The Daily Commute

Thinking about turning my experiences going to and from work in New Orleans into a short collection of comics:

Giant man: Damn gurl, what I gotta do to get in there?
Me: Well, there's actually no "there" to get into. I don't have a vagina. Sorry.
Giant man: I know you not tellin' me you a dude. 
Me: No, I just don't have genitals. Boating accident when I was a kid. Long story.
(Beat.) 
Giant man: So, I can't get in there then?
Me: Yeah, no, it's like a Barbie doll down there. No vagina. 
Giant man: Oh… Okay. 
(Man says nothing else to me and we wait for the bus in silence.) 

**** 

Man smoking a cigarette: Hey girl, what's your name?
Me: Alice.
Man: Can I take you out some time, Alice? We could get some drinks, I could take you out, take you to The Moon.
Me: (Horrified look on face) No, I vowed never to go back to space again. It's too dangerous out there.
Man: Not like the moon moon, The Moon, that place on Tulane Avenue.
Me: HA! You think I'm gonna fall for that? Not this time! Who are you working for?
Man: Oh, you crazy, huh?
Me: You can tell your boss he'll never take me alive. (Quickly walks away, suspiciously peering over shoulder every few seconds)

****

Waiting for the bus. A 30something-year-old woman with a blonde buzz cut wearing men's swimming trunks and a Hawaiian shirt approaches. 
Woman: I'll trade you my outfit for that dress you're wearing.
Me: Okay.
Woman: Alright, we'll do it real quick right here. 
(She lifts up her shirt and then reconsiders.) 
Woman: J/K, I'M DRUNK!!!!!!!!
(She runs away.)
Me: (to myself) I don't know who you are, drunk swimming trunks lady, but I hope that someday you will return to me, for you made off with my heart.

****

So, I don't know about you, ladyfriends, but when I'm biking and a man blares his car horn at me and then shouts to inform me that he wants to lick the sweat from my body, I usually go home and fantasize about marrying him. Marrying him, learning to cook for him, bearing him a son that he adores, and then on his birthday preparing a romantic feast for him. As he joyfully stuffs his face, he'll say, "Darling, this is delicious! Is it lamb?" And I'll shake my head. "Rabbit?" He'll ask. I'll shake my head again. "What is it? It's so juicy and tender." And then I will laugh like only a completely psychotic woman can and inform him that he's eating his son.
Just kidding! I love it when men scare the fuck out of me by honking at me and then scream obscene shit at me when I'm just trying to get home.

****

Forgive me Lord for I have sinned. I walked outside today and found a man in an I  Jesus shirt holding a cross and a megaphone preaching. He gave me an elevator look.
Jesus Freak: Ma'am, you're going to attract the wrong kind of attention in that outfit.
Me: How do you know what kind of attention I want to attract?
Jesus Freak: Men are going to approach you for the wrong reasons.
Me: Thank god I'm a dyke then. 

****

To the man who pulled over on the side of the road and shouted, "I own a clothing line, and you girls look like you could be my models," to my friend and I as we walked to her bike: You interrupted an excellent conversation about the objectification of women.

****

Dear man in the parking lot who asked me if I like to party and then tried to win me over by spraying me with Ed Hardy perfume when I said, "Not with you,"
Ladies don’t like that.
Sincerely, me

****

The Public Transportation Diaries 

8:40 Have arrived at bus stop 10 minutes early. Today will be a good day.
8:45 Maybe the bus will even come early and then I'll be early for work and everything will be wonderful.
8:50 Bus should be coming any time now.
8:51 Any time now...
8:52 Any time now............
8:55 Maybe it isn't coming at all.
8:56 Maybe the buses just aren't running today at all. Maybe it's a holiday that I don't know about.
8:58 (brief google search) No holiday, maybe there's been some sort of horrible national tragedy.
9:00 Maybe this is the apocalypse.
9:01 Maybe I should ask someone.
(looks around for someone to ask, no one is around)
9:03 Oh god, this is the apocalypse. Everyone is dead. What am I gonna do?
9:05 If I use that branch there, maybe I can break the window of that hardware store and get tools for the apocalypse.
9:06 I'll need nail guns, duct tape... How am I gonna carry this? Maybe they'll have wheelbarrows...
9:10 I should just take everything I possibly can so I can use it for weapon making and bartering for food later.
9:12 Maybe it would be better to break into the Walgreens first. They have medicine and food.
9:13 But what if there are armed people in there? I need weapons first.
9:14 But what if there are armed people in the hardware store?
9:15 There will probably be saws on hand. I can just grab a saw and it'll be fine.
9:16 How heavy are chainsaws? Do they need to be assembled?
9:17 May need to work on upper body strength before I attempt to wield a chain saw... Push ups!
9:18 (Bus arrives) Oh thank god.

Sign Language

I spent all morning explaining that often words speak louder than actions to me, and then you left for the store. I told you I love you and you turned your cheek to me for a kiss and then walked out the door without saying a word. 

Clairvoyance at 5 o’clock on a Friday

What happened at the lost colony of Roanoke?

The sounds of metallic balloons popping beneath high-heeled shoes, a blue parakeet dying of hypothermia, a grown woman subsisting on candy and wine

When Grandma dies what will things be like?

Riding a mint-colored bicycle with your white hair in a long braid down your back, carefree

How does it feel to lose a limb?

Whiskey, chocolate ice cream, one crying jag for every two weeks you wanted to kiss her

What will be happening the moment I meet my soulmate?

Your ex-girlfriend hidden beneath your bedspread, butterfly knife in hand

What does it take to be a good mother?

Spit, all your shredded letters, all of my favorite bedding, feather pillows, zip ties, string, an allegedly endless supply of love

How do you deal with the pain that accompanies your premonitions?

Slicing off toes to fit into someone else’s shoes, poisoning a girl you should be praying for, absconding with her bundle of joy because she has forgotten you

At what point should we stop drinking?

Maybe it would be easier if we had arms like Michelle Obama, arms better suited for holding

Pasta con Broccoli

Auntie once told me

loving someone is like 

eating a hot meal

you got to savor it,

but take care 

not to let it go cold.

I learned to love 

from a woman

with an eating disorder.

May through December

Despite our mutual disgust for one another, we made love often. It was the only activity during which we could completely allow ourselves to forget that the other was there.

The Mating Rituals of Skinny Girls Brought Up in Midwestern Hellholes

Rip out your heart.

Sew it back into place.

Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

Do this six hundred times a day.

Never stop loving.

Self-portrait (2010)

Self-portrait, 2010

Acrylic paint on canvas, created by painting body parts and pressing against canvas. Hair done with hands, eyes done with breasts, cheeks done with buttocks, lips done with labia.

The thorns they prick my fingertips/ And I remember her soft red lips

I am in love with a photograph. She doesn't love back, but she never changes and that's more than most can promise you.
I keep a spare bedroom for her, here, in my head, should she ever choose to come to life again and dance with me the way that only a memory can.

Synonymous

“Some people would call them ‘friends,’” said Cass. “I, however, choose to label them ‘straight people who try to sleep with me when they’re drunk and their boyfriends are being assholes.’” She looked up and saw Libby frowning at her phone and went to pour her another glass of wine.

The Happily Ever After

I could hear her from the hallway; I couldn't tell if she was laughing or crying. I knocked, but she ignored me. I knocked again, louder.
"Mag? I'm here. Are you ok?"
No answer. I knocked more frantically.
"Mag? Are you okay? Answer me!"
Nothing.
"Mag, I'm coming in."
The doorknob didn't turn. As I struggled with the doorknob, her hysterical sounds grew louder.
I began to sweat. Something was not right. Mag's mood swings and hysterical displays of emotion had become routine, but something was not right. This wasn't her usual histrionic routine. She'd locked the door, something she would usually never do. She'd never want to keep people out, never want to risk losing her audience, never want to keep people from giving her the attention she needed. Usually Mag's suicide attempts were carried out with the door slightly cracked—not totally open, so that it didn't seem staged, but never, ever locked. She needed to be sure that a passerby could get to her in time to make her puke up the pills, bandage her up, drag her to the hospital. But, no, the door wasn't budging. This was different, all wrong.
What could I do? She wasn't opening the door. She wasn't acknowledging my banging and screaming her name. Could she hear me? Could she not understand that I'd shown up to rescue her, as the script seemed to go?
"Mag. Mag. Mag. What are you doing, baby? I can't get in. I can't get to you. Open up! How can I be your knight in shining armor if I can't get in? Mag, is this a joke? Are you fucking with me, Mag?"
She was quiet. Complete silence, no more crying or laughing, whichever it was. My hands began to shake.
"Fuck, Mag. What can I do, baby? I'm too small. I can't break down the door. I'm not a real fucking knight, Mag! I don't have a fucking sword or armor or any sort of goddamn training for this. I need you to open the door, baby."
She didn't.
I don't know how long I was screaming before two guys from down the hall whose names I'd never bothered to learn came and pulled me away. The taller one grabbed me and began asking me questions while the other worked on the door.
"What's going on?"
"I dunno. I dunno. She's in there, and she locked the door. She doesn't lock the door when she does this. It's a game. Today it's not a game."
"What's a game? Try to calm down for me, okay?"
"Mag. Mag's life. She does this sometimes, but not like this."
"You think she's trying to kill herself?"
"I dunno. I dunno. Something's wrong."
"Should I go get someone? What do you want to do?"
"I want to break down the fucking door."
So, the three of us kicked and pounded and threw our weight against the door until the hinges gave, but Mag was gone by then. Gone, gone, gone.
Her body was all the wrong colors. White and blue, some violet. She'd put red lipstick on, but most of it had smeared off. She wore a white dress, combat boots, white gloves. It was all wrong.
I went to her dresser and took her tiara from the top of her jewelry box. I smoothed down Mag's hair and placed the tiara on her head before kissing her cold mouth.
"Goodnight, my princess."

Tiaras

Mag once told me that stories about two girls never have happy endings. I'd never thought about it. I wanted to argue, but I couldn't make a case.
"What about us, Mag?" I finally asked, "Aren't we happy?"
She didn't even take time to consider, just rolled her eyes. "It's not the same."
Realizing she'd hurt my feelings, Mag ruffled my hair and gave me a dismissive smile.
This took place during her tiara phase. One of her little protests against normality, against heteronormativity, against patriarchy, against the mundane and socially acceptable. Mag backed up her tiara phase with this reasoning: "How often does an out bull dyke get to wear a tiara? When I was five, my daddy called me his princess. I'm not giving that up just 'cause I've grown up, and it turns out I'm gay."
"I don't know, Mag," I ventured. "I don't think straight people get to wear crowns much, either."
Pretending she hadn't heard me, she continued her monologue: "What? Just 'cause I'm into women, they take away my crown and my happily ever after gets revoked? It's bullshit. I'm a motherfucking princess, and I'm gonna wear this tiara."

"And I will die a voodoo chile."

People offen ask me, Grampa Oogey Boogey, how is it dat you's a grampa, and you ain't got no kids? And I tell 'em true, I got no kids cuz, I fell in love wit a woman wit a tilted uterus. Dat's what dem doctors tell us. It waddn't dat dere waddn't enough love between us. We got plenty a dat. Plenty a love. Lovin' an' lovin' every mornin' an' every night. But da babies just falled right outta her. I figure dat whoever job it was ta be designin' mah cher spent so much time makin' her outsides lookin' fine, dat dey run outta time on her insides an' done a sloppy job. When mah cher lost chile numba fo', she got to be real sad, cryin' an' cryin' everyday. One day, she cryin' an' I pick her up in my arms, an' I say, "Mah cher, it's gon' be alright, it's gon' be just fine, cuz we already got babies of our own. All dem voodoo chill'en out dere, dem's our babies. All dem li'l chill'en who believe in magic, dat's our chile." And she stopped her cryin', and she smiled at me, and she said, "Honey, I do believe dat's some load a bullshit." She lef' me not long afta dat, moved to Florida an' took up wit one a dem smooth-skinned Hispanics. Not a day goes by dat I ain't missin' mah cher. She was wrong about dem voodoo chill'en, no—dem's mah babies and dem always gon' be mah babies an' I love 'em all just like dey was mah own blood. Dat's what voodoo does. Dat magic gets up in your blood, and you's chained to all dem other voodoo chill'ens like dey was yo' own. And, well, I'm an ol' man now. Ol' Grampa Oogey Boogey, and I still got dat magic in my blood dat every voodoo chile got. I'm still chained, and I'll stay chained til dey put me in da ground.

For Rico, Jack's Last Request

When I am dead, my dearest Rico, please do not attend the funeral.
Please, do not squeeze yourself into that black dress on my account.
Do not spend days agonizing over which wig to wear—the black,
pinstraight bob says mourning but the blonde Goldie Hawn looks so
good on. Please, my darling Rico, don't plaster over your eye brows
and paint new ones on your glittering brow bones. Don't go with the
gold eye shadow. Don't wear that same red lipstick that you wore the
last time that we kissed. Oh, god, Rico, and please, whatever you do,
do not make a speech. Do not mingle with my family and friends at the
memorial, and then halfway through the service, don't stand up and blurt
out some bullshit about how you were the true love of my life. Do not get
into a catfight with my wife over my casket. Do not get into a who-can-sob-
louder-and-is-therefore-more-emotionally-distressed-by-this-event-and-
therefore-loved-me-more match with my mother. Remember, Rico, you are
a lady. My lady. Do not introduce yourself to my boss as, "Coco, a very
close friend of Jack's," emphasis on the close. My darling, Rico, whatever
you do, do not have one of your episodes upon seeing my in my coffin.
Do not grab my lifeless body by the lapels and sob about how I was taken
from you too soon. Do not get on your knees in that cocktail dress. Do not
rip off your matching vintage hat—the one with the little netted veil—and
throw it across the room before balling up your fists and beating the ground
hysterically and shouting, "Whywhywhy!" Please, Rico, if you ever loved
me at all, then when I am dead, my dearest, please stay at home. Do not
change out of the silk bathrobe I bought you in Barcelona. Do not do your
makeup. Do not do your hair. Do not leave the house. Order in from Harry's.
Buy yourself two desserts. (Don't pretend you're worried about getting fat;
you always eat mine, anyway.) Drink that champagne we've been saving.
Drink it right out of the bottle. Put on Funny Girl. Watch it three times and
recite all of the words. (I won't be there to let your know how annoying
it is when you do that.) Don your fur-lined slippers in my honor. Cry if you
must, but only if you must. Take comfort in knowing that I was naked in your
arms, and everything else that I ever did was just drag, part of a persona. Get
angry that the love of your life was so artificial, if you must. Call for more
champagne. Watch Funny Girl again. Fall asleep. Wake up. Take two
aspirin with a glass of water. Pull the covers over your head. Close your
eyes. Start to feel better.

Fast Learner

I think that part of the problem must be that I immediately understood in preschool when the teachers said that the golden rule was to treat others as you would like to be treated, while most people I’ve encountered thus far are still trying to make sense of that one.

Magdolene

In all fairness, she did once tell me that she was insane,
but not long after she said, "But I know that I'm mad,
and truly mad people never know they're mad,
so, really, I must be okay." I told her I was not sure
that was the way it worked. I watched her mouth
force itself into a half smile, though it came out
more like a half frown. I could not help but kiss her.

Now you know

In World War II, the Nazis forced gay males to wear pink triangles. "Asocial" people (this included feminists, lesbians, and women who did not perform the traditional roles of heteronormative housewives) were forced to wear black triangles. For these reasons, the triangle has been adopted as a symbol of LGBT pride. 

Tender Loving Care

When I was ten, my mother sat me down at the kitchen table. A paring knife and a reddish-yellow apple on a paper plate lay in front of me. "Today, I'm going to teach you an important life lesson," she told me. She came up behind me, her arms around both sides of my body, and took the apple and the knife off the table. "Today, I am going to teach you how to slice an apple," she said.
I'd seen her do this countless times. She'd twirl it in one hand, effortlessly shaving off the skin with the knife she held in the other, and then cutting the flesh into twelve perfectly even pieces. Sometimes the slices would be arranged on a plate with a glob of peanut butter for my after school snack. Sometimes they'd be dropped into a Ziplock bag and placed lovingly under the ice pack in my lunch box. And then, at holidays, when the apples were bitter green and not for me, they'd be baked into a crust with brown sugar and served with vanilla ice cream. It had never occurred that someday I'd have to learn to slice my own apples. My mother did it so well. She dissected it quickly, precisely, and with little or no concern for the damage a paring knife could do to her lovely, manicured fingers were she to make one false move. I had little confidence that I would ever wield a knife with the same insouciance.
My mother put the apple in my left hand and the knife in my right. I flipped the blade over so that it faced away from me and touched it lightly to the skin. My mother took my hand and gently turned the blade to face me. "You always hold it so that it's facing you," she said.
"But what if I stab myself or cut off my fingers?" This was as a likelihood that I immediately wished I hadn't thought of. Images of me slicing off my thumb, blood everywhere, passing out, a trip to the emergency room immediately came to mind. I wouldn't be able to hold a pen without my thumb. My classmates would make fun of me. I'd drop out of school. I would never marry; no one would want me. My mother would be slicing my apples for the rest of my life—if I could ever bear to eat another apple. I'd be doomed to lead a lonely, thumbless existence.
"If you hold it like this, you won't," she explained, thoughtfully. "Because when you're pointing a knife at yourself, you'll be careful. You're aware that you could get cut. If you hold it away from you, it doesn't have the same effect. You'll get careless because you'll feel safe, and then BAM! you'll slice your finger clean off."
This did not reassure me. I turned and looked up at my mother's face. She was smiling. I was so terrified that I began smiling, too.
"Trust me, honey," she cooed as she put her hands around mine, moving them to make cuts in the apple in a slow, controlled way that made me less afraid. "There you go, you got it," she said as she removed her hands. I sliced the rest of the apple in the time it would've taken my mom to slice ten of them.
When I was done, I picked up a piece and bit into it. My mother did the same.
*****

Six Word Memoirs (2008)

• Should have worn a bra today.
• "Fuck" isn't such a bad word.
• She fell in love with everyone.
• Writing my name on your face
• Never in the company of sanity
• She knew that everyone had something.
• In the business of soul stealing
• She was a nightmare, at best.
• A billion reasons not to care
• Maybe I want to look trashy.
• Put the world in a box.
• I love you./You love everyone.
• When life gives you lemons, cry.
• Love me. Love me. Love me. 
• I don't know who I was. 
• What do you want from me?
• You were everything./You were nothing.
• I never noticed all the staring. 
• I never noticed all the caring. 
• Can I sleep in your bed?
• Milk shakes melt and people change. 
• I'm too sexy for my shirt! 
• Keep your coins, I want change. 

The Liar

She was an artist.
Picasso had painting.
Poe had his writing.
Dickinson had poetry.
She had lying,
and her masterpiece
was a love story.
It was the story of us.

It went like this:
Once upon a time,
(This is how the best
lies always begin.)
there was a lovely girl
without a name, and
one day she met another
lovely girl without a name.

And together they were
lovely—no, they were more
than lovely, they were
happy. They were in
love. Everything was
absolutely magical.
And the frogs got along
with the toads. And the
witches stayed in their
fortresses. And the princes
stayed in their castles.
And the nameless girls
lived happily ever after.

The end.

Leanan Sidhe

And I've tried to put off writing about Mag because she's a cliché—a real life cliché. She's been written ten thousand times over by writers ten thousand times more talented. She is Holiday Golightly, Miss Daisy Buchanan, Beatrice Portinari, that stereotypical kind of extraordinary that permeates pages of classic literature. It's true—she is my muse, but she is also part demon. She is a spider whose bite I invited. The venom dripping from her fangs is inspiration. She pumped me full of it, and now I dance like mad for her amusement, scribbling away at sonnets in her likeness as her poison courses through me and rots my insides. I can feel her sauntering through my blood stream, her laugh echoing in my brain, her scent causing my lungs to swell. My greatest works are merely seizures brought on by her bite.