Christian Haterade

I hallucinated picketers outside Planned Parenthood on my way to work this morning. They were robed in rags and scarecrow hair, three vagrants holding cardboard signs written in an alien language.

Later in the day, I found a beautiful hardcover book about the hippie generation. I would have a zero-tolerance policy for naked females riding my shoulders at a concert. I can't believe how many men were willing to have all those bare, bushy labium wrapped around the backs of their necks like feeding animals.

The book was abundant with protests. Middle-aged parents marching in support of their gay children, holding signs like, "I will not be a closet mom." A plump man in a business suit, "I am proud of my gay son." There were photos of the women's liberation protests at the '68 and '69 Miss America Pageants. Racial equality protests. A profusion of protests to end the war.

Things are different now. It seems the majority of protests in this nation are hags and fundamentalists taking a piss on the things I thought were no-brainers in Now, The Future: GLBT rights, and a woman's right to decide her body's fate. What the fuck happened to us?

The Self-Deception Questionnaire

If you answer "no" to any of the 20 questions, you're deceiving yourself. 1. Have you ever felt hatred toward either of your parents? 2. Do you ever feel guilty? It asks if you have ever made a fool of yourself. That was the... mission statement of my childhood.

#3 is obnoxious. Does every attractive person of the opposite sex turn you on?
You can recognize that a man is attractive without being attracted to him. It's like how I know that Joseph Gordon-Levitt has boyish good looks, but


That can't ever turn me on.

I'm going to skip to the end because #5 is Do you ever get angry?

18. Have you ever enjoyed your bowel movements?
YES

19. Have you ever wanted to rape or be raped by someone?
Everyone is an animal. I've never wanted to be the rapist. I guess the closest I ever came was my first lucid dream.

It was me and the man I liked in a dark concrete hallway. We stood between two metal bookcases. Everything was black but for one fluorescent spotlight on us. The eyeballs of my sleeping body were pounding against the lids as they spun; I felt it while I dreamed. I examined my crush's beard hairs individually. Each blade was in high-definition; long and glossy black, as thick as slices of cheddar. I could zoom in on them until one blade was bigger than my hands could wrap around, and zoom back out. His beard hairs are what I remember best, that streak of shine, and the thickness, and the plenitude.

I was only partially in control of the dream. I did whatever I wanted to do, which was stare into his beard hairs like I was tripping mushrooms. But he was resistant when I tried to kiss him. I went for it, and his face stiffened. He leaned away from me. Rather than become flustered, I said to myself, "This is a dream, and you will kiss me in my dreams." I placed my palms on his cheeks and don't remember the kiss. I think that glitch in control was my demise.

My second and final lucid dream took place in a warehouse. The air was musky with brown daylight. I jumped from rafter to rafter. A zombie jumped after me. My heart dropped like a roller-coaster when I took flight. But I knew I was dreaming, so I had a lot of fun with that zombie. Even though that's all I did. Just jump. Jump. Jump. Jump. Jump.

20. Have you ever thought of committing suicide in order to get back at someone?
I get urges to do stupid shit all the time, but it's never a vendetta.

When I was a teenager, I went on a cruise and contemplated jumping overboard. Kicked my toes up and gripped the rail. I knew I would never do it, but I gazed into dark, hypnotic waves each night and fantasized about my doom. Glanced up a lot, expecting to find birds, and then back down, to the healthy black splash of the sea. Would I break my neck, would the boat chop me up? Sharks?

I still consider sliding over third-story railings at the museum like a rag doll, and swan-diving down the center of a spiral staircase. I contemplate crashing my car into phone poles, plunging my hand into a turbine or weather-vane. Poking my tongue on a hot stove. Jumping in front of a magic spell, Avada Kedavra. Tipping an ant farm above my head and drinking its contents. If there's an opportunity to lose a leg, or free-fall down an elevator shaft onto poisonous glass, I'm contemplating it.


I heard about this questionnaire through the WNYC show Radiolab, episode "Deception." Find the podcast on iTunes, for god's sake! And find the full questionnaire here: www.wnyc.org/files/radiolab/Self_Deception_Questionnaire.pdf

New Mexico

I spent Memorial Day weekend in New Mexico, a lagoon of flowers and mish-mesh nature. Cactus plants puckered like gorgeous monsters with bed sores. Beer cans galore.

I was there visiting a friend's family. His grandmother might be immortal; whenever she buys a sterling silver crucifix, they say it turns to gold within hours and polishing doesn't help. Everyone in the family is stumped and weary. She says to me at breakfast, "Your dress is pretty," and later that day, "What are you, girl, a hunchback?"

I hope I'm a tough broad when I'm old. I think the majority of old people are capable of punching a hole through my head.

The whole family is as frank and quick-witted as its matriarch. Says one aunt, "I worked as a receptionist in a doctor's office once. I didn't answer those fuckin' phones."

It is the middle of the country and the farm dogs run in packs. They're wearing lipstick, eyes of human drug addicts, aggressive. As we drive through the neighborhood, four dogs gallop round the bend and bum-rush my car, hairs raised, dried blood. They bite the tires until the spinning rubber makes them squeal.

The dogs are either run over, or they're eaten alive by a rival pack. They trail your heels as you walk. One of them will rear up on his hind legs and crack you over the skull with a Dos Equis bottle. His cronies then all rise to their hind legs, holding their lower backs like old maids, the wise pit bull putting on his specs. They'll form a circle around your soaked, sunburnt body. You wake up in a sweat. Cigars thicken the air. You're in an upside-down camper, hogtied beneath a table at which seven dogs sit playing poker. One of the little guys leans down and blows you a smoky kiss. You have no idea what will become of you. All you know is he's the most interesting man in the world.

Sunday morning was particularly lovely due to a call from A cappella Zoo, a "web and print journal of magic realism and slipstream." They want to publish my story "Movie Man." Fall 2010 issue. Boom.

This is Teeny! She's one of the good guys.