In which I make myself very unpopular

Hello.

There really is no dignified way to start this post, so I will just say it: I watched porn.

Let me explain: I am 41 years old, and it occurred to me recently that I have never seen pornography - not even Playboy. I might have seen a few naked pictures here or there, but basically, I had no experience with the industry and had never "seen" people doing stuff.

I decided that since I wasn't interested in getting turned on - and since I wasn't going to pay for any yucky material - that it would be ok for me to google to google the word "fuck" and click on one of the options in the spirit of education.

Well, well.

Hello, internet. It's nice to meet you...? Did you know that if you are a bored, indifferent, 19 year old girl, you shouldn't yowl on queue and look bored while some dude in his forties infects you with chlamydia?

Did you know that if the guy wearing tightie whities and a coyboy hat offers to go Alamo on you -WAIT- STOP- he is going to shove his stuff somewhere it doesn't go?

Aside from the fact that porn is incredibly boring, I was disgusted by how, duh, unsafe it is. Woman after woman was apparently OK with anal, vaginal, and oral penetration without a condom. HELLO, what planet are we living on?? Plus, these girls were visibly bored and in it for the paycheck. How sad.

Given, that I am about two degrees removed from a pilgrim in terms of sexual morality, I want to say the following:

I want very much to say that erotica has a place in human sexuality - remember the simple thrill the first time he held your hand? Remember the time you looked into his eyes a bit too long and saw everything, saw the whole world, ultimate happiness, right there in his eyes? Remember what it felt like the first time he slid his hand through your hair?

But porn? It wasn't even erotic. It wasn't - truth be told - even sexual. It was mechanical, scummy, and dehumanizing to the people who participated. Seriously --- I find it absolutely impossible that any human person could get off on watching what I saw. It was like watching hogs led to slaughter.

I must be crazy, because this crap is all over the internet.

For Cath

It's snowing in New York City, and my, is it pretty.

While I Wait

I have about $200 worth of prescription medication being filled right now, and gosh I don't know whether to feel grateful that such medication exists or melancholy because the reality is I need all that stuff to keep me... alive. Well, let's go with gratitude, since gratitude is more attractive than self loathing.

Speaking of attraction, suddenly I am questioning my "celibate for life" policy based on nothing but the fact that celibacy now seems somewhat severe. Sometimes (often... always) when I am at the gym, I look at the men in the pool and consider whether they are my type or not. People, I haven't had a type since Bill Clinton was president. What to do about this? Should I start applying lipstick again? Should I try to get into my skinny jeans and attempt to be attractive? I really don't know. More on this later.

Oh! I moved. A block away from my job. Two days ago I got the worst performance review in the history of my career, but since I am focusing on the positive, we'll just not talk about that. Well, not today.

Caution! Here is what could happen to your apartment if you go to graduate school a whole lot:



Oh and I bought a dresser that fit perfectly into my apartment. (Please note that I had to buy children's furniture in order to accomplish this.)



One more! My bed matches the dresser. Maybe if I fit into my skinny jeans and start wearing lipstick again I will meet a man person who will tolerate a full size bed. Full beds are kind of small for two people. (What the hell am I talking about? Celibate! Forever!)





See you... next time.

Love,

Nina

Are we getting anywhere?

Is this any better? I think it looks pretty awful, but I am used to the dark and storminess. Is the red doing anything for anyone?? The white background?

Also: I believe that novels, like all essays, should have thesis statements. My current working thesis:

If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.


The quotation comes from the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas. If Jesus really said this, and I hope he did say it... uh, Jesus you are absolutely correct. If you don't give what you have, all that havingness will come back and bite you square in the ass. Destruction is certain.

Another note: thinking about writing the book has been fun because WOW have I done great work in the area of being angry and blaming others for everything. Since I take comedy any way I can get it, I have been getting lots and lots of laughs making notes for this book. Let me know if you want special tips in the area of blaming others or feeling viciously and sadistically persecuted. I have special skills in these areas.

I love you just because you are you, but also because you are beautiful, and I can't help myself (and because you show up here and read about my badness).

Love,

Nina

Liar

There is a commandment somewhere on the tablets the anthropologists can't manage to find. It says (reportedly): don't lie.

Oh.

Eek.

I lie all the time. I do it to protect other people from truths I fear people cannot - or should not have to - handle.

Sometimes I lie because the truth would break the hearts of people I love.

But I also lie to make money. (I have two jobs and neither employers knows the other exists).

Other times I lie about where I am going (Kate doesn't need to know that I am going out at 9pm for a cheap bottle of hootch because I can't sleep and oh dear God please tell me that in heaven, everyone sleeps, all the time. Please? Thank you).

My lying concerns me. It is true that I can go to confession and bore some sweet old priest with a list of all the times I told my brother I was really feeling fine, and thank you for asking, when the truth was I was sharpening my knives and looking for a way to commit the deed - and still look pretty in the casket.

But we - the priest and I - would be there in that hot and uncomfortable cell for a long time if I gave all this information. And sometimes I think to myself: how terrible for the priest who has to listen to people's sins.

"Bless me father, for I have sinned. It has been three months since my last confession. Twice I drank a bottle of Night Train and ran naked through Cooper's Square. Nine times I interfered with myself while thinking of Anna Nicole. I hate animals and children because they are loud and smelly. I rarely bathe and I have not flossed in a year. Oh! And I got fired from my job for drunkenness and something they call sexual harassment. Bastards! Is that their sin, or mine? Okay! That about covers it. What's the penance?"

Where was I?

Oh. My lying. There has been something (lately) that I lie about all the time, to everyone. Even to Lindsey.



Sometimes when work is slow and I have the inclination, I go to Woodlawn - all the way up there in the Bronx. There, I sit in the cemetery (it's a big one). Because my parents don't have graves, looking at those of other people gives me peace. I do not know the people buried at Woodlawn, but I wonder who those people - all those people - are. And I hope they don't mind that I come and sit with them, even though my visits are for my own benefit - that at best, their resting places are a proxy for the graves of my deceased parents.

It is not a sadness thing. I don't go up there and cry or cling to a stranger's headstone. But I do spend hours and hours there. I sit and think about there people buried there, and I wonder who they are, and I ask myself if I could talk to them, what one thing they wished they had done differently before it was all over.

My mother, who went out with real style, said on her deathbed, "I wish I had worried less and laughed more."

My father probably said something but I'll never know what it was. I wasn't there. But I can damn sure tell you what he would have done differently, and if you have been reading my internet diary this long, you know, too.

But that was not my point.

Lying. I lie far more than my conscience allows.

How much lying do you do? Do you have regrets? And if lying is ever legal, when? why? how?

Questions

I have been thinking. (I know. I know. Drink more, think less: happy life). (But I have been thinking anyway).


I have questions for God.

No, the are not questions such as "why have you been so not awesome to me?" and they are not questions like "is there a paradise for Cathead -- even though Cathead was a dirty, dirty sinner (even in his most charming moments)?

My questions are:

1) God, what if the fall angel, Lucifer, the evil one, requested a meeting with you and repented of all his pridefulness and bad behaviors and begged forgiveness? Would you grant it? And if you did, how might that decision impact the whole everything? (I am serious about this question. I really want to know if the fallen angel has ever said to him or herself: gosh... I probably made a serious error, here. Can I fix it?).

2) Catholic theology teaches that if you skip Mass to go bowling with your friends and you get hit by a car on the way home, you are damned just as surely and completely as mass murderers and and child rapists. Are you serious?

3) God, I believe in you. I think you exist and I think you are powerful and probably good looking, too. But love you? I am sorry, but I don't really love you. Don't get me wrong. I want to love you. I am told that I should. But love is something people feel for their friends, their family, their Catheads - maybe even their favorite board game. The fact is, God, I cannot picture you, unless you count the endless images of Jesus stretched out on a cross and looking for all the world like he was of Swiss descent, even though the overwhelming likelihood is that he was short and dark and certainly had brown eyes. Oh wait. Where was I? Love is personal. It is big hearted and faithful and hopeful. However, in your case, my images of you are ephemeral and my understanding of your influence in my life is at best... confusing. Frankly, I am terrified of you. Love? Where do I even start? I mean thanks that I am I fat, white, American person. Thanks that I am not deformed or prohibitively stupid. But I think you know I would rather have had other challenges. More on that later.

I ask these questions well aware that if I die in the next ten minutes I will be pulled to pieces by demons and roasted alive (dead) for the consumption of demon-types who love the taste of fat white girls. But I still have to ask.

Comments: if you have one (or two questions) that you would ask God (assuming you believe in God and assuming you would get an answer), what would it be?)