#this is real and true in my mind lesbian paul told me in a dream

[menlove]

One thing I always find very fun and intriguing about girl McLennon is how some aspects of their dynamic would be recontextualized, like how Paul being the most conventionally feminine of the group would position her as the de facto leader while John is her crass "mannish" right hand who wants to have everything Paul is but tries to get by on being "one of the boys" and dissing her. And then Paul still looks up to her and wants her validation and to bring out her soft side but can't let down her own wall of how she thinks her life is supposed to be as a woman and feels childish for caring so much. And John's insecurity and self-hate is magnified by her being perceived as unfeminine, especially if she's still got her pathologized attachment to Julia, feeling even more fundamentally othered as a gross unlovable freak and hating Paul for seeming so perfect and beautiful and normal.

sorry i read this, lost it at how real this is, forgot to answer once i was on my computer, and bc i no longer had the notification forgot it was here i love adhd!

but literally it's fjasdfasdfasdf the dynamic would be so different and interesting & that's what i looooove about well written genderbends like. they are not exactly the same person ! let's discuss the impacts of misogyny !

god they'd be the epitome of toxic yuri and this drives me to distraction at least every other day.... there'd be a lot of competitiveness and jealousy there as there is w mclennon always but it would add such a different Flavor to it. john would try to act like it doesn't bother her & that she's above it all and "fuck the world" is kind of just Her Thing but she cares deeply and she would soooo resent the supposed ease with which paul would navigate femininity... any john is so so so so gnc, To Me, which would play out really interestingly w her internalized homophobia i feel. i could see her being more openly into women than john was with men, mostly bc she's already One of the Guys & her anger and callousness/crudeness and General Quirkiness would already set her apart from the world so why Not fuck women and make it worse for herself? (except, and this is very real to me, she would Not fuck paul. they have for sure had girl bestie Moments but they would not fuck for soooo long i know this to be true)

meanwhile paul would just be so..... the expectations would be SO different for her as The Eldest Daughter rather than the eldest son. her running off to join a rock and roll band would be taken even worse bc she's abandoning the role she would've been forced into after mary died &, in her father's eyes, abandoning her future role as wife/mother too. she'd probably still wind up engaged to some guy (genderbent jane? just some dude? who knows not me he's irrelevant) but i feel she'd just have a really interesting relationship to femininity & her expected roles there bc of losing mary like that & subsequently leaving it all for fame (& john...) and her sexuality is just not something she'd consider at all except for knowing that she would probably like. kill someone for john. which is soooo normal of her.

this got long but. tldr: yeah. Yeah.

[docholligay]

St Raph 4: With All Your Mind

Another release of The Intercession of St. Raphael, The Catholic Boarding School AU. ALl of the released chapters are here, or the full chapters are available on Patreon! 

The dress was, all other things aside, well-constructed and tailed perfectly to Haruka’s body. Mako had given it the collar and simple short sleeve of an Oxford shirt, with sheer panels at the shoulders that kept it just this side of feminine. The skirt fell elegantly from her waist and slipped to the floor, making use of her height. The blush-pale pink complimented the soft gold of her hair, along with keeping Father Anthony off her case for another night.

On anyone else, it would have been beautiful. On her, it was a tragedy befitting a Shakespearean soliloquy.

Haruka looked at herself in the mirror and bit her lip. “I look stupid.” She looked over toward Mina, who did not respond, just continued to gaze at herself, turning to capture each angle. “Mina!”

“What?!” She looked up at Haruka, irritated, still fiddling with her hair.

“I said I look stupid.”

Mina shrugged. “I mean, it’s maybe not your greatest look, you look like a butch les--”

Haruka grabbed her and covered her mouth “SHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!”

Mina bit her palm, and Haruka removed her hand and shook it lightly, nodding her head toward Mako and and Usagi at the other end of the room.

Mina sighed. “Buddy, I’m telling you, this is no great secret.”

Usagi turned around and clasped her hands together with delight. “Haruka, I think you look BEAUTIFUL.” She practically skipped around the room, giving a dramatic twirl of her as she landed in front of Haruka. “I got you something! Both of you!”

“Oh man, am I excited to see this.” Mina leaned against Haruka.

Usagi meant well, nearly anyone who met her would be quick to say. Her skills were not in music, or in art, or in school, or the kitchen, or a mechanic’s shop, or in an athletic fields, or...well the list went on for some pages, despite every sister’s attempt to find her hidden talent. But what  the sisters did not know, but was recognized by this room, was that Usagi’s talent was not hidden at all, simply an underappreciated capacity to love all those that fell into her life.

“These were my mom’s! But I wanted to share them with you, I have a whole box and you guys are my family, too.” Usagi radiated with joy as she dug through her trunk.

Only Usagi spoke of her family--she had merely had the misfortune of having them die, with no other family. She was, Mina observed maybe not the smartest of them, but surely the best adjusted. Haruka had given up on having a family. Her mother never spoke to her after she stepped through those doors, and no one else seemed to take an interest, though a family had taken her for a summer once. To try her out, she supposed, and Haruka had tried to be very good and very helpful, but after the summer was out, she was returned to the school, and their letters tapered off.

She had been eleven.

The thought whipped out of her mind as quickly as it had scuttled in, lost in the temporary beam of Usagi’s excitement. She presented them both with poorly but excitedly wrapped packages.

“I already gave Mako hers,” She leaned forward conspiratorially, “but I told her not to tell you.”

Mina grinned. “Why ruin the surprise?” She tore at the paper, revealing a cheap paste set of bangle bracelets. “Oh hey, these’ll go great with my dress! I love them!”

Usagi glowed under the light of her praise and threw her arms warmly around Mina. She nodded toward Haruka. “Now you!”

Haruka gave a weak smile as she accepted the package. “You didn’t have to, really.” She looked over at Mako, putting a sparkled rose clip in her hair. She looked over at Usagi. “You should really keep this for yourself, Usagi, I don’t want to take your Mom’s things.”

Usagi’s eyes grew wide, her voice soft but insistent. “I want you to have it.”

Haruka turned her attention back to the package, turning it over in her hand. She delicately ripped at the paper, trying to moderate her face so she didn’t disappoint Usagi, revealing a small box. She opened the lid, and tucked inside was a small silvertone tie tack, with a barely perceptible diamond chip.

“It was my dad’s.” Usagi looked at Haruka hopefully. “I know you can’t wear it tonight, but with your uniform! Or, anytime! That you might want to wear a tie. In the future. If you want.”

In that moment it seemed like more than a cheap trinket. It seemed the promise and the possibility of all she’d dreamed, in a small silver disc. She ran her fingers across it, and felt the cool texture of her apartment and her cat and her nice suit in the closet and a girl who kissed her on the cheek when she left for work. It made her feel real.

Haruka unconsciously touched the box to her chest. “Thank you. I love it.”

Usagi barreled against her in a hug. “It’ll look great on you!”

“Told you they knew.” Mina quipped.

__

Haruka paced nervously outside of the St. Stephens gym, which had been festively decorated for the occasion, the music softly streaming into the hallway. It wasn’t like she set up a date. She said she’d see Michiru there. It was not precisely the way she had pictured asking her, extending her hand in an elegant suit, the Prince Charming to her effortless princess, waltzing around the floor, unable to keep their focus on anything but each other.

That she didn’t know how to waltz and had never had a suit were small details at best, as Joan thumped reassuringly against her chest. Be brave, she whispered, God is with you. That God was willing to do the assist on a lesbian love story didn’t seem covered by any apologetic she’d ever read, but, what was that verse? From Genesis? It is not good to be alone? That was true too, wasn’t it? She touched the medal on her chest through her dress. Joan died for France and for God and for Justice but the actual charge she died for was wearing men’s clothing and having short hair, though that detail got left out a lot by the sisters when they discussed her.  Was Joan alone as she stood before the flame? Was she thinking of a girl when the smoke hit her lungs? Did she ever know what it felt like to press her lips to another woman’s, to know love? Did she--

“You look like you’re gonna throw up.” Mina pointed out helpfully, drawing Haruka’s attention from Joan’s martyrdom.

No, of course Joan didn’t think of that shit, she was a literal saint, Haruka, what’s wrong with you?

“Ruka, stop.” She grabbed Haruka’s arms and stopped her pacing. “You’re making me nervous, damn.”

“What if she stands me up?”

“Then we’ll get drunk.” She patted the flask at her thigh.

“You’re not very comforting.”

“Come here.” She walked to a classroom door and deftly picked it open with her school ID. “Sit. Breathe into a paper bag or something.”

Haruka went, more obediently than she expected to, and sat down on the bench at the back of the classroom, her plain black flats, borrowed from Mako and too wide for her narrow feet, peeking out from under her dres, legs spread indelicately as she leaned forward over them, elbows on her knees and staring at the floor.

Mina sat down next to her and patted her back. “Talk to me.”

Haruka looked up toward the blackboard, toward Jesus hanging on the cross at the front of the room. “What if she thinks I’m,” She scratched the back of her head, “You know? Creepy, gross,” she paused for a moment, “Wrong?”

“Trust me, I think Michiru is probably into some weird shit.”

“Mina!”

“No really! Look at how she slithers around, I’m sure if she’s not into weird shit now, she will be later. Catholic guilt makes girls a lot of fun,” she looked up at Haruka, “Or, you know, you.”

Haruka sighed and leaned against the wall, still staring at the cross. “I shouldn’t be this way. I know that.”

“Gay or pathetic? I’m confused here.”

Haruka gave an irritated growl and looked up at the ceiling.

“Okay, okay,” Mina held her hands up, “no more jokes.” She slipped her arm around Haruka’s waist and laid her head on her shoulder. “Question.”

“Answer.” Her voice was resigned.

“You pay a lot more attention to the bible than me, yeah?”

“Everyone pays more attention to the bible than you, Mina.”

“True, but,” She looked over at the cross. “I seem to remember something you don’t, for all your praying and studying and being up St. Joan’s as--” she sighed and continued more gently, “for all the faith you have. You know that guy at the end of the room?”

Haruka looked over to the end of the room. “Jesus. Yes, I’m familiar with Jesus, Mina.”

“Reasonably important, you’d say?”

Haruka laughed. “What are you talking about, Mina? What’s the point?”

“My point is, I don’t remember him saying a whole hell of a lot about you kissing a girl. I think if it was important he’d bring it up. Don’t you?”

“Paul--”

“Oh Paul thinks braiding hair is a sin, Ruka, and that’s how we’re supposed to wear it here.”

Haruka looked down at her. ‘You do pay attention to the bible.”

“You have to know the letter of the law if you’re gonna exploit it.”

She drew her arm around Mina’s shoulder. “Thanks.”

“I mean it, you know. I don’t think there’s a damn thing about you that God or whoever didn’t mean to be there. Well,” she shrugged, “the moping, maybe.”

She chuckled. “I’ll keep that in mind.” she sighed. “I guess I should go find her.”

Mina kissed Haruka on the cheek. “It’s okay, buddy, you just gotta get in there and try. What’s the worst that can happen? She turns you down and you continue being a useless lesbian feelings puddle.”

Outside, Michiru could not hear the sweet words that spilled between them, but blushed angrily as Mina kissed Haruka’s cheek, the hurt filling her and becoming purified into anger.

She moved to the gym, heels clacking like a warning call.

__

As a child, she had dreamed that she was a mermaid, that the crashing waves would embrace her, that her soul would be assumed by the sea and she would know what it was to be truly free. Those summers by the seaside were the purest she had ever known, when the sea roared so hard in her ears she could no longer hear the musical murmurings of expectation that had haunted her since birth.

For all that it seemed a fairytale, she smelled the sea in her own eyes, her sight growing blurry under the betrayal of it all.

She had known it was so, and it had been foolish to assume otherwise. Haruka was a polite and gentle and kind girl, and had only extended the invitation as friends. She had another love, and for whatever Mina’s sins might be, she was genuine and fun. She was nothing like the silent sea snake that lay in the deepest part of Michiru’s heart.

She smiled her delicate smile, moving sinuously around Seiya.

“Seiya.” She touched her arm in her soft and tempting way. “What a lovely dress.”

Seiya looked down at the dress she wore, a serviceable black number with a lapel she hoped looked nearly tuxedo style.”Thanks. Nothing on you though.” She grinned.

“Is that what you were thinking? Of nothing, on me?” She gave her practiced titter, and delighted at Seiya’s blush.

She cocked an eyebrow. “You’re gonna get me in trouble, Michiru.”

“Is trouble what we’re calling it? You think so little of me.”

Seiya was not a dumb girl. Michiru was up to something, and when was she not? She could recognize cunning, to be sure, but there was also the fact that Michiru’s shoulders were like cream against the navy of her dress, her red lipstick caressing the curve of her lips, her hair curled delicately like waves around her face.

It was a compelling argument.

As if in thrall, she followed close to the smell of Michiru’s perfume, knowing the danger, unable to stop.

__

Haruka slicked back the sides of her hair in the bathroom. It still looked all wrong. She’d stolen a little bit of cologne from a boy carelessly grooming outside, and it, at least, added one thing that made her feel a little bit handsome. A little bit like Michiru might actually want to be around her, if not with her.

No. Rei had said. Rei was her best friend. She was going to trust.

Haruka walked out of the bathroom, and there she was, breathtakingly beautiful in a way that both seemed absolutely perfect and completely unexpected. Her dress was demure but all the more enticing for it, as if she was a package to be unwrapped, and Haruka’s heart soared to speak with her.

Her lips had begun to part, as miraculously as the Red Sea, when she noticed Michiru’s hand, leading another. Seiya.

It couldn’t be Seiya, not out of all the people in the world that it might be, not her and Michiru. No, she was overthinking things, rei had said, and besides, there was no law saying you couldn’t hold hands with your friends, Haruka be calm, Haruka don’t get upset, Haruka control yourself.

And then, Michiru kissed Seiya.

Passionately. Deeply. Barely shaded by the darkness.

She pulled herself back into the bathroom, her vision clouded.

Seiya pulled away from Michiru.   “Whoa whoa did you forget where we are?” She sniffed at Michiru. “Are you drunk.”

Michiru looked over Seiya’s shoulder. She was so certain she had seen Haruka, here in the hall, but she was nowhere to be seen. It was a silly idea anyhow, to expect Haruka to have been jealous. For her to be jealous, there would have had to be some true and deep affection for Michiru. And who could manage that? Even her parents seemed to struggle under the labor.

She sighed heavily. “I suppose you’re right.” She looked up at Seiya. “Would you like some punch?”

__

Haruka sat in the stall, trying not to cry. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Michiru was a beautiful, high class, talented girl, and Seiya was much closer to her social strata than Haruka could ever dream of being. Every action Michiru had taken to her had been a magnanimous show of pity for Haruka’s poverty, for her awkwardness, for the way that she was different. THe issue hadn’t been that Michiru was straight. It was that she simply wasn’t into Haruka. A chilling thought came over her.

Mina had been making fun of her. She had set the whole thing up as a joke at Haruka’s expense.

She wiped her face on the skirt of her gown. She was just a joke, a freak, someone--someTHING, to be mocked, and Mina had thought it would be funny, she always thought these sort of things were funny, and the rage began to grow in her, fanned into a flame, and any good heart and good intentions she had choked on the smoke of it.

She punched the side of the stall, and heard a girl cry out in surprise.

Fucking Mina. Fucking Michiru. Fucking Seiya.

She burst out of the bathroom, not sure of what she was going to do, not sure was what she was going to say, but knowing she had to say it now, while the fire still burned, while her sword was still drawn, before she could lose course.

Seiya happened to be the first person her eyes found, chatting with her friends by the side of the gym, next to the refreshments. Casually leaning. Casually chatting. As if she hadn’t had a part in Haruka’s humiliation, as if she hadn’t planned this whole thing.

Seiya Kou was having a bad evening, it would be fair to say.

Haruka stomped across the gym and as soon as Seiya looked up, she put all of her weight behind a right hook to the face, knocking her backwards into the punch bowl, the sleeve of Haruka’s dress tearing away from the bodice with a loud rip. As Seiya fell, she reached out desperately, just narrowly grabbing Haruka’s skirt, and Haruka stumbled, unable to right herself, down on top of Seiya, the dark red punch staining her dress as she continued to swing wildly.

It was at this juncture that Haruka had a moment of clarity, as a group of boys yanked her off the top of Seiya.

She needed to take a walk. She needed to cool down. She needed to talk to somebody. She needed to do literally anything other than what she’d just done, the faces of the priests and nuns shining down on her like stone church statues in harsh judgment.

Her gown was torn and stained, and the entire room stared at her as she bit her tongue, willing herself not to cry, not to show a moment’s weakness, and she tasted the metallic salt of blood in her mouth.

A priest grabbed her arm and shoved her toward the hallway, spitting hellfire at her, a peppering of words about respect and being ladylike and repentance, but she wouldn’t listen, couldn’t listen, the whole world moving in slow motion, just thought over and over again about the smile on Mina’s face when she told Haruka, the kiss between Michiru and Seiya, the stares in the quiet gym.

Sitting on a bench near the St. Sebastian’s office, she touched her chest softly.

Her St. Joan medal was missing.

Fucking Haruka.

[auskultu]

Valerie: Assassin With Balls

Mary Reinholz, Los Angeles Free Press, 28 July 1968

A sign on the bulletin board of New York’s Chelsea hotel asks if anyone has a copy of the play by Valerie Solanas.

You must have heard of old Valerie—she’s the tough chick who organized the male-hating organization SCUM (Society for Cutting Up Men), authored a misanthropic manifesto by the same name and used pop pope Andy Warhol as target practice for her philosophy.

Olympia Press publisher Maurice Girodias (first with LOLITA, CANDY, etc.) told me at the Chelsea restaurant that he had refused to publish SCUM last year—but had given Valerie about $600 on contract for a novel which she failed to produce.

Now, however, Girodias has changed his mind (“it took her drastic publicity to convince me") and will print her manifesto in paperback along with the elusive play—a little thing with four alternative titles: “Up Your Ass;” “The Big Suck,” “From the Cradle to the Boat;” “Up from the Slime.”

Realist editor Paul Krassner, who is looking very elegant these days in a pair of albino jeans (basic white streaked with blue) will provide an introduction titled “Wonder Waif Meets Super Neuter.”

Now—St. Paul is eminently aware of the ironies involved in the publication of SCUM and its friendly companion piece. His introduction puts down, among other things, the advertising industry which has numbed consumers to violence and notes that “it took the shooting of Andy Warhol for the SCUM manifesto to be published by Maurice Girodias, commented on by me and read by you.”

In other words, it took a gun to publish Valerie’s mighty penmanship. Concludes Krassner: “Be sure to watch for the film version, starring Christine Jorgensen and Mr. Clean.”

Before she went after Warhol, Valerie hawked her dittoed document on the streets (men always had to pay more than women who sometimes received SCUM FREE) and, from all accounts, seems to have made most of her living from panhandling. Oh yes. She appeared in Warhol’s I, A Man—a title which must have offended her.

All of this does not necessarily imply motive—it’s just that SCUM will now have a wider circulation. As for Valerie herself, Girodias, a melancholy Frenchman, sighs and says “I’m probably her first and last publisher.”

On a happier note, he adds that she looked “rather sweet” behind bars in her prison uniform.

Could it be that all old Valerie did was exhale? A week after she shot and critically wounded Warhol, I was in New York, expecting to see Anne Miller tap dancing down Broadway. But no-I was splattered with spit as I strolled along 12th St.

A writer had told me earlier that “everyone in New York operates on a high level of hostility,” which may explain Valerie’s hangups. But not everyone in marvelous Manhattan takes the environmental view. At least two men I met implied that her violent action was part of the lesbian syndrome.

Whether Valerie was the Village’s unfriendly neighborhood dyke seems beside the point. Let us not forget that Medea, Lizzie Borden and Ma Duncan could have been portrayed by Joan Crawford in I, A Woman.

So what, then, IS Valerie? Another “lone assassin?” A deranged female? The apotheosis of the Feminine Mystique? The flip side of the Kitty Genovese recording?

Some people view the attempt on Warhol’s life as symbolism, a form of guerrilla theater. Following the blast of real bullets, a Village group (reportedly a revolutionary organization called “Up Against the Wall, Mother Fuckers”) issued a leaflet in which Valerie emerges as the white female equivalent of Nat Turner:

"VALERIE LIVES!”

“Andy Warhol shot by Valerie Solanas. Plastic Man Vs. the Sweet Assassin—the face of plastic/fascist smashed-the terrorist knows where to strike—at the heart—a red plastic inevitable exploded—non-man shot by the reality of his dream as the cultural assassin emerges—a tough chick with a bop cap and a .38—the true vengeance of Dada—tough little chick—the ‘hater’ of MEN and the lover of MAN— with the surgeon’s gun—NOW—against the wall of plastic extinction—an epoxy nightmare with a dead super-star—the Statue of Liberty raped by a chick with balls—the Camp Master slain by the slave-and America’s white plastic cathedral is ready to burn. VALERIE IS OURS AND THE SWEET ASSASSIN LIVES. — SCUM in exile."

A few folks in Los Angeles responded to the shooting as if it were staged by Warhol himself. Exclaimed a journalist: “Can Norman Mailer top this?” Even the fact that Warhol was at first given a 50/50 chance to live seemed like a put-on.

About 12 hours later Bobby Kennedy was mortally wounded at the Ambassador Hotel and there are those who still believe it was just another bad commercial...

But back to SCUM in exile. As far as anyone can tell at this point, Valerie is the lone  member of her female-supremcisst society. But to many, SCUM, as a group is much less dangerous than SCUM as an idea.

During my nine days in New York, I mentioned to several people that I was interested in doing a story for the Freep on Valerie’s literary bag. Invariably, the men would retreat a few steps, laugh nervously and remark, “You don’t BELIEVE in that stuff, do you?” Or, “Please don’t shoot me!”

A friend of mine half-jokingly refused to let his wife read Valerie’s manifesto, the inference being that a sweet assassin lives in every woman, so let’s not stir up latent tendencies. Well, that’s hardly news. Men don’t have a corner on violence—just more opportunity.

The difference between Valerie and a long line of violent ladies is that she has a political plan (namely sabotage and murder) for the elimination of the male—whom SCUM describes as “an incomplete female, a walking abortion...To be male is to be deficient, emotionally limited; maleness is a deficiency disease and males are emotionally crippled.”

Obviously, here is a woman untroubled by penis envy.

Valerie allows that all females have a “fink streak” in them but this, she explains, is due to living among men. “Eliminate men and women will shape up.” Or, Martha Raye is salvageable, but John Wayne isn’t.

Perhaps Valerie should have been called “the sweet Nazi,” but that would have spoiled the anti-Andy symbolism.

[miss-butter]

Things I Thought That Were Not COVID (January - June) Ending

~having journaling sessions so intense I get a headache 

~ the RHONY cast casually drinking martinis plural at bars like it's a chill thing to do and they're not immediately going to black out?? Damn. 

~ e v e r m o r e 

 ~ the intensely stressful harmonica opening of All I Really Want while Alanis wails "do I stress you out" over the top of it 

~ today I feel like an eye that opened very very wide. What I saw was a door, opening 

~ through the fog I thought the city was the sky 

~ I carry all of this inside of me. It makes me very still 

~ "I am slow as the world. 

I am very patient, 

Turning through my time, the suns and stars 

Regarding me with attention. 

The moon's concern is more personal: 

She passes and repasses, luminous as a nurse. 

Is she sorry for what will happen? I do not think so. 

She is simply astonished at fertility." 

~ people with no self awareness/people with no sense of humor about themselves truly need to go live on a farm away from me 

~ the piano player that lives below me, the guitar player that lives above me 

~ "the sun whose rays are all ablaze" 

~ Room Memory I: the PERFECT sensation. Wearing my coat with a bagful of plastic spoons in my hands, leaping into krts car that smelled like dogs and cigs and is a smell that makes me feel so warm. Going over the bridge into Minneapolis chatting with them while the radio played (krts parents would play the radio, old and new, it was a thing I have never ever stopped appreciating). The times we'd get snacks at the theatre, dreaming of the day we'd be old enough to look upstairs (we haven't yet). The dark room, the laughter in the shadows and the feeling of fulfillment and validation. How their parents were there to collect us after and I got to see them on the Monday after that night. 

~ Room Memory II: me and emma and bast going to see it in the winter of a year I can't remember. Driving across the Minneapolis bridge in a snow storm, slow but with intention. We arrived early, and saw a cat on it's way home before taking shelter in a late night kowalskis. They had never seen it before, and I think my friend Eric was there but that might have been another time. Laughter, darkness. Emma drove home in the blizzard, tracking over deep, deep, inches of snow in the dark over the bridge and home. When we got back my parents were asleep, and I remember us piling our feet over the vent to catch the heat in my living room. Oh, babes. 

~ why do people ask where the love you had for a person goes when that person is no longer with you?? As though feelings are so easily generated that you can just release a life that you led and say "that goes there now, away". I think I'm STILL feeling everything I've ever felt in my life, nothing can truly ever go away. Also, the idea that because a person is no longer beside you that that somehow influences how you feel and what you feel and when you feel it! Can't relate. 

~ That Scene in Frances Ha where they fight in the bathroom and: 

Sophie: You're bullshit, and you're making me feel really bad right now. 

Frances: I want to love him if you love him, but you don't love him. 

Sophie:  I DO. 

Frances: Sophie, I fucking held your head while you cried, I bought special milk for you, I know where you hide your pills, don't treat me like a three hour brunch friend. 

Sophie: I'm not talking to you while you're like this. 

~ I never would have known, but there are pieces of me only Paul and Fred can reach. I want to go back to my Little Self, the first time I saw Fred, probably hungover, wiping sleep out of his eyes in that chair in Brownville, and whisper: "that's your brother. That's your real brother." She might burst into tears and never stop weeping with joy. That she had a brother who was a good man. A man of character. 

~ I got fired, and two days later I allowed myself to get packed into a truck and taken to a lake. On the way there I stopped at the first restaurant I'd been to since march, and I was so scared I slurped down three vodka sodas with a burger. When I arrived it felt like a miracle, like paradise. I remember everyone went to the beach in the twilight but I stayed, and sat on the patio and smoked a stolen cig, and listened to The Beautiful Ones 5 times thinking of how badly I'd like to be a nun because I couldn't stand the thought of other people. Somehow the moment still makes me feel so. Just So. Hearing it now is like seeing a ghost. 

~ do all people feel this way? Oscillating between airy fulfillment and vanilla scented oblivion? When I think about death I think of little sideways smiles, heavy lids, radiator squeaks, That Tree I still see in my memories. Somedays I feel like I'm full of Cool Whip, otherwise gelatinous, heavy, falling apart like an aspic. 

~I still refuse to be sorry that I find some of the things lena dunham does and says to be funny, suck my hood 

~ I constantly see tweets and stories that go something like "I told my 4 year old ____ and then they *insert action or phrase no 4 year old would ever do or say*. Yes, brilliant child. Yes." Like....the compulsive need to make shit up about your child in order to appeal to strangers on the internet is a form of Munchausen by proxy we as a society would do well to reckon with. It wasn't ok when those lesbians with the adopted kids made their son hug that cop, it's not cool for your "cute" tweet, babe. 

~ people who refer to their pets as "fur babies" have either tried to or successfully gotten their pets to eat them out. You can't change my mind. 

~ the stars in Death Valley 

~ next year in Nebraska 

 ~ it's beshert. No matter what you choose, no matter where it goes, the act of looking and of learning was beshert. This moment was meant to be. 

~ it's going to be such a bummer when my tits start to go off to the side when I lay down. How can we endure it? 

~ family: watching musicals with The Boys, swearing that we'll go to NYC together. Fred's face, Paul's smile, the sound of MEMORY let your Memory lead you I remember a time I knew what happiness was let the Memory live again 

~ I'm too upset to write / I'm too upset not to write 

~ the bruise, the deep round bruise, the lump beneath it 

~ $80,000 each; $240,000 total after amendments 

~ I lean to my wound, I lean to my wound 

~ disgusting girl, nasty pie-faced thing filled with fruit the color of plastic gems. Veins plugged up with sugar, eyes full of stars. 

~ its lucky to not be bothered at all by blood, I must have been born under something (or over something) 

~ this is the worst lead up so far I've ever had. Utterly alone, unsupported by....who? The r u b i c o n, the gentry, even the rabble. Sitting in a lukewarm tub, soaking the wound, empty head in the room between shitting and living. Thank god for grapefruit chapstick, and for Them. 

~I'm.......babing out 

~ how nice for her, how nice for him, how nice for everyone  (breaks glass in my fist) 

~ I am the drug that you need, shoot me up shoot me up 

~ Jennifer Jason Leigh in Single White Female was a definite top 

~ muttering to myself in a Mark Wahlberg voice just to get a good giggle 

~ making things for my brothers daughter; playing peeks with Jeremy; reading a book with John; playing sticks with natalie; talking about books with Noah. Being a woman with five nieces and nephews to watch grow up. 

~ “She wanted to die, but she also wanted to live in Paris.” 

~ Nora Ephron, and Melissa Broder. The now maligned art of self-confessional writing that I find infuriating when men do it (woody allen) but not unlike sinking into a hot bath when a n y o n e else does it. 

~ My dad telling me about his golf tournament, my dad telling me stories of seeing bands in the 70s, my dad finding out who Blac Chyna is and saying "she's amazing", my dad knowing every character ever on Law and Order, my dad and Noah bent over a chessboard, my dad taking a splinter out of my sisters finger. 

~ if I was a Housewife my tagline would be: "my attitude isn't MY problem, it's yours!" 

~ I have a recurring nightmare where I went to my first day of Spanish class and then just never returned? And I knew I was going to fail but for some reason really wanted to make it to the final bc that might make a difference? True claustrophobic panic. 

~ I have an incurable disease? I have an incurable disease! 

~ a m e r i c a n  w o m a n 

~ DR Q: should I be on antibiotics until surg? Ointment yes. What in detail will happen after surg/how will it heal/will it heal? If the wound is not going to heal after surgery is it necessary to do it at all? Down the line, when can I have sex? Can I take full body baths? Is there a specialist I can take these to? Should I shave before surg? Infections? 

~Potential Bday Marathon w bois: Big Lebowski, Wild, Stand By Me, Almost Famous, Frances Ha 

~ I am going to be well, I am going to heal, and I am going to be better one mesh shirt and gauze pad at a time 

~ Tommy Wiseau saying "I've sumfin fer youuuuu" 

~ hating the Grateful Dead SO much but knowing all the words to Box of Rain. Singing it in the bath first thing in the morning while my coffee brews. 

~ I've been making this list for a year 

~ "Butt out, Baby" 

~ What I have done I was compelled to do 

~ sitting here in this humid April heat, remembering the blizzard last Easter, with Band of Brothers episode 5 on the tv, a lavender candle flaming, a message from Fred flitting across my screen like a dear little bird, my disease pulsing in my cells, my hair long in a ponytail, thinking of my brothers wedding in a few days. I've cried three times. 'You should be so lucky,' I think, over and over again. 'You should be so lucky to have this love, to have room for this pain. Le douleur exquise.' Thank you and thank you and thank you (and, if you have time, let me heal) 

~on the phone with Natalie, laughing hysterically as she takes shots and calls me Marat 

~ Last night in my dream the doctor called my wound "the bog" 

~ I might....actually want to watch Desperate Housewives again 

~ the dinner the RHONY gals have in the Berkshires season 8 is my IDEAL meal, just a roast chicken with herbs de provence, mashed potatoes, fresh green beans, and cranberries. 

~ Again, tonight in the bath: 

"Just a box of rain 

Wind and water 

Believe it if you need it 

If you don't, just pass it on 

Sun and shower, wind and rain 

In and out the window like a moth before a flame 

And it's just a box of rain 

I don't know who put it there 

Believe it if you need it 

Or leave it if you dare 

And it's just a box of rain 

Or a ribbon for your hair 

Such a long long time to be gone 

And a short time to be there" 

 ~ a really cathartic thing to do is throw ice cubes at the wall 

~ crying on the kitchen floor and thinking of amy winehouse singing: "I cried for you on the kitchen floor." 

~  note for later: what are you doing? What are you d o i n g ? Get out, get out, get out. It ain't shit, babe. Ain't shit. 

~ you're a woman of genuine wit, write what you feel and how you're feeling it. Someone, someone, someone anywhere will see it and will cheer 

~ that season of vanderpump where schaena fucked adam and denied it the whole time but was so obviously in Love with him while he could care less about her, culminating in her adopting a penguin from the zoo and giving him the gift of it. She named it after him. Imagine loving someone that much that you would do this. 

~ the loveliness of a braid. A braid in hair, in rope, in bread. How a figment becomes a pattern, becomes history slapping against my shoulders. 

~ spring cleaning for mothers day. Egg salad and a nip of whiskey after dark. Feeling very old and yet very at sea 

~ A Thought: I should think about my neighbors on my death bed. I hear them speak through my walls, the boy that gets in screaming philosophical arguments and the upstairs girls who shriek. My neighbors who stomp, and my neighbors who dance all around me, the ones who were groaning in pain in the stairwell before going quiet. I can hear their laughter, and I've thrown things towards it and felt bad about it later. Their pianos on cold fall afternoons, and the late night guitar they probably think nobody hears. The couple with the large, spindly dog who isn't allowed to be here, and the cat that I pet on the stairs, the barefoot boy cradling his cat in his arms after the fire alarm went off, the chic looking lady with her carrier. The girl I went to college with, hidden somewhere in here. The ones who've come, and who've gone. They've likely heard me, too; crying, coming, laughing until I have to scream into it. Maybe they hear my music, too. I've left them cough drops, left them notes, brought packages upstairs, held the door, gifted cups of detergent. I'll remember the bike, abandoned in the laundry room even when management kept sending emails about it. 

~ I'm afraid one day I'm going to turn around in bed and my wound will be my lover, my wound will be companion, who will press up against me as I make coffee, who will throb under my sheets, who will sit beside me as I eat dinner, drink a glass of wine. She weeps, and last night I thought: "do I make you wet, baby?" and I laughed. Hedwig says laugh because otherwise you'll cry, I'll remember it forever. When I laughed everything tightened up and I Hurt and Hurt. Tonight I'm very, very, very alone, and my bath radiated through me like I was a boiled lobster. When I watched RHONY naked I felt the wound put its hand on my thigh, and it felt like I was living with someone I didn't trust. Gone Girl hours. 

~ I look like a cloud 

~ I have a true disease of the soul and mind in which I'm not capable of forgetting anything. This must be due in part to me being a Leo and therefore being a righteous holder of grudges, but I can't even manage to forget a purchase I made at CVS that I didn't feel great about three years ago much less an interaction with a friend that isn't reflective of Either of us now but that fills me with rot. In this sense, retrospect hits me very hard because nothing ever leaves me. I'm like a desk and papers get piled on top of each other and sometimes it gets messy but each memory is just under the surface of another. Needless to say, if I tell somebody that I can't remember something I'm usually lying to them just to avoid being bored. Which is something to think about, to be sure. Anyway, tell me the story again. 

~ I feel naughty and covetous, big-titted and sharp-toothed and green-eyed and hungry hungry hungry hungry hungry. I always get this way when the whether turns hot. Everything is getting deeper, thicker. For the better and the worse. Keep your candy away from me or I'm going to take it from you. 

~ "My daughter. My last one. She's my sin. She's what I smeared on the world." 

~ the beginning of the summer I sweat, and I bleed, and crack, and i hate and hate, until. Until. The window must be left open, to let the lion in. While I sleep it crawls out of my closet and lays down upon me and I wake up with my hair in a snarl and an insatiable throbbing in my veins. The air is hot, and I'm ready to swallow the moon again. Be  r e b o r n. 

~ it's nice to meet you. I'm 26 years old, I'm a woman of cracks and fissures, a woman of unprentention who relishes pretending, baddest, chatterbox slut, writing gay porn every night if i can manage it, irremediable sky watcher, secret smoker, mainliner of unhip music, dizzy lady, silly goose. I think the moon is in my neighbors window, and I look up at the impression and thank her. 

~ I'm vaccinated, I'm going to a party at my sisters house, I have a person in my phone who I think likes me and I Know wants to fuck me. I've written 1,000 words every day this week. This year I’m spending my birthday in Nebraska. Let the season begin, let me move west into a long, brilliant wind.