April 2016 - Our Lady of Lust and GraceOur Lady of Lust and Grace

dancing girls

Burning Books

April 30, 2016

Someone called this blog my ‘burn book’ last night.

Seriously? 100 000 followers and you are yelling at me in the middle of the floor on a Friday night…that hardly seems safe now does it.

“Watch how you treat writers, we will describe you.”

I get paid to tell stories about my life. Sometimes it bursts into flames, I light a smoke and watch it burn. Then I write about it.

I’m more of a pour-sugar-on-shit-to-make-it-look-good kinda girl. Ask my exes.

The irony of the Mean Girls references flying around while a group of sparkly blond girls ganged up on me…not lost.

It started a little something like this.

There is a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women. ~ Madeleine Albright

There’s an extra fiery pit for women who watch their drug dealer hit his girlfriend, proceed to just buy drugs anyways and leave her there.
The heat in that pit gets turned WAY the fuck up when they ‘swear on my son’s life I didn’t do that.’

Ya, you did.

Just like she swore on her son’s life she wasn’t trying to fuck my ex. She was.

She applied her cocaine logic to the situation…instead of talking to me, she amplified a pre-existing fight and suddenly every girl in that clique was mad at me, including my PIC.

I’d uttered a less than silent prayer earlier yesterday that my Friday night be peaceful and profitable. For two reasons.

I knew I had fucked up at work. I mean I didn’t know, I was told.
Bartender said “_______ is mad at you for touching her customer”.

He explained what happened and when. I instantly felt like shit. The girl in question had asked Bartender to say something to me to avoid a fight. Rather adult of her actually, kudos.
I said “There isn’t going to be a fight, I fucked up.”

To fight implies I have some right to counter her argument. I don’t.

It doesn’t matter that I meant no harm, harm was done. Ergo, no fight. Just her mad and me sorry.

We’ll come back to this.

But first.

The girl who got beat up by the drug dealer? She’s a friend of mine. She called me panicked, crying, screaming and running down the street trying to get away from him and asking for help. I did what non-addicts do and grabbed my car keys, my son and a baseball bat and went to go get her. Put her in the car, threatened to run him over and brought her home.

I had already had a bit of a day.

Sadly my prayers went unanswered. Money was shit and ______ was pissed.

_______ asked me if it was okay to stick her finger in my face and I said ‘sure if that’s what you want.’ She was citing other fights with other girls. Seriously, do what you gotta do to get this out so we can get past it. Fuck, hit me if you need to.

But don’t yell at me on behalf of other girls.

Flashbacks of high school.

She who shall now forever be known as ‘Cocaine Logic’ saw a way to get in with the popular girls and took it. She also took it upon herself to tell my PIC that she ‘heard’ I had been shit talking her.

I still have no idea what I supposedly said. In fact any time I have been asked about our time away I stick to ‘it was insane, it was amazing, I want to go away with her again’, it’s all right here in this very blog.

Why would I make plans to go away with her again? At 8:30 this very night we talked about going to Chicago. I openly called her my PIC and made her my WCW. I adamantly defended her when people spoke badly about her or warned me about hanging out/going away with her. I actually expected her to do the same. No such courtesy.

So be it. Soap bubble friendship that popped at the first touch of anything.

I’m not here to fight. I wouldn’t trade a minute of hanging out with her for some bullshit idea of revenge.

This is just one of life’s little shake ups.

I spent a year in that bar being teased and ridiculed and alone. I can do it again. And if memory serves, I made way more money when I had way less friends.

Now.

If you have followed the blog you know, everyone gets a nickname.

I handed out a bad one. Call it poetic licence.

It’s just a case of a writer knowing what I meant and not explaining it. It happens.
Again, I meant no harm by it but harm was done. Doesn’t matter if I meant to or not. I did the thing.

So my darling 100K readers, here’s the corresponding apology.

I called a girl at work THE Plastic. Hence all the Mean Girl talk.

She gets her hair and nails done did on the regular. She probably has a collection of purses and shoes that cost more than my last 3 vehicles combined. She is always looks like she stepped out of a magazine… pretty, coordinated. She works out, goes to yoga and Starbucks.

I’m a heavily tattooed, barely functioning alcoholic, weird, writer/stripper.

She isn’t part of my tribe is all. None of them are, I was just visiting.

What I failed to make clear is that despite our vast differences on paper…I really like her. She was fun to talk to, said things like ‘I don’t like your music but I love your shows’. Flattering considering her shows are flawless and fantastic.
She has layers, we have had a handful of great conversations.
The article I mentioned her in cited one of those talks. When I re-read it I realized I didn’t make it clear that although she had gotten on my nerves one night, I shrugged it off for the greater good, which was us getting along. I don’t like what you did but I still like you. Basically.

Work is just work.

I love my life. I have a wonderful man who loves me. I have a son who overhears that panicked conversation with my girl and just grabs a bat and starts the car.

I’m going to miss my PIC if she stays gone.
The idea of making new memories with her was a nice one.
But, if I miss her, I have about an hours’ worth of videotaped shenanigans stored in my phone.

I archive, that’s what I do.

Added bonus, all the extra blog hits while people read through looking for themselves in here.

Hi guys.

men

The Big Blue Thingee

April 29, 2016

I put out distress calls, god knows I do.

I spent a long time alone in my head believing myself to be strange and unworthy.

Spent that exact amount of time toning myself down and trying to figure out what everyone wanted me to be. Like wearing costumes that didn’t fit. They pinched, itched and hurt.

I think I am naked now.

I found my people and came home to them. We are naked often, stripped bare, just being us.

And sometimes, the me that I am, is a sad girl, a scared girl, I don’t understand the actions of others. Especially those who seek to hurt, maim and manipulate me and mine.

Still, I go out and I try to live my life. I bump into people with sharp edges, I try to love them anyway and I bleed.

If it’s bad enough, I cry out and always, without fail, someone from my village comes running with bandages.

Only makes sense that my heart and ear is also fine-tuned to hear others crying out in the wilderness.

A girl said upon the Facebook “I don’t think I should be allowed out in public today.”

Sounds exactly like me 6 weeks ago.

My first instinct? Go get her and take her home. Make a sushi roll outta her and take it from there.

Instead I messaged and said “I’m around if you need an ear and a coffee.”

You see, we’ve only met twice in person. Once at a photoshoot covered in fake blood and once at the launch party for the calendar that said photoshoot was for. https://www.facebook.com/deadglamourgirlz/?fref=ts

She was drunky and I got her car where it needed to be.

She is cute when she is drunky, and next level sex kitten when she is in front of a camera.

Good times. Not enough to form a lasting bond, but enough that I was intrigued by her.
And then there was the distress call I couldn’t ignore.

We agreed on tacos the next Tuesday.

I told her she is a juxtaposition to me. A chameleon, and I find her fascinating and wonderful. Because at her core she is sweet, kind, smart and a total dork. Kinda like me. Except she has the switch inside of her that turns her brave ALL the way up in a way I have not learned yet.

That day her switch was turned off. Or maybe it wasn’t. It took guts to sit across from a relative stranger and show the absolute shit hand of cards she has been dealt lately. Her bottom lip quivered and I saw tears that never made it out of her eyes, but they were there, hovering, waiting.

The things we talked about are no one’s business. This is my blog and my space. If I could out my friends and their shenanigans, I would have a million followers just for the Cara Show alone.
But one thing she said, I had an immediate counter for. I had real life proof that what she wanted wasn’t outside the realm of possibility.

I was a bit late for lunch, for 2 reasons.

A real estate agent and the big blue thingee.

I got stuck waiting for my apartment to be shown, they were late.

Aaaand…Jason and I were trying to make our relationship Facebook official and we couldn’t get the big blue thingee to work. This one.

One of the reasons the girl sitting across from me eating tacos was sad is because she had been with someone for several months and he wouldn’t claim her on social media.

I know right now that some of you are inclined to believe that it’s not a big deal. And if that is your opinion, more power to you. I am not here to judge. I have said before my relationship status was on mute for 5 years.

The only other long distance relationship I had with a semi public figure/writer…it was important to him to be anonymous, so I kept his name like a secret in my mouth. Even though I could bury him, I wouldn’t, I didn’t and I won’t. It’s important that he is safe, even after everything.

It’s no different than some people like holding hands in public, some don’t. Young Un hated it and I knew it. He knew I loved it so sometimes he would, for me. And that was enough, more than enough actually.

It was important to her. So it is valid. She is valid. She is worthy of any gesture that adds comfort to her. Her partner, if he is to be called that, should have acknowledged this BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT A PARTNERSHIP IS. It’s not a failing on her part, it is something simple that she wanted and was within his power to give to her. But he chose not to and thereby didn’t chose her.

Now she is free to find someone who loves the way she loves.

I understand completely. I don’t want to be a secret either, nor does Jason.

In my relationship with him, it is important to US. Doesn’t matter what his/my/our reasons are. I want to be with a hand holder. I want to be held and claimed and celebrated. And it isn’t some bullshit girly fairy tale shit that doesn’t exist. It does. I am proud of my man and proud to be his, and the world knows it.

We are both writers, we both spill our guts. And I have a feeling that we will show the world what is possible when it comes to love via the vast ocean of the internet.

When we are out in public there is no doubt that I belong to him. My body language screams it.

We finally figured out the riddle of the big blue thingee.

Jason has claimed me, over and over. Written pieces and articles about me, in which he calls me Sarah. And my name spoken by him in his sweet southern drawl is about the most beautiful thing I have ever heard.

https://thelithiumchronicles.org/2016/04/28/make-it-count-jason-king/

lost boys

Looking Back and Fucking Thumbs

April 28, 2016

“…that’s a biiiiiiiig fuckin’ thumb you just sent me.”

That was the first time I heard his voice. InstaSploosh.

I am a sucker for a southern drawl, I won’t lie.

American accents sound like home and happiness. Some more than others. “Just shut up and let me say this” sounds bad regardless of the voice. I think even Morgan Freeman telling me to shut up would get my back up.

And that badly placed thumb on Facebook messenger. I hate it, seems dismissive. And yet I hit it by accident on the regular.

Meh.

Just gonna roll with it. And “big fucking thumb” has become part of our language with each other. I do so love it when he says ‘fuck’.

We talk, oh lord we talk for hours upon hours. I feel like I am in high school again, phone cord stretched to the limit out the back door so I can smoke and listen.

High school sweetheart went to juevie when we were god, like 17 maybe. I spent every night on the phone accepting collect calls and every day for the next month working to pay off the phone bill. He came home and dated someone that wasn’t me for the record. Why does my life get stuck on repeat? That was 25 years ago and I am still doing the same thing? And why do I have to have these moments mid-write?

And now that heaven is on fire, in the worst technicolor, oh and I’ve been chasing angels all my life. Amber Run, Heaven

There it is.

So now what us gonna do?

“This war won’t stand long, God won’t let it.”[1]

I am still fighting. I’m tired now.

“I am tellin’ all y’all it’s a sabotage.” [2]

Mercury is in retrograde, all phone lines to God are currently down, please try again later.

Day one. Shit is already slipping sideways.

My laptop decided to do an update shutdown and I lost 5 pieces I was working on. Microsoft Word had the audacity to dangle a carrot called “would you like to restore your previous documents” to which I replied YES. And no, not a thing. Just blank spaces where before there were words and feelings and thoughts and links.

“This is me breathing.” [3]

Jason had to tell me that yesterday. Breathe baby.

Somehow he knew. I was sitting in front of my laptop, mouth agape, tears rolling down my face.

I have a private album upon the Facebook called “holding area”. It’s where I put the things. Snippets, screenshots, inspirational shit. I was pulling screenshots off my phone looking for a conversation with Leah for an article. We fought, I was expecting a heartpunch. What I wasn’t expecting was uploading these tiny wee thumbnails that were not conversations with Leah.

Here come the Giant. Waltzing out of the past.

I wasn’t ready.

Sucker punch.

And this wasn’t the worst one. Not even close.

I have a self-defence mechanism, sharpened and honed over the last 3 years of dating ghosts.

More often I cut myself on the damned thing and baby do I bleed.

I decide I made them up in my head and he wasn’t that great, he didn’t really say those things and I am just a silly girl and look, everything is fine now.

And then time passes and I go looking for something else, innocently enough and I open their assigned oubliette.

And lo, he did say those things, and so much more.

I have got to learn how to label things better.

I also need to learn to stop looking back over my shoulder lest I trip, or worse. What if God sees and I become Job. Nothing grows on salted ground. I need to grow.

I said to Jason that I thought he deserved better, that I wasn’t coming into this clean. And he just stayed. Made a hundred excuses as to why this WILL work.

He doesn’t punish me for my past or even ask me to hide it. He works through it with me and looks for the why.

He doesn’t tell me to shut up. Quite the opposite actually.

He simply says “okay baby”. Let it out baby, give it some air and let’s work through this.

We did. We are. We will.

“Maybe what you think is you being a hurricane just feels like a light sprinkle to me.” He said.

I think so maybe, yesh baby.

This.

[1] Cold Mountain, Ruby Thewes

[2] Beastie Boys, Sabotage

[3] Grosse Pointe Blank, Martin Blank

Uncategorized

Okay Baby

April 28, 2016

Oh you did a buttload of drugs and you feel shitty and you need me to come get you so you can sleep in my bed and cry on my couch?
Okay baby. Love you be there in 20. What’s the address again?

Oh, you want to ride a mechanical bull with no panties on?
Okay baby. I will hold your purse, and film it.

I want to go swimming, can we get a hotel with an indoor pool?
Okay baby. (What no foot stomp required? Thanks baby.)
(See also, can we go shopping at Target for shit I don’t need so I can be supportive and then can you fuck me in a blanket fort…okay baby. Yesh)

Oh, you think its okay to bring your drug dealer to brunch and spend 3 days text screaming at me because I didn’t just say ‘okay baby?’
Okay baby, we done. That one wasn’t okay.

Which is weird considering…lately everything okay baby.

It’s my new mantra, whatever life hits me with, its just okay baby.

Once upon a time my dad was a shutdown coordinator for a huge company.
He would tally the man hours and outside hires to get everything running on budget within the time given. He worked with another man to whom he would show his well calculated specs to.
This man would look them over and religiously say at first “Okay Jonny”. Then it would all slide downhill. “Okay Jonny, I thinks so…I think so maybe. Um no. No Jonny. Just no.”

In my household it became part of our vernacular. Those inside jokes, movie quotes and song lyrics that become a private language between those you love and spend time with. The original back and forth got shortened. And any time the answer to anything was ‘no’, it became, “I think so maybe no.”

I have since changed my outlook on life the universe and everything due to a random trip to New Orleans with Miss No Rules.
There are no rules.

If I love you, I just love you. As is.

You wanna do a thing? Okay baby.

You hurt me? Shrug, okay baby.

Plans for hotel rendezvous? Okay baby.

It works for everything, like tabasco, perspective, duct tape and WD-40. And should be applied liberally.
This is some next level, ‘just roll with it’ shit. And I love it.

What happened is while I was waiting for life to happen, it was already happening. I panned out whilst watching the movie that is my life and saw that with little or no direction, everything was great. We lay in the road and get up if a car comes. Dance to no music or all of it. Life isn’t scripted, and I love the people playing star roles with me right now. Exactly the way they are, messy, funny, honest, belly laughs and sometimes out of control.
We have all survived everything up until this point. Those nights laying in bed with my heart ripped out, I wanted to die, thought I might. But at some point I got back up and back on with the business of living.
And as scary as the new stuff was, it was also really amazing. And it continues to be so, exponentially better.

I always loved this poem…so much that i wanted to be it, somewhere I lost my way.

Found it again and found the one who makes me feel like he is yesh, and I may…

Planned a vacation with Jason, we must have reorganized things, added and subtracted 1000 times, if once. Now he has to work 3/8 days. No breakdown, no subtext, no foot stomps. We can snuggle and watch movies when you get home and I’ll make dinner. Okay baby.

My friends are all at different points in their lives, most of them younger than me, some of them making right messes out of things BUT THOSE ARE THEIR MESSES TO MAKE. In retrospect all my messes had lessons buried in the shit. Why deny them the same thing just because I actually know better. If it gets dangerous I will pull them out, and they will come with me because they know that I am the Queen of Okaybabyland and if I have to say, no baby, there is a reason for it.

They say things like ‘I love him.’ and I just say “okay baby”. I am not the expert on love, I have a really good idea what it feels like to be accepted and wanted as is. Like a solid friendship, with lust on top. Closer than I have ever been. Feels like love to me. For them? I just know how I love them and hope they find something similar. Someone who just lets them be themselves and says ‘okay, that’s my baby.’

men

The Claiming

April 25, 2016

My relationship status on Facebook has been non-existent for over 5 years now.

I haven’t been single for 5 years mind you, but I left it blank.

I dated Pimp Daddy for 2 years and never felt the need to claim him, gee I wonder why.
(See the 3^rd word in the previous sentence.)

He never called me his girlfriend even after we moved in together, even after I got pregnant and then fired, rendering us gypsies. Even after I got us out of that mess and every subsequent mess after that.

He wasn’t that important.

End of story.

There was a method to my madness, or a reason for it.

I remember one day when ex hubby and I were fighting. I’d run away from home and was sequestered in a Pepto Bismol pink room above a strip club surrounded by everything I could possibly jam into my Jeep, including my laptop thank fuck. I was using it for evil, posting passive aggressive shit. Obsessively checking my relationship status on Facebook to see if maybe this was the time it would actually be over. It wasn’t. I mean, he DID dump me on Facebook that week, but it didn’t last.
And so it went, different locales, always the same game.
Is it my turn or hers?
Where am I sleeping tonight, and watching my status obsessively to assess how bad things were this time.

If I left 7 times I left 20. If he dumped me 17 times he dumped me 57. The center didn’t hold. It was never my circus and they weren’t my monkeys.

My monkeys fly.

And you know what? Fuck it. Fuck this, fuck that, fuck them.

Every time I start shit talking my exes, I hear Sophia from the Color Purple.

“He ain’t worf it.”

“Don’t trade places with what I’ve been through. Sat in that jail, sat in that jail till I about done rot to death.”

I did. A few times. And I was always the key.

Hell can get pretty comfortable if you have been there long enough.

But I was the key, the key to leaving, the key to the locks in my life.

The secret is all inside your head she said to me. The answer is easy if you take it logically. I’d like to help you in your struggle to be free. There must be 50 ways to leave your lover. ~ Paul Simon

The leaving, I have that down. Being left? Got that too, don’t want it but I get it.

But what about the in between?

How in the good lord’s name do I deal with that?

Where is that fine line between belonging with/to someone and territorial pissings?

Once upon a time I posted a profile pic of me in a doorway, wearing The grey dress. My corner of the internet exploded, compliments flying everywhere. But the one I fixated on was from Young Un. We had an inside joke about ‘man pants’, jeans I owned that hung off me rather than hugging my curves. He posted under said grey dress pic that I was beautiful no matter what I wore, even in my man pants.

It was the first time I had been claimed publicly by someone I was with, in what felt like forever.

And it felt amazing.

The Poet did the same, a few times, and it always elevated me. I felt wanted, like he was announcing his presence in my life. And I liked it.

I realized, I had lived without it for so long that I no longer need it, but I kinda want it.

With the new one, good god I wanted to brag. But I would restrain myself, mull over the comments I was leaving out for the world to see, and if I felt they might offend someone…inbox or not at all.

We talked about it, he makes it easy to talk about everything.

“I’m scared.” I said.

“It’s okay baby.” He replied.

I wanted to climb the air traffic control tower at O’Hare and announce how smitten I am with this man.
I told him that too.

“Okay baby.” He said.

Shortly after we each got called out by mutual friends…”so you seem really happy, what’s his/her name?” They already knew. I am so transparent it’s like trying to hide elephants inside a greenhouse.

I don’t want to hide anything, I don’t keep secrets nor am I one.

So I said it, out loud. Posted upon the Facebook that “I am smitten as fuck with Jason King.”

Took him nanoseconds to comment underneath “and I am smitten right back.”

And in that moment I allowed myself to be happy. Still am.

men

Smitten as Fuck (airports and kudzu)

April 24, 2016

When you live 9 hours away from the one you are smitten as fuck with, date-night takes on a whole new meaning.

Netflix+sweats, yesh. But my show stayed on pause for 5 hours while we talked about the universe, life, exes, work, our children, parents and grandparents. Feelings growing like kudzu, about a foot a day, wrapping us us in happy green and changing the landscape. Then we belly laughed for about an hour and made plans.

And it came to me then, that every plan is a tiny prayer to Father Time. (Death Cab for Cutie)

It is.

And with every new relationship we must battle the demons of what came before and the cold, cruel, pessimistic leader of their army, Sargent-at -Arms “What If”, his never-ending arsenal, bombs and bullets labeled ‘pain’ and ‘hurt’.

What if it doesn’t work? What if he doesn’t like me anymore? What if he likes me and then stops?

I don’t have to pray to any God’s for that. They have given me the gift of ‘try one more time’. I am optimism walking around in human form. Now is blessed the rest remembered. 90% of the time I only remember the good anyways, so there is that then.

I don’t feel like I have a choice. It’s either that or be a nun or a lesbian considering how I’ve been treated by men.
And men on the internet? Fugedaboudit.
And (gasp) another poet sailing into my inbox? Nope nope nope.
2 years of Chinese water torture under my belt there. The slow drip left me fucking Thirsty.

But I opened the door and invited him in. Didn’t think of any possible outcome beyond friends. He knows everything because I told him.

“2 years?” He said.

“Yesh.” I replied.

“Well that makes no sense.”

I opened my mouth to argue but nothing came out. I allowed myself to briefly imagine how much loving and living could have transpired between the Poet and I in 2 years, and suddenly I was kinda angry.
Who does that?

It’s easy to find all the ways something won’t work out, especially when nothing ever has.

I have the Giant as recent (I think he is still living) proof. Perfection and compatibility and magic mean nothing when you dangle a nice safe waitress in front of a boy. I mean nothing. It hurts.

Men are sweet as fuck to me and then they run.

This one is sweet as fuck and he may yet run.

But why would I deny myself the possibility contained in his eyes, the ones that crinkle at the corners when he looks at me, smile going all the way up and lighting tiny fires there. Why run from that voice? The one that sounds like a young Elvis…low, southern twang, wrapped in velvet and says wonderful things. Why deny the pull between us?
Why turn my back on the body that drove half a day to see me for an hour, the one that radiates heat and looks and feels like home.

Yes, him.

Once upon a time in New Orleans I gave a stripper a lap-dance on around midnight and so began the day of opposites. I stopped adulting. T’was I who suggested getting massages less than an hour before check out from the hotel. T’was I who took a cemetery tour with no way of telling time, just so I could say hello to Marie Laveau and the other ghosts that wander St. Louis. T’was I who said yes to shrimp and grits, knowing we had to be on a plane within the hour.

And it was I who stood under a pillar at O’Hare, tucked in between terminals, wearing a red dress as not to be missed. Eyes darting from the door to the road and back again, like a tennis match, simultaneously waiting on my PIC and him with 2% battery and not a care in the world. I just knew it would all work out.

I wasn’t wrong.

I saw him before he saw me, and I just knew.

“I’m here”, I called out. Head down, studying his phone. “Jason.”
He looked up and smiled, kept coming towards me.

My walk became a run, I totally forgot about watching the door. I forgot about everything beyond closing the gap between us. He opened his arms and I fell into them like I belonged there. Airport chaos forgotten when I asked him to hold my hand and not let go.

He still hasn’t let go.

https://www.facebook.com/KingsPoetry1/photos/pb.1723932144510357.-2207520000.1461513578./1763620803874824/?type=3&theater

lost boys

Afternoon Delight

April 20, 2016

Oh, I know
I’m holding on
I’m holding on to a ghost

I know
I’m tangled up
I’m tangled up in your ropes

I know
I’m skippin’ work
I’m skippin’ work like a stone

I know
It’s ok I’m not a-ok right now
Ubiquitous Synergy Seeker, N/A OK

That happened, verbatim. And I got coconut oil on that dress, I love that dress.

I am not ok right now.

And for my next trick I will reach into my recently retired winter purse and pull out… a carrot peeler?

And resume my position of puddle girl crying on the floor.

Only in my head. Okay, truth. My eyes leaked a little, but the flood seems to have passed. Just waiting on a dove and an olive branch.

We are almost done, I swear it. I can’t even anymore.

Sorry my Sunshine. I have tried fucking this poison out, crying it out, toughing it out and it just keeps ending up here. Skip over this if you must, I will understand.

The pen is my sword, my blood is my ink and a carrot peeler has become a catalyst.

My dad gave it to me years ago.

It’s important to me. I have lost a lot in this life, not that though, never that.

And I kinda want my Tupperware back. I don’t want it back so much as I just want back in the house and upstairs. I will forever wash the Tupperware if I can just go back upstairs.

I still read his horoscope when I read mine.

This…

*Welcome to the Beauty and Truth Lab.
We’re coming to you live from your repressed memories of paradise, reminding you that you can have anything you want if you will just ask for it in an unselfish way.
Welcome to the end of your nightmares, beauty and truth fans!
The world is young, your soul is free, and a naked celebrity is dying to talk to you about your most intimate secrets right now.

Just kidding.

In fact, the world is young, your soul is free, and at any moment you will feel a flood of ecstatic compassion for salamanders, oak trees, clouds, toasters, convenience store clerks, and even the ocean itself.
I’m your host.
My name is the Sacred Janitor at the Edge of Time, and I’m proud to announce that this is a perfect moment.
It’s a perfect moment for many reasons, but especially because you are on the verge of finally figuring out exactly what it is you really want more than anything else . . .

Fucking Postcard from 1952 is playing again, seriously?

Hadn’t heard that song in a week, but twice in two days. Still a thunderpunch to the heart.

Add *Rob Brezsny and a carrot peeler and I have flashbacks galore.

The one I call Giggles and Human Serotonin was sitting with me at the bar one night, the Giant was messaging me. In an untoward and forward manner considering he has a girlfriend. But I was feeding it. Love does that, makes you bend. Sometimes at the knees.

I asked him to come get me and he didn’t. He’d been drinking.
She answered in her 19 year old way of making pouty dolphin noises.
For a minute I wished I was her, at least she had a shot with him if you considered their age.

She asked me why I couldn’t let go.
I told her I was in love with him.
“Well, have you told him that?” she asked.
“No, honey, I don’t know how.” I said (except here and now like this I suppose)

I vowed aloud to her the next day if that happened again I would walk out the door to him.

I had to wait 3 whole days.

He messaged on a Tuesday, said he was home asked if I wanted to watch a movie.
I didn’t even have to think about it.
I made some half-drunk bullshit excuse ran out the door of work and hopped in a cab before he changed his mind. Passed about 300 bucks worth of customers on my way out. Didn’t care, still don’t.

We were both drunky when he opened the door and I stumbled inside.

We had more drinks.

We giggled and laughed and talked and touched like we hadn’t spent the last month apart.

We fucked with reckless abandon and lightning bolts louder and brighter than before, to that damned song. Explosions in the Sky. The one that only previously reminded me he promised he would stay. After I promised him that if she wasn’t the one I would just take his hand and take him upstairs. I don’t break promises, I did exactly that, twice.

Now I reminds me of him, inside me. Us. Molten and moving.

The carrot peeler happened the next day. We had a lunch date planned. I brought over pasta and made parmesan curls with it, all fancy-like.

Whatever had been holding us back physically had dissipated the night before, never to return.

There was no music when we went upstairs, no false pretense of a movie. No cover of darkness. I got to see him in all his glory, holding me down and open, blocking out the sun. Like an eclipse, I stared too long and the image and halo are burned into my eyes and memory.

Earlier I danced in the kitchen to a live John Mayer album while he finished off renos in the dining room, occasionally sneaking peeks at the other through the doorway and smiling. I caught a glimpse of what life would be like if he had stayed with me and I floated around that fucking kitchen, doing dishes and grinning like an idiot. Idiot being the operative word.

Both of us.

And I say this with all kindness intended. My darling Giant. You are a fucking idiot. Who lets this go? Who lets me go?
At least I hope you are an idiot, it’s that or the world’s most beautiful liar. Please be an idiot and then stop doing that.

What if this storm ends and I don’t see you? (Snow Patrol)

gypsy travels

Bourbon Street and the Baskets of Fucks

April 18, 2016

I started writing an article yesterday about my trip.

I am under a gag order. Some of what happened in New Orleans has to stay there. It’s only fair and right, this is my blog about my adventures. Not a place to out anyone.

I had my Sunshine take a look to make sure no one was getting painted in a bad light. Then I re-read it myself.

It sucked.

I mean it wasn’t that bad. Just sounded like a travel journal entry. Meh.

I had a moment of self-discovery yesterday right after my welcome home brunch.

I was a little jealous of my traveling partner, my PIC.

At one point the second morning, while discussing the night before with her I said the words, “I am a mom, I can’t turn it off.”

She is a high-maintenance-party-girl over a decade younger than I. We are not well matched at all. But somehow we work.

I wasn’t jealous of the attention she was getting, which was a vast amount, she was happy and I was happy for her. I am not a fan of attention from strangers.

It was her amazing lack of fucks.

We each carried a proverbial basket. Mine was full of all the fucks to give and hers had none. Mine was heavy and she floated around like a helium balloon with me holding the string.

I am the writer and the documentarian and the mom. It’s just what I am.

But I am also a heavily tattooed mildly enlightened stripper that drinks like it’s my job at my job.

There has to be some balance here.

Night two, we finally found it.

When she rolled into my nice quiet dinner the second evening, smashed, I (almost) burst into tears.
I wanted so badly to relax and enjoy at least a part of the night.

But…wait…that wasn’t her responsibility, it was mine.

My tears and her shenanigans got us free garlic bread and a staff discount on our /my dinner…so that was okay.

I had a mini epiphany after she jumped on a random party bus and left me standing on Canal. Well first I chased the bus four blocks and chewed her out, then I had an epiphany.

What if, once we hit Bourbon Street, I just let her do her thing? No rules.

I knew our final destination, I knew I would feel safe and happy there, we weren’t in a rush.

I uncrossed my arms, unfurrowed my brow and let my guard down. I danced a bit too, did a few free shots, hugged some bouncers and staff from the night before. They said “she’s at it again huh…you okay?” and the answer was a sincere “yes”. And suddenly the dynamic shifted.

She would look to me before doing much of anything and I would nod. Then we would both smile and she would do her thing. Sometimes I would snap a pic or shoot some video, sometimes I would just watch or strike up a conversation of my own, then it was time to move on to the next thing.

When we got to where I wanted to be, we were greeted like long lost friends. Free drinks started flowing, at one point a blue shooter got spilled down my white dress and the purveyor of said shot braced for impact, I just smiled and said it was fine. It was fine, it’s just a dress. I have plenty.

I stayed sober enough to get us in a cab (just barely), but by then we had a legion of new friends wanting to make sure we got home okay. At some point my dress was all the way up, all good, I had nice panties on. There is a snapchat video of me giving a stripper a lap dance floating around in the ether and that is alright too.

I was warned about her, my instructions were ‘don’t let her get raped arrested or killed.’

Mission accomplished.

Truth be told, I needed her. I couldn’t have enjoyed myself as much as I did without her. I would have played it safe the whole time and missed out on way too much fun.

Just no twerking or talking on Canal Street.

dancing girls

Adventures on Whore Island

April 12, 2016

“Don’t date a mystic, if you want the life you have. If you are comfortable and cozy, stay away. Whatever you have built around yourself to create comfort: it cannot stand in the blazing fire of a mystical woman. She is no trophy. She is no bodily pleasure-maker. She is the seer of souls. She is the womb that births the divine into the flesh and bone of matter. She doesn’t mean to burn your village to the ground, but she has seen what you are meant to become. You are not a peasant sheering sheep, as you have thought. You are a king dressed in rags who has amnesia.”
~ Alison Nappi

Love that almost as much as Lessons on Loving a Prophet.

No actual post today. Save these words.

I have failed to find an adultier adult and thereby must become one.

I leave for NOLA in less than 2 days. Gone for 3.

I need to recharge. Absorb some magic from elsewhere to bring back home.

Promised the Giant I would procure a voodoo doll and name after him, and so I shall.

Before I leave I must do things like get an oil change and climb Laundry Mountain, and work I gotta work work work work work.

I was out with a dear friend the other day. Talking over twin stone bowls at the Owl of Minerva, a Korean restaurant with a name that pleases me to no end. The food is amazing, as was the company.

We were talking about the last straws in abusive relationships. She said if you can leave in less than 7 attempts you are doing well. First two took me over 20, this last one…just once.

I was beaten so badly once that when I got to work the other strippers in my change room believed I had been in a car wreck, save one who asked when they started making cars with fists.

Led to some other stripper war stories. She asked if I had published any…not the ones I was telling…no. Too graphic, Angel Heart versus 9 1/2 Weeks.

Hmmm, I felt an idea tickling the back of my brain.

I’m working on an erotica novella, very genre specific and although loosely based in real life, it is fictitious. Not the kind of thing I post here. But…

The one who inspired my aforementioned Opus also used to play a game with me called ‘fact or fiction’. He would ask about my past or get me to make something up and I’d send whichever he chose. The real life ones have no place in the novella…but…

I have archives of lovers past. Starting around age 17, and never ending if I can help it.

More idea tickles, I’m giggling now.

So, starting soon, there will be a new page to this website. Pay-per-view so to speak. I give you, my darling readers, a one paragraph teaser and if you want more you have to subscribe or pay a nominal fee.

I promise to be worth it.

Full disclosure stories about my lovers and strip club shenanigans.
Way less metaphors, way more sex and all absolute truth.
Thinking it should be called “The xxx Files” or “Adventures on Whore Island” yep, there it is.

All me, All nude, All the time.
See if I can hire Cheech Marin to stand outside and be my barker “PUSSY PUSSY PUSSY”. There may or may not be vampires and snakes inside, mariachi band…check. We did have a live tiger on the pool table every Friday for a while. Her name was Tasha, I think.

See you on the other side.

men

Hot Neighbor and Humble Pie

April 10, 2016

It seems that I’ve been chasing angels
for what seems the entire of my life.
Amber, Run Heaven

See also “angel came down from heaven yesterday, (s) he stayed just long enough to rescue me”.
Jimi Hendrix

Hot Neighbor brought pie and wine the first time he came over.

We were both kinda awkward, didn’t know each other very well.

My how things have changed. We now eat cheesecake.

We do however, still call sex ‘pie’.

I re-posted The Dress a few weeks ago, and contained within is “An Ode to Hot Neighbor” wherein I hadn’t met him yet, but he looked at me like I was a goddess even in my sweatiest sweats. He still does that. He came over last Saturday right after the Hulk apartment incident. I opened the door, crying and he lunged forward and caught me in the best hug, he then drove me and my Sunshine to work.

I looked at her that night and said “I am not doing right by him, making him listen to me cry over other boys when he is right here and treats me like gold.”

“He doesn’t seem to mind” she said. And for a second I believed her.

He was here through the Giant recovery, just holding me and listening. Giving me pep talks and much needed perspective.

I’ve been standing in the forest screaming at the trees again.

I fucked up.

Is no bad. I make fix now.

I wrote an article yesterday about all this wonderful unconditional love I get from my girls, and I do. We all deserve a love like we have for each other, as messy and strange as it is and we are.

But, um wait. I have boys in my life like that too. Men actually, good ones.

Hot Neighbor. The one I call Home. And a new one, the Blue-collar to my Ballerina.

Blue-collar messaged me shortly after I put up the aforementioned article.

Him: I just wanted you to know I love your newest writing….and I know you’re still having some good and bad moments….but I am enjoying seeing you with that fire in you more….very proud and happy for you Flash….

Me: It’s you too. You treat me like gold.

Him: Love you’re more precious than any gold.

Me: As are you darling

Him: Thanks sugarpants

He calls me Flash. He is the factory worker to my stripper and together we make the premise for Flashdance. I could spend the rest of the article explaining the subtle private language we have begun to develop, but it’s ours. He makes me smile and giggle and sigh on the regular. Yesh, yesh he does.

He is also making an 11 hour pilgrimage to buy me tacos in Chicago whilst I have a two hour layover. That is the stuff memes and dreams are made of.

The one I call Home maintains vigil. Popping in every now and again when my Facebook statuses or profile pics get too morose. He keeps up with this blog. (Hi honey). He was with me when the false soldier/bouncer debacle happened, offering advice and keeping me from beating myself up too badly. I came to peace with that horrid situation in lightning speed thanks to him. Actually the article I wrote about him called Sexual Healing was the catalyst that launched me out of that relationship. Thank you honey.

And what of Hot Neighbor?

He was here last night for proverbial pie. We broke in my new We-Vibe.

I had a mini epiphany while we were talking and smoking in the afterglow.

“I can sex friend like a champion” yes, I meant to put the R in there. “But if I get an inkling of ‘relationship potential’ I turn into a retard.” (The way Zach Galifianakis says it in the Hangover)

I do, I become less of myself, I start pulling back and trying to be what my idea of what they want, and I am normally wrong, because um…THEY PICKED ME IN THE FUCKING FIRST PLACE. Old conditioning makes me feel like they want a watered down version of me, but I don’t like me watered down, neither should any man I want around. Its science.

I slipped up and cited the Giant again, after I promised myself I wouldn’t.

I apologized immediately to Hot Neighbor. Said I felt like I misused him and took advantage.

His response? “Sarah, you treat me like a prince.” And here I was thinking I was being douche aka myself, my messy crying self.

Geographically speaking it is impossible for me to always look cute when he is around. We live across the alley from each other, he does see me in my sweaty sweats, morning hair, racoon eyes from the night before. He has held me while I cry and shake and get boogers on his shirt and he just keeps coming back, checking in and serenading me.

Also geographically speaking it is impossible for me to be around the other two, but if they were here I think we would make fine sex friends.

So basically I have 3 men in my life who actually love me as is. Why was I sad again?

I am smiling as I eat this piece of humble pie, washing it down with good coffee and good karma.

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