It's time to buck up and hunker down and tighten your belts. There is a new blog on the scene called Life Behind Bars. I'm totally diggin his rogue approach to describing bar culture. I hope Ben is drunk when he writes, and that there is a fresh bottle of whiskey at his side.
Here is an excerpt:
""A dive bar is the sort of place you would go to after planning a bank
robbery or plotting a murder. A place with stuffing coming out of the
chair’s, stains on the ceiling and the smoke caked smell in the carpet
and on the walls from all the years of chain smoking over the bar.
A place where the bartender will give you the stink eye for ordering a
foo foo drink. A dimly lit bar with graffiti stained bathrooms
reflecting the time spent their writing poems on the walls. The last
refuge for the woebegone, the bar standing battered and bruised like an
aging prize fighter, wishing it still had it’s youth when it wasn’t
considered a dive but just the neighborhood corner bar."
Thanks Ben...you rock for giving us a taste of the real deal. Check him out on facebook at
"Illusion is the first of all pleasures." - Oscar Wilde
I often wonder how we exist in an illusory world without thought of what it means to firmly plant our feet on the ground ....because there is nothing firm about it and I dare say there is no ground. Like seriously: physics, quantum physics, and all the other stuff of modern science has proven time and again that we are "not the droids you're looking for." What I mean is that nothing is real, though it's as real as it gets.
But not.
The real truth is, we are not resistant, or immune to those very things we were convinced we were immune from. It's the lesson we try to
avoid at all costs: there is no such thing as controlled chaos and no one really
understands anything. (Cool?!)
My hand looks like a claw if I stare at it too long.I can chew food and realize that my innards look terribly different than my outtards. The light from the sun is waiting for something. I feel the moon watching me.
What is all this? I have asked since I was 9 (yeah nine) and still I find myself waking up day by day forgetting the magic and hypnotized by the illusion. And yes, that crush I have is nothing I can put my finger on. It's a phantom, yet I feel that I've known it for years.
Bottom line: I have no idea.
That's the catch. No one knows. Anything. And yet we find that as time rolls on all we can do is to make pretend-sense of things. We long to feel a part something (anything.) Call it whiskey. Call it love. Call it dirt. Yes. Call it age. Call it grace. Cal it being lazy.
And as we grip these illusions more and more tightly, absolutely refusing
to believe what we already know, deep down: that when you finally open
up your hand, there's actually nothing there. Ain't it amazing?
Either way I hope that you find me. You've found me before. I'm here wondering all the same things you wonder.
Why did I switch to Mac? Simply put: no spy ware, no Trojans, no viruses, no complicated moves. No cartwheels, no catch. The Mac is so simple my PC head could barely understand it. I did a time analysis of my last year of PC which amounted to over $2500 dollars of time dealing with the following: wiping my hard drive due to a virus, the long start up time of 2 -4 minutes every time I opened my PC, all the lock ups my old machine encountered, and all the time I spent trying to get software to work that never wound up working the way I wanted it to. When I looked at how much time I actually spent dealing with bullshit I decided to invest in a Mac. That, and the battery actually lasts about 7 - 8 hours versus the PC's 3 -4 hours. Wow.
The downside: for about a day I had the equivalent of being car sick from feeling like I was driving on the wrong side of the road. It took more than a week to get all my software and documents and back ups transferred over to the new format. However, the best part of having a Mac is going to the Mac store for help. Oh.My.God. Real people. One of the "macologists" spent over 3 hours with me as he patiently helped me through the transfer process. Mac users are so stoked to get you on board that you actually get customer service. All for free. ( If you have a new Mac in Portland go to the Lloyd Mac store and ask for Gerowe. Great guy.)
Apparently Macs are not perfect. I know they have had a handful of security fixes in the last 20 years, but Apple releases regular security
updates of its own and although the Mac is not flawless it's damn close. The Mac OS architecture is much
more solid, much more difficult to hack into. Apple's
software is, by default, more sound and reliable, given its more stable
core. (I guess in the late '90s, a Mac org ran a
rather amazing hacker competition:
they offered a $13,000 cash prize to anyone in the world who could hack
into the company's unprotected Mac server and alter the contest's home
page in any way. Needless to say, no one ever could.)
Any talk about easy: here is a video I made in 18 minutes. Keep in mind I had never used video software prior to this and only had my Mac for a day:
The question, “Why still single?”is both a compliment and an accusation. I usually smile and pause. I take it to mean I am a catch. I take it to mean that I am a woman most men wonder about and simultaneously fear. I do not have children. No mortgage. No debt. No Abortions. No Prozac. I have no hidden secrets because I have this blog and most people know too much as it is, so there is no hiding. (Yes there was that one stint with that one weirdo vampire-guy who really did kiss me and made my gums bleed from two symmetrically cuts above my canine teeth, but I have no explanation for it and have no idea where he is. I was 22 in New York. I take it he is alive or dead and doing well. ) I have no porn videos that you can find on youporn, so all in all I am still a catch.
So why still single?
It’s a strangely fascinating position to be in. Some days I feel I have won some "just-turned-forty" social lottery that allows me the freedom to be as crazy as I want to be, some days I feel like I will die if I do not get my arms around someone. I got a dog, and truthfully it helps. Yet, I still want to text message that certain someone (the one I’m afraid of) and ask if I can crawl into bed with him, but instead write clever texts like, “You gotta see the moon, “ hoping he will see that as a hint and ask first. Sometimes it works. Other times I go home alone, and after the first sting of realizing that he didn’t ask, honestly I get happy that I am home alone doing whatever I want, whenever I want. It’s a weird trade off.
Backtrack: I spent years in long monogamous relationships. My first was 16 to 21, then 22 – 28. From there it got vague. I scrambled and got lucky (yes lucky) and met a man of my dreams, at least for 2 years until his drug addiction and my panic set in, and then it all blew up in our face. We married (for all of 6 months) because we thought that would save us. It didn’t. It actually created a wound so deep Tonya Harding would have to break more than a few knees to make the pain feel equal. So I think: Been there done that. Scared to death to do it again.
Since the divorce I’ve scrambled by falling in love with men I can barely live without, yet want to find freedom from. Because when you're single and you've finally made it past the age when you've felt love's deepest slashings, and also its most hot passions, past the age when getting stupid drunk at basement parties and hooking up is the ultimate goal, and you've had enough sex to fill hundreds of porn movies and everyone around you is no longer on some sort of giddy, wide-eyed-oh-this-is-the-one parade, what it means, at least for me, is that you get to become this odd sort of sounding board - you get to enjoy and lament all that love is.
Which is another way of saying: I am learning something. Or rather, re-learning. Or rather, I have something that everyone sort of knows. Some people envy it, some people feel bad for me, and no one likes to talk about it, but their curiosity gets to them and they clench their teeth and they ask, “So why still single?”
I know. Shocking.
Singlehood at my (dare I say) “mature” age can be a time of profound cleansing, of enjoying the moment as something new and old, of trying to figure out just what you're all about and what you really want and how to go about getting it, or not getting it, or letting it all go and not attaching to it so that it may find you, in the best most honorable and sexiest way possible.
It goes on. There are no rules. Monogamy. Polyamory. Dating. Seeing. Fucking. Loving. Living.
I have friends that fuck their friends. I have friends that fuck strangers. They all write stories about how he is the one, or she is the one, or they are the bunch. There is no pattern. The exceptions are the rule. There is no approach that, overall, seems to work for most people most of the time. There is not even a hint of possible formulas. Kids? Maybe. Maybe not. Kids don’t bind bad relationships. If anything bad relationships fuck up kids. I vote break up and at least give those kids a chance at seeing true love, or at least true devotion. Find someone to love, or love yourself first. Your kids will thank you. And for god’s sake save a friendship over fucking your best friends partner. Even if you have “that connection." That connection is more temporary than a good friendship, because odds are the friendship is (in the long run) WAY more important and valuable than following your lonely, horny ass.
All of these plans and renditions of relationship is why God laughs. We want it all. I know I do. And the truth is that I have it all. Love is not something I am lacking. I have nurtured and kept sacred the ones I love. So many loverships and so many friendships. I have so many people that I would die for I can't count them on all my fingers and toes. So when that lame ass guy asks, “Why still single?” I snicker to myself, because I have more love than most. I have more sex than most, and if the shit hits the fan I have a fan club that will come to my rescue the same way I will come to the rescue of those I love. Those that know, know I love them. I’m not single. I have more love, more attention, more connection and more freedom than I've had in all my years combined....And all of this because I chose to live my own love life. I dare say I am love. Looking at it all I have never been single. Never was. Never will be.
But yes, I've still got my hopes up, still got my fingers crossed, because that's the best part of all this nonsense. I still believe that it's simple because for the most part, I still believe in love.
After 40 years of being in and out of a multitude of
relationships (monogamy, polyamory,
loverships, weekend flings, marriages, etc.) I finally made the plunge: I got a dog. It’s the first relationship that
happened rather seamlessly and seems to be the best one ever. This is what happened: the giant Dog-God appeared at the foot of my bed (just like Harvey the giant rabbit )and said, “Psst.
Hey you. Yeah you. It’s time.” And just
as if I was bit by the dog vampire I was completely hypnotized and seduced by
the idea of being a mommy to a mutt. So
I did what any New Yorker turned West Coast Woo-Woo might do: I meditated
everyday and talked to my dog in some other dimension and asked it to find me. Seriously.
I told her that I was ready and that all she needed to do was come to me.And although friends of mine told me I should
get a boy dog, because they supposedly bond better with women, I knew my dog
was a girl. I figured I have enough boys in my life and men seem to circle me
like satellites, so it made sense that some feminine energy would make more sense.
I spent my web-time cruising petfinder as if it was
match.com, but it felt kind of like picking a lobster
out of tank. I would stare a lab named Coco (why are so many labs named Coco?) and judge him based on the tilt of his tongue.
This was not proactive or productive, so I prayed to the Dog-God some more and then the call came. One of my
ex-boyfriendshad a friend that was loosely
looking for someone to adopt her dog. She was very busy and wanted to give her dog
to a home that would be able to give it more attention. Apparently she and her brother found the dog a
year ago in the woods in Alabama. The dog was obviously abandoned. She had been
dumped in the woods after having a litter of pups, but never got to raise them
which made her breasts swell in horrible proportions because none of her pups suckled
her. I’m talking HUGE
swollen breast and she was scared to death. The poor thing was in bad shape. They
took her in, cared for her, and did their best. The dog recovered nicely. Eventually the girl traveled to Portland, but her schedule and lifestyle
wasn’t conducive to giving the dog the best doggie life. She loved the dog so much that she wanted to see it in a good
home. If you know me you know I’m a huge dog lover,
and I work from home as a fulltime
writer. I have the ability to give a dog the best home ever.
And just like that, “Wala!” I was in love.When I got a text message with her picture I
was dumbfounded. She was exactly the dog I had in my mind’s eye. It was the
spookiest manifestation ever. A pitbull mix. Maybe mixed with boxer, or maybe a
little mastiff.The story goes that they
first called her Ruby, but then renamed her
Edward. Edward just didn’t seem to fit,
so after calling her about 30 different names I jokingly called her “Rumi” (one
of my favorite poets) and her ears perked up and she loved it.(At the time I didn’t know her first given
name was Ruby, so it made sense.) And just like that Rumi became a new member
of the Montefusco family.
Rumi is the ultimate dog. She is gorgeous and attracts
people like some Hollywood Hottie. She is the queen of canine. People are
always telling me what a handsome dog I have and get mesmerized by her calm and
confident aura. She is shy at times and a little scared. This of course is part
of her master plan to seduce those around her and take over the world. She is
active when outside and totally chill when indoors. It’s hard to get her out of
bed in the morning, which I might add is a bonus. I love a dog that knows how
to lay around like a stoner , but can also outrun every dog in the dog park.
She is pure love, but doesn’t slobber
your face. I’m telling you, when you have
a dog like this it’s easy to let go and just live a happy life because every
night I know I get to snuggle with the best friend a girl could ever have.
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