87. HOLY MOTHER OF MASTURBATION, BATGRRL!

From the Archives

(Amy 2005) “In my site you can acquire chaep mads horrid”—that’s the subject line of my most recent SPAM. Not quite jabberwocky and there’s a touch of Chaucer in there somewhere, but what do you suppose it means? The best I can come up with is that I have been invited to purchase cheap, naughty maidens from someone whose English is extremely limited. Second best SPAM of the day: “Are you a 2 pump chump? Go all night and drive her crazy!”

Never had that problem, actually; perhaps Mr. 2 pump chump is using the wrong equipment (-;

Had another glass of that tasty pinot noir last night (ah, those dimples...), did laundry, and read Best Lesbian Love Stories in between playing the guitar.

They’re not Pat Califia, but these sweet little vanilla tales are charming.

Meanwhile, Just read an interview with Betty Dodson (AKA the Mother of Masturbation) who reports that she is working on a new video entitled Orgasmic Woman that “will show vaginal penetration using a vaginal barbell.”

So now I'm trying to picture what a vaginal barbell is. Is it sort of like the base end of a Feeldo, only it has a “5” or a “10” or whatever stamped on it? What color is it? And its texture?

Dodson continues:

A lot of women hate penetration because it's too hard or fast or because of friction. Orgasmic Woman shows me working hands-on

(and oh I hope she recognizes a good pun when she makes one—although "hands-on" could mean many things in Dodson's case, I reckon.)

I work with a woman who doesn't think she is having an orgasm. Some orgasms are like hiccups or a sneeze and some are huge and profound. But, if a woman doesn't recognize that she's having an orgasm, then what happens? How would you intensify it? That would be by taking more time after you have that first orgasm. Don't stop! Keep going! Women are not like guys. We are so ignorant about female sexual pleasure.

So. I wonder. If a woman has an orgasm and no one hears it, does she still have one? Does a dildo still fall off the bed if no one hears it? The lesbian world presents us with such conundrums sometimes

•

And now for something completely different.... I recently referred to the following poem that I ripped it out of the New Yorker. It's so, so beautiful:

IN THE ABSENCE
by Kathleen Lake

In the absence of Christ, one must become
one's own hands, moving
one's self tenderly
through all the shapes that pain takes.
Whatever you thought you knew, your hands
will forget it for you,
remembering only the hollows
and lilts of your lonely body
which quietly holds its own
story, and waits to be heard.
So when you are listening
at last, your hands will be holding
that wordless quality your mother's had
which changes everything and nothing.
And in this luxury the marrow
of your bones
will finally speak.

TODAY’S TOP SPAM: You can have a bigger cock than Ron Jeremy. (Uh, I already knew that.)

86. VIOLENT PINOT POETRY

From the Archives

(May 2005) I checked my e-mail a little while ago. My spam says that Women Will Love Me and that Julie [7] says Hi Honey.

Am eating some locally made brie on crackers and drinking a nice glass of pinot noir because the lovely woman in the Whole Foods wine department snared me as I walked past with my creamer and cilantro.

“Hi there,” said she. “Would you like to hear about our pinot noirs?”

I thought well I would certainly like to look at your dimples a while longer and my purchases ARE disgustingly alliterative, so sure, show me your wares.

She described several pinots as I studied her gorgeous jaw line, then I said, So tell me, which pinot that doesn’t cost a small fortune has made you smile most recently?

She grinned at my question and handed me the bottle that I have just now opened, which is quite good ... plus I get to imagine her dimples deepening as she discovers this taste.

Yesterday, I passed the Joy Delight Commandment King Church van on my way up the mountain. I really wanted to look through those tinted windows to see if the bus was filled with shiny happy people (who probably wouldn’t get that REM reference) too. Their name reminded me of the (shiver) Baptist camp where I spent too many summers.

Whew what a God um forsaken place that was!

The shiny happy counselors confiscated my Neil Young cassettes (AKA Devil's music) way back in 1976 and I still want them back. They also forced me to memorize Bible verses and recite them before getting in line for my meals.

In my book, if you f*ck with someone’s food, then it’s brainwashing.

I did enjoy canoing there though—when the counselors left me alone. Usually, though, they decided that this introvert spent too much time alone and so called me in off the lake and made me join in a variation of kickball/dodge ball that involved us kids pushing a ball that was bigger than all of us combined up and down a fresh-mown field.

Idleness is the Devil’s workshop, I reckon, so canoeing instead of playing with big balls must have put my soul at risk of eternal damnation. Or something.

(Just an aside but wouldn’t you think that someone who places a bumpersticker of the American flag announcing These Colors Don’t Run on his truck would replace the dumb thing when it fades to almost white?)

•

My friend gave me a copy of her spiritual autobiography yesterday. She grew up attending a Seventh Day Adventist church—“the cult” is what she calls it—and first encountered television and films as an adult. She can’t watch either though because the violence is too real and the stories make her lose her faith in the goodness of people.

This fascinates me.

She wrote this last week:

You aren't afraid to go anywhere, are you? I just managed to make it through [my blog entry] SITUATIONAL ETHICS. You grapple with things I can't even get close to without nearly dropping off some inner edge. The first time I heard about snuff stuff, I threw up, and couldn't sleep for days without waking up screaming. How can you ponder these things, and then go about your daily routine? ... I wish I had not read that entry! Please remind me again that the vast majority people are not out to damage other people.

Um, okay. The vast majority of people are not out to damage other people. There’s no tangible evidence that anyone has ever made a snuff film. And, when you think about it, we mostly find a way to love extravagantly despite it all.

I wrote a short story and painted a disturbing, multilayered torture painting that Mud dubbed “The Angry Painting” in an effort to get the snapshots I talk about in that entry out of my head. I wouldn’t say that I ponder atrocities and then just go about my normal routine though.

We carry all that shit around with us like luggage (note absence of baggage here), I reckon, just as my body carries around every punch my father ever delivered and all the terror I felt as a child, and so it stays tensed and ready to bolt even now if I’m not paying attention.

But my body also carries around healing caresses, the comfort I feel falling asleep as my lover kisses my eyelashes, a snapshot of my little brother at age 4 holding out his grubby little hand and saying “I Made You a (dirty) cinnamon toast ball,” and so many acts of kindness, and passion and love and unsolicited generosity. So there is some balance, I reckon, if we’re fortunate.

I don’t think my friend could read JM Coetzee’s Waiting For The Barbarians, but his main character asks similar questions.

This pal has lost faith in humanity because a patient told her horrible abuse stories last week, in which a father anked his daughter out of bed and held her underwater till she thought she would die every time she peed in bed. This has made her lose faith in our goodness. Again.

I’ve been pondering what poems to send her way.

I'd send Vassar Miller’s sonnet “Without Ceremony” to myself, but am not sure it would comfort her. The final stanza of Frank O’Hara’s “Steps” would comfort me too:

oh god it’s wonderful
to get out of bed
and drink too much coffee
and smoke too many cigarettes
and love you so much

but I believe I will send her Kathleen Lake’s “In The Absence,” Mary Oliver’s “Morning Poem” and “Poppies,” and Wendell Berry’s “Work Song. Part 2, A Vision: The Wisdom to Survive,” which seems like the perfect poem for her.

28. IN THE ABSENCE

From the Archives

(March 2005) Good poems comfort me, remind me that, in the midst of great change, there is a core me that knows how to survive even if I am temporarily overwhelmed.

I like this poem because it reminds me of my ability to take in a deep breath when life is overwhelming and to stand in that hard wind that will, ultimately, heal me if I listen carefully to myself:

IN THE ABSENCE
by Kathleen Lake

In the absence of Christ, one must become
one’s own hands, moving
one’s self tenderly
through all the shapes that pain takes.
Whatever you thought you knew, your hands
will forget it for you,
remembering only the hollows
and lilts of your lonely body
which quietly holds its own
story, and waits to be heard.
So when you are listening
at last, your hands will be holding
that wordless quality your mother’s had
which changes everything and nothing.
And in this luxury the marrow
of your bones
will finally speak.

So I was warming up my lunch a few minutes ago and thought about all the crappy food I ate before I finally realized that, if I wanted to eat delicious food on an ongoing basis, then I was just going to have to learn how to cook.

I moved out on my own as a teenager and had no clue how to cook because I had very carefully avoided learning how. Why? Because I was sick and tired of family members telling me that I had to know how to cook just because I have a clitor!s. I was also naive enough to believe that cooking is just not what lesbians do.

The downside to this willful ignorance is that, for years, my skill set was limited to frying eggs and making salads and warming up processed food.

And the stuff did not taste good.

(Well, the fried eggs were okay.)

These days, I am a serious cook who can cook up a gourmet meal in a flash. I also make up recipes on a regular basis. (I'm not a good baker though, because I dislike following recipes.)

And all this is making me hungry, so I’ll leave you with a report on the best bumper sticker I’ve seen in a some time: “Jesus was my co-pilot / But we crashed in the mountains / And I had to eat him.”