Translate

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Nonnie, Donald, Drago, and Glee

Nonnie, Donald, Drago, and Glee

Yes, well, I am, after all a blogger, so I’m meant to have something to say about Donald Trump, I suppose.                              Nope. Don’t have a thing.  Wait! I know.  I can say he’s a fidiot. That’s a word I learned today. See, you take the “f” from f#$%ing with idiot and voilá,  Fidiot.  I google “slang” and get a new word every day. Once I settle on one, I put it up in my “private office,” at Zoetrope Virtual Studio, so other writer friends who might be a bit behind in their slang can learn it too. Zoetrope has a Writer’s building, and I’ve been hanging out there since 2004. It used to be a jumping place, but now, what with Facebook and all, there isn’t as much going on. Still, I’ve learned a lot there, and it doesn’t scare me like FB does. I don’t deal well with millions of this or that. Doesn’t matter what really-I don’t want stuff, even friends, well, especially not friends, in the millions. Way too many. Funny to think when I was a kid I dreamed of being famous.  I wanted to dance with Fred Astaire. Like all kids, I was confused about the timing. I mean he was grown-up and in the movies and I was six. How was that going to work out? Practical considerations do factor in daydreams when you’re six or so, but not so’d you’d notice. Donald Trump is like a six-year-old.  A six-year-old fidiot.

But, jeeze louise, why are so many of us giving him so much attention? He keeps acting-out, and we keep paying attention to him. See, I used to teach emotionally disturbed kids, and I knew, and practiced, the basics of behavior modification and a biggie was the first problem-solving step: Ignore Misbehavior. We should try that with him. That’s what I do about Palien, and so does the rest of my family. Others, too. In fact, happily, I’ve seen a distinct fading of her star-power. I don’t know if it will work with the Trumpet, though. It seems to me he’s been getting way too much attention for most of my adult life. And I’m old.

That should do it. I've blogged about Trump.

Tuesday night. Drago, my brother who I live with in case you don’t know, just asked me if there was anything on TV and I told him Glee.  He said he wasn’t gay enough for Glee with one of those airy hand swirls he does when he’s acting gay. I mean he is gay, but he can be especially funny when he acts gay.  I seem to be using a lot of italics tonight. Maybe by the time 2012 gets here, we will all be writing everything in italics. We’re already e-mailing each other in dashes and exclamation points. Pretty much.



Monday, April 18, 2011

I've been wanting to write this...

 
April 18th was my brother Ric's birthday. He somehow managed 53 of them, before his, his what?-alcoholism, mental illness, poverty, loneliness, shame-killed him in August of 2008. The medical examiner found blood in his brain and blamed his death on a "brain bleed.” He ran out of gas a block from his trailer, and fell when he got out of his car. We know this because someone in his neighborhood saw him get up and limp to his place. I don't want to call it his home. Crash pad will do.

A cop I called opened the door, because we hadn't heard from him in weeks, because we were pretty sure he was on another binge, because I couldn't stand waiting and not knowing. Once the cop and I got inside, I only got a glimpse of my brother before broad shoulders blocked me from going any closer. He'd been dead a day before we found him. I called my brother Drago, and he and our neighbor Ben came right away. Drago stayed for the coroner and all that followed that day. Ben drove me home, because no one thought I should drive.

Ric’s life had been full once; a wife, two kids, a renovated Victorian on a quiet street only a few blocks from the bay.
Ric had a day job that he was good at that paid the bills, and nights he played drums. The best drummer in the Panhandle, they said. All the music people around here knew him. A lot of people loved him, too, because he was easy-going, funny, liked almost everybody. His hair turned gray early and he wore it in a long pony-tail. Tall, lanky, always in a t-shirt or layered up with flannel if the calendar said it was winter, he looked like a rocker, but not fierce-kind. He sang, too, but drums were his thing.

It took about fifteen years before alcohol stripped everything, even music,(the shakes) away. I don't know how he lasted that long. Blackouts, fights, hellish weeks of sobering up and making a stab at normal life, and eventually, another binge. About a month before he died, he got himself together and spent a weekend in Pensacola with his daughter and grand-daughter. The visit was good and I was so glad he'd been able to do that. I think he was ashamed, though, that he'd had to take a bus-six hours each way. A car would have gotten him back and forth in two.
Of course, by then shame was a constant, unless he was drunk enough to pass out.

During our twenties, Ric and I lived in Albuquerque. For a year or so we shared an adobe place in Old Town. My favorite thing was to go to "Okies," on Rt.66, when Ric's band was playing. I'd usually drink too much and my brother and his wife would make sure I got home okay, because neither one of them were in to getting smashed. God, or something-I sure as hell don't know-brought me to a time when I couldn't keep going with Johnny Walker Red and I quit drinking. That was almost thirty years ago for me, but my little brother never could stay stopped and I don't think he minded dying a bit. Ric's okay now. Peaceful, looking out for the rest of us, telling jokes, playing drums, himself again.

Monday, April 11, 2011

Nonnie's Cleavage

Cleavage

When I was four I decided I would become a ballerina, started on this project right away, and at seven finally got to start lessons. By the time I was a teenager, a career in dance seemed possible. What I lacked in technique, I made up for in enthusiasm. I was disappointed that I stopped growing at a little over 5’2” tall, and in keeping with almost all dancers, I was, well, flat.

Think about it. How many dancers have you seen with lush, sexy, breasts? How often do you see a ballerina’s boobs bouncing as she leaps, lands, or does fast fancy footwork? When she spins, do you see floppy flesh whipping around as she goes? The torso is a ballet or modern dancer’s center of strength, and there isn’t much chance of developing the soft tissue that fills womanly cup sizes. When I danced, I was glad of my shape, because my “line” was not marred by big bumpy boobs.

Ballet company directors were demanding that all their dancers have long limbs and tiny heads. I was short, and my head was a normal size, so I took off my point shoes, and in bare feet, focused on modern dance. My breasts stayed small and when naked with the current love of my life, or dressed in anything but my dance clothes, I wished I could look more voluptuous.

My dance career ended abruptly at thirty when I tore my Achilles tendon during a performance. Until then I had assumed that I would beat the odds and join the few who continue to perform despite pesky aging. Life is often unfair, etc., etc., but at least, if I couldn’t dance, I expected an increase in cup size. This was not to be. I lost weight. All through my thirties, I was skinny, everywhere.

I got married in a size six dress when I was forty-one, moved into an eight around forty-five and started buying medium, sometimes large, tops somewhere between forty-five and fifty. The change in my body happened when my attention was elsewhere, and I was slow to realize that my water weight was not watery weight at all; it was solid.

But! I'd acquired full breasts. I bought a few low-cut tops that looked like low-cut tops on me, because for the first time in my life, I had cleavage. Forgive me, sisters, but I loved it when men looked at my chest instead of my face! Spandex bathing suits came on the scene, and I bought a chocolate-brown number that squeezed all the stuff I wasn’t so happy about in, and allowed a good deal of mammary to push out.

The politically incorrect pleasure I took when I garnered below chin level stares was short-lived. At fifty-one, with almost no warning, I needed open-heart surgery. They sawed through my ribs, stopped my heart and attached it to a pump, and put me on a respirator while they fixed me up. The good-looking surgeons who came to see me later deemed the operation a success. It wasn’t until I came out of the morphine-induced fog I’d been in that I realized I might have died. Just before I was discharged from the hospital, the nurse disconnected my pee tube, and I walked to the bathroom all by myself.

“Oh, God!” I cried.
“What is it, are you all right?” asked the nurse as she rushed to the open door of the tiny room.
“My cleavage!” I sobbed. Staring at me from the mirror was a scary woman who looked like she belonged in a coffin, and there was a long, thick, red, ugly scar that started below her collarbone and snaked its way down between her breasts.

For a year the scar hurt like hell, and the damn thing even developed its own bumps. And though I had forever lost the chance of dazzling with my dĂ©colletage, I still had the unwanted weight on all my body parts except my ears. They hadn’t changed.


My brother Drago, my housemate, (divorce is a whole other blog, at least) thinks I look nice, but he's too loyal for his opinion of my figure to weigh heavily with me. (If there's a pun there, it isn't intentional. I can't pun intentionally. Never could.) The scar was finally fading by 2009 when another handsome cardiac surgeon (they are probably all handsome. Dunno.) saved my life again with open-heart surgery. And on to how I look today: not fat, not thin, big boobs, goodish legs, dressed in turtlenecks. As Tony Soprano would say, "Whayagonnado?"

Tuesday, April 05, 2011

The Dice are Not to Blame



Ted swam far from shore with a bar of lead.
He loved it, you see, until he drowned dead.
Mick had a trick of giving his money
to heartless bosoms that called him honey.
Sharon kept caring for drinkers and dopers
gamblers and cheaters and whiners and mopers.
Benny saw double and never could tell
which one had substance and which was a shell.
Mick, Benny, Sharon, and poor dead Ted
had luck that sucked they frequently said.
I didn’t agree and suggested instead
that they didn’t have to sink; they could listen to me,
and let go of their lead when they swim in the sea.