Dollars and Scents

I'm reading 2666.. the mammoth Bolaño which is divided into sections. Currently I'm in the hellish panoramic depths of a chaotic and distinctly Mexican criminal investigation into the serial killings of young women.  In these times, there was no electronic trail to follow and these women-- some of them actually girls-- go missing and turn up mutilated, raped, abused.  It's compelling and disturbing reading. Somehow it mixes in my brain with the Nancy Guthrie mystery. But the relentless sequence of bodies.. it takes days for their absence to be logged, and since most of them are poor working women in the dubious culture of Santa Teresa, the news is neither reliable nor nationally remarkable.

So I'm not yet sure how I will process the whole of this novel.  His writing is luminous and his narratives are compelling and readable. I miss Bolaño with a personal sense of loss and grief.  These dark people who have left us a world that is both startling and comforting... the characters remain with us, are us.  My intimate friends have become the ones in these books... the authors a kind of paternal presence.  They are there for me-- they do not change. By their means, I see through myself--' As Though Through Glass', my 2015 collection was titled (followed by the (implied) denouement phrase 'I watched you shatter').

In a dark place today, I feel as though I am witnessing the crumbling of a dynasty, of a civilization... the crooked mistakes of what one once saw as progress undermining us like massive fissures and portentous seismic adjustments.  I am seeing Jeffrey Epstein as the ultimate modern Superhero or Villain.. it doesn't seem to matter anymore.  With the seven sins as his private constitution, he manipulated the world, preying on contemporary addictions to greed, false senses of power-- massive money, schemes and games.  I am relying on this story to bring down the great web which seems to have entangled and entrapped our better intentions. I also realize there is too much at stake here... and not everyone implicated is as simple as the Prince Andrew fall-from-grace. But something like the financial crisis feels as though it's unraveling in a dark background. Pay great attention to the man/men behind the curtain. For way too long we've had our heads in the sands of the internet and phone-distractions

Lately at 4 AM I pick up a guitar and try to remember who I am. Songs come like prayers-- so many of them commemorated old friends or times.  Occasionally my old torch-lamp flickers-- the one I picked up on a corner dump in Trenton in 1972-- it still belongs, the way some things don't...and blinks as though the spirits of Alan and others long-gone are my audience.  When I was studying art I had to give a talk on the Giacometti sculpture at MOMA-- The Palace at 4 AM... I remember I went a little too deeply into the psychological space... it still resonates, these empty personal rooms of an artist's vision.  Like so many things from an analogue past it became part of my private architecture, my iconography.

Among the ever-increasing numbers of disposable emails today was one advertising a new 'pale pink' apartment complex somewhere in Brooklyn.  I once lived in a pale pink building which seemed to be the unintentional outcome of some kind of concrete facing of an old factory on the East Side of Manhattan. Pink is not an enticing attribute for an urban building. I was never 'that girl' who wore pink-- not even the rock-and-roll kind. Maybe for some lost character from a Sex in the City episode or a Barbie fan... but today... perhaps the color of diluted blood. 

From out of some blue, today, came the opening line of a William Gaddis novel... 'Money?, in a voice that rustled'.. something like that. Written today, it occurred, there would be no question mark. How innocent the days of The Bonfire of the Vanities seem.  The enormity of instant wealth-- mergers and venture capital...cryptocurrency fortunes... the bloated corporate banks... the new American economy of tilt. The whitewashing of money, the normalization of evil. 

Often I walk down the street and identify the smells of luxury... well-dressed women with pricey perfumes that have become part of a compulsory culture of scent.... and then there is the cheap cologne of debt which hovers... sometimes indistinguishable, but loud.  I don't know how these people perceive their own flesh... we have become so accustomed to customizing what we are given... with money one can dispense with unmentionables, or acquire newer versions-- teeth, hair, skin... we can ski on broken limbs. There is progress here, but for whom? 

In the 1970's my friend worked for Halston.  She used to give me samples and gift me their uniquely scented bath talc.. it was subtle and a little earthy.  I loved it. Obsolete now, a nostalgic friend found a container on eBay, from Canada... gifted it to me.  It's not the same... it is like an AI version of the stuff, we both agreed, after a month-long wait, paperwork, and an import tariff of more than the cost of the box. A contemporary disappointment.. a vintage fraud. Besides, talc is now an illegal substance, I think. 

I will go back to Bolaño who understood women although he did not live to see a decent Mexican President and the political perversion of the American dream.  The scents of death and rotting corpses in a hot climate not quite as bad as the stench of a rotting America. As an oddity and closet rebel, it was maybe never my dream, but it is currently becoming my nightmare. 

Hail Mary

There are days in which I have little to offer, although it is hard to keep one's mind silent when the autumn sun is clear and shines effortlessly on those of us who are not in the midst of hurricanes and typhoons.  Even in those ravaged places, we know, the mornings after are cruel and calm and show unspeakable damage with blue clarity and the watery whisper of a quiet sea. Our well-dressed reporters and journalists with furrowed brows survey and film, photograph and interview.  We check our social media and breathe a bit easier... we give a little money-- we gasp and sympathize, we go on with our day. 

Yesterday I went gallery browsing-- the theme being indigenous Australian artists.  It rewarded in a way that contemporary American has not, in recent years.  Inherent soul and story-telling-- these young artists inherit the myths and beliefs of their cultures, and even without explanations, they manifest.  In their presence, one surrenders.

Earlier in the week I visited a few of the sick and aging among my friends who are imprisoned in an existence they can't have imagined or foreseen. As time goes relentlessly on, there are many of these... no solution, and my presence gives merely a tiny atom of distraction to a cavernous lonely discomfort. There is no companion for pain and suffering; I find myself always walking home from these visits... as though I need to remain in a kind of prescriptive sentence of solitude to process what I have witnessed.  A few of these people might return to some kind of disabled living situation; deterioration is part of life... it's just that we childishly don't imagine it will really happen to us. Yes, we take care of our health, we take the recommended exercise and precautions-- some of us too late-- but we cannot avoid the reaper's overture.  

One of my friends has reached a point of collapse. She has bravely suffered the utter inexplicable indignities of a brain cancer which gradually absorbed her beauty, her grace, her keen mind and now her body.  Sitting by her bed, her head turned to one side, it was like speaking to an injured fallen horse whose life and fate displays its pride and sorrow in one eye. She breathes, occasionally sighs... I could swear I saw a tear.  Music, I said... makes one sad... and she seemed to agree.  I walked the seven miles from North Bronx to my apartment, trying hard to supplant this vision with memories of her vitality.  It will take some time; the dull and needy neighborhoods beneath the train tracks provided a kind of visual accompaniment to these souvenirs. And suddenly... there is the bridge over the Harlem River... the sunset... the glory, the antipodal irresistible reality.

For some, memorials and rituals are important.  The pandemic era made this less so, in a way.  The pomp of services was disallowed and one grew used to mourning in a kind of vacuum.  Death-- the death of others--  is the portal through which all grief expresses itself. Tragedies are often measured by its  statistics.

Australian indigenous art is permeated with narrative... and as in most cultures, these narratives often interweave with death.  It makes the art more compelling and true-- more universally articulate. There is also a kind of hope or rebirth that permeates all religions.  This is our deepest wish-- to return to some kind of life or afterlife. As though the sad material of human beings had a value... still, we believe this.

In the aura of what I witness, I return to my computer and come across a feature-- about how contemporary artists deal with concealing their under-eye circles.  While I truly hope this is some metaphorical piece about the omnipresence of tragedy in art, it is rather a cosmetic piece. Irony noted.

Maybe my epiphany of the week is how some kind of narrative (or the utter opposition of it with philosophical content) compels us-- from the Bible, classical art, indigenous painting, to modern literature... and yet we struggle with the absurd human inability to decipher our own.  While we control and change direction and envy and pity and weep and laugh, we rely on anything that is not our own. 

My son, this week, is obsessed with the baseball playoffs.  It's an American thing and, surely, the love of sports brings more people together than politics. It's a finite thing, too.  There is a clear winner and loser.  Not so even in elections, with the electoral college nuances.  It's confusing.  With baseball-- barring happenstance-- the final teams are pretty surely the best.  One believes-- one hopes. This seems to be the common denominator-- hope. Millions of people in stadiums and bars put on costumes and make the prayer sign. Even I, for the sake of son, root and cheer.  We read the stories of each player and feel connected. It is giving us a viable distraction in a difficult month. 

Walking into a church for some instant spiritual support, it occurs that for most women, no symbol will eclipse the Virgin Mary.  If we could reinvent her... but we cannot, and her meaning has been manipulated and distorted.  We have tried-- the Barbie Movie, etc... but no.  She is the suffering mother, the comfort, the grace, the vessel and the very epitome of grief.  Even the athletes call on her. In every culture-- we are born with some sense of belief... it connects us-- makes us human, and gives us the courage to hope-- despite all odds, despite my ailing friends being down 3-0 in the series, or not ever having made a single playoff... or even a team... there is this thinnest thread that in an impossible narrative just might lead to a miracle.  

A-women.

THE ANTI-BARBIE

On the first day of second grade I was sort of the new girl, having skipped a year and moved up into a faster group.  I sat in front of a blond-haired boy who shared his lunch with me on the playground. He was 7 and destined to become a high-school girl-chaser and an incurable romantic, but he'd singled me out (I was all of 6 years old) right there as his primary 'mate'.  

On the first Friday of that term, a stack of comic books was left on the front stoop outside my house.  A blond boy with a bicycle had delivered this, my neighbor announced.  There must have been fifty or sixty-- the pile was quite as high as the milkbox.  Some Nancy, some Richie Rich-- but mostly Superman, and various other galactic beings and heroes.  As an early reader, I devoured books... took my wagon back and forth to the library where I loaded and unloaded. But comics? I'd never tried these, besides the Sunday strips which never interested me much.

It's sort of a love thing, my mother suggested... and being the youngest and smallest in my class, having a handsome attaché gave me status.  So I delved into Superman-- Bizarro world, kryptonite, Mr Mxyzptlk-- Lois, Jimmy and Clark. Besides Elvis on the car-radio it was my first real foray into pop culture.  It was also my first experience of peer-culture affecting my personal entertainment choices.  And while I spent long afternoons playing at the blond boy's house with his dog and his siblings, he never really seemed that into comics.  He could draw and paint, though, and we made things-- built things, played in the yard.  We were sort of inseparable for years... until I hooked up in the 6th grade with his twin brother. By Middle School, we barely spoke.  And besides occasional childhood Superman episodes and the 1978 movie, I had significantly more interest in rock and roll, folk music and anti-heroes. The only cartoons I indulged in were Robert Crumb-- Edward Gorey-- Beardsley... etc.

So it baffles me that the Marvel Universe has usurped a disproportionate sector of our entertainment bandwidth. Movies, Broadway-- as though the cult of the juvenile has infiltrated.  I guess I can relate to science fiction-- horror, although I'm much more drawn to psychological thrillers and historical bio-pics.  But all this costumery and the characters... with super-powers and fantastic abilities... it's fun to consider, but it's a multi-trillion dollar industry. Yes for children wearing capes on Halloween, even the dolls and figurines... but as grown-up film material?  I'm missing something here.

Sometime in the early 90's I was looking for a new apartment and happened on a loft space filled with massive Lego projects.  This was the home of a sophisticated architect and the structures and ideas were compelling; the sheer volume of tiny blocks was staggering.  But now-- the cult of Lego has exploded.  Movies-- theme parks... and of course one must appeal to parents who accompany their kids and buy the toys that engage the whole family.  Well, it's educational-- the building part-- the geometry, the planning, the engineering factor. But the endless contests... in light of our overwhelming world issues... it seems way too much brain-time is occupied with play.  

While we were all sleeping, or building Lego, watching Spiderman-- galactic fantasy and space wars... our own world is more than a little terrifying and overwhelmed. Was this the point?  Instead of worrying about the new NATO and the Ukrainian cluster bombs, it seems we are all watching Barbie.  We pay to have our brains distracted.  More people will see this movie than vote in the primaries, sadly.  

Apparently sixty-one percent of America does not believe in evolution.  While the scientists were debating this week about the designation of an Anthropocene era, the majority ignores the math. Are these the same people who watch the Marvel films?  Jurassic Park? Are the lines deliberately blurred between reality and fiction? While Hollywood was making all those techno-laced fantasy films,  AI was slipping into our entertainment DNA and only this week the actors have decided it was terrifying enough to shut it all down?

Today I saw a news piece about a new cruise-ship that looked like it was manufactured in Candyland.  The toy-culture rules the seas; five intelligent men boarded an expensive toy (directed by a Playstation controller!) and self-destructed on their way to a sort of deep-sea fantasy-fulfillment.  I also saw a 75 year old woman wearing a pink tulle skirt and a Barbie handbag.  Grown men in suits ride scooters around the city.  They wear T-shirts and uniform replicas just like their own children.  When did this begin? 

The NYPL is commemorating HipHop with new cards to attract users. I got mine this morning... and I already miss the old one.  I wanted to become part of this culture... and yes, I embraced Hip Hop... but now I feel a bit duped, like I traded in an old vintage Renault for a Lego car.  Here I am, an incongruous specimen of mid-century obsolescence-- with my books and my records and my technological illiteracy. 

Text me, my son says... and it sounds as though he is asking me to transform him into verbiage.  There's a kind of poetry in my failure to adjust to the mainstream.  I am not just gig-less but gigabyte-less. To me AI is and always will be the first name of the great artist Ai Weiwei.  Irony?  He seems to understand things.  His Lego version of the Monet Waterlilies was spectacular.  But I digress... a symptom of natural intelligence-- one of the flaws and distractions of not just curiosity but the aging me.  God willing I will not descend into some intellectual childhood and betray my adult values.  Victim or villain, persecuted or culturally excommunicated as I am occasionally by the consequences of my analogue stubbornness, I was surely born this way. 

The End of the Innocence

Much as we would like to, it is hard to wipe the slate clean with a new year.  The ominous cycle of life and death has little regard for calendars or resolutions.  This new year, 2016, sounded so sweet--began with a prayer, but seems to have plowed forward with extra vengeance.  Loss is our companion, hope is a short straw in a bouquet of funereal flowers.  I walk my city often on the verge of tears; the blues touches me like an old lover,  and my solitude has become a fragile room of crackled glass.

Mornings wash up on my bedroom shore and bring dream-bottled messages that elude me.  Waking no longer gives me relief; I dread meeting people and the news seems at best ambiguous.  My friends are burdened and sad; the ones that are not seem disconnected and clueless.  Some days I get the sense I know no one, and find less relief in writing.  I am overloaded and grieving for too many.  Love seems futile and disappointing; against my instincts, I expect things and find them only occasionally in books, in lyrics of people who have long disappeared and left their wisdom and old beauty in vain for a world that texts and posts.

The economy is precarious and unpredictable; markets are manipulated by the masters who profit from them; young start-ups are not fresh ideas but opportunities for venture capitalists to line their accounts with even more spectacular numbers, and create instant billionaires while whole countries are in recessions and hard-working people lose their homes.  My neighbor Jamie Dimon earns more in one hour than I earned all year.  Some of those hours are spent at lunch, napping in a private jet, having a facial, shopping, texting his decorator.

I was fortunate enough to preview the SAG award films on disc… a little disappointed by the quality of these in general-- and cried at most of them (except the Steve Jobs)… although my son says I've been crying at Nike ads these days.  Spotlight was especially upsetting; as a truly single Mom I was extra vigilant knowing fatherless boys are ultra-susceptible to any male authority attention, and found myself chronically scrutinizing coaches, mentors, counselors and even older team-mates.

Children are such special and odd creatures… they come out, like puppies--- buoyant and dependent and so trusting… and at some fatal moment, in a soft or hard landing, they are profoundly changed by one experience or other.  We protect them, we nurture them… but who's to say when circumstances-- a fire, a natural disaster, an accident-- brings pain or fear or injury into their lives… unexpected death?  In New York, the 9/11 tragedy was a kind of mass loss of innocence.

Personally I love teenagers--- it's such an incredibly fragile time… and there's that moment, for us girls, when we spread our wings a little and suddenly we are swans-- with legs, and evolving bodies and we feel our power, and a certain radiance-- boys admire us, they touch us occasionally and we are electric.  I had this odd memory of one of my best girlfriends-- we had constant sleepovers as girls of 14-16 often do, finding the company of our families unbearable without our BFF.  I was a skinny teenager, with long colt legs that felt awkward to me, but served well in ballet class.  I felt inferior to my curvy older sister who was sexy like a dark Barbie.  But one night… my friend's Dad stopped me on the way to the bathroom-- in the dark hallway he started describing my legs and blocked my path with his authorial arm.  At first I thought it was a game, but I realized, as I tried to focus on the wall-- his Ivy League diploma in a frame… with a hot shudder that something awful was happening.  I could smell alcohol on his breath, and I thought of his grey-haired wife named Mary who went to bed early, looked chronically tired, had way too many children and was not a great housekeeper.

He released me, but a boundary had been crossed.  I felt weirdly both sickened and somewhere a little flattered; I knew this kind of thing happened to women and it was sort of a coming of age.  When I applied to colleges I skipped his alma mater--- I couldn't erase the sleazy association of being disrespected in the hallway under its name.  And it put a tiny 'cap' on my new-found feminine power… it spoiled my joy and changed me.  I never told my friend, of course.

We women go through life-- not a single one of us is not disrespected in some way-- abused, touched, threatened.  We learn to navigate these episodes for better or for worse.  They taint our experience and cause us pain. We choose to keep them silent or tattle and risk being blighted by association-- hated, passed over for promotion, unchosen.  Boys, too, have these incidents-- the hideous epidemic of priest abuse seems most evil of all.  The really sad fact is these things are waiting out there like traps; our children and babies are often unknowing bait-- and even a small cruelty, a rough hand, an especially harsh scolding-- -these things wreck them and hurt them and confuse and change them, and they are too young and innocent to be able to process this.   I often remember my macho older cousin who used to camp in Death Valley with a devoted black lab; one day I discovered him beating the dog mercilessly-- the dog that followed and watched him with complete love.  It was a lesson.

What am I trying to say here?  That I feel the happy balloon of our world has been pierced and punctured irreparably?  That the paradise of beauty of this world is being polluted and ruined-- the ecology spoiled… I can no longer believe in justice and truth and our leaders are greedy power-hungry narcissists and our music heroes are hocus-pocus businessmen and gangsters?  Beauty is artificial and religion is an argument, God is holding up his hands, palms up, listening to the whistle of a distant freight train which is carrying some lethal message?  I can no longer answer questions, I am losing my faith, unsure that my loved ones will survive the week.  And for those of us in psychic or physical pain, for whom life or the ambiguity becomes unbearable… death is not pretty, and it is inevitable and present.  Our heroes and enemies die, our lovers leave and our children cry, and we are a little helpless.  It's as though the back-current just overwhelms me some days.

And somehow when you least expect it, some fragile slivery moon rises in a black sky like a tilted bowl of golden light and you feel your heart hanging on the edge like a puppet, and the lights of cars on the bridges, entering the city with some kind of hope, like a living toy train set… and you can't look away, or leave… it takes your breath away-- and here you are, between birth and death, between knowledge and ignorance--- and you try to forgive those who hurt you, those who fail to protect you… slightly ruined but still able to cry and maybe even feel some kind of desire for love-- and walk blindly into the cold night.

Bed Post

I think I’m going to write a novel called The Talking Bed.  Of course, I don’t even need a Google-search to know, like most things, it’s already been done.  Fortunately for us, titles aren’t copyright- proof or we might have a way to filter the tsunami of crap that’s come down the pike in the name of culture.  But since we all seem to resort to under-the-blankets for several varieties of trust or confession, the concept is amusing.   Besides, there’s no privacy anywhere—no truth, no real contract for solitude, certainly no guarantee for prayer.  Why not betrayal by one’s own bed?

I watched an old Bergman film last night--- The Passion.  Tough to say whether it’s my predilection for the Swedish cultural reverence, or the period, or the crashing tedium of recent film-watching…but it stayed with me.  From the opening scenes-- -the pace, the cinematography, the quiet breathing of Max von Sydow—it was hypnotic.  It felt important.  For me, anyway. 

Cut to the Contemporary art sale at Phillips’ tonight where the Emperor’s New Clothes has become something to own rather than an ironic warning.  Most offensive for me is that artist who sticks chewing gum on a canvas in an unattractive arrangement and banks 6 figures.  The catalogue actually has the balls to relate the fact that the guy doesn’t even chew the gum himself but hires college kids to do it for him for 50 cents a piece.  Kind of a Warholian joke or maybe a metaphor for what the banks are doing to us.  Wasn't it also a 'green art' project we did when the kids were in kindergarten and were learning about recycling? Don’t get me started. 

At the risk of becoming the cranky old woman, because anyone with education and memory must have some opinion here, I am searching to find things of recent manufacture that feel ‘important’.  I’ve retreated to my little book-lined anthill of indie songwriting and poetry and simply wince when one of my rich friends gushes about their latest Damian Hirst Butterfly purchase.  Last night for food-money I had to ghost-write an article on one of the big young collectors.  I have to admit I can’t find much to criticize--- the guy, although massively wealthy, seems relatively intelligent and philanthropic and of course, the gist of the article, he has created his own Private Museum. 

The old saying ‘you can’t have everything; where would you put it?” is no longer valid, because of course, you put it in your own Private Museum.  From there you can lend it out, give it away, auction it off, store it-- -whatever… an enormous tax write-off, a solution to having your 45 room triple-penthouse look like a hoarder’s hideout, a relief from renting apartment-priced storage from Crozier or Cadogan Tate,  not to mention insurance.  It is also kind of a living monument to yourself--- your taste, your sophistication--- at least in principle.  And a way of covering up your mistakes, your unwise purchases in the name of philanthropy.  Let's face it-- some of these things don't wear well in your private living room.

So in one of his clever flippant hedge-fund manager remarks, the guy says, of course, art has no intrinsic value: it is just marketing.  Maybe your art has no value, I retort silently, but mine does.  I have starved for weeks, gone without new shoes and clothes for years, to have some small painting I simply couldn’t live without.  Can Mr. Private Museum live without his art?  He can.  In fact, I’ll bet he could live without his wife because although she seemed nice enough, I really couldn’t tell her apart from at least 3 other Private Museum wives who sat at an adjacent table.  

I’m also beginning to see a definite trend of artifice in these trophy women—like some of them used to have soft, blowy hair, or neat ponytails and well-tailored dresses.  Now they seem to have these megalo-hairstyles like somewhere between the Jersey Housewives and Barbie.  I sense a certain rococo tendency in the jewelry and accessories… like even a charity dinner is a red-carpet moment for these well-photographed housewives.  Like a Dave LaChapelle thing…just a little more blingy than chic. 

Oh, Andy, where are you now?  Will your hundreds of soupcans and thousands of Marilyns be enough to go around?  At least my old guitar continues to increase in value because there was little demand  and few produced because they were for actual real musicians back then-- and when you play it—well, it sings.  It’s old and it’s done thousands of gigs and at least for now it hasn’t been bought by some hedge fund hoarder who will hide it in a guitar mausoleum.  I’ll be playing realtime unique music on it while Forbes magazine photographs Mr. PM proudly displaying a wall of 5-cent gum chewed and spat out maybe by the same drunk NYU students who just stuffed one of the artist’s bills in our jar.   

Talk is Cheap

On the way from the fireworks last night I began absorbing the noise factor in Manhattan.  From my admittedly luxurious viewing space, the  explosions were thrilling and loud enough to set off nearly every car alarm on the block.  Loved it.  But shuffling east in the massive festive crowd--  maybe it's the heat, the constant cellphone chatter in public space--- it seems to me that the general volume is louder than it used to be.  Like the glutted internet, the billion cable stations--- there is just so much chatter, people have raised their speaking level to compete.  I'm listening to snippets of conversations-- of public intimacy-- that I didn't sign up for.  And not at eavesdropping levels; these abused rock-musician ears have been gouged and tortured with cymbals, drum whackers, bad PAs, deaf guitarists with 4-figure wattage... it's a miracle I can hear my old television at night.  But the value of conversation seems to have not just declined but disappeared, while personal audio settings have skyrocketed.

Of course it follows that people no longer whisper but quite audibly discuss and promote their sex life everywhere-- on buses, in restaurants, in 5000 shades of cheap novels.  It used to be those who could, 'did'.. and those who couldn't, talked about it.  Now who the fuck knows or cares.  It seems to me, an old retired babe, that the quality of sex must be suffering along with conversation, journalism, literature, whatever.  Talk is cheap, the phone companies tell us--- we have become the Yngwie Malmsteen version of talkers.  Remember when telegrams charged by the word?  When e. e. cummings' economical response to the Academy of Arts and Letters' invitation to join was 'drop dead'?  

Maybe America needs a Twitter diet.  Like one a day.  Some quality control.  Levels of internet communication.  Asshole filtering.  And I'm not a complete old bitch; I love great loud rock; I love comedy that humiliates; I like the knife and I like the blood.  I spent a lot of years reinventing my personal sexuality brand and don't regret a minute.  But even minutes have lost their edge.  They're unlimited and cheap and low-res.  Like climbing all the way up Everest and finding you can't see a thing.  Or you get a billboard and 3-D glasses.  A view master if you're over 50.  

Look at our pop icons:  Brittany Spears has become a badly-spoken candidate for talent-judge.  We used to have Marilyn.  She fucked not only baseball allstars and the president and maybe even Albert Einstein,  but married the greatest 20th century playwright.   That was interesting.  The sex--- well, our daughters might certainly have learned something Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton didn't show them.  Now our icons (and I love Brittany--- she's so 'real' (!)) are the Barbie version of what they used to be.  What do we do when our culture is looking up at the American I-doll of what should be...and reality is a fake ill-scripted cheap version of post-Cassavetes television?  Who wants the super sized cup of diet soda?  Not Writerless.  Maybe we should all just give in and go to K-mart online and buy the doll.  Cindy Sherman knows about that.  I will order several of Eating Disorder Barbie.  Bulimic Barbie with a bulge in her stomach/ can be transformed into teenage pregnant Barbie.  Cutting Barbie.  True Blood Barbie.  Collagen lip-enhanced Barbie.  Breast augmentation Barbie in 3 sizes.  I'm not even amusing myself now.  I hate dolls.  PMS Barbie.

Did you women ever think that we spend 25% of our sex life bleeding?  The networks love anything with Blood in the title... but who writes 50 Shades of Blood?  I might.  I'm sitting in Starbucks taking advantage of the free air-conditioning and a young intern is waiting for his iced latte talking about diarrhea.  Loud.  Laughing.  Next to me a hot young Russian trophy wife is talking to her realtor.  Her ring could buy me coffee for life.  To my left a woman is making a reservation and her baby girl is yelling for another M&M cookie.  Another lady had a car accident and is reporting to her insurance company.   Building a case.  I literally hear all of this.  Not to mention the canned coffeehouse Latino-light music which is annoying.  A cheap cowbell.  Sounds digital.  Organ with too many runs... please God, spare us vocals.  Across from me a man with small hands is i-ordering his scarcely adolescent daughter a new phone.  It will be pink.  2 tiny boys in their karate uniforms coming from one of their myriad summer enhancement programs with their over-educated nanny.  Can't be too botoxed or have too many pre-school lessons here in Carnegie Hill.  Who will tell them that all their jiu-jitsu moves won't protect them from what lurks ahead?  

The heat outside is omnipotent today.  My mind is withered.  My Mom who is old enough to have earned a memory award now has Alzheimers and wants to wear an overcoat.  A rebel, she is.  I wonder if she thinks about sex.  She follows my Dad around like a young puppy now.  Tells me how handsome he is.  I wonder if the sex I had is better than the sex I will have tonight.  That 50 Shades book has affected my 1001 Arabian Nights parallel serial virtual novel.  I  don't want the soft whip and satin handcuffs package in any version of a honeymoon suite.  This is corporate soft-hotel-porn.  The Travelocity gnome in heels and black leather.  They ruined rock, they ruined the economy, they ruined medicine and now they're ruining sex.

On the hot asphalt my local homeless true-reality star James-with-no-surname is talking without a phone.  You have to love the guy.