Virgin In The Volcano

Laundry

2012-01-23T08:04:00.000-08:00

I did the little dog's laundry.

Lox

2012-01-22T10:27:00.000-08:00

The little dog has an upset stomach, probably from all the antibiotics he's been on this week. He wouldn't eat his breakfast. But he needed to take his antibiotic anyway. The Mother wrapped the antibiotic pill in a piece of chicken. The little dog took the chicken and pill into his mouth, then spit both out onto the kitchen floor. The Mother tried another piece of chicken, this time stuffing the pill into a small slit she'd made with a knife. The little dog once again took the chicken into his mouth and spit it out. The Mother then went for the nuclear option: The Father's favorite lox. The little dog took the lox and the pill and didn't even chew. The lox went down, The Mother says, "like glass." The little dog is clearly Jewish.

Check

2012-01-18T19:46:00.000-08:00

Last week, The Mother and The Father went to their family doctor for a dual check-up. Predictably, both have high cholesterol and high blood-pressure, but all their major parts are working fine. Ten points to the doctor for running thousands of dollars in lab tests to confirm what any idiot could tell you upon sight.

I think The Mother must have been expecting tougher news because she brought up a conversation with me in which she asked for my help if The Father dies first. "I can live without your father," she said. "Thirty-five years is a long time already."

"Ok," I said. "I can see that." I didn't really, but fuck, what do you say during these little Hallmark card moments The Mother so easily brings up?

"What I need though," she said and paused to look around the room. She seemed to be checking around be sure The Father wasn't in ear shot. "What I need is for you to show me how to do online banking."

"Oh Mom," I said and I think she thought I'd turned sad because she took one step toward me, in the kind of half-committed stroke of intimacy that people learn to adopt around my squeamishness toward touching. "You need to learn so much more than online banking. There's shopping on Amazon and how to pay the Nordstrom's card."

"So you'll show me when your father's dead?"

Scratch That

2012-01-16T15:38:00.001-08:00

Didn't put in the offer. My realtor and broker and I got everything all ready, and then a half hour before we were to meet with the seller's agent, the seller's agent forwarded a previous inspection report and some HOA investigative reports and damands related to water damage and an ongoing leak from the roof and an improperly installed door, and I became terrified of walking into a money pit and a lawsuit. So, it's back to the listings. Sigh.

Short

2012-01-15T20:36:00.000-08:00

I'm putting in an offer tomorrow on a short sale. There are already multiple offers and my realtor is trying to pump the selling agent for the magic number so that I can beat it. I'm oddly less nervous than I thought I'd be. I had a moment of panic when I started reading up on the horribly long and troublesome short sale processes, but my realtor, who has done these before, answered a lot of questions for me and calmed me down, and I really think this is a good property in a good location at a good price. If it works out, I'm going to gut the thing because it's hopelessly stuck in the 80s. It's the bones of the place that I like-- two story penthouse condo with a 20+ feet high ceiling in the living and dining area and views from Century City to downtown. By gutting the bathrooms and kitchen, and throwing down hardwood floors and fresh paint and window coverings, I think the place will be transformed into something I'll truly love. But we'll see. This is by no means a sure-bet.

Sleepless In The Gayborhood

2012-01-14T05:36:00.001-08:00

I can't sleep. The little dog has some sort of infection that blew up overnight. My parents got him to the vet yesterday and had him shot up with antibiotics and steroids, but the vet wants them to call with reports every day and if it doesn't improve quickly, the nasty thing will likely have to be cut out. Of course, the vet used big words like "granuloma" and "possible tumor," but I think the guy is an alarmest ever since the middle dog had a tiny cyst that turned out to be cancer. Tumors don't triple in size in 24 hours. Infected wounds on a boy dog with little common sense totally do.

While I was waiting for word from the vet, The Mother sent me an invitation and login info for a dating website called Rabbi Knows Best. Instantly, I was Oedipus wanting to gouge out his own eyes. Here's how the site describes itself:

"Rabbi Knows Best offers a panel of experts consisting of dozens of PhDs, Rabbis, Ministers, Clergy, and Psychologists from around the nation who will provide real-time, real-life guidance for any of our members seeking extra support and advice. We will help you with any aspect of relationship dynamics that you require, and address physical, emotional spiritual, and ethical issues with you directly over our unique telephone service."

Can you imagine me talking to any of these people? I'd be like, Dear Mr. Jew PhD, I like bacon and shrimp, and I believe that religion is a myth propagated by people who don't have the balls to maintain their own imaginary friends from childhood through adulthood. I'm looking for someone with excellent forearms and a 760 FICO. Love of bourbon, a plus; love of dogs, mandatory. Did I mention I need a straight boy who's willing to live in the gayborhood for the rest of his life?

Speaking of the gayborhood, the other thing keeping me up at night is the house/condo hunt. At this point, I think I've ruled out a house, if only because I'm not willing to move to Echo Park or Culver City or Sherman Oaks to afford one. So it's going to be a condo. And since I'm going to be settling on a condo, the thing I'm no longer willing to settle on is location. I'm literally now considering only properties within about a half of a square mile. It's the loveliest half of a square mile in the entire universe, and goddamn it I'm going to stay for a while. I haven't seen anything that's blown me away, so I'm leaning toward something on the lower end of my price range that will leave me able to gut the place and remodel it the way I like. I have already lost entire evenings to searching through catalogues for flooring, sinks, tubs, counters, cabinets, etc. That part is actually super fun, but I have to remember that my choices could be limited by condo rules. For instance, I'd love to put hardwood floors through the living and bedroom spaces, but lay down concrete in the kitchen and bathrooms. If I can't do concrete, I could probably go with a wide slate tile, but the wood is non-negotiable. I ain't spending my entire life savings to get a nondescript condo that's barely different from my current carpeted apartment.

Bingo

2012-01-12T07:28:00.000-08:00

The Brother and I went to drag queen bingo last night with The Mother. She loves bingo. She's not so sure about drag queens but she was willing to give them a try. She only told the waiter twice that my father has a large penis. She also told the waiter that the first time she saw an uncircumcised penis in nursing school, she ran and got her supervisor because she was sure something was wrong.

For those of you who watched The Real L Word on Showtime, Mikey was there. She won a round of bingo and kissed her blond girlfriend, who was clearly not the brunette she'd asked to marry her in season 2.

Neither The Brother, The Mother, nor I won any rounds of bingo or raffles. The Mother was disappointed. Two glasses of prosecco and five beers later, I didn't so much care and had stopped marking off all the numbers. Today's gonna be a bitch of a day at work.

Signs

2012-01-05T22:31:00.000-08:00

If there was ever a sign I needed to move...I came home from work today to find my sink and half of the kitchen flooded with black water. The neighbor's drain upstairs was clogged and the plumber who snaked it basically shoved the clog right down to me! Someone's supposedly coming tomorrow to replace half the carpet in the dining room, but I got stuck cleaning the kitchen and a certain rug I had in front of the sink is toast. Do I need to explain how anxious I am to move?

To de-stress, The Brother and I ended up going for sushi and plowed through two pitchers of beer. He actually drove home after the first pitcher and then walked back so we could drink the second pitcher without any worries.

On a more positive note, I drove through Silver Lake earlier today and really loved it. The neighborhood has all the urban perks I like--funky little restaurants and shops and bars, lots of variety of languages and cultures--and yet there are a bunch of small and quiet residential streets that wind up hilltops and feel like total hideaways. I can see myself there and there seem to be several options in my price range. It's a good thing.

Moving

2012-01-03T18:45:00.000-08:00

So a nightclub moved in on the block behind me and now I need to move. The sooner the better because I am currently being driven insane by thudding base four nights each week. My lease is up in mid-March, though I'm pretty sure I've got grounds to break it if I find another place earlier.

Here's the thing though, I really don't know what to do at this point. I could look for another apartment to rent just a couple of blocks over in the gayborhood. I'll likely find something pretty similar to what I've got now. I do love my gayborhood. My worry though is that it's still difficult to find a quiet place that's within walking distance to all the bars and restaurants I like walking to. And I also think I've hit my limit with apartment living in general. I'm just so fucking done with hearing neighbors above or beside me. And I'm done with renters who don't care and who leave trash in the halls or block your parking space or leave the common areas reeking of pot or cigarette smoke.

So I'm thinking of buying something instead. I had wanted to wait until I finished my clerkship and took a more permanent position, but it seems silly to move to another apartment now and then look to buy in another year or so anyway. Plus, interest rates are ridiculously low. I do have the downpayment and I do know I'm staying in LA. Most likely, I'll end up at a family law firm in LA after my clerkship, which probably means working either downtown or in Beverly Hills where the family law firms are heavily concentrated.

Here's the problem though: my current salary is decent but not stellar and the LA housing market, even somewhat depressed now, is still remarkably high. Though I'd love to stay in the gayborhood, shitty crackerjack box 2 bedroom, 1 bath houses built in 1936 and crumbling on their foundations start around $1 million. The same house in Culver City or Echo Park might go for half that, but those aren't neighborhoods I'm interested in. What I can afford in the gayborhood is a 2 bedroom condo, but I just don't see how that'd be much different from my apartment situation right now. So I think the prudent thing to do is look outside of the gayborhood at other neighborhoods that maybe I've overlooked, maybe even some spots in the Valley.

I guess if I don't find anything I like, I can always rent another apartment for a while. It just seems like such a waste. Would be nice to build a little equity, to get into the market with low interest rates, and to get out from under any neighbors. I just now spoke with a realtor my family likes and I'm hoping she has some good ideas. But if any of you have suggestions, I'd love to hear them.

Bird

2011-12-31T08:11:00.000-08:00

A bird flew in the house through the open sliding glass door and I spent most of the morning trying to convince three terriers not to kill it. I know nothing about nature but I do know that the bird was of the same variety of birds that the big dog killed right in the yard a year or two ago. For weeks after, its mate would perch on top of the patio overhang above the spot in the grass where the murder occurred and engage in some truly pitiful and prolonged tweeting. Call me cold-hearted, but if I'd been that mate, I'd have stayed much farther away from the assassin. The mate was practically begging the big dog to do it again. Not so high up on the evolutionary chain these birds, whatever kind of birds they are.

But I digress. Today's bird was in the house for approximately 5-7 minutes. It flew around wildly, crashing into windows as it looked for an exit. I followed it with a kitchen towel to try to escort it to the open slider. I screamed the whole time, not at the bird but at the three terriers who were circling and jumping on the couches and windowsills after the bird in question. While fleeing the three terriers, the bird shit several times right in mother's house. Do not tell mother. Please. I'm thinking of calling in the Mexicans for an emergency cleaning.

Eventually, the bird flew so hard into the kitchen window that it knocked itself out. It fell from the glass straight into the dish drain, on top of dishes I'd just washed. Not eating on those dishes ever again. I thought the bird was maybe dead already but I wrapped it in a towel and took it outside to a bush. Birds like bushes, right? The bird didn't move and I watched its chest beat like crazy and its eyes follow me and then close and then open to follow me again. Did you know that even small dumb birds who are not very high on the evolutionary chain have eyelashes? Tiny fuzzy ones. The fuckers would be almost cute, you know, if they weren't just rats with wings.

I let the bird rest for a while. I guarded the bush because the three terriers were circling like sharks. I nudged the bird with the towel and it moved a little. Hooray for the un-dead. I gave it a few more minutes, watched its breathing slow to something like normal, and then because I was totally tired of my new gig as bird-security guard, I nudged the thing again with the towel until it flew away. It went straight up into the tree where its previously murdered brethren once came down and never went up again, but oh well. It was out of the house. The dogs' hands remain bloodless for yet another morning. I can return to my cold medicine and hot tea. Suburban victory.

To Kill A Mockingbird, Redux

2011-12-29T08:25:00.000-08:00

Like so many other classics force-fed to me in junior high and high school, To Kill A Mockingbird was a total blur to me. When it was assigned, I read it quickly and bitterly and then promptly forgot it. Yesterday I picked it up on a whim--I'd watched a documentary on Harper Lee and found myself interested in the book again mostly because people were saying that the character Dill was modeled on a young Truman Capote. Capote wasn't force-fed to me in junior high or high school and I've loved him solid for the last 15 years.

My reread of Mockingbird now really feels like a first read, and I can barely begin to explain how much I enjoyed it. The narrator's character is plucky and relentless and a hundred years before her time. Lee's plotting and pacing are the stuff that manuals should be written from. Sadly, the story of a white community's racist and classist ugliness is as relevant now as it was fifty years ago.

My one major gripe is that too often it's clear that different narrative orchestrations are meant to advance the author's purpose. Though there's almost always some grounding in the children's slow and thorny journey to understanding an intractable problem, that alone can't keep the narrative from feeling oppressively preachy and heavy-handed at times. Still, it's a fucking remarkable story.

I'm left wondering what should be done to school reading lists. I know that, at minimum, this book and The Great Gatsby were lost to me for years simply because they were thrown at me when I was too young. Then again, what should we be telling teenagers to read? Any ideas?

Cheese Ball, Day 6

2011-12-28T16:32:00.000-08:00

Here she is six days later. Yesterday I began to enlist the dogs' help. Still no end in sight. Sigh.

Cheese Ball, Day 4

2011-12-26T10:44:00.000-08:00

I had some friends over for lunch on Christmas Eve and decided to cook like a smartass: with a nod at various white goyim stereotypes. I made things I'd never made or eaten: meatloaf, two kinds of casseroles, an actual cheese ball. What I learned from the experience is that bourbon really does in fact go with everything and that one cheese ball can probably feed an entire Los Angeles suburb. Here is the cheese ball at day four. It is one pound of cream cheese mixed with one pound of cheddar and a heavy slug of worchestire sauce, all rolled in crushed pecans. A dent has barely been made on one end. As you can imagine, the rest of the week is going to be one hell of a dairy battle.

Following

2011-12-19T19:51:00.000-08:00

I've been watching Miranda July for the past 15 years, but I'm going to have to start stalking her for real. Her work is rarely super polished, but there's something about the angle of her mind that I fucking adore. Love, love, love what she recently said about pursuing strangers. I think she's asking the right questions, poking around in the right places that others overlook or even purposefully ignore. Among my friends, it's no real secret that I've been following various strangers all my life, and I'm a little bit pissed off that Miranda July thought to do it in a more organized fashion and document the thing as the thing, the product. My following strangers has mostly been about process, not product. That Miranda July is one smart cookie.

Seriously, There Is No Talk Of Trannies In This Post

2011-12-03T14:15:00.001-08:00

So I just got an "almost" letter from another journal regarding a different story than the one which was accepted last week. The editor emailed to say that the story caught his eye and he wants to see something else in the future. It's a good sign. If I could just figure out how to get over the next hump and take my stories a step or two further, I think I'd be in decent shape.

The Blog Post In Which I Almost Don't Talk About Trannies

2011-11-27T14:09:00.000-08:00

Woke up in the kind of mood where I fantasize about quitting writing. Then I found an acceptance letter in my inbox. It was from a small lit mag that probably five whole people read, but it was still a nice surprise. The story I'd submitted was from more than a year ago and though I'd already determined it had no legs, I'd sent it out a few months ago as a kind of punishment. Too often, I let my weeks roll forward only in their most practical terms--I play lawyer, friend, sister, daughter, even housecleaner, but what I don't play is writer--and so I sought to propel my writing self forward by sheer force of embarrassment. In other words, I made myself submit a couple of old stories because it was the only way to make myself take another pass at revising them.

After finding the acceptance letter, I reread the story again this morning. It's not great, but it's not particularly embarrassing either, and for that I am extraordinarily, infinitely grateful. It's even a story I could show to my mother or grandmother or 6th grade English teacher, i.e. no trannies in this one!

Noodles & Booze

2011-11-20T15:45:00.000-08:00

I had brunch plans with The Grandmother today for what's arguably the best ramen on the westside. The Grandmother loves soups in general and loves any place that's new and different to her, and she was excited. A few days ago though I warned her that the ramen place doesn't serve booze. The Grandmother right away said, "Well maybe you'd like to go somewhere else?"

Because I'm clearly more poorly behaved than The Brother, I quickly reassured her that we'd have booze, that I would take care of it. I arrived at her place at 9 a.m. to fix a few things on her computer and around the house before driving to brunch. The Grandmother, understandably still worried about the lack of booze at the restaurant, offered me a glass of wine as soon as I walked in the door. I appreciated the thought, but 9 a.m. is a little early, even for me.

We waited until almost 10 before cracking open a bottle. I found two glasses and a bottled water in her kitchen cabinets, emptied the water, poured a healthy serving of wine into each glass and the rest into the emptied water bottle. We had our first glass of wine at her house and took the rest to go, and as I stuffed the water bottle into my purse, The Grandmother said twice, "I can't believe I never thought to do that."

At the ramen place, which is inside a Japanese marketplace and food court, there were big signs visible from every table that said "No Consumption of Alcoholic Beverages Permitted on Premises." The Grandmother took two small styrofoam cups from a stack by a water cooler, and whispered to me to pour the wine into the cups while we waited for our order (one spicy miso ramen, one shio ramen, one small side of sticky rice with chashu, if you must know). I shook my head and took the cups straight back to the water cooler to fill them with actual water.

I have a general theory about lying and deceit: anything is best hidden right in the open. People get caught when they act like they've got something that needs concealing. Instead, I commit most of my sins in plain view, and if you haven't figured this out about me already, I get away with almost everything. (That's the privilege, I suppose, of being white and clean-cut and small--there's nothing physically intimidating or suspicious about me.) So I waited for the ramen to arrive and then put the water bottle from my purse right on the table next to our bowls and cups, and I took a big healthy swig before nudging it across the table to The Grandmother. She looked around, a little nervous, but I encouraged her. "People will just assume you're drinking water. No one thinks that the white girl with her nice little grandmother is boozing openly."

She took one more look around and then finally drank, and when the booze-police didn't pop out to arrest her, she drank again and smiled widely, clearly pleased with herself. We swapped the bottle back and forth, and the bowls too (The Grandmother decided she liked the spicy miso better than the shio, so we switched twice), and we eventually made it back to the car pleasantly full and buzzed.

On the drive home, I asked her if she'd enjoyed the ramen enough to go back sometime. "Oh, yes," she said, "but we'll have to remember to bring two bottles. Now that I know how you do it."

Cross

2011-11-05T14:58:00.000-07:00

I spent most of Halloween ignoring the huge parade through the gayborhood, ignoring The Brother and Gay/Not-Gay Boyfriend/Not-Boyfriend, and just quietly talked to a conservative crossdresser from the suburbs who wore a red plastic French maid's dress trimmed in cotton lace at the neck and hemlines to keep him cool. He was alone and eager to talk, especially because I asked lots of questions and was a captive audience. He spoke with a kind of detailed particularity that was both fascinating and alarming. In the same measured, calm voice, each word distinct and separate out of his throat, he told me that he was 5'10", 195 lbs., with 13" forearms and 24" thighs, and he was wearing the Bali 3300 bra and Cristian Dior Rouge 644. He talked about his body the way some guys talk about car engines, and when I said as much to him, he lit into a red-rimmed smile and told me he worked as a machinist.

From the beginning of our conversation, he used the words transgender, transvestite, and crossdresser nearly interchangeably, and at some point I stopped to ask him about that and played dumb to get him to define each term. Surprisingly, he really couldn't--the definitions he offered were muddled and overlapping and seemed to focus on physical expression only, not an underlying gender identity. Something about his muddiness really clicked for me. The thing is, I've never trusted what crossdressers typically say to explain their behaviors. The standard line is about embracing their feminine side, about being brave enough to transcend gendered stereotypes and temporarily live as their more nurturing, softer selves. Frankly, I think that's bullshit. While straight male crossdressers obsess about outdated, exaggerated female forms that take hours to put together, real women in sweatpants and greasy hair are doing the housework and running errands and taking care of all the other responsibilities crossdressers have put on hold in order to shop for size 12 stilletos. The guy I was talking to fucking did a "dry run" of his eye makeup two weeks ago. There's nothing nurturing about this kind of behavior, it's narcissism at its finest.

Which is not to say that there is anything wrong with narcissism per se. I indulge plenty of my own oddities. I'm clearly selfish. I just want people to call shit like it is. What I liked about this guy is that I think he was more honest than most. He admitted that crossdressing for him is a sexual impulse. In sixth grade, while dressing up as a woman for Halloween, he first realized he got off on this when the bra he wore all night chafed a raw spot on his rib cage and he liked it. He's collected vintage bras ever since, and of course he rattled off dozens by brand and model number. Throughout the night he reached down to finger the abrasion where his garter belt and the edge of his girdle met.

I suspect though that crossdressing is far more than a sexual fetish. I think these men, for all of their conservative values (and they are REALLY conservative--Republican voting, gun carrying, total warhounds), are at their core self-loathing and unable to voice the real face of their desires. Perhaps, had they had more liberal inclinations or grown up among families who weren't card-carrying members of the NRA, they'd eventually admit to being gay or trans. Instead, they walk around pretending that crossdressing is merely a hobby, merely an escapist pastime that takes up only a fraction of their real lives. At night, they drive to bondage and fetish clubs on the Eastside or in the Valley, and during the day they hide out in the suburbs, purportedly thankful that they don't live among the liberal freaks in a place like Weho.

In the end, what I learned from Halloween night is that I don't like a Republic man in a dress any more than I like a Republican man in pants. But I do appreciate the opportunity to have talked to this man, and more so, his patience and kindness with my many questions.

Three

2011-10-15T07:52:00.000-07:00

There are three homeless people who live at the courthouse entrance I use and who I see twice a day, five days a week. Two are black men likely in their fifties. One is plucky and energetic and regularly has a stream of attorneys who give him a couple of bucks to carry up their exhibits and files. This is the man who every day tells me as I leave the courthouse to "be good, be safe." The second man is quieter and hustles in a more straightforward fashion, by jingling loose change in a paper cup and asking for more. This is the man who tells me in the morning to "have a good day, stay focused." I like both of them immensely. They watch people and adapt to different personalities with real skill, and I feel like they look out for me.

The third person is a white woman who could be anywhere from 35 to 55. She never makes eye contact and she never says a word. She either quietly paces or sits next to her dozen or so plastic and canvas bags. From what I can tell, the bags are filled with more bags, plastic soda and juice bottles, and teddy bears. For several months, she has worn the same outfit: white tennis shoes, wide leg jeans in a medium blue wash, a long-sleeved denim shirt in the same medium blue wash, and a grey knit beanie. Her long blond hair hangs in greasy strings, her pale blue eyes stare vacantly at nothing.

I wish I'd had the foresight and the nerve to take a picture of her every day since she'd appeared in the denim outfit. Over the weeks, I've watched her become dirtier in measurable increments. The blue of her shirt and jeans went from brand new to yellow before slowly turning brown, and by now the dirt and grease have become so pronounced that her clothing has taken on a new thickness.

Yesterday, I noticed a new tear in her shirt along one shoulder seam. I'm worried there'll be no end to it, that she'll wear the denim jeans and shirt until they disintegrate completely and fall off. She asks for nothing, talks to no one. I'm sure there are support services in the area that have tried to reach her, but she seems to live entirely within a world of her own mind. If I thought that bringing her money or clothes or hygiene projects would help, I would have brought them already. But the one thing I've come to understand about her is that she's not with us, she's not interested in doing anything our way.

I can't fix her. The government, the hospitals, the non-profits can't fix her. The two black men seem to watch that no one bothers her but otherwise know to ignore her. What I could have done, what I wish I would have done, is take her picture, each day at the same time in the same place, each day documenting the quiet, simple brutality of filth.

In The Gayborhood

2011-10-02T05:30:00.000-07:00

A neighborhood favorite. Voted Most Creative Use of A Nursing Bra for four years in a row.

Jesus lives here now too. He shows up for all major and minor local events, and is typically among the first responders when the fire department is called.

After the bars close tonight, these two are going straight to Cesar Milan.

"It was ultimately about surface, not function."

2011-10-01T15:20:00.000-07:00

If you're anywhere near Hollywood, Heather Cassils new piece is worth checking out:

"She started training in late February and at first focused on building up bulk, lifting weights and doing leg presses, some so heavy she'd pee her pants. Nutritionist David Kalick helped her develop a diet she followed to the ounce. All this became a full-time job, which was difficult since she kept working her actual day job in a Silver Lake gym. 'I was running off and locking myself in the bathroom, shoving food into my face," she says. "What I initially thought of as empowering became limiting.'"

Soap

2011-09-24T07:56:00.001-07:00

After my grandfather died, my grandmother gave me 24 bars of his soap. When she handed me the bars from their shelf in the linen cabinet, she revealed no hint of sentiment. The soap was merely too strong for her. She has thin, sensitive skin prone to liver spots and scaring, bleeding at the slightest scrape or nick. My skin isn't much better. I've hung on too long to youthful arrogance, rarely bothering to moisturize, only remembering to give my face a good scrubbing when a zit sets in. But I like things that are free and so I've been using my dead grandfather's soap once or twice a day now for the better part of a year.

In the bath this morning, as I got ready to drive across town to help my grandmother move into her new condo, it occurred to me that wearing his soap into her new home—the only one except her parents' that she's ever had without him—could be construed as an aggressive act. Smells carry such predictable assaults. If I died tomorrow, I imagine I'd be little more than the intractable scent of the Guerlain perfume I've worn steadily since I was 20.

I have no idea where I'm going with this. I'm not the type to live among the dead. When I wear one of my grandfather’s tshirts or sweatshirts around the house, it has nothing to do with nostalgia. I just took back a handful of clothing with my alma mater’s logo because no one else wanted it and my own college gear needed replacing. In the end, perhaps it’s only envy that has me sniffing at his soap. It’s a privilege, a kick in the teeth kind of gift, to miss anyone that much.

Drives

2011-09-18T16:39:00.000-07:00

I had to bring my primary laptop to Apple today for yet another hard drive. I have a fairly recent time machine backup, a secondary laptop, and extended apple care warranty, so it's not really a catastrophe. If anything, it's the loss of time that I hate most: Apple needs about a week to get the part in, and I wasted most of the day trying to restore the OS until the drive finally quit completely.

Perhaps the worst part of the ordeal was that I had to go The Grove. Some people call it an outdoor destination mall, I call it hell. It's the kind of place where kids named Apple or Kingston roam freely and where women who are only pretty enough to be leg models like to linger. I had to brave the weekend throng of surgically altered bimbos and D-list celebrities hoping to be photographed. At the Apple Store, the lead from Drop Dead Diva (I have no idea what her name is and still can't bother to look it up--maybe she's an E-lister?) was getting her iphone replaced because she had "dropped it in a big vat of Italian dressing." Um, really? Tell catering to use the little individual packets next time, and put your phone in your pocket before you hit the buffet.

I'm not looking forward to going back to The Grove once the repair is finished. I'm doing my atheist equivalent of praying that solid-state drives come down in price and become standard.

Big, Small

2011-09-17T07:12:00.000-07:00

I forget sometimes how different small towns are from real cities. My parents still live in the same neighborhood where The Brother and I grew up, a suburban enclave of tract homes in the Santa Monica foothills, population maybe 20,000. I drove there yesterday to knock out a list of things in one shot: dental appointment, oil change, car wash, 10 loads of laundry, and a visit with my dog.

The dealer was busy when I dropped off my car for its oil change, and so I had to wait a couple of hours. I walked first into the service waiting lounge but quickly walked out when I saw Fox News blaring on the TV and two guys in gimme hats staring at it reverently. Then I went outside to look for some place to shop or grab lunch. My choices: two quick lube joints, a gas station, a pool supply store, a yogurt shop, and a mom and pop coffee shop that I remember from my now ancient carb-loading days for swim team. I took an outside table at the coffee shop and tried not to make eye contact with the waitress. She was in her twenties, earnest and sweet, but she had only one other table apart from mine and she had that desperate look about her that people get when they know they're not going anywhere beyond the dead end they're at. There was absolutely nothing interesting on the menu, so I ordered a turkey sandwich with a small green salad instead of the default fries. My lunch first came out as a tuna sandwich, which the waitress took back. The actual turkey sandwich then arrived 5 minutes later, with effusive apologies. I almost wished I'd eaten the tuna just so the poor girl wouldn't have said sorry so many times. The sandwich was really the size of two, the salad an embarrassing mountain of iceberg smothered with two kinds of shredded cheese and diced olives. In the city, I've grown accustomed to dishes that are composed of only two or three bites. But in the suburbs, people tend to take quantity over quality wherever they can get it: from their mammoth sandwiches, from their bus-sized SUVs, from their great big swathes of mortgaged land.

Once the car was finished, I went to my parents' house and took the dogs out for a walk. The dogs are suburbanites too, scared of trucks and the first hint of traffic but trusting of every passing stranger. Within a three mile radius, everyone knows the dogs by name. The dogs know which direction they want to walk--sometimes toward the house with the lady who comes out barefoot with treats and sometimes toward the mini mall where a cat stands watch in the window of a country-bumpkin art gallery.

Things moves slowly in the suburbs. There's no sense of urgency, no sense of ambition for what might lie ahead. Instead, there's a sense that what's right here will do just fine, that's there's no need to look any farther. I suppose that's peaceful, but I can't fundamentally understand it. I'm buoyed by possibility, by the hope that what's around the corner is newer and better and more exciting than whatever's gone by. I'm charged by even the tiniest of personal discoveries: a painting I've never seen, a meal I've never tried, an accent I've never heard. I like noise and crowds and just knowing that something is open through the small dark hours of the night.

The coffee shop where I ate at while my car was serviced closed at 4. There had been one change there though. As long as I can remember, the coffee shop only took cash. They now take credit cards.

More On Laundry

2011-09-14T19:01:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned yesterday, I'm down to the dregs of my clean laundry. I still have maybe a dozen clean shirts that are suitable for work, but none are shirts I like. They all test my patience and good sense in some way, and they are each the kind of shirt that gets rotated into my wardrobe only two or three times a year when desperation hits. Only halfway through this work week, desperation has hit.

I paired a black suit with one of the desperation shirts: a leopard print shell. Yes, I said leopard print. The shirt makes me look like a chola playing dress up, but it's cut well for me. It's got two thin layers of fabric that are cinched at the bottom before billowing out. Flatters all the problem areas. Makes it clear that I have both boobs and a waist. Separately. For a short Jewish woman, that's no small accomplishment. Boob-waist is endemic within our population.

So at work I carried my files over my chest and did my business quickly. I didn't want any of my Judges to notice the leopard print in their courtroom. But just as I dropped off a stack of finished motions, one of my courtroom assistants stopped me. She's a brown skin woman who fumbles party names in Spanish, and yet I know she lives somewhere deep in the Inland Empire where speaking English is not an option. I've always suspected that she's more Mexican than she lets on. She looked straight at my clearly separate boobs and waist and said, "Wow. Love your shirt."

The Boob Report

2011-09-13T18:14:00.000-07:00

Because I am lazy and cheap, I now only do my laundry at my parents' house once every four to six weeks. This mostly works out fine. I keep a three-month supply of underwear and socks, and I wear suits on weekdays which all require dry cleaning.

This morning, however, I awoke to a dwindling supply of clean blouses. I neglected to pick up the last batch from the dry cleaners, but I wanted a black shirt to pair with a light grey suit. The only clean black tops in my closet were ratty tshirts or polo shirts, an oversized men's oxford, and a couple of black hoodies. Nothing that screamed "Attorney at Law."

I dug around in my bra drawer and found one last clean black camisole. Unfortunately, it was a camisole that only fit me a full cup size ago. I squeezed the girls in, aligned them politely, and figured we'd all get by. Yet though the camisole looked more or less ok when I stood in front of my mirror at home, I hadn't counted on what would happen when I actually moved throughout the day. Suffice it to say that by 10 a.m., I'd flashed something like 10% of the judiciary in Los Angeles.

I attempted to remedy the situation first by tucking the bottom of the camisole into my underwear. I figured that would keep everything firmly in place. Wrong. More of the girls just kept spilling from the top.

Then I looked toward our primitive office supplies for a solution. I took out a roll of scotch tape, turned away from the two other attorneys I share an office with, and tried to tape my boobs to my camisole. That didn't work either. Fucking gravity.

I tried rounding and hunching my shoulders to conceal the problem, but you know what that did? It just made my cleavage appear fuller.

My midday, I gave up and accepted that I would have to bare my boobs to all my peers. That's not an entirely unattractive prospect when I'm drunk, but it was kinda sorta terrible to think of while sober. I got cruised in the hall by one very tall, very blond dyke and by a rounded process server who seemed not to care about the ring on his finger.

So, what have I learned from this lesson? Will I break down and hoard quarters for the washers in my building? Nope. Not gonna happen. But I will pick up my dry cleaning.

Weekend Report

2011-09-11T11:48:00.000-07:00

On Friday, I christened The Brother's car with vomit. I doubt he's amused. On Saturday, I cradled a bottle of diet-7up while praying for the worst of it to pass. Apparently, I can no longer skip dinner, then move from wine to beer to bourbon, and still remain upright. The parts I remember were fun though. So there's that.

Highlight Reel

2011-08-31T20:23:00.000-07:00

Don't you wish you lived here? Recent daily blotter hits from "The Creative City":

-Female transient in flowered dress reportedly stole a flag from an office on Fairfax. No info on if flag was gay/leather/state/american.

- Hit and run of a bicyclist on the corner of Sunset and Sweetzer... The biker was a midget.

-Johnny Rockets on Melrose closed due to filming.

-Boyfriends fighting on Larabee, sheriff responding.

-Man climbs tower outside KTLA studios. LAPD en route.

-Girl acting like Snooki at Jersey Mike's subs on SM blvd... threw a drink at customers and left.

Wanted: Real Mexicans in LA

2011-08-25T18:35:00.000-07:00

I've been taking a new route to work that winds me around MacArthur Park. For those of you not from LA, McArthur Park overlooks downtown and was built around a small man-made lake that at one time was a drinking water reservoir. When my mom was growing up, MacArthur Park was where kids went on Sundays with their families to rent a paddle boat and eat an ice cream cone. Now the park is basically owned by gangs and drug dealers and the families you see there are the ones that can't afford to get out of the neighborhood.

But the neighborhood is also home to some of the best Mexican and Salvadoran food around. I now regularly drive by dozens of little places I want to try. I'm not sure which places are good and which are merely going to give me e-coli. For a good sweetbreads taco or a chicharron pupusa, I'll probably risk the e-coli.

Still, it seems prudent to ask around a bit first. So today I asked the parking lot attendant that I talk to every day. He's young, probably in his early 20s, and judging by the Spanish I've heard him speaking into his cell phone, he's Chicano. He asked me which street I take home, and then without missing a beat he said, "They got King Taco on that street?" I shook my head. King Taco is a chain and I was disappointed. The tacos actually are decent, and by East Coast standards they would be the king of tacos, but this is LA. I can get every third person's mother here to make me tacos. I don't need the predictable carne asada of King Taco.

So the parking lot attendant goes, "What about Tacos Mexico? They got Tacos Mexico?"

"Yes," I said, and tried to again hide my disappointment. Another chain. Granted, another legit chain. They do a pork stomach taco. You can always tell a legit Mexican spot by its offal. Beef tripe is standard, even available at the white people places east of Fairfax these days. But pork stomach, buche, is still firmly the terrain of the brown folk. It's more tender than beef tripe. Chewy, yes, but it breaks down differently when slow cooked the right way, and I didn't blow ten years of being a vegetarian so that I could eat tasteless slabs of skinless boneless chicken breast.

The parking lot attendant must have heard me sigh. He tried again. "How about Baja Fresh? You like Baja Fresh? Try the nacho burrito with chicken. It's the bomb."

At that point, I lost it. What is the world coming to when the Mexicans of Los Angeles flock to yuppie chains for lard-free beans and heated cheeze wiz? I was as polite as I could pretend to be. "Does your mother know you eat at Baja Fresh?"

Luckily, he didn't have time to answer. Another car had pulled up and he had to turn away to sell a parking ticket. I drove off, got stuck in some kind of police road block around Rampart, took a detour through streets no white girl should ever travel, and went home where I cooked up a couple of bean tostadas for myself, topped with crema and a roasted tomatillo salsa.

Like Mind Blowingly Awesome

2011-08-21T21:13:00.000-07:00

This is a real person on a real subway. This is awesome. Like mind blowingly awesome:

http://www.slate.com/slideshow/arts/turning-humans-to-canvas/#all

Painter Alexa Meade has painted people and has them walking around. The people become flat, 2D things that you can't quite negotiate into the 3D space surrounding them. Seriously, go check them out.

Obsession

2011-08-14T15:41:00.000-07:00

So I'm working now on what is the second transgendered character I've put in a story, and I've become kinda obsessed with figuring out why I'm obsessed with these people. It's not a fetish and it's not envy, and so I'm left struggling to articulate something far more complicated and elusive. I'm asking everyone I can for their input, and I thought I'd ask you for yours too. One of my smartest friends had this to say:

"you're compelled by characters and people who have a certain rawness/tense vulnerability, but who walk a tightrope, and have always within or about them a stark combination of that painful rawness, and a kind of fuck-you power. trannies have had the experience of feeling exquisitely uncomfortable in their given bodies and the identities that get foisted on them because of their gender--they feel displaced. displacement is compelling to you (the experience of loneliness is compelling to you, too, and anyone who has felt that level of difference has deeply known loneliness). but they're also ballsy (they have to be) and willing to go to incredible efforts to change their bodies (and by extension, how they move in the world, are seen in the world, etc). there's something unavoidably conspicuous about them, and sometimes it's awkward and graceless, and sometimes it's incredibly beautiful. some trannies carry themselves with an incredible kind of power, and you're very attracted to powerful people. you're also very attracted to certain kinds of personality structures that display force of will. and as i said, you're also drawn to that particular rawness, that way in which a tranny--no matter how "successful" in the transition and inhabiting of an altered/new physical (and to some extent, then, psychic) form and persona, is still always Different. there can never not be difference. and that is something that speaks to you."

What do you think? Is she right? Is she missing something?

Paying Up

2011-08-06T13:55:00.000-07:00

Went out after work last night with about a dozen other research attorneys. We started with happy hour at an old dinner house nearby the courthouse, and the waitress put everything on a single check. I figured it'd be one giant fuckery come pay-up time. Big group checks are always a mess because people so often don't pay for what they actually ordered, or forget to add in enough extra for tax and tip. I'm so tired of having to put in extra money for people who short their share that I generally do everything I can to stay off a group tab. But every single person in this group actually paid his or her share, and everyone was so afraid of coming up short that they put in extra. We ended up like $30 or $40 over. Can you believe it? I couldn't. I guess this is the difference between hanging out with writers and creative types versus boring but risk-adverse lawyers. The waitress actually got a decent tip.

Words

2011-08-04T20:21:00.001-07:00

Apparently, I've already been living in the gayborhood too long. I caught myself tonight singing along to Tori Amos's "Yes, Anastasia," but I'd gotten the words wrong. For the line that goes "If you know me so well, then tell me which hand I use," I was singing, "If you know me so well, then tell me which gender I use." I had the song on repeat long enough that I finally noticed it, and when I thought about it logically, it just didn't make sense. So I had to look it up. And lo and behold, it's not a gender empowerment tune. Makes the line "we'll see how brave you are" totally different now.

Ideas?

2011-07-31T17:09:00.000-07:00

My smallest dog may or may not be entering the gayborhood's dog costume contest for Halloween this year. He is currently soliciting ideas. There are prizes for Scariest Costume, Look-Alike Pets (and guardians), Most Creative Costume, Most Colorful Costume and Best Costume. Keep in mind that the small dog does not like to lose and the competition in "The Creative City" is...well...stiff.

Dream

2011-07-30T14:00:00.000-07:00

I dreamt that I'd forgotten I'd invited a bunch of people over for a party. A dozen people came through my apartment with six-packs and bags of chips before I understood that I'd invited them previously when I was drunk. There was no way to kick them out, so I just started raiding my fridge and serving whatever booze and snacks I had. Winter was there, but with long hair and wearing a long denim dress and knee-high suede boots. I can't understand why I wasn't making fun of her outfit in the dream. I think it was because I was too preoccupied with yelling at someone who had been eating chocolate and left chocolate stains all over my white carpet. Then I was preoccupied with trying to keep her girlfriend from killing me for the yelling. The Brother was there too, but only briefly. He opened a bottle of wine for me and then asked if he could leave. I said yes but was fuming the rest of the night while I was still scrambling to serve enough drinks and play good host without his help. I don't know why I couldn't get ahead of the drinkers--it's not my problem in real life. I guess this dream though means that I live in fear of accidentally calling a fiesta at my place when I'm too drunk to think better of it. Thank god for permit parking, my last line of defense--you really have to plan ahead to visit me.

In Shining Armor

2011-07-25T18:12:00.000-07:00

Someone is looking for the tenant who lived in my apartment before me. From the mail I'm still getting, it seems this tenant used at least three different names and a sham company and left a flood of unpaid bills behind. I'm pretty sure the guy banging on my door last night was a process server, but I'm not entirely convinced that there isn't anything shadier going on. I was a little freaked out, but then guess who came to my rescue? My fearless tranny! I hadn't opened my door, but I could hear tranny talking to the guy in the hallway. She said that the tenant had moved out at least six months ago and that she had no idea where to. Then she called me and said that if he or anyone else comes around bothering me, that I should just call her and she'll take care of it. I believe her. She's a tough NY broad. I think tonight though convinced me more than ever that she must have been born a biological man because she just walks in the world with too much confidence to be a woman. She just doesn't scare easily. That's really a luxury that most women will never be able to imagine.

Now It's All So Flat

2011-07-24T19:21:00.000-07:00

Nan Goldin isn't exactly one of my favorite photographers. Her photos are often technically crude and the worlds she bore witness to--NY in the 80s, junkies, battered men and women--have never been my worlds. I enter them with a certain distance. But her ballsiness is something I've always loved, her refusal to look away where others did, her sheer stubborn dedication to holding to on to the people and times that inevitably slipped away. From what I understand, her sister died young and Goldin thereafter took photos to keep from losing people ever again.

Predictably, the photos of hers I've liked the most are of transsexuals and drag queens. They're not exploitative. They're not about a freak show. They're just photos of her friends. They're honest in the way the rest of her photos are: blunt shots of people living their lives, in all their complications. And even though I don't know the people in these photographs, they produce in me a kind of anemic longing, maybe because it's so clear that Goldin herself is longing so profoundly to keep these people close. I may not be desperate to hold on to these people, but she is, and sometimes the easiest thing to feel is empathy because it requires of me nothing but a careful watch from the sidelines.

Goldin has a short piece in today's Guardian that made me stop cold. She sets forth what's maybe the saddest confession I've ever heard from an artist: "I don't carry my camera so much these days: I don't have the same relationship with it. I've never considered photography one of the higher art forms. Everyone takes photos; now even phones can. The whole issue of digital is so depressing to me; my process is gone. There were all kinds of unknown things that could come out in a photograph, things you didn't know were there until you saw it; now it's all so flat. But then I never really saw myself as a photographer."

Horrific, isn't it? Take away process from an artist and what do you have left? It's like Didion saying that she writes in order to know what she feels: "I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear." You don't do the feeling and understanding parts first; you create so that you can find your way to any kind of understanding at all.

I'm imagining Goldin now pacing lower Manhattan without a camera and it IS depressing. I'm projecting too, of course, because I'm a writer who isn't writing (unless you count writing 8 legal memos a day, which I don't). Who is Nan Goldin now that she doesn't routinely carry a camera? Who am I when I go months at a time without making anything? Who are any of us but the stories we leave behind?

Dinner

2011-07-22T21:07:00.001-07:00

My gay/not-gay boyfriend/not-boyfriend took me for a belated birthday dinner at one of the most old school sushi places downtown. We stopped for a beer first and arrived 12 minutes late for our reservation which they had already given away. The host scolded us but sat us anyway, much to the horror of the dozens of folks lining up down the block to get in. A harried waitress somehow brought us handtowels and more beer through the crowd, and then only mocked us once or twice when we dared to ask questions about the menu. She became considerably nicer though when we it became clear that we weren't looking for bullshit yuppie rolls with cream cheese. We ordered respectably (for non-Japanese people): octopus sunomono, fatty tuna nigiri, tamago nigiri, chef's choice sashimi (which turned out to be piles of yellowtail, albacore, squid, salmon, mackeral, and abalone), and then the crown jewels of the night--the yellowtail collar. It was awesome until the host came back and said he needed our table. All of New York has better manners than this place. But then my gay/not-gay boyfriend/not-boyfriend, who is Vietnamese, made everything better by observing quite simply that the host had "turned Korean on us."

Insert Tongue In Cheek

2011-07-21T18:32:00.000-07:00

LA has a particular sense of humor that I never seemed to find on the East Coast. It's equal parts arrogance and self-deprecation. To see it, you don't have to look any further than the signs around town. On Melrose alone, one clothing store runs the slogan "Broke Is The New Black" and a consignment shop's motto is "Pawnbroker to The Stars." Is there any better way to say that we're ridiculous and we know it and we're gonna keep indulging that ridiculousness? In other words, there's no place like home.

In The Gayborhood

2011-07-16T08:52:00.000-07:00

Last night, I went out with my favorite lesbians. They're good people (i.e. they like TV and dogs and vote blue), and they're good drinkers. We hit three bars and I lost count of the drinks. At one point, we ended up in what I now know is the gayest gay bar in gaytown. I thought I'd already been to the gayest gay bar in gaytown, but turns out, I'd barely scratched the surface. This place had nearly naked women dancing on the bar and giving out body shots. Half of the lady clientele was more masculine than every guy I've ever slept with. At one point, my favorite lesbians got into a fight and then had to talk it out. You know, because they're lesbians.

And at a certain point for me though, it was just depressing. I need to find some straight friends around here. One straight friend around here, even. Thing is, I pass so easily for gay that I'm always comfortable in these crowds. Plus, there's always a lot of booze involved, which is another big plus for me. But then I realize that I'm not getting what I want out of these nights. I'm not getting anyone to go home with.

People, my mother asked one of my judges to find me a husband. This is desperation time. I may have to venture out of the gayborhood. Dear god, pray for me if I have to go up to Sunset.

Birthday

2011-07-10T16:58:00.000-07:00

Judging from my count of mystery bruises covering my body, last night was a good night. But judging from my hangover, 32 year olds should not drink like 22 year olds unless they have no interest in seeing 42.

In The Cards

2011-07-09T08:42:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow is my birthday, but shush, don't tell anyone. These are the kinds of cards that people send me. Do they know me, or what?!

In The Life Of

2011-06-30T20:34:00.000-07:00

Arrived at work at 9 a.m. Updated one motion workup with a late-filed opposition and wrote up one other workup on a separate motion. By 11 a.m., called work quits and pulled out an unfinished draft of a story I've been avoiding. Popped open a diet coke and the lunch I'd made that morning: tuna sandwich on Russian rye, parsnip and carrot salad on the side. Reread the unfinished draft at my desk and slowly plugged away at six new handwritten pages. Paced the halls in between writing different scenes and received an unexpected second bag of homegrown plums and peaches from my new gay-not-gay boyfriend (who, incidentally, has offered both to go purse shopping with me next week and to go shopping for work clothes with me and my mother this weekend). Ate a peach. By 3 p.m., called writing quits and delivered stacks of workups to various courtrooms to give off the impression of slaving away on the calendar. By 3:40 p.m., pretended it was 4 p.m. and started packing up my stuff. By 3:42 p.m., pretended it was 5 minutes after 4 p.m. and hustled out of the building. By 4:30 p.m., home. By 4:35 p.m., wriggled out of suit, put hair up in a ponytail, poured wine into a coffee mug. 5 p.m. boozy and happy, the end.

How Was Your Day, Honey?

2011-06-13T21:49:00.000-07:00

The morning began with a respectable hangover from yesterday's Pride Parade and assorted beverages and the realization that I'd drunk-facebooked a cute guy who works on the same floor with me at the courthouse. By noon, I'd discovered both that cute guy is gay and that he's moving out of state at the end of the month. I then ran into cute guy in the hallway. He politely chit-chatted with me for a few moments. After we finished talking, I went into the restroom where I discovered a clump of rice hanging from the ruffles on my shirt. Thankfully, the shirt was white and the rice seemed to blend in. I hadn't eaten lunch yet--the rice was from at least two weeks ago. You see people, during the colder months, I do what I can to save on dry cleaning. I'm not too proud to admit it. I'll wear a shirt twice if it doesn't smell. Now I know though to check for smells AND leftovers.

So, after removing last month's rice from my cleavage and double-checking my shirt in the mirror for sriracha and soy, I actually went to lunch. When I returned to the courthouse and passed through the metal detectors, I found the security guards busily whispering to each other. I was hoping that a d-lister had faceplanted in a courtroom. But no. Not even close. What happened was that someone decided to shit in one of the public elevators. A judge had stepped on the elevator and quickly stepped out--reports on whether he stepped in the pile of feces are still conflicting. TMZ has been contacted and has been asked to provide surveillance footage.

When I got home from work, my mother called. Her first question was, "How hungover are you?" Apparently, I drunk-dialed her as well yesterday.

I'm now waiting for the rest of the collateral damage to trickle in. Let's hope I did something constructive while wasted, like prank-calling Oprah or writing love letters to Anthony Weiner.

Biting

2011-06-06T19:48:00.000-07:00

I bit the bullet, took the bait, went out on a limb...whatever. I've got a coffee date with a former mayor of the gayborhood. I'm getting off my ass and getting involved. You can't live in Republican-free paradise forever without participating, right?

Stumped

2011-06-05T08:02:00.000-07:00

I checked for all the usual signs—outsized hands, narrowed hips, an Adams apple—but I still wasn’t sure. She was tall and too thin and had the high, bulbous tits of a Barbie Doll. She might have been a man once but she might just as easily have been any other over-manicured woman in LA who kept her plastic surgeon on speed-dial. Her lips looked freshly plumped with collagen and there were no roots showing on her long blond highlights. She wore no makeup since the wisps of color above her eyes and around her mouth had been permanently tattooed in. The skin on her face bore the shiny, reddened tightness of a recent acid-peel. Her arms were smooth, entirely hairless, and though her voice was on the wrong side of throaty, her chain smoking explained it.

I tried to decode her mannerisms instead. There was something slightly cartoonish about her femininity. While holding a cigarette, her wrists drooped and slid around, boneless, as if pre-calculated to ward off rigidity, as if being a woman required a certain looseness, a certain adaptability of form. It was not unlike watching a gay man who let his wrists lead him. Also, there was something awkward in the way she repeatedly swept hair out of her eyes, grabbing the fallen lock between her thumb and forefinger and pushing it to the side while bending her neck toward one shoulder. I found myself raking my fingers through my own long hair more often than usual, just to try to spot the difference. She was undoubtedly more feminine than I was, but I don’t think there are trans women who describe themselves as tomboys. Tomboy territory seems to belong exclusively to those who haven’t had to explain their gender.

Vultures

2011-06-01T07:39:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, a woman wearing flip flops in the courthouse (why she wore flip flops to court is another story) tripped as she was trying to get into the elevator I was riding in. She got part of her flip (or flop?) caught in the narrow gap between the floor and elevator door and basically shot forward into the elevator car wearing one flip flop. Someone kindly picked up her flip flop (which if you must know, was gold lame) but someone else not so kindly shouted, "Need a good personal injury attorney?" A half dozen other lawyers packed like sardines into the elevator car laughed nervously. The woman in one flip flop didn't say anything, but looked over in the direction that the voice had come from, like she was actually interested. I moved my arm over to cover my courthouse employee badge. Fucking lawyers.

Drumroll, Please

2011-05-31T13:01:00.000-07:00

I've hit the motherlode. There's a tranny in my building. Turns out, she lives right across the hall from me. She's very warm and friendly and has been volunteering at a local animal rescue for the last 12 years. Occasionally, she fosters cats and dogs from there too. She also likes to drink. She doesn't know it yet, but we're gonna be besties.

In The Navy

2011-05-30T18:22:00.000-07:00

The Brother describes Memorial Day weekend in the gayborhood as a sitting holiday. This is not a weekend to travel, but a weekend better spent stumbling to neighborhood bars and/or friends' places to sit in the sun and drink. I'd been sick all week, and my liver seems to be aging in dog years, so my abilities to properly celebrate a sitting holiday were limited. On Saturday, Poodle came over with his platonic wife for a quiet visit at Casa de Virg, where Virg made the mistake of chasing four beers (and not sissy beers, but strong IPAs at 9% alcohol) with straight bourbon. On Sunday, I limited myself to wimpy beers and white wine, but managed to get myself out of the house to join a gaggle of lesbians and a token bi-curious boy and his beard at the gayest gay bar in gaytown.

The beard was a straight girl from the Valley who enlisted in the Navy and now works at the Pentagon and lives in DC. She was just here for a short visit, and she was living it up at the gaybar, certifiably plastered by 3 p.m. Apparently, she has a huge crush on the dreadlocks chick on the Real L Word, and for most of the time when she was at our table, she was scanning the patio for said dreadlocks and a camera crew. The beard was nice and clearly liberal and I was talking to her for quite a while, so finally I just asked her the question that needed asking: "How the fuck are you in the Navy?"

Without missing a beat, the beard pulled down the top of her tank top and said, "The Navy paid for my tits."

"What?" I'd heard her, but my mind couldn't process things fast enough. "Tax dollars pay for boob jobs?"

"You get excellent health care in the Navy."

Apparently so. I'm ready to write my Congressmen. Half the country doesn't have health care and we're paying for outsized tits on uniformed twenty-somethings the moment they claim "depression" or "low self-esteem." Good work, government. Good fucking work.

Greg Miller, Rough Rider

2011-05-30T10:28:00.000-07:00

Would someone please buy this for me and hang it over my couch in the living room? Ok, thanks.

Choices

2011-05-29T08:56:00.000-07:00

With school over, the bar exam finally done, and my apartment more or less furnished, I've found that I have more time on my hands than expected. Though I work Monday through Friday, I don't have to take any work home. After years of being a student with endless hours of studying, reading, and writing, and after years of being an instructor in writing with endless hours of grading and class prepping, coming home without a list of tasks to do is a huge luxury.

I should be using this time for writing. That was my whole plan originally: to find a job that would allow me to pay the bills and live with some sense of security while still leaving me enough time to write. But in practice, I seem to write regularly only when I'm completely overwhelmed by other obligations. During the last year of law school, for instance, I wrote more than I'd written in any other year of my life, despite the fact that I was taking a full load of law classes, plus an English lit grad class, plus studying for the MPRE, plus applying to grad school, plus applying for jobs in CA, plus planning a cross-country move back home.

Somehow, when I have open stretches of time before me, the synapses don't fire. My mind stops taking associative leaps, forgets to watch for small details, and is incapable of manning up with my heart to do the feeling work. The world sort of parades before me, but I'm unable to find traction anywhere. The stories just do not come.

So I need a plan. I need to get involved in more things. I need to make myself responsible to more late afternoon activities than drinking on the couch and watching Netflix. I'd like to volunteer for some kind of legal aid services, preferably for the LGBT community (because, hello, there's no reason why I can't do good and also get tons of stories out of people at the same time), but I may not be able to because my work for the courthouse poses unlimited potential conflicts of interest. I'd like to help out with a dog rescue or animal shelter, but the gayborhood contracts out to Carson, which I intend to avoid for fear of getting shot, and the rescue I'd like to volunteer for is in Venice, which suggests a nightmarish afternoon cross-town commute from my paying gig downtown. I may have the option of getting involved with local politics, as the former mayor has asked me to meet her for coffee (nepotism, at its finest), but The Brother has warned me that gayborhood politics are notoriously insular. There's also a mentorship program I'm interested in that pairs up writers with at-risk teenage girls from the Eastside, but that doesn't start up again until the school year begins in September, and I really need to get myself going now.

Basically, I'm still searching for something that fits. Anyone got any brilliant ideas?

Plague II

2011-05-28T13:25:00.001-07:00

I'm still sick. Whatever virus this is, it's a good one. I look mostly human now, at least when dressed. My torso is still covered in a blotchy, now peeling rash, but as long as I'm clothed, you can't tell. I've covered up most of the snots too with Sudafed. I have absolutely no energy though. I feel winded just walking to my car.

Since it's a three-day weekend though, and since I don't want to feel like an ass losing the entire weekend to Netflix on the couch, I'm determined to ignore my ongoing bout with plague and get down to business. The business of the drinking kind. I feel like shit anyway, so a hangover won't be much extra trouble. Cheers, people. Happy Memorial Day Weekend!

Plague

2011-05-24T07:40:00.000-07:00

With all the stress of the last few weeks waiting for bar exam results, my immune system seems to have collapsed. Two days before results came out, I got a few spots that I dismissed as probably bug bites. I had headaches too, which I dismissed as hormonal. By the weekend, those spots had grown into a full out medieval rash across my chest, back, upper arms, and thighs. The rash is now scaly and peeling but still very much present, and now I've added a sore throat and ears to the mix. I expect to be snotting wildly by the end of the week. I finally decided to skip work today--both because I feel like hell and because it's probably not nice to knowingly inflict plague upon other people. I'm waiting now for my supervisor to get into work and find my email, and then I'm waiting for the coverage department to call me and either cover some of my caseload or tell me that they're booked solid and I'm up shitcreek. Then I'm going to pop Nyquil and sleep through the morning, at least long enough for my favorite sushi place to open and deliver me a big steaming bowl of udon. Now if only they would also deliver antibiotics...

Etiquette

2011-05-19T07:59:00.000-07:00

Last night, I somehow ended up at one of the gayest gay bars in gay town. I hadn't been there since high school and it was a little more get-a-room agressive than I remember it. My friend and I were pushing through the crowd and trying to find a table when a woman bumped into me. Right away, the woman said, "Sorry, baby," and then rubbed my shoulder and back. It wasn't a pat on the back. It wasn't a quick oops! tap to steady herself or me. It was a prolonged rub in a circular motion. I said something like "that's ok" and kept walking, but because of the tight crowd, it took me a few seconds to get away, and she used all of those seconds.

At the time, it wasn't a big deal, but I thought about it later and realized that if that woman had been a man, I would have been completely pissed off. I didn't invite that kind of touching. A strange guy touching me like that would have been borderline harassment. I get that at a bar people are going to try to pick up other people, but there are a whole lot of ways to hit on someone without touching them. Most straight guys know that they can't touch a woman they don't know until she's somehow indicated she wants that. Is there some kind of other rule for lesbians? Did all the lesbians get together at some point and vote for unabashed stranger groping?

Big Dog

2011-05-18T07:55:00.000-07:00

Happy 12th Birthday!

Apocalypse Now

2011-05-17T12:07:00.000-07:00

This is Ed Harris as John McCain. I feel betrayed. I feel used. I feel empty.

Cleanliness is Godliness

2011-05-16T21:56:00.000-07:00

I just found a local dry cleaners who will clean my suits for $6.50. After paying nearly $18 per suit near my parents' house, it feels like I've stumbled upon the miracle of miracles. I wear a suit every day to work, so in the long term, this will be a substantial savings.

Translation: for every suit I have cleaned, I earn $11.50 for booze.

Like Life

2011-05-15T06:14:00.000-07:00

The Grandmother is selling the beach house. The Brother and I helped her box up and move a few things. She gave us a lot of stuff too--dishes, glasses, some furniture, a lifetime supply of ziplock bags, wax paper, and tinfoil. The Brother and I also each took two potted cactus/succulent plants that the Grandmother had displayed around the master bathtub. We now have them displayed in our own bathrooms. A few days ago, I watered mine.

Yesterday, I found out that the plants are fakes. I did not find this out on my own. The Brother's highly paid decorator saw them in his bathroom and sounded the alarm immediately. I guess that's why she's highly paid. I guess we also now know why I had to take the bar exam twice--I'm the kind of idiot who waters fake plants.

Attorney At Last!

2011-05-13T22:10:00.001-07:00

I passed the CA bar! I get my life back. I get to move forward. I am very fucking happy, but for now I'm just going to stay in one place and keep drinking.

Working Girl

2011-04-21T07:47:00.001-07:00

My boss asked me to come in later and leave later (so I least appear to be working regular business hours). I'm now working a little more slowly, taking a leisurely lunch break, and chatting up the sheriffs who give me the early word on which celebrities are visiting which courtrooms when.

I suddenly feel like I have a whole chunk of time in the morning to myself. Eventually, I hope to use that time for writing. Unfortunately, I've been my own worst enemy this month and haven't written a thing. This morning though, I had time for coffee and an actual breakfast (cottage cheese and homemade salsa, natch), and browsed two newspapers before settling in with an old John G. Dunne novel that I love. If I can make this into real reading time, I'm pretty sure that the writing will come back too.

I'm now thinking that this shift in my schedule is a good thing. By coming home a little later, I'm less aimless through the long afternoon. The only problem is that lunches with The Grandmother will need to become happy hours with the Grandmother. Somehow, I don't think she'll mind the change.

Weekday Lunch

2011-04-06T06:05:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I left my government job at noon, flipped across town on three different freeways, and met the Grandmother for a boozy lunch at a Frenchie place with a beautiful outdoor patio and C-list celebrity sighting. The Grandmother espoused about the new season of Nurse Jackie, whom the Grandmother believes should, at minimum, get her eyes done. I talked about my latest attempt to find the right area rug for the living room. After lunch, despite two iced decafs, the Grandmother refused to use the bathroom because she was wearing jeans so tight that she needed to lie down on a bed to close them.

"Do you miss Boston?" the Grandmother wanted to know.

"Hahahhahahhahaha!#R#@#R#F@#@#!" In other words, no.

Moved

2011-03-26T07:45:00.000-07:00

I moved. To the, um, happiest part of LA. I love my new apartment. It's in walking distance of everything I need--a library, a Trader Joes, bars, my bank, the best pizza place outside of NY/NJ. The apartment building is quiet all the time, and the people are friendly and easy going. Traffic is absolute shit, but the courthouse folks let me make my own hours, and when I go to work at 6 a.m. and leave around lunch time, I can still get through even the most congested parts of the city.

The big thing now is furnishing my new place. I basically left Boston with nothing more than my clothes and my laptops. My mother convinced me that it's time to part ways with Ikea and buy adult furniture. So I splurged on a mid-century couch that I can't quite afford, and I'll probably be resigned to domestic booze for the foreseeable future so that I can pay for the coffee table. I swung the bookcases by foregoing cable TV. By the time I get to furnishing the bedroom, I'll probably have to whore myself out to a local bulldyke to pay off my Crate and Barrel bill.

Lockup

2011-03-14T18:51:00.001-07:00

A friend of a friend is getting me a backstage tour of the big criminal courthouse this week. Back hallways for judges and staff only, the lockup, the shank wall. I've been instructed not to wear a skirt or carry a purse. I need two forms of ID and must stay very close at all times--no wandering on this tour. I'm so fucking excited that I'll likely kiss my guide.

Dog Fight

2011-03-02T15:27:00.000-08:00

I came home from work to find that my medium dog kicked the shit out of my little dog. (The big dog continues to care less about both of them). The little dog has two puncture wounds on the top of his nose, a chunk missing under his chin, and another nasty puncture inside his mouth. He bled so much that the floor had to be mopped and his collar thrown into the wash. His face is now swollen up clown like and he hasn't gotten off my bed, even though I'm cooking downstairs right now.

We'd been lucky to have gone a while without a real scrapple, but this was a good one. With three male dogs, and all of them terriers, this kind of thing happens from time to time. We keep plenty of antibiotic creams and baby aspirins around the house.

So I guess the little dog will be getting soft scrambled eggs and ice cream for next few days because chewing appears painful. He'll also have a couple of new battle scars to talk about with the neighborhood pooches.

Egon Schiele, Frau In Rot

2011-03-01T20:01:00.000-08:00

Round Two, Day One

2011-02-22T18:20:00.000-08:00

The February CA Bar exam feels wildly different from July's. Simply put, no one's cocky the second time around, and in February there are no first timers.

Despite the stress and misery, people are oddly sympathetic. You're in a room full of thousands of people who truly understand the depths of your despair. That feels different from your friends and family, most of whom are supportive and kind but can't possibly get it unless they also failed the bar exam at some point.

I've run in to a lot of friends here. All of them are from top tier law schools. They've all been A students and overachievers their whole lives. It's fucking nuts really how the bar has arbitrarily decided that basically half of all people who take the exam aren't qualified to be lawyers. I'm already doing the work I'll continue to do once I pass the exam, and I read plenty of motions by virtual retards.

The guy sitting next to me is on his third try. The first time, his mother died during the second day and he basically tanked all of day three. The second time, he failed by 2 points. 2 fucking points out of 2000. I feel horrible for him. (I also have a huge crush on him, which is a problem because I actually stopped typing to check out his ass when he got up and walked to the bathroom).

Anyway, I don't know what it's like in other states, but people in CA are genuinely terrified. They know that 1 in every 2 people fails the exam. They know they could take it again and continue to fail, by 2 points. Strangely though, all that terror makes for some very nice people over 30 hours of hellishness.

Bar Exam, Round Two

2011-02-18T11:52:00.000-08:00

I'm out of clean sweat pants, and all other related substitute pants (pajama pants, yoga pants, drawstring capris).

That means it's officially time to take the bar exam and get the fucker over with.

Like A Prayer (For the Bar Exam)

2011-02-07T17:55:00.000-08:00

Madonna is my Jesus.

There, I said it.

Top Ten Things That Piss Me Off Lately

2011-02-05T17:56:00.001-08:00

10. James Franco getting nominated for an Oscar.

9. Actresses whose faces no longer move (I'm talking about you, Jennifer Aniston).

8. Oprah's Own network, with a whole goddamn show just for Gail.

7. The fact that most judges are men, but most of their research attorneys are women (or occasionally, doughy boys with man boobs and a penchant for science fiction).

6. Anything involving Arizona.

5. Anything involving Texas.

4. Anything involving Florida. (seriously, why can't we get rid of these states?)

3. The DA throwing down new charges on Lohan while Charlie Sheen continues to enjoy cocaine by the briefcase.

2. Having to study for the bar exam again.

1. Getting to work at 6:30 a.m. only to find my parking space occupied by craft services for a fucking Chinese film crew.

Bar Exam, Round Two

2011-01-17T20:05:00.000-08:00

Here's how I know that studying for the bar exam again is killing me.

Tonight, after I finished studying, I had a couple of beers. Just a couple. Two. Exactly two. And then I couldn't find my way out of my own bra. Strangled myself in the straps and somehow pinned my arm to my neck.

The Job Report

2011-01-15T15:35:00.000-08:00

I can't talk much about my job. Most people who do something in the legal profession can't. And most of the work is so boring that you wouldn't want them to talk about it anyhow.

My work though is rarely boring. Sure, the law part may be stultifying, but the drama of nearly every case that comes before me makes up for it. I work in family law, and I can now say that soap operas don't come close to getting right the amount of drama in regular people's lives. I've gotten paternity cases with lists of potential baby daddies long enough to warrant an index. I've gotten eight-figure pre-nups, custody battles revolving around copious amounts of porn and the occasional threat of incest, judgments clouded by a shadow of bigamy or fraud or even Scientologist conspiracy. I've seen litigants so angry that their declarations devolve into expletive-ridden rants that would make Howard Stern blush. I've watched others shuffle into courtrooms barely able to speak, their bodies a map of bruises and wounds, their hearts plain tuckered out.

I know a lot of people hate family law for these very details. They think family law is too ugly and heated, that it brings out the worst in people even though they at one time probably loved each other.

That's exactly why I like it. There's something almost primal about it. People reduced to anger and hurt, their rawest parts. People who have forgotten to pretend that they're not selfish.

As a writer who needed a day job, I pretty much hit the jackpot.

Breakfast

2010-12-19T08:02:00.001-08:00

Sweet potato hash brown & scrambled egg breakfast tacos.

It's good to be home in LA.

Kiddo

2010-12-16T05:33:00.001-08:00

One of my judges calls me Kiddo.

I'm 31.

I love him.

Also

2010-12-05T19:05:00.000-08:00

Mash potato quesadillas. Think of them as holiday cousins of the potato taco. So far, I've made them with cheddar and jack cheese, diced red onion, pequillo peppers, and pickled jalepenos. But I think they still need a little more crunch for contrast. I'm thinking about trying them fajita style with grilled onions and bell peppers. Or maybe doing a vegetarian nod with sliced carrots and broccoli. Ideas, people?

Three Words

2010-12-01T18:39:00.000-08:00

mash potato omelet

It's why leftovers were invented.

Lucky 13

2010-11-23T16:59:00.000-08:00

I failed the bar by 13 points. Out of 2000.

Failing The Bar

2010-11-20T08:07:00.001-08:00

I did not pass the CA bar. I can't even begin to explain how awful this is. It's not just the emotional crater of this kind of news. It's the hard, ugly reality: I can't practice without a license, I could lose my job at any moment (especially with Jerry Brown coming into office and promising to make budget cuts on the judiciary), I can't return to teaching because I just resigned from my spring classes when I accepted this clerkship, I don't know how to study any smarter than I already did, I don't know how to study 12 hours a day when working 12 hours a day, I can't move now or have a life because everything is on hold until I have a license.

My mother slept in my bed with me last night. It's that bad.

Job.

2010-11-11T07:10:00.000-08:00

I got the job. I got the call last week but I've been waiting around the last couple of days for the security clearance to be processed. It's processed now. I'm secure, I'm clear, I'm starting tomorrow. I've got a week's worth of suits, three weeks worth of blouses for said suits, and assorted semi-comfortable dress footwear. Of course, I can't really blog about the job, but I can tell you it comes with full medical and dental benefits, plus a pension. That's really the main thing anyway, right?

Interview 2

2010-11-02T16:45:00.000-07:00

Well, my interview went fine. In true LA fashion though, when I walked out of the interview room into the hallway, I nearly bumped into Tommy Lee. Also in true LA fashion, no one cared about Tommy Lee. The cordoned off media area was completely empty.

Interview

2010-11-01T14:35:00.001-07:00

I have a job interview tomorrow. Over the weekend, I sprained my ankle and I still can't put weight on my foot. I think heels are out of the question, but I'm determined to at least wear decent flats with my suit, no matter how much it hurts. I also woke up this morning with the snots and a sore throat. I also have my period. If I can just walk into the interview room, not cough or snot on anyone, not keel over from the pharmaceutical cocktail I'll have taken to get me in the door, everything should be fine, right?

Zit

2010-10-15T07:47:00.001-07:00

I'm 31. I have a huge zit front and center on my face. Not a pimply breakout all over. Just the one zit. I had to run to Target just to buy Clearasil. I can't remember the last time I bought that shit. When does it end?

Steve Almond & The Female Ejaculate

2010-10-05T16:07:00.001-07:00

I'm reading a Steve Almond collection today. I've always liked his shorts. I should have known though that a story of his first published in Playboy would have a least one detail that would send my jaw dropping. My Life In Heavy Metal takes on the little-discussed topic of female ejaculation. There's enough detail both to keep the average Playboy reader's attention and to write a lecture for a gynecological seminar. I still don't know if I buy it though. A woman who gushes out enough liquid to make a two-foot stain on the bedspread? Can this really happen? Anyone know for sure (from...er, um...personal experience)?

Anus Flies

2010-10-03T14:19:00.000-07:00

I've lost the last few days to reading Susan Casey's books on rogue waves and white sharks. I can't seem to put the books down, though I've been sitting so much that my sciatica flared up. Casey's detail is fascinating, a glimpse into worlds I'll never get experience for myself. At times, the details are even funny, like when Casey, who is living on a boat anchored a few hundred feet off the Farallon islands, a known great white hotspot, talks about kelp flies: "their preferred habitat is the inside of a seal's anus. The anus flies spent their time in one of three ways: tormenting us, tormenting the poor seals who had to house them in such an inhospitable place, and copulating with abandon in giant fly gang-bangs. This morning I'd counted a vertical stack of thirteen flies. Swarms of anus flies would put a definite damper on sleeping outside."

I doubt that Casey or her publisher would have picked this snippet as an endorsement, but I promise you that both books (The Wave; The Devil's Teeth) are worth reading.

The Mother Report

2010-09-22T15:09:00.002-07:00

Two days post-op.

Two weeks post-op.

Drafting

2010-09-19T13:55:00.000-07:00

I'm writing a story about a Mexican tranny. It just feels right.

Fuck

2010-09-15T18:45:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, a half hour after my interview for today was confirmed, it was cancelled in a mass email to all applicants interviewing this week. I don't know what's happening now. It sounds like the state's lousy budget problems are rearing their ugly heads.

But I just bought three new suits, ten dress shirts, and a half dozen pair of Spanx. I need this fucking job to come through!

Job?

2010-09-13T18:57:00.000-07:00

Just got asked to do the final interview this week. If all goes well, I could have a real job by Monday!

Job?

2010-09-10T12:24:00.000-07:00

I passed the first round of interviews for the clerkship I want! Onward!

The Mother Report

2010-09-05T11:56:00.000-07:00

The Mother's broken ankle turned out to be broken in two places and nothing was aligned right. After two weeks in a cast, Doc took her in for surgery, broke up the healing bones again, pushed everything into an appropriate position, then pinned and plated the fractures. The Mother woke up moaning that the morphine was making her itchy. Then she replaced itchy with bitchy and went on telling everyone who walked in her room that morphine made her bitchy. No one corrected her. I think the entire nursing staff had given up on her after the surprising intake interview when, in response to a question about previous surgical procedures, The Mother announced that she'd had two hysterectomies.

That's when I told the nurse I had had three hysterectomies. I couldn't let The Mother be the only one having any fun.

Regression

2010-09-02T10:16:00.000-07:00

I'm teaching today for the first time in more than three years. I don't entirely remember what it is I used to do in a classroom, but I've got two three-hour classes to give today, so I better figure it out soon.

Job?

2010-09-01T15:10:00.001-07:00

Virg got an interview for a law clerk position. Cross your fingers that Virg doesn't blow it.

Belle Boggs, Mattaponi Queen

2010-08-28T12:07:00.001-07:00

Put down the remote and read this instead: Belle Boggs' story Homecoming.

Just trust me, ok?

More Proof That Jews Shouldn't River Raft

2010-08-27T15:14:00.000-07:00

My mother broke her ankle last weekend. She and my father had gone river rafting. The boat popped up, my mother popped up with it, the boat fell back down, my mother fell back down sitting on her left ankle.

I'm now more or less chained to the house while my mother lies in bed for the next few weeks. It's the opposite of fun.

The Grandmother Report

2010-08-17T09:27:00.001-07:00

"After you left last night, I threw up and felt much better. No more carafes for me."

The Father Report

2010-08-13T08:40:00.001-07:00

In addition to becoming a professional amateur products tester, my father is becoming a professional freebie diner. As long as they feed him, he'll sit through time-share promotions and pyramid scheme speeches. Yesterday, he went for dinner on some questionable investment company's dime at a fancy steakhouse that he and my mom generally love. The invitation stated that he was allowed to bring one guest who was over 55 and interested in investing. So my dad, in a moment of genius or spite (I'm guessing spite because he's too transparent for brilliance), invited his investment broker to join him. The investment broker is a guy our family has used for twenty years and he's the real deal--has nothing to do with these schemes my dad funnels his dinners through. But our investment broker was thrilled to be asked and seemed to be excited to join my dad. Surprisingly though, the company vetted the dinner guests, and a few hours before dinner, the company called to say that our investment broker wasn't eligible to attend. They were pissy about it too, as if a legitimate broker would really cramp their sheister style.

My dad then made my mother, who would rather pay for dinner than listen to every asshole's spiel, go with him. She came home grumpy and angry despite a full belly. My dad though, he just patted his stomach and said he'd "won." He figured that he and my mom ate nearly $200 of steak and sides off the regular menu. They never bought into a single investment scheme either. And they brought home leftovers. He likely did win something, but the way my mom keeps cursing about him today makes me wonder about the prize.

Do Brits Bathe?

2010-08-11T16:04:00.000-07:00

Anyone know what the standard bathing habits of the British are these days? We have house guests from Wimbledon. We've known them more than twenty years, and nine out of every ten times we see them, they positively stink. They come from a snobby family and go souvenir shopping on Rodeo, so their odor has nothing to do with poverty. By the time they got to us, they'd been traveling through California for two weeks already, and while traveling can be rough, I'm pretty sure The Four Seasons has showers. But these people seem to think that a monthly dip in the tub is enough to keep them smelling like roses.

Is this common behavior for Brits? I'm generally annoyed when I visit anywhere in England, but I don't remember all of the UK offending me with their body odor.

We've tried the subtle approach, but no one in our family seems to have the balls to say anything. My mother--in typical Jewish overkill--put out six bath towels for two people and then said the shema so that God might help. I went to great pains this morning to ask our guests what time they might be using the shower so that I could find fifteen minutes in the bathroom for my own shower later. They told me not to worry and to just go ahead.

I may have to accidentally turn the hose on them later.

Opie & Baldessari & The Grandmother Report

2010-08-11T09:29:00.000-07:00

The Grandmother, the Mother, and I all went to LACMA yesterday to see the new Cathy Opie exhibition and the John Baldessari retrospective. I'd already seen some of the Opie portraits of the high school football players and their towns, but I'd never seen more than a few pieces at a time. To see the body of work intact was awesome. I fell head over heels for a pair of game-time shots that were hung next to each other. One was from a high school in Hawaii while the other was from a high school in Staten Island. All the basics are the same--a football, football players, coaches, parents, bleachers, lines on the field--but the landscapes are starkly different. And it was as if each shot were telling a familiar, almost ritualistic, narrative: this is how to become a man, to enter into and become part of a community. This is expectation, and pride, and ambition. Of course I loved the portraits too, especially those of young men who seemed least likely to become football players—the scrawny ones, the slightly feminine, the ones with fear in their eyes.

The Baldessari was awesome too, mostly because the entire second floor of the Broad building was devoted to the show, which spanned each decade of Baldessari's work. You could get a sense of how his work developed over time, and his extraordinary, indelible playfulness. I'm partial to his stuff from the 80s and 90s, the photographs thrown up in collages and plastered over with blocks of color that obfuscate and willfully distort the most essential parts of the narratives.
We finished the day with lunch at the museum restaurant. Despite the bottle of champagne we ordered, The Grandmother couldn't disguise her sadness. She'd kept it together all day, but cried through dessert. There's no way to escape this new narrative that survives in The Grandfather's place. We carry him forward, with us all the time, and that is both blessing and curse, a new way to stoke the old loss again and again.

To Jew or Not To Jew

2010-08-06T10:29:00.000-07:00

My parents' temple went belly up a little while back. The rabbi and a few dozen members of the congregation are trying to resurrect the thing from scratch. For now, services and meetings are held at the rabbi's house or in a rented elementary school classroom. My parents have become very involved and are now board members. We have a torah lying on our living room couch.

Until recently, I thought that my parents' involvement was a fairly good thing. It gives them something to do and a community of people with which to do it. I was ready to help with fundraising and some organizational details. My dad even offered to hire me to write their press releases, providing he could get board approval.

Then I found out that my parents' rabbi refuses to marry gay people. He will continue to refuse to marry gay people regardless of what the courts do with Prop 8. I find this shameful and hurtful and downright bigoted. I will not help the temple with a goddamn thing, and I would like my parents to join a different congregation.

My mom and I had it out this morning. I cried even. I can't imagine how she can sit and rationalize supporting an organization that openly disdains her own son. She somehow compartmentalizes things, saying she doesn't agree with the rabbi on this matter and several others, but that life is not simple and she needs a place to pray. But I truly believe that her willingness to normalize this kind of prejudice is exactly what ensures that gays remain a second-class citizenry. And I am tired of hearing the argument that people are entitled to their own beliefs. No one is "entitled" to subjugate an entire people just because they think those people are icky.

If I met a nice Jewish boy tomorrow, my parents' rabbi would marry me. I have never been religious, never attended Hebrew school, and never was bar mitzvahed. My brother, however, was bar mitzvahed by this very rabbi. That he could not come back to this rabbi fifteen years later to be married by him sickens me. I always thought that the goal of religion was to provide a sense of community. How the fuck can these people justify such open disenfranchisement?

Homefront

2010-08-02T08:26:00.002-07:00

Because I don't have a legal job yet, I moved back home with my parents. This morning I woke up to find my mother sitting bleary eyed at her computer in her pajamas. She didn't have her glasses on and there wasn't a coffee cup in sight. But she was watching video clips about an orangutan that lives with a hound dog, and she couldn't be torn away from the screen. I realized that if my mother belonged to some other child, I would totally peg her for a certified nutjob.

My father, who also makes a substantial case for certifiable nutjob, is becoming something of a professional amateur products tester. A few years ago, he began test driving cars for dealers who paid him in donuts and a few hundred bucks for the day. He'd drive around their lots and fill out surveys. They apparently liked his work because they recently started to send him home with cars. For a while, he was driving a different car every week. Then he'd go back to the dealerships and sit on panels and tell them everything he didn't like about their cars. My dad's a Bronx-born Jew who wouldn't know how to shut his mouth if a Palestinian held a gun to his head. He says the dealers like him because he's honest. He'll never tell anyone what they want to hear unless he means it.

Now the dealerships have farmed him out for other products tests. In the last few months, he's been on test panels for river cruise vacations and various home-remodeling efforts, including something called invisible screens. My father's still not sure what an invisible screen is, but he was happy to test for them because they fed him a a full breakfast with eggs and bacon. He takes up every test and survey offered to him and gets visibly upset if he doesn't fit the test profile and is rejected. If need be, he's prepared to tell people that he's a 35 year-old black man or at 73 year-old housewife. Anything so long as he can continue testing.

Anyone want to take bets on how long I'll last in this house without becoming certifiable myself? The only thing I've got going for me is that the house is stocked with booze. I can usually weather anything with bourbon.

Survived The Bar Exam

2010-07-30T18:48:00.002-07:00

Well, it's done. (Hopefully.)

I don't quite know what to do with myself now that I don't have to be strapped to my barbri books for 12 hours each day. I'd like to get back to my own writing, but my head's too much in exam mode. I need to go on a steady reading workout so that the rhythm of sentences and storytelling comes resurfaces. My problem right now is that I honestly can't find things I want to read. I tried a half a dozen different authors today--new ones and some old favorites--but nothing was catching.