Batteries NOT Included

I can’t be the only one. Seriously, you know you’ve done it too. I’m not the only one guilty of frantically rummaging through every electronic toy owned by one’s child, like a junkie looking for a taste of smack, trying to find a few new batteries with just enough juice to  -  nah, I’m not alone!

Since the dawn of the working woman, self “pleasurvation” has been a necessity. How are women to manage Work, Home, Husbands, Weigh Gain, and Fatigue, without some sort of personal – release? It can be an embarrassing topic, even taboo, for some women – for others, we can meet at the bar and compare vibrator mishaps, tips, and even jokes!

Now, timing is everything. As we all know, no one wants to rush through a good thing; we never fast forward through a Ryan Reynolds body scene, or skim through the hot sex scenes in “Fifty Shades,” nor do we cram chocolate French Silk pie down our gullet in a food frenzy. We. Take. Our. Time. Unless, of course you don’t have any – in that case it’s every clitoris for itself! So, if you’ve got 9 whole minutes while the spaghetti noodles are cooking then use 8 of those minutes to relax! Guilt free. Because you’ve earned it; all the chauffeuring, cooking, and “woman-ing” has earned you a free pass, a Golden Glorious Ticket, a Token, a credit, a moment to your fucking self. A moment to breathe. Maybe even laugh. Enjoy it, but remember what the box says – “Batteries NOT Included.”

To My Twenties --------> by Kenneth Koch

How lucky that I ran into you
When everything was possible
For my legs and arms, and with hope in my heart
And so happy to see any woman—
O woman! O my twentieth year!
Basking in you, you
Oasis from both growing and decay
Fantastic unheard of nine- or ten-year oasis
A palm tree, hey! And then another
And another—and water!
I’m still very impressed by you. Whither,
Midst falling decades, have you gone? Oh in what lucky fellow,
Unsure of himself, upset, and unemployable
For the moment in any case, do you live now?
From my window I drop a nickel
By mistake. With
You I race down to get it
But I find there on
The street instead, a good friend
X—— N——, who says to me
Kenneth do you have a minute?
And I say yes! I am in my twenties!
I have plenty of time! In you I marry,
In you I first go to France; I make my best friends
In you, and a few enemies. I
Write a lot and am living all the time
And thinking about living. I loved to frequent you
After my teens and before my thirties.
You three together in a bar
I always preferred you because you were midmost
Most lustrous apparently strongest
Although now that I look back on you
What part have you played?
You never, ever, were stingy.
What you gave me you gave whole
But as for telling
Me how best to use it
You weren’t a genius at that.
Twenties, my soul
Is yours for the asking
You know that, if you ever come back.

—Kenneth Koch

A Time and a Place

There’s never enough time in the day, or the week. Or a lifetime. At the end of almost every day I hear myself say, “There’s just not enough time to get everything done.”

Our days (by ‘our’ I mean both men and women) are fleeting. I’m afraid of that morning when I’m in my th-th-thirties and I look in the mirror, and there’s nothing. I’m gone. I’m gone and I didn’t finish that long To-Do List.

Today I yelled at Vivian. I was so busy cleaning, baking, and dealing with Mikey, and she kept hollering for me to look at something on the T.V, or watch a particular scene from her show. I couldn’t keep pulling myself away and I just wanted QUIET. I wanted CALM, PEACE, and fucking QUIET. Because it’s not until everything is done that I can relax, but the trick is completing that “everything.” I’ve noticed that the “everything” has a sly way of multiplying itself, and increasing, and intensifying, and swelling into more and more and more, and never ending. To conquer the To-Do List is a monumental triumph. And to complete it while you’re still human – Evolution my friend.

Evo-fucking-lution.

Later, when I had a moment to relax, and write this blog, the guilt set in - the guilt of not spending enough time with my child (and children are the most important things). I suddenly remembered a very specific memory of my mother (and mothers are the most important things) . . .

I suppose the wise man would find balance amongst the chaos of strings pulling the frazzled man in opposing directions, and kudos to that motherfucker. There is power in finding that calm, peace, and quiet. Absolutely.

The Money Pit

Love is like money, everyone wants more. In 1986 a movie came out starring Tom Hanks, it was called 'The Money Pit' and the premise of the movie centered on being too stubborn to cut your losses short and throw in the towel. In the process of trying to rebuild a once beautiful house, a couple continues to waste thousands of dollars fixing what is destined to be unrepairable, making themselves miserable along the way. The money pit  -  a starving, never-satisfied parasite that feeds and sucks the life out of its host. Love is like money, and the relationship is a pit.

Men

You men are delicious to look at -  with your tall physiques; the firmness of your long bodies pressed against ____ ; rapid pulse during warm, slow, determined, pulls; strong nose into the curve of some soft neck, wide jaw against the bend of some back ---- but, ouch! to the heart.

See?

I was once a young girl, searching for Heathcliff, years ago. It’s a funny thing – Want. Need. Silly young girls are fools who hopelessly grow into foolish women. Don’t read about your prince in books, in the fairy tales written by fools wanting more. Charming is long gone, replaced with the shell of Illusion – a cardboard cut out of lovely, loveliness. Let your eyes drink in the beauty, let your heart lap up the promises, let your lips contort smiles of splendor – never take your fingers off the pulse of the Illusion…it's fading fast.

I've decided to date that guy . . .

Because I stole a glace at him with his shirt off I realized just how wide his back was, how large his biceps were, and how blue his eyes. I began to entertain the possibility that I might just cast away the complex restraints held fast by "being in a relationship" and plunge into that pool, take that leap, cross that line. I would date him. I would rub the glossy film of repetition from my eyes, and drink in that exhilarating thrill of New. I would feel fresh with him. Alive with him. The Everyday would give way to the New, and give me a reason to smile. To smile in the kinda way I did when we first met - fourteen years ago. I think tonight, I will introduce myself.


"And stand together yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow."
                      -Kahlil Gibran, On Marriage.