City Wendy

Official!

It's finally officially on sale!  It'll be available elsewhere in time (which means I will get to announce over and over when it's available some place else, which is fun for us all, isn't it?!), but for now, head on over here to pick up your copy or even a convenient download. 

But, as Sarah writes, we have a Disclaimer: "Yeah, that rating says "mature." That's because, among the beautiful stories of family bonding, soul mates and the hunger for acceptance that resides in us all, there's a lot of stories about throwing up and jerking off.
So. Uhm. Anyway, it's a good book! But I'd keep it away from grandma."

Over him

Today was the first day in what seems like weeks here in Chicago it hasn't rained or threatened to rain or flirted endlessly with the thought of rain, so I did what I've been dying to do all month, and I pushed my work aside and spent the afternoon at the beach.

Tomorrow I'll start tackling the next draft of my thesis (I got comments back from my profs and they like it pretty well...or at least, that's what they say, anyway), and yesterday was the last day of my first 4-week writing workshop with the ex-cons.  After class, one of the guys who wrote a poem on Tuesday about the police beating the shit out of him came up to me and thanked me for showing him he had talent.  "I never knew I had talent in anything," he said, " And now I think I could be a pretty good poet."  G, an ex-marine and class clown said he's going to keep writing and keep writing and write for the rest of his life,the lone woman in the group said she can't wait to take another writing class, and at least two people actually produced short essays that they had been working on as homework, even though I never assigned outside work.  The class is made of 100% high school drop-outs, most of whom have been in and out of prison their entire adult lives, and seeing them actually be excited about writing and to share their writing with each other and with me sort of blew my mind.  Also, did I mention one of the guys has a fucking glass eye?

Anyway, that was yesterday.  Today, the beach!  I went to the beach with my school teacher friend who is off work for the summer and we ate popsicles and gossiped about celebrities and at one point I must have casually mentioned this guy I've been sort of seeing for a few weeks and my friend asked if I ever compare him to my last boyfriend, M.  "No!" I said, they're nothing alike."
"Oh," he said, " It's just that M seemed kind of your type -- I mean, it seemed that way at the time."
"He was," I answered,"He was everything I didn't even know I was looking for, except he wasn't very nice to me.  And he never really considered my feelings or anything."
"Yeah," my friend said, "He was kind of self-absorbed."
"He broke my heart," I said bluntly.

After the beach, my friend and I picked up a few things at the grocery store, hit a wine shop and had an impromptu lunch of cheese and bread and guac and berries and glasses of pinot noir.  I picked up a trashy gossip mag on the way out of the store and back at my place, opened it up eagerly to see who was wasting away from anoerexia this week and who Paris Hilton and Nick Lachey,respectively, were dating today.

"Look how happy Jen looks," my friend remarked of Aniston, who, for a change, expressed some semblance of personality and lack of misery behind her boring smile.
"Maybe she's finally over Brad," I quipped, "Maybe she's over Brad and maybe that Vince is really, really nice to her."
Maybe Brad was everything she thought she wanted, but in the end, she wasn't enough for him.  And maybe now she finally feels like she's enough for someone.

I don't know if that's enough to make one happy -- enough to help heal a broken heart and turn a tight-lipped grimace on the cover of every goddamn magazine over the last year and a half into something a little happier, but maybe she finally decided that it is.  Maybe, finally, after enough heartache and feeling rejected and dejected and disappointed for too long, being enough for someone who treats her really, really well and makes her laugh, maybe it's, well, enough.  Maybe.

In other news, in a strange celebrity twist, Paris Hilton is dating her mirror image this week and hasn't ever been happier.

Meeting Summer Again

The last few weeks have been sort of a blur for me.  I have a million things on my mind and find myself often feeling nostalgic for the summers of yore when all I did was watch back-to-back episodes of You Can't Do That on Television and Saved by the Bell, lounge around at the community pool in unflattering one-pieces, and catch fireflies in the evening and sing "Dream a Little Dream" into my palm before setting them free again into the summer night.

These days, life goes so fast, I've got a lot demanding my attention right now, and it seems everyone I know is in the middle of a big transition and just not able to enjoy the season like we all used to when we were kids. 

Last night, I rode my bike to Lincoln Square to have a drink with a couple of friends.  On my way, I thought about the big decisions I need to make shortly, the fear of the unknown, and all the ways the lives of people I care about are mirroring big changes in my own.  I have close friends and family starting new careers, losing jobs, buying homes, getting divorced, reuniting with old loves, coping with parents' terminal illnesses, it's all so much sometimes.  I started getting a little panicky, kind of anxious.  "What if it doesn't work out?" I thought, " What if it doesn't work out?!"  Fill in the blank for the it -- I have a lot of "its" I'm contemplating at the moment -- in my career, my love life, my everything, really, and as I watch the people around me coping with their own "its," I feel overwhelmed by the weight of it all.

It was a gorgeous night and I was on my bike and it was dusk and the fireflies were out, but I was so wound up worrying about all these things I can't control, I couldn't even relax enough to enjoy this time of year that's so short anyway.  I peddaled faster to the bar for a beer, but even there, I still felt a million miles away.  (Not so far away I couldn't flirt with the hot, young bartender, let's not be crazy here, but far away, nonetheless.)

Then, on my ride home, I happened upon a group of people in the neighborhood square salsa dancing.  Someone had brought a radio, and at first, I assumed it was a class, but on closer inspection, it seemed to be a spontaneous gathering of people just getting up and dancing to the music someone thought to share.  Random men extended their hands to random women sitting on benches, and the ladies, in return, smiled or blushed or curtsied before being guided around the square, kicking their legs up flirtatiously, their skirts flaring as they twirled.  Some of the newly matched couples shuffled awkwardly, other glided effortlessly like they were born dancing together, and those of us onthe sideline, watched with the kind of wonder and amusement usually reserved for blockbusters and cute babies. 

Chicago has been unseasonably mild lately, like mountain weather, and last night was no exception.  The air was cool and crisp, the trees swayed lazily in the breeze, and feeling the beer working it's way through my body, I relaxed a little, finally.  Girls in skirts ate ice cream from the little euro bakery next door, boys on bikes smiled at me, I rang my imaginary bell and smiled back, and for a moment, my life, with all the "it's" and "what if's" melted into the night, and summer regained her hold on me again.

I got a text message from a friend.  "Bike ride?" it said. "Yes," I texted back. I peddaled over to the park outside his apartment and waited.  He came out, and we rode our bikes around and practiced cartwheels.
"I haven't done a cartwheel in ages!" he said, extending his arms in the air and positioning his feet.
"Me neither!" I replied, and for a few minutes, we re-acquainted our bodies to old moves. 
We re-acquainted our bodies to summer.

Needin' some love (not that kind, although, that would be okay, too....)

Y'all, I need some love!  Incase it isn't apparent from my recent boring posts, I'm all tweaked out and pre-occupied and shit.  Seriously.  In an effort to finish my thesis by tomorrow (the rough draft, anyway), I've holed myself up in my apartment with barely even a glimpse of sunlight or a breath or fresh air.  I've cut my daily sudoku playing down to a mere 20 minutes and I haven't even so much as glanced at a gossip magazine in at least 8 days!  In the rare moments that I've allowed myself out to have a quick coffee break with a friend, I've been told that I look like hell, and that people are starting to worry.  Also, my hair is falling out.  Okay, that part isn't true, but doesn't it make everything seem much more dramatic  and exciting??

Excitement!  I could do with some of that.  But instead, I've been cooped up inside, hunched over my computer and piles of notes and books and all kind of boring crap that make my eyes roll back in my head and all I want is to drink mohitos and swat mosquitos and fan myself while waving a yellow kerchief around with delicate fervor.  I don't even know what delicate fervor is, but I want to be doing it!

I hate academic writing!  I hate it with a passion so intense I can taste it like blood in the back of my throat.  I don't even know what that means.  I'm sort of going crazy!

I've only been on my bike for, like, 30 minutes total this week!

Seriously, it's maddening, and even when I do get the rough draft finished and mailed off to my readers, I still have about a week of edits to look forward to and then my unemployment status to fucking deal with because I've decided to defer the phd program since I hate school so much and that means I have no income lined up after august and about a kabillion dollars in loans I have to start paying back and, my god, it''s summer and I am supposed to be chasing boys and drinking Margaritas or mohitos or imported beer and chilled white wine and instead, I have to actually work and stress and worry, and I'm not cut out for that sort of thing at all!  Not at all.  Have I mentioned I haven't even had time to read gossip magazines?  God!

My insomnia is back.  Back with a vengeance, and seriously, I need love.

Other Ways to take Rejection besides ‘Personally’:

With a spoonful of sugar

Straight from the can

Over-easy

Drugged up on Codeine

With a grain of salt

With cream and sweet-n-low

Like you’ve dodged a bullet

Mellow-Yellow

The Hollow Grove

In February, I wrote this, and I said, "It's about writing, it's about writing, it is."  I wrote it one cold, lonely winter night, while listening to Victor Malloy's "The Girl in the Hood" on repeat over and over, and I really believed I was writing about writing.

About four years ago, I saw Kurt Vonnegut give a talk at the Harold Washington library.  It's not an understatement to say the two hours I spent in his presence helped me define who I am.  It wasn't so much because I'm a fan, but more because Vonnegut is a brilliant, wise, old man whose words filled me with such...I don't know...awe and understanding, that I rushed right home and filled 4 large sketchbook pages front and back with everything I could remember him saying. 

One of the insightful remarks he made was that every good writer he's ever known has a specific person in mind when he or she sits down to write.  For him, it was his sister, Allie.  For me, it's whom I wrote about in that post in which I felt so certain I was really writing about writing.

Well, I was writing about writing.  Sort of.  Mostly.  Halfway.  But I was also writing about this other thing -- this entity that's always present in my life -- this person I write for, this person I think about when I write, this person.  I don't know who he is.

I've thought I've known him before -- recognized his laugh, the way he looks at me, smiles, the faces he makes when he watches tv.  I thought I've known him before.  And I wonder -- how will I recognize him when he finally becomes real to me?

So I search.  I search for this physical embodiment of something I think I've known all along, that I've repeatedly mistaken in various forms.  I search for the physical embodiment of this thing I write for and cannot even picture, may not even recognize if we were to meet some day in the middle of a rainstorm, the two of us,the only ones sane enough to be without umbrellas.

I search, I write, I search, I write.  And then writing is this thing, because when I imagine being with him, we are drinking cocktails and listening to Billie Holiday and talking about nothing and everything and he is holding my hair, and so writing is this thing, because in the emptiness his absence creates, writing holds his place in my life while I wait.  And I wait.

I am the Walrus

A couple of weeks ago, I took my phone to the beach and got so much sand in it, I ruined it beyond repair.  I couldn't figure out how it happened -- I'd never had a problem taking my phone to the beach before, but I couldn't fight the evidence: it was full of sand, it made grinding noises when I turned it on or off and it just stared at me and stuck it's tongue out and spit sand in my face when I told it to dial out.  Luckily, it'd been less than a year since I'd knocked my last phone off a 3rd floor deck and shattered it to pieces, so my newer phone was still under warranty and I was able to get an even newer one for free.  The biggest inconvenience really, was  dealing with the loaner phone T-Mobile gave me while I waited for the new shiny Samsung to come in.  The loaner was so big, I swaddled it in clothes, carried it strapped to my chest in a baby bjorn, and fed it mushed up bananas when it rang.

Over the weekend, I made another trip to the beach, but this time I was smart!  I said to my shiny new samsung, " Shiny new samsung, it's not that I don't love you, it's because I love you that I have to leave you at home today!"  And with smug arrogance that I'd finally beaten the Gods of Chaos at their own game, I threw my self-help book, sudoku puzzles, and $300 canon Sd400 digital camera into my beach bag and bounced out for a lovely afternoon in the sun.

Later in the day, after I'd satisfactorily fried my brain some more under the steamy hot rays of the midwest summer, I lay around my livingroom staring dumbly at the walls and alternately cheering myself for creating such a lovely life, and condemning myself for not being further along at almost 30.  The fact is, I've completely wasted most of the last month that I'd allotted to finish my thesis.  Rather than just pounding that bitch out and start searching aggressively for a job to actually support myself, I've been doing sudoku puzzle after sudoku puzzle, updating my pedicure every couple of hours, and hunting for the perfect key lime pie recipe.  Meanwhile, I'm out of savings, I don't know how I'm going to pay my rent next month, and anytime anyone asks me in genuine concern why I'm not looking for work, I push my hair out of my face dramatically, glare at them with contempt and say with exasperation, as if I have been slaving away over notes and quotes and research around-the-clock for the last many months, "I don't have time!!  I'm working on my thesis!"  and then I go back to my sudoku puzzles and choosing just the perfect shade of metallic pearl for my toes.

So, I was lying around my livingroom yesterday, alternately patting myself on my back and screaming obscenities because I seem to lack the basic discipline to get my act together, when I had a brilliant idea.  "I know!" I thought,  "I'll take pictures of my cats!  That always cheers me up."  So I scrambled to my beach bag still sitting by the front door, and pulled out my camera and as I turned it on to start snapping away, it made this horrible familiar grinding sound.  "Oh No!!" I thought, as I frantically pushed all it's buttons and screamed more obscenities at myself.  "Goddamnit!" I yelled, "damnit, damnit, damnit, damnit!"  Then I immediately got online, because being online fixes everything, and I furiously googled, "sand in my camera," and "how do I get sand out of my camera lens?" and "WHY AM I SUCH A FUCKING MORON WHO CANNOT HANDLE LIFE OR ANYTHING THAT DOES NOT REVOLVE AROUND BOOZE, BOYS, BIKING, AND THE BEACH??!?!?!"  Google turned up a few matches, including, "You're almost 30, lady, IT IS TIME TO GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER!!!"

Then I cried.

Then I got another brilliant idea!

I emailed this guy who's been dumb enough to express much interest in me and I told him I am a mess!  "I'm a mess!" I wrote and "I recommend you think long and hard about getting involved with me!  Really hard!"  And then I outlined all the things I had managed to break and/or ruin in just the last couple of months since he's known me incase he'd forgotten about all my mishaps.  "My car," I wrote, "My phone, my bike fender, someone's sideview mirror..and I'm pretty sure there's much more that I can't even remember because I am such a goddamn mess!  I break everything!" I wrote, "I might even break you!"  Then I hit 'send.' 

Then a couple hours later, I decided to take a break from my thesis because I'd been working on it for 30 minutes straight and had simply exhausted myself from all the sustained hard work and I needed to go out for a bike ride and relax a little, so I turned off my fan and I don't know what happened exactly, but suddenly the top of the fan broke away from the stand part and the blades and motor fell on the hardwood floor and shattered into pieces, little plastic parts dangerously flying across the room practically impaling my poor cats who were holding graceful poses on the couch and window sill, still waiting patiently to have their portraits taken and be made into kitty stars just like that black cat who used to be on Sabrina the Teenage Witch back when Melissa Joan Hart didn't look like she spent weekends at Walmart picking out paper plates with animal faces and 99 cent Q-tips, and I just looked up sky-ward and yelled to the Gods of Chaos, "Why, Why?  Why do you hate me so?"  Then I immediately emailed the boy back and said, "PS I just broke the fan into a million little pieces!  I am a mess, I told you, a goddamn mess!!!"

Surprisingly, I'm still waiting for a reply.

Top Ten things I'd Buy if I were Britney Spears

Root job

More knuckle rings

Appropriate footwear for those tricky "cobblestone" New York city streets

Eyelash glue

Brush

A publicist who doesn't hate

Another layer between skin and transparent outerwear

car seats for all the cars

socks for Matt Lauer

Justin's love back

It's Huge. Or, I'm tiny?

The proof came in the mail today.
Have you pre-ordered yours yet?

Inside my head, it's kind of a mess

"You're too in your head," my friend Meg said to me recently, or more precisely: "Maybe you're too in your head."  The thing is, there's no maybe -- it is so.

We were talking about driving and I was telling her how impossible I find it to follow signs and lights and things like that and how I routinely drive down the wrong side of a one-way street and in the middle of the night, I'll suddenly awake, remembering it's street cleaning day in the morning, and I'll go out to move my car, quite pleased with myself, thinking a ha! I've beat you at your own game this time, parking ticket-givers!, only to realize later in the morning, after the cops have strolled for cars to ticket, that I actually left the coziness of my bed at 3 fucking am to move my car to the WRONG side of the street -- the side adorned with clearly marked "NO PARKING" signs that I didn't even notice because I am TOO IN MY HEAD all the goddamn time.

I am so in my head lately, I can't even think what to write about here, or how to be funny.  I can't even be funny anymore, because I am all stuck in my head and my head is TOTALLY BORING right now -- my head is all neurotic and messy and wrapped up in a million different things I cannot even prioritize, so I just lie awake at night arguing with myself over what I should let keep me awake -- what is worthy of my anxiety the most, but because I cannot possibly decide, I just play mental ping-pong with all this inconsequential shit, thereby letting indecisiveness keep my awake -- indecisiveness over what to worry about the most, I told you I'm not funny right now!

I'm teaching a writing workshop twice a week now to ex-felons and yesterday during the class, I brought a couple of Carl Sandburg poems in -- one about happiness and one about freedom -- and I was pleasantly surprised with how excited these tough, hardened cons were to talk about poetry, about imagery in the poetry, to figure out what the imagery symbolized, and at one point during the class, I was so overwhelmed with, with, I don't know what -- emotion or some shit, that my heart almost exploded in my chest.  Because, here I am lying awake at night worrying about what to worry about, and there are people who struggle all goddamn day of their lives to just get through, just to survive and to feed their kids and stay out of jail and maybe turn their lives around a little bit so when a three-day weekend comes along, they might be able to take their families to the zoo and maybe buy a couple of snowcones.

I can leave my head long enough to see this, but at night -- not even at night -- all the rest of the time, really -- I am obsessed with my own boring life and my own boring worries , so much so, that lately, I find it difficult to be at all interesting.  Or to drive.  Or to park on the right side of the street.

This can all be taken care of, though, if someone would just answer a few questions for me, like:

What happens next?
Will I have a job in the fall after I finish my thesis and get my masters?
Should I pursue a relationship I don't know can work?
Should I risk hurting and getting hurt?
Will friends I have supported and spent money to see in countless productions over the last decade or so ever support my work and aspirations in the same way? 
Will they ever act like what I do isn't a big fucking joke?
Is my cat mildly retarded?
Does it matter?
Will my mother be satisfied with the stylist I picked to tease her hair into a massive mass just like she likes while she's visiting next month, or will she complain that she gave me just one task and I can't even do that right?
Will I ever have enough money to pay off my student loans and visit Nepal?
Why do I want to visit Nepal?
Perhaps I should go to Bali? 
Is Andy Samberg really dating that cunt, Kirsten Dunst?
Should I color my hair again even though the sun just fades the color in about 4 days this time of year?
Maybe I should dye it right before my mother comes so she doesn't complain about how washed-out it looks and how I'm not aging as well as she did and maybe I got my dad's aging genes and that's too bad since I also got his knees and teeth, too, which are fine on him, but look sort of ridiculous on a girl.
Maybe a nice dye job will distract my parents' attention from the fact that I have two big bottles of gin in my kitchen, but no husband!  Or a real job.
At least I'm still thin.
Sort of.
Why didn't someone brush Britney's hair and help her dress and maybe do her make-up for her interview with Matt Lauer?
Does my hair look like hers?
Why does she call her baby "boo-boo"?
Why do I care?
Why is Star Jones still famous?
And I'm not? 
Why isn't Andy Samberg dating me?
It's because I am too in my head, right?
And because my hair is all faded out?
I'm totally going to dye it again.
Right before my parents come.
To distract them from the mess that is the rest of my life.
I totally hope it works.
(but if not, I've still got those two big bottles of gin)