who would do that to their kid going into a new country, you know? We do! Don't change a thing, baby. You're perfect just the way G-d made you to be. Amen to you, brother. This one's for you and yours today, baby. We're all red on the inside: http://taylorseafood.co.uk/ and http://www.taylorfoods.co.uk/

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=welfare+burger

* http://www.onlythebible.com/Poems/Footprints-in-the-Sand-Poem.html

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

Right Stuff

This one's for you, boys.

https://www.wwiimemorial.com/Registry/plaque.aspx?honoreeID=333036

Crazy Paprika

In light of recent developments like madness and manic depression (which turn out to be not-so-new, after all), I decided years ago to give online dating a try. I found a highly coveted piece of real estate online, from what used to be a hippie-dippie sharing site for creative types on a budget, such as myself. Why not move from buildings to boys? 
It made sense to me after a German business trip that lasted months for no good reason, during those halcyon days of riding out a desk job with people hell-bent on mutual destruction, or at least driving each other into early graves. What was the point? I bowed out of their mutual chemical destruction to seek out what lurked beneath the service, and I had a hell of a ride surfing for companions while holding off a raging office bitch from tearing through my neck completely. It's what passes for "multi-tasking" bloodsport in Manhattan business circles. No? Oh, uh, okay. You may need a few more primer courses before moving on to "Excellence".

Anyway, my day job sucked, but that certainly wasn't anything new. 
All of the good, healthy productivity was diverted overseas by the company owners who had a much bigger stake in their home country than our U.S. game. No problem. Under a looser structure of discipline, I thrive, and if the entire company reads my e-mails through the company network, so much the better. I love publishing to a crowd, no matter how big or small. During my tenure with online denizens, I discovered a recently re-located opera singer at a downtown Brooklyn internet start-up, a celebrity chef, some requisite arty types (like actors, designers, poets, etc.), and a one very problematic Eastern European who was not-so-recently arrived. My new manic depressive acquaintance at the next desk job I scored for free online dubbed him (after just one outing with us for cocktails) "Crazy Paprika". She also said, with a few more drinks in her, that we had "showed her what real love looks like", because he picked me up after work to drive me home. Oh....

It went downhill quickly, because within a month he fell in love with me, wanted my children (I wanted a new puppy), and then pestered me into the rather trite romantic vision of a weekend spent in Vermont, probably because he saw some American movie that told him we do such things many years ago. The truth was, as handsome as my new friend is (and he is that, trust, girls, you know me by now; I don't date "common" or "ordinary"), he and I had absolutely nothing in common besides physical beauty. He had dated and impregnated an ugly older woman to get her to fund his American Dream, but after they broke up, he was stuck cleaning houses in the city and living in a cheap Hasidic neighborhood that never (NEVER) opens up to outsiders, especially obviously good-looking Goyim ones. He just didn't fit, and like his media-derived visions loosely based on me and "Pretty Woman", his actual life resembles Movieland very little, so little that it has made him madder than ever.

Sure, waiting on a line that goes around the block for toilet paper drives a person insane, but what he told me was so bat-shit, it solidified my impression that Eastern Euros are fucking crazy forever, not that I needed much more evidence. He told me tales of abuse so severe, I know that if a post-Cold War regime can slowly starve to death it's own people while watching, you're fucked unless you move, which is exactly what he did. They had to sign up for a waiting list spot for an old car that was ten years long, and that's the nice stuff. Most of it was centered around really old, out-of-date technology "for the people", while the corrupt upper tiers of Communists gorged themselves fat on Western luxuries, much like China still does today. They're corrupt, but, so what? Good and bad people exist everywhere, and if you don't like your government, you have to fight for freedom like we do.

Mad people live a life based on delusions, not reality, so when he fell head over heels in love with me, I wasn't particularly flattered. It was way too quick. Not that I doubted my prowess as a lover, because I am experienced, it was that I knew he didn't really know me at all, just the outside wrapping, which is great, but so what? Where does this go? Well, it goes downhill quick, like every other doomed romance when I'm "The Man" with the cool job, great apartment, hip clothes, and tremendous attitude, but...where does that leave you? Riding on my coattails? How is that masculine or sexy for me?! It isn't, and barring unforeseen fetishes that will most definitely NOT crop up in the future, I don't get off by strapping on a fake penis in my hetero-themed family unit. That's why my man is there, yo. Feel me? I'm the girl, you're the boy; that's how it works in traditional family structures where gender and sexuality are hetero, healthy, and normal. It just works out that way naturally.

So, we burned through it quickly, while he freaked out, panicked that his Golden Goose dreams funded by his richly gorgeous dream girl fantasy went up in smoke, because he's not all that. When he grabbed my arm in his car to prevent me from exiting (after I told him to leave me alone) after work one afternoon, I knew this particular Eastern Euro was gonna be a royal fuck up. He then stalked the crazy blond receptionist from my day job, the one with the obviously cheap clip-on hairpieces from Ricky's (they were the real duo in all this), barreling angrily down the block in her baggy beige knit poncho, as she headed towards the bar and back to Long Island on the LIRR, when she still lived there with her parents. She laughed it off, while being openly jealous that I could inspire such bunny-boiler insanity after a few short months of dating. In BipolarLand, jealously and stalking are highly coveted trophies to be bartered around like cash. Not so much for me, in my genuinely legitimate quest for love and romance.

She told me he followed her down the block right outside of the office building where we worked, laughing and saying how "lucky" I was, because she couldn't get a second date after getting drunk and putting out, so, like "wow"! Uh, okay...I backed slowly away from the reception desk to do the real work that makes a publishing company money. After he figured out that she was just as fucked up as him, because she didn't pull away in horror when he grabbed her by the arm in a clearly desperate stalking move, he moved in closer. He began following me home from work for weeks, forcing me to take different trains home (which I did, I mean, fuck, I 'm a native homeboy), which forced him to recognize that he was outplayed by the subways. He called me all night long (manics tend to stay up all night, not sure if you knew; oh you do? Yeah, me, too) to disturb my sleep, but I was locked up tight on the 4th floor of a building he couldn't get into, because there were four good, strong locks he had to get past.

When that didn't work, he escalated into deeper behaviors, like leaving my old cassette tapes that I had taken on our road trip to Vermont on my stoop with a weird note, months after we broke up. I upped the ante, too, playing the uncle-who-is-an-immigration-lawyer card (that's actually true), and then filling a restraining order with the Park Slope police, but in his illegal status, he was already a law-breaking immigrant, so I guess he figured he could do what he wanted, since no one squeezed him about blowing his Visa years ago. No one banged on his door to drag him away in the middle of the night like Eastern Bloc nations do, so what was the harm in hassling this "stuck-up American bitch"? Well, the problem is, he didn't really know what it took to be a successful transplant from another country who worked their ass off, and I did. That's how, bitch.

Once he figured out that I had a full deck of playing cards with all the leverage, he became extreme, and that's the exact sweet spot you wait for with garden variety fuck-ups, because once you break the law out loud and in front of reliable witnesses, I fucking own you. You're mine, punk! And that's exactly what happened. His last desperate stand was to shine his headlights directly onto the building I lived at, honking his horn, blinking his headlights, and calling me non-stop: this, after the Immigration card threat and the Restraining Order, words he pretended not to understand when his English suddenly got real bad, real quick. I no understand, followed by a sheepish shoulder shrug and big "poor me" eyes. Yeah, buddy. We all come from somewhere, bro. So, how did I do it? What was the final nail in his Transylvanian coffin?

Oh, girls, you know me! Mama scared him like the pretend punk he wanted to be: through the power of sheer illusion, just like his feverish media-inspired dreams. I had a leftover BB gun from my crazy redneck ex-boyfriend from Colorado, the big Scottish lad who liked to shoot squirrels from his apartment for fun and target practice, in between his big Elk hunting expeditions in the backwoods. I took that pretend .45 out from it's hiding spot, and in the shining glare from his amped-up, overly bright headlights, I held it up against the window, the clear shadow of a gun in silhouette showing up enough for even his fake-addled brain. Yeah, bitch, 'cause that's what's up. He didn't know if it was real or not, and in his Western cowboy fantasy world, it just might be. Who was he to know me better? I have the warrior-like attitude to back it up. Don't fuck with me. This is my world you livin' in, boy. Don't front, and don't forget. See you on the firing range.

A Thousand Points of Light

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

Like a lot of native New Yorkers living outside of the country (or smack dab in the middle of it like I was), news of home and murder struck us deep at our core, and like many of my friends, we took it as a beacon of light in the fight against the dark that spreads through the human condition where we cannot see it, deep within our souls. I came home as soon as could, with a full grown Mal and man in tow, in a crazy road trip adventure that was fraught with many perils, but make it I did. 
Of course, that man soon realized all those t.v. shows and movies depicted a reality about my home that he was not prepared to accept, but I accepted the return to the homeland of my birth as a necessary burning up upon re-entry. Ain't nobody gonna move me from this.

And so I set out to reconnect with my old network of former classmates, college pals, and work acquaintances, trying to pick up the thread of life in our big city once again. It was overwhelming: I was flat broke (typical for single women), had one of the highest rents in the country to make every month (alone), on a paycheck that did not include food, or clothing, or electricity, because no one in the city gives a fuck about you or your comfort. It's sad in a way, I suppose, but everybody is just trying to keep their heads above water, in the most vicious waters urban man has ever created. Population and competition do that to people, like Rhesus monkeys fighting for peanuts at the local zoo: people zone out, stepping over homeless humans like they're a discarded pizza box, but what can you do? That bum is schizo and he might knife you. Besides, you'll get fired from the job that keeps your head just above the poverty line, and you'll soon be homeless, too, if you don't hurry into work.

That's life in "The Big Apple". It's a near-constant Round Robin* game of crisis care, like an Emergency Room on any given night throughout Gotham: who lives, and who dies? We call it "The Rat Race" here for good reason, because sometimes the vermin outnumber the amount of humans who give a rat's ass about you, and that's on a relatively peaceful day. Know what I mean? It changes you: how you think, look, and behave. Yeah, it makes you stronger, faster, smarter, and tougher, but you learn to let those little things go over the catastrophes, losing sight of the details that pile up in the face of neglect.

I certainly wasn't alone. As part of my "Reconnect" campaign, I briefly became a "joiner" of clubs and associations, at least temporarily, while I made crucial connections. With my safety, security, and money in mind, I forced myself out into the nightlife of Manhattan, typically after rushing home to Brooklyn from work to walk my dog, change my clothes, and take the train back into town, usually because people become snobbish about boroughs at the slightest suggestion from an out-of-towner. Yeah, I know. Women lead brutally hard lives. On one such night, I sat alone at the bar that some local actor bought with t.v. series money about life in the city. But not for long. Within minutes, I chatted with an attractive lady sitting next to me to learn that, yes, she too did design work. Well, yeah. Most of us do that at some point.

We quickly became friends, and branched out from our two bar stools to include other RISD alumni within our conversations. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a guy speed past me like a blur, and then I thought I heard my name. "Hey! Beau!" Turned out to be a guy I had gone out on a date or two with, made out with one time without sex, and then never dated him again. He avoided me in classes after that, and I never really knew why, although hardcore dysfunction was definitely part of my short list of reasons. He fit the criteria: well-to-do, infamous dad, artsy Jewish family with lots of creative connections, etc. You know the type. Handsome but distant, like he's got a million exciting things going on, but honestly, it's creative procrastination.

Anyway, we reconnected as friends, in the same dithering slightly romantic way we had made contact at school with. He was still attractive and young, and so was I. He was entering a Japanese firm through Marketing, that standby for artists when the art and design department thing doesn't work out for you. We were all trying to make our way in Post-911 New York. He'd come back from teaching English in Japan after the attacks to enlist in the NYPD. The force didn't work out for him, for obvious reasons, but I admired his response to a call-to-action. I felt the same way about my people, too. This is our home. 
We fight to defend it. Makes sense.

We became reacquainted and spent some time together, mostly drinking his food of choice, like Sake and Sushi, so he could show off his knowledge of Japanese to me, but we occasionally connected on a deeper level. One 9/11 night was one of those times, when we broke through the petty show-off competition of visual genius to throw some light on what it means to really belong to a culture, like he and I do. He was trying to work on series of paintings about his brief time on the force, like his Jewish Upper East Side gallery agent suggested he do, because his pretty but lackluster Japanese landscapes kind of fell flat. I didn't mind. His rich kid edge was the same energy I met with at school. Why would his life here be any different for him? It wasn't really, as I watched him muddle through his intense feelings about seeing murder and the worst of humanity firsthand, for hours at a time.

I didn't think it would go far due to his emotional constipation, hence the whole codependent thing he's got going on with his folk in their Village apartment, because processing wasn't high on his family's list of accomplishments. His sister still slept on his parent's couch at the time, supposedly because she was the victim of a sexual assault that left her traumatized, but after my brush-ups with the insane, I knew it could be untrue. Besides, his parents covered for her constantly in her infirmity, and I knew all about that, too. I covered up for my family more times than I could count, being an abuse survivor all my life. I knew the consequences for speaking up against mental illness in the home.

It was in that context that he invited me to see his cool art studio housed in a trendy brick building that was formerly a warehouse in the Meatpacking District, on the very night we mourn our dead. After touring the facilities, we made our way to the roof with a bottle of wine. It was cold out, as September nights that edge towards Fall are. Besides the uncomfortable fumbling around that passes for flirting with the disordered, I could see the twin lights of the former Trade Center site from atop the building, and I still can't really explain what I saw accurately. It was like there were a thousand little lights twirling, dipping, and swooping independently within the two upward beams, of their individual volition. It was eerie, fantastical, and utterly miraculous.

I asked him if he saw what I saw, and we spoke briefly about it. 
He dismissed it as dust motes, but what kind of matter moves like that?! I tried watching the evening news for days afterward, as well as intermittently searching the web for other witnesses to the events of that night, but I still don't know what happened. I don't know what I saw, except that it looked like the dearly departed souls had become a thousand points of light** in the night, a cluster of brilliant fairy lights brushing up against one another as they surfed the warm updraft of the hot spotlight currents. It was joyful and free, and I have the same chill goosebumps writing about it in this library's air conditioning as I did on that windy night in September, when I wasn't a human warrior on a mission to save the world with my friends, but an artist who could really see what life was about: the beauty of it, the pathos of it, the sometimes tragic and hopelessly beautiful quality to our unique lives that makes the world go 'round. Do you know what I mean? 

I hope you do, because that feeling was more real to me than any of the words spoken to me that night by a New York kid who would never make it out of his head to achieve great success, despite every advantage that was rigged for him through a Capitalist system designed for his particular benefit. He was a victim of circumstances beyond his control, like the synapses in his brain that constantly misfire, as mysterious to me as the cosmic forces that drive stardust across the night sky, but such is the mystery and marvel of our faith. Amen to you today who have suffered at the hands of others who do not love you like I do. I understand you, and I can feel your pain. I can help. We'll be here for you, when you're ready. I am the light at the end of the tunnel. Come home to me.

*    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Round-robin
**  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thousand_points_of_light
 

Indian Giver

Mi'kmaq warrior and dancer, Danny Boy Stephens, takes a moment to reflect on the shores of the Great Slave Lake, Northwest Territories, Canada.

For years I lived in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the world; 
a very affluent section of Brooklyn called "Park Slope", famous for its' artsy writing crowd, media types, ubiquitous designers, and lesbians, which suited me just fine. Except for the occasional coffee-house misunderstanding (volunteer firefighter "dude" with a preference for Great Danes and Christmas lights, I know you knew I was straight, girl, but thanks for being a weirdo to me when I was sitting alone), I was pretty much left to my own devices, which also suited me fine. 

I didn't have a lot of time for bullshit anymore. I was a full-time Art Director in publishing, and after I quit smoking, a part-time martial artist in training, which meant I had weekday evenings after 9pm and Saturday mornings to sleep in, which was exactly what I did, and I did it every week for years. I'd also tack on church and Sunday school classes when I worked from home, but it was pretty much the same deal, because no one around me was suitable for my company.

Sometimes I dated men I knew I could trust from my past, from places like old jobs or school, but that eventually went away, too, because they weren't suitable for me either. Mostly, I worked and walked and kept healthy, which kept me going. When the boom was lowered on me financially, I did double-time creatively by cutting out everything but food as an expense, but just like my training provided, I set up a new routine in which I could flourish and work, albeit more sporadically and with much less frills for decorating. 

It's the same productivity I have in place today: free Internet access at the library, while trying to keep the freaks off of me. But in Brooklyn, it was harder. People are savvier, and they know how to work you over. 
I met a man there that I knew was troubled, but because I grew up with it, I managed to stay safe by my own wits. He knew that, too, along with many other facts that were mixed in with his psychosis.

What my Nuyorican friend from Brownsville did not know, and had never known, was an Acadian Métis warrior. He thought his "street smarts" about welfare scams and rent cheats were powerful weapons that he had in his arsenal, along with an almost total lack of a moral compass, really bad acting skills, and one very serious mental illness. Over time, I put him through all the paces, but to no avail, which certainly didn't surprise me one bit.

If my friend said he needed a clock, I gave him the old one I'd had for more than 15 years hanging in my kitchen, because I had another one in my living room. If he said he was "learning" design at a broke-ass school on Staten Island, I gave him my old small spare portfolio to use, with deadlines in place for him to keep to, and he did absolutely nothing with the gifts I gave him, just like any other asshole white boy I've ever tried to trade with.

When I asked him to show me his portfolio pieces one day, as I was checking out his tiny room in a typical Brooklyn tenement in the Spanish-flavored part of the Slope that turns into Sunset Park, he shamefacedly opened it to reveal that he turned into a place to keep his checkbook and receipts for storage. Oh. OK. You've done nothing. Give it back to me, asshat. NO! I mean hand it over to me now.

He sputtered in shock. But, but...he's a welfare-case. Pretty white ladies usually give him stuff for being sick and broke! Yeah, bitch, meet the real deal ethnic minority. He tried to quibble with me about my genetic past, saying I just wanted to paint myself "exotic", like the mass murder in our Nova Scotian past was something I chose to brandish about town, like he did with his check from the government for school. You know, because he needed a "hand up", not a hand out.

Same thing with my room clock: you don't help me move my stuff after I run out of money "homeboy", you give me back my clock (which I eventually ditched at a Park Slope storage place when I ran out of money for that, too). By this point, I had him trained: he just sighed, took down the clock from the painted-over graffiti ghetto wall, and handed it back to me.

You see, esse, in my world, if you don't have something of equal value to trade, we don't trade with you at all, so give it back. All of it. It's okay, though. I've got a special lil' internal clock running, just to keep track of all the borrowed time you're on. Take your time with it.

 

from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_giver

Satanic Surfer

Years ago, after a financial downturn I didn't control, circumstances forced me to move from place to place, like a woman with hell on her heels. One place was an old, run-down townhouse in Brooklyn, with the usual suspects: an old white lady landlord living in Long Island who just wanted checks in her mailbox, a Puerto Rican super/building manager turned rogue slumlord through the opportunity that indifference brings, a corrupt bodega owner in "da 'hood" who recommended hard cases to the seedy crash pad, and a desperate network of ex-cons, schizos, and other outsiders (like me), who needed a place to stay immediately, because a hotel was out of the question with no money.

And so I nimbly footed my way through the system, meeting up with a troubled but highly intelligent man while working at the public library. He finally found a room to rent in his "dream" neighborhood, which had quickly become the over-priced hellhole I wanted to escape, but options had run out for me. When my library friend offered to let me crash on his floor in an old Army sleeping bag while I greased the palm of "José" (the building manager who was in the palm of the corner bodega owner), for basic cleaning services to the garbage-filled room next door so I could move into it. 

I had to pay the rent for even that floor space dearly by listening to my new friend rant and rave while he badly juggled school, work, and life on his own, which naturally led him to weaning himself off his anti-psychotics during my time at "Casa Crack Shack", but that's a story for another day. My sick friend does it routinely, and no one ever does a thing for him about it; another hard luck case for social services that are so anti-social, I have no idea what petty bureaucrat thought it up, but they should serve time for the offense.

Anyway, he had a substitute for his expensive medication, with all the excuses hard criminals have, who also struggle with mental illness and addiction: dirt weed and lots of alcohol! It was a brilliant plan, because he soon ran out of the sleeping pills he needs for mania, hence the healing nature of pot, which left him with a nagging smoker's cough that did not go away. In between hits off his cheap cigar blunt and hacking coughs, he liked to tell me outlandish stories, because I was already well-known in the city for storytelling, right here on this site.

I'm sure he read it, though true to the lifestyle of the not-so-rich and not-to-be recognized famous, he pretended he hadn't seen my work, choosing to bend my ear with his horrible lies instead. The tales he told were telling about his psychosis, and I didn't have a choice, so in between cleaning a room that had been vandalized for years, after my day job at an indie house as a rock star cover artist, I sat on the floor of his tiny room to let and listened.

Like any kook you meet at a cocktail party or on the Internet, he was obsessed with the usual wacky shit that crazy people get wrong all the time: sex, drugs, rock n' roll, and religion. He mixed them up poorly, fueled by the pressure to perform at NA meetings, finely honed after many therapeutic sessions. He was your average reality t.v. show guest star, having told me that he was a child actor who auditioned on Broadway and had recently tried out for a weight-loss show as a coach, because one of his jobs in Florida was as a "Personal Trainer". He's basically your headcase whose weight fluctuates wildly from extremes, which is the exact profile most producers look for in potentials, but he isn't handsome, so nothing ever came of it.

What he did have were hours and hours of bullshit; some good, some really bad, and occasionally he veered close to art, without ever crossing over into our territory, but he was fascinated with me for my beauty and my genius, which kept me safe, because he was enthralled by me as an audience. He must have read about my boogie-boarding and beach going online, which naturally led him to tell me a crazy story about him violating the "Boarders-only" policy at the Rockaways*. He must have got caught in a riptide and panicked, because he was in way over his head in rough waters, but instead of telling me that, he concocted a bizarre tale about evil surfers who tried in vain to drown him.

Why? I asked mildly, though I am shocked as usual by the utter lack of reason the seriously disordered among us suffer from. Why would Satan give a crap whether some fat Nuyorican drowned or not? Were in you in league or something? "Well, no, Marie," and then he would adopt this pseudo-white guy, actor-y voice, which let me know the real show was about to start. He forcefully told me that "Luciferians" were real, when I countered with the obvious truth that there have never been any documented cases of cult activity, certainly not while surfing poorly in Queens without a board. He pretended that I was a naive white girl, and that I should look it up online soon, on that other Wild West domain of the insane known as "The Internet", like a hypochondriac addicted to WebMD.

After I pelted him lightly with a series of easy questions in rebuttal, tired from a long day of brutally hard work, I let him know the jig was up. I sagged on the mattress I now sat on, because the floor had gotten hard during his long speechifying. So, I looked him right in the eyes, after yet another position change, this time him on the mattress and me on the floor, and he knew it, too. His eyes changed, the wind went out of him, and he told me the truth, finally: he had a psychotic episode while he was swimming, and he thought devil-worshippers sounded a lot more exciting. The only demon in the room with him and me that night were the ones flying around in his brain; a series of random, uncontrolled brain bursts that one very sick man needs medicine and treatment for, not stories and t.v. shows.

Can you guess what he was studying (and I use that term loosely) at Staten Island Community College? Some design thrown in for flash, and a lot of drunken, stoned television and movie-watching, but that's not what he called it. He told me he was a Media Major. 

Hey, have fun at the beach this weekend, America! Watch out for all those sharks that swim in deep waters. You never know where you might find one.


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

Leatherbound

Pressed leaf from a Ginkgo biloba tree.

As a publisher, I have books of all shapes, sizes, types, languages, and purposes. Most are for reading, but I am media-independent as a creator, which means I do not experience biases based on other people's preferences. 

A junior staff member from a small family business I worked at years ago was horrified to discover that my priceless going away gift, presented to a homesick Midwestern admin, was actually a one-of-a-kind art piece crafted from a hollowed out duplicate of a hardcover classic that's been in print for hundreds of years.  

A gift of a leather bound journal for whatever I want. Thanks, Jang!

Yeah, I know. It's why neither former female employee (not the gift getter, nor the assistant) works in publishing anymore. They don't understand that a book is more than text communication; it's also an art object. The very essence behind my success lies in my ability to transcend individual intentions (which are probably wrong) to ascertain real value, make something from it, and present it to all of you. That does not mean the people around me necessarily "get it", or see worth right away, because they can't. My job is to see.

I use bound materials the way any artist uses any medium in a serious way: by pushing it further than you ever could, and that's what keeps it so fun and fresh. Plus, I really enjoy the feeling of "shock and awe" on your faces that rings in "frontiering". Hey, parents get bored, too! Have fun this weekend and go make something, will ya?


"For those who fight for it, 
life has a flavor that the sheltered will never know."
- from the movie, Sucker Punch.