Day 28: Throwback Thursday: What Febreze Scent Is Your Vagina

Happy Thanksgiving! Are you stuffed? Because I am stuffed. And tired. The past few days I did a lot of cleaning and a lot of cooking and right before my favorite holiday I got a nasty shock that I'll have to deal with whether I want to or not. If you're the praying type, our little family could use some intervention of the supernatural type. No floods or anything like that, please. If you're a ninja Amazon warrior, hit me back channel and let's make a plan. This Mama Bear never hibernates, although I do need some sleep tonight.

So anyway, it's been a long week and I'm so glad it's over .... Wait? What? It's not over yet? Damn it. That's a very good reason for me to share a post from six years ago that I still find entertaining instead of staying up another 2-3 hours writing, editing, nodding off and banging my head on the keyboard. I've already talked about vaginas and Febreze this month. This post ties them together in a neat fragrant package.


From March 6, 2013

Recently I've started holding what I call writer's bootcamps at my house. I open my house to a group of women writers, take their cell phones, and shame encourage them to put their asses in a chair and write for 4 hours with 5 minute breaks every hour. We take a long break for lunch, and then wrap up with a sharing session.

Sounds so simple, but it's rather powerful. Some amazing work comes out of these bootcamps.

At last week's bootcamp .... for reasons I simply don't understand .... the topic of vaginas came up. I offer you a synopsis.

KS: Vaginas do not smell like fish. Vaginas don't even smell like nice, fresh trout. (This will make no sense if you haven't read the nice, fresh trout post.)
Reticula: Hey, that's what I said, but he was adamant. The guy seemed to know his vagina.
KS: No way. As the lone lesbian in the room, and the person with by far the most experience with vaginas, I'm telling you no vagina smells like fish.
Reticula: My vagina smells like rain. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
KK: OK, then mine smells like mountain air.
KS: Sounds like a Febreze scent. Hey, if your vagina was a Febreze scent, what would it be?
R: Mine would be mango .... no, chili .... no, mango. My vagina smells like mango Febreze.
Reticula: I'm sticking with rain. I'm not kidding: my vagina smells like rain.
Anonymous: How about double rainbow? Maybe your vagina smells like double rainbow Febreze.
Reticula: No, I'm sticking with rain. Nobody gets to say what somebody else's vagina smells like....especially if he's going to say fish.
KK: If we're thinking of Febreze scents, then I'm going to change mine. My vagina Febreze scent is sunshine, not mountain air. My vagina smells like sunshine.
M: Mine is ....  fresh man walking out of a shower.
Everybody: That's the best Febreze scent ever!
KK: OK, I'm changing mine again. This time I'm sure. My Febreze vagina scent is honey cream hops.
Reticula: Mmmm. That sounds like a favorite beverage. Maybe next time we should say what our vagina's favorite beverage should be. (Wait for it...)
KS: My vagina Febreze scent is new car.
Everybody: New car!!!  Does your vagina really smell like new car?

KS: I'm telling you, my vagina smells like new car. I'm the only lesbian here, so I'm the expert on what vaginas smell like. New car. 

Epilogue:

KS: OMG. New car Febreze smells like old lady.
Reticula: What does that mean? Did you buy some?
KS: Yes. And I mean it stinks. I want to change my Febreze vagina scent.
Reticula: Too late. You already chose. Your vagina smells like new car.
KS: But new car Febreze smells like old lady toilet.
Reticula: Do mean the toilette that's watered-down perfume or the toilet your cat drinks out of?
KS: Is there a difference?
Reticula: I dunno. It's your vagina.


If your vagina smelled like a Febreze scent, what would it be?

Day 14: Throwback Thursday: Ghetto Tattoo

I think I've mentioned already that I've had more trouble than usual settling on topics for posts this NaBloPoMo, and tonight was no different. I suspect my muse, Dolores, has other writing she'd like me to do and she's not giving me much help. Also, my laptop is a piece of shit with my son, who is giving one last shot to fixing a battery problem. Excuses. The truth is when I started writing tonight, I realized what I wanted to say about what I was writing about would take a lot longer than I dare give it tonight. My mornings come earlier than they did when I started doing this.

So I'm going to continue working on that piece, which might not even end up here, and tonight I'm going to cheat and share one of my favorite posts from the past. May 17, 2012, to be exact. It's from another time in my life, a time when I had the freedom to say yes, and sometimes my friends worried about what I'd do next. But I'll let it speak for itself. It's Throwback Thursday, but I'm still writing.

Ghetto Tattoo

Yesterday on my way home from school I drove past a surprising sight. A rather fair man was standing on the steps in front of his house talking on the phone. He was shirtless and across his glowing-in-the-sun lower abdomen was a large tattoo that read "GHETTO." I stared as long as I could and then drove on to the stop sign at the end of the block.

And then I sat there. Damn it. I wanted a photo of that tattoo. I'd seen some pretty rough looking people on that street. It's not a street I would want to live on, in fact. That guy with the tattoo would probably be considered a rough looking character by most people. He had a fucking tattoo that said GHETTO on his belly, after all. He might not appreciate me gawking at him.

That tattoo was really calling to me though. It was big. It said GHETTO. And when had I ever been scared of rough looking characters?

I threw my van into reverse and backed up the way I'd come on the one-way street. It curves, so of course I hit the curb -- three times. Of course I did. Way to let him know a crazy woman is backing the wrong way down a one-way street. I finally gave up stopped about 100 feet away and walked in the street to the house.

As I came into view around the bushes that hid most of the porch, a big boxer hit the end of his chain, barking a warning greeting. The guy yelled at him, "Down, Psycho! Stop barking at the lady."

I said, "I'm sorry to bother you...." Psycho was still barking and lunging, so the guy yelled at him again, said "Just a minute" to whomever he was talking to, and walked toward me. "Psycho, I said shut up!" He made a menacing move toward the boxer. The dog stopped barking, but he stayed at the end of his chain, pulling. I'm pretty sure he wanted a pat on the head, but I didn't get close enough to see. He might have wanted to eat my liver.

"I'm sorry to interrupt your phone call," I said. "I don't mean to be rude, but I wondered if I could take a photo of your tattoo." I held my crappy dumb phone up and wished I had my fancy SLR with me. I could see he had a bunch of other tattoos on various parts of his body.

"Hold on," he said into the phone. "There's a lady here trying to talk to me."

"I was ... ummm ... driving by and I saw your tattoo and ... I really don't want to be rude, but could I take a photo of your tattoo? My daughter loves tattoos and I like to send her photos of unusual tattoos I see."

"Sure. Go ahead." He posed. I took the photo.

"Mom, I gotta go. Some lady wants to take pictures of my tattoos." He snapped his phone shut. I smiled inside. He was talking to his mom.

"I got all of these in prison," he said. Oh.

"No way," I said. "They let you have tattoo guns in prison?" I looked closer at the ghetto tattoo. It looked pretty intricate for a prison tattoo. Because I've seen so many prison tattoos.

"Nah. We made the tattoo guns. Every single one of these I got when I was in prison. They were all done with a homemade tattoo gun in prison."

He told me how they made a needle out of the coil in a disposable lighter. They'd break the lighter, pull out the coil, heat it to straighten it into a wire, sand it down, and then sterilize it with alcohol.

"Here look. I got more on my back too. You can show her those too." I walked around him and took a photo of his back.

I asked him if they used ballpoint pen ink. (Elvira tattooed three little stars on her ankle when she was about 15 using ballpoint pen ink and a safety pin. She told me that's how they did it in prison. Suburban teenagers know so much.)

Tattoo guy said the only thing they used from a pen was the barrel. They taped or melted the plastic barrel to hold the lighter-spring needle in the machine. They used a motor from a CD player to power the tattoo gun.

To make the ink, he said they burned Vaseline and made a clumpy product they called "sood." I spelled it back to him to make sure he wasn't saying soot. He was missing a tooth in front, and I wasn't sure I understood him right. I think he said sood. Anyway, the sood was mixed with alcohol to make the ink. It was clumpy, he said, but it was still ink.

"I had no idea that's how prison tattoos were made. My daughter will love to hear how you did these. She wants to be a tattoo artist," I said. "Thanks for letting me take a photo and for talking to me. I didn't mean to interrupt your conversation with your mom."

"Hey, you need to take a photo of this one too." He flexed his pec. "This is Psycho. He's not mean." He pointed his thumb at the dog.

"I'm not scared of him," I said, which was almost true. He didn't look like he wanted to gnaw on me, but I didn't tempt him. "I've known other boxers. They're sweet dogs." Psycho slobbered a little and pushed his stubby nose toward me.

"I've got three more inside, but this here tattoo is that dog, Psycho," he said. "Take a picture of that one to show your daughter."

I took a photo of the tattoo. I wondered if anybody had pointed out the spelling, but I decided not to be the one to mention it. Maybe he didn't know. Maybe there are times when it's best to turn off the external editor.

I thanked him and started to walk back to my van, but he stopped me. "All of these are 12 years old. That's how long it's been since I was in prison. Twelve years. I ain't been in that kind of trouble since," he said.

"That's good," I said. "That's a long time to stay out of prison."

"How old is your daughter?" he asked.

"Twenty-one."

"Oh, 21, huh. Well, I'm 33. That's why I was askin'."

Lightbulb! "Oh, yeah, well she's only 21 .... and you're ... you know .... 33," I said.

"Yeah. Well, if she wants to be a tattoo artist, tell her to get a license and not do it in her own home. She could get in trouble and lose her license if she gets caught doing that." (The irony did not escape me.)

I promised I'd warn her not to give tattoos in her house, and it was time for me to go. But before I left I took a photo of the real Psycho, who posed like this when I told him to smile for the camera. Awwww. He probably didn't want to eat my liver after all.

Throwback Thursday: Goodbye to Cousin X: Day 15

Tonight's Throwback Thursday post is one that got a lot of attention, although it's hard to tell by looking at the original post. No comments on it at all. But there were tons of comments on Facebook, and it was one of my top five posts for views. In fact, one of my brother's friends in Minneapolis sent it to him, not knowing it was about him. That's viral in my world!

Some things have changed since I wrote this post. To begin with, I unfriended Cousin X, and so did my sisters and even my mom. The Supreme Court did the right thing and upheld the right of gay people to marry, and yet also upheld the baker's right to refuse to bake a cake for a gay couple. But the state where he lives elected a gay governor this month. There's change. But the religious right is always pushing back and trying to erode progress. I'll never understand what people are so afraid of, and frankly, it's their problem. They need to deal with it and leave the rest of us out of it. And on we go with Throwback Thursday.
_________

I wish people would think about who they might hurt when they let loose their bigoted, repressive, cutting words on the world of Facebook. Real people read these words. Real people react with their real feelings. Their hurt feelings. Their feelings of despair. This goes out to all of my LGBTQ friends. I'm sorry for some of the shit you endure here. I'm sorry for some of the shit we all have to see here.

P.S. I love my baby brother with all my heart. Don't bake him a fucking cake if you don't want to. I'll bake him a cake, and I'll bake it with love. Keep your hate to yourself.

 I posted this on Facebook tonight. I was so pissed, and I wanted to make a vague statement about a conversation I had with my little brother early this evening, just as I was finishing up a ham dinner to eat with Drake and Montana, my son and daughter-in-law. We'd shared a good day: birthday brunch for Montana, a visit with her adorable 9-month-old nephew, a long hike along the river in a nearby state park with our dogs. While I grilled ham and mashed potatoes, they grabbed a quick nap before their 2 1/2-hour drive home.

I almost didn't answer the phone. I almost didn't even check to see who was calling, but I did, and when I saw it was my youngest brother, probably on his long drive home from Easter dinner at Mom's, I picked up the phone. I intended to just let him say "Happy Easter" and get right off, but instead we had this conversation. (Note: My brother is not on Facebook and never has been. For that I am grateful, for reasons that will become clear. Oh, and also, my  brother is gay. Not that that's any of your business.)

Bro': Did we talk about Cousin X the last time we talked or the time before? Did you say you weren't really in touch with her any more? Because I can understand why now.
Me: I don't remember talking about it, but it's true. We don't have much in common any more.
Bro': Yeah, well I have even less in common with her. You're Facebook friends with her, right?
Me: I am .... or I think I still am. I have her set on "show as little as possible without unfriending." Too much right-wing bullshit for me. Why? What happened?
Bro': I was at Mom's setting up her phone. I put her on my plan so she'd get better reception there.
Me: Yeah, any reception at all would be welcome, I'm sure. I didn't get any bars the entire time I was home for [her husband's] funeral last summer.
Bro': So I was setting up her phone, and I had to load her Facebook app for her. And I saw the kind of shit Cousin X posts on her Facebook. I couldn't believe it.
Me: I haven't seen anything from her in months. What did you see?
Bro': A bunch of stuff. Some really ugly stuff about Obama. And a post about ... well, about me. It said something like making a Christian bake a cake for a gay person is like making a black person bake a cake for the KKK.
Me: Wow. That's .... that's horrible.
Bro': Yeah. I .... I don't know what I ever did to her .... I don't know how she could compare me to the KKK. I didn't know that was who she is now. I won't keep you. I just had to tell you ... It hurts, you know?
Me: I know. It's awful. I don't even know what to say about it. I'm so sorry you saw that.
Bro': I was so upset I almost responded to it right there ...
Me: Yeah, but it would have looked like Mom was responding. Not that she wouldn't have supported you.
Bro': And then I thought I'd send her an email when I got home, but the further down the road I got, the more I realized it would be like teaching a pig to sing. It would waste my time and just annoy the pig.
Me: You're right. You're not going to change her stupid, bigoted opinions.
Bro': I know. I just want to ... I don't know. Tell her I'm a real person, someone she knows, and that's a vile way to talk about me and my friends and a lot of people she doesn't even know.
Me: It is. I just doubt you'd get any satisfaction from contacting her. Maybe ... but probably not.
Bro': I'm not going to. I decided to call you instead. I'll let you go now.
Me: OK. I'm just getting dinner on the table. Sorry.
Bro': It's OK. I just needed to tell you.
Me: I love you. Drive safe.
Bro': Love you too. Talk to you soon.

I have so much to say about this, I can barely think straight. I'll try to be concise though. Joining the KKK is a choice. A vile choice. Being a Christian is a choice. And the result of that choice sometimes results in vile actions, like posting shit like this on Facebook.

I'm not sure who Cousin X thinks she's talking about when she compares a gay wedding to the KKK (the irony can't escape any of you), but if I cared to have the conversation with her, I would remind her that she's talking about real people. Real people who have the same human desires and failings, the same needs and feelings that she does. Real people who include her younger cousin  who shared holiday dinners and birthdays with her at my house for several years when we all lived close to each other and far from other family. A real person who used to think she cared a great deal for him. 

Apparently she does not. Does not care about him, and does not see him as a real person with the same rights she has.

You know what though? It's none of her damn business who he loves or who he shares a wedding cake with or even who he fucks. None. Of. Her. Business. Nor mine. Nor yours. Nobody's business but his own.

But since people insist on making my brother their business, let me tell you something about his weekend. He drove 10 hours to and from to spend Easter with our recently widowed mother. He's probably made that trip 25 times in the past year. Maybe more. While he was there he told stupid jokes, cooked, cleaned up, did several handyman chores that Mom needed done, watched some TV, set up her cell phone, teased his sisters, let a few odorous farts, laughed too loud and cried too easily, reminisced about those of us who weren't there, saw something cruel on Facebook that cut him to his soul .... 

Here's what he didn't do. He didn't discriminate refuse to show common courtesy to anybody, including straight people, who are not like him in that way that's so important to some straight people. He didn't rape any children. Most pedophiles are straight men anyway. He didn't shame any little girls who wanted to wear a suit for Easter. I doubt very much he compelled anybody to commit suicide, although if you've ever endured one of his farts ... I digress. And he did not post a quick, yet heart-wrenchingly cruel, quotation on Facebook about anybody at all, but especially not about somebody he thought might remember him with fondness, if not love. 

Who wouldn't want to bake this man a wedding cake? (He's single, btw!)

I have to ask: Are there really good people who think their savior rose from the dead on a day like this one a couple thousand years ago just so they could use the religion they named after him to crush people who don't love the same gender of person they love? Really? Is that what they got from Jesus? Is that what they distilled from his words?

From what I know of Jesus, he accepted everybody. In fact, I think that radical, liberal young rabbi would have been out there performing gay weddings if such a thing had even been a thing. Oh, I know he would have. He certainly wouldn't have been quoting John Hawkins' words of hate on Facebook.

I'm rambling. It's hard to watch someone I love step on a landmine like that one up there. It's hard to see people I love and people I don't even know try to defend who they are, who they were born to be. It's hard to watch people carry on conversations about them -- about them -- as if they weren't real live human beings who shouldn't have to defend their relationships to anybody.

So I'll stop rambling and say it again to people like Cousin X (who won't be on my Facebook friend list after this): Don't bake my brother a fucking cake if you can't treat him like a human being who has all the same feelings and rights as you. I will bake him all the cakes he can eat, and I will make them with love. You hit him today with your words, and you hurt him. But don't think that means you will oppress him forever. Your dehumanizing hatred is going to cause a backlash like you've never even imagined. A backlash of people loving and supporting and fighting for their gay relatives and friends, and yes, even strangers.

Wait for it. It's already headed your way. Bam!

Throwback Thursday: Proust's Madeleine: Day 8

Today for NaBloPoMo I'm doing a throwback Thursday and sharing my most popular post. Not necessarily the one most popular with my regular readers, but the one that has received by far the most views, partly because it's one of my earliest posts (January 1, 2009) and partly because it comes up on a Google search for "Proust's madeleine." With no further ado, my first cookie post.

I wish I could remember where I recently ran across a reference to Proust’s madeleine. Intrigued, I googled it, and then I couldn’t believe I hadn’t heard of it before. Maybe I had and I wasn’t paying attention. Who knows? It’s not as if I sit around reading Proust, although if you’d like to think I do, I’m fine with that. If only I were that high-browed. I’m never even sure if I’ve pronounced his name correctly—not that it comes up often in my conversations.

Every writer must dream of writing such a deep and enduring metaphor, one that has coined a phrase used in psychology, “involuntary memory.” Proust writes that he was having a bad day, so his mother gave him a snack. He took a spoonful of tea with some crumbs of madeleine floating in it, and suddenly he felt much better. He spends a significant number of words describing his internal search for the memory that tiny sip of tea must have evoked. Eventually he ties it to his aunt having given him bites of her madeleine years before when he was a boy.

Who hasn’t experienced tasting something that transported you back, in both memory and feeling, to another time and place? Often these are fleeting, whispy moments; we barely pause in that place out of present time and space, that place where we are the ghost watching like Scrooge and the Spirit of Christmas Past. Since I learned about Proust’s Madeleine, I’ve been on the prowl for such an experience, but they’ve been like that lone fly that buzzes and buzzes around your head until you finally get up and find a flyswatter or a section of newspaper, only to have the fly mysteriously disappear until you turn your light off to go to sleep and then just as you’re about to drift off you hear that buzzzzz….you get the idea. I was getting discouraged, thinking maybe my madeleine would never come. And then on Christmas Day, a peanut did the trick.

I invited my usual “family” of friends over for Christmas Dinner. We were eating at 3:00 and I didn’t want people to starve while they waited, and yet I didn’t want them to spoil their dinners, so I put out a basket of peanuts in the shell so they’d have to work for their snack. Phil and Joe were the first ones here. They poured coffee and eggnog for themselves and started shelling peanuts. Phil commented that I’d bought unsalted—totally unintentional on my part—but they still ate them until it was time to make the gravy.

After everyone had gone home and the dishes were done, I grabbed a peanut on my way out of the kitchen, thinking as I did that I might as well just put them out for the squirrels. Who likes unsalted peanuts? I cracked the shell, pulled it apart with my fingernails, slipped the peanuts out, popped them in my mouth and chewed.

All of a sudden I was standing outside a three-sided tent in the yard of the courthouse, which stood in the middle of the square in the small Iowa town where I grew up. Packed snow crunched under my boots as I waited in line behind what seemed like hundreds of other kids. It was probably only five. In the tent, sitting on a big chair, straw covering the ground around him, sat Santa, and soon I would sit on his lap and tell him what I wanted for Christmas.

Winn Geeseman played Santa every year. His daughter, Valerie, was a year younger than me, and even though by the time I was seven I recognized him, he was magical once he put on that red suit. (I certainly wouldn’t have sat on his lap if he hadn’t been wearing that costume!)

I wasn’t one of those kids who asked for big impossible things like ponies or red sports cars or bringing people back to life. I always asked for what I knew was possible—clothes, go go boots (never got those), a crying baby doll (she gave me away several times after I was supposed to be in bed asleep), a Barbie with bendable legs. (I was the first girl in first grade to get one. I took it to school for show and tell and Sherry Ryan broke one of the knees so it flopped instead of bending. I was devastated. I still haven’t forgiven her.)

After we had taken our turn on Santa’s lap, his helper would hand us each a small brown-paper bag half-full of hard candy—ribbons, raspberry-filled, a couple of small candy canes--and some unshelled, unsalted peanuts. We got the same bag of candy and peanuts at the church on Christmas Eve, after the annual nativity play. I wonder if they were the leftovers.

Although we didn't live in a little house on the prairie, Christmas was the only time we got nuts, except the little black walnuts we picked up in the fall. Somebody would give Dad a fruit basket with big, shiny red Delicious apples and basketball sized navel oranges — not like those nameless little sour apples Mom bought in three-pound bags or the wormy green ones we stole from the neighbors’ trees — and nuts in the shell — pecans, fancy English walnuts, almonds. They were so fun to crack open with the silver nutcracker and they tasted so exotic, coming as they did just that one time a year, probably from very faraway — New York, maybe, or even California. And they weren’t selfish with their meats, like our home-grown black walnuts.

Oh, and then there was Grandma’s peanut brittle, shards of hard, amber candy impregnated with Spanish peanuts. I didn’t like it as well as the chocolate-covered cherries and fluffy white and pink divinity she made. And two kinds of fudge — regular chocolate cut into squares and the maple fudge that she put into tiny fluted paper cups. And caramels, creamy and chewy at the same time. One year when I was helping her make candy she told me about how her mother had to invite several friends over to make divinity. Because they had to beat it by hand, one woman couldn’t beat long enough for it to set up so they took turns beating the egg whites, sugar and corn syrup into divinity. If the weather was too humid, sometimes they never could get it to peak, and so they’d just make sticky disks of candy, failed divinity they called it. (I only remember one year when my grandma’s divinity failed in spite of her electric mixer. It was never mentioned.)

It’s surprising how the taste of one unsalted peanut can bring back so many memories. I still want to write a Proust’s Madeleine poem, like the one below, written by the late Kenneth Rexroth.

Have you ever experienced your own madeleine? Would you be willing to channel your inner Proust and share it here?

Proust’s Madeleine

Somebody has given my

Baby daughter a box of

Old poker chips to play with.

Today she hands me one while

I am sitting with my tired

Brain at my desk. It is red.

On it is a picture of

An elk’s head and the letters

B.P.O.E.—a chip from

A small town Elks’ Club. I flip

It idly in the air and

Catch it and do a coin trick

To amuse my little girl.

Suddenly everything slips aside.

I see my father

Doing the very same thing,

Whistling “Beautiful Dreamer,”

His breath smelling richly

Of whiskey and cigars. I can

Hear him coming home drunk

From the Elks’ Club in Elkhart

Indiana, bumping the

Chairs in the dark. I can see

Him dying of cirrhosis

Of the liver and stomach

Ulcers and pneumonia,

    Or, as he said on his deathbed, of

    Crooked cards and straight whiskey,

    Slow horses and fast women.

~Kenneth Rexroth ~