pantoum's diary

pantoum's Diaryland Diary

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CLEAVAGE

(No. 225 � Friday � 11 August 2005 � AM) Finally, the day I go to mountains to pick up Pottergrrl, and then head to South Cackylacky for my baby brother's wedding has arrived.

Lad, who is ten years younger than this bifocaled babe, is the brother I basically raised while my mother was institutionalized and I adore him beyond all reason. He was such a sweet little child with his mop of black curls and his sad, hopeful eyes�and always stopped to pick flowers to take to Mama, thinking this would somehow make her well, and he always showed up right as I was falling asleep to tap me on the shoulder and ask to sleep with me so his nightmares would stop.

He spent his childhood going to my friends� art openings; coloring pictures on the floor while I painted play sets; sitting on the floor during my drawing classes and coloring; going to poetry readings that explored subject matter that was way too mature for his young ears and taking it all in with a serious look on his face; listening to my musician friends curse and rehearse; sleeping on my lap while my pals and I sat around a campfire singing; sitting at the little plastic organ that I bought for him and Glittergrrl so they could learn to play music by following the numbers that I drew on the keys; climbing on red-clay cliffs that I took him and Glittergrrl to so we could get filthy and just be kids tumbling down hills; break dancing and skateboarding (both of which he learned how to do on his own); and listening to me trying to teach myself how to play guitar (which I sucked at back then, although my voice wasn�t half bad).

I used to worry that I�d scarred him for life by taking him to places where people were having adult conversations and sometimes losing their marbles�which my creative friends seem to do a lot, but they are good-hearted, creative people trying to live as authentically as they knpw how and he seems to have turned out okay. In fact, he�s a really cool adult.

So, in honor of his wedding, I have spent the last week going to malls (which I despise) and shopping (which I also despise, unless I�m buying plants or art), and have purchased, in no particular order, (1) a damn sexy, very low-cut black sleeveless cocktail dress because, well, I have good cleavage and might as well show it off and my muscular shoulders look good in it; (2) a pair of black lace-top thigh-high stockings; (3) a lacy black garter belt that I had to get at the sex store because Victoria�s Secret and Hecht�s and all those other places in the mall didn�t carry them (�We sometimes carry them in the winter,� the Victoria�s Secret clerk said helpfully, and I contemplated again the boring vanilla suburban sex their customers must have in their tacky hopeful polyester fuchsia teddies ...plus I refuse to wear pantyhose in August in the south, plus�let�s face it�garter belts are just plain sexy; (4) a pair of black lace, barely there panties, because the black bikinis that I typically wear just aren�t fancy enough for this particular garter belt; (5) new black dress shoes with a very sexy curved heel; (6) a gorgeous pair of earrings with a matching necklace, which I have since decided not to wear; and (7) a black pocketbook ... all of which I will don with a gorgeous, green, raw silk, nicely fitted jacket that I plan to take off as soon as we reach the reception.

Gasp! Did I say pocketbook? Yes, indeed I did, ye dykes of little faith. Nothing wrong with keeping everyone guessing, right? (And, hey, I clean up all right, look pretty good in a dress, actually�but still walk like a big ol� bull-dyke.)

I checked out the tit clamps in the sex store, but they only had the alligator clamp variety and I want the ones with sliding beads so that the woman who is making me writhe can increase the pressure oh so excruciatingly slowly.

Pottergrrl, who is, for the most part, a dress-wearing femme already, plans to wear gray silk slacks to the wedding, so this will be an interesting role reversal. Not that I�m into roles, mind you�I actually make it a point to defy them�but I nevertheless recognize that I am pretty dang butch by most people�s definitions and she is pretty dang femme by most people�s definitions.

I like playing around with expectations though, not letting anyone get to0 comfortable with their definition of me, because they always seem to then try to restrict me with their definitions.

So, as of 6:30 tonight, I am spending four long, luxurious (and I hope mostly sleepless) nights with Pottergrrl.

We return to mountains on Friday and gawd do I feel lucky: the beach, the salt marshes I love, Lucinda Williams, Pottergrrl, the mountains, and my favorite baby brother getting married to a fine woman he and all of us love�and all in one week.

I am one gawddamn fortunate woman!

This does means though that, after today, I won�t be back online till sometime Tuesday afternoon (unless Hurricane Irene washes us away. My brother�s wedding is on the Savannah River, after all, right up from the ocean. Whee! Hope we�re not driving in that.

So, here�s something to ponder. It�s a love note from Rob Breszny, care of his book PRONOIA:

Review in painstaking detail the history of your life, honoring every moment as if you were conducting a benevolent Judgment Day.
Forgive yourself of every mistake except one.
Create a royal crown for yourself out of a shower cap, rubber bands, and light bulbs.
Think of the last place on earth you'd ever want to visit, and visualize yourself having fun there.
Test to see if people are really listening to you by asserting that Karl Marx was one of the Marx Brothers.
Track down people who are impossible to love, and love them defiantly without expecting anything in return.
Steal lint from dryers in laundromats and use it to make animal sculptures for someone you admire.
Fantasize you're the child of divine parents who abandoned you when you were two days old, but who will soon be coming back to reunite with you.
Once a year, say these words into a mirror: "It's bad luck to be superstitious."

Well I already tested to see if people were listening to me back when I ran a cash register in a hospital cafeteria. People assume you�re brainless when you run a cash register in a hospital cafeteria though and rarely make eye contact, even in the south where everyone wants to know how your mama is doing.

I ran the register when I was living on my own in high school, and then when I was in college�worked in either the cafeteria or the kitchen or delivering trays to patients for seven long years, actually (operating on the theory that I would never starve so long as I worked in food service).

And I didn�t mind the work so much (although it was boring), but I did mind being invisible and the occasional people who would say some word to you, then go back and insert an easier one, assuming I could only handle monosyllabic conversation.

I learned quickly who was not even aware of my presence and, to those preoccupied doctors and nurses and X-ray technicians and physical-therapists and whatnot, I smiled and said �Fuck you very much� when I handed them their change.

And only one person�Miss (she preferred miss) Weeks, the head nurse, looked up and gave me a quizzical stare, so I said �thank you� like I was repeating myself, and smiled real big at her. I think she was on to me though, so I never said it to her again.

Hmm. I would �track down people who are impossible to love, and love them defiantly without expecting anything in return� but, hey, I did my time in that arena already. Yeah, maybe you learn there are some valuable aspects of even the prickliest bush, but at what cost to yourself?

Some of that other stuff is just silly, but I take his point. Have pondered the last place on earth I�d ever want to visit and am just not sure. Let�s assume, for the sake of argument, that it�s a real place and not, say, a spot where a stabbing has just occurred or an intersection where a fatal car accident just occurred. And let�s assume it�s present day, so I can�t choose, say, the gas chambers at Auschwitz right after a gassing or a Salvadorean ravine filled with the body parts of the disappeared. And let�s assume it�s not a fictitious place, like the bloody RR car in David Lynch�s creepy Twin Peaks, which still gives me nightmares (bloody RR car, killer climbing over the sofa, creepy tall man in creepy red room, that mechanized voice�all of those show up in my bad dreams sometimes). That bloody X-Files van in which the dentist�s son who walks on stilts lobotomizes beautiful women whom he decides are too precious to see the evils of this world, so he goes in through their eyeballs with Daddy�s dental instruments and takes it away from them�no, that place appears in way too many of my nightmares, but it�s not a real place either.

So let�s assume it has to be a present-day place that will be virtually the same tomorrow as it is today. So maybe my answer is a chicken plant I saw on 60 Minutes some time back where the baby chicks get squashed by this huge machine that looks like the dog-food maker in Wallace and Gromit.

Anyway...

I�m trying to think of the mistake for which I should not forgive myself. There are so many�making an entire building out of toothpicks in my architectural design class, then tripping and falling on it; not fucking Pamela B. when I had the chance (although whether or not we had sex is still open to debate); not talking to my mother in specifics the day I knew she was going to shoot herself; turning my back on the Ginger the day she probably would have come back to me because I just couldn�t do it any more (so, actually, maybe I have nothing to forgive myself for then, do I?); the first day I smoked a cigarette, back when I was ten and, gawdammit, didn�t turn green like all the other kids but liked it right from the start. Putting that retarded girl named Jeanette on the potter�s wheel in seventh-grade art class and spinning her around until she got dizzy just to be an ass.... I just don�t know. I�ve made so many bad choices that I'll have to think about this one longer.

�

Meanwhile, Coolio sent me BRAND NEW TEXT for her laid out ad this morning, so I had to rush and recreate it for her in an attempt to leave by noon. I�m only thirty minutes late, which should still give me enough time to go home, finish packing, run by the store for a couple of items, run by the LGBT film festival and drop off the chorus stuff, get some cash, fill up the car, and then be on the highway by 2 PM.