LaDonnaWitmer

Still in bed on a Sunday Morning

Mood: Waking life
Drinking: Too lazy to get up and get one

I’m all propped up on pillows with my wicked little laptop whilst the LeeLoo sits here staring at me, all wrinkly and doe-eyed, hoping I’ve got a jar of peanut butter or some other tasty niblet stashed in the bedside table. Boy’s side is empty ‘cuz he’s somewhere in Colorado, heading this way by car with our fabulous friend MTB. After years of baldfaced begging and not-so-subtle hints on our part, MTB is taking the plunge and moving from Gnashville to San Francisco, and we are beside ourselves with excitement about the whole thing. So MTB and Boy, who are former roommates and lifetime friends, are doing the male bonding thing by driving through moutains & desert together for a coupla days.

Believe me, if we could relocate all our friends to our favorite city, we would.

Usually on Sunday mornings I wake up, check the clock and roll back over for my one-day-a-week of uninterrupted sleep-in time. But today, for the first time in a long time, I thought, “Hey, it’s Sunday. And somewhere out there, lotsa people are going to church.” And then I rolled back over.

I used to be one of those church girls. I grew up in it. My parents were sporadic church attenders, but since they wanted my sister and I to get a good education, they sent us to a parochial school. We got a good education and more than our fair share of irrational guilt. Chapel was mandatory. And they (not my parents, the school) guilted you into church attendance, too. Not just Sunday morning, but Sunday night and Wednesday night. “Every time the church doors are open,” was the saying.

The story of how I came to be the non-church-attending heathen I am today is a longwinded tale, and my fingers have just woken up and haven’t eaten yet, so they’re not even going to attempt the marathon typing session that would require. I’ll just say that all those preachers in all those ill-fitting JCPenney suits who pounded their Bibles at us in all those midweek chapel sessions, well, they were wrong.

They were wrong about a great many things. But in this case, they were wrong when they made fun of people who favored the solace of nature over church. I can’t even count the times I heard the example of the “backslidden Christian” who said, “I feel closer to God out in the woods/beach/desert/mountains than in a church, so that is where I do my worshipping.” And all those small-town preachers used to smirk and scoff and say “Can you believe that nonsense? THE CHURCH is where you worship. Among God’s people. Do not forsake the assembling of yourselves together! Mutter, mutter, mutter.”

Well, I have forsaken the assembling. I have forsaken it for the woods and the beach. I have forsaken it BECAUSE of “God’s people”. This is not to say that I think all of those who call themselves Christians are to be avoided. My parents, my sister, my brother-in-law, some of my good friends are all church-attending Christians, and I have nothing but respect for them and for the way they lead their lives. They are amazing, loving, kind and brilliant people.

But, truth be told, the majority of Christians I have encoutered in my history of church are to be avoided. And I have done that, rather successfully, for the past 5 or so years.

But there’s this thing that I did that still connects me to the church world, and today that’s what made me wake up and think of pews. Back in 1998, when I lived in Chicago, a friend of mine asked me for a favor. He was speaking at a Christian conference in this really huge (freakish, frightening) church, about Generation X. (Which was, at the time, all the rage.)

Being the GenX poster child that I was, at the time, and being a practiced performance poet (which I also was, at the time), my friend asked me to write a piece about what it meant to be a GenX’er and read it during his session at this conference. He told me that the audience was 99% Baby Boomers and that they had no understanding of my generation.

So I did. I wrote this piece, an essay-type-thing, titled “This is who I am.” And I read it for this audience of Boomers, a couple thousand of them. I read it with absolutely no comprehension of what a big deal it would become.

Seven years later, people still talk to me about that performance. See, it was videotaped. And the video has been copied and sold and sold and sold. It’s been shown in classrooms and churches and conferences. It’s been taken to Norway and Australia and Florida. And this week I received, through this web site, two separate emails from two people who just saw the video.

I would have been a lot more nervous at that performance had I known how long this thing would last. I definitely would have written it differently. Because us GenXers, we’re not the thing anymore. We’re all grown up and having babies and mortgages and making sure our cars have 4-doors. And yet this video, this little speech about a generation gap, it lives on and on and on.

And people somehow still find it relevant. And moving. And powerful, even. And most of these people are church people. They write and tell me they’re praying for God to “bless your ministry.” And although I appreciate the sentiment (I mean, it can’t hurt to have lots of strangers praying down blessings upon you, can it), it freaks me out a little. Especially since my “ministry” consists mainly of being a bitchy, moody, misanthropic poet.

If they come to this website and find this journal with its prolific use of the word “fuck”, I’m sure they quickly figure out that they may not be dealing with a holy roller. (But then, my little GenX piece, while profanity-free, was definitely not a rah-rah sunday school speech.)

It’s just ironic to me that of all the things I have written, the one that has gotten the most attention thus far is an essay written on assignment for the “people of God”.

I have removed myself so far from the land of Christianese that it is always surprising to receive these emails. They don’t come all the time, so usually I have forgotten about the video altogether and then someone will write and say things like, “What a tremendous impact God has been able to accomplish through your efforts. Thanks for being a blessing for the Lord.” And I’ll be all, “Huh?”

I shouldn’t complain. And I’m not, really. I’m just mystified, I guess. And so I sit here in bed on a Sunday morning, all snuggled with the LeeLoo, and to be perfectly honest, just sitting here all contemplative with my computer is better than any church experience I’ve ever had.

So all you folks who stumble across this site having seen that video somewhere, consider yourselves warned. I’m just trying to be up front here: I am not the church girl you might have been expecting. I am happily backslidden. I swear a lot. I worship God in the woods and on the beach. I spend my Sunday mornings communing with my pillow. And I like it this way. I think my faith in God works better this way. Just want to make sure we all understand each other. So I welcome your prayers and your blessings. But not your sermons.

And I am mystified and humbled that a little 7-minute, 7-year-old performance is still making the rounds and moving people enough that they will track me down. But if I were to be completely honest, I would trade all that in-church publicity for a little more name recognition out-of-church.

Because it’s just better out here.

-Lo, who was once asked by a chrome-domed preacher if she was a witch. You know, because “rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft” and all.

Miserable and Inadequate

Mood: tingly, and not in the good way
Drinking: Diet V. Coke. (i’m not an addict, i swear)

Ran across an old interview this a.m. with poet Justin Chin. (Justin writes amazing things like this: “Cats and dogs see spirits that humans do not. When I walk through my apartment with my cat, we see different things. I see a mess that needs cleaning up, a stove, a scratching post, a dehydrated plant. My cat sees powerless demons lounging around with nothing to do…”)

Anyway, in this interview, Justin answers a question about his reading habits by saying, “I like books that instill jealousy and feelings of insecurity and worthlessness in me and my art… I also love Alice Munro. She makes it looks so effortless. She can write soft, slow, pretty stories with such underlying turbulence. Crafty and subversive ? God, I love her work, but it always makes me feel so miserable and inadequate afterwards.”

I cannot tell you how comforting it was to read that. Comforting in the sense of “Ah, you too? So I am not the only one, then.”

I have often thought that the so-called artists who strut about with puffy banty chests, thinking to themselves, “God, I am so fucking awesome and talented and did I mention AWESOME!” — I’ve often thought that those guys are the ones who actually suck. While the people who actually have a spark of talent are the ones groveling about in dark corners, hog-tied by the growing fear that they actually DO suck, that they are never going to get it right, and yet they pick up a pen and write, anyway, in spite of the fear, because of the fear. Those are the ones I like to read.

And those are the ones that send me whimpering into dark corners, all miserable and inadequate. All my favorite writers do that to me. It’s this delicious coupling of amazement and abasement. The thrill of discovering gorgeous lines of words all strung together just so and perfectly balanced and the simultaneous falling feeling in your gut while all your demons crowd into an impromptu moshpit on your shoulders, pushing and shoving and screaming, “You will never, ever, ever write anything even three-tenths as good as that, you pitiful hack!”

All I know is the day that I really suck will be the day I listen to those demons and put down my pen.

-Lo, who by the way, would like to say that the chick on the Overstock.com commercials is just too fucking creepy. “Sometimes it’s all about the office. Oh! Oh! Oooooooh!”
Yick.

Object

Mood: Restless
Drinking: Not at the moment

Object

secretly,
i want the men
to look at me.
women, too.
but i don’t want to know
when they’re looking.
just tell me when it’s over.

i sneak peeks
at myself
on the sly.
in mirrors,
in windows,
in spoons, even.
i want to see what they see.
myself from the outside.

do i seem tall?
small?
or do they glance over once
and think nothing at all.

are they looking at eyes?
breast size?
or do i remind them of someone
they physically despise.

i wait sometimes
poised on a streetlight corner
hoping for a telepathic driveby.
all my receptors are open.
my eavesdroppers are standing by.
i’ve cranked the volume
to deafening decibels
but i still can’t hear
what they think of me.

at home again,
i let the mirror do her worst.
armed with calipers
and red wax pencil,
i calculate the errors
unflinchingly:
-10 for celluloid thighs
-5 for accusing eyes
+2 for well-designed brows
-6 for an ass that goes “pow!”

i put that high school algebra
to real life use (for once)
and figure in the x-factor.
(where x=the understanding
that objects in the mirror
may be more fucked-up than they appear.)

-9 for unclaimed emotional baggage
-6 for obscure childhood trauma

i take the numbers out for a run.
we work up a sweat
and settle the score.
(it turns out to be a round,
rather voluptuous number.)

but still i cannot get the angle right.
distracted by some trick of light, i
look away from the mirror. and
that’s when it happens.

when my best face is finally forward,
there is no reflection.

-Lo, who thinks vampires take self-portraits to doublecheck their hairdos.

How many assholes does one need, really?

Mood: I don’t like Mondays
Drinking: Morning caffeine injection

I have a low tolerance for a great many things.

It may be one of my most irritating and endearing character traits. I used to fight the urge, used to pretend that 99% of humanity didn’t make me want to tear my face off, used to try the kindler, gentler thing. I got over it.

It’s one of the things I enjoy the most about getting older. The wise ones will tell you that you’ll experience this whole “getting comfortable in your own skin” thing, which is sort of true. But there’s also this whole side effect wherein you just don’t give a shit anymore. You like what you like and you hate what you hate and you stop apologizing for it. (Confession: I hate onions, and I always have and always will and you can’t make me eat the slimy things!) It really is a wonderful thing.

Which is why I am not going to apologize for my sudden and irreversible disdain for the sweaty, arrogant technogeek I saw on TV last night. I was innocently folding laundry while Boy clattered away on his laptop with the TV tuned to some random HDTV channel. (Sidenote: HDTV is awesome, except when you’re watching a panel of mostly middle-aged, overweight, overdressed “experts” sweat in the limelight. Because the wonder of HD lets you see every single bead of sweat in all its overheated glory as it slowly sliiiiiiiiiiides down one bulbous, balding forehead after another. It’s so realistic, you can almost smell the condescension.) Anyway…

Most of the dudes on this panel were gray-haired and suited up, but then there was the t-shirt wearing, greasy-haired thirty-something braniac behind BitTorrent. (An admittedly clever bit of technology.) He was demonstrating his uber-coolness and obvious superiority to all his fellow panelmates by sighing loudly, smirking to himself, muttering, threading his ballpoint through his fingers and clicking it on the table, and generally acting like every smelly, arrogant know-it-all slumping in a desk in the front every high school chemistry class.

Since I was doing the housewifey thing with the laundry and not really paying attention, I don’t know what the panel or discussion was about–something web- and technology-related. Mister BitTorrent, Boy Wonder, was yammering on about how the market is saturated with wannabe musicians today, and then somehow segued into poetry. “There’s just too much out there,” he said (paraphrasing). “In fact, I think some people need to take it upon themselves to just stop writing poetry.”

moment of silence

WHAT?

Ok. I’ll give him the point that there is a lot of crap out there. A lot of people who think they can rhyme and therefore write. A lot of people who are very good at crafting steaming piles of shit that they pass off as art. Hell, there’s a lot of published work that is just embarrassing. (*cough*Jewel*cough*) And I will be the first to admit that I don’t like very much poetry. BUT. I’m not sure that I can agree that there is too much out there. I mean, if you’re going to start getting rid of an overpopulation of something, why pick on poetry?

How about road rage. There’s definitely too much of that. Homophobia. Violence. Abuse. Scams. Hunger. Litter. Poverty. Disease. War. Big hair. Greed. Pollution. Inequality. Racism. Genocide. Purple fingernail polish. Conspiracy. Fear. There’s too much of all of that.

But you won’t see me marching against poetry anytime soon.

-Lo, who would definitely march to ban Jennifer Lopez from producing any more albums. If only such a thing would work…

Flipside

Mood: Guilty
Drinking: Snapple

As promised, I’ve searched the clouds for silver lining and have come up with a list of things that make me happy. Things that make me swoon. Things that make me get out of bed in the morning. Things that make it all suck a little bit less.

The Other List:

* Let’s start with peanut butter
* Neighborhoodies
* Non-cheesy mosaics, especially those involving broken mirrors
* Jon Stewart
* Espadrilles
* Striped knee-highs
* Sour candy
* Buffy DVDs
* The Tyler girls
* Paper toilet seat covers
* Citi billboards
* Showtime, with special nod to Dead Like Me
* TiVo!
* Boxers (the dog version, not the hamfisted sport)
* Strawberries
* Silver glitter on eyelids
* “Raccoon eyes” done right (hello, Shirley!)
* Pale girls with long black hair
* The new Garbage CD, Bleed Like Me (in headphones now)
* The impending new NIN
* Bar Sinister in Hollywood
* the DIY category on ebay
* iPods
* Changing your haircolor, just because you can
* New lipstick
* Drop earrings
* Digital cameras
* Stained glass windows
* Making your own South Park character
* Short little dresses from Lip Service
* Sunglasses with attitude
* Solitude
* A plane ticket home
* Franka Potente
* Bettie Page air fresheners
* Voodoo dolls
* New Tim Burton movies starring Johnny Depp
* Friends in bands
* Cinepoetry
* A really good thesaurus
* The annual Bay to Breakers festivities
* Golden Gate Park
* Buffalo Exchange
* The Serious store on Melrose
* Beach bonfires
* Saying “fuck”. Sometimes it just feels so right.
* A reserved parking space (but only when it’s reserved for me)
* Used book stores
* Neil Gaiman
* Narnia
* My Betty Blue
* Trips to Italy
* Weird buttons
* Violets
* When she says “my darkling bunny”
* Unexpected flowers
* Brand new poems
* Boy
* Sistervoice
* The sight of the Pacific
* Morrissey
* Cheeseburgers & fries eaten in the car at the height of a road trip
* Quitting time

-Lo, who could, once again, go on and on. But the balance has been sufficiently restored and so, the end.

The Jumping of the Shark

Mood: adamant
Drinking: one guess

Heads up to all the things on the following list: I am over you. Even if I was never into you in the first place, I am SO OVER you now.

You make me want to harm small children. You make me want to stick my head in a bucket of dirty mop water. You make me want to run through Mikasa with a brick bat. You make me want to rip the heads off small teddy bears and set them afire.

You have so jumped the shark! Consider this your final warning. The door is to your left.

The List
* Reality television and it so-called stars
* Starbucks
* Ashton Kutcher
* Gap commercials
* “Creative” ringtones
* Hate blogs
* Fat guys in hawaiian shirts
* Loud talkers
* Close talkers
* Jesus fish
* Bright yellow H2s
* Any color H2, actually
* Pit bull prejudice
* Muni riders who sit on my front step and wait for the train
* Litterbugs
* Public Nosepickers
* Nosehair
* Visible thongs
* Butt ruffles
* Paris Hilton
* People who ridicule war protesters
* Mudslides
* Hair extensions
* Manic Panic (it doesn’t last long enough!)
* That Sugar Ray buffoon
* Changing the name of your company (hello, ofoto!)
* Newsboy caps
* Hilary Duff
* Fellow fliers who ask what you’re reading when you obviously have zero interest in conversation
* Poetry slam voice
* Platform flip-flops
* French manicures
* The Bush administration
* The Da Vinci Code
* Sarah Jessica Parker
* Horrible hip hop lyrics
* Lindsay Lohan’s boobs
* Lindsay Lohan
* Blogs with consistently horrible spelling. (I’m not an grammar autocrat. Occasional spelling errors happen to everyone. But when you can’t spell anything right, ever, maybe you should just stop. Or consult a dictionary. Please!)
* Jewel’s “poetry”
* Writing f**k. Just spell it out. FUCK! What’s the difference?
* Brad and Angelina rumors
* And while I’m at it, Jennifer Aniston
* Burberry anything
* Tazmanian devil tattoos
* Gas prices
* Red State/Blue State
* Arnold’s delusions of future White House glory
* Body builders (speaking of Arnold)
* P.M. Bay Bridge traffic
* The cat vs. dog argument
* Ashley Simpson’s acid reflux
* Playboy playmates
* People who sing along at concerts so loudly that you can’t hear the people you actually paid to see sing
* In the same vein, people who make noise in movie theaters
* People who think Marilyn Monroe was fat
* Pamela Anderson’s hair
* Women who think Mick Jagger is still hot
* Michael Jackson.
* Court TV
* Anything approved by Oprah
* Hurricanes
* “Stale incense, old sweat and lies, lies, lies!”
* Frat boys in goth clubs. This. Is. Not. Your. Scene!
* Frat boys, anywhere
* Personalized license plates that state the model of your car. Original.
* Saying something is the new something (“pink is the new black”, etc.)
* Prince Charles and Camilla
* Britney and Kevin
* Cheetos
* Mosquitoes
* “Hella”
* Ugg boots
* Earthquakes
* Beauty pageants for little girls
* Beauty pageants for anybody
* People who ask if your tattoo/piercing/scarification hurt
* Christian “rock”
* Take-your-kid-to-work-and-let-them-run-the-halls-screaming Day
* Ludakris
* The Rivers women and their plastic surgeries
* Paparazzi
* Celebrity baby/breakup/wedding rumors
* Acceptable anorexia (speaking of celebrities)
* Everybody Loves Raymond (except me)
* Chick fiction with shoes on the cover
* Homophobia
* Faded hair color
* Irrational fanaticism disguised as “patriotism”
* Tsunamis
* Stale pretzels at the movie theater
* Wadrobe malfunctions
* American fucking Idol!
* Lists that go on for way too long

-Lo, who could go on and on but has to start thinking of a list of things that don’t annoy now, just to balance out the universe.

Cinépoem, Part Deux

Mood: Boooooring
Drinking: The usual poison

The second cinepoem is on its way!

We (we= M and M and I) shot the video footage a couple of weeks ago on another unseasonably rainy day. That’s two for two with the video shoot and the rain. If this continues, I may have to shoot all the cinepoems in the rain, a la John Cusack.

We spent the first several hours of the shoot all snug and dry in a semi-seedy hotel room in San Francisco’s Excelsior district. But then we had to head out into the weather, umbrellas and all. The weirdest part was that every time we reached a location and got out of the Jeep, the rain would disappear and leave us with bits of sun and shiny puddles. But then as soon as all three of us were back inside the vehicle, the clouds would scuttle back into position and unleash another torrent of rain, cats-and-dogs-style. It was eerie.

All that shooting resulted in a couple of hours of video for just one 7 minute poem, so now we’re in the process of sorting through all that footage and lining up the lip synch and putting our little story together.

This cinepoem was shot for Bored Now, which I posted on this site a few pages back, at the end of January. I posted the poem a day after I wrote it, so it has gone through a few revisions and has been neatly trimmed around the eges since then.

We’ve got several more editing sessions ahead of us before the final version ends up online, but it’s coming, it’s coming. And you’ll be the first to know. (Or maybe the second.)

-Lo, who used to be a total sucker for John Cusack. Say Anything, anybody?

Pink Strip

Mood: Over it
Drinking: Diet Coke with a dash of that magical vanilla

Pink Strip

Blame it on the genes.
They’ve betrayed you.

Curvaceous Helix Traitors.
Deoxyribonucleic Renegades.

And if you think proteins and
sugar phosphates
can’t have an
ulterior motive, a
sinister agenda, the
last laugh, you
have not done your homework.

It’s a biochemical mutiny,
and you’re walking the plank.

Blame it on the boy, if you want.
He double-crossed you, too.

Malefic Civilian Informer.
Treacherous Morrissey Fanboy.

You should know by now
that you can’t trust a man
with magnets for eyes. He
carves your initials
into his arm
just to infiltrate the psych ward
to find you. It’s so bloody, it’s almost
romantic. But then he doesn’t just
push your buttons, he
threads a needle and sews them
right into your skin. He’s a card
carrying member of Nicole’s
Black Cotton Mafia and you
are his heroin moll.

It’s a Dark Boy conspiracy
and you need witness protection.

Blame it on Jesus. Everyone does.
Isn’t silence a breach of good faith?

Deficient Deity.
Inadequate Savior.

Just when you’re ready to seek
and to find, that’s when
he goes into hiding.
He goes into stealth mode,
radio silent.
He goes incognito.
He goes away.
(It’s almost like he wants you
to beg for it.)

So you do.
You get down on your knees
in the bedraggled back bathroom
of Andy’s Chinese.
You assume the position
and you say “Our Father,
pretty please.”

Then you wait for heaven
to crack wide open
and spit out an angel
but you’d settle for something
smaller and less brilliant.
You’d settle for an answer.
But all you see is the ceiling
the white paint falling in flakes
to reveal a yellow sheen
circa 1973
hidden underneath.

You start to think
the colors in this room
have formed an alliance against you.
White is never as innocent as it
first appears. There’s always a secret
seeping through like a yellow disease.
And this pink in your hand,
so nauseating
so Pepto Bismol
so far from pretty.
You never did like the pastels.

So you’re left with the pink strip
and the absolute absence of
divine intervention.

Jesus
is busy.
Boy is oblivious.
And your genes, well,
they’re just too dangerous.

So you blame it on yourself, finally.
You make such a good villain.

And villains don’t make good mothers.
(The defects are hereditary.)

-Lo, who knows that not all poems can be taken at face value and not all Morrissey fanboys are treacherous.

Betty Blue, She’s So Fine

Mood: Anticipatin’
Drinking: Nu-uh

It’s a great day for a motorcycle ride.

And that’s just what I’m gonna do. What we are gonna do. And I’m not ridin’ bitch on the back of some boy’s Harley, either. (I’m not necessarily anti-Harley, but I don’t think that Harleys are the be-all end-all of cycles, either.)

I used to happily ride bitch. I few times I even fell asleep b/c the road was smooth and the sun was warm and the motor was purring and I just couldn’t help myself. So I’d nod off but somehow manage to hang on and it would freak the Boy right out. He used to joke that he was going to get himself one of those T-shirts that says (on the back) “If you can read this, the bitch fell off.”

But I soon got bored with the backseat. There wasn’t a whole lot to do except hang on, stare around and try not to clonk your helmet into his helmet when he came to an unexpected stop. So after awhile I stopped riding along and Boy got offended. He thought that either I had lied and didn’t really like motorcycles or that he must smell real bad. Neither of those are true. I just expected more from my motorcycling experience.

So Boy got all brilliant and signed me up for a motorcyle-riding class. At first I wasn’t that into the idea. I hadn’t seen many girls riding bikes and most of the ones I had seen fit more into the “broads” class. Their skin was more leathery than the fringed chaps that they loved so much. They were also unnecessarily into riding in bikini tops, wrinkled stomach flab hanging over and obscuring their turquoise belt buckles. No thanks.

But San Francisco is a two-wheeled town, the streets full of all manner of bicycles, scooters and motorcycles. So I decided that maybe I could be a scooter-girl. An Amelie in the driver seat. And Boy convinced me that the motorcycle class would serve me well as a Sassy Scooter Maiden. So I went.

First there was the classroom thing with the book-learning version of riding. (Here is the clutch, here is the throttle.) There were a few too many of the Driver’s Ed style videos with the horrible acting and violently grinning talking heads saying stuff like “Always wear your helmet. It’s the law in California. If you don’t wear it, the whole world will see the exact color and consistency of your brain matter as it smears across the pavement like so much cream cheese.”

I had never paid much attention when Boy was in the driver’s seat, and I had never ridden a dirt bike, so I had some trouble remembering to shift with my toes. So the first day on the driving range as 20 of us lined up in our jeans and boots and martian-sized helmets, I kept muttering to myself “Clutch on the left hand. Gas on the right.” And then the instructor pointed me to a little red Nighthawk and my Scooter delusions skipped right out of my head.

Even backseat bitches will tell you there’s nothing like riding a motorcycle. The freedom. The exhilaration. The power. Well, when you’re the one doing the actual riding instead of just sitting, you can multiply all that exhilaration by ten thousand.

From the moment I first rolled on the gas and leaned into my very first turn, I was a goner. I loved it. I couldn’t believe it had taken me so long to figure out that I was a motorcycle rider. I couldn’t wait to get my license and hit the open road for real. And Boy, he knew it all along.

The day I finished my class and received the little white piece of paper that told the DMV to give this girl a Class M license, Boy picked me up in the Jeep, drove me home and rolled open the garage door to reveal a shiny blue motorcycle of my very own. It was better than Christmas.

She was so obviously a chick ‘cycle, so obviously meant for me. Tall enough to make room for my long legs, thin enough to let me lane split without fear of taking off car mirrors and blue like the blue of the morning sky on this fine motorcycle ridin’ day. I named her Betty Blue. (I name everything. Our Jeep’s name is Dana, and he’s a sexy gay man.)

Betty Blue is a badass bitch of a cycle. If she were a human she’d be a Betty Page in boots and garters. We’ve been together for nearly two years now. And when the rainy season keeps us indoors, I start to get an itch in my throttle hand and begin making random comments to strangers like, “God, I miss Betty!”

So when I woke up a few minutes ago and saw that the sky is the perfect twin to Betty’s gas tank, well, I started shinin’ my riding boots.

I’m going to let Boy sleep in but as soon as he’s up we’re going to fire up our bikes and head down Highway 35 through the mountains and the woods to Alice’s for a biker-sized burger. Then we’ll cut over to the Pacific Coast Highway and head back north along the beach, watching the sun turn the surf to liquid light and listening to the hum of our engines pulling us home.

-Lo, who is in no danger of becoming a gearhead.

Invincible

Mood: Growly
Drinking: Yup

There’s a girl
down in Georgia
who doesn’t feel pain.

Cut her, she bleeds.
But the sticky redness
doesn’t cue any panic.

It might as well be fingerpaint.
Clot and color.

And you,
you are made up of panic
and pain.
Balls to brain.

I wish you were her,
bleeding
but oblivious.

-Lo, who once saw a boy drink his own blood.