where no woman has gone before

From time to time, I find myself in a men's bathroom. Not for any illicit reason. Unless peeing is illicit. I'll have to consult my social conservatism handbook on that one. But sometimes, a girl has to go pee with the boys. This doesn't bother me at all, as I grew up in what I now realize was a rather bohemian household, but at the time seemed quite normal.

So last weekend, I went to see "After Mrs. Rochester" with my father. Interesting play -- stirred up thoughts on being a writer versus being a parent and the idea of perfection of the life versus perfection of the work. But that's a much more serious discussion to have somewhere far away from the salty-meets-sweet combination of silliness and near-constant political vitriol that is this blog.

So, at the play, there was a line for the ladies room just prior to the performance. I say it was a line, but it was really more of a collection of female persons in a hallway, all facing different directions as though they were posing for the cover of their CD. In an episode of "South Park."

I asked the woman I was closest to -- who was facing southwest, I believe -- if this was the line for the bathroom. Considering the way the other people were assembled and the habit women have of standing around a bathroom waiting for their friends, I did not think this was a silly question. She looked at me as if I'd just asked her if she were waiting for a bus. "Yes," she said, "it is." She said it so coldly and slowly that I had the time to narrate "she said" in the middle of her sentence.

I should mention that this play was being performed in the Braddock Carnegie Library, a building which, though it is a building, is my father's favorite child. Consequently, I know it fairly well. Not well enough to direct a tour, but well enough that I know where the other bathrooms are. It had occurred to me that I ought to take a collection of people downstairs if this modern-art assembly was actually a bathroom line, but because of the aforementioned exchange where I narrated a not-so-nice woman, I decided they could all fuck off. It only takes one to ruin it for the rest of the class. Or line.

So I turned around and was getting ready to walk downstairs when a man said, "No one's in the men's room." I heard the tiniest snort behind me and I decided that if it was going to bother that woman, I'd go pee in the men's room. I turned around and asked if anyone would rather go before me, because, after all, it was a line. Also, I wanted to get a look at that woman's face. It occurs to me now that she probably looks like that all the time.

So I went in, I peed, and I came out. There was a different guy standing outside and he said, "Wow! Going in the men's room!" Guys are usually surprised. Once, at a truck stop at about 3:00 AM, I walked out of a men's room (the women's room had been vandalized and was nauseating to the point that even I couldn't use it) and I made a guy nearly jump out of his skin. I think he got out three "Oh, miss, I am so sorry"-ies before I convinced him that it was in fact I who was in the "wrong" room. But never have I previously experienced what happened to me last Saturday night.

The same guy said, "All right!" and clapped me on the shoulder as I walked out the door. Women tend to chat with strangers, especially in a bathroom, and my understanding is that men generally do not. In fact, they go out of their way to avoid contact with men they don't know, especially in bathrooms, and carefully calculate buffer zones between themselves and their fellow urinators. (Tearooms would be a whole different category with a decidedly different code of conduct. Which I also know a little something about. Don't ask.) My point is, men don't high-five each other for peeing, so I have to conclude that he was applauding my apparent bravery for going pee in a room that has a picture of a person wearing pants painted on the door.

I guess next time I'll just use the bucket in the janitor's closet.

i hope there's an afterlife because i want my slave-owning bastard relatives to be able to watch little scenes like this while they roast in hell

Sometimes, I really hate white people. And then immediately after that thought, I look down at my arm and say "God damn it!"

Over the weekend, Mom and I stopped at the grocery store after we'd done some shopping (by which I mean we made fun of things at Pier 1 -- what the hell is up with their latest stuff? Usually I love their things, but we saw silver and gold teddy bears. The fuck? We decided to leave during the brief window that comes between us both cracking up and the manager asking us to leave).

So we're at the home grocery store. Everyone in America knows what I mean -- there's the grocery store you go to that's close to your house, and then there's another one, maybe even in the same chain, that's farther away, but nicer in some respect. Maybe it's cleaner or better-lit or has a wider, fresher selection -- maybe all three.

Our home grocery store is the Giant Eagle in Braddock Hills. I don't want to give anyone the impression that I think this store is ghetto -- it's not. It doesn't have the huge variety of the Giant Eagle at the Waterfront, and sure, the bank branch in it has been robbed a couple times, but whatever. This is Pittsburgh. Every bank has been robbed a couple times. I've been going to this grocery store for over 20 years and some of the same people have been working there the entire time. Pretty much everyone who goes to this store has been going there for that long, if not much, much longer.

My point is this -- unless you're under the age of 2, this isn't gonna be your first time there.

So I'm standing at the deli counter waiting for my turn and talking to the lady in front of me and her kids. (Side note -- having one random little kid start talking to you out of the blue is awesome. Having her little sister grab your hand while you're talking is like a religious experience.)

Including the deli staff, the only other white woman around was an extremely sour-faced old bat with hairdresser hair. You know what I mean -- the short, blue-white hair done in ridiculous curls and then sprayed with some kind of sealant so it lasts until next week when she goes back to the hairdresser and "gets set."

So, Sour Face is before me. It's cool. The lady with the kids left, and I smiled at Sour Face. She gave me a weird look and then ordered the deli girl around like she thought we'd all been transported to a tobacco field in South Carolina around 1837. Part of her orders included "I don't want the slice on top." I have no idea why. Maybe she has OCD or schizophrenia and the voices in her head don't like their lunch meat exposed to too much air.

So, as the girl grabbed the entire stack of bologna and weighed it, Sour Face gave me another look. This one I understood immediately, because I've seen it on many an old white bitch in my life. It's the look that says, "Oh, these silly Negroes!" and it's usually followed by a giant spike in my blood pressure. I gave her a look of my own and I don't think it's the one she thought she'd be getting back, because she immediately started studying a stack of Ham Off The Bone.

"I didn't give you the one on top," said the deli girl as she flipped a decidedly flaccid- and anemic-looking slice of bologna back into the case, which I think showed a great deal of self-control, because the temptation to flip it into Sour Face's hair and say, "Don't worry, it's on the house," must have been absolutely overwhelming.

I exchanged a look with the deli girl, which sent Sour Face into some sort of palpitating state -- perhaps the vapors -- and that pleased me to such an extent that I nearly forgot what kind of turkey I wanted.

And just for the record, if the deli girl had whipped that bologna at that old bat, I would have told the manager that Sour Face did it to herself.

stories like these are why this blog has a sub-title

So I was coming home from work yesterday, and when I scheduled myself to work till 5:00 PM, I made the mistake of forgetting there was a game. A home game.

So I was stuck in Squirrel Hill Tunnel traffic coming home around 6 PM and there was this big van full of boys...I'll be generous and say they were in college. Or perhaps some sort of institution. So they see me in the lane next to them, and one of them sends out the "check her out" signal and they all press themselves up against the glass like little monkeys. So they keep winding up just in front of me as the lanes seesaw back and forth, advancing toward the tunnel, and one of them presses this piece of paper up against the window that says "PLEASE CALL ME!!" with his phone number on it underneath and he starts gesturing at himself. I start laughing -- because honestly, what the hell -- and then my phone starts ringing. So I reach in my bag and pull out my phone, and he starts bouncing up and down and they're all going "NUH-AWW!!" at him or whatever it is little monkey boys say to each other, and meanwhile I'm talking to my brother. Just as well. It was probably an outing for America's Youngest Glaucoma Patients.

This happened last week. I was alone at home standing by the window, just enjoying the breeze. Now, our neighbor's house is close. Not so close that I could touch it just by leaning out the window, but if I were on the roof, I might be able to jump onto their house, assuming that I could get onto the roof, could get a running start, and wanted to wind up on a Vonage commercial.

Anyway, I saw this bottle of Spic N Span sitting on their window ledge. So I start yelling, "Don't do it! You have so much to live for! Formula 409 is on her way over, and I just know you two can work it out!" And I went on and on, because I'm always freaking like this, even when I'm alone. So I'm making myself crack up at my own sheer hilarity, and then I hear the neighbor's car start.

Good times.

And finally, the family across the street is moving. My brother used to fuck their daughter, and after that ended, they all decided they're afraid of us or something. They won't make eye contact with us. I pretend not to know what's going on an I have long conversations with them even as they fail to acknowledge that I am talking to them. After this latest episode, I'm going to start describing bowel movements at length. Mine, my family's, people at work, diapers I've changed, and just in general. Possibly while they're having an open house. Possibly inside it.

The bastards filed a complaint with the borough about the little patch of Queen Anne's Lace (which is a wildflower) growing next to our driveway. Now, I know what overgrown weeds look like. This was a little patch of flowers. And so the borough sends my mother a bunch of letters in the mail (actually, it was the same letter twice because apparently Forrest Gump runs the Forest Hills borough) telling her that if she didn't remove said "weeds on hillside" that were "in excess of 10 inches" then she would have charges filed against her with the possibility of a several-thousand-dollar fine, jail time, or both. Meanwhile, by the time the letter came in the mail, my mother had already pulled up everything that was growing there. The whole handful.

Now, what makes this extra-hilarious is that the fucking police had to come out and take notice of our little patch of renegade flowers before they could send us this bullshit in the mail. About three years ago, one of their fellow officers was shot by some drug dealer not a half a mile from our house. The guy hid in a patch of four trees and somehow got away even with every police officer in the greater Pittsburgh area on his ass. So until they find the guy who shot their buddy, I won't be taking them very seriously. They've gotten nowhere -- they just act really suspicious of normal people now, like when my brother got pulled over in the spring and the cop acted like he would have no possible reason to have a jack in his car. Apparently the Forest Hills police department uses the same amazing mental super-powers to change tires as they do to solve crime.

Someone had to report our terrorist wildflowers, and as mom said, "I'd bet a pint of my own blood that it was them, because who else but someone selling their house would give two shits about some fucking wildflowers in someone else's yard?" (Mom and I share the same delicate constitution.)

So far, our vengeance has been limited to having loud conversations in the front yard. Here's the one we had last night.

"HEY, AMANDA, DO YOU SEE ANYTHING OVER 10 INCHES IN THE YARD? I'D HATE TO GO TO JAIL, BECAUSE I REALLY WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS NEXT WEEK ON DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES."

"I CAN'T BE SURE, MOM. LET'S GET OUT THE TAPE MEASURER. OR PERHAPS SOME GIANT ASSHOLE COULD COME OVER AND LEND US THEIRS."

"THEY BETTER HAVE A TAPE MEASURER, 'CAUSE IT'S FOR DAMN SURE THAT NOTHING ELSE IN THIS NEIGHBORHOOD IS OVER 10 INCHES."

(See what I mean about our delicate nature?)

I'm sure that this is going to turn into the Wildflower Chronicles. I'll keep you all posted, since not all of you live close enough to read about it in the paper.

higher learning will never be the same

I'm going to look like one of the students and no one is going to know who I am until I start passing out papers and writing on the chalkboard. Then again, I thought Bob Day* was a farmer auditing my Chekhov class, so maybe there's something to be said for looking like an imposter.

What you might have guessed by now is that I'm finally doing it. I am applying to grad school.

Well, okay, not really. I've got a big list of possible places (I think about 14) and I'm looking through them and choosing where I want to apply, because I can't afford to apply everywhere with application fees running as high as $75 for some schools. But this is the price I guess I literally have to pay for the schools I have on my list. Warren Wilson. Goddard. Bennington. Fairleigh Dickinson.

Dear god, I'm going to go down in flames.

That's not true. Though it might amaze some of you to know, I do write serious things. Painfully serious things. They're not very long.

I like poetry for its economy of language. I think that's because concentrating on brevity means I only have to think seriously for a short time. (Know thyself and all that.)

After I get my MFA, I'll be all ready to teach. Or so the theory goes. Knowing me, I'll get a post-MFA teaching certificate. If I can overeducate myself, I will. After I've sufficiently stuffed my head full, I'll be moving...somewhere. New England, maybe. A lot of the schools I'm interested in are in New England, but since I'm doing a low-residency program, I'll still be here in Pittsburgh full-time and traveling there twice a year for about a week at the start of each semester. Even two weeks a year in New England is exciting to me. (Don't worry -- I will never, ever root for the Patriots. They could be playing the Cowboys and I wouldn't root for them. Hell, they could play the Browns and I wouldn't root for them. How could I? I'd already be so busy trying to light the stadium on fire.)

I think it's safe to say that my future students, who are probably freshmen or sophomores in high school right now (assuming it doesn't take me years and years to find some college somewhere that will hire me) should probably start drinking now. Some of the schools require that I teach a course -- not just a single class, mind you, but an actual course -- before I graduate. I'd say that everyone in Pittsburgh should start drinking now, but football season has already begun.



*Bob Day was a professor of mine in college. My goal in life is to be just like him, but with less Jack Daniels, as I prefer vodka.

this is what i get for never streaking on may day

Almost 20 years. That's how long it lasted. 19 years and just shy of 8 months. And now it's gone. That was how long I went without ever having to say, "Today, my brother saw me naked."

I was getting ready to take a shower this afternoon. I started the water, took off my pajamas, and I was standing there cleaning my ears and waiting for the water to warm up when I heard a tiny clink in the dining room. I knew that sound -- it was keys on the table. A silhouette immediately appeared. I swung the door shut. "Sorry," I called, trying not to sound like I was wishing my head would just explode, "I didn't realize you were coming home so soon." I knew he was coming home to to laundry, but I didn't expect that it would be in the afternoon. Obviously, or I wouldn't have had my kibbles and bits on display.

The whole time I was in the shower, I tried to come up with various ways in which it didn't actually happen. I'd imagined him. It was really a robber who likes to drop keys on the table before he robs a place. He was struck hysterically blind. He was engaged in a tantric blink and his eyes had been closed the whole time. But eventually, I had to get out of the shower. He was in the basement when I came out, my robe knotted in several places.

"Dude. Sorry about that."
"I don't care. I've seen Papa naked."

Of course he has. Everyone has seen our father naked. People who don't even know him have seen him naked. (That is not hyperbole.) I used to have to remind him to put pants on when my friends would visit. And by used to, I mean in 2004. Interesting note -- I haven't lived with him since 2003.

So, that was that. Almost two decades -- it was a good run, but all good things have to come to an end eventually. I don't see why, but this is what I've been told, usually after some analagous catastrophe. Whatever, I've changed his diapers. Somewhat less recently than 2004, though.

at least the pro-lifers are leaving me alone

MySpace would be fabulous if it were not for:

- PeoPLe wHo tyPE lIkE ThiS. Although it does make it extra-easy to spot idiots.
- The following pieces of punctuation did not exist: ~ and *
- Everyone was required to show proof of age before joining.
- People didn't believe hoax bulletins about a MySpace tax or getting your profile deleted or that 200 virgins will meet you in heaven if you -- wait, that last one is fundamental Islam.
- Random losers didn't message me every day. What the fuck -- I finally put up an actual picture of myself (not even a GOOD one) and now I get at least one message a day from a stranger. Stranger emails don't bother me. It's that none of them are even barely coherent. If I see "holla atcha boy" one more fucking time, I'm going to stab somebody.
- Couples didn't assume I want to be their chew toy simply because I am bisexual. Okay, so this isn't limited to MySpace, but I get more messages like "Hey my gurl and me was lookin 4 a bi chick to kick it wit an we saw ur pic check out our pics an holla back" on MySpace than anywhere else. In fact, that's the only place.
- No one put songs on their profile and Fred Phelps was in little bits in somebody's compost heap. That second one is just a general statement, though.

fuck the park service!

If you've seen "Grizzly Man," then you'll find this snort-worthy.

If you haven't seen "Grizzly Man," go turn on the Discovery Channel and wait for it to be on again in a 9-hour block.