The Breakfast of Champions
Max recently asked me if he could get Lucky Charms cereal. I think Lucky Charms cereal belongs to a class of food in which you will also recognize sparkling greyish-white mirror lines of meth, cocaine, and crack. The real breakfast of champions!
I should know. I have a fairly checkered past. I can prove it by having dated a very short dread-locked Australian man who alarmed me dreadfully when stripped down to his briefs at which point I wondered what the hell I saw in him in the first place and the only answer I could conjure up was that he had looked quite fascinating in the strobe lights at the Underground Club. This was the only boyfriend I ever "cheated" on. I say "cheated" because we never actually decided we were going out for real. I confess that I was shocked when he expressed unhappiness at having found out I went out with another guy.
Considering that I didn't put out for him I figured he'd be just as happy being set free. Even though he was never really going out with me. Men are a fucking mystery. I am still frightened by the memory of him in his skivvies.
Just for the record, and because I'd like to get this off my chest for posterity's sake- I had a total of fourteen boyfriends before I married Philip. I have only slept with four men. So you can see that I frustrated a lot of young men's fancies and drove a lot of balls to that quaint state of blueness so easily fixed by heartier gals than myself. I didn't tease men to be an ice queen nor did I think I was some precious china doll waiting for some perfect moment.
You know I wasn't waiting for God's approval either.
The ugly truth is that sex seemed like a serious invasion of my personal space and there are few things in life I have come to value quite as seriously as my personal space. It was one of the very first things I remember finding value in.
What interests me more than my early sex life is my history of drugs. Compared to people like Bill Clinton who never inhaled, I am like an old rock star. Compared to my immediate family I am like a pure unpoisoned angel of abstinence. What's deeply ironic is that while most of my immediate family were unabashed potheads, they seemed to have worried that I might have become a speed-freak. We discuss these things fairly freely amongst ourselves and there is no shame in having had, at any point, a relationship with narcotics, always supposing it isn't running us ragged or inspiring us to live a life of crime. I was surprised, never the less, to find that the general view at one time was that I was over the edge for speed.
It's true that I had more than my share of the stuff. Yet I have to say that most of the time I did it was either to help me pull all nighters in which I drafted patterns for school into the wee hours or because my friends had it. There was never a point at which I longed for it or sought it out because my blood ached. The only two narcotics I have ever had a weakness for are cigarettes and beer.
It is my belief that Lucky Charms cereal is a gateway drug.
First it's Lucky Charms with those brightly colored stiff weird "marshmallows" and the next thing you know you're dusting it with crack powder.
Max and his friend seemed to have had a disagreement about the damage capability of a nuclear missile. So Max wanted to know if you could blow up a car with one. So I explained that you could blow up a whole city with one and kill lots of people beyond the city as well through the heat and the acid rain and the awful fallout. It reminded me what terrible beings we humans can be. My boy is a warrior and he wants to know about these things. I am more like a monk or a Buddhist. It makes me wonder how a woman can give birth to a weapon wielding warrior? Surely that must be the eighth wonder of the world? It's weird enough that my body knows how to make a perfect penis in my womb without asking me to think about it at all. We can give birth to our opposites and, I suppose, our enemies. What torture it must be to stand across the line from her own son in war or political division.
Just like the torture it must be to see a daughter sold off to a country to quell rebellion.
He's going to remember that I wouldn't buy him Lucky Charms. I should know. My mom wouldn't buy them for me either. She might have agreed to buy me hemp cereal but there was no way she was going to pollute my body with kid-crack.
It is very late at night. I both love and hate this hour. I love it because so few people are awake. It's quiet out there in my hemisphere. When every one's awake I can hear them all. All the time. Loud like a thousand minor birds. I don't want to go to bed because it's the only time of day that no one needs anything from me. Husband sleeps. Child sleeps. I sit and ramble to self in the dark quiet hours. I have hated this time also because I have woken up so often at this time and been the only one awake in my unfading nightmare. I still have them. But they are exponentially worse when you have had very little sleep in many weeks. I hate being awake at this time when woken from a nightmare.
I am stealing some one's wireless connection. The only place in the house where we can steal the connection is at the top of the stairs. So that is where I am sitting. Most of you are asleep right now. Or awake, probably doing things I don't need to know about. Except Riana and Jo. They are probably waking up now. For them this is a time of crisp eastern light.
I like that our days cross at strange hours.
I would like lullabies to be sung to me at all times. Would you like fairy lights to be lit and a lilting song to be sung to you in your mother tongue with love, ripe with wishes and that peculiar warmth that only your mother's eyes and arms can impart?
Philip asked me if my recent nightmares have included any of the usual lions or leopards. My nightmares have nearly always featured really dubious bathroom situations or circling lions of which I am quite fearful. Or tests I haven't studied for. Or serial killers. A lot of serial killers. And hunts for me.
The nightmares have been different. But I can't tell what that means.
Right at this minute I am feeling all of your spirits out there. I am blowing kisses into your dreams. I am blowing peaceful thoughts across your brow.
I should know. I have a fairly checkered past. I can prove it by having dated a very short dread-locked Australian man who alarmed me dreadfully when stripped down to his briefs at which point I wondered what the hell I saw in him in the first place and the only answer I could conjure up was that he had looked quite fascinating in the strobe lights at the Underground Club. This was the only boyfriend I ever "cheated" on. I say "cheated" because we never actually decided we were going out for real. I confess that I was shocked when he expressed unhappiness at having found out I went out with another guy.
Considering that I didn't put out for him I figured he'd be just as happy being set free. Even though he was never really going out with me. Men are a fucking mystery. I am still frightened by the memory of him in his skivvies.
Just for the record, and because I'd like to get this off my chest for posterity's sake- I had a total of fourteen boyfriends before I married Philip. I have only slept with four men. So you can see that I frustrated a lot of young men's fancies and drove a lot of balls to that quaint state of blueness so easily fixed by heartier gals than myself. I didn't tease men to be an ice queen nor did I think I was some precious china doll waiting for some perfect moment.
You know I wasn't waiting for God's approval either.
The ugly truth is that sex seemed like a serious invasion of my personal space and there are few things in life I have come to value quite as seriously as my personal space. It was one of the very first things I remember finding value in.
What interests me more than my early sex life is my history of drugs. Compared to people like Bill Clinton who never inhaled, I am like an old rock star. Compared to my immediate family I am like a pure unpoisoned angel of abstinence. What's deeply ironic is that while most of my immediate family were unabashed potheads, they seemed to have worried that I might have become a speed-freak. We discuss these things fairly freely amongst ourselves and there is no shame in having had, at any point, a relationship with narcotics, always supposing it isn't running us ragged or inspiring us to live a life of crime. I was surprised, never the less, to find that the general view at one time was that I was over the edge for speed.
It's true that I had more than my share of the stuff. Yet I have to say that most of the time I did it was either to help me pull all nighters in which I drafted patterns for school into the wee hours or because my friends had it. There was never a point at which I longed for it or sought it out because my blood ached. The only two narcotics I have ever had a weakness for are cigarettes and beer.
It is my belief that Lucky Charms cereal is a gateway drug.
First it's Lucky Charms with those brightly colored stiff weird "marshmallows" and the next thing you know you're dusting it with crack powder.
Max and his friend seemed to have had a disagreement about the damage capability of a nuclear missile. So Max wanted to know if you could blow up a car with one. So I explained that you could blow up a whole city with one and kill lots of people beyond the city as well through the heat and the acid rain and the awful fallout. It reminded me what terrible beings we humans can be. My boy is a warrior and he wants to know about these things. I am more like a monk or a Buddhist. It makes me wonder how a woman can give birth to a weapon wielding warrior? Surely that must be the eighth wonder of the world? It's weird enough that my body knows how to make a perfect penis in my womb without asking me to think about it at all. We can give birth to our opposites and, I suppose, our enemies. What torture it must be to stand across the line from her own son in war or political division.
Just like the torture it must be to see a daughter sold off to a country to quell rebellion.
He's going to remember that I wouldn't buy him Lucky Charms. I should know. My mom wouldn't buy them for me either. She might have agreed to buy me hemp cereal but there was no way she was going to pollute my body with kid-crack.
It is very late at night. I both love and hate this hour. I love it because so few people are awake. It's quiet out there in my hemisphere. When every one's awake I can hear them all. All the time. Loud like a thousand minor birds. I don't want to go to bed because it's the only time of day that no one needs anything from me. Husband sleeps. Child sleeps. I sit and ramble to self in the dark quiet hours. I have hated this time also because I have woken up so often at this time and been the only one awake in my unfading nightmare. I still have them. But they are exponentially worse when you have had very little sleep in many weeks. I hate being awake at this time when woken from a nightmare.
I am stealing some one's wireless connection. The only place in the house where we can steal the connection is at the top of the stairs. So that is where I am sitting. Most of you are asleep right now. Or awake, probably doing things I don't need to know about. Except Riana and Jo. They are probably waking up now. For them this is a time of crisp eastern light.
I like that our days cross at strange hours.
I would like lullabies to be sung to me at all times. Would you like fairy lights to be lit and a lilting song to be sung to you in your mother tongue with love, ripe with wishes and that peculiar warmth that only your mother's eyes and arms can impart?
Philip asked me if my recent nightmares have included any of the usual lions or leopards. My nightmares have nearly always featured really dubious bathroom situations or circling lions of which I am quite fearful. Or tests I haven't studied for. Or serial killers. A lot of serial killers. And hunts for me.
The nightmares have been different. But I can't tell what that means.
Right at this minute I am feeling all of your spirits out there. I am blowing kisses into your dreams. I am blowing peaceful thoughts across your brow.