I put my son into one of those hospital cribs that have always made me shutter, a metal cage; the perfect place to suffer in. But I didn’t shutter. I laid him next to a horrendous giggling bear-robot of some sort, without the least hint of melancholy. I laid down in the pull out chair next…
I hate flat gravestones. I know they are practical. I know they make it easy to drive a roaring, chopping engine reeking of gasoline and indifference right over them. But they are not monuments to the dead, eerie and sacred like they’re supposed to be. They’re just cheesy name tags, stuck to the ground after…
I had the good fortune to be born to a family of conservative rednecks. To my further posterity, I then spent my adolescence living inside a hive of religious nutcases. Then, another blessing, was to spend my adulthood surrounded by over-educated, flaming liberals. I am not being a smart-ass. I am lucky. The only thing those…
“I swear lesbians give the best advice ever,” I said, absently, possibly offensively, to my lesbian therapist. Her office is warm and smells very strongly of lavender. The combination sometimes makes me dopey. “Seriously, I never leave a conversation with one of you guys that I don’t feel I’ve come away with something valuable.” That’s not…
I am a Girl Scout co-leader this year. I didn’t want to be. I’m brutally lazy. I like to lay down at meetings. My body rejects order and organization like a transplanted monkey liver. But there was what Gus calls, “a power vacuum,” and I was the only one to fill it. Then he…
I met a pretty woman the other day. I couldn’t guess her age…45 to 55, trim, well turned out. With my usual tact I blurted out, “You’re PRETTY!” She responded gracefully, as she is in a career where she often works with small children. “Thank you!” I asked her if she always intended to hold…
My therapist has a great butthole analogy. (Ha! Anal-ogy…just noticed that. Ah…butts are fun). She uses it to help clients understand why they cling on to the bad habits in their lives. Why they stay doughy and sick, why they don’t try for a better job, why they hang around people they don’t like.…
You're Doing It Wrong 