Did I Dream It?

Someone used the word “autoeroticism” today instead of “masturbation” and I just immediately imagined autoerotic asphyxiation (AA). Maybe because my mind always goes to the dark side but also because you just don’t hear autoerotic… without the asphyxiation. At least I don’t.

So Michael Hutchence brought AA into most folks lexicon and imaginations, I figure but it hit me the summer of 1992 when an Ann Arbor homeless celebrity was found hanging from a beam in a detached garage.

I found myself thinking of that fella and wondering if he was real or imagined. This is what and how I remember that story:

The guy was skinny with saggy older skin but probably wasn’t more than in his 50s. His hair was cut into a bob just below his chin and it was thin and stringy that he kept out of his face with a head band. He wore jersey knit everything and I seem to recall it was shiny but I’m suspect of that memory. He rode around town on an old bike pulling behind him a cart covered with a tarp. He was very protective of that cart and would only pull up enough tarp to extract what he needed without ever showing the world what else lay beneath.

If he wasn’t on his bike, I would see him in sitting in a corner of the below-ground Burger King. He was either reading a book or playing with some sort of electronic gadget. The local kids would hassle him and taunt him. They call him spaceman or something equally silly and ask him if he was trying to talk to aliens. If he replied at all it was usually a hiss.

So when buzz started circulating that he was found hanging nude, I suspected the worst – some kids went too far in the harassment. But soon autoerotic asphyxiation was being bandied about. I think it was Casey who explained to me what that was. We all learned more about that man in his death then we ever knew in his life. He was a former Professor at the U of M and have thousands of dollars in fines from the local library – books were apparently what he was fiercely protecting under the tarp. He had grown children and wasn’t homeless at all. And most stark in that portrait was he was a man who marched to his own drummer and fulfilled his own fetishes.

I wish I knew his name. I wish I could be sure I remembered the details correctly.

Old Blog 5: What Does Your Brain Tumor Smell Like?

So those of you who know me know that I don’t do drugs that aren’t prescribed by a doctor. But my dear Grandma Dot (whom you can read about in my Silver Jews dream) loved Coke back when it was just called Coke. Not Coke Classic because back then there was only one. She had cases and cases of coke stacked out in the garage and just so she’d never run out, if she took one case in the house she’d buy another for the garage pile. I loved my grandma more dearly than I have ever loved anyone or thing else. She was wisdom, love, humor and cleverness all wrapped up one big hug.

.. ..

Anyways, it’s no surprise that I drink diet coke like I do. It’s in my make up handed down from Grandma Dot. That said, I may have found an excuse stronger than genetic make-up to give it up.

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So I recently took on a new role at work and I’m in a smaller cube. I have new neighbors – mostly foreign dudes – who I do not truly know yet. I decided keeping a 12pk at my desk didn’t make sense from a space standpoint and admittedly this much dt. Coke consumption isn’t healthy. So I have taken to paying $1.25 for a bottle out of the vending machine. It prickles my very soul to pay a buck twenty-five but that also slows down the consumption see?

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So I’m sitting in my new cube and notice the unsavory sent of acidic BO -- as in stinky boy body odor. Only it seems really close so I take to sniffing my pits thinking “frick, do I stink?” No, no I don’t stink. I start to think my sniffer is off. Some brain tumors make you smell toast or marshmellows. With my asshat luck, I probably have a brain tumor that makes me smell stinky pits! I try to tell myself it’s imagined but it just doesn’t go away. I get up and do a walk through the foreign dude section just outside my cube to see it the stink is emanating from there. Nope. As I finish up my bottle of DC, I decide maybe the previous occupant of this cube left something stinky behind and I will look for it tomorrow as it’s the end of the day and hunting stink just isn’t something for which I’m willing to work late.

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The next day I rinse and repeat. I put one foot infront of the other, cursing internally the whole way that I should NOT be so addicted to DC that I need to throw down a buck twenty-five. I go back to my desk and go about the business of work…. There’s the stink again! Self pit-check – nope not me. Fly by foreign boy area – nope not them. Ponder what will happen if I expire from this stinky pit smelling brain tumor while Seth’s away – will the dogs start to eat my corpse? I take a swig from the DC bottle and FRICK! The bottle smells like BO! Surely I’m crazy, right? The bottle can’t smell like BO. I then go to a trusted colleague and ask for a favor:

“Mary, smell me.. Honestly do I stink and just not smell myself?”

After a confused look and a deep sniff “No, you smell good”.

“Now smell this bottle, what do you smell?”

“Dt Coke” she giggles

“Do you smell any BO?”

“Ew, no but if you do throw it out!”

“you don’t smell it?” the hope that I don’t have a pit smelling brain tumor fades.

“I don’t think so, just throw it out”

.. ..

I go back to my cube and finish the bottle assured I’m crazy from the brain tumor.

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This morning I do the same thing ever more convinced of the brain tumor. I walk in on a sorta dirty vending guy stocking the machine. Awesomely, he stuffs bottles under his arm so he can load faster.

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The good news: I don’t have a brain tumor

The bad news: I have been wrapping my lips around the vending dude’s armpit stink.

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GAH!

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No more vending pop.

Old Blog 4: Tomorrow, Tomorrow, I love ya....

So I leave tomorrow on my silver jews journey. Over looking the fact I must board a plane to get this shit seen I would describe my excitement is unfettered and feverish. But heres an update of a different sort.

Im a week a way from my first ever half marathon and it seems like for every 3 steps forward I go back 2. Thats always one step of progress, right? but the backwards steps are torn from the monty python ministry of funny walks playbook. So you may have seen my new pic, the one of my hot-cha-cha sunburn. If not, check it out. I got that bad boy on my 12 mile run last Sunday. So lets work backwards in a funny walk way, shall we?

On Thursday last week, I was doing splits up the monstrous hill that will be mile six in the half marathon. The intention was to run up the dang thing 3 times to build my tolerance and legs. I was so strong feeling good and thinking four times would be possible when of the way up the second time, my left calf Charlie horsed and spasmed. I couldnt stretch it, couldnt flex my foot. I hobbled the down the hill and a mile or so back to my car. I was bummed and scared. Bummed I didnt see if I could make it up 3 times. Scared because I was 2 week away from the race 9 weeks into training and experiencing something I knew nothing about: will it heal? Am I crippled? Sucked butt, Ill tell you what.

I hobbled around Friday and Saturday, keeping my eye on the prize: the final training run of 12 miles on Sunday. I woke up Sunday stiff but determined. Some well held downward-dogs, I got dressed and set out to run. It was a little bit later than we usually start and I picked up the sunscreen knowing the sun was strong. Then I thought, hmmm. My legs are gonna be a problem. The last thing I need is non-breathable skin. Yeah, I got a base tan, I should be good. So off I went for 2 hours of running in the So Cal sun. As you can see, the cost is a wicked sunburn.

The run was good, my left leg held on although I must have coddled it because every joint ached unlike they ever have before after the fact. But the run ended at the ocean and we took off our shoes and waded in up to our hips. It was icy cold but felt good on the gams.

So today, sufficiently recovered from the 12 mile jaunt, I went back to the hill for a few run-ups. I wore a tshirt so that I wouldnt let the 6pm sun get the chance to fuck with me. So I start running, the calf was good, I was up on my toes for the first time in a week. Three steps forward. Things were fine but halfway up my first hill, I notice my upper body and face are sweating unlike anything I have encountered EVER. I am thinking the whole way that my measly total of 14 miles last week had me atrophy and Im a sorry ass runner all of sudden. I got to the top, wiped my face and headed back down, sweating wildly and totally embarrassed to make eye contact with ANYONE feeling so out of shape. I went back up for a second one, intending three times, and the sweat was getting alarming, when I descended that second time I chalked the day up to a bad run and headed back to the car. Two steps back. I called my training partner to give her the update and admit shamefully I gave up after two hills because Im was a sweaty piglet. As I told her this, I go to wipe some sweat off my neck and feel something x-files alien creepy: lumpy, bumpy, blistery, slippery skin. EEEWWWW!!! I shriek. Kitty was all like What?! I tell her and ominously she explains that my sunburn made my skin into a leather coat so my body was sweating erratically trying to break through to cool me off. Yep, sure enough, I dont know if this is technically blistered but I have all these little sweat filled bumps all over my sunburned shoulders!!

Thats what happens when a see-through skinned Alaskan thinks she knows how to rock the so cal sun.

Im off to Chicago where, even if warm, the sun is not so hot so heres to hoping all my steps are forward from here on out.

Wish me luck, wings and planes that remain in the sky

Old Blog 3: It Only Took 12 Freaking Years

I have written three fan letters in my lifetime. Wait, let me qualify “fan”, I have written three letters to musicians/bands in my lifetime. Sure, I’ve written a letter or two to Santa (of whom I was BIG fan) giving him the score, as I saw it; my naughty vs. my nice doings and what I deemed was owed me come Christmas. No, what I’m talking about with these three is pure idolatry - the kind that would get you smote in the bible- of the music of a band. Had the first one not been well received, maybe the other two would never have been written. The first was to Pavement after meeting them the first time. When they rolled into town the NEXT time, they did so with the windows of the van rolled down shouting at me and Jess, “We got your letter!”. They asked where Ypsilanti was (they read the return address!) and not only let us catch soundcheck, we caught a solar eclipse in which we compiled and stacked everyone’s sunglasses to look through one at a time so as to NOT burn any retinas. Celestial phenomenon all because of our letter!!

So after living with the Silver Jews “Starlite Walker” for awhile, I fell asleep one night and had the best dream I can remember. The dream went like this:

The Jews were playing in town at a bar I had never been to before. I saddled up to the bar waiting for the show to start when who walks in? My recently departed grandma Dot. She’s glowing and has her angel wings already and is being lead to me by my cousins Amber and Julie (both underage but under the guardianship of an angel, no one is carded). Grandma Dot saddled up to the bar next to me and started telling me all about dying and heaven: who she spent her days with, what they did all day in heaven. I was so happy to see her as I was unable to get back to Alaska for her illness or funeral and carried a heavy, waking heart about it. My sleeping heart beat fast from the pure joy of seeing she had wings and was well again. I had so many questions but I could see over her shoulder the Jews were setting up. My mind raced, if I took my eyes off Grandma Dot, would she disappear? If I missed Jews, would they come through again? Grandma, always intuitive, noticed my dilemma and suggested we move it to the swingset and continue the conversation WHILE we watched the Jews. How cool is my grandma? Willing to swing while watching the silver jews. How cool was this bar? A swingset front and center? Grandma struggled to get her wings through the chains but once settled we watched the Jews, continued the talk of heavenly days and as we swung. I woke up with the lightest heart I ever had and immediately put pen to paper to tell DC Berman of my dream and ask them to come through town.

I can’t tell you the content of that letter. Not because it’s private but because I simply don’t remember. I can tell you that shortly there after, I got a 3”x5” lined index card in mail that read something to the effect:

“Dr. Pepper plays a big role in our lives, too. We will not tour as I would just as soon run for public office. DC Berman.”

The Dr. Pepper bit has stumped me for years. What would I have said about Dr. Pepper?! In a smote inspiring fan letter? Dr. Pepper?!

Anyway. Here it is, 12 years later and I still have never seen the Jews. Never have I been to a club with a swingset and that was the one and only time angel Grandma Dot has visited me. BUT on April 14^th at the Double Door in Chicago, I will finally see the Jews. That’s right. FINALLY. Wonder if grandma will make an appearance even if only to sit on my shoulder and watch.

Old Blog 2: What the....?!

here's another "have you ever..." for you. Have you ever been twirling your fingers through your long, silky hair only to pull loose a strand doesn't seem like it could come from your head like maybe it's from wired haired dog or something?

I'm a hair twirler to be sure and all sorts comes out (luckily I have a ton of the stuff) but today, a wirey, kinky 1.5ft long black hair came out of my flowing red locks. this is not the first time, mind you, such a thing has happened but it makes me wonder what other kinds of hairs are in this head of mine. So far no grey ones, on occassion one of my natural blonde bad boys will make an appearance. Why is it the odd ones are wirey and not angora like or chinchilla soft?

you all should touch my hair, it's as soft as it is shiney. You too would be completely mystified by the wire hair.

Old Blog 1: First of 2005

Firsts in 2005

First time I:

climbed 94 floors in under 18 minutes (actually, first time I climbed that many consecutive stairs);

visited Southern California;

quit the best job I ever had to pursue the untested and unknown;

drove over 2000 miles with my mom;

have been to Texas, Oklahoma and Arizona;

became a member of the San Diego Zoo;

was employed within a week of moving to a new town;

had unlimited access to a trampoline, foosball, ping pong & indoor skateboard ramp (although I didn't make use of any nearly enough);

attended a Gong Show in which my date was gonged;

met the Scots;

stumbled onto a nudist beach by accident;

played kickball as an adult;

stepped up to the karaoke mic;

have ever seen a movie projected on the back of my house;

introduced linus to the concept of a dog beach;

lived in a place with a pool;

witnessed the largest thermometer in the country read 104 degrees;

saw the Virgin Gorge of Nevada;

realized all the hot springs available in western Colorado;

drove through tornado alley during a wicked electrical storm. SCARY & SPECTACULAR;

visited Wichita, KS;

discovered the joys of a floatie in the pool;

uncovered my exceptional skill at floatie racing;

wrestled a black widow in my tub;

shooed a lizard from my doorstep (twice) and bathroom (once);

climbed a California peak;

discovered the Velodrome Bike races in my 'hood;

found the Hash House Harriers (running club);

employed my bike year round (since becoming an auto commuter);

saw the glow-in-the-dark red tide;

realized that store displays are the only indication of seasons changing in these parts;

visited Chicago as tourist (since having called it home for 6 years);

observed a temperate Halloween in which ladies could wear practically nothing AND hang outside;

had an in-&-out burger (not as awesome as I was led to believe);

walked Hollywood Blvd – powered through LA traffic;

adapted to the weather staying warm but the sun still going down at 4:30pm (screws with the body's constitution, I'll tell you what);

have needed no special clothes for "winter";

run outside in short sleeves in December;

spent Christmas Eve on a beach;

felt the warm sun on my skin and face in late December.