Godammit, I’m Mad!

When I recieved the offer of a review copy of  ”Tickle My Tush” by ’sex educator’ Dr. Sadie Allison, I complained on facebook.  I was egged on to pursue this,  so I stupidly clicked on the link I was given.  Even though I’d been warned that the book was about the “true pleasures of the under-explored seat of love.”

Oh, Dr. Sadie, why did god make you?!

Here are some testimonials for the book:

“Whether you’re solo or with a partner—your fun, safe thrill-ride starts here.”  - Charlie Glickman, PH.D., Sexuality Educator & Writer

Uh-oh. Does this mean the book tells you how to have fun with your butt when you’re ALONE???

“Dr. Sadie is an exciting, alluring and thought-provoking artist. Each of her books never cease move me to new heights, like a modern piece of art.” – Laura Henkel, PH.D., Erotic Art Appraiser & Founder Sin City Gallery

I guess Laura Henkel knows art when she sees it.  Moving along to the table of contents:

1. Butts Up?
2. Frequently Assed Questions

I will spare you any more puns. It’s just too awful. I don’t think I could read this book for $500. Moreover, I am already well acquainted with my ass and the asses of everyone whose ass is any of my business.

With all due respect to Dr. Sadie,  I suggest ignoring her books to the best of your ability. Instead, listen to Sister Wolf’s free advice:  Don’t stick anything up your ass that would invite mockery in an emergency room. That’s all you need to know.

When I was little, I loved mermaids. I loved the illustrations in my book of Hans Christian Anderson fairy tales. I drew pictures of mermaids over and over, draping them in strings of pearls.

Now that I’m addicted to tumblr, I’ve discovered that mermaids are more popular than almost any other image. A mermaid also encompasses two hugely popular tumblr subjects: Tits, and women submerged in water. While tits need no explanation, the drowning women are disturbing.  Paintings of Ophelia tend to be lovely and melancholy, but depictions of modern women floating under water or laying dead in bathtubs are reminders that people like to see women in jeopardy (if not actually dead.)

Mermaids are always beautiful and young, so that aspect of their attraction is obvious. In mythology and folklore, Mermaids are sirens who lure sailors to their death.  Do men find this danger seductive?

More important, mermaids have no genitals. Do men love them because of this or in spite of it? Does it relieve them of performance anxiety? I’m convinced that the anatomy issue is key somehow.

For me as a child, The Little Mermaid was a beautiful fantasy of a daughter who was loved by her family and showered with jewels.  I didn’t really understand why she would leave her home. I wanted a home filled with love and warmth. I didn’t feel good about her deal with the sea witch. The prince seemed kind of dimwitted not to recognize her or to intuit her love for him.

Later on, I remember reading The Little Mermaid to little Max, at bedtime. The book I read to him was an old unabridged translation of the original Hans Christian Anderson stories. It probably took several nights to get to the end, and I was so engrossed in the story that I forgot what was coming. I choked up with tears and tried to think of a way to spare Max the tragic last paragraph: The Little Mermaid threw herself overboard and turned into seafoam, comforted by some angelic sprites who asked her to join them. I think I made something up but I can’t ask Max.

Why do we love a story where the heroine sacrifices everything for love, even suffering constant excruciating pain, and ends up getting nothing but death? Until Disney changed the ending and turned a classic tragedy into a sappy feel-good product to sell other products, it was, for me, an inexplicably melancholy story.  It punishes a girl who seeks adventure and romance, so what else makes it such an enduring favorite?

Theories, memories, insults, anyone?

I’m reading a book about addiction that Max read last year. He told me I might like it. I also remember him writing to his girlfriend that the book caused him to review his childhood, which he always thought was “pretty normal.”

The book, by Gabor Maté, a physician and psychiatrist, is extremely compassionate toward the addict. In fact, he explains at great length why the addict never really had a chance: Improper bonding during infancy harms the infant’s brain and sets him up for addiction.

Maté recounts study after study to underscore his thesis. When rats are removed from their mother for only one hour a day, their brains show damage. In human babies, this faulty bonding fucks everything up. The child is forever doomed to suffering and attempts to extinguish the suffering.

I can’t read too much of this book. Someone needs to do a study on my brain, to show how much harm the book has done.

Maté ends the long chapter about the origins of the addict’s malformed brain by assuring us that he’s not saying it’s hopeless! People can be healed, he says, through the indomitable Spirit that lives within all of us.

Meanwhile, I am compelled to look back in time and question everything. I remember loving my baby at first sight. I remember adoring his every expression, every gesture, every hair on his head. I remember nursing him for 14 months. I remember friends coming over  just to  admire him. I remember dressing him in his little outfits, reading to him, cuddling him, singing to him.

But I was a depressed mother. Depressed mothers ruin the brain as well. I forgot to say that. The baby picks up on the mother’s depression and is irreparably fucked.

I wish I could talk to Max about this. I want to know if he blames me. Or rather, if he forgives me.

His addiction must have been a nightmare for him. So much worse then the nightmare it was for us. It was such a long struggle. I never really felt it was my fault, until now.

My own mother hated me and told me so, but I didn’t want to become a drug addict. There was no comfort anywhere, from anyone, when I was a child. I have my problems but I never wanted to stick a needle in my arm. If everyone with an imperfect or depressed mother needs to escape their pain through opiates, who’s left?

I’m caught in this argument.  Depressed people don’t all become addicts. But my son did, and it’s my fault.

I wish it was nobody’s fault. I wish it was a wrong turn that led to more wrong turns. I wish he had been able to overcome his addiction and the pain that caused it. I wish I could comfort him and convince him that he was loved and he was perfect, addicted or not.

Mothers and children, what are your thoughts?

Bryanboy and the Christmas Miracle will be a book to cherish for the whole family! Celebrate the holiday season with this heartwarming tale of loss, courage and the Lord’s love!

Here is the first page, illustrated by the brilliant artist Tatyana T, text by Sister Wolf. We are scrambling to have the book ready by December 25,  our Lord’s birthday. xoxo

(click on the picture for full size)

Okay, but don’t tell Clement Hurd.

Some helpful readers have alerted me to the Gala Darling wish list at Amazon.com, and it has been a revelation. Here I thought those wish lists were for books you wanted to read.

The list of 348 items that Gala wants is as brazen as Gala herself.  It includes cosmetics, chocolate, a personal laser hair remover ($448), magazine subscriptions, soda, and oddly enough, books.

The books are deeply offensive to a literary snob like myself, so don’t make me list them. Let me just say that I’m tempted to fulfill her wish for a copy of “The Haunted Vagina” but I can’t justify spending $7.95 for a moment of perverse satisfaction.

I still can’t understand the appeal of this Gala person, aside from reveling in her awfulness. She makes me feel squeamish.  The wish list business suggests a new level of shamelessness that I hesitate to even explore.

But if wish lists are okay for bloggers, I want one too. Here are the preferred items:

1. New roof (somewhere between $4000 and $7,000)  Nice to have before the next rainfall!
2. Pay my medical bills from hip fracture, $2,200
3. Pay my auto insurance and gas bills.
4. Nordstrom bill minimum payment $35
5. Facial filler $600 +

Oh god, this list is no fun, no wonder I’m never invited to blogger conferences!

Gala may not want your comments but she wants a shitload of merchandise. Feel empowered to leave her a comment here.  I will go first:

Dear Gala Darling, What the hell is your deal?! Why all the icky self-help books when I thought you were a self-help guru yourself? Why the hair-removal? Why the pink? And what’s up with the Nubby Twiglet? No offense, but don’t you guys have mirrors? Sorry about all the questions, just ignore them if you want, cuz I’m not gonna buy you anything, ever. Love, SW

On a rare night out with my husband, we drove to an independent bookshop where a guy we like was reading an excerpt from his new book. I felt tentatively hopeful. I almost never go out in the evening.  I was pleased to be doing something arty for a change.

We sat in the front row of chairs, since there weren’t many set up in the aisle at the back of the store. An affable guy read from his book about encounters on the bus.  Then, the guy we came to see introduced himself and read a short chapter of a charming, offbeat memoir of his childhood in New York.

Another guy quickly replaced him and introduced himself. His name was Chris D. I should have been warned by that D.

He gazed at his shoes and began a rambling account of his various artistic endeavors:  He was involved in music for 20 years, he had written several unproduced screenplays, poems, and short stories. He noted that some of his stories were based on dreams. He introduced a story about a couple of  war veterans from Vietnam, describing their convoluted situation.

He began to read the worst piece of writing I have ever heard in my entire life. He read in a deep-voiced monotone. Some GI was shooting dope with a Vietnamese prostitute named “Lucky.” The dope-shooting was described in lurid, over-the-top detail.  Veins, blood, abscesses, verbs, more blood, adjectives, then sex. “They fell to the floor and fucked each others brains out.”

I stared at my hands and played with my hair. I wanted to kill that fucker. I imagined a question and answer period after the reading, where I would confront him with the question: “Are you a junkie or just a fucking idiot?”

He read for close to 30 minutes. No cliche escaped him: It was hackneyed melodrama, both dismal and pointless.

We left the second he stopped reading. Outside as we walked to the car, I exclaimed, “What a fucking motherfucker!” My husband agreed. He added that the guy had once been in a band called The Flesh Eaters.

Back home, I googled Chris D and saw how important he was to the L.A. punk scene.

Nothing is sacred, not even old punkers.

I am left with these two thoughts:

1. I am fucking Tolstoy compared to that bastard Chris D.
2. I can’t even enjoy a simple night out.

Every time I read a thing about bloggers having to find a niche, my heart sinks.  I’m not doing anything right. I’m also supposed to put keywords in my post titles, and to figure out what kind of posts bring the most traffic. That way, I can give the readers more of what They want.

I’m terrible at following rules, even when it would be in my best interest.

I also read some shit about finding your Voice and establishing your Brand. No problems there, I think. My Voice is my actual voice, and the Sister Wolf Brand..well, duh.

But here’s a great idea for a niche. Shopbop, my favorite online shopping site, has announced that returns of their merchandise are now free! So is shipping. Wouldn’t it be great if I spent the rest of my life ordering stuff from Shopbop, modeling it, and then sending it back?!

I could let readers vote on what I have to buy and model! I could try to pose like Goony Bird! I could glower like Starvng Girl! I could wear rompers and sequin shorts! The possibilities are endless. And horrible!

I wish I had the energy to carry this out, don’t you? I could get really famous as That Crazy Woman Who Models Shopbop Crap. But would I get a book deal, do you think?

I’m not doing anything that won’t get me a book deal. In fact, that is my motto from now on. I’m going to try it out on my husband when he gets home tonight.

I finally decided to see the doctor today, when my terrible sore throat turned into a fever with body aches and a rattling bronchial cough. Since I didn’t already have an appointment, I was told I could be a walk-in patient but I’d have to wait.

After an hour of waiting in a nearly empty waiting room, I was joined by a teenager who’d been stung by a bee. Her father was an asshole. They took the bee-sting girl and left me to wait, coughing my guts out. I asked why the girl got to be seen before me, and that seemed to elevate the hostility from behind the window.

I lay down across some chairs, and tried to stop coughing. Patients arrived and were led behind the door to see their doctors. They were all fat. The women behind the glass window were fat as well, and spoke in proud pidgin English or whatever it’s called when you’re Latina and refuse to use proper grammar.

A father arrived with four kids under the age of ten. I was entranced by how gently he brushed his son’s hair behind an ear stuffed with cotton. The youngest child walked over to me to look at the fish tank. We talked about the stuff in the tank and she called the sponge a “ponge.”  I was brokenhearted when her father took her away to see their doctor.

Three hours passed. I decided that the office women were punishing me for not being fat. I wanted to stick my head through the window and scream, “It’s not my fault I’m not fat.”

Meanwhile, I brought a book with me that I’ve meant to read for years: The Afterlife, by Donald Antrim. It turned out to be a memoir about a crazy mother. The writing is amazing. The kind of writing that hits the exact right spot, like sex. It was so intense that I had to keep putting it down to recover from it.

Finally, I pretended to have to use the restroom, and I went behind the door. I sat on a chair in the hall where no one could ignore me, and coughed dramatically.

A doctor I’ve never met before asked me what the problem was. I told her that one problem was the 3 1/2 hour wait. I confided that it was punitive because the office women hated me. She reacted badly to this so I apologized and told her my symptoms.

She gave me some antibiotics, some cough syrup with codeine, and a ridiculous lecture about my attitude. She told me that there was a time to be stoic and a time to be vulnerable. Except she said “vunerable” without the L. That was the last straw. I felt a visceral* repugnance for this doctor, who then went on to ask “What are you doing for yourself?” I am always disgusted by that question and I  don’t like to lower myself to answer it. I told her, Well, I write.

She said, “That doesn’t count. I mean, like music.”

*The word for this week is visceral.

I love Maurice Sendak just like all decent people, but I prefer his illustrations in “Mr. Rabbit and the Lovely Present” to “Where the Wild Things Are.”  The latter book is poised to be ruined forever by the movie version, and if that’s not enough there are the product tie-ins.

Look at this tragically idiotic “Max suit” by Opening Ceremony for $610. Naturally, it is sold out.  I thought we were well past Plushies and Furries but no, not yet. Why is this supposed to be cute? Why do grown ups have to co-opt a children’s book? Children need Mommies and Daddies, not ironic label whores dressed in bunny suits.

It annoys me to see the name Max debased like this. A Max should look more like this:

When my Max was born, the only Maxes around were old Jews. When Max was around 12 I think, Steven Spielberg named his kid Max and the scourge began. Still, the name cannot be ruined. It’s just too good.

Some other Wild Thing products include a couple of typically garish designs by jewelry designer Pamela Love.  Her claw necklace for Opening Ceremony is less ugly than her claw bracelets, but it still screams Ooh, Creepy Goth! which does nothing for me as a fashion statement.

If you like claws, you might appreciate my wacky vintage bracelet and earring set by Selro, a 50’s era brand that combined metal, plastic and rhinestones for its distinctive designs.

I have curated Quite the Collection of claw shit for years and years, but I am planning to sell most of it. I am much too busy having accidents and surgery to devote any time to a proper job. This Selro shit is in mint condition, $200 plus shipping. SOLD