I wrote a poem today

I dreamt last night

That I could tap my veins like maple trees.

I hammered the spike in

And blood poured onto the snow.

video store porn

I used to watch porn all the time. I had a favorite actress (sasha grey), favorite website (qmov), favorite genre (not going to share). I learned about blowjobs from porn before I could drive, and as I got older I learned many more tricks that made my sex life awesome. I got older, and busier, and then I stopped watching porn. I can't exactly say when it happened, or why. Maybe it was all those gender studies classes at columbia, maybe it was all my friends now working in the sex industry, maybe it's the fact that (excluding age-fetish porn) the overwhelming majority of the women in porn are several years younger than I am. Younger. Younger than I am. And I know fuck-all about life and the world and how shit works.

The local video store has become a significant part of my life ever since I moved into an apartment with minimal internet - not nearly enough to run netflix - but tonight was the first time I braved the maze to the adult section. I guess it never occurred to me before. I browsed for maybe two minutes before I left feeling like a failure, like I've failed my own sex life and I've failed every one of those women by even walking in there. I know that not all sex workers are slaves, I know that plenty of women choose that life and are happy and empowered there. Congratulations, ladies. You're doing god's work. My feelings have nothing to do with you. Well, that probably isn't true, but that's not related to what I mean to communicate.

I don't understand why I'm having an emotional response to the porn at the video store on my block, but I am. I used to be able to enjoy porn and use it to enhance my life, but now it just leaves me confused and unhappy. Why?

If I subdue the massive anger I have at the industry's overwhelming abuse and cruelty toward women generally and it's own actresses specifically, which makes me violently nauseous, if I focus, for the sake of argument, on porn featuring only consenting, happy women, I'm still mired in this confusing anger.
Is it inadequacy? Maybe. Maybe this reaction is rooted in the conviction that because I can not and will not perform the tricks with my orifices those girls (because really, these actresses are mostly younger than I am, so if I mean to be accurate I shouldn't be saying women) perform with theirs, that I am Less Than they are sexually. Than I don't fuck as well as they do. That they have raised the bar in the male conception of femininity to a height I do not aspire to and will never meet.

So, no. I don't want to watch porn any more. And I don't like the idea of it in the damn video store. Get your porn on the internet, privately. And turn down your music and get off my lawn.

Short fiction nine

The dog was the problem between us. That's what I thought then at least. Now I can see that any first year psych student would have been able to see that the dog just bore the brunt of the problem. It had taken root in each of our minds separately then finally  merged into a single great growth between us, pushing us apart, our timber creaking, to make room for the giant it planned to become. My need to comfort the dog during storms, to make him feel safe and protected, to find the perfect place for his bed that would guarantee he'd be able to hide from his myriad spooks but also would never feel alone or isolated - how could I not see that all of this was my own fear and anxiety sprung  wholly from my head like (Zeus' child), my internal horror at my own manners, my nagging shame of being Less Than assuming the form of that greatest of Danes, my dog. 

No, the personification of my darkest anxieties and fears was not godlike at all. Zeus would never have personified the part of himself he both loathed and couldn't understand. A closer analogy for the projection of my anxiety onto the dog would be some kind of south American parasite  - it was an anxiety capable of consuming my entire identity and, unfinished, fabricating a loose system of hollow reactions and downcast eyes to pass as humanity to the few peers not immune enough to it be repelled by it automatically. 

So the dog got lazier. It turned out of course he wasn't just lazier; I'd infected him with my depressive-anxiety. The dog and I manifested our symptoms the same way. We stayed in our beds. We were silent; I dont know whether he would have spoken to anyone if he could have.  I recognized the vacancy behind his eyes from the mirror I looked into every morning while brushing my teeth. I recognized it before I even saw it, I suppose, in his eyes or in mine. In that place the mind is emptier than a vacuum. It doesn't even have the force to suck thoughts in in order to crush them infinitesimally. It had neither content nor force. I barely remember living there, because memories need to be tied to words like balloons to those little sandbags to be retained, to be kept, but in that place there were no words in my head  so any memory that may've found something with which to fill itself must just have drifted off. 

I've always had nightmares. I'm afraid of a lot of unreasonable things that I don't tell people about. As the summer melted into a sunny fall the nightmaresstarted coming for me during the day. I fell asleep midday, unwillingly, pulled by dreams i didn't want. 

Nightmares slid long fingers into my conscious mind and pulled me down into their myriad darkness, like long seaweed catches an anchor, until i was moored in their phantasmic depths, crying out loud from the watery deep of my screaming dreams: I woke, angry: angry like the man shaking me. 

"Don't fucking interrupt me. Im working, asshole."

I nodded, how many times?.

I said "yes." 

I said "I'm sorry."'  

I said "I didn't mean to." 

I tried to sit upright. I held a novel open on my thighs. So many novels, those long afternoons. But the long pale slimy fingers reached around my mind, dug their nails into the gray matter between my ears, worked my brain like dough, and took me again. I was so quickly lost to the primal fear of nightmare. 

It was a cycle of fear that led to more anxiety. I got quieter, he got angrier. In the mornings I woke up slowly. I made weak tea and returned to bed to read, but my eyelids were heavier than steel weights, they pulled down. I rolled my eyes up to fight them, and he found me passed out with my eyes rolled up into my head.

I tried to tell him how hard I tried to stay awake. I described staring at my hand, mentally demanding it to lift, to push me up, but he didn't want to hear. I told him how many times I felt myself standing and walking across the room, only to stand at the sink and look at the bed, seeing myself still flat across it. They call it sleep paralysis. He didn't like to hear me talk about these things,  he thought I was asking him to solve a problem and proving his impotence by making him admit to not knowing how. I just needed to talk, to know another person knew what I was fighting. 

I slipped into nightmares before I was even asleep. I laid in bed staring at the hand I couldn't move and yelled his name, I screamed for help but heard no voice come out. Nightmares. He couldn't hear me. A sleeping girl cannot cry for help any more than she can raise her hand. He saw those moments as symptomatic of an illness he didn't want in his lover. He didn't like me to talk about them, he thought I was sick and he couldn't fix me. 

I told him about my dreams, about the faces in the windows, about the presence I felt standing over me, about the Danger walking through our rooms. The distance betwee us just pushed further.

The nightmares got worse.

My voice drifted ever farther from me. Overcast mornings left fog clinging to the windows and I never really knew whether I was dreaming or awake. I lived in fear of the nightmares. I spoke less and less. My silence was my only weapon against the fear that would reduce me to tears if I tried to share it. He got angrier. I think he felt helpless. 

"You have to tell me what's wrong. Why are you so miserable? It's every day now. I can't live around this." 

"I don't know honey. I'm sure it'll get better. I'm just tired I guess." 

I may have dreamed those conversations. Maybe I dreamed the fights too. Some of it must have happened. Something made him leave. His shouts bounced around in my head for a long time after. 

"You're empty. You're silent. You're looking at things that aren't here. I can't live with you while you vanish. You can't even say what you're afraid of!"

I left the house less and less. The nightmare fog oozed out of my dreams into my waking life. The barrier between the two dissolved in the haze. 

I started sleeping through my days and couldn't sleep at night. I became nocturnal. The nights were simply too threatening. The setting of my nightmares, the men attacking, the fear and Danger, was always night; I had to stay awake then to make sure they didn't become real while I was vulnerably asleep. One night I returned from the grocery around two am, my eyes still reeling from the abrupt shift away from supermarket fluorescents to the inky black road and flashing stop lights. My dog followed me inside, a faithful and trustworthy shadow. I flipped the kitchen light on and swung open the refrigerator door and my skin shifted its' position on my bones. I jerked my body around to put my back against the humming appliance and face the sputtering lightbulb over my kitchen sink. Had I just turned that light on a moment ago? I must have; it only then kicked into a steady emission of watts. That bulb always took a moment to kick into full power illumination. So it must have been off when I got in. My lungs grabbed desperately for more air. I always left that light on when I went out. I'm afraid of the dark. I wouldn't be able to walk through a dark kitchen to get out the door. The refrigerator kept humming behind me. I stood motionless for what felt like a long time before my lungs could accept air deeply and slowly. I'm sure I forgot. I must have turned the light off without thinking and then forgotten about it. 

The nightmare voice made me count the knives in the kitchen drawer while I made tea, and bring one with me to my bedroom.

I fell asleep around eight that morning, and the things I saw in my nightmares blurred the fear the memory of that strange fear I felt in the kitchen. The dog was whining when I woke. 

short fiction eight

A woman's pride lives in a cool, dry place near her core, tucked safely between the spaces holding her security and her confidence. Her pool of pride pours into the stream of her dignity that flows along her spine and keeps her standing.

A half-assed return to blogging.

So, yeah, I didn't update this shit for like six months. I can't imagine this is upsetting to anyone at all, but despite your total lack of reaction to my absence I'm returning. I'll probably fade off again shortly.

Since my last update not much has happened that a reader would need to know to understand future posts. I got a boyfriend, he's great. I doubt there will be much about that here but just in case. I'm not stripping anymore but I am a bartender at a strip club. I do expect to thrill you with tales of that development. It's not great, but it is funny.

I mostly wanted to kick this shit back into life to muse on the following: I think I ruined some really great records by overplaying them in rehab. I still can't listen to Imogene heap. Huge bummer.

So much for new thoughts.
I'm gonna just post the openings to a couple different stories ive been working on.

Fuck everybody.
Alexandra Elisabeth

IMG-20120503-00021.jpg

feeling feelings

there are times when, no matter what one does, one is dragged into unnecessarily messy situations entirely outside her own control. this happened to me the night before last. i desperately wish i could relay this story in the active tense, but unfortunately i had no agency in almost any of it. the whole mess blew up in my face; i happened to be holding the grenade when it exploded, but i certainly didn't pull the pin.
i know who did pull the pin, though, and i must admit my deep, deep disappointment in him. but let's set the scene before we walk through its combustion.

i was very proud of the arrangement i found when i moved to ohio. open, casual, liberated - i'd never been able to apply those words to my sex life before, but here, i could. i had no reason to worry about boys at all - i had one when i wanted one, but without any of the thinking or feeling usually attendant to official relationships. it was ideal. we honestly had no expectation of each other - i could and often did leave town, he could and often did keep other girls here. the only requirement was that we do everything openly. we knew what we were getting from each other. that, my friends, is the dream; to be able to say "you do you" without any hesitation, to be genuinely unbothered by where he goes in his spare time, to be free from any of the responsibility and emotional burden of a relationship - i never met his parents, i didn't have to throw his birthday party, i didn't have to know his darkest secrets or fuck him when i was tired. our time together was strictly fun: all PDAs at bars, running jokes, lazy mornings...  we could share all these things completely securely knowing that no one had to get hurt AND i got to brag about being liberated from the social pressure to couple up, while getting laid without sleeping around.

however, we must all learn at some point that utopia is never real, no matter how desperately we wish it to be. my paradise was not founded in the honesty i require. turns out, my anti-relationship wasn't the picture of modernity i believed it to be, for my man hadn't found a string of girls willing to participate in our experiment. instead, from the perspective of the poor child who texted me in the middle of the night on friday, i was the girl helping her boyfriend cheat on her.

i do not like to be lied to, i do not like to be manipulated, i do not like to talk about feelings, and i do NOT like to be blamed for another person's mess. therefore, i was, as you can imagine, slightly less than thrilled to wake up to a phone vibrating with hateful messages from an incredibly upset girl who somehow knew all the worst parts of my history and blamed me for stealing her man. luckily for me, this girl is a decent and reasonable human being, who quickly understood that had i known she'd been lied to i never would have participated. we spoke throughout much of the next day, and though i promised her that i would wait until she'd had a chance to yell at the boy in question before venting my anger with him, talking to her longer just made me angrier. since he's no longer answering his phone, i've taken to the internet to bitch, following in the footsteps of millions.

how can a man just lie to the people he's so sweet toward - the people he purports to care about? if this is something he's capable of, doesn't that make him less a man than a boy? if he continues this behavior into his thirties will he be a little boy throughout his life? is there hope for a person who exhibits this behavior, who values the people around him so little? i can't stand that he misrepresented himself to me, but it's something i'm relatively used to. the part of this story that absolutely makes me want to stab him right in the balls with a rusty flathead screwdriver is how he treated the girl who thought she was his girlfriend. this is a person with whom he's been sleeping for MONTHS - i know, because she asked me if he and i were together on NEW YEARS. her emotional investment in their relationship was pretty high, which he must have known (probably also why he decided against honesty) and consciously decided to take advantage of. i can't imagine any other way for this to have gone on for, again, MONTHS with her imagining monogamy. and then to drag me into his mess? the whole point of sleeping with him was to avoid emotional messes!

i'm very upset, which isn't a state i enjoy. because of this dbag's irresponsibility, i can no longer hang out with any of the people i've taken to spending my time with here. what was about to be a kick-ass country summer will now be a drawn-out battle with the university of michigan and a lonely wait for my return to new york. great.

Why I Cannot Justify A College Degree

I return to you still thinking over the question that brought me here last time. I've been reading a lot of news lately, more than usual, news about the NDAA, hedges v obama, the election, national student debt, trayvon martin, the slaughter in afghanistan... a lot of things.
I'm trying to look at this information dispassionately, to study it fairly and not let my own stubbornness trick me into denying the pattern staring me in the face. I gather more and more information to disprove the pattern i see emerging, but every article presents new facts that support the pattern's existence.

The world is changing.

The people who want to help us are not the people who can help us. We can no longer look to the people around us, those who have succeeded and want to advise us in following the paths they forged to success. Our mentors, our advisors, our parents, our teachers - all grew up in a world that has very few similarities to ours. And, because of how effectively their generation has manipulated the government and other national institutions, they will spend the rest of their lives in a kind of parallel existence; they may walk the same land we walk, they may stand beside us, but their world is not ours.

85 percent of college graduates returned to their childhood beds in 2010, toting along $25,250 of debt.

Read more: http://www.esquire.com/features/young-people-in-the-recession-0412#ixzz1qiYIY7Xl

This is new. Not new, maybe, but not the experience of the generation that preceded us. It is therefore time to abandon the paths of our parents, to move beyond traditional paths that lead to traditional definitions of success.

The steps taken by your father to elevate himself to the level of his aspirations have crumbled. They're gone. You cannot climb them.

We must re-consider our dreams and our goals.

I do not aspire to wealth. I do not want fame. The fact that this is a revolutionary statement is appalling.
We have twisted the interconnectedness of modernity from a tool for self-improvement, education, and growth to one for self-amplification, for accumulating notoriety, for lifting ourselves not to the upper-boundaries of our potential but onto the table of celebrity.

Why? Why our obsession with fame? I won't attempt to answer that question, but I believe that our preoccupation with credentials and the need of today's individual to hold himself above his peers is tied into the perversion of higher education and the inability of highly-qualified young people to find satisfying work.

We know a college degree is no longer the ticket to a career, but we continue to promise our young adults fulfilling and satisfying high-pay employment if they only graduate. Even if a degree could earn me those things, that is not the life I want. I've had nice things, I've been taken care of, I've had access to the best since I was a child. As I debate shouldering the overwhelming burden of student debt I have to ask myself: why would I do this? What am I buying, with all this money I don't have?

I started pursuing my half-finished ivy league degree because I wanted access to the world such a degree opens. I wanted to distinguish myself - I wanted to have proof that I am better than the people who surrounded me while I was growing up.
Beyond that, I also wanted the job security. I wanted the magical piece of paper that would guarantee me  a career or open the doors of the best post-graduate schools. I envisioned my future fairly traditionally. I would graduate from Columbia with my liberal arts degree, I would attend law school either at another ivy league school or go overseas, I would get married, I would practice law, I would have children, I would send my children to even better schools than I attended, I would save for a comfortable retirement with my husband, I would put my children through college so that they could follow the path I had taken. I remember now how comfortable this time of my life was, how safe and warm and inevitable my future looked. I knew what I wanted, and I knew how to get it.

I left school and returned it to it several times, and each time my initial enthusiasm for my classes burned out within weeks and flew up from it's own ashes a new, angrier bird. Ultimately I learned that college is not about learning. This was a profound disappointment. I'd waited my whole life to be allowed the privilege of studying whatever interests me, in an environment that encouraged independent thought and fostered creativity - but that isn't college. Maybe it used to be, maybe it is elsewhere in the world, but not here, not now.  I found the subjects of the classes to be irrelevant; study whatever you want, what matters is that you learn how to succeed, how to placate professors and deans with flattery, how to manipulate your peers to ensure your own participation credit, how to navigate bureaucracy, how to follow classical formulas when writing, how to win discussions and conversations by silencing opposition. The subject matter doesn't matter. You're not there to break new intellectual ground, but to follow the same lines of thought to the same conclusions that students have found in universities since Aristotle. No professor wants to be challenged - they are increasingly elderly people, who, from the heights of their age, could never believe that a person without a single grey hair may have an equally valid perspective.

Real learning, then, must occur someplace else, some secret place that popular culture is very interested in keeping hidden. That real education is what I'm interested in. I do not care where I work. I'm not interested in work because I'm not interested in an income. I want to learn.

My only option then seems to be to remove myself from the world of useless academia and pursue my interests independently. I'll take classes as I can, but never for credit. I'm not interested in accumulating credits because I don't want a degree. I will read books, I will have conversations with people who know more than I do, I will chase new experiences. I will endeavor to elevate my mind every day. I will live on very little.

I will read and write.

abandonment issues

hello, blog.
i'm sorry for abandoning you. i've been working on rather serious things that aren't suited for your format.
however, i have missed you. i miss casual writing. i miss the short form. i miss the thinking-out-loud feeling i get when i click "new post" without any ideas to direct what i'll write.
so i'm back.
i've had much to think about over the last few days.
i'm putting things in order to return to my education, which is something i'm pretty conflicted about. i'm going to try to work it out here, because it's something i'm going back and forth on. i can't seem to make up my mind about whether going back to school is worth it. national student debt is now over 3 trillion dollars, and since my parents have (fairly and correctly) determined that i'm old enough to take some financial responsibility, going back to school means consciously joining the millions of americans with insurmountable debt. columbia runs about 55 grand a year, plus rent on whatever apartment i find, plus subway fare, plus books, plus plus plus plus...
it's an awful lot of money that i don't have, and wont have for the foreseeable future. what will it buy? a degree from an ivy league college, which translates to an interview at any job or post-graduate school, the beginning of a career.
but i don't want a career.
that degree also represents two more years of studying under some of the greatest minds in the world, which isn't something i'm inclined to turn down. i like to learn. i like to do new things, find out things i don't know, read things i wouldn't read. i could do that at columbia. i could re-engage in academia.
but what is learning separated from practice? from experience?
what IS the real value of an environment organized the way a college is organized? where a student thinks about books all day, reads books, argues about books, writes about books, and every few months is forced to prove her knowledge of books? what kind of reality is that?
i can't make up my mind.
sometimes i'm excited about the opportunity to sit in a room with really smart people and listen to them talk, but then i realize that college isn't really about learning for the fun of learning (or reading for the fun of reading, writing for the fun of writing, etc). it's about career-training, which is why the whole institution has become so antiquated. the aim of a college like columbia is to groom its students, to mold them into representatives of itself. i don't want to represent anyone that isn't me. i don't want to be groomed or molded.moreover, i'm not interested in jockeying for professor approval or competing for participation points. i never have been, which is one of the reasons my gpa is now abysmal.
blegh. it seems that there are better ways to spend my time than accumulating degrees. though maybe getting one of them wouldn't be all bad.
is it worth it?
what else can i do?

east

i have an itch. i've had it for a very long time, and it's just growing and growing in intensity.
i have to go east. either india, or even farther. i want to see mongolia, singapore, tibet, china, japan, the countryside.
i've been reading only japanese authors for months now.
all i can think about now is how to get to india. they have colleges there, don't they?

ER trip

i went to the ER last night to have my thumb stitched back together. i was in a knife fight, and the other guy hit me right in the left thumb, sliced it straight to the bone. i lost a lot of blood, but managed to get myself to the emergency room. it took four stitches to clean it up, which hurt like hell since im not allowed narcotic painkillers.
anyway, the full gory photoset is on tumblr, for your entertainment.
http://mllemagnetic.tumblr.com/

back in the new york groove

and it feels so right. went out to soho house  last night to see nicky digital and have some high-roller cocktails, and tonight i return to my former gogo glory at lit.
everything just feels right.
i even had my hair done at hello beautiful in brooklyn and i love love love it.

im looking forward to a fantastically stress-free weekend. drama can't get into your life if you dont invite it!
time to nap so i can keep up the party tonight!
see you at lit!

TUMBLR + i need tat ideas.

i dont really get tumblr - far as i can tell tumblr : blogspot :: twitter : facebook, so i don't hate it.
anyway, check it out here:

tumbl me

also can anyone think of a symbol for family/love that has five completely equal components? my mom and i might get matching tattoos, and since she has five kids (who argue about silly things) she wants something that represents all of us.
this is a more difficult idea than it seems - we can do a five-point star for example, because the boys will insist that the point at the top of the star is more important that the other points and she therefore loves the child that point represents more than the others. also, it needs to fit on our wrists so it has to be simple and small.
if you can think of anything, i need ideas asap.
we're irish, if that helps at all.
right now i'm thinking five circles in a row, outlined in black, filled in with the color of each child's birthstone.

I CANT SEE STRAIGHT IM SO ANGRY! IMPOSTOR IN NEW YORK!!!

i just found out that some LES side CUNT has taken advantage of my departure from nyc (something i did to clean myself up and get my life in order) to use my name in order to get drugs.
I AM NOT IN NEW YORK.
THIS BITCH IS NOT ME.
DO NOT SELL HER A FUCKING THING.
actually, charge this dip-dyed whore 75 dollars for a gram of baking soda and while she's pretending to be fucked up whip out the lube and FUCK. HER. ASSHOLE.

after all the work i've done - i haven't touched an opiate in over a year. not even a pill. do you have any idea how difficult that is??? i'm trying to re-build my credibility from scratch and this peroxide piece of shit is ruining everything. now i understand why nobody believes im really clean. well motherfuckers, i am.

not only am i clean, i'm coming to new york next week. i will find you, you disgusting little prosty, and i will yank that dying hair right out of your scalp. FUCK YOU for destroying all the work i've done, for making my word as unreliable as it was 18 months ago, for DESTROYING my credibility with the people i care about. trust is important to me, and i have worked my ass off to earn it back while your hooker ass has been on the streets in new york making me a liar. FUCK YOU.
I cannot BELIEVE the myriad ways my past has come to bite me in the ass, but drug-dealer-identity-theft is a low i never could have imagined.
i will find you.
i will cut your face, and everyone will see your scar and know-
"she's a liar and a narc. she's not worth the risk or the waste of credit."
I, by the way, have never not paid back a debt. i have money in my wallet right now to pay back DD for some cash she loaned me in '09. I've never missed a debt, and here this fucking whore is walking the street, scoring in my name, and not paying for shit.
if "I" ever ask you for free drugs, say no.
IDK what this bitch's identifying features are, but here are mine. so you don't have to worry about confusing her with me. i have two flowers and a vonnegut quote tattooed on my left forearm, a feather and a bird on my upper left arm, a shotgun on the left side of my back, mermaids on the right side of my ribcage, a black skull on the back of my right arm, the word 'please' behind my right temple, and a brightly colored dagger on my right inner-calf. if she doesn't have these things perfectly healed - get her number, say you'll call her w her stuff, and SEND IT TO ME.
i will pay you for the information much more than she ever would've paid you for the drugs.
thank you.

*a note to my imitator: FACE DOWN, ASS UP, BITCH*

notes from two years ago, for a story i'm writing this year

From: mlle.magnetic@gmail.com

Subject: sept 08 09

Date: June 19, 2011 1:11:33 AM EDT

"While i was blowing him he asked me about a book he say on my bookshelf and i looked up for a moment to confirm i'd finished it. He said it's weird that he felt totally fine to be talking about book while we're fucking. That made me fall in love with him for the sixteenth time."

(this is an excerpt from an email i wrote myself on sept 8, '09, when i used my gmail inbox to collect notes for short stories. This bit appears in one i've recently written.)

scribbled notes copied from my moleskine

(i'm working on lyrics for a developing project. hence all the rhyming. i know it isn't poetry.)

Summer's almost gone.
We had some good times, 
But they're gone.
The winter's comin' on.
Summer's almost gone.

What do you see outside that window?
It's the middle of the night and you need to sleep.
Is it that dark specter i don't know,
Who keeps so much of you from me?
Do you see yourself from years ago,
A younger you out on these streets?
What is it that you can't let go?
I can't stand this thing between you and me.

Baby come back to bed.
Take the gun away from your head.
Put it back in its locked drawer -
Let me show you what a friend is for.
Baby come back to me.
Leave the past where it should be.
Baby make sure to lock the door
I'm gonna show you what friends are for.

It's four pm; you're not awake.
I saw you at the window last night.
How long have you been sleeping through the day?
Talk to me again. Tell me we're alright.
How can you think for months and have nothing to say?
You're vanishing without a fight
While your silence grows and washes us away.


Baby come back to bed.
Take the gun away from your head.
Put it back in its locked drawer -
Let me show you what a friend is for.
Baby come back to me.
Leave the past where it should be.
Baby make sure to lock the door
I'm gonna show you what friends are for.


Baby come back to bed.
Take the gun away from your head.
Put it back in its locked drawer -
Let me show you what a friend is for.
Baby come back to me.
Leave the past where it should be.
Baby make sure to lock the door
I'm gonna show you what friends are for.



You only love me because I love your work.
You just love me because of how we'd look.
You just love that I still have hope
And all the chances you never took.


This is the plight of women through centuries, lying awake, imagining their men with other women. He's touching her, and i'm starting to sob while i write. Some girl he's known for three hours, maybe that should make it easier? That it's just masturbation for him? She could be anybody. I'm not saying I don't understand his position. He's a man, a man like him, in LA for three months? To me he's not tangible any more - he's the other half of a writing team working out a novel written in dialogue; he's a pen-pal. He hasn't been a physical presence in my life in almost two years, not counting his too-short visits, so i shouldn't care. It shouldn't bother me.
But it does. I'm going to throw up.


I can't afford to eat but
I've got these pills.
I can't bear to sleep but
The nightmares wake me with chills.

I saw her walk into the building
That contains your illegal loft.
I don't care who you see now
But i shouldn't have to watch.

There's nothing worse
Than giving back a key
There aren't drugs strong enough
For days like these.

I don't care what you play
Just play it fucking loud
So i don't have to listen to the mess in my head.
I don't care what song it is
Just play it fucking loud
So i don't have to think about my empty bed.



There's the bar where ate breakfast
The salon where we got our nails done
They closed the diner from that summer



Last night we sat on the ridge
High above every life i've ever lived
With a bottle of merlot.
A hundred miles away
We watched the cars on the highway
You said "look at them go"

You teased that i was helpless
We could see miles of land
But we didn't see a single town
The sun slid behind the mesa
The rocks went up in fire
And we climbed down.



I see the void
And it sees me
We'll always recognize each other
From our days on the street.
I never asked to be happy
But i never wanted to be sad
I never really tried to be good
Now they all just say I'm bad.



He's no longer waiting for his belle.
He was saved by the girls on the road.
They told him not to be afraid of hell.
They promised he wouldn't go alone.



Flayed by the knotted combination
Of patience and great expectations

See you in your helicopter
Trying to give me bad dreams
But you're in the sky while i'm on the ground
So you can't bother me.
I don't fly, i've got no lear jet
Im grounded for longer than today
Top of nobody's list; social reject
But I'm Sinatra, I did it my way

Everyone likes to watch him ride through
Town.
They like to note how his broken parts are breaking
Down.
They study how they wash off his make-up like the tears of a sad old
Clown.
Nobody tells him why they watch him though, they just like to see him riding
'Round.



Oh if they play your song again
Well I've already got the gun in my hand
I blame the radio
Blame the radio
I blame the radio
Blame the fucking radio.



If i rub glitter on my track marks,
Can i be glamourous again?
It's summer in the city, again.


Give it up little muse,
Cant you see?
Your rockstars have killed you.



Cloak and dagger, baby.
Tooth and nail.
Tooth and nail.



These winter rust belt blues
Got me down down down.
I miss the mountain-top highs
And the steamy desert towns.

No matter where I go
I wake up and i just know
-
That I'm not home.

I miss the western coast,
Watch the ocean or a sunset
Both of us knew we'd gone
As far as we could get


No matter where I go
I wake up and i just know
-
That I'm not home.

I used to wear my heart on my sleeve

But i can't when i leave my city

I'll always keep it on her streets

Because I'll only ever love New York

I've got secrets locked away

That you'll never know

I have done things in LA

That my face will never show.

I've played games no one plays

To pass the New York nights.

I have left debts unpaid

That wait for me in plain sight.

No matter where I go
I wake up and i just know
-
That I'm not home.

I used to wear my heart on my sleeve

But i can't when i leave my city

I'll always keep it on her streets

Because I'll only ever love New York

I need my injection

To battle my infection

I think they call this a disease.

Just give me my injection

Stop the spread of this infection

Baby vaccinate vaccinate me.

i'm so hard.

Pics from Drink & Draw

I took some pics from tuesday night of some of the sketches. there were about 45-50 artists there and some of them were amazing. i couldnt get pics of all the ones i wanted, but here are some to give you an idea of how it went.

it has been a long, long time

since we last spoke. we haven't communicated in almost half a year. i was clearing out my inbox the other day and found some old emails from you. i never would have thought, the first time i read those words, that one day you'd just be an absence, a hole in my life. now that you've erased our entire, five year history of honesty and passion and connection, of daily communication, of being extensions of each other (your words. you said that in one of these emails) i wonder if you even notice that i'm not there any more.
i told you once that i feel you in my head like you're a part of my thought process, and you responded by saying "exactly. and we'll always be a part of each other. no matter what happens, i feel closer to you than i ever had to anyone." you told me your love for me is a given, that you can't even explain it because it feels so natural you don't question and don't see how anyone could.
so do you notice that i'm gone? do you still love me? you said "forever." you said "no matter what." you said even if we haven't seen each other for years and are in relationships with other people, you'll never feel as close to anyone as you do to me and that feeling will never change.  so now that it's been months without a word from you, i wonder if you meant all those things, if you love me despite the silence between us, if you think i'm better off without having you in my life and you're trying to do right by me.
or.
maybe.
probably.
you were lying. every word of every one of these emails, every word you ever said to me, whispered to me, mouthed to me from across the bar, every touch, every gentle kiss, was a lie. the only thing you ever did to me honestly was fuck me like you hated me.

the only thing that gets you off is to see me in pain but i think i love you - why didn't you tell me you were a demon from hell???
i dedicate this video to you.
and, btw, shut the fuck up about tommy lee. he is fucking beautiful in this video.
fuck you.
i can't believe the years of my life you wasted. you ruined my heart, and i will never love again. that's the mark you left on my life - a giant scar right where the best years of my life should be.

get this guys

so my dad has witnessed my flailing around in the real world, and, having come of age in an era when a job should be more than a job, a career should be fulfilling, an income should be not just a means of feeding and sheltering oneself but a source of identity and meaning, he believes that i need to identify my dream and pursue it until it validates me with a supportive income.  now, being a person of the world and member of society, i know that this expectation of a job that provides meaning and fulfillment is hopeless. the world simply does not work that way any longer. i know this, because i read the news - the actual news, not that shit those waxy faced people seem to vomit up on television.

(this article particularly)

so i know that it's impossible to make money doing what you love. it's a privilege we simply don't have. i wish i'd turned 23 about fifteen years ago when there were like, careers, and people could pay for luxury and appreciated the arts, and felt that quality was worth money. i wish that was the case, but it isn't. this is why i stripped. thats an ideal job. i worked for about 16 hours a week and made at least two grand every week - leaving me plenty of time to spend all of that money doing whatever shit gave me meaning. i could decide on a new fulfilling, meaningful thing to do every week! now that was fantastic.
unfortunately, "stripper" in ohio just means "prostitute," so that's not really an option now.

luckily, my dad has decided to rescue me - a luxury every girl knows she will never outgrow. we met for lunch last night and he pitched me an idea. he will pay me two grand a month to write every day. i told him once that i read an author (i don't remember who) who said that anyone can write well, but first he has to write about a thousand pages of completely horrible, dreadful, worthless drivel and most people read their first 500 pages, realize it's bullshit, and decide they are not writers. however, by the time any person writes his thousand and first page, if he's not completely dumb, will have learned something and produce at least one perfectly beautiful sentence. and then that person will be a writer.

so i'm now trying to get through the next 700 pages of terrible writing. many of them will appear here, and i apologize for that. ill try to label them so you won't have to sift through my shit. but i will be paid for producing them, so go ahead and try to ponder the reality of my day-to-day life.

i am something to do,

at least according to time out new york.
i think this should've been the whole article,

but alas, it goes on. if you care to read the rest, http://newyork.timeout.com/things-to-do/2459461/east-village.

oh, and Girl-Writer, that's (L-R) Chantilly Lace, Kelly Hurt, Machine Sex, AND Alex M-A-G-N-E-T-I-C.

Fun w Feathers!

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Drink & Draw

Toledo's First!!
Artists and friends of the Toledo area! One week from today you have the opportunity to participate in one of our city's coolest cultural events - the Art Supply Depo's monthly Drink & Draw!
From 7-10p, a week from today, at 29 S St. Clair Street, you're welcome to bring your favorite drinks and draw a live model - me!
Come participate in this celebration of local art!! Text me with any questions and I very much hope to see you there!!
Xoxo!

I made this.

my first toledo event

it seems that ill be staying in this town for a little while. im not completely sure how life spit me out here, or the thought process that led me to sign a lease, but i do know that when i was an infant my mother left me unattended on her bed for more than fifteen minutes and returned to find me upside down with my head stuck between her mattress and her bedside table, so that may have had something to do with my decision-making process.

anyway, since im here, i need to start a life for myself, so ive decided to go about it in the field in which ive been traditionally successful - nightlife. it has been a slow start, but i announced my first event today. it isn't exactly nightlife, but if i can get the right people to show up itll help me build the kind of notoriety a good nightlife princess needs.

its just an art model job, but i did invite all eight people i know in this town, and kelsey will invite everyone she knows - and she knows a lot of people - so hopefully our invitees will combine with their expected crowd and it'll be a pretty good show. if you want to win nightlife, you have to be known as rather crazy (the kind of crazy that makes you prone to removing your clothes and buying rounds of shots), and extremely self-confident and comfortable in your skin. Ill exhibit all of these qualities a week from tuesday, when i stand nude in a room of nearly 50 people who will be drawing me while drinking heavily.

the girl running the event just moved to toledo (i didnt ask why. i should have. i will tomorrow) from brooklyn only six months ago and we talked about how you can find a drink and draw event every night of the week in brooklyn and i told her many of my friends and i often modeled for them. (slight embellishment) ill be standing on a platform in the center of the warehouse with artists seated all the way around me - no hiding anything! - and she said i can be as creative or as comfortable as id like with posing and props. im debating just putting my feet shoulder width apart pointed forward, arms straight down, chin up, all defiance and raw human pride like something out of ayn rand, but im glad i have time to think. hopefully ill come up with something more creative. im looking around for lightweight, interestingly-shaped objects like vases or candelabras to hold.

with this and all the writing ive been doing for a yet-to-be-announced musical collaboration im working on, plus the painting ive picked up and the truly incredible book im reading (seeking air, by barbara guest), im feeling pretty creatively fulfilled lately. i never wouldve thought it to be possible, but this is an optimistic post from ohio.

oh! if any of you, my dear readers, are in the detroit/toledo area, id love to see you on the 17th!!

new pics

i haven't given you all a photo update in a while. i've been in a pretty dark place. winter in the rust belt takes a toll on the soul.

 anyway, this is pretty much what we do for fun here. bars. they're not grimy as a decor choice; just grimy.

 these are the prada glasses that i don't understand why i don't own. i can't think of one good reason for me to not have them. if miuccia prada knew that i don't have them, i believe she'd give them to me.

the angst expressed here sums up how i feel about christmas and new years eve.

not to imply i didn't go out for new years. this was the look.

and this was the more important end of the look (darian, when not taking pictures of myself with it, i kept my phone tucked into my stocking all night).

high res

no more relationships built on unspoken agreements of silence.  no more being the other woman. no more emotional investment in relationships that hurt other people or myself.

pay the bills. assume responsibility for each of my expenses.

dress for fun. do not dress to fit in.

learn latin, because it's cool.

always insist on a condom. always.

take the first steps toward long-term goals without expecting the journey to success to be shorter for me than it is for others.

utilize my experience in the music/entertainment fields to build my own success rather than be another person's muse. be my own muse. create something.

don't go back to smoking. too old.

stop with the junk food. too old for that too.

get back to new york. as often and for as long as possible.