the half truth of a whole life

My lucky bamboo died.

Fuck you. No, no, truly. I would like to express to you, as well as the geniuses who run your organization, the extreme frustration that you’ve have caused me over the last five months. Were it not for the unbelievable yoga program (coupled with my gym crush on Marc McDonald), I would have packed my bags and headed back to Equinox. (Although, the snarling facade of my former trainer does keep me a safe distance.)

First of all, let’s have a quick chat about communication. As a veritable communications genius myself, I need to tell you the first and golden rule of marketing communications: communication. No. Fucking. Way. When you have something to relay to members of your internal or external audience, the most effective way to do that is to first and foremost do that. For example, if you consistently charge a members DEBIT CARD when you have explicitly told them that you will not be doing that, you should probably communicate to the accounting department that there has been an error. Don’t force said member to call sweet Donna from accounting and tell her all about how the Member Services people are backing over her with the proverbial bus. That’s just going to get nasty. And we know you wouldnt want that.

Communication is a dirty little word that actually entails two parts listening, one part engaging, and one part action. When you decide that your establishment is worth a sign up cost of nearly $1000 and then charge an additional $165 per month to the helpless beings to are forced to join your gym due to some unparalleled locational issues, you may want to consider showing them where some of that money goes. (And, I could be wrong, but I dont think it’s into your employee on boarding process, due to the fact that an employee misunderstanding led to my washing my body with MOUTHWASH last week. Funny, funny. If the shower amenities need subtitles, you’re going to have to suck it up and get on that. ) Could you explain to me, beloved Sports Club/LA how the weights in your fitness studio are so horrifying? I am quite certain that the free weights in prison are better taken care of than the bullshit that you supply. I dont think that walking those weights down Comm Ave like an imaginary puppy could cause them the damage that a bunch of cardio princesses have seemingly caused. I was at Target this weekend. They have weights. In case you’re having trouble finding them. Better yet, give Kristi DiScipio a ring over at Equinox and ask her for the magic method by which she keeps the weights so impeccable. Wait, what is that, Kristi? You have someone come in and take care of them? What does that even mean?

Sports Club/LA, it’s no secret that you have me by the downward dog. I’m forced to remain a member because the yoga studio is beyond compare. Wait, isn’t the yoga studio managed by someone different? How enlightening! I love George and Lily, Marc, Jen, Kelly, and Dave. I love seeing my gym buddies and buying an overpriced salmon lunch on Saturdays and talking about what a shithole the gym is. Did you know that, Sports Club/LA? The members actually sit in the cafe and commiserate about what a shithole the facilities are.

Lucky for you, a run in with Seal (singer and husband to “the Heidi”) on a treadmill last week was worth at least $75, and I’m willing to admit that the yoga and Dossas is worth at least another $75, so we’re square for April.

But here is the real kicker. The coup de grace. This incredible rant could have been entirely avoided if you’d just communicate.

Who in their right fucking mind cancels a yoga class on a Monday? A Monday, no less, where every person who comes to you after 6:00 PM is pissed to high hell about the fact that their company didn’t give them the fake Massachusetts holiday, Patriots Day. A day when everyone who comes in your doors is feeling particularly poor about themselves because they aren’t good enough to have run the 26.2 miles that the Kenyans did that morning. Who cancels yoga, on Marathon Monday, of Patriots Day, and doesnt tell anyone?

And dont fucking start with me about the sign. There are so many signs on that goddamn wellness desk that I wouldnt know if one of them told me that Jesus was teaching in the Fire Studio on Saturday.

Communication, Sports Club/LA, communication.

Namaste.

I recently went on a business trip to Atlanta. First, let’s cover the fact that the company finally trusted me enough to let me interface with clients on my own. I’m not going to hold my breath for another such trip, because, let’s face it, I’m a fucking ace in the hole for a lot of things, but I cannot seem to get my goddamn language in check. (Which reminds me: my mother called me this evening to discuss that very point. “Caroline, I just dont understand. Can you or can you not get through a sentence without using potty language?” Potty language? Are we being for serious?)

Second, let’s cover the details leading up to the big business trip.

Now, I know as well as anyone else that we are in a recession. Even if I were thinking about forgetting it, it seems to be the only thing that people want to talk about. Remember the days when a lull in conversation meant talking about a mutual friend whose ass had gotten fucking ginormous? Gone forever. Now when you realize you have nothing in common with someone, you talk about all the friends you know who have been laid off… and then make that frowny, head shaking face that says “that is so sad, but I really wish they would stop asking me if I have any leads.” Anyway, the recession is a top that is coming another day. The point of all this is that people are cutting corners, saving pennies, trying to make life cost a little less. Not me. I’m trying to save the human race and stimulate this bitch. Which leads me to how I ended up at the Doubletree hotel in Hotlanta. My new favorite place in the world.

The folks accompanying me on this trip sent me an itinerary on Monday afternoon detailing flights, hotel reservations, contact numbers, etc., so that I could make my own travel arrangements. (Business trips? Check. Personal assistant? Not a fat kid’s chance at the prom.) I looked at the flights: departing Boston at 6AM. Immediately I realized that I had made a mistake. I didn’t want the face-to-face client contact. SIX AM? What the fuck time does that mean you get to the airport? Is it open that early? Negative. Fortunately I was able to have a chat with the powers that be and in the end it really didnt seem necessary for me to be anywhere that early.

After I booked my flights on the world’s worst airline: AirTran, I needed to book my room with the gang. We could all stay together and carpool and stuff. It would be so convenient for getting to the shoots in the morning, and getting home at night.

Or not. The gang booked a room at the Super 8. The Super 8.

Look. I get it. We’re a bunch of nobodies. We’re no one’s CEO, CMO, CFO, COO. We ain’t got no Cs anywhere in our titles, so okay. We wont book a suite at the Ritz. But we also don’t have bend-over-the-spooge-covered-mattress-and-get-roach-raped-by-the-infested-sheets in our title.

I’m sure that in certain parts of the continental US there are Super 8 Motels that are lovely. I’m sure that the Super 8 takes pride in their standards for cleanliness, and the amount of chlorine that they use in their quarter-operated Jacuzzi to keep it sterile, but I just don’t care. I didn’t dream of my wedding day as a little girl growing up. I dreamed of expense accounts and business trips. And while some girls were thinking about multitiered fondant-covered cakes and Vera Wang, I was imagining those long days on the road, staying in hotel beds and watching B movies on demand. Not in any of those fuck-Barbies-I’m-going0to-rule-the-world day dreams was I knocking heads together all day and then kicking up my heels at the Super 8. There were always elevators in my day dreams. Never did I drive up. Ever.

The problem is that there is no more efficient way to alienate friends and piss off your boss than let them know that you’re too good for the gang’s hotel. “Really, Caroline? You too good to get fired too?”

Probably not.

Sensitive, sensitive stuff. I stared at my computer screen for a solid twenty minutes thinking about how to take on the situation. I even googled the Super 8. I checked out the on-site photos. I closed my eyes and willed myself into the room. I mentally looked for a free hair dryer. Shampoo. Mini body lotion. I looked for a clock radio. I couldn’t do it. I couldnt put myself in the room.

And then I remembered.

The people I work with think I’m obsessed with working out.

You cannot work out at the Super 8.

You know where you can work out? At the Precor sponsored gym at the Doubletree hotel in Druid Hills.

I booked it. And then I waited to get fired. Which didn’t happen.

What’s funny is that the Doubletree isn’t exactly the Four Seasons either. And it wasn’t that I was looking to stay there. (Well, kind of. But I also know that the recession has flooded the market with people who are much better at my job than I am and I don’t want to stand at a job fair telling anyone the hilarious story of how I got canned…) I just didn’t want to be at the Super 8. They don’t charge enough per night to convince me that they can afford to clean and wash sheets after every client. Anyone ever heard of overhead??

But the point of all this is to say that while I may have been dreaming of the Four Seasons, my heart was captured by the Doubletree Hotel. Did you know that the Doubletree gives you a WARM CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIE when you arrive? That’s right. I couldnt have been happier if they gave me a little pink sorry-you’re-alone-for-three-nights dildo. It came out of a warming drawer. They didn’t phone it in with a Chips Ahoy. They gave me a cookie that was warm. And soft. And made me forget about the guilt I had about my gang… at the Super 8.

And there was a gym. (Which I used THREE TIMES because I felt like if I didn’t that karma would turn me into a quadriplegic. I did, after all, convince the universe that I was FORCED to stay at the Doubletree because of my work out habits.) There were little TVs on all the cardio machines. I watched shows about people being murdered in the Bronx while I sweat out the stress of my day of knocking heads.

There was a bed that felt like millions of tiny angels sacrificing their bodies for my own comfort.

There was a free hair dryer. And little shampoos sponsored by Neutrogena. Oh! Neutrogena! I recognize your brand!

I was so overwhelmed with the Doubltree that I didn’t even turn on the TV. I was so taken with its charms that I didn’t even check for B movies. Or look at the breakfast menu.

And when I set the alarm on the clock radio, I sent out a happy thought to that little girl I used to be.

Fuck weddings. Grow up and stay at the Doubletree on business trips.

You may or may not have joined the Twitter revolution (either way, I understand), but if you have and you’re not following Stuart the Cat, you’re totally missing out. His simple yet insightful view of the world is changing humanity one Twitterer at a time.

http://www.twitter.com/stuartthecat

If you’d like to follow me, I think it would encourage me to write better, wittier things– tweet them, I mean. As it stands I have trouble caring what the 10 people who follow me think.

http://www.twitter.com/linabeau

See you there.

About a month ago, my favorite gym fairy (who, as mentioned, needs to be Best of Boston….) George descended upon my Saturday cardio class looking noticeably thinner than the week before. In the world of hard-core fitness (a world I now think I’m officially a part of), showing up thinner in less than seven days is like fucking Edward Scissor Hands and then going for a swim off the coast of Cuba… you are going to get attacked. To make matters worse, Georgie went ahead and teased the entire class by telling us that if we stayed for the second round of class (immediately following), he would tell us all how he shed 10lbs in 7 days. I have never seen so many people in a cardio class in my life.

The key to George’s sudden weight loss was a program called IsaGenix. Now, I’ve learned via Twitter that if you mention this product in ANY negative fashion, thousands of angry Isa-Twitterers will come out of the woodwork and Tweet you to death. I can only imagine what today’s Google Keyword search is going to do to me. (Hello, crazy IsaGenix people. Welcome to my blog. Now leave me alone.) The program is a “cleanse” which rids your body of the evil toxins that are weighing you down and keeping you from being the best possible person you can be. Actually what it is is a 9 day torture test to see whether or not normal people can live normal lives without food.

Like all stupid things in life: hammer pants, scrunchies, that time Coke fucked up and changed their formula, I needed to go ahead and try it. You know, just so I could blog about it. Had I been smart about it, I would have blogged during the actual cleanse, alas I did not. Mostly because cleansing turned me into a unique person who couldnt focus on benign tasks like sharing her life with twelve people.

For two days you drink some cleansing juice. Mine was “tropical berry” which, in IsaGenix land, is cousins with rancid organic apple juice. For two days at the beginning, and two days at the end you drink this juice and if you find yourself unbearably hungry, you are allowed an almond or two. How generous. The middle days (5) you drink two meal replacement shakes and then are allowed a 4-600 calorie meal– either as lunch or dinner. Think of it like a glorified SlimFast plan. During these nine days, I compiled a list of things that I was learning about myself through the cleanse. So here is is, Everything I Ever Needed to Know, I learned on an IsaGenix Cleanse:

1. Poo is Precious

I know. It is completely unladylike to talk about poo. So we wont. What we will talk about is what happens when you realize your rear functions have been… defunct… for more than four days. A girl who doesn’t believe in God starts saying prayers that the savior will send her a turd. After day five, the anxiety over the mass that is growing in your defunct belly becomes overwhelming, and you ask the hubs if he’ll just beat on you for a while. Lightly, of course.

The real kicker is when your meal replacement shakes give you Devious Gas. A rare breed that cannot be trusted unless one is seated on the cool promise of porcelain. Trust me on this, cherish your poo.

2. It’s the texture, not the flavor.

I actually learned this lesson years ago when I had to fast for an exploratory stomach surgery: hunger is nothing. I could go days without calories; it’s the longing for something in the mouth that becomes unbearable. I actually remember standing over the kitchen sink (during the fast) and chewing up stale loaves of bread and spitting them in the sink, just so I could remember what it was like to feel food. My dad accidentally caught me, and I dont think things have ever really been the same.

On day two of the cleanse, I had taken out nearly eight packs of gum. I was chewing the calorie equivalent of a Big Mac in increments of “Not a Significant Source of Nutrition or Calories”. They only say that because they dont know that some people use them as meal replacement.

As weakness turning to longing, I thought I was ready to lead a debate against religious activitists. You think your God is the reason and source of life? Wrong. It’s restaurant week. It’s gluttony and pleasure and fluffy carbohydrates. That’s what it’s all about. Ave Maria.

3. About your friends…

They only like you because you drink and because you eat. No one wants to be around a dieter. It’s a close second to a recovering alcoholic. (Sidenote: once you hit the 5-10 year mark of recovery, this doesn’t apply. We’re talking about alcondriacs– a breed of people who go to Betty Ford and emerge convinced that EVERYONE is an alcoholic. I don’t want anyone falling off the wagon, I just want them to shut the fuck up about it.)

For nine days I was a nobody. I wasn’t drunk enough to be honest, full enough to be tired, or engaged enough to care about anyone else. I was hungry. Plain and fucking simple. I wanted to eat babies. Covered in mayo. Fried.

Yum.

And now here I am. Maintaining. Drinking Devious Gas Shakes and playing poo roulette.

God Bless IsaGenix.

As most of you know, Stuart is our cat. There are days when I find myself recounting stories of Stuart while simultaneously ignoring the innner voice that’s chanting, “No one fucking cares. In fact, you’re actually freaking people out, cat girl.”

As you can see, I ignore that inner voice. If I had something better to talk about, I’d be talking about it. As it stands, though, I ain’t got shit. Except Stuart, of course.

Stuart George Wayne Edward Beaulieu, Cat Elite.

But the thing about Stuart is that he is more than a cat. I don’t mean that he is a soul, or that his eyes tell me things about the state of humanity that only God could know– because those sorts of things are truly the statements of lonely cat women, but I mean that he is something else entirely to hubs and me: He is a mediator.

Some people have open lines of communication. Some couples turn off the TV, put away their dinner plates and excessive work loads, and have intimate conversations about the state of affairs within their family. Hubs and I use Stuart as a tool of passive-aggressive puppetry, a highlighter for the deeper dysfunction within our unity.

Overtime (I think), you learn that there are things that you can’t say to your spouse. Marriage can make you forget it, but everyone has feelings and perserving those feelings is 90% of the battle. Telling hubs he is a useless sack of laziness? Not adviseable. Having Stuart mention to him that he is ashamed to call him “father”? Completely acceptable. In fact, downright constructive.

In the days of Milo, hubs and I could have entire conversations abot how much we loathed each other through him. Milo would tell hubs that he was scared of him, that the way he spoke to his mother (that would be me) make him scared that he would end up splitting holidays and having to spend Thursdays and every other weekend at a converted frat house in Allston. In turn, Milo would tell me that as a mother I was dispicable, that my housekeeping tendencies make him feel awkward about inviting friends over, that he was nervous the tabby from upstairs would come over, see the kitchen, and tell everyone in the building that Milo’s parents didn’t own any soap.

And there you had it. We would each apologize to Milo and walk away with a broad marital perspective. Put that in your marriage rules pipe and smoke it.

Milo was different, though. He didn’t lend himself to impromptu corrections about minutia. He truly shone in crisis situations. When anger was lurking at the surface–late at night, dishes undone, nothing on TV, hubs tapping his pen, watching TED– there was Milo, ready to tell dad how disappointed he was in how everything had turned about. Give him the eyes that only a child can, and plead with him to do better, to try harder, and goddammit get up and do the fucking dishes.

Not so with Stuart. He seizes at the climax, the pressure of picking sides between the man who feeds him and the woman who purchases the food is too much. Trivial, frivolous arguments– those are where Stuart finds his sweet spot. Recently, his position has morphed into something else: he is the cruel voice of all things painfully obvious, but never mentioned.

(Sitting on the bed, mom and Stuart watching TV, dad walks in wearing a towel. Stuart looks up and speaks.)

“Gee, dad. Where’d you get that belly? How are we ever going to play in the father/son softball game with you looking like a slugging monkey.”

Then hubs stands there, torn between whether to beat me within an inch of my life, or simply play the game.

“Oh, buddy. Don’t worry. Haven’t you seen mom lately? She’s been working out so much she looks like a big, butch lesbian. And you know how much they love softball.”

Translation: Hubs, you may need to pay attention to the weight that may or may not have added to your midsection. It’s becoming obvious and I’m slightly embarrassed by it and definitely less attracted to you. Caroline, your working out is not only making me resent you slightly, but your barrel arms are making me feel like less of a man, and with this recent weight gain I’m feeling vulnerable.

Now, you tell me if you’ve gotten that much out of thousands of dollars and hours of couples therapy.

You need a Stuart.

There is a difference between the moment that your heart breaks—that unmistakable pain that starts some where inside your being and slowly makes its way to your heart, a pain that makes you certain that there is no tomorrow—and the moment that your heart breaks open. The pain, though nearly unbearable, almost identical to heart break, bears with it a distinct and beautiful difference: somehow, some where, at the end of a pain that seems as though it will last forever, is a light. It’s a sign of hope. It doesn’t make promises. It doesn’t tell you in the middle of the night that everything is going to be okay. What it does is remind you that beyond what we experience, beyond what we are certain will consume us, is something else. When your heart breaks open, it is raw and fragile. It is a gift that so few people are given. It is the opportunity to look inside the heart. What you find in there is what guides you towards that light. And eventually it will heal.
And then all you have to do is remember what it is that you saw when your heart broke open.

Today we return to our gym-talking roots. I don’t plan on recounting the horror of my New Year’s weight loss plans, much to your sadness, I’m sure, but rather we will focus on the dark and oft not spoken of underbelly of the high-end fitness world: it is exactly like high school.

What does this mean? It means that the minute I step off the elevators at the SCLA I am again the slightly less than popular girl who hasn’t learned how to manage her skin care regime and still thinks that her mother was correct in telling her that blue eye liner will help her eyes pop. Despite my years of estranged silence from the people I went to school with, a time period in which I developed a personality, became an intellectual, drove myself into a career with reckless abandon, became a successful and functional member of society with a flawless skincare regime, I am still the awkward girl. My lululemons, though equally as costly, aren’t the color that every cool girl has decided to ban together and wear this season. (Which reminds me exactly of whatever whore bag decided that Uggs and Umbros were going to be all the rage my freshman year of college. What the fuck? How could any girl know that trend was going to take us in that direction?)

Now, for all this gym misfortune, there is one teeny detail that keeps me floating along, despite the evil that prevails at the gym: I am, and will always be, twenty years younger than most of these women. That’s right ladies, you can stare, murmur, eye roll, blacklist– whatever– but at the end of the day, guess who is still going home a cake away from fifty? That. would. be. you.

And so I’ve learned to adapt. On Saturday mornings, my favorite gym fairy George (who, by the way, should be the next Best of Boston, lets work on that), teaches back-to-back weight training and cardio classes. The weight training is a spacial free for all, with women literally throwing their bodies onto the ground to save themselves a space. Because gym buddy and I have gotten into the inner sanctum, we simply stroll in about three minutes before class and talk to George until, what do you know, class as has started and we’re standing at the front. Sorry, ladies.

The cardio class, on the other hand, is not the same gig. My first cardio blast experience I was like a little fawn. Unbenounced to me, I had ignored the evil stares of “The Three” and positioned myself on their turf. George probably could have told me that I’d made such a fuck up, but I think that maybe he wanted to see if “The Three” would actually eat a young girl like me alive.

(“The Three” have different nicknames depending on the day. They started out as the Heathers, but there was something not quite evil enough about that name. Heather sounds soft and youthful. What we’re dealing with is something agier and more bitter.)

So there I am. A girl who has struggled her whole life with less than stellar coordination standing amidst “The Three” at the start of a cardio class where, guess what, a fair amount of focus and coordination is necessary.

I failed.

I turned left at “The Three” were twirling right. I grapevined when “The Three” were adding their own cardio zest with a whirlybird. I felt myself self worth shrink, but then I remembered that they probably knew these moves from the original Jazzercise, something I couldn’t possible remember because I was in grade school.

Now, you must be asking yourself, “where is gym bff? why is she not saving you from this horror?”

Well, this particular day, gym BFF was dancing to the beat of her own cardio drummer, having not quite figured out if the alcohol from the night before had completed its course through her system…

And this was it. (Though, unfortunately, I had to take out some of the much funnier parts now that I am totally sure that my whole family reads this blog…)

****

Writing around the holidays (and most especially that melancholy period shortly after—when the tree is dead, the spirit gone, but neither removed from sight) has always suited me. In the aftermath of the gift giving, gorging and memory-erasing drinking, I find myself sorting through a year’s worth of afflictions, all the while chanting that never, ever again will I subject myself to those people. I am going to hole up in the East and pretend they do not exist. I cannot put up with the dysfunction. From the pain and agony comes the prose. Some go to therapy, I write it down. Lord knows I need an record of this, if for no other reason to prove that I was right. I was sane, and every last fucking one of them was cooked.

As far back as I can remember, Christmases have been pre-planned disasters, fueled by our inability to look around and realize that 80% of us are shitheads, and the other 20% too stupid to stop us from ruining the season. Being from the South (all hail the great state of Texas) holidays are not about Jesus, but how Jesus managed to give your family the upper hand, whether it be your wife’s phenomenal new breasts or your son’s completion of his second senior year of college. I only pack my best outfits for trips home. No sense in bringing something comfortable and then running into someone that I know. My mother would only be upset that I didn’t look like I turned out better. Of course we are all best friends, and have been since before we could talk.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Meet the Family

About a year ago, my mother called me up on the phone. I was living in Boston with my husband, working for a commercial real estate company, and spending my nights drinking rose and wishing that something slightly terrible would happen to me, mostly so I wouldn’t have to go to work anymore. I started a blog so that when people asked me what I was doing (in reference to the writing degree I had received) I could say something smart and slightly untrue like “Oh, yes, I’ve been doing quite a bit of writing. I actually have a blog if you want to check it out.” The truth of course was that the only writing I was doing was via Yahoo, and the blog was a half-assed effort to remain visible. Occasionally I would post something and send the link to my immediate family. They always got a kick out of it, thus calling me to tell me what I genius I was. It was a sick, but sustaining kind of validation that kept me from feeling altogether shitty about myself for the whole of that year.

Anyway, after one of my more fantastic bi-yearly blog posts, I received that phone call from my mother. She had recently moved to a small farming town in Texas and spent most of her early days trying not to remind herself that after twenty-six years of marriage, a nasty divorce, and a recent remarriage there wasn’t going to much in her future to rival the drama of the previous three years. While she was outwardly relieved that life had finally settled into something “more manageable” there wasn’t a soul around who didn’t wonder what she was going to do with no one to talk about. In lieu of local gossip, she started an outreached program. She reached out to me a few times a day to see what was going on. On this particular day, she didn’t seem to have much interest in what was going on in my life. It was too bad that I couldn’t get her going with news of an unexpected pregnancy or something of the sort, but she didn’t seem to mind. She had found an old collection of stories that I had written. My writings go back as far as elementary school, and though the transition hardly noticeable, continue into the present. For fifteen years my mother had been reading my tormented memoirs, laughing, and calling to remind me that she thought I was a genius. I could hear her flipping through printed pages, whispering lines while she looked for one she wanted to read to me. I reminded her that I wrote the stories, and had likely referenced them numerous times recently, trying to piece them into something worthy of the Pulitzer. It was a baited hook, but it had been a rough week, and I just needed to hear someone tell me I was better than some stupid prestigious award. It was a gimme shot.

“Have you started writing your book?”

I knew that if I answered affirmatively, she would send out a bulletin to the family, prompting them to call and email about the book, its subject, its title, and ask whether or not they would be making an appearance. I responded that writing a book was something that most writing people were doing on an on-going basis, and I was pretty sure that most of them never actually finished, and those that did weren’t guaranteed that it would ever see the shelf of a Barnes and Noble. She pulled through with a savory bit about my book most certainly being a best seller.

It was after about thirty minutes that she remembered why she had called me in the first place. She was reading through my stories, and it occurred to her that most of them were about the family. She was wondering what I was writing about now, having resolved that I wouldn’t write anything about the family in any potentially published works.

Rut roh.

I was suddenly sitting in my senior introspective writing class, listening to my professor talk about the “rules” (spoken and understood, though not written anywhere—to my knowledge) about writing non-fiction. I was straining to remember what it was that he told me about writing unflattering details about the unsuspecting members of one’s family. If memory served me correctly, I was technically allowed to write anything I wanted about anyone that I wanted. As a general rule, writers who wished to maintain interpersonal relationships after their work was published did tend to share the contents of their work with family members, but it seemed to me that the worst-case scenario was simply enduring a brief period of exile from family gathering and holidays. To my knowledge, families seemed to come around after they realized that being infamous is pretty close to being famous.

I didn’t really trust that my mom was going to buy into that, so I told her that I was writing book about myself.

“That’s great! You are so interesting, successful, young, funny, perfect, poignant, charming, smart. . . . “

And fucked.

*

Since I’m a female, I endured (or should I say my mother endured) the requisite mother-hating period of my young adult life. I’m not sure the median duration for these bouts of concentrated hatred, but I can say that my mother and I locked horns for a solid two-year period, one that I’m quite certain the better part of my immediate family thought would end in fatal bloodshed. I started out a daddy’s girl, so it was no surprise that I remained fiercely loyal to Camp Father during those years, as well as the divorce years. What will be a surprise is how I managed to stockpile such delicious bits on my father all those years and how I seemingly have no code of honor keeping me from sharing them. My moral fiber has always been a loose weave.

My dad and I were simpatico from as far back as I can remember. My mother was a southern gardener, which meant that every square inch of her prize-winning, potted, planted, pruned, weeded, and seeded grounds were the product of slave driving her children at hours of the morning that could have landed her flowery ass in jail for abuse. We were desperate to escape the rounds, but unless you had chemotherapy for terminal cancer at eight am on Saturday morning, you could assume that you were going to spend the first half of your day playing fertilizer roulette, while kneeling on the pond stone walkway.

Once a friend of my mother’s slowed in front of the house for the sole purpose of admiring and commenting on the gardens. (Drive-by conversation is something that I have yet to witness on the East Coast, but growing up my mother would have hour and a half conversations through the driver’s side window of a neighbors Suburban.) As my mother sat there, beaming from the glowing commendations, I was seized by the need to blurt out the unimaginable roots of my mother’s flora. I was a small Indonesian child listening to a Nike exec talk about the quality and craftsmanship of his company’s American-made sneakers. I knew that if I could just tell her about the abuse my Saturdays would suddenly open-up. (Not the mention the thrill of watching the mighty and revered gardener fall beneath accusations of deception!)

I added another page to the site. You can see it right there above me. It says, ” the ‘ironing out’ period: writings from long ago.” It’s a completely unformatted page with stuff that I’m just cutting and pasting from old docs. Most, if not all, if from college, and most of it is also from when the parents were getting divorced. So its dramatic and kind of sad…

Not the normal fat kid gym chatter, but if you’re bored….