Eat The Worm

Despite our crowd's consistent demonstrations of hearty appetites backed by impressive quaffing, we were not immune to bad party fouls, like any other high-aiming social group. We were the kind of kids who'd try and make the worst combinations of lunchroom leftovers we could think of, daring kids to eat it for, like, a quarter or fifty cents, which immediately knocked out the rich Jewish kids with orthopedist/dentist dads. They didn't need the change as badly as we did. White milk in a carton was $.15, and my mom didn't give anyone anything extra. Ever. If we wanted some chips to go with our bologna sandwiches or maybe a carton of chocolate milk for $.30/.35 (both junk food items in my household), we had to earn it, which we did by creating insane concoctions we giggled profusely over.

Drinks were fodder, too, because you could make gross-out combos in the obligatory thermos that came with every lunchbox back then. Do people even use those anymore? I'm not sure, but like our clothes and sneakers, a new lunchbox that wasn't a knock-off or a hand-me-down from your less-than-cool older sibling was fresh gear to sport around, and that meant something to us. Like a weird Midwestern religious cult that forbids gifts, presents, and celebrations like the booze that will surely cause them to snap out and kill someone, we were strictly limited in our options, which forced us to get creative, so we did.

Peas mixed with mashed potatoes and something sweet was a solid combo, but over the years, as our stomachs grew stronger, so did the thrills and angst accompanying cafeteria dares. After awhile, like, say, in junior high school, we had jobs for fast food and extra things like a novelty eraser that had meant so much to us in grade school. So, too, did our appetites grow in high school and college. "Mixology" was considered an unspoken minor alongside rolling joints and tobacco in rolling papers, which is kind of like baking with really thin puff pastry in cooking school for the first time: one tear and you're out of the game, unless you become adept at fixing the hole that could render a joint unsmokeable—or a pastry edible—making you the target of jeers for the rest of what could be a very long night.

Certain drink categories quickly became defined to us as a group as utterly non-potable and undesirable for long-term partying, meaning the wrong combo could take you out of the scene and into the bathroom for the entire night, missing out on the kind of crucial action that always takes place at a great party with slammin' music and beautiful people. It hurt, you know? As working class kids, we didn't have a lot of time for recreation, and for us to blow a rare opportunity for fun to remain behind closed doors while recovering from one of the worst hangovers of your life meant you fucked up somewhere, so you'd better fix it for the next time. We had the added bonus of hearing all of our friends make fun of us in the very next room, or prank us hard while we were down for the count, and these were kids from rough homes: they could turn vicious and mean with too much booze and pot. 

You didn't want to be "down for the count", like a prizefighter in the last round of a title fight who needs just a few precious seconds to make it to the end of a fight, in order to earn out from the bout, for all that hard work and dedication. It meant that much to us at school, and we really couldn't afford to blow it. There were no magical "Plan B" pills for us to take, back then. Every fuck-up we made could hurt us badly and take us "out of the running" for life, forever, like "Crackhead Jen" who got busted by "Pubic Safety" (public safety): a ragtag bunch of fat locals who hated us/needed us for a living. She got caught by them for over-drinking between dorms, and then was sent back to Ireland by her parents for awhile, to cool her heels. I finally got Karen back to our room, after they'd been pounding cheap fruit punch powder mix with grain alcohol that our friends bought for us in Pennsylvania.

As part of the prized "heavyweight" class of drinker from solid German/Irish/Italian working class New York roots, Karen could pull it in for adults and parents like I could, but Meg and her roommate Jen were from the quieter town of Mamaroneck in Westchester that left them lacking in their party-training, though Meg proved heartier than little Jen, who'd completely lose her shit after a few drinks. It was weird, because they're both solid Micks, but, with her cheerleader crew, Meg had sampled the darker world of blotter acid trips gone bad in the 'burbs, which actually left her primed and ready for a serious party experience like O-town. This shit wan't no joke to play with, yo. Kids snapped out and went down all the time around us, sometimes waiting it out at a local community college while living back at home with their parents for what could be a few crucial years in our development. We didn't have time for interruptions like that, esses. 

And so, like grain alcohol with powdered fruit drink mix, Tequilla (or "Ta-Kill-Ya", as we renamed it back then) was "loco" to us, man, as were the rest of the mescal group of drinks from south of the border. We'd drank the bottles to the bottom to eat the worm in front of each other, and that's exactly where it went all wrong for us: at the bottom of a bottle of seriously strong booze. We became the kind of crowd who could smoke and drink all night to exhaustion, braced for the deathly-cold walk home by a strict one-shot rule of whiskey at the end of the night, pounded to the same "Smiths" song that signaled it was closing time at the bar to us, cranked to an ear-splitting level. It was time to go home, and no matter how hard the booze hit you in the warmth of a cozy pub, the freezing bitch-slap of our mountain air always (ALWAYS) sobered us up enough to make it home problem-free. It pays to know just who the fuck you are at the end of a night out, especially around a bunch of roughneck New York kids. Take care with it.

 
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everclear_(alcohol)

Camp Out

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Talent Show

By now, you should know as my frequent readers that my parents hit "The Village" and Broadway in the city for many years before me and my brothers were even born, so if you think you can top them in "art fag", don't. Don't even try it with them, or with me, for that matter. They were wayyy gayer with it, first. Trust, on that. I should know, because they bought the soundtrack albums with overly histrionic solos more fit for bad vocal stylings on pop culture "talent" shows than real singers with authentic chops. We've been over this before: it's that aggressive up-and-down warbling that goes "ohahoohhhoonnnannndohhhahhhon" long after it should have ended, popping "pop tart" vocal chords to give us instant headaches, but my parents are suckers for it, just like y'all with poorer musical tastes than me.

I should know, because I took serious music classes in college that developed my innately good interest in real sound by authentic musicians, and then I worked in a professional setting with it, which meant I took my act on the road and then walked it around town for many years. I know "good" from "bad" on an expert level, and that's that. I also know totally bullshit "diva" attitudes, because my version of the manic-depressive bulimic bipolar bisexual cheerleader stereotype was my ballet teacher in New City growing up, and she never failed to remind us to diet as children until it hurt, so we could have the dubious privilege of spending our formative years training among other gay kids with body image issues who wanted purely homocentric bitchiness in their social circles for many years, ones that self-patrolled one another by over-scrutinizing their bodies for overtly heterosexual body traits (like fully-developed breast tissue brought about by years of healthy eating combined with a great attitude), which meant, just like with the gay girl scouts, that I was utterly excluded from it as a peer group. Forever.

And just like I wrote before, I was totally fucking fine with that. Not my scene. And so, when those trite bitches in the gay troop decided that our horrible camp out should include gay skits, I knew it would suck, because none of them had the actual chops to go with artistry that mark the master's mindset from the amateur, even in childhood. Like the rest of my time with them, I knew beforehand that each and every thing they would do would suck badly, combined with my lack of control as a child with the brain of a ferociously bright werewolf who just knows exactly what will happen beforehand, and then it does, and I have to watch you do it. And then it happens. 

This skit bullshit with the gay troop was like that. I was so horrified by the idea, that I had to walk around crying in the dark for awhile before I could even contemplate telling my mom what I already knew: these bitches are crazy. It was, again, one of the worst experiences of my life and my childhood. As I walked around dark woods that are native to me, I had never felt so out of my skin among nature in my entire life, and I knew that could only mean one thing: a really bad ending. Not for me, but for all of you, and I was powerless to stop it. I knew it was motivated by their bad taste, and I knew it was just another way to exclude me from it. I finally worked up the nerve to interrupt my mom having a bitchy coffee klatch with the other moms over-nighting at the campsite, and just like I predicted, she sucked, too.

She pushed me away, telling me that I had to do it for some stupid fucking badge I didn't need for me and my life, and that I had to seek out a group, ask if I could join them, and then do their stupid fucking skit poorly. If you're not a master artist, it's hard to explain how bad hiding your skills hurt, because you can physically feel it in your body, forced to imitate other brains that are much worse than yours, like pretending to be dumb, deaf, sick, and blind. I was, quite simply, stuck on a sinking ship, and I was the only one aware of what was actually happening. I took my time walking around the campsite again, to put off talking to some crazy fucking butch who would either die early or kill herself, and every nerve-ending in my body was attuned to it.

Finally, after lurking around the edges of one group, letting them gossip about me and my presence at the edges of their exclusionary circle, I made an approach upon a group of girls I'd spent some time observing from a safe distance. It hurt all over, but I'm forced into abusive situations all the time, and for me, it wasn't even the first few times, nor the last. I went up to a nasty-tempered, chubby, moon-faced girl with short hair, and made a move at her, by way of making conversation. They were already in stupid stage outfits, and she'd pushed a pillow and a pan under her flannel shirt, giving herself freckles and blacked-out teeth, presumably to play a male redneck role in some skit that both degraded the country and herself, while we were in the wilderness showcasing our outdoors skills. It was bafflingly bad.

"Hey!" I mustered up as much false confidence as I could muster, by pushing my way through the group to join their conversation made into a tight circle. "What's this?" I knocked on her padded stomach area to hear the hollow sound of a cooking pan, and she immediately bristled by jumping down my throat too quickly, which gave away her hand to the rest of the group gathered around. "G-d, Marie!" She whined, way too loudly. "How would you like someone coming up to you and punching you in the stomach?" Uh, good point, toothless queer kid. I guess I wouldn't like it, so fair enough. Anyway, I told them I was being forced by the parents to join their skit by reason of insanity, and it won enough support among them as a group that I was allowed to join, by the other girls. But I'd made my point, and for that reason alone, the rest of the night passed in a blur that I could now tolerate. 

It sent them a very clear and distinct message in "healthy hetero female", which is my primary language: mess with me, queer kid, and I can hit harder than any girl you've never met before, gay, straight, or otherwise. In my culture, we are that brave and strong as a tribe, and the very first people to hit me were my own adult parents, and in the "right" mood that was way wrong, they may or may not pull their punches directed at me, even as a child. After them? My bigger, stronger brothers hurt me next. Around the fire, as I sat on a log watching the other kids perform, I distinctly remember flashing white teeth all around the fire, because in my heart, I knew I just won the biggest bravery award we have as a tribe, bitch or no butch. It didn't matter. I won. The rest of the night passed by smoothly for me, and I went to sleep in a group tent without further incident, because those bitches chose another target to prank during their manic night, fueled on sugar snacks they hid away in their camping gear. But, not me. No, not me. I actually slept a rather decent night's sleep, in comparison. Smoke that, c#nt.

http://nativequotesandbrilliance.ning.com/profiles/blogs/a-test-of-bravery

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

Pancake Breakfast

In addition to the pain of being the token "hetero" at any gay girl scout meeting (as well as many design groups in the city, as an adult), I also hated everything they did as an activity, because I had pretty much learned it already on my own, or with my brothers and my dad's boy scout troop, and it was all the cool stuff like making fires, swamping out canoes, basic CPR, hiking, and making fires. Done. Why did I have to do it again with these chicks? They were horrible. My mom was also invited along for girl scouting, and she took the opportunity to join this gay movement with a gusto that frightened me in its bitchiness. As the only straight kid, it meant that almost every conversation excluded me, plus I didn't have the right hair length (too long, curly, and feminine) to make it plausible, even as afterschool banter with these queer kids.

It was excruciating, but because my mom had felt excluded from our boy scouting excursions that we loved as a family, she clung to the all-gay girl group like a pit bull biting down on its prey with its jaws locked. Finally, as a mom, this was her métier: a bunch of short-haired, gender-challenged bitches who worked on becoming better fucking bitches like it was the only badge in the book. It was pure hell for me, and it went on for far too long. Because my mom thrilled with this same-sex "be-in" like we were beret-wearing hipsters listening to jazz music at a smoky club in the Village (except that would have been infinitely better for me as an experience), I was also forced to go to their gay day camp (run by another large butch female), and overnight trips that made me cry bitterly. 

The idea of it was so repulsive to me, because I knew what waited for me there: more hazing and brutal abuse, with the continued betrayal of a mother who liked gay kids way better than her own straight daughter, at times. I went on one camping trip with them, and it was one of the worst experiences of my life, in cruel contrast to the great outdoor experiences I had with my brothers and their friends, led by my dad in our childhood, and then on our own. We had barely made it through the night, when my mom (finally) and I decided it was enough. We conferred via a brief tête-à-tête by the morning campfire, sullenly cooking breakfast with wet wood that blew thick smoke in every direction. "Yeah", my mom finally agreed, "there's something really wrong with Chris (the troop leader). We should quit. Never again." Yes! Finally! Sanity had returned to my usually savvy New Yawk mutha. You're back on the right team!

Because of this joyous news, I moved closer to my mama as we tried to salvage pancakes over a poorly made fire that would flavor anything we made with charred wet wood, not anything like the gourmet "smoking" techniques you see on t.v. cooking shows. "This sucks", my mom declared, and I was overjoyed. Never again. I'd never have to see these fucking cruel bitches again on my free time, outside of the nasty jeering they performed for each other as they passed us by in the hallway. We were finally out of this hellish scene! They were so fucking crazy that everything we did sucked, which only pissed off their butch leader even more, as she saw her troop spinning out of control with lowered attendance for each passing weekly meeting, because of her incompetence.

I leaned against my once-again pretty mama as we whispered back and forth over the campfire. Sensing a disturbance in the wicked dark forces, the angry butch had, just moments before, pulled back a tent flap in anguish, as her little spies reported back to her about my breakfast badge that went up in flames with the poorly made fire and soggy pancakes. Sabotage, like ballet, is a big part of the bitchy gay world, and each passing second confirmed what I had pretty much known since birth: I do not belong here, and in case I ever forgot that fact—with momentary lapse of politeness and genuine conversation that's "normal" for Rockland County—they snapped back at me way harder than was necessary, because that's what being a bipolar gay scout troop is all about, like cheerleading and reality t.v. shows.

"Mom", I said to her quietly, "can you flip these pancakes for me? I have smoke in my eyes," at the exact same time as one big looming butch stood over us aggressively, who had also passed the night poorly, like we all had. And it was true. The smoke stung my eyes so badly that they watered and reddened badly. It really fucking hurt. But, seeing this tender scene between an actual mother and her biological daughter was more than this bitch could take. She snapped out, screaming and yelling at us, with her eyes bulging and her hands balled into fists. "THERE ARE NO 'MOTHERS' IN THE WILDERNESS!!" She jeered down at us hunched over the fire. My mom, not to be bested in "bitch-speak" by anyone (she's from the Bronx, and they made it famous), said back to her, "That's not true, Chris. We saw a mother bear with her cub, like, yesterday, right near this campsite." And that was true, too. 

She hated us even more for having the right facts. "That's not what 'scouting' is all about! You have to 'pretend' she's not your mother to earn this badge!" Yeah, fuck you, lady. I'm, like, ten years old and scared. Anyway, I choose my mom and my family, you fucking freak. And that was it. "I don't care!" Fuck this, bitch. I threw down the spatula, and walked away from the campsite to pack up my gear. Lady— or whatever the fuck you think you are—you can take your fucking gay girl scout troop and shove it, and just like that, I was done. So was my mom. The spell over her was finally broken, and I had my real mom back. That was the best thing out of all of it. I got my family back. Shove that, butch! No badge in the world can cover "loyalty", when it comes to blood bonds. We'll always win.

Scouts Honor

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

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

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

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

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

Cleopatra Jones

Every so often, people will ask me about my ancestry and, as it so happens, it is almost always disastrous, especially to someone who doesn't really understand genetics, history, or the human diaspora across the globe. It's disconcerting to me, but such is the nature of impairments  and/or little formal education. My much-older friend Tony asked me about a necklace my mom bought for me from Ireland, a beautiful silver Celtic cross hanging on a chain, and from there he asked me if I was mostly Irish, right? I know he's "just Sicilian" (or so he thinks as an American), so it's really hard for him to have fully developed ethnic conversations, plus he's 90+, hearing impaired, cognitively impaired, and he never had a real college education. Ah, there's the rub.

In deference to his age, his service to this country, our friendship, and my innate respect for older people, I always try to answer him, but he either interrupts me abruptly before I can finish explaining it all to him, or he vaguely stares off and then just walks away from me, both utterly disturbing habits to have while in conversation with another person. To whit, I have done this: told Tony my ethnic story countless times, which has left me with either interpretative dance as an option, and/or performing a Broadway musical in his honor, neither of which I am willing to do for him at this point. 

He's from the "pie chart" generation of ethnicity, when you split the difference about parents and grandparents over who married their cousin or niece from the old country, which is parlayed into "purebred" status here in "Amereeka", much like the inbred lineage of a certain Macedonian Queen ruling Egypt at the end of its golden age. Needless, studies have shown that during the gestational process in utero, genetics actually battle it out for dominance in the womb and beyond (http://phys.org/news/2009-07-maternal-paternal-genes-tug-of-war-childhood.html), so to answer your question (again) Tony, and also my mom: no, I am not "mostly" Italian because my grandma's parents were from the same town in Italy. I am predominately Northern European (British/Irish), because that's the way it goes with ferocious werewolf genetics. Sorry, mom.

That's not to say that I don't love being from an ancient Mesopotamian line of Greco-Romans who predate the creation of Europe, like my other Norman ancestry of movable merchants. Tony trailed off at this point, because the only reference point he has is "Sicily", and that's about it. It's unfortunate, because our real genetic histories can tell us fascinating stories about our ancestors, and how much they actually moved around the ancient world. So, here it is, once again: I am English, Irish, FrancoGermanic from the North and Southern European with a small percentage being modern Italian, since GrecoRoman predates Europe, and Acadian Métis, that predates Canada and the United States. Okay?

I know. It's a history lesson and a half, but it's also not rocket science. This is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta-v. Got it? Good! Let's move on. So, in addition to having Mesopotamian genetics that skipped the horrible incest that marks most modern nobility (see the above jump for more about Cleopatra's inbred family line), I also have very old European DNA so, fuck you, too. I'm "Cleopatra Jones", and I'm definitely not your typically fucked-up royal. I'm much better than that, actually. Oh, and yes, "Joneses" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jones_(surname): family reunions in the Maine back-country are still "on". See you there, moonshine or not. We're still wild, folk.  

http://www.metisofmaine.org/

Digable Planets 

Rebirth Of Slick (Cool Like Dat)

[Butterfly]

We like the breeze flow straight out of our lids
Them they got moved by these hard-rock Brooklyn kids
Us flow a rush when the DJ's boomin classics
You dig the crew on the fattest hip hop records
He touch the kinks and sinks into the sounds
She frequents the fatter joints called undergrounds
Our funk zooms like you hit the Mary Jane
They flock to booms man boogie had to change
Who freaks the clips with mad amount percussion
Where kinky hair goes to unthought-of dimensions
Why's it so fly cause hip hop kept some drama
When Butterfly rocked his light blue-suede Pumas
What by the cut we push it off the corner
How was the buzz entire hip hop era?
Was fresh and fat since they started sayin audi
Cause funks made fat from right beneath my hoodie
The puba of the styles like miles and shit
Like sixties funky worms with waves and perms
Just sendin chunky rhythms right down ya block
We be to rap what key be to lock

But
I'm cool like dat [x7]
I'm cool...I'm cool...

[Ladybug]

We be the chocolates taps on my raps
Innovates at the sweeta cat naps
He at the funk club with the vibrate
Them they be crazy down with the ?five plate?
It can kick a plan then a crowd burst
Me I be diggin it with s bump verse
Us we be freakin til dawn blinks an eye
He gives the strangest smile so I say hi (wassup)
Who understood yeah understood the plan
Him heard a beat and put it to his hands
What I just flip let borders get loose
How to consume or they'll be just like juice
If its the shit we'll lift it off the plastic
The babes'll go spastic
Hip hop gains a classic
Pimp playin shock it don't matter I'm fatter
Ax Butta how I zone (man, Cleopatra Jones)

And
I'm chill like dat [x7]
I'm chill...I'm chill...

[All]

Blink..blink..blink..blink..blink..blink..blink....
Think..think..think..think..think..think..think...

[Doodlebug]

We get ya free cause the clips be fat boss
Them they're the jams and commence to goin off
She sweats the beat and ask me cause she puffed it
Me I got crew kids seven and a crescent
Us cause a buzz when the nickel bags are dealt
Him that's my man with the asteroid belt
They catch a fizz from the Mr. Doodle-big
He rocks a tee from the Crooklyn non-pigs
The rebirth of slick like my gangsta stroll
The lyrics just like loot come in stacks and rolls
You used to find a bug in a box with fade
Now he boogies up your stage plaits twist or braids

And
I'm peace like dat [x7]
I'm Peace

[Butterfly]

Check it out man I groove like dat
I'm smmoce like dat
I jive like dat
I roll like dat

[Ladybug]

Yeah I'm thick like dat
I stack like dat
I'm down like dat
I'm black like dat

[Doodlebug]

Well yo I funk like dat
I'm fat like dat
I'm in like dat
Cause I swing like dat

[Butterfly]

We jazz like dat
We freak like dat
We zoom like dat
We out...we out...

Songwriters: Vieira, Mary Ann / Butler, Ishmael R.

Rebirth Of Slick(Cool Like Dat) lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

Smear

 

Women's healthcare (and women's bodies) have long been demonized by an extremist sector of our society who continually struggle with their sexual identity, gender, and maturity level, which means that the rest of us have to be subjected to their continued insanity as it relates to those topics, and I want that very much to stop. Like, today. It came to a sharp point for me through the pet adoption process I did with a couple of high school drop-outs not of my social set; like, not even related to someone on the bottom rung of my family, ya dig? 

As such, they were so far off from reality and where they should be as human beings, that I found basic communication with them difficult, which means they're psychotic, especially when it's when combined with all the scientific evidence someone like me can drum up with a team of ethical experts like myself. What I'm saying to you in plain English is this: me and my mom always knew Angel and Dom were fucking nuts, but they were crazy enough to take care of a beloved family pet, and that's what we needed then. Anything else, like their false sense of friendship towards a woman like me, was entertained with my promise to Teddy in mind, like any real mother would do.

It's not that I particularly disliked them as people, it's just that they're the kind of people working behind the PetCo counter at the local strip mall who handed me my change, or the woman handing dental instruments to my dentist while I got a routine exam. Angel never attended college, nor did her ex-husband (although several prior ex-husbands could have been college educated...who knows?), and neither did any of their children, or children's children, because they way they kept their freaky "lifestyle" intact was brainwashing their young with their half-ass theories of life that cannot be supported in higher learning institutions (from the sheer volume of its madness), nor out in the world at large, or even in the wider social circles among their rather unhealthy inbred set of mountain folk, a place where child birth by uneducated teenage girls is considered an acceptable practice, which is about as far from me and my family as you can get.

It made for some strange bedfellows, like Angel's vehement support of gay lifestyles and gay marriage (really, anything "gay" at all), that she combined with her rather pedestrian view of women's healthcare that her wacko father taught her, that meant killing babies in secret satanic rituals the rest of us call "clinics" or "hospitals" or "the ob/gyn" or "doctor's offices", because her fucked-up dad told her that the tissue we generate—that may or may not grow to full-term in a woman's uterus—was, in actuality, fully gestated already at the beginning of the fertilization process, which means that women everywhere transport a tiny-size human shrunk down to impossible proportions that's pushed through her egg sack into the Fallopian tube, to attach to the uterus like an astronaut with an air-line floating in outer space looking to attach to the hull of a speeding spaceship. And I'm a sci-fi fan!

She used her rudimentary skills as a barely-educated dental admin (six-month certificate, tops) combined with her rigorous pet store training to tell me that they had "pictures" to support her point of view, which means they go to some quack who bought an old camera from a defunct doctor's office on Craigslist to sell made-up pictures to other crazy pregnant women who want a photo to put on their fridge of their "baby" to brag about to other nut-jobs, and they're also highly Photoshopped recreations that are not based on any particular scientific reality, other than keeping the insane somewhat gainfully employed. Out of this weird cocktail of half-baked ideas and rigorously-guarded ignorance came about Angel's special blend of the next generation of fucked-up bipolar bisexuals, like her porno-appearing daughter whom she touted to me and my mom (on the one visit we had with Ted at one of her exes houses) as a real beauty, and that was also not true, in addition to all of her bad medicine.

What it did produce was this: Angel's gay daughter—who self-describes her education on Facebook as "the school of hard knocks"—attached herself to a strip mall BJJ dojo because I'm a fighter, to rub up against other weirdos who have mental patient fetishes, then turn that legitimate martial arts scene into bad, amateur online porn by frequenting underground sex clubs with rubber mats and no lighting but lots of body oil, to get knocked up out-of-wedlock twice by a gay Brazilian instructor at her dojo who needed to establish residency here in the U.S. (and a kid would do that for him), in between her day job as, yep, another dental "assistant" from some certificate program for high school dropouts. 

But, "abortion" was "murder", and over that, her and her fucked-up daughter were vehement, vicious, and very vocal about, which must be a great hit at every Pride Day parade, you know, as a place where people are dependent on "straights" like me and my men to provide eggs and semen for them as couples, then carry their kids for them (for the guys), or adopt our kids when something goes awry in a pregnant teenager's life, and it will. That was wrong, but everything else they did was OK. How's that for a smear campaign? It's one heck of a crazy cocktail. People, you have to vote to be heard in this country. That's it. So, do that. Vote for for sanity. Vote for reason. Vote for education. Vote for healthcare, for all of our citizens, because you're worth it to me. That's what civil rights is all about, kids, even you assholes in the back of the room who will fail out at 14 or 15. Imagine how the president feels? That strongly. And that well-educated.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_induction
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_abortion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misoprostol
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cervical_dilation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childbirth
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obstetrics_and_gynaecology
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gynaecology
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obstetrics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obstetrics_%26_Gynecology_(journal)

http://similac.com/pregnancy/3-weeks-pregnant

 

Cruisin'

Years back—at the height of the social media craze—I re-connected with a former classmate I met in junior high school on a "friends" site, like so many of us who work with computers do. He wasn't part of my circle of friends back in the day, but I remembered him as a nice, quiet, serious boy; not exceptionally bright or gifted, but nice. My impression of him was confirmed during our reacquaintance in a series of IM chats through the online site that tended to go on and on, because he wouldn't disconnect from me first. He went to a SUNY school in the city for toy design that I thought was really neat, except that it wasn't for him, because he wrote to me that his architect dad "pushed" him into the program, when he really wanted to be a car designer. Oh.

It didn't make sense to me. No one can (or could) "force" me to be an Illuminator, especially my non-artistic immediate family, so how did it happen? He still really didn't know. He worked at a company for ten years that he described to me as his "dream job", in direct contradiction to his other messages. But, like me, he moved back from out west to Rockland County after years away, so we had that in common, along with design and martial arts. He got his Judo black belt from a strip mall dojo with a self-appointed "guru" who sold them potions while they were still on the mats, so I didn't expect much from our playful sparring, and he never competed. He sat on me with his full weight, and then told me that was a "pin" in judo, which I guess means a "win" without any technique or effort on his part. It was weird. "What do you, just sit on people?" Well, yeah...that was his strategy. Okay.

We diverged again artistically. I didn't remember him from any of my art classes at public school, and I'd taken them since childhood—even when they weren't offered on the curriculum—at my urging. He didn't strike me as an artist at all, nor do I remember any of his works. I'd simply never seen him in our studios at school. He was tepid about that, too. But, he did like to get the fuck out of his parents house while he re-established his career on the east coast, and that we very much had in common. My overbearing mom eases up immediately around strong men, because they telegraph "hetero" in a big loud voice that she doesn't like, so she skitters away vaguely. It gave me the head space I needed to endure dysfunctional family visits during their holidays—that they wrongly describe as "parties"—by having an excuse to leave, which was also noticed and attacked.

"You have to 'visit' with people when you come over!" my mom would say to me, only to either ignore me for the rest of the "visit", or abuse me into working "her" weirdo "party" filled with other headcases by serving and waiting on their lazy fat asses, only to have them insult me to my face. Fuck that! I can punch anyone of them in the face, hard enough to do serious damage. I don't have to sit in some overheated room to shove my face with bad food made for other addicts. We'd escape in his car for "joy rides" made through the twisting hills of rural Rockland County with the windows open to stave off motion sickness that sometimes didn't work, hiking our way through the trails we grew up walking. It gave us the counterbalance we needed in the mentally ill homes of our youth, as we adjusted to our adult roles of leadership in these families too sick to care for themselves in our absence.

He picked up visits to the acupuncturist his mother frequented in Nanuet, working out as a bodybuilder in New City and going to the local bars there. He established a suburban routine much quicker than I did, because I still worked as a designer in the city, and I had my own apartment in Park Slope that he immediately wanted to move into (not uncommon for me), by planting himself and his cat there for a length of time that was to be determined by me. He left on Monday morning. Besides his rather generic interests and habits, he also had a bland "white boy" sensibility about travel that was filled with dull cruises that he referred to as "cruising" online. I finally responded that to him that it's the go-to phrase for gay men on the make who are also fond of ships at sea. Oh...haha. Yeah. Did I like "cruising", though?

Oh, fuck no, "white boy". For a Filipino boy from New York, he had a lot less flavor than me, and he knew it. He told me he was always upset by people's reactions to his appearance, because he said he wasn't that exotic. "I'm kinda like a 'white boy' in L.A." Yeah. No shit, homeboy. You're kinda "white" here, too. It was doubly odd because the dude looked like a younger version of Jet Li or Donnie Yen; like, a good-looking martial arts movie star with an incredible physique. So, what gives with that? Why no "flair"? He didn't know the answer to that question, either. The last girl he dated was a homeless meth addict who slept on his couch (and with him) because he "felt sorry for her". 

He just liked to drive around aimlessly (he sent me the video links to his really dull driving videos that he made with a smartphone mounted on the dash of his car...yay), and his boring cruise ship pictures that could be anywhere with anyone. I immediately got tested after we broke up (negative for disease), and developed a much better attitude about men from my homeboy, so thanks for that. We had parted ways without any physical violence at all, which is quite uncommon for two martial arts "action heroes". No harm, no foul. It was a totally clean break from a kid who loved me from afar for many years, a schoolkid crush that he had made real for a short time, and that deserves some "kudos". But he doesn't deserve me, or a relationship with me that's a marriage with kids. That's for another superhero entirely. 

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

Gotta Have Park

When I wrote that I competed with adults at the hardest school in the world—with the lowest admissions rate in the world—I meant it. I was vying for my class spot with people who had already lived a few lives and careers before me, which is about as daunting as it gets, not that anyone came to our defenses. We were their fodder; everyone's: the teachers, the administrations, the other students, and that included any/all adults working around us. People who try to excel by becoming talented fakes with great mimicry skills are very nervous people indeed, because they need much better, smarter people—to feed off of to survive—and that included the teenagers and very young adults we were back then, which was sort of like sending a young Jimi Hendrix into war involuntarily, to die for a country that denied him the right to drink at certain water fountains, let alone buy himself a real stiff drink before being shipped out to active wartime duty at 19-years old.

As much as we tried reconciling their presence at our school, it didn't seem fair to us, and we knew it, because we started making some noise, and then some much louder noise, until the "profs" who thought they could game us by sabotaging our expensive education got a real taste of working class life and the transfer student mindset. It sent them tail-spinning downward while taking potshots at kids like me, working three jobs at once while taking only studio classes, because I had essentially completed an entire Liberal Arts curriculum in just three short years, though that degree was unjustly held from me, too (in lieu of my transfer status), just like I was forced to complete my senior year of high school, even though I had completed the curriculum by junior year with college credits and a Regents diploma, but if the gifted left, who would be there to pay for all of your salaries? Right?

In retaliation for circulating a petition around campus asking for desktop publishing classes to be placed on our curriculum, equipped with the kinds of computers we actually use in the workplace, I was "blacklisted" by the very professors who were there to supposedly educate me. It didn't matter—just like it hadn't mattered in my educational past—because my mentor let me pursue my work in his classes as independent studies, which is, once again, like becoming a grad student as an undergrad, but, again, that doesn't pay for your two apartments in Providence and Brooklyn, does it, "Prof"? No! We did! We paid for that for you, so you could take open potshots at children, basically. It made for some very weird classes indeed. 

Take, for example, Ellie. She decided to play the "ethnic minority" game by wrongly trumpeting her prized European status to an openly disparaged minority like me, which made for the most awkward kiddie-adult conversations you could imagine, as she openly campaigned for me to get kicked out of "her" school that she attended as an undergrad at 34. Huh...that's so...odd. And it was. She would talk about her past as a forest ranger (why didn't she learn to draw while living all alone in a forest for months on end?), as we pondered how the fuck she could go from living on Mount St. Helen during its epic volcanic blast to sitting in on our kiddie crits, because I sure as fuck never had the time to work on a portfolio before attending college, let alone blow off one career for our kiddie art classes, in comparison.

It was highly suspect and dubious in the extreme, but just like every other situation I've faced in my life. I had to make it, like a Marine dropped behind enemy lines with no lines of communication or ammo left, nursing a serious bullet wound or two while evading capture and/or the enemy. If I didn't attain a degree from this school, there was no job waiting for me in the outside world, and I didn't want to die from homelessness or starvation, which is just like today. 

I write to you from a public library that's becoming increasingly hostile to me, because the director here has already called the police on me for standing up to one of their Special Needs crafts "teachers" for harassing me by lurking behind me as I typed, and then aggressively staring at me, mouthing words at me as I typed to you all, which, just like then, resulted in me attaining a police contact on the force by an officer who flat out told me not to even bother to talk to anyone at this location again. "Just call us instead." That's how bad it gets. 

Like every moment that's precious in this life we live, so is our land. We live off the land that grows the food we need to live. No healthy land, no food for the animals to eat, and that includes us. If we do not protect our precious resources—like our land and water—then we do not survive. Sometimes—like my work, education, and life story—it is that simple. It becomes that basic, our survival. No food=no us. No bees=no pollinators. It all comes back to our defense and self-defense skills, and so, even though adults with more money, more experience, and a heck of a lot more time than me still tried to kill me off, here I still am, fighting for my survival while I fight for all of us. 

So, Ellie, even though, in your misguided hatred and aggression of an artistic life that was never yours to live by destiny, I dedicate today's fight to you anyway, for a t-shirt you wore back in the day that read "Gotta Have Park", and even though you wore it to protect your own government job as a forest ranger, I still believe in its message. What cannot die has never really lived, as far as I'm concerned. Live.

http://www.earthshareny.org/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overdevelopment 
http://www.environmentnewyork.org/