When Playboy asked you whether black women “throw themselves” at you, you said:
“I don’t think I open myself to it. My dick is sort of like a white supremacist. I’ve got a Benetton heart and a fuckin’ David Duke cock. I’m going to start dating separately from my dick.”
Well, jeeze. This is awkward but…dude! You said that—among many other inane things— OUT LOUD. To a reporter. And anyway, do you really think your racist dick is the reason black women don’t dig you?
The Benetton folks must be cringing.
Honey, you are an affront to frat boys everywhere and that’s a damn near impossible feat. You are not smart. You are not cute. You are not deep. You are not intellectual or witty or cool or hip or dope or fly or whatever it is you fancy yourself to be. You have a small, small, small brain and a very big mouth. You are a self-important asshat raised to the 11th power, quadrupled by dickheadery, topped with three servings of phony and one heaping scoop of overcompensation.
Do humanity a favor, John Mayer, and please stop talking. Just shut the fuck up and go far away. Make that annual Mayercraft Cruise of yours permanent. Put on your Gopher-from-The-Love-Boat costume, set your vessel on starboard tack and make a bee line for an iceberg.
I was in the kitchen, setting out the frosting and the jimmies for the cupcakes Ruby and I had just put in the oven, when I heard a couple of heavy thuds come from the front hallway. It was pouring rain, Sam was away for the weekend and my heart had already exploded into a million shimmering pieces of glitter when my One and Only—after after cracking her fourth perfect egg into the batter—looked up at me and said, “I love girls weekend.” I couldn’t have been any happier.
There was another heavy clunk! and then, “Mama, helllllp!” I stepped out of the kitchen and looked toward the front hall closet. There was my kid, hanging onto the doorknob of the front door, her long spindly legs spread wide and sliding out from beneath her because she had found and was wearing my rollerskates.
She didn’t want to take them off and I wasn’t about to deter her from trying, so I showed her the necessary side-to-side motion by gliding across the floor in my slippers. And other than letting me tip-toe behind her while she made her way around the couch two times, she was fairly explicit in her instructions when I tried to help her. “No, Mama! I can do it!”
She carried on like this on and off throughout the weekend, my big girl in my too-big-for-her skates, until I decided our Sunday expedition for Valentine’s Day cards, would include a trip to the Sports Chalet, where I bought my girl the very last pair of purple, pink and white skates they had in stock. The uninhibited joy she expressed as she tested her new wheels in the store is what makes parenting so totally awesome and instantly vaporizes the anguish of those many years of sleepless nights. And if that wasn’t quite enough, the child further transformed the glitter of my heart into a fine sparkling dust when she skated across the carpet like a foal trying to walk for the first time, lifted the bottom of my shirt and kissed me on my belly. It’s impossible not to be schmaltzy about it.
If you look closely, just beyond the wrist guards, you will see me wrapped around her little finger.
(Originally published at The Women’s Colony on Tuesday February 2, 2010.)
I had dinner and drinks last night with two friends from my adoption group. One of them has three adopted children. Her eldest, a 7-year-old son, is from Haiti. My friend went there to meet him when he was ten days old. She lived there for 100 days, as is the requirement of all adoptive parents. She and her husband stayed at the Hotel Montana, a place she will never be able to revisit because, like most of the buildings in Port-Au-Prince, it was flattened in the January 12th earthquake. Her son’s homeland is demolished, his people suffer more than they did when he left there and what remains is part of his story. The anguish this tragedy has caused my friend and her family cannot be understated.
Not surprisingly, the number of orphaned Haitian children has spiked exponentially, with parents going so far as to relinquish their kids to orphanages in the hopes that they might receive food, water and medical care. It’s a terrible problem, the solution to which will require leadership, international cooperation, many open hearts and some innovative thinking.
However.
An overflow of “orphans” does not mean there is a giant green light in the sky giving the go-ahead to any Tom, Dick or Job who fancy themselves in God’s image, to swoop in and label children with name tags, tell them they’re going to Disneyland and secret them off to be raised up right. Even if they were “just trying to do the right thing,” as their spokeswoman initially claimed. And even though they have since admitted they knew what they were doing was wrong. Does that bear repeating? Yes, I think it does, and in all caps, too:
This group of self-important crusaders—without adoption experience or proper paperwork or association with an orphanage or even knowledge of international charity—people who probably didn’t know two weeks ago whether Haiti was to the West or East of Boise, KNEW WHAT THEY WERE DOING WAS WRONG.
Another term for it would be “illegal.”
The now-jailed Americans are members of the Southern Baptist Convention, an organization “which has extensive humanitarian programs worldwide,” according to the Associated Press. Which begs the question: With the many “extensive humanitarian programs”—aka, bribery in the form of salvation in exchange for acceptance of a Western view of God but let’s not split hairs—wasn’t there a more appropriate and organized outlet for these nice folks from Idaho to display their do-goodery?
Something tells me they didn’t need to airlift themselves to Haiti to find what they were looking for. Like Dorothy, they could have gone into their ownbackyard if they wantedto beheroes. I suppose it does help one’s image as The Great White Hope if you’re saving impovershed black kids, as opposed to white ones. Memo to the Renegade Ten:Though perhaps not in the potato state, there are plenty of the former in the foster care system right here in the U.S. of A. In fact, they wait approximately 9 months longer for a placement than their white counterparts. Sure, 9 months is a longer wait than a flight to Haiti. But hopefully, it will be less time than the sentence you receive.
These selfish, presumptuous people, who knowingly engaged in child trafficking, have put unnecessary stress on the decimated Haitian judicial system and will end up doing the same here in the U.S., where they will likely be prosecuted. They hurt proper adoption practices in Haiti, which are currently stalled. They are taxing the relief efforts of organizations on the ground, since now they need to be housed and fed and looked after, which is to say nothing about the one who has required medical attention. And now their lawyer has the balls to say they’re being treated poorly, that “[t]here is no air conditioning, no electricity. It is very disturbing.”
Disturbing about covers it. I feel really sorry for their plight. They must be suffering so.
Like a timeout for a toddler, they should sit in that jail cell until rainy season so they can contemplate the nature of what they did in their Lord’s name.. They should be left to feel a little bit hungry as they think about the entitlement which led them to believe that rules and laws and formalities and bureaucracies don’t apply to them. Then they should be brought home, prosecuted and sent a bill for expenses.
Who wants to place bets they get off with time served and glowing interviews on all the morning shows?
I am not a homemaker. I have three or four recipes I can cook and proudly stake claim to (I’ll put my chicken pot-pie in a blindfolded taste test any day of the week), but in general, I’m a hurricane in the kitchen. Ditto in the laundry room. Yes, I manage to get things agitating without soap bubbles pouring from the closed lid, but inevitably there’s a tinted lip balm in a pocket or a new red shirt mingling with the whites. The same goes for sewing. The simple task of replacing a button brings out the OCD in me: There aren’t enough knots in the universe to hold that sucker in place and so I keep tying them, one after another after another, knots lining up like an endless string of ben wa balls, unable to stop myself until the button disappears beneath a big clump of thread.
I thank my mother for my domestic ineptitude. It is she—the Queen of Beige Food, the one who boasts of her culinary ability to prepare all things pasty and grey—who once forgot to add sugar to Baked Alaska.
In her defense, she was probably high when baking it, so despite the sour look on her guest’s faces that night, she’d had a good time in the kitchen and eventually, after the initial horror wore off, a good laugh. Still. Baking-while-stoned only further serves as a reminder of the old apple-and-tree cliché, a fact I’m intent on defying as I’ve made it my purpose in life to break the mold.
And so it goes that a couple weeks ago, while under the influence of Vicodin following a little abdominal surgery, I decided the time had come to hem the curtains on the French doors in my bedroom. I’d purchased them at Ikea and go figure, they were three feet too long. Damn those Swedes and their extra-tall doorways.
Not to fear. I asked a talented seamstress friend, who makes fabulously stylish Mad Men-era clothes for herself and her daughters, if she would hem them for me and then never got around to bringing the fabric to her house. Which is aaaaall the way across the street. Instead, my mother-in-law pinned the curtains during one of her visits and that is how they stayed, no one the wiser, for five years, six months, three weeks and four days. I am lazy. And pathetic.
To offer some perspective on my state of mind at the time of the “hemming,” I had been unable to pee without immense effort for two days. Were you to have peeked through the bathroom window during this time, you’d have seen a very disheveled me, sitting on the toilet with my laptop open to this:
I was drugged and delirious and fighting tooth and nail to avoid catheterization. I was dribbling urine after hours of concentrating on Niagra Falls and then lying sleepless in bed—bladder full—on top of Ruby’s special potty-training mattress pad just in case my urethra came to in the middle of the night. I actually hoped to wet the bed. Isn’t that sexy? This was new turf for my relationship. Suffice it to say, being bedridden did not suit my mental health. I had no business using scissors. But enough excuses.
I’d been staring at those curtains from my bed for three days and the more I stared, the more I began to resent them. Their imperfect existence was a reminder of my domestic shortcomings. They were unfinished and they needed to not be unfinished immediately.
How hard can it be? I thought. By following the hem line, I can cut them to the proper length with just enough fabric left over for a little break. Any caveman can do that!
I shuffled to the kitchen, grabbed the scissors and shuffled back to the bedroom where I knelt at the curtains, careful not to bust the stitches in my bellybutton. I lined the scissors up and I cut. Slowly, at first, but then I picked up speed as I cut and cut and cut. It was cathartic in a nobody-gets-hurt, NO! MORE! WIRE! HANGERS! kind of way. I may have grunted. I was a caveman. I was Wilma Flintstone.
Feb. 15 marks the last day that parents of children going into or already enrolled in the San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) can apply for “school choice.” If you’re not a parent, you probably think this column doesn’t apply to you. But please. Don’t skip over to the medicinal-marijuana ads just yet. There’s valuable information for you in the next nine paragraphs, namely: Don’t have kids. Not that kids aren’t great; they totally are—especially if you raise them right, with plenty of pleases and thank-yous, baths and broccoli and lots of Yo Gabba Gabba! (As an aside: Most people don’t raise their kids right and you will have to deal with these insufferable nincompoops on a daily basis. It’s painful.)
So where was I? Oh yeah. Getting your kid into school.
Navigating entry into the public-school system makes that first horrendous year of incessant crying, sleepless nights and crap-filled diapers seem as fun and carefree as the days when you were single and doing lines off a bathroom counter-top at the Manchester Hyatt during the staff Christmas party. Make the most of your childfree lives, people. It’s a tad different over here on this side.
Here’s how the school thing works: Parents can send their kid to their neighborhood school like they did back in the 20th century. Or, they can look at other schools in the city that have a particular focus—say, immersion in another language or an emphasis in boondoggle—and list up to five of these schools on the “choice” application. Then you cross your fingers and kiss your elbow that Little Jackson’s number gets picked out of the giant lottery ball at the school district’s main office. All of this doesn’t include applications to charter schools, each of which has a separate form. Admission to these schools is equally as random (or so they say).
Although I’m not a hover parent or even one who is particularly organized—I missed my father-in-law’s birthday last year—I managed to overachieve in the school-application department and beat the deadline by months. And thanks to a Total Freak Out at the ominous news of pending school budget cuts, I turned my back on my philosophical stance and waded into the private-school-application waters. More specifically, Sam and I dove head first into the financial-aid tide pool for a private school. It was a paralyzing experience that went something like this:
How many boats do you own? 0
How many vacation homes do you own? 0
How many of your membership dues exceed $250 each month? Uh… 0.
Do you summer in Madrid or Gstaad? …
Do you prefer Dom or Krug to be served on your private jet? …
Do you own a coat, scarf or purse made by Burberry? Oh, God no. Hell no.
Jimmy Choo or Christian Louboutin? …Do knock-offs count?
Sam and I had started to feel pretty low and uncomfortably exposed. After four hours of scouring old tax records and seeing exactly how worthless we are on paper, I sucked down three old-fashioneds, including authentic maraschino cherries made by D.A. Kolodenko himself (take that, you high-falutin’, private-school-attending Cristal drinkers!). It was clear how far I’d wandered off the beaten path. These are not our people, I thought. And we are not worthless, even if a line-by-line audit says otherwise. We are poor! We are pagans! We are public school! And with that, I shredded our application. I’d like those four hours back, please.
Every day, I am asked by various friends or family members, “Do you know where Ruby will be going to kindergarten?” And I offer an abridged spiel with lots of gesticulation. Our first choice for her is a school whose proximity to our home is sort of like that of Russia to Alaska, but even closer, if you can imagine. It’s not a metaphor: We can actually see it from our front porch. Unfortunately, because it’s a magnet school, we’re beholden to the lottery and there is no greasing the wheel with charm and / or insider connections. I’ve watched other parents do some foot stomping, but that only serves to remind me not to hang out with them. Ever.
My personal feeling is that if I have to listen to the school’s alarm going off all weekend long, my child should automatically be given admission, in the same way that she is automatically admitted to our neighborhood school. Because that would be an actual choice, as opposed to the semi-sorta-pseudo choice currently offered. I politely mentioned this to a district staffer on the phone one day, when I’d called to verify that they received my faxed application. Not surprisingly, I heard only crickets on the other end of the line.
And so, like parents all over the city, we wait on the School Gods to bestow upon us the answer to the pressing question. If you’re a parent and you haven’t already done so, you might want to get your hustle on. You have just a week to make your list and then sit on your hands. And if you’re not a parent, and you made it this far, then, well. I’m guessing you really need to hit up that pot dispensary now, though you’ll likely have to get in line behind a few parents. And after you get home, I would highly suggest you seek out DJ Lance Rock for a little entertainment.
As I begin preparing to go on Euro Gallavant 2010—also known as Debt Fest 2.0.1.0, or Reinvent Yourself: The 21st Century Edition—I’ve been making contact with a few other writers with whom I’ll be sharing prosecco toasts and sunsets over the Amalfi Coast. I sure hope they’re not talkers, boy. I like my sunsets lonely and profound and weighted with deeper meaning. Sort of like J.D. Salinger. Ah, shoot. Who am I kidding? What’s a sunset without friends and a few tipsy oohs and ahhs and holy mother of Jesus can you believe we’re in fucking Positano?!?
One of the people I plan on spending some serious time with is this woman right over here. I spent several days perusing her blog and getting lost in her incredible interviews (especially this one), which are amazingly thoughtful, pitch-perfect-inquisitive and deserving of larger publication. All I can say is that the screenwriters for Jerry Maguire couldn’t write a line cheesy enough for the occasion of meeting Sariah in person.
Without a script, I’ve decided my best bet is to play it cool. Not like Danny Zuko impress-my-friends cool. But more like a don’t-fawn-or-try-to-touch-her-hair cool. The way I figure it, if I don’t knock her over and hump her leg on day one, that will be West Side Story cool.
But I’ve strayed now from my original intention, which was to borrow the questionnaire part of Sariah’s interview. Because it’s so damn cool. As in, The Birth of:
What are your necessities?…Love; kisses from my daughter, both landed and blown; sunglasses; CO Bigelow Mentha Tint lip gloss; heels of all kinds (stacked, stiletto, kitten, princess, wedge, what have you); booksbooksbooks; The New Yorker; On The Street with Bill Cunningham; the family bed on weekends; alone time; my Canon 40-D and 50mm lens; Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue, any Thelonious, Jimmy Smith, Gene Harris, Chet Baker, Ella Fizgerald…oh hell, all kinds of jazz that I couldn’t possibly live without, especially Cannonball Adderly’s and Bobby Timmons’ swingin’ masterpiece “Dis Here” set on repeat, cruising up the coast as a passenger in my husband’s classic Mini, windows down, volume at 11. Picture it…
Nothing smells better than. . .my daughter’s skin after a bath and her scalp after oiling; the space between my husband’s nose and upper lip after he shaves; early mornings in a canyon.
Nothing tastes better than. . .Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups/Trees/Eggs/Hearts with an ice cold glass of water.
Nothing feels better than . . .Hey, now…
I’d rather be…laughing and toasting with friends on my back patio during a summer evening, my home filled with people I adore, than doing just about anything else, especially faxing.
If you could live in any other epoch, which would it be? As far as fashion goes, the 20s or the 60s (ala Mad Men). Otherwise, this one seems to be working out well for me.
If you could jump into any painting, à la Mary Poppins, which would you choose?
“The Tree of Life,” c. 1909 by Gustav Klimt
What about you? What are your answers to Sariah’s pressing questions?
Next week is Staff Appreciation week at Ruby’s school and since everything seems to be about Ruby’s school these days, I thought I’d share this gem, sent to me by my friend The Lethal Weapon. You know who you are.
After attending a kindergarten forum last night, Sam and I headed to our favorite neighborhood bar for some decompression. Wasn’t it just last week that we were bringing a baby home from Chicago? How is it possible we’re getting her ready to go to school? And is that really a gray eyebrow growing in above my left eye?
My favorite bartender took one look at me and whipped up my favorite cocktail, which I sipped as I plotted an uptick in naked dancing. There is going to be an exponential increase starting ASAP, before Ruby is old enough to be self-conscious.
Ruby had already buckled herself into her car seat when she realized she’d forgotten the drawings for her teacher. I ignored the urge to say, too bad, kid. We’re late. Chalk it up to a lesson learned about having your shit together. (God, how I love my fantasy life.) Instead I channeled June Cleaver, set my travel mug in the cup holder, dashed back into the house, grabbed the three sheets of paper she’d worked on with her dad and headed out the door.
Ten minutes later, Ruby was handing her pictures over to Miss Sarah. “This is a castle,” I heard her say. I was distracted by her little friend G. who was hurrying to peel away his shoes and socks so I could see how beautiful his pink toenails looked. “And this is Miss Carlee as a princess,” Ruby continued her parallel conversation. I told G. that Ruby’s dad likes to have his nails painted, too. “He likes purples and blues and greens and sometimes sparkles! How cool is that?” I asked him. His mother seemed embarrassed but also relieved at my reaction.
“Thanks for saying that,” she said.
“I’m not making this up,” I told her. “He’s artsy.”
Just then, I turned to see my daughter handing her teacher this:
Down there in the lower left quadrant? That is a naked person bending over with an asterisk for a butthole. Up above that guy are two formerly androgynous people drawn “without clothes!” per request of the child. Since Sam decided to make these two clowns G-rated—unlike the blue muscle man bending to pick up a dumbbell—she who is obsessed with all things penis, grabbed a sharpie and filled in the blanks. And then there’s the scary monster thing with hair made of lightning bolts, a squiggly smile and a Sonny Crockett 5 o’clock shadow. Notice the sharpied-on boxer shorts with the open fly. I’m not positive, but given the severe focus of conversation in our home lately, those are either tampon strings or urine running down his leg. Could just as easily be one as the other.
Of course, the upshot—I always like to find an upshot— is that the child is accurate and has some fairly impressive fine motor skills. But back to pre-school.
I saw the drawings and gasped. Then I stammered. So much for having my shit together. I hemmed and hawed and grabbed the paper with less subtlety than I would have liked. “I’ll just take this back home,” I said, withering. “Ruby’s in a phase…she asked Sam to do it and…um…well, we don’t do everything she asks…I mean…she did it.” I was selling out my man and my kid. I was losing credibility. I looked back and forth at the teacher and G.’s mother, apologizing, swearing that we do not normally sit around the house drawing wieners and sphincters. Princesses with giant breasts and “nibbles,” sure. But wieners and sphincters?
I had just come from Madalena’s and was driving to meet my husband for a late afternoon drink when I got picked up. Never mind that I had worked out that morning and was still in my gym clothes, marinating in my own grit and stink and general grossness derived from being packaged in Lycra for 8-plus hours. It wasn’t pretty. I was disgusting enough that I apologized repeatedly to Madelena as I lifted my arms so she could pin and stuff padding into my favorite strapless dress, but not so disgusting that I decided to postpone my alterations for another, more shower-filled day. Poor Madelena. Suffering the slings and arrows of dried gym sweat, all because I’m derelict when it comes to time management.
However evident my yuckness was to anyone within arms-length, the state of my filth was apparently well shielded by a) my car, b) my tinted windows, c) my over-sized sunglasses and d) my lip gloss. (Lip gloss has magic powers. Praise the lip gloss!) All I know is that I slowed, smiled and waved into my lane a car full of wild-haired, teen-ish boys at a two-way stop on Adams Avenue and suddenly, I was Eva Mendes.
On my best day I should hope to look so gross.
And so I found myself crawling along in single-lane traffic, behind a white Honda Civic filled with lanky kids of the male persuasion who probably weren’t old enough to vote in 2008. The driver, wearing Ray-Bans circa Risky Business—a movie he’s probably never heard of—kept checking on me in his side mirror. The two boys in back turned to face me, as excited to watch me follow as my friends’ small daughters, who make funny faces out the rear window of their father’s car whenever our families take our Minis for an afternoon drive. And the guy in the passenger seat poked first his head, then his arm, out his window, waving a cell phone, signaling me to call him. Which required a number, so he set the phone down and began slowly and methodically flashing a series of numbers with his long fingers. It was like the mating dance of some rare, exotic bird that was vaguely familiar and yet incredibly foreign. It didn’t matter that he was of a different species; I understood the language. He was thoughtful and precise, leaving enough time between digits for me to write them all down. Too bad I was DRIVING! Further evidence of an evolutionary gap.
My hands were on the wheel and I was smiling wide at this point. Chuckling, even, as the passenger twisted to flash an eight, a six, a nine. Oh, if they knew, I thought. If they only saw me close up. I imagined the surprise that would register in their eyes if we were to stand face-to-face, realizing their mistake and figuring out how best to get out of this uncomfortable situation. I contemplated what their conversation under such circumstances might be—surely involving several “DUUUde!”s— when I noticed the driver eyeballing me again in his mirror. I held his eye contact and pointed to myself slowly and methodically, making sure the line of communication was open. He adjusted his glasses, rested his elbow casually across the door and nodded at me. He was ready to receive.
I lifted my right hand off the steering wheel and pointed at myself one more time. He nodded: Got it, got it. He was sort of adorable, this man-child. The whole group of them was. But I had to have my say. I crossed my thumb over my open palm and held my arm straight out toward my windshield. I held it there until the boy in the mirror nodded again. Then, with my fingers touching my thumb, I made a perfect O.
The boy didn’t move. I laughed and repeated my message knowing I’d undercut myself; flashing my real age would have required both hands on my part and maybe a little too much work on his. He was using a mirror, after all. Plus there was that other hurdle of DRIVING A CAR with which we were both grappling. I conceded the six months because a one-handed “four” and “zero” were the safest route to the same destination. And anyway, at their age, what the hell’s the difference?
4-0 babe, I smiled. His eyebrows went up and that’s all I saw because I’d arrived at the bar where I’d be meeting my husband. I performed my award-worthy parallel park job, and looked up in time to see the boys disappear into the rain, their four mussed heads a silhouette against the gray day. It had been good while it lasted. It was silly but exciting, I admit this. And I was slightly more dirty when it was over.
