HOLD ON TO YOUR UNDERWEAR

            I am proud to announce that I am the first person ever to survive getting their wisdom teeth out. HURRAH! The doctor said my eyes were open and I was staring at him the entire surgery which must have been freaky for him, but I’m sure he is used to it. I have memory of him with his foot on my forehead and a monkey wrench on my tooth just pulling really hard. “GET OUT YOU MOTHER FUCKER” And the nurses with their arms wrapped around his waist for further leverage. He took out three wisdom teeth. (I thought he was only going to take out two, so there is going to be a lawsuit in the near future.) I was high after it was over, still under the effects of anesthesia, novacane, and nitrous oxade. My parents brought me home, which I don’t remember and I laid in bed, taking oxycontin every three hours.

        I watched a lot of movies: Strangers On A Train, (which I had never seen and loved), French Connection, which I am obsessed with, and What Lies Beneath, which I stand by as pretty good movie. Plus I’d let Pffeifer play my fife ANYDAY! HAHAHA! Today, the pain is better than yesterday. But my cheeks are more swollen. Dare I say  I look like one of those old classic bloated beauties from the black and white movie pictures! I just wanted to let the joyous news be spread that I am alive and eating a lot of sugar free jello. I still can’t eat anything solid yet, which is a huge set back for me since my favorite foods are gravel and tar. (HAHAHA!)  Some good have come out of taking all these drugs though. For Instance, I’ve been singing “She Drives Me Crazy” by the Fine Young Cannibals constantly, BUT I switched out “CRAZY” With “CRAY- CRAY” to update the song for this wondrous, modern generation.

  ”SHE DRIVES ME CRAY-CRAY” by Bridey Elliott

“A new single that will surely flip your lid and have you breathing hard into your own underpants.”

-says SOURCE

mattdwyer:

This is a great episode. I converse with two Marijuana Civil Defense lawyers and get a highly different and interesting view than we hear out there in the mainstream world. Lawyers Raza Lawrence and Allison Margolin are engaging funny and really great. I’m super proud of this episode. Enjoy the shit out of it. FREE! on itunes or go to this link

http://feralaudio.com/3-margolin-lawrence/

           I am a very un-lady like person. My looks fool a lot of people. My looks being that I am anatomically a female. I hear people remark all the time “She wears dresses, she must be a lady! She has boobs that means she’s a lady” However, this is simply not true. I wear dresses a lot because they’re easiest, in that its one piece of clothing I have to worry about. And I have boobs because someday I am meant to milk a child, or a child is supposed to milk me or some elderly wealthy man is meant to. Whatever.

            I wish I were better at a lot of stuff like self-discipline, personal hygiene, keeping a routine, sleeping well. I go through phases where I knock all of these out of the park! I make my bed in the morning, brush my teeth, put on deodorant, but that’s sort of the extent of my hygiene. I feel down right dirty compared to some girls my age who care about what their cuticles look like. Christ, I was thirteen before a hairbrush even graced my head. My mom would chase me around the living room trying to untangle the giant rats nest on my skull, but I would not have it. So, I’d go to school with a huge mane of hair probably filled with play mobile, gum, pepperoni, Nickelodeon gunk and whatever the hell else I was into. The paradox here though is that I also refused to wear anything besides a tutu or a “pitty dwess”. So I’d be wearing something cute and flowery and then have a mop on my head like 80s Bon Jovi.

             I’ve never learned to braid my hair, have never tweezed my eyebrows myself, nor have I gotten my vagina waxed by a stranger who waxes hair off your vagina in exchange for money. In essence, a stranger waxes hair off your vagina and your butt hole, if you so desire it. Primping in general is just a nuisance to me. I’m not saying I don’t shower. I do, but Clorox wipes work as well. (HAHAHA, I’ll have another Cognac, Sugar Pants.)  Maybe I’ll grow into the ritual of it, but often I feel like a boy posing as a girl. (NOT SAYING IM TRAPPED IN A GIRLS BODY, that’s another discussion. BUT I’M TRAPPED IN A GIRLS BODY) However, I do remember in Kindergarten spending a good half hour looking for my penis in the bathroom stall.  I was sure I had one somewhere. I was paranoid it was inside me! “Oh, how embarrassing! My penis is stuck up inside me!” I panicked. However, a penis was not stuck inside me…YET! HAHAHA! It would be many moons before a tiny, tiny, TINY penis entered me. As you know by now, this essay is not at all alluding to my sexual orientation- I am as straight as the hair on the heads of people who straighten their hair.

            I’m simply trying to go back to the roots of my tomboy behavior. I guess peeing on stage with my first grade class took the piss out of my femininity right away. HAHAHA! NO PUN INTENDED= TOTAL PUN INTENDED. There was also the time that I pooped in a Limited Too clothing store dressing room. I was eight at the time, and passed it off that it wasn’t me but alas, it was I, I had had some sort of indigestion that led to me painting that fitting room in poop basically. You may be thinking you don’t sound like a tomboy, you just sound like a disgusting person, and you are most correct to be thinking so. But it goes deeper than that.

             My best friend Xani from middle school and I were inseparable. So inseparable that people would write erotica’s about us and pass them along in email chains. This was very upsetting and alienating to us. It was too humiliating to try to get the kids in trouble for it. We were labeled as lesbian lovers at the age of ten. People called us “spaghetti and meatball” because Xani was a heavy kid and I was just a shrimp. In that relationship, I took on the boyfriend role of defending Xani and her weight, and our strictly not lesbian relationship. She trusted me to stick up for her and I trusted her to keep hanging out with me so I wouldn’t be alone. We still talk to this day and though I haven’t seen her in years, we pick up exactly where we left off in our phone calls.

But getting back to the fact that I am disgusting. In years to come, perhaps I’ll begin to morph more into a civilized lady who enjoys pedicures and putting diamonds where there’s supposed to be pubes or whatever, but until that day I am more than OK with not receiving the spa treatment. Spas make me nervous after a horrible experience I had where essentially this elderly Asian woman gave me a shower and put yogurt all over me. I forgive her though, she was just doing her duty and she had no idea how violating it felt to me.  Also shortly after that, I was diagnosed with ringworm and I have a sneakin’ suspicion it was from that naked lady spa. You live and learn I guess.

            All of this isn’t to say that I don’t’ wear my five pounds of make up everyday and try to look like a whore, and not reek of cheese, hell, I am an actress, right?

Portrait by Bob Elliott              

          It’s a rainy day in Morningside Heights. I squat; I mean sit at the café down my street. Columbia students work feverishly in their stupid stinkin’ study groups as I sip my chai tea all by my bloated self. I just ordered a sandwich to appease the waitress. I am the biggest pushover!

             I have been having a hard time lately allowing myself to feel things. Been feeling a bit beaten up from resisting my emotions. It’s as though they’re surging through my veins like a lethal injection and I’m trying to fight off the effects, but its to no avail. Death is a depressing thing, and I have never felt more vulnerable or frightened of it. Perhaps all my experiences with a loved one dying happened when I was too young to fully comprehend the impact. Suddenly at twenty-one years old, my grandmother dying is feeling like one of the hardest thing that’s ever happened to me. Of course, grandparents die. That’s what elderly people do. There is no really tragic element to her death, the only tragic part is that death is always heartbreaking no matter how peaceful or how much relief it brings.

   What my acting teachers have always commented on is my “sensitivity”. “You have an incredible sensitivity in your work.” That has always bothered me. I feel like it alludes to me being a fragile person about to break at any second. But I know they are right.  I am a sensitive person, a deeply sensitive person and so my sadness is shamed by my subconscious. “You’re being too sensitive! It’s not a big deal. You knew this would happen.” But right now it still leaves me with no appetite, no focus, and with eyes about to flood at any second. I wish I were a stronger person. I decided not to drink for the month of May, just as an experiment. My sleeping schedule has been strange and my dreams even stranger. I guess this is the process of grieving. The feeling that your vision is narrowing until all you see is a dark tunnel while you’re at a party with a ton of strangers. That’s what I’ve been experiencing.  I guess what it boils down to is I’m no fun right now.

            My Nanny loved overcast days, more than sunny ones. She passed away last week and though my family has been readying themselves for this day for quite a while, the news is still raw and painful. The woman was a force; filled with more beauty, wit, and mystery than anyone I have ever known. Lee Peppers from West Virginia was impossible not to fall in love with. My cousins and I all looked at her with the same adoration and fascination. She was an enigmatic figure in our lives. Nanny wasn’t the kind of Grandma that you called up every so often, nor was she the type of Grandma that spoiled you with constant hugs and cookies. As a young girl, I wanted her attention, but her sheer presence also made me timid. Her beauty was unnerving matched only by her unbelievable wit. Every now and then while we all sat around the fire, I would get a wink or a smile from her and it was one of my favorite feelings. A glance from her meant more to me than any birthday present or Christmas card she could give. A look from her was like some secret understanding, it was like code, or an inside joke and Nanny could joke. She had such subtle and brilliant quips that would just roll off her tongue effortlessly. My girl cousins and I have brought boyfriends up to meet Nanny and Papaw in Maine as a rite of passage over the years. She has met quite a few characters and some creeps who should forever burn in the fiery depths of hell. One of Nanny’s specialties was to test them (in the most loving way possible) with her wit, make them feel uncomfortable, play with them, tease them, and in the process, awe them with her unbelievably clever mind. Only the good eggs really survived Nanny’s dry levity.

            She encouraged us to be weirdos; most of our time with her was spent trying to make her laugh, which is a big part of who my family really is. In layman’s terms, we’re a bunch of toilet headed freaks trying to crack each other up. Nanny, ever sophisticated and glamorous, was a big supporter of letting your freak flag fly. That’s not to say that she appreciated every time a fart joke was made.

            “Aren’t we all so lucky”, was a phrase she repeated throughout her life, especially towards the end. We are very lucky to have had such a wonderful woman in our lives. It is stupid sounding, but I think the best way to celebrate her is by moving forward just as she did.