Armchair Physics

The scientific community was slow in embracing Katy’s Couch Theory.

To tell you the God’s honest truth, the theory did make much of an impact until around the middle of the twenty-first century. Scientists – even scientists who are physicists like the ones we were dealing with – have always been a notoriously stuffy crowd. They’re stuck in their ruts. They’re impervious to the smallest of changes. Real revolutions in thought are often beyond the capacity of their eggtastic noggins.

This holds true even when the theorizer in question is a scientist of some renown, armed with charts and graphs and laboratory results, with studies and journal articles, protractors and an army of vacantly nodding interns. But if the theorizer should happen to be a semi-literate, intermittently homeless ragamuffin without one iota of scientific training to her name, then, well…

Suffice it to say that the scientific community was slow in embracing Katy’s Couch Theory.

James Bond Gave You Herpes

This is the second entry in my blog series, “The Weird Girl’s Guide to (Not) Having Sex.”

I hope that you like it!

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On the television, sex is shorthand for emotional connection.

Five, ten minutes into an episode, boy meets girl. Now, there is no time for these two crazy kids to get to know one another. No, no. There’s much to do and only about forty-two minutes in which to do it!

So before we are even sure why, really, the boy and the girl are off and running. They are running away from the designated bad guy or they are running towards the designated bad guy. Or, if the writer of this television program is unusually clever, they are kind of alternating back and forth, first running from and then running towards the bad guy. Sometimes, maybe the boy or the girl – who, you will remember, have only just now met one another – even begin to wonder whether the person they are running with is in league with the person they are running from.

Suspense! Do not touch that dial.

But at some point – and I am estimating it will be roughly thirty minutes in – the thrill of the chase will overwhelm this boy and overwhelm this girl and practically force the two of them into each other’s arms. Passionately. This can only take one form: They will have to have sex.

This sex will occur on a queen-sized bed with white sheets. Maybe inside of a hotel room. A lamp atop a nightstand on the far side of the bed will be left on, so that you and I, from where we are sitting, well, we will see this boy and this girl in silhouette. And the boy will be on top of the girl and the bed sheet will be covering him all of the way up to the middle of his back.

The Weird Girl’s Guide to (Not) Having Sex, Part 1

This is the first in a planned series of blog posts I’m doing. More specifically, it is the first in a planned series of blog posts I’m doing about sex, or, rather, about no-sex.

This planned series of blog posts was inspired by a conversation at the Wisdom Exchange a few days back. The Wisdom Exchange is what we call our conversations over lunch at the place where I work. The conversation was about sex but this planned series of blog posts is about no-sex, even though the blog posts were inspired by the conversation.

I promise: This will get a whole lot simpler as we go along. On top of that, it will eventually involve dolphin rape.

Okay. At the Wisdom Exchange at work, we talk about all sorts of things, a full spectrum of peculiar topics, but the topic that nobody has been talking about – the topic that has been consciously and somewhat awkwardly avoided over all these weeks – is me and my recent breakup. I mean my recent breakup with Dana, Dana being the woman who is still legally my wife in at least a handful of American jurisdictions.

You have to understand: The Knowledge Exchange is fueled by knowledge in the same way that mosquitoes are fueled by blood. Everybody knows that if there’s a warm body just lying around near a swarm of live mosquitoes, sooner or later that body is going to get pricked. It’s just too tempting, and everything needs fuel. I’m not defending it; I’m just telling it like it is.

And so it was just the other day that somebody at the Wisdom Exchange finally tapped the untapped body of knowledge that, for a long month and a half, everyone had been pretending not to notice just lying there.

Oh, the knowledge, it was flying all around the table – helter skelter, hither and yon, twixt and tween the exchangers – when suddenly, up from out of the din, a lone voice sliced right through: “How ya holding up, Katy?”

Things got really quiet really fast. I noticed the silence but I pretended I did not. I said, “Better than expected.”

I paused, I thought some more, and I added, “The nights can be a little rough, but in general… Yeah, better than expected.”

This was the truth. At that moment, I could not think of a better answer, let alone a lie, let alone a reason to lie. So I went with the truth, even though I work at a law office.

“I can’t even imagine!”  said one of the exchangers. She was not the brave soul who had broached the topic a moment before. She was a septuagenarian and she spoke up and she sounded like she honestly could not imagine.

She said, “To have someone for sex, four or five times a week for all those years, and then suddenly, nothing? My God!”

A couple of exchangers nodded. Several others made sounds indicating agreement.

I thought, Four or five times a week?!  but I did not say it out loud. At least, I do not think I said it out loud.

The next exchanger to speak was our firm’s CPA, and this was her contribution to the discussion: “If I don’t get sex at least every three days, I cease to be able to add even simple numbers. My hands start shaking and my brain shuts down and I can’t do the math!”

I heard somebody mumble an incredulous “Really?”  to the CPA. It took me several moments to realize I had been the mumbler in question.  

“Oh, hell yes! I’d go cra-a-a-a-azy!” It was now the receptionist’s turn to pipe in. The receptionist, who had had her first child at the age of fifteen. Who had had her second child at the age of eighteen. Who, now at the ripe old age of twenty-three, had four kids and a brand-spanking new boyfriend waiting for her back at home.

The next person to speak up was IT Dude. Not just any IT dude, either, but THE IT dude. The three hundred pound, bald IT dude with the combination birthmark/mole/prickly rash thing taking up the entire left side of his face. The IT dude who is paying child support to – at last count – four different women, including a prostitute who he claims he didn’t realize was a prostitute at the time, despite having routinely paid her for sex.

“I-i-i-it… It’s j-j-j-j-j-just a biolo-lo-lo-logical fact!”  IT Dude declared. “B-b-biological fact! I-i-i-it’s exactly l-l-l-like b-b-breathing or eat-t-t-ting. Human b-be-be-bei-i… um, people require s-s-s-s-s-sex.”

Everybody else at the table looked positively riveted by the information IT Dude was exchanging.

Then it was Handsome Young Male Associate’s turn. “I was reading the other day about dolphins,”  he said, and he said it in that handsome-young-male-associate kind of way, where everybody believed him.

He said, “If young male dolphins don’t get sexed regularly, they snap. Just snap. They will rape anything around them: Other dolphins, human divers, turtles or rafts or whatever is convenient.”

He said, “If they continue not getting sexed, a bunch of male dolphins will form a gang and start murdering other animals for the hell of it, just to get out their aggression.”

More sounds of agreement from the Knowledge Exchange. “Been there!” somebody said. This appeared to be exactly the sort of useful knowledge that the Knowledge Exchange was craving.

Handsome Young Male Associate continued. “The life of a duck is completely sex-driven,” he said. “Ducks will even have sex with dead ducks, and rape is so common in the duck community that the females have evolved genitalia specifically designed to repel these frequent attacks.”

Then Handsome Young Male Associate sat back and victoriously tossed a grape into his mouth. “From the perspective of almost ANYWHERE in the animal kingdom, your current situation is unsustainable and potentially dangerous for you, Katy.”

I looked around the table, from face to face to face, from pockmarked visage to snot-covered mustache, and on every face, without exception, I could see sincere concern. The Knowledge Exchange was worried that this horrible no-sex of mine might kill me – or if not kill me, then it might lead to my killing them!

I said, “Are you heteros being for real here? Are you all fucking insane? Did I wander into an eighth grade boys’ locker room?”

At this outburst, everybody looked sad. They probably all assumed that the weight of no-sex was finally taking its toll.

I said, “It has not just been a month and a half since I’ve had sex. It has been ten months.”

There were audible gasps.

I held up my hand to them.

I said, “My hands aren’t shaking involuntarily.”

And I said, “I can still add numbers.”

And I said, “And I am most certainly not… raping… dolphins!”

I said to the Knowledge Exchange on that day, and I say to you now, that I am not a eunuch. I am not frigid. I am not a prude. I have no real moral objections to people having sex – even having sex for pleasure and fun and profit. Hell, I think I am called a “pervert”  or a “degenerate”  on an almost daily basis. 

But the conversation about sex that day at the Knowledge Exchange has inspired me to launch into this planned series of blog posts about no-sex because, well, because I did not understand then and I do not understand now the psychology behind that conversation. Because I need to think about it in some systematic fashion. Because these days, whenever I need to think about something, sooner or later that something is going to turn into a blog post… or two or three or maybe even four blog posts.

This is “The Weird Girl’s Guide to (Not) Having Sex,”  and things are just getting under way…

With any luck, this will get Not Safe for Work.

Katy Anders, Myth Buster

I found Tres Bocas today.

After all of these years! It has been right under my pierced nostrils all along.

And just like I have always suspected – as I have somehow always really known in my heart of hearts – Tres Bocas? Total sham, baby. Take my advice and do not waste any of your precious time on this one.

It was this afternoon and the weather was cool and I was walking down Travis Street when I heard them. I heard Tres Bocas, I mean. (NOTE: For those Canadians among you, “tres bocas”  means “three mouths”.)

I heard them and I knew. Immediately, I knew. How did I know? It must have been the echo or else it might have been the tone or maybe it was some ephemeral quality for which English has not developed a suitable word at all.

These are the voices which many cultures have heard and for which every culture has turned to some other language or other tongue when the time for naming has come. Sounds like these can’t be known by any designation ordinary as your mother tongue! No, you’ve gotta look elsewhere, turn to something more exotic… even if your mother tongue is otherwise pretty darn exotic in and of itself.

Will you look at this? My story has already gotten derailed somehow. Here I am, having already wasted years trying to find Tres Bocas and now it’s turned out to be an utter sham and I am not even going to salvage a decent story from it as a consolation prize.

To hell with it. Let’s keep moving.

This afternoon, then. The voices were coming from inside of a parking garage. You know, that one under the Houston Club, over there on Rusk? I tracked the voices to there – no easy feat in and of itself! – and I walked into the garage and I heard what sounded like three Eastern European polyphonic choirs singing… in unison.

This is what they were singing:

“DANIELLE!”

Tres Bocas
(Artist's Rendering)

At that same moment, a valet danced down a ramp right near me. He was a valet and he was old, but he was happy and he was dancing and he was, you know, snapping his fingers and what have you. Happy valet sorts of things.

I ran up to him. The valet looked surprised. He did not say anything, but his name tag read: “ARTHUR S.”

I said, “Arthur S.! What did those voices say?”

Arthur S. said, “What voices?”

I said, “The ones just now. You know: Three Eastern European polyphonic choirs singing in unison? Sang ‘DANIELLE’?”

Arthur S. said, “Oh! Those voices? They said ‘DANIELLE’.”

The conversation was going nowhere. But I was not to be discouraged. After all, I was used to conversations that went nowhere. I once lived with an attorney for eight years. I said this: “And who is Danielle, Arthur S.?”

And Arthur S., why, he sort of stopped and he thought real deep-like for a moment or two. Then he smiled again. He said, “Only Danielle I ever known was my high school sweetheart, Danielle Nicole Trotter. Why, she-”…

I was already off and running. I grabbed another random passing valet. This one did not dance, but he wore a name tag that read, “LEON R.”

I pulled Leon R. to the ramp and shoved him up it. “Go on up the ramp, Leon!”  I said, “Go up the ramp and we’ll hear what the voices say!”

Now, you might think if a stranger ran up to you screaming about voices and told you to run up a car ramp that you might be hesitant to do it. You’d be wrong, though, because people tend to do what they are told to do, no matter how crazy the order might seem.

Hey, you! Yes, YOU. Keep reading!

Anyway, Leon R. ran to the top of the ramp, and he’d no sooner set foot at the top when what sounded like three Eastern European polyphonic choirs sang out in unison. They sang this:

“CLEMENTINE!”

At this, I screamed. The substance of what I screamed escapes me just now, but whatever it was was probably not very important anyway. What I do remember is that I screamed, I jumped around a lot, and I hooted and I hollered and at the very second Leon R. got back down the ramp, I said, “My turn!”  and I ran up and…

And…

Well, maybe I do need to go back a little bit further, after all. I need to go back, on the off-chance that there are those among you who are not altogether familiar with the long and rich history of Tres Bocas. I assume it is possible that not everyone knows…

Beneficiary of a scam.

Of course, the first – and still the most celebrated – account of Tres Bocas in history comes to us from the historian Nicolaus of Damascus in approximately 42 B.C. Nicolaus writes of a strange trip embarked upon by then-Roman co-consul Mark Antony to Atlantis. Although some mainstream historians consider the story to be spurious, I believe that Mark Antony actually traveled to the Texas Gulf Coast, and here is why:

Nicolaus writes that while in Atlantis, Mark Antony came to a great swamp where there were many flying bloodsuckers (Houston? Houston?), and while in the very midst of this humidity and muck, Antony heard demon voices. Furthermore, Nicolaus reports that the demon voices sang this:

“CLEOPATRA!”

Upon hearing the demons, Mark Antony immediately returned to Tarsus and summoned his future lover, Cleopatra. Something is also mentioned of the relationship ending somewhat badly later on down the line.

Now jump forward a few centuries. Now farther. Jump forward to the story of Chief White Oak’s so-called Singing Crows. Forward, to Ponce de Leon’s swamp angels (which reportedly sing out, “¡JUANA DE LOS APOSTOLES COVADONGA CONTRERAS!”

Forward, to 1968, when a very young and very drunk George Walker Bush lies semi-conscious in the streets of downtown Houston and hears God shouting the mysterious phrase, “CONDOLEEZZA!”

According to the noted Bush biography, “I Really Tried Hard,” Bush at first believes the voice to be just another alcohol-induced hallucination. Only much later does he decide he’s misheard the voice. “I thought it said ‘Condoleezza’,”  Bush is reported as saying. “Only later on, I realized what it actually said was, ‘I want you to be President!’ Those two things sound a lot alike when you’re that drunk.”

Too late, Rosario Dawson discovers
her mistake.

Now jump forward again. Forward to 2009, when the National Enquirer reports that, on a short promotional trip to Houston, actress Rosario Dawson steps out of her car at an undisclosed Houston parking garage and hears voices singing, “KATY ANDERS!”

Tragically, Dawson dismisses the voices, making the awful, awful fate that befalls her in 2015 all the less surprising, frankly, in future retrospect…

These have been my leads. I have found historical account after historical account after historical account like this. Buckets of them. All of them virtually identical: Texas Gulf Coast. Tres Bocas. Singing out the name of your true love. Your inevitable soul mate. Light of your life.

I’ve just never known where to look. Where to listen.

But that all changed today.

It changed. First there were the voices, and then there was Arthur S., and then there was Leon R., and then I myself ran up that parking garage ramp to hear…

To hear…

“Dana,”  maybe?

“Rosario”?

How about “Bella”? There are tons of girls being named Bella these days, and that would give me a few years to grow up myself while my soul mate was somewhere out there, inching towards the age of consent.

“Beth Ann”?

“Regina Pastula de las Muertos y Cigarillos?”

But no. There was nothing.

Not a sound. I was in downtown Houston on a weekday and there was nothing to be heard but the notable LACK of any sound.

And the silence made me furious. The silence made me steam. I leapt up and down like Daffy Duck on steroids. I yelled things that I dare not repeat in mixed company. I showed the pavement both of my middle fingers while Arthur S. and Leon R., stared on, rather dumbfounded, I should think.

And it was only then that I heard it.

I heard laughter.

It started off a bit like Vincent Price at the end of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” if only Vincent Price had sounded more like three Eastern European polyphonic choirs singing in unison. But it kept building. 

Tres Bocas? They were laughing at me. At me!

So you see what I mean, right? Total sham, baby. Tell me: What kind of imbecile would I have to be to give any credence at all to the opinions of some random voices singing out of the ground in the middle of downtown Houston?

I tell you, Tres Bocas is a sham. A lie repeated once too often. This myth is busted. It’s like the Loch Ness Monster or Shangri-La or Ringo Starr or the G-spot. Just a child’s fairy tale.

Bastard Bocas…

Ask anybody out there. They’ll tell you the truth: Katy Anders is not going to die unloved and alone.

Hey... Are you sure you didn’t just hear somebody singing, “ROSARIO”? Really? Are you sure? Because I thought I did…

Esoterica for Everyone!

Sometimes I wish I had some sort of secret knowledge to share.

To share with the world, maybe, or maybe just to share with you. Probably just with you, actually, now that I think about it. You would be more than enough.