A Story of Faith

She was always a believer.

A believer in God, I mean. And not just in God as Mystery, or in God as a shared dream or a cosmic game of hide-and-seek with every one of us as its players. Not God as some non-spatial, non-linear connectivity wherein time is curved light or light is frozen time.

No, Dana was always a believer in THE God. THE very left-brained, very male God of Western history. The God who put everything-but-everything that anyone ever needed to know or ever could know about himself down inside the snug confines of a single book. The God who worried a great deal over specific things like where humans stuck their bits and pieces and how many cubits wide a temple ought to be.

Clear-cut. Simple. Well-defined.

Vagilante Justice

I would love to tell you, right at the top here, yeah, next year for me will be exotic and strange. That it will be filled with spaceships and travel and pussy. I would love to tell you that, but I believe – I really and deeply believe – that this would be telling only a half-truth.   

As you know – as anyone knows if they’ve met me or if they’ve talked to me or if they’ve been around someone who has met me or talked to me – mostly this year was about selling my television pilot. There were meetings. Promises made. Rewrites and dead ends and promises broken.

I’ve worked and I’ve waited and I’ve been quite patient while other shows – lesser shows – got green lit, got produced, got premiered and then got cancelled less than six episodes in.

Five years of my life and I know how that sounds. Everyone says I should quit! Real blood. Real sweat. Real tears… and nothing but nothing to show.

But next year is the year.

Really.

Next year is really the year when Vagilante Justice  comes to your t.v.

My Top Ten Albums of 2014

I heard some great sounds in 2014 and normally this’d be the part where I’d write about them.

But it doesn’t make much sense, if you think about it, really, to go and write a bunch of words about sounds when the sounds can speak for themselves. So that is what I’m going to try and do this time around.

My Top Ten Albums of 2014 is the only year-end list you will ever need, and here it goes:

Why Mia McKenzie Tried to Have Me Lynched

It was Monday night and as I sat down to check my twitter feed, I discovered that everyone in the world had suddenly gone apeshit.

I do mean everyone: Black people, white people, pink people, green people, people of all the many shades of brown, as well as liberals, conservatives, the young, the old. You name it.

Everyone.

A Whole Katy

You. You stole away my breath. Robbed me.

Little by little, scooch by scooch, you brought in the walls ‘til they’re so close I can hardly even breathe anymore and I can hardly even move anymore. I cannot maneuver these hallways and I bump my head on the doorframe when I go to try and leave.  

At night, I wake up and lying there in the dark, I can feel the ceiling just inches above my face. It’s way too close and there’s not enough air and it’s all closing in on me.

You shrank the van to where it looks like a toy. Kids on skateboards tower over me. Dogs tailgate me. Grandmas laugh at me.

At work now, my office is like a cardboard box and it’s all closing in on me.

Corpses in the Cargo

They’re coming! They are nearly here! 

I Am the Daddy

(A Play in One Act)

Curtain opens, revealing the interior of House of Pies restaurant. KATY and SCOTT THE LAWYER sit in a booth, on opposite sides of the table. On the table lie empty coffee cups, wadded napkins, various eating utensils, half-eaten foodstuffs, empty cigarette packs, pencils, pens, iPads, and piles of papers related to KATY’S child custody case.

ADRI paces back and forth past the booth. SCOTT THE LAWYER bangs his head against the table.

The Thing in the Tree

I confess my sins to the thing in the tree.

I do not even know what it is, this thing. This thing up there. It’s probably some kid from the school, I’d imagine. Frat pledge. Giant owl outfit.

I mean, that poor kid. He probably believed, going into all this, believed he just had to sit up there in his costume for a few nights. That he’d stare down at the track and think about calculus or Fall Break or girls. That everybody would leave him the hell alone and that soon enough, it would all be over.

Little did he know. Now he’s got some dykey, middle-aged mother of three-and-a-half pouring her heart out to him every other night.

Die Geheimschriften und die Dechiffrir-kunst

There are rules to this thing.

There are the parts of my life that I can write about, there are the parts that I may never write about, and then there are the other parts. The parts that are kind of in the… in-between.

When I come to one of these parts, usually I write about it in roundabout ways. Like I might change all the names or drown it in blood. I might write about it a long time after it happens or before it happens. Or maybe I will write one story you can see but there will be another story written underneath – written in milk – so that if you hold it over a flame, the real story appears in thin brown letters as it dries.

I Left Her for a Concrete Garden Gnome

Dogs or a gnat. Three dimes, Tuesday, or the space where an old lamppost used to stand. Your Uncle Charlie’s left pinky finger. Dust motes or the long, raspy guitar solo from the studio version of “Free Bird.” Or myoclonic jerks. Or the declining entertainment value of the television program, “Homeland.”  

Tell me: Are our loves less worthy than your own? Less deserving of respect somehow? Can you look me in the eyes and say they’re any less central to our being?

Less sacred?

He caught my eye from the other side of the yard of a neighbor of mine. It could have been the hat. It could have been the ants that ran across the surface of his poorly-painted beard. We made love under the full harvest moon and by morning, I knew this was what I’d been born for.

It was who I was. It is who I am. I was born this way, don’t you see?

Bad Brains

They shaved half her head so they could break her skull open and they scooped out the bad stuff inside.

I typed those words. Me. Just now. I did. Really. I typed those words and then I got up and I paced around the room.

I stared out the window. I saw a little dog straining on a fat man’s leash, trying to go meet a daredevil squirrel. I saw a Monte Carlo thud by with a flat tire and a spiderweb windshield and no apparent driver at all. I saw flowers. Me. Just now. I did.

I thought about some things – things that were not Dana and were not brains and were not that sentence I’d just typed. I tried to drum “Moby Dick” on the wall with two jumbo-sized orange highlighters. It sounded alright.

Then I sat back down and I looked up at the screen. That sentence was still there, just like it was when I left it.

Adorable

It’s not just that she was late for class. It’s that she was twenty minutes late for class. It’s that when she finally made her appearance, she had her headphones on and she kept her headphones on. It’s that she flitted into the room twenty minutes late, headed straight up to the front of the classroom, and crashed her things down into the seat right next to mine.

It’s all of those things but it is none of those things, really, because it’s what she did next that is the reason I am telling you this.

Aesop & me

There was the time when Dana’s grandmother died, and Aesop and I smoked peyote before the funeral. The funeral was in an old stone church and we sat pushed right up against one another during the service and I remember sweating a lot. We watched the spirits wriggling in the shadows reaching out for the casket and afterwards, we compared notes about what it was we’d seen.

Aesop and I used to record terrible, terrible ambient music together. We’d send our 4-track tapes off to Brian Eno and to Harold Budd, to Steve Stapleton and to Alvin Lucier, but we never heard back from any of them and Eno would return his envelopes not even opened.

I met Aesop in a dingy record store when I was fifteen years old. The record store was called Sound Exchange. Aesop was wearing a Silver Apples t-shirt. We got to talking about krautrock and about astral projection and about whether anybody had ever recorded a good album after age fifty.

Rainy Day Women #47

The years went by and she grew sexier and sexier until finally, the people of the town took up pitchforks and torches and gathered outside her house in hopes of catching a glimpse.

Trepanation Blues

The sound of cars in the distance. I lie on a mattress. The most jagged in Hell. Head over the side face down in waste paper basket. The waste paper basket metallic rusting contains an astonishing volume of vomit to which I contribute munificently. Vomit scorches inside the nostrils coats throat tongue lips chin.

Sucking back spittle and flashes of light retching everything stabs any attempt at movement immediately punished with more of the same bile poison stomach muscles shriek.

Splash of tequila no place time name only spasms spewing and this soul-destroying bed of nails.

It goes on forever.   

The Suicide Diaries

The clown was dead. On this, we all agreed.

We stood around. We stared at all the pieces – his remains. We stared, but with each other we did not make eye contact.

This clown, he had tried to cut his wrists at first. He’d used a pocket knife. He’d failed. Fumbled it.

Then he’d moved on to a belt. He’d wrapped his clown-belt around his clown-neck. He’d closed the ends of the belt in the closet door. Over the top. This proved to be more effective than the pocket knife. He’d succeeded, and now the clown was dead.

9 Mistakes (You Should Not Make)

Now, if you are going to go and have yourself a stroke –

– and I do not recommend that you do and in fact, I would strongly urge against it, but if, despite my warning, you are going to go and have yourself a stroke anyway –

– then here are some simple things that you should avoid to keep yourself this side of a worst-case scenario:

First, if you are going to go and have yourself a stroke, do not do it while you are alone. Do it while you are around other people, so someone else around you can see you and notice you and maybe even say, “Hey! Look at her! She seems to be acting a little odd. I wonder if something might be wrong!”

And if you should be so fortunate as to begin to have your stroke right in the midst of all of your family and your friends, then do not mistake your stroke for a migraine and announce you are going home. Do not ride your bicycle the two miles back to where you are staying just to sit… all alone… on your couch… in the dark… stroking out.

Look at These People

I found these pictures.

These pictures show all of my people – my cast of characters – even though some of the people don’t come around anymore.

If I Told You the Truth, You Wouldn't Believe Me Anyway

I feel safe in here.

Things rush by, outside my windows – most of them just shapes, blurs, really – and some of them seem more threatening than others seem, but I feel safe in here.

Mostly.

While I am in here, I find things to do to occupy my time. We all have to be doing something, after all, wherever we end up, and mostly, I blog.

I have been blogging like this for years. By now, it might even have been decades. I do not know. There is no way to know for certain.

Chaos at Feast

I’ve given a name to the past month of my life.

I call it Chaos at Feast.

I’ll admit that as names go, this was not my first choice. It has a kind of pretentious teenage boy quality to it, don’t you think? I considered Lucifer Sam for a while. Jennifer Gentle. The Judge. The Kid. Tyrone Slothrop. A Spoonful Weighs a Ton. Ann Botkin. Black Paul. Even plain old July.

But I ended up going with Chaos at Feast because, well, I guess the month I just lived through feels like a Chaos at Feast and anyway, it’s started responding to the name, so now of course I am stuck with it.

We Need to Talk About Wayne

I worried about Wayne Coyne once.

It was in 2006. It was when I heard a song called “Mr. Ambulance Driver.”

“Mr. Ambulance Driver”  was a new Flaming Lips song and it was the first single from a new Flaming Lips album but it was… it was old.

Old as in elderly. Elderly as in decrepit. Decrepit as in the sound of millionaires trying to create a reasonable facsimile of earlier glories. “Mr. Ambulance Driver”  sounded like a Flaming Lips cover band and when I heard it, I worried about Wayne Coyne.

But that was in 2006 and now it is 2014 and it seems like everybody’s worrying about Wayne Coyne these days.

Totally True Tales of Dana, Chapter 1

There once was a young girl whose name was Dana.

Dana lived in a big grey house with her mom, her two sisters, her four brothers, and a three-legged bulldog named Trigger. Their big grey house sat beside a dry red road made out of dirt which ran into a slightly bigger road made out of gravel. And the road made out of gravel ran into a road made out of concrete, and the road made out of concrete ran into a convergence of streets, and this convergence of streets was the town square of a place you’ve never heard of, right in the middle of Oklahoma, which is equally far from everywhere.

The town where Dana grew up was a curious sort of town where the dogs outnumbered the people, and the snakes outnumbered the dogs, and the tumbleweeds outnumbered the snakes, and the churches outnumbered the tumbleweeds, and nothing outnumbered the churches except tornadoes.

Now, it might seem strange to you, or wrong, or it might even seem to be a lie that there exists such a town where churches outnumber people, but in the town where Dana grew up there was exactly the right number of everything. There was the right number of people and the right number of dogs, the right number of snakes and the right number of tumbleweeds.

WE ARE AWARE

Grandma says, “Katy, you need to get out more.”

She says, “You need to go DO something. Do it all.”

She says, “Katy, you need to experience the world while you are still young.”

Grandma says a lot of things, and all of the things she says are things like these things, and she says things like these things practically all of the time.

We hear her every word. We roll her every word around in our hands. Slowly. Considering each for shape and for size. Smoothness and weight. Impact and echoes and related after-effects. For potential to forfend flesh shadows.

We consider Grandma’s words, but we know better than Grandma. We know there is too much to do in here to ever go outside.

The Good Queer, Part 2

Some things you should know about me:

I have never worn my hair in a mullet.

I do not listen to the music of Tegan and Sara.

Sure, I own some flannel shirts, but I live in Houston, so they rarely get worn.

I do not view the continuing success of Ellen DeGeneres as a personal win for me in any way, shape, or form.

The Good Queer, Part 1

On Wednesday, May 28, 2014, which was only a couple weeks back, the City Council in my town passed something it called the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance, or “H.E.R.O.”  What H.E.R.O. is supposed to do is to legally bar discrimination based on “race, color, national origin, marital status, religion, age, gender, sexual orientation and gender identity, disability, [and] military service”  in employment, in public accommodations, and in housing.

I know, right? Wow!

For me, this was great news. It meant I could quit my jobs and fulfill my lifelong dream of earning my money by suing Christian bakers who refused to bake me gay wedding cakes.

How to Pronounce the Word "Orgy"

Do you remember that Happy Guy from back when we were out on the streets? Daniel Johnston-looking dude? Lived up on Woodhead and West Alabama? Rode his bike everywhere? Worked down at the Bookstop and down at the Cactus Records & Tapes?

Yeah?

I ran into him the other night.

At Adri’s, matter of fact.

We were both mostly naked at the time.

My Possible Pasts

This is a story about a sock.

Or rather, it is not about A sock so much as THE sock. The sock at the beginning of the whole Universe, yeah, way, way back at the start. The point to which every line can be traced back, if you only had the patience to trace back every line. Why, even the things that look  like they came before it – the oceans and the canyons and the fossilized reptiles, the comets and the planets, old light and ageless black holes – those things were just thrown backwards in time from the story of the sock, instead of forward, like you and I were.

This is the way it all appears from my perspective, anyway, after years of thought and of measurement and research.

For you, maybe it is different.

I hope that I am not overselling this particular piece of men’s footwear.

Something's End, Part 2

If you read Part 2 without reading Part 1 first, well, that is just like cutting in line, now isn’t it? We take cutting in line very seriously around here. Do not test us on this. Go read Part 1. Go! We will still be here when you get back.

*           *           *           *           *

Back when 3400 Montrose was mine, I usually slept on the fourth floor of the building, right there at the northeast corner that overlooked the Kroger store next door.

The room I slept in, it was completely sealed off, with no doors to the hallway or to any other suite. I had to climb down through the ceiling from a utility closet on the fifth floor to reach it.

It stank. Whenever I slept there, I stank, too.

But it was mine and I had somewhere to sleep and I had to sleep somewhere.

I still have the master keys to the whole building. Right here. I keep them with me even after all of these years, just in case. I figure if ever everything else in my life falls through, I still have the keys to the bathrooms for 3400 Montrose, you know? I mean, you never know…

Something's End, Part 1

I have been giving a lot of thought to endings lately.

I believe I have been giving a lot of thought to endings lately because for me, a lot of things have been ending lately.

Relationships done. School finished. My lease ended. “Lesbians in My Soup”  ending…

So much around here has been going, going, gone.

Then this morning, which was Sunday morning, I was out on Montrose Boulevard, dumpster diving like I do every Sunday morning. I had just come up for air with a box fan in my left hand and a brown corduroy Stafford suit jacket in my right. I admit that I was really pleased with myself because, I mean, who wouldn’t be? A brown corduroy Stafford suit jacket goes with almost anything and it can be casual or  formal.

And that was when I saw it. Across the street.

I saw that old office building at 3400 Montrose.

Where Are We Going?

Okay, so I’m leaving now.

Still, I am not going to hide from you. If you look for me, you will find me.

I am not becoming someone else.

I will keep writing like I always do, and I hope that you will come around to read it sometimes. You can even come around just to point and laugh at me. To poke and to prod at me.

Consider this to be an open invitation!

The Lesbians Have Fled the Soup (POLL)

I’ve always wanted another name, different than the one I’ve got. As a kid, and growing up, and now, I’ve wondered a lot about Mom and Dad and about what made them go with… “Katy.”  

“Katy.”

I’ve got my problems, you see, and another name could have changed it all for me. Right up front. Right out of the starting gate, another name could have made me something… unforgettable. Something powerful. Something exotic, something that roared with strength and with meaning.

Like I could have been “Leija.”

“Ajala.”

“Bhoomi.”

I believe the right name can conjure spirits. The right name can open doors. It can seal and unseal fate. Me, I could have been… “Princess Anahita Autophagia Onassis XIV.”

Do you know who never gets turned down for a car loan? Princess Anahita Autophagia Onassis XIV, that’s who.

Scrying Over You

Scrying is crystal ball gazing. It is Ouija board. It is all the ways of making the subconscious conscious.

Like maybe you will take a bowl. You fill it with water and with oils. You run a stick around the edge until it sings. When it sings, in the song there are words. You write down the words.

You are scrying.

Or maybe this woman – this woman over here – with her it is all different. Like maybe she  will light a candle. She sets down a sheet of paper and she sets down a pencil on the table. She stares into the candle until her mind blanks. When her mind blanks, then her hand writes. What her hand writes, she does not know. She writes down words that she reads only later.

She is scrying.

Or maybe like this guy. This guy over here. What the hell is he  doing? Maybe he is using a dowser’s rod. Or he is mirror gazing. Or he is shell hearing. Maybe he is tasting a taste in his mouth just by touching some something that you’ve touched.

If he is, then he is scrying, too.

Or… me. What about me? What is it that I am doing? I tie a bag – cloth, dark, tight – I tie it around my head and I lie down on my bed. I lie on my back. All around me are little scattered scraps of paper. On the little scattered scraps of paper, I have written questions.

Now I lie and I wait. I wait for paralysis, I wait for Tarab, and I wait for answers to my questions.

I am scrying, too.

I am making the subconscious conscious.

I am finding the answers to my questions about Doctor Belloq.

*           *           *           *           *

You want to know where the answers come from, don’t you?

It’s alright. Everyone does.

Everyone wonders, but the truth is I don’t know. The truth is I do not worry about it all that much. The truth is I do this thing and then that  thing happens.

But you want to know if this panic-induced demonic hallucination ever really tells me anything new.

Me too.

*           *           *           *           *

I started dating Doctor Belloq fifteen months ago. In those fifteen months, Doctor Belloq has spent three weeks in Nepal.

She’s spent two weeks in Haiti.

Four days on Easter-fucking-Island.

In the past fifteen months, Doctor Belloq has been lost overnight in an underground Mexican cave.

Twice.

In the fifteen months since Doctor Belloq and I started dating, she’s been on sixteen of the islands of Micronesia.

She’s almost been arrested in Yemen. She was briefly detained in Brazil.

Fifteen months. That is what fifteen months in the life of Doctor Belloq look like.

*           *           *           *           *

Less than one-half of all Texans believe in evolution. Nearly one-fourth believe that the President is Muslim. One-fifth believe that our governor has banned Obamacare.

In the fifteen months since Doctor Belloq and I started dating, I have not stepped foot outside of the State of Texas.

*           *           *           *           *

Maybe I knew. Maybe something hidden deep inside me connected the dots all by its lonesome.

Maybe I did not need to hear it from Tarab at all.

But it was game night and I was with some friends out at the home of Veva Purvious and I was drinking cheap moscato and I was unlikely to win the game.

I lay down on the couch to clear my head and then the room was too yellow and then I could not move. The game continued without me and no one seemed to notice when the dark shape appeared over me hissing and pressing me down.

Tarab said, “Veva Purvious will win this game.”

I tried to move a finger.

He said, “Doctor Belloq is never coming back to Texas.”

He said, “She’ll list her house on Monday.”

It was true: About the game. About the house. All of it.

And maybe it did not take a seer or a prophet – no supernatural intervention required! – to see that Doctor Belloq was unlikely to let grass grow up between her toes. Ever. To do a happily-ever-after bit with me and the kids and a white picket fence. Maybe a scryer would not need to be much of a scryer at all for that information to reveal itself.

But I was scrying all the same, and this is how I found out about Doctor Belloq.

For the past fifteen months, this blog has been the story of me and Tarab and Doctor Belloq, and this is how the story ends.  

This is how we clear the way for the story of Veva Purvious.

***END OF SEASON FOUR***

I’ve Got More Tickets Than Muddy’s Got Blues

Look! Piles of them. Mountains, even. Mashed into the glove box and sticking out at the hinge.

Covering the floor like carpet, with mudprints and crumbs and Doritos stains. Down inside the seat beyond the reach of my fingers.

The date on this one reads,  “November 1, 2007,”   but I don’t even remember getting it.

It seems the city has wasted whole forests on me.

Jackie on the Run

I told her, “I just don’t trust anyplace that doesn’t have ‘Texas’ in the name.”

I mean, why would I? What has Oklahoma ever done for me? Or Kansas. Let’s talk Kansas. Can somebody sit down with me right here and now and explain Kansas to me? Kansas, simply, and Kansas, succinctly, in a way even I might understand?

Why, I heard there’s even a place called “French Lick, Indiana,”  although to tell you the God’s honest truth, I have some doubts.

A Hint of Areola

Three and a quarter years.

I have been writing this blog for three and a quarter years now.

Do you have any idea how long that is? Can you even begin to wrap your tiny brain around just how old that makes  “Lesbians in My Soup!”?

Three and a quarter years is longer than Jesus Christ’s ministry (and he never posted a single word!). It is longer than Kurt Cobain was famous. Three and a quarter years is longer than the lifespan of the American newt, and it is even longer than it took the ship to sink in that Titanic  movie back in the Nineties (and I feature 100% less Celine Dion).

Why, this blog is 62 years old in blog years!