LOVE IS THE DRUG!!!!!

It's been an opera. It was more than a opera. It was gore theater and I was the leading lady. I became obsessed with angels and ballerina's, things of grace and beauty after sonny and I broke up. I would cry about every fifteen minutes. I was a makeup nightmare. I wanted to be the swan in swan lake and flutter, crumple, and disappear.

Imagine this: your peaking. your in your youth. At the prime of your life. You've finally met someone. and your in love with him. You have a best friend. You have a soul-fucking-mate. And he's the best fuck that ever walked. And he wants to have babies. and what you want is babies. You've wanted to have a baby forever.

And he understands everything you say. and he completes your sentences. And he's lazy but he's spirtual. And he's not embarrased about praying. and he's not embarrased about god, jesus, none of it. He fucking thinks it's all kool. he wants to be enlightened. everything.

And there's even room for you to fix him, which you like, cause your a fixer-upper. He's perfect in almost every fucking way. The only fucking happiness you've ever had. And then he starts slamdancing with Mr. brownstone(herion)..and it all gets taken away from you...

He was in a coma for twenty hours and I was hysterical throughout. I mean, they had two tubes in his nose, two in his mouth, things coming out of every avaiable artery. They had to put the glucose through his neck that night. All of his life functions including pissing were done by a machine.

I mean, I seen him get really fucked up before, but I've never seen him almost eat it like that. And I knew that night as I layed with him praying he wouldn't leave me that I could never see him like that again..and that this would be the end of our story..I've been a zombie for eleven months now. For so long in my relationship and afterward. I've been in isolation, oblivious to everything but my darkest hedonism and darkest hours.

I have to start feeling my heart again. I'm finally returning to the land of agoraphobia trying to purge myself of my vitriol for every man that has hurt me in the past..I did lady macbeth..all right..now it's time to get back with the living....

GARY GRAFF

When I was twelve I had to switch schools and I hated it. I didn't know anything about guys then, but I knew you were supposed to desire them and they were better than horses and kitties. I'd been at school for a week. There was this guy and his name was Gary graff and he was really nice to me and sweet and cool and funny, and followed me around and everything.

So we went out to this place where everyone smoked and he kissed me and gave me this hickey on my neck. So then these two incrediably popular girls asked me where I got my hickey, and I was really proud, and I said, " oh, this guy Gary Graff." and they started laughing and cracking up. The deal was that Gary Graff was the biggest geek in school and everybody made fun of him. I didn't that to happen to me, so I ignored him. I did that to him.

This was one of my first lessons on vanity. Don't know why I'm thinking about gary graff..but I am...


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MISSING HIM

Sychler Cates was not terribly nice to me. None of that matter, though. To me, he was dark and handsome and dangerous. Needless to say I had an enormous debilitating crush on him. When I was in the sixth grade I fell in love with a boy. The boy nobody could break. A boy strong and shining among a crowd. I watched him lean against the wall and smoke a ciggarette. When he lifted his head his eyes would fill my heart.

The boy had blue eyes as do I. His were far more striking. He dressed with style. He didn't dress to show off his wealth or beauty, though he had both. He dressed to show who he was. I danced with him once, on a rooftop. It was drizzly and cold. We climbed up there to smoke. I sat shivering and smoking. We waltzed above the skyline stumbling and giggling.

" Wear that to my funeral." He whispered. "you look beautiful." I felt beautiful. I promised I would, never believing I would have to. I talked to the boy one night. It smelled like spring that night. I crouched behind my house smoking.

The boy I loved wraps leather around his arm. His body tightens. His lips curl. The rush flows from the needle. I can feel it dancing, sweating inside him. The river is sex, climax, and ciggarette. His eyes glaze and then smile. The boy I loved died. He died with a spike in his arm, injecting venom into his body. He died alone. He closed those blue eyes and died. Poison killed him. He loved that evil potion that made him fly free.

I dreamed of the boy I loved. I was wearing a ball gown, with flowers entertwined in my hair, walking on a spring morning. I walked too far and fell in a blue lake. I am beautiful in my dream. I fell into the blue water. I opened my eyes as I suffocated. If only I could have saved the boy. If only I could have set him free.

I have always wanted to be free. Soaring, alone, without inhibitions. I tried to fly away from his funeral. It was classic-raining, hailing maybe. I drove up the hill, the boys house looming ahead of me. His house with the father inside. He got those blue eyes from his father.

I pulled up girl music playing behind me. I started walking. The boy said I looked beautiful in these clothes, these shoes. I was wet and cold and not pretty. I sat down and smoked a soggy ciggarette. I walked three miles, before I went to his house and looked into those eyes, his eyes, the father's eyes.

Then, I was alone. Alone was bliss. Alone was power. Alone was self-loathing, hatred. I had forgotten how to be with people. The world was spinning. My eyes burned red.

Summer comes. The air was fresh, but somehow bitter. I walked with flowers entertwined in my hair. I don't think the hurt had actually faded. I think probably I just forgot how it felt to be normal. I felt guilty when I laughed. The boy I love will never laugh again. It was summer, but I was cold.

Those eyes, his eyes, the father's eyes still haunt me. I suspect they always will. Over too many glasses of champagne and a pack of a ciggerettes, I made a resolution . I will be happy. I will not forget the boy I love. I will allow him to become the boy I loved once, a memory.

GROWING UP GIRL!!!

The meaning of "girl" has been given a much needed make-over. The truth that girlhood is more about insolence than innocence; that little girls are made more of piss and vinegar than sugar and spice is finally being told.

When I was growing up I tried to find my girl heroes wherever I could. I remember sitting on the floor of my dark bedroom every Sunday morning, watching old shirley temple movies. Hugging my knees to my chest, I'd be mesmerized by shirley as she tap-danced her way through one tragedy after another. The fact that her movies made me cry was all the better.

They fed my girlish desire to feel deep, sensitive, and a bit melodramatic. In books, I could find a few girl characters I could relate to, but mostly, stories with girls at the center were few and far between. There was certainly no female equivalent to huck finn.

My education of all things Girl began in 1991. I began listening to female led bands like l7, the breeders, p.j. harvey and the like. I began reading "sassy" magazine religiously..it was my bible. Sassy was every teenage girls bible for all things girl. It was full of attitude, you could practically hear the sound of gum-snapping emanating from it's pages. Sassy was a magazine like no other: unapolegitcally feminist, smart, funny, and irreverent. Sassy spoke to its readers in the language of girl. It was written in the way that we spoke to each other, and any girl who read sassy felt herself instantly transported to the world of girl..

As long as we keep telling the truth about what it's like to grow up in a girl's skin, we can show what the world of girls is all about. So I'm here to say to the girl's of our nation: ASK NOT WHAT YOU CAN DO FOR YOUR CUNT, BUT ASK WHAT YOUR CUNT CAN DO FOR YOU!

REVOLUTION GRRRL-STYLE NOW

The women of the new girl order are ready to go out and get what's cumming to us. Our mission is to seek out pleasure wherever we can find it. In other words, if it feels good, screw it. Were ready to fight the good fight.

It's time that we, the grande dames of the New Girl Order, defy the backlash with a proverbial middle finger and bust through the Reviving-data of Ophelia's low self-esteem, stop shoving our fingers down our throats, turn our back on skeletal standards, enjoy being the girl with the most cake and ask: Can I have some more?

Let's make our voices heard often, and as loudly as possible. speak up!
Be as loud as you wanna be. Be courteous, be nice, be polite- but do it in a way that doesn't infringe on the person you are. and if people tell you that you're too opinated or not "ladylike" enough, tell them to go fuck themselves.

A VINDICATION OF THE RIGHTS OF CUNT

The word is Cunt. So many hate it. I love the word CUNT. And find it so perfect. Cunt is taboo, and taboo things are scary and powerful. Cunt is different from bitch. Cunt is bitch's naughtier little sister. I figure it's so fucking dangerous, and it's so intimately about my anatomy, that it's going to be mine, too.

Cunt is direct, it's unafraid to be what it is. Bitch is more sanitized. Cunt is a word that you wouldn't say in front of your mother. There's nothing that frat boys can call me that I haven't thought of myself, before you. And I'm using it my own way, thanks so much.

There have been lots of divine cunts in history. I think of Catherine the Great, who used her literal cunt to great effect. Mae West was considered a cunt because she was funny and sexy but also because she insisted on directing her own movies and slept with whomever she wanted.

I have two final things to say about why I love cunt. First of all, the thing in itself. Cunt is in charge, take-no-prisoners, and brazen. Finally, cunt is about being an insider. Or making somebody one of you.

For fun and for mean, for expression and for irony, cunt is it!!

MOTHER-TO-WANNABE

I know plenty of women who don't want kids, and I respect that. But if there's anything I must absolutely accomplish before I leave this planet, it's to give birth to a baby. I don't know exactly why, it just feels like an instinct that I can't intellectualize away. It's just there, like gravity or the tide. Every living thing on earth comes into existence, reproduces, dies. I am woman, I bleed. All I know is, life just won't feel complete until I am a breeder.

And don't tell me I can adopt. Fuck that. I want unconditional love, And I will have it even if I have to make it myself! It's not about the kid, it's about my kid. It's about fusing a piece of me and someone I love into total oneness(even if the only one I end up loving is my disparate self!) It's living breathing proof that there are things in me that are so good that they're worth repeating, and an excuse that I can't do a damn thing about my bad points, since they're biologically preprogrammed.

So here I sit, basically ready. It's not like I need to have the kid tomorrow, but I'm ready in an abstract kind of way. I've looked for liquor and love in enough bars to know that one doesn't lead to the other.

I was raised in a traditional family structure, and it left me with some mighty un-pc ideas of what a family is supposed to be. But I find beauty and comfort in making a man my best friend, sharing the rearing of our very own kids, growing up and growing old with all of us there to love and look after each other. I also find potential boredom and total castration of my self, which is probally why I'm not there yet. But I think deep down I do want it..

But just in case, I am chanting a regular mantra to myself that I do not need another half to be whole. I'm slowly coming to terms with the idea that I may not find my prince, or I may never be able to accept anything less than one..

Maybe I could handle single motherhood after all, or maybe time will teach me to embrace childlessness.stranger things have happen...

ANGRIEST GRRRL IN THE WORLD

When men get angry, their taken seriously. It's assumed they have a reason to be upset. But it seems whenever women have the gall to express anything other than effusive chipperness, were accused of being drama queens or pms-ing..Women it seems aren't allowed to be just plain pissed off.

I think alot of this comes from the fact that women are "supposed" to be feminine and docile. Anger doesn't fit into the idea of women as quiet and forever smiling.(stepford wives)anyone?

If we complain..were being rude or loud or obnoxious. If were angry their must be something wrong with us. Because "nice" girls don't get mad..When women are shown as mad or angry we become caricatures.

The pissed off man-hating feminist. The neurotic girlfriend. When in fact, women can love men..why else would we be in constant search for one..? and still be angry..believe or not we are complex creatures too..we can hold two thoughts in our head at once..imagine that boys??

ONE SICK PUPPY

Dogs give great head. But I digress.
when I was twelve, we had a small dog named Toby. He was irresistibly cute, a puppy pinup with as many neuroses and vices, namely an unquenchable thirst for attention and sex. He humped everything in the house: a little stuffed bunny, my dirty underpants, the loops in grandma's quilt. He repulsed me.

For one thing, dog penises are wet little aliens living inside man's best friend. They are not of this world. Either they look like a drippy corn dog or a melting creamsicle. Neither is attractive with a panting, hyper, buggy-eyed dog on the other end. To make matters worse, Toby was unscrupulous: any soft, smelly thing would do.

At twelve, my orgasms came at mysterious times. I didn't understand what caused the body-cramping rush between my legs and made my month when it happened. I didn't connect sex and the little "o", and I never connected sex with Toby. He was masturbating, but I didn't know that yet. All I knew was that our dog was a barking hormone, and that he was getting the coverted rush every time I saw him hump something.

Fast forward fourteen years. I'm sitting with a friend of my mine in a dark bar slurping free drinks and winks from the bartender, who ocasionally gives us a dollar for the jukebox. Sex and relationships, our favorite victims, were being torn apart as usual. Good head came up-no pun intended- and I slid into a drunken revelation of the best head I'd ever gotten. You know the punch line-my tireless Casanova was a foot-high dog. She screamed. Her best head was also a dog, although taller than mine; she always got the better looking guys.

Was this some disease of the suburbs spread by Wonder bread and Milk Bones? I started to wonder if maybe all my friends harbored secret dog fantasies. The bar seemed to grow smokier, the music muddled, and the crowd closer as we leaned into the lush details of our conversation.

I decided no secret this fun, and perhaps this common, should be kept from my boyfriend. He might be disgusted, but he might pick up some pointers. Reasons why dogs give better head than men;(1) they don't care when you took your last shower; (2) they would put the energizer bunny out of business; and (3) they don't have razor stubble. After listening to my story slack-jawed and short of breath, I don't think my boyfriend like the fact that I cooed about Toby's technique, but he knew the ace would always be in his hand (or mine) and he offered the best of both worlds; dog porn.

And that's the moral to my story; the big "O" doesn't have morals. If it feels good downstairs and no one gets hurt, girlfriend, fuck morals...

ELECTRA GIRL AND WONDER BOY!!

I had known from the beginning all I wanted was to create something that was forever. From my earliest knee sock-wearing days, I had lusted to fall in love. Not just a tomorrow kind of love, but a tomorrow's- tomorrow-and-then-some kind of love. What made me different was I didn't just think about it alone at night. I consciously looked for it. I heard it's voice in opera and in Shakespeare. It was a sprightly nymph, a decadent myth that I sought.

Oh. Here's the deal on boyfriend boy. I had been indefatigably pursuing the legendary love-a little more than an abstract concept to my adolescent self. Suddenly, I rounded the corner at a dance club, and there it was-my ideal staring at me. Being full of youthful zeal, I pounced on the elusive sprite, closed my eyes, and kissed him. I kissed him and kissed him, and thought my heart might burst.

Two years later when I opened my eyes, I was shocked and appalled to discover, I had captured the wrong nymph.
You see, he looked an awful lot like my fantasy. But I had confused a jock for a fairy. It's funny how that happens sometimes. He tasted and cuddled and even smelled like love. But at second glance, I noticed his blood ran about ten degrees cooler than the life force that coursed through the veins of my self-envisioned hamlet. His blood was too cold, and his eyes too empty, and my lips too tired of saying the same thing. Frankly, I was bored.

My predicament reminded me a lot of that Barbara Streisand movie, where she spends her whole life convinced she's in love, until it suddenly hits her that she's only in love with wanting love. So we took a break, My mom reminded me how many damned fish were in the sea, but I felt too weak to swim, and almost wanted my old fish back. After all, he was on my speed dial.

The long months passed. I remembered I had a life and treading water isn't so bad. My long-awaited nymph was on vacation. I went on a date with a boy who wore sweatpants and wrote love songs, but I didn't take boyfriend boy off my speed dial. And a hundred parties and kisses later, I was alone.

Well, I don't know quite what became of starry-eyed Ophelia. Even now I sometimes secretly wish to run to his comfortably boring arms and just dive back in....

INNOCENT ATTRACTIONS

While I am happy with my former "mature" relationships. I am remarkably nostalgic for those one-sided, silent affinities, those never-to-be realized romances. In junior high, one of my best friends had a remarkable ability to turn her terribly unrealistic crushes into actual flesh and blood boyfriends, but the real boyfriend-boy was never as much fun as the fantasy version.

I like the innocence of secret loves. Fantasies can be perfect. Reality is often unbearable. Crushes are fun. They allow us a momentary escape-like reading a page-turning book or crying during a movie. We are not giggling girls without grounding, but sometimes we do need a break from our often too harsh reality....

Sometimes nervous queasiness and sweaty palms can be our escape..

BRING ME THE HEAD OF JESSICA SIMPSON

" Why pick on Jessica Simpson you might ask?", you might ask although you probally understand all too well). Is it because she is a subpar actress of limited ability, appeal, and intelligence? Is it because her personal life envinces a woman of coarse sensibilities and little sense. Or is it merely because she personifies all that women have been individually and collectively struggling against for the past three decades.

Certainly there are a number of celebrities congesting the pages of people magazine and our corridors of justice that are pratically crying out for my contempt. But there is something about Jessica Simpson's uniquely brazen vacuity that I find especially offensive.

That Jessica Simpson is neither really talented nor attractive is only part of the problem. She exudes not one iota of intelligence, strengths, or integrity, no matter what unlikely scenario script writers and directors have dreamed up for her.

While it's not terribly surprisingly that men would buy into this caricature of feminine sensuality hook(er), line, and sinker. Why are women colluding with this charade? Why is this skank being profiled in women's magazines, and being held up as a modern beauty career gal. when her entire being screams..sloppy seconds..Is it just Conde Nast, or has the entire world gone mad?

For me, Jessica epitomizes our society's predeliction for dressing up the skanky as sexy, the inane as art, and utter crap as none crap. So women of america join me in saying no to Jessica, Britney, and Paris and their whole mammary-augumented, stripper impersonating ilk. Worship women who, while they may dress like hookers don't necessarily always play hookers. And never ever plunk down another ten dollars to watch Jessica Simpson play another in that never ending parade of ditzy yet lovable trollops....