Thanks Bone for the words.

I apologize for the triteness of the dialogue. This is a writing exercise and I have too much on my mind and other things happening. I really don’t want to write about my apartment sale until the middle of October–November, however–it’s never ending and there are more things I have to do that are kind of funny.

I loved and felt privileged by the award Cooper gave me. I hope to give it out next week

A couple of years ago this was a nice townhouse complex. Now she wouldn’t even go into the greasy pool filled with foreigners who yelled in strange Asian languages, and all variations of Spanish, she thought as she banged the wall with her broom. Damn kid. Screamed constantly as the kid’s parents talked over her in Chinese or Viet Namese, and didn’t care if neighbors got any sleep or not.

People moved out in the middle of the night. There were foreclosure signs everywhere. Marilee grew tired of banging on the wall. Cigarettes. Damn she was out again. She took a butt from the large silver plated tray that fell. She wasn’t going to pick it up.

Once she had girls to do things like that for her. When she had moved to the townhouse it had been a temporary measure for a girl used to living in 10,000- 5,000 square feet houses with full staffs.

She had moved to Vegas at the end of the Rat Pack era. You could tell a gentleman gangster from the scum wannabes of today. Oh she had been aware that many girls her age became hippies but she laughed at them. They didn’t know about glamour, about gentlemen paying a lady’s bills, about things necessary for a girl’s survival.

Marilee had never made it as an entertainer. Occasionally she would be in a chorus line but it didn’t matter. Marilee and her girlfriends measured success by the size of the rock, the size of the house, the cut of their man’s suit, the silk in the shirt and tie, the Italian loafers and the size of their feet. Still a girl couldn’t gamble with her future.

Marilee became a craps then 21 dealer. Later she became a floor supervisor. Then her rotor cuffs went and she got sciatica; the secret ailments of the Vegas dealer. The money for the seventeen operations ate through her savings. The men who once couldn’t leave her alone couldn’t be found. Still she had the town house and some money in a bank account. One day she would get back. She was keeping the money in the account for facial renewal purposes.

The doorbell opened.
Oh, it’s you. Could you get me a cleaning woman?

The tall girl with the thick brunette hair and smile that could have powered Vegas frowned.
Mother you owe two months mortgage. I’m not going to front you any more money.
Lesley I gave you money for law school. You wouldn’t have the life you have if it weren’t for me. Come to think of it, you wouldn’t have life without me.

Marilee wheezed. The cigarettes were beginning to catch up with her. She sat on a chair and put up her swollen legs. Who the hell did Lesley think she was? When she was a girl she had everything Marilee never had. Lesley was smiling. Marilee remembered all the time she had spent arranging people to take Lesley to the orthodontist. All the money gone to Lesley’s mouth. She looked as if she whitened her teeth to the max. Marilee would have approved if she could stand anything about her daughter.

Lesley sat in a chair across from her mother:
I’ll get straight to the point mother. The other day when you were dead to the world in an alcoholic haze I tried cleaning this mess. You’re not at the top of your game mother anymore. Not even close. I found Johnny’s will. He left everything to me. You spent my inheritance and that fabled law school tuition. You paid for one semester. I had to work my way through school but at least I was a good dancer. Yes, mother people wanted to see me dance. I was a headliner, no thanks to you. I know you told people not to hire me. They laughed at you. You were washed up by the time you were my age and never knew it.

You omitted to tell me that I was Johny’s heir. I found the letter he wrote me. He wanted to know me. You wouldn’t let him. You told me he wanted nothing to do with me. You were scared I might like him more than you. You deprived me of knowing my father and I never can forgive you. How you managed to hide everything for so long, god I’ll never know. You knew he had a dangerous job and could be killed at any time. You’re the ultimate bitch mother.

Your bank account–it’s in trust for me. I had your name taken off. This house is in my name. I’m your landlord mother. I paid off the mortgage, and I might just evict you.

Oh, Lesley, stop being so melodramatic and get me a cigarette.

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If Karl Rove goes to jail, my heart will burst. The arrogant prick thought he was better than any of us. He thought he was above the law and spent five years secretly investigating the former Alabama governor

This would be a law way overdue. Keeping pot illegal is to nobody’s interests. It’s a very selectively enacted law and just serves to give poorer people and/or Black people records.

Stumble it!

I have long believed that while this country has countless problems it needs healing more than anything else and Obama is the perfect person to do that

The Bush admin has spent almost the past eight years fracturing us, beginning with a crime of the century, the stealing of the 2,000 election. It doesn’t matter whether you think he had the numbers–the recount was a model of political sickness.

Here’s just one more thing, the Bush admin has been guilty of–hiring Justice Department attorneys

If anybody wrote “a good young liberal, pro civil union, atheist attorney,” heads would be rolling. And who is anti-marriage? Gay marriage isn’t on my personal top 20 issues, but I do understand the want for a union to be recognized, benefits to be shared etc.

Someday we will look back at this time as a very sad and sick time in our country’s history. Oh we do now. Let’s reclaim America–and who cares what the color of Obama’s skin is? If he bled green I would have problems but he bleeds red so…

Stumble it!

McCain’s playing dirty. Obama would have loved to meet with the troops. Money can’t buy that type of PR, and any American would love to meet injured troops. Anti war doesn’t mean anti troop But as he took himself off the ballot in Michigan because it was against the rules, he didn’t meet with the troops.

I love Southerners. They bang at my door, almost invite themselves in, tell me their life stories and then tell me how gracious I am. Once is strange; but twice in three days is a pattern. There are townhouses in the complex for sale, and the lock box doesn’t have the keys. There are a lot of people home but I’m the only one who feels compelled to answer a door knock.

I’m not going to talk about my New York apartment until after the closing which should happen sometime in the decade so I won’t jinx anything and because I do feel so blessed to have an apartment that I can actually make a profit from.

After I close I hope to buy a patio house. They’re adorable houses with very little land and decks off many rooms and sometimes an inner courtyard, but not in the Mexican or South Western way.

I lived in a house in Oaxaca off the Pan American Highway that looked like nothing until you went into the courtyard. It was filled with sculptures, comfortable chairs, tables, plants and birds.

No these houses aren’t on that scale but I love them. Lucia’s used to going from the house to the beach to Wal Mart. I introduced her to the different hoods. She could never stand looking at the patio. We walked from the patio to an enchanted world filled with beautiful houses, community pools, and truly nice people.

I took her to Cherry Grove and she fell in love. I live in Crescent Beach/Ocean Drive. I spent months looking for Ocean Drive until I realized it’s a hood that personifies shag dancing. I have no idea what Ingram Beach is as I have only seen it on maps.

Sadly or not I learned that Lucia is a bed slut. When we were young we would share beds at times and she would hog the covers. Sometimes we would come to one or the other’s homes after a wild night with prey uh men and I have no idea if she hogged the covers or not. We don’t have that type of friendship. Once she and her sister C were staying at my studio on East 63rd Street. C lived in Atlanta and they didn’t have sex stations on cable yet. Lucia and I shared my bed, C took the couch.

She stayed up in awe watching the channels (have to editorialize and say I found them totally boring, but I guess if you’ve never seen people undressed on TV…) I would wake up every hour or so as Lucia would hog the covers or kick me;C was still talking. I think we had a six hour conversation that I didn’t remember at all. Apparently I’m very good at talking in my sleep or almost in it. That began C and my friendship–and now I’m her tenant.

This is a beach house so it has many beds and adorable roll up Urban Outfitter’s Chinese mattresses and other things like that. I offered Lucia every bed in the house including mine or rather C’s. Lucia was here for five nights and slept in four different beds or bedrolls. Always said she was a slut. And did tell her that if I had any same sex inclinations she would be the one.

I don’t remember what Lucia and I laughed about. Neither does she. We have an ability to look at each other and laugh.

When I first met her I was dating a guy at work who had a thing for the guy Lucia was dating. Lucia and I weren’t friends yet and were totally clueless as to their sexual adventuring, I guess is the phrase. It was the 70’s and people did things like that. Especially guys.

I remember one day Vinny had us follow them to the subway. I found that very strange. They were arguing and I finally realized what Vinny wanted as he almost jumped over the tracks to Ed’s side.

I was dating other guys. It was the one time in my life I could keep more than one guy at a time–I want to say straight but that doesn’t seem right.

Vinny was strange. We went to a party in a loft on the Bowery in his white Caddy–very embarrassing to begin with–but he kept running to the windows to see if it was still there or if the snow had covered it. I can’t believe I dated him for two New Years Eve’s which was a very big deal then.

Lucia and I became friends the following fall, after having never spoken to each other for a year. I don’t think there’s a person in the world who would have guessed we would have become each others true life partners in every sense but one and yes that is a big one.

To all the people who thought Lucia and my friendship was a flash in the pan, and we were very well known at our job which kept half the unemployed actors, artists and writers in New York in work, I say “I couldn’t have asked for a better friend. Even if she is a bed slut.” It was weird but people delighted in talking about us.

This is number two in an occasional series on sluts.

And Cooper–who is anything but a slut and gave me a great award–I will be giving them out on Wednesday.

Can I still call myself a woman and a blogger if I didn’t go to blogher? It reads so institutionalized and “we who go are more committed and better bloggers than you who didn’t take the time.” My life’s been more than a bit unsettled and I wasn’t going to make reservations or commit to something I didn’t know if I could go to. San Francisco’s not exactly around the corner.
I read there was a panel for baby boomers. At one time I was the “highest ranked” baby boom blogger. It didn’t make me feel warm and fuzzy; didn’t give me anything but a lot of unpaid work. I’m not into talking about menopause. I don’t have kids or grandkids. My career trajectory has taken me down unique roads
I haven’t been giving my all to blogging these past eighteen months or so and part of that is because I love my blogging friends but have no desire to reach out anymore. I’m tired. I’m disillusioned. Once I thought blogging held so much promise. Now I see every MSM magazine or paper have bloggers–paid bloggers. It lost that feeling of “I’m doing something well that not every person can do.” That was a great feeling and made up for the lack of pay. When Writer’s Digest for a quick example has newish bloggers who tell bloggers who have been blogging for years what they like in a blog, it’s time to be even more rad.
I’m not a prod placement blogger, a tech blogger. I write about politics but I would never consider myself a political blogger.
I’m a personal blogger who is a hopeless optimist and still believes that I can make something more out of my blogging.
I don’t know; I just find the mainstreaming of blogging to be sad. At this point in my life I have to ask not what I can do for the larger blogging community but what I can do for me. Somehow I think going to blogher would have helped cement certain things, but my life’s unsettled and more than anything last weekend was the one weekend all year I want to be all about me. One spent not trying to sell myself or my blog but in comfort with an old friend laughing over nothing

Stumble it!

Of all the articles I have read about Michael Savage and his very stupid remarks this was by far my favorite. Though it takes my last name and defines it. While true, some Savages are the opposite of evil.

NLD is on the Aspergers specturm. I have said that Michael Savage is my worst fear aside from misguided professionals who label people according to their problem.

Ms. Woliver is right. M Savage’s speech is hate speech or borderline inflammatory. I’m a First Amendment absolutist, and not sure that this crosses over into inciting action–except on the part of Autism groups and individuals and that’s a good thing.

I would rather listen to Howard Stern any day. We went to the same camp….

This is another no comment post brought to you by the Savage that personifies good–to some people.

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I tried making a page and it screwed up of course. The evidence shows that LaVena Johnson was raped and murdered on 7/19/05 Please sign the petition.

This is a no comment post. I always have to uncheck the comment box twice and it’s beginning to drive me crazy

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The first weekend after we moved to Jericho my father drove my sister and I a few miles to a trailer park. Nothing wrong with trailer parks but they’re not common in metro New York.
See, not everybody lives like us. We have more money than most. With money comes responsibility. And on and on he went

It was a very mixed message to give to two young girls who had been uprooted from Queens and weren’t dressed properly. It wasn’t that we were dressed badly. We were dressed from cheap stores not Best & Company.

I was going to have a hard enough time fitting in. I needed to look like everybody else.

Yet even then I understood why my father was saying the things he did. He wanted us to have a social conscience; to be aware of the larger world.

I did find it just that he got a ticket on the drive home for starting an accident on Jericho Turnpike. He was so busy lecturing us on social issues he was driving about ten miles an hour.

I forget the exact details of the “accident.”

Four or so years later Richard Nixon would become his idol. Then he turned into a Reaganite. I always have thought he had a stroke and died in 91 for several reasons; one being Bush One was so boring.

My father never did lose his sense of justice. I might have detested his politics but I knew how big his heart was I’m scared I can never do his story justice.

Actually my parents were friends with Marty Tankleff’s aunt and uncle. They introduced me to Marty’s case and were always convinced of his innocence. I am so happy all charges were dropped as they should have been years ago.

I

Stumble it!

Thanks Bone for the words.

It is difficult to get back to blogging. I would like to put in pictures while I work on a book and enjoy summer. Summer has always been and will always be a season of magic. No matter how long I am out of school–and I got my grad degree twelve years ago; twenty years after my undergrad degree, class will always be out in July, August and I love the perfection of September so…June isn’t bad also.

Summer is a state of mind. Summer belongs to me, me, me. Summer is a time for beach music; light things. If I take a class and sometimes I do it’s a fun one. Dream interpretation; pop culture for the classless; stuff like that.

It rained and rained on Friday and Saturday, but that didn’t stop us from exploring every beach between North Myrtle and Pawleys Island (I’m redoing my blog to make it photo friendly, and blogging from Flickr didn’t work.)

Monday was hot, very hot, but we weren’t going to avoid going to Wrightsville Beach in Wilmington NC. It was so breathtaking I forgot I had my camera. The waves were supposed to be seven feet from a storm but it was so calm we could swim. The sand did stick to my body. I felt like a kid in love with the ocean who could do everything and not care about anything. The view isn’t quite describable. A huge dune and a beach that was not the widest I have ever seen but the most beautifully shaped. Unbelievably it was almost deserted.

I’m a beach slut but as most sluts I have my preferences. I’m an Atlantic person. I know people think the Pacific Isles are the best but they leave me cold. Oh, Jones Beach will always be my dream beach though the ones I found this weekend might be a close second. And the beach near my house is great just not in high summer.

I was born near the Atlantic and I hope to die near it. Not for a long long time. Estelle Getty died yesterday. She didn’t have her “break through” role until she was 60. I knew that but forgot. Now she’s my new idol.

About Michael Savage’s comments on autism. It has always been my fear that when I write about NLD people will think I’m excusing myself and others from being neat and much more. Never. I’m harder on myself than anybody could possibly be. I will be on anti-anxiety medication the rest of my life, and don’t enjoy that. But as I suffer from such bad anxiety and panic attacks it can’t be avoided.

We have many best buds–they tend to intermingle and only one bff. I know how rare a friendship like ours is and might even write about the weekend is in depth.

Stumble it!

Paraphrased from a tee shirt. Solved that age old question: Can white men dance?

Stumble it!

It is that part of the summer where the ocean waves break more ferociously, the air smells of salt and I want everything to be alright with the world.

For an hour or so i can escape into that realm of my brain where the memories are marked “happy summers of years past,” but then as the breakers come gliding to shore faster and faster I come back to reality.

Nothing is as it should be this summer of 08. It’s as if we have collectively gone down the hole and can’t find our way back up. Or maybe King of Hearts was my favorite movie for so many years for a good reason. The inmate have taken over the asylum, but not the inmates with love and good tidings.

For several hours today I was fixated on the idea of the Democrats staging a coup and taking over The White House on the “who cares about Democracy, we need a government that works” theorem of life.

But that fantasy left my head as I couldn’t stop of thinking of each segment of the Constitution that would be disregarded, laws broken, and how the Republicans would have a just reason to declare martial law

One of my favorite of all blogs is Cooper’s. I can’t help it. And will offer no explanation other than everybody should read a blog that defines the word.

Damn that girl and her conscience. Please read her post and numerous links on LeVena Johnson

Honestly when I first heard her and her death in Iraq all I could think was “why did you a beautiful girl, born the same year as Cooper, to privilege and I’m sure parental helped higher education enlist in the Army upon graduating high school? Couldn’t you have done something like my Goddaughter and got a job in a cupcake bakery? Go to Costa Rica? Volunteer somewhere in America? Why the army?”

I’m jaded. I’m a New Yorker. I never got that volunteer in the army to go to Iraq thing. I understand people think they’re expressing patriotism but I’m old enough to think of their parents and the other people they have left behind, and I never found Iraq a just war worth anybody dying for.

But she did and she died on my birthday almost three years ago, and so stupidly it becomes personal. The army says she killed herself. Her father, who I’m sure mentally beats himself every night, is trying to get an investigation as evidence points to rape and murder.

Cooper once again thank you for making me think of things bigger and more important than the things I think about. Though tomorrow if it’s not pouring I’m running into the waves to try to forget for just an hour.

It’s not too late to impeach Bush, Cheney etc., for war crimes I don’t know about you but it would make me feel a bit less dirt laden.
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On a note that bears no relation to the rest of this post here’s a Washington Post article about older people being happier. I’m not going to be in my 60’s yet, but I do get the article. I have felt a well of emotions recently but I’m selling my apartment (badly) moving to a strange but interesting state, wrote an article that made me dig deep and remember much.

The strange and wonderful thing was that i didn’t get all hysterical, didn’t fell into the anxiety or depression. I knew I would survive. I feel a calmness I never have before. I call it menopause to be blunt, but maybe it’s something more. I do like it and with this new found true strength I can survive all the above. I also have called it blogging and I do think having a “journal” I can vent into and that more than I read does play a part. But that’s my personal recipe for new found happiness in a world gone mad.

My best friend Lucia is going to be here on Thursday and we’re going to party like it’s 1985, without most of the things we used to do, without the rest of the people who will be here in spirit and/or on cell, and in a totally different geographic location. But as we’re half of the BlenderBusters (more usually called BustedBlenders now) we have a responsibility to find the perfect blended drink. We spent many a summer driving up and down the Northeast looking for the perfect frozen strawberry daiquiri. I have this horrible tendency to drag my friends into my obsessions. But they’re still looking, still laughing and still telling the story of how we became the BlenderBusters. Everything about us mortifies LuceAna Mae (Lucia’s daughter) but she loves that story. It’s her mother, godmother’s and two favored aunt’s history! At a party, when I was in New York in June, I realized I knew everybody for at least 30 years. There’s something both humbling and wondrous about that.

Stumble it!

This is very disjointed. I have been living without my own things since the beginning of March. I got rid of most things but what I have left I love and need.

I feel exposed; naked; as if I said too much yet not enough. I half expect people to think that I was exaggerating, lying even. That’s left over from childhood as people thought I lied when I said I was adopted. I fit with my family too well. The adoption wasn’t mentioned in the article as it’s both extraneous and confusing.

There are some people who think I will do anything for attention. They don’t know me well and this isn’t the attention I want.

I want to be known for wit, intelligence and abilities. What sense of humor you ask? My immediate family and best friends will beat you up for even wondering.

Writing the article wasn’t difficult. Living with it being published has been strange. I understand not knowing how to respond, but some old friends haven’t been in touch at all. Talk about something else. Anything. Just let me know that I didn’t freak you past the point of wanting to know me.

If you’re from my hometown, except for my sister and JI, and you forgot all about the years before I turned into a “cool girl,” I don’t live mired in the past. Neither can I forget it.

Don’t be condescending in your emails and/or comments. I know who and what I turned into. Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do. I know better than anybody.

Is it very important to have perfectly folded towels and the best made bed? In mysteries people are always being judged for such things. I learned to fake it because my sense of design and color is better than most peoples.

I have beaten myself up for not being able to fold perfectly. Somehow I don’t think that will come up at my funeral, memorial service or if there is such a thing, ultimate judgment.

I read a bulletin board on NLD. A woman asked questions about herself and her son. The doctor said there was “this, this and that” for her son, but for her, sorry, nada.

Made me feel like shit actually. Why do I talk about something if nothing can be done for adults? If adults are going to be considered “untreatable.” If I had a child with NLD I would try to learn everything he’s learning.

I’m not Mother Teresa. I’m the antithesis of selfless. I want everything possible out of life for me. I believe that life is supposed to be about fun not suffering. We’re not put on earth to be tested.

Maybe I’m supposed to believe in an afterlife but I can’t. It’s beyond the scope of my imagination and I do have a vivid one.

I’m determined to be a “later in life” success and I will define success.

See there’s so much more to my story. One of the reasons Lucia are closer than most relatives is because we lost two thirds of our friends before they lived to be 40.

We were party girls. We loved going out. She’s been married four times but only admits to three. I have had seven serious proposals. But we had another life going on at the same time.

The one with the Mary’s.

Direct frontal hit. My generation.

It took Patrick two years to be diagnosed. The medical form from NYU was many many pages. We all took a few. Did he ever do it with birds and if so what type?

Yes damn it we laughed at the question but I looked at the parrots that he didn’t do it with it and was scared. So little was known.

Patrick was the first to get sick and die. By the time Larry was really sick I had gone from being a true JAP to somebody who could nurse with one hand, help get affairs in order with the other and talk non stop about anything and nothing

I spent his last day with him. The next morning I had to go to Reddens for a Memorial service for somebody who actually hadn’t died of AIDS–Reddens was the funeral parlor of choice for many.

I freaked my father out before AIDS. In college so many people….he had to tell me about JohnnyB’s death. JohnnyB was the first boy I dated in school and one of my best friends. My father couldn’t help editorializing:
I grew up during the depression, lived through World War Two and you have more dead friends than I do.
What can I say daddy? I didn’t write this part of the script.
I didn’t really say that. I didn’t know what to say about drugs, suicide, death by freezing in the woods, death because the hospital gave the wrong medication (JohnnyB’s–just as his art career was taking off.)

It was the early 70’s. You survived or you died. I suppose I had interesting friends. I was a survivor. Still am.

My Dad had a lot of friends. I have his knack for befriending people. But they would die on me. I’m hoping that this part of my life makes up for the parts before.

I think I have earned the right to define success on my own terms. I wasn’t going to post this weekend. Actually I was writing fiction dialogue and found my way to my blog.

I feel as if my life is very much in a state of suspended animation. I pray my apartment will sell soon but who am I to complain? I have lost a lot recently but not anything near 70% of my net worth. Though there’s always this week.

Birthday week is so pressured. It never lives up to my own hype. And why am I listening to 70’s disco? Gawd, no wonder why I’m working myself into a depression. I hated it the first time around…

Stumble it!