So, I forgot --
When I was having that long conversation with the law school students, the one who liked to pee standing up in her youth was saying about how this one girls she knows from the law school's parents were really open about their having sex to their kids all their lives, and on vacations they would tell their kids to go keep occupied and be like to them, "We need some time alone to have sex."
She said, too, that the parents are now in their 60s, and when they visited their daughter a few weeks ago, they were having coffee together and planning their day and all of a suddent the parents started looking bored and a bit distracted, and then their mom turned to the girl and was like, "Honey, could you go find something to do for 45 minutes or so? Your father and I want to go have sex."
Also, I went to the black neighborhood bar again last night, since I had overdue plans to go meet a friend and that's where we ended up. While we were there talking, the two black men in their 40s seated next to my friend at the bar both pulled brass knuckles out of their pockets and compared them for a good ten, fifteen minutes, only my friend didn't notice since she was turned more turned me and kind of had her back to them.
Plus, one pulled out one of those mini-guns that some people call a pea-shooter, and showed it to the other guy, then they both went out back in the alley to have a smoke.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Quite a night -- drinks, and drinks (part II of II): the black neighborhood bar.
So, after taking my leave of the white neighborhood bar, I went to meet my friend from the masters program at the black neighborhood bar, and she was sitting there reading a book she has to read for class on the sociology of the Hell's Angels, and she had a pitcher out and was like, "Hey, just grab a glass," and the big black bartender ambled up and mumbled something, so I got out my ID and showed it to him, and he was like, "No, I don't need that, I know who you are, I said what do you need?", and I told him a glass as well as a glass of water and he got me one, and then I introduced myself... He always has seemed a bit standoffish, but, it was a good opportunity to finally meet him.
"He's so nice," my friend was like, and then she was like, "Did you see we're the only white people in here!", and she was right.
So, I had a glass of beer and we talked about this and that, and I was bitching about how I had nothing to read, and she was like, "Sonny Barger wrote a memoir", and then she started flipping through her book and was like, "Here, they describe it as 'a self-aggrandizing tale full of rapes and murders' - I guess that sounds like what you're looking for?"
Then she started telling me about how her dad was in a motorcycle gang, and used to get in shootouts in the streets of Detroit and shit like that, and since I knew her mom is a feminist sociology prof, I asked her how they had met, and she said that her dad migrated west in the mid-70s after being a doorman at a club in the Haight, and when her mom was a barmaid in Kalamazoo since on an impulse she had taken all her money for college and went to Europe to live for a year and was then broke, this huge tornado hit Kalamazoo and destroyed the buildings behind the bar where her mom worked, and her dad needed money and was on the clean-up crew, and after every day's work he used to come into the bar all sweaty from manual labor and order a burger and a beer, and two months later when he had to flee town because he had started stealing cars again, her mom was already pregnant with her, so they fled town together and went to a small cabin in rural Kentucky that was owned by a friend of a friend to stay put for a while and avoid the heat.
"It was one room and somehow the shower worked but no other plumbing did, and since it was a dry county, they sold moonshine, and they were really poor and would eat squirrels and shit, but" - and here my friend looked away a bit and her eyes got all misty, since her parents are now divorced - "they still both say it was the happiest time of their lives." She then told me about how they also held cockfights in the basement for spare cash, and her earliest baby picture is of her dad holding her behind the bar in the basement while an illegal cockfight is going on.
A little while later she told me, too, that she had heard from someone that the black neighborhood bar, while not technically a gay bar, is a bar in the neighborhood that gays go to, but she said she's not sure if it's true, since every time she goes there to drink and study, she never notices any signalling or anything between the men, though she never gets hit much, and a couple of times she's seen some women doing some close dancing that was more for them than any men in the room.
"He's so nice," my friend was like, and then she was like, "Did you see we're the only white people in here!", and she was right.
So, I had a glass of beer and we talked about this and that, and I was bitching about how I had nothing to read, and she was like, "Sonny Barger wrote a memoir", and then she started flipping through her book and was like, "Here, they describe it as 'a self-aggrandizing tale full of rapes and murders' - I guess that sounds like what you're looking for?"
Then she started telling me about how her dad was in a motorcycle gang, and used to get in shootouts in the streets of Detroit and shit like that, and since I knew her mom is a feminist sociology prof, I asked her how they had met, and she said that her dad migrated west in the mid-70s after being a doorman at a club in the Haight, and when her mom was a barmaid in Kalamazoo since on an impulse she had taken all her money for college and went to Europe to live for a year and was then broke, this huge tornado hit Kalamazoo and destroyed the buildings behind the bar where her mom worked, and her dad needed money and was on the clean-up crew, and after every day's work he used to come into the bar all sweaty from manual labor and order a burger and a beer, and two months later when he had to flee town because he had started stealing cars again, her mom was already pregnant with her, so they fled town together and went to a small cabin in rural Kentucky that was owned by a friend of a friend to stay put for a while and avoid the heat.
"It was one room and somehow the shower worked but no other plumbing did, and since it was a dry county, they sold moonshine, and they were really poor and would eat squirrels and shit, but" - and here my friend looked away a bit and her eyes got all misty, since her parents are now divorced - "they still both say it was the happiest time of their lives." She then told me about how they also held cockfights in the basement for spare cash, and her earliest baby picture is of her dad holding her behind the bar in the basement while an illegal cockfight is going on.
A little while later she told me, too, that she had heard from someone that the black neighborhood bar, while not technically a gay bar, is a bar in the neighborhood that gays go to, but she said she's not sure if it's true, since every time she goes there to drink and study, she never notices any signalling or anything between the men, though she never gets hit much, and a couple of times she's seen some women doing some close dancing that was more for them than any men in the room.
Quite a night - drinks, and drinks (part I of II): the white neighborhood bar.
So, last night I was going out the door to meet my one friend from the masters program at the black neighborhood bar, when my neighbor from my building who I went to Indiana to campaign for Obama with texted me that she and her friend were down at the white neighborhood bar and to come join them for a pitcher, so since that bar was closer, I decided to go down and have just one glass, and then go on to go meet my one friend from the masters program.
Anyhow, when I arrived at the white neighborhood bar, my one neighbor from my building who I went to Indiana to campaign for Obama with's friend, who also goes to law school and has very short hair and pixie-ish cheeks but is not a lesbian, was for some reason talking about all the gender-transgressive thing she did in her childhood growing up in the outskirts of Valparaiso, like pee standing up which her brothers made fun of her for when they accidentally opened the bathroom door one day and saw her doing that, and read boy-books like "Where the Red Fern Grows" and the Hatchet series, and be sexually aggressive to her teachers and in third grade be upfront with her male teachers and ask them to kiss her, and how since she wanted to be a native American, she'd wear nothing but a loin-cloth around the house for years, even till she was like eleven or twelve and her older brother would start whining to their mom about how he was embarrassed to have friends over since she was going around topless, and she'd confront him and be like, "Well, I don't have breasts yet," and stuff like that.
"It took me a long time to sort through things," she said, "since all along I was attracted to men, but I hated fucking women and the way they behaved and talked and the things they thought about."
She then said that during her first years of college, her dad at the goading of his girlfriend who has a gay son, took her aside and started off on this long talk about after his dad (her grandfather, who she never knew) died in his fifties, her grandmother kind of wandered emotionally for a few years, and then moved in with her long-term best friend, and they shared a house together, and went to functions together, and for all practical intent and purposes were a couple.
"And...?", she was like, to her dad.
"Well," he was like, "I don't know how to put this, but --" and he paused dramatically, "They were lovers," and then he explained though it was never articulated, everyone knew it. Then, he was like, "And I want you to know that that's okay by me," at which point she had to tell her dad that she wasn't gay, and he was like, "Well, I wanted you to know that anyways."
After this, somehow we segued into how her friend at law school was doing a research paper into bestiality and animal consent, and we all started swapping horse-fucking stories as well as a few livestock insemination ones, and then she started talking about this one documentary she saw about men who liked getting fucked by horses, and then somehow we started talking about fetishes and how they deveop in youth, and then out of nowhere my neighbor from my building who I went to Indiana to campaign for Obama with, who was raised in southern Illinois by hippie parents and who always looks stoned though she's not and has never tasted meat in her life, said that when she was a kid, she had a genocide obsession, and how she couldn't stop reading "The Diary of Anne Frank", but even more than that, she couldn't stop reading the more-recent "Zlata's Diary", about whatever the fuck war that was from a few years ago where there was shit going on in Sarajevo.
After that, there was an awkward pause and it was about time for me to get going, so I told them about how I talked to my mom that evening on the phone and how she was telling me about the recent visit of the Yooper girlfriend of my brother's one friend from high school...
(I didn't even know she was visiting and staying with my parents; I guess my mom had went to write this to me in an e-mail when she was at work this past week, but she was like, "I pressed the wrong button, and the next thing I know, the entire e-mail was obliterated, and I wasn't going to write out the whole goddamn thing again!")
So, the Yooper girlfriend of my brother's one friend from high school repairs cars, and she had met a bunch of people over the internet who really like used Kias, so she drove down to stay with my parents and then the next day was going to meet this weird guy from a shitty-ass small town near us to drive down a couple hours to another part of the state for this impromptu Kia rally, only she flaked out at the last minute and didn't want to meet up with this guy, so she was basically hanging around our house a lot, and since my mom had a few days off of work and realized that this Yooper girl had never really been anywhere since she had been born and raised in the U.P., my mom decided to go with her on a couple daytrips around the northern lower peninsula, the first one being to this pleasant summer-town on Lake Michigan with a yuppie-ish downtown.
Anyhow, they enjoyed their day there, and on the way out of town, this Yooper girl asked really casually, "Is there a 7-11 around here?", and my mom was like, "Yeah, actually a couple blocks up, we're going to go right past it, why, do you want to stop?", and the Yooper girl was like, "Could we?", and the next thing you know, as they pull up and are sitting in the car and just before the Yooper girl opens the door, she starts kind of staring wistfully, and is like to my mom, "I've always wanted a Slurpee..." -- since, as it turns out, the U.P. gets a station or two from northern Wisconsin media markets and 7-11 ads are on all the time, but there are no 7-11s in the U.P, so this girl had all her life wanted to go to a 7-11 and try a Slurpee.
So, after finding this out, my mom, who wasn't going to go into the store at all, went into the store with this Yooper girl to show her to help her operate the Slurpee machine, and while my mom was showing her that, she mentioned to the Yooper girl, "You know, [me] and sometimes [my brother] used to always mix the different Slurpee flavors, it would look so disgusting that it would make me sick," and the Yooper girl, once she heard this, was like, "No way!", and made a mixed Slurpee. She didn't sip it right away, but after they paid and got back in the car, as soon as the door was closed and the Slurpee was put in the cup holder, the Yooper girl gave a big "Yessss!" with her hand, and started stomping her feet on the car floor and squealing.
And, as it turns out, she really likes Slurpees, and has had six this past week.
"Sounds like a keeper!", my one neighbor from my building who I went to Indiana to campaign for Obama with said.
Besides that even, the next day they went to a more major city in my area, and on the way out of town, the Yooper girl turned to my mom and was like, "[my mom's name], is there a Dunkin' Donuts around here? I'd like to buy you a coffee."
"You know, I actually don't feel like a coffee," my mom said - "Oh," the Yooper girl said right away, and seemed crestfallen -- "But -" my mom continued, "We can go to one anyway, would you like to stop?", and immediately the Yooper girl said "oh!" and was like, "Could we?"
So, they pulled up the Dunkin' Donuts, and my mom waited and waited, and finally the Yooper girl comes out with her coffee and a donut, and as soon as she gets in the car, she was like, "That kid in there was so nice, I tipped him real good. There were so many donuts, I didn't know what to do, and he was real nice and explained them all to me!"
Anyhow, when I arrived at the white neighborhood bar, my one neighbor from my building who I went to Indiana to campaign for Obama with's friend, who also goes to law school and has very short hair and pixie-ish cheeks but is not a lesbian, was for some reason talking about all the gender-transgressive thing she did in her childhood growing up in the outskirts of Valparaiso, like pee standing up which her brothers made fun of her for when they accidentally opened the bathroom door one day and saw her doing that, and read boy-books like "Where the Red Fern Grows" and the Hatchet series, and be sexually aggressive to her teachers and in third grade be upfront with her male teachers and ask them to kiss her, and how since she wanted to be a native American, she'd wear nothing but a loin-cloth around the house for years, even till she was like eleven or twelve and her older brother would start whining to their mom about how he was embarrassed to have friends over since she was going around topless, and she'd confront him and be like, "Well, I don't have breasts yet," and stuff like that.
"It took me a long time to sort through things," she said, "since all along I was attracted to men, but I hated fucking women and the way they behaved and talked and the things they thought about."
She then said that during her first years of college, her dad at the goading of his girlfriend who has a gay son, took her aside and started off on this long talk about after his dad (her grandfather, who she never knew) died in his fifties, her grandmother kind of wandered emotionally for a few years, and then moved in with her long-term best friend, and they shared a house together, and went to functions together, and for all practical intent and purposes were a couple.
"And...?", she was like, to her dad.
"Well," he was like, "I don't know how to put this, but --" and he paused dramatically, "They were lovers," and then he explained though it was never articulated, everyone knew it. Then, he was like, "And I want you to know that that's okay by me," at which point she had to tell her dad that she wasn't gay, and he was like, "Well, I wanted you to know that anyways."
After this, somehow we segued into how her friend at law school was doing a research paper into bestiality and animal consent, and we all started swapping horse-fucking stories as well as a few livestock insemination ones, and then she started talking about this one documentary she saw about men who liked getting fucked by horses, and then somehow we started talking about fetishes and how they deveop in youth, and then out of nowhere my neighbor from my building who I went to Indiana to campaign for Obama with, who was raised in southern Illinois by hippie parents and who always looks stoned though she's not and has never tasted meat in her life, said that when she was a kid, she had a genocide obsession, and how she couldn't stop reading "The Diary of Anne Frank", but even more than that, she couldn't stop reading the more-recent "Zlata's Diary", about whatever the fuck war that was from a few years ago where there was shit going on in Sarajevo.
After that, there was an awkward pause and it was about time for me to get going, so I told them about how I talked to my mom that evening on the phone and how she was telling me about the recent visit of the Yooper girlfriend of my brother's one friend from high school...
(I didn't even know she was visiting and staying with my parents; I guess my mom had went to write this to me in an e-mail when she was at work this past week, but she was like, "I pressed the wrong button, and the next thing I know, the entire e-mail was obliterated, and I wasn't going to write out the whole goddamn thing again!")
So, the Yooper girlfriend of my brother's one friend from high school repairs cars, and she had met a bunch of people over the internet who really like used Kias, so she drove down to stay with my parents and then the next day was going to meet this weird guy from a shitty-ass small town near us to drive down a couple hours to another part of the state for this impromptu Kia rally, only she flaked out at the last minute and didn't want to meet up with this guy, so she was basically hanging around our house a lot, and since my mom had a few days off of work and realized that this Yooper girl had never really been anywhere since she had been born and raised in the U.P., my mom decided to go with her on a couple daytrips around the northern lower peninsula, the first one being to this pleasant summer-town on Lake Michigan with a yuppie-ish downtown.
Anyhow, they enjoyed their day there, and on the way out of town, this Yooper girl asked really casually, "Is there a 7-11 around here?", and my mom was like, "Yeah, actually a couple blocks up, we're going to go right past it, why, do you want to stop?", and the Yooper girl was like, "Could we?", and the next thing you know, as they pull up and are sitting in the car and just before the Yooper girl opens the door, she starts kind of staring wistfully, and is like to my mom, "I've always wanted a Slurpee..." -- since, as it turns out, the U.P. gets a station or two from northern Wisconsin media markets and 7-11 ads are on all the time, but there are no 7-11s in the U.P, so this girl had all her life wanted to go to a 7-11 and try a Slurpee.
So, after finding this out, my mom, who wasn't going to go into the store at all, went into the store with this Yooper girl to show her to help her operate the Slurpee machine, and while my mom was showing her that, she mentioned to the Yooper girl, "You know, [me] and sometimes [my brother] used to always mix the different Slurpee flavors, it would look so disgusting that it would make me sick," and the Yooper girl, once she heard this, was like, "No way!", and made a mixed Slurpee. She didn't sip it right away, but after they paid and got back in the car, as soon as the door was closed and the Slurpee was put in the cup holder, the Yooper girl gave a big "Yessss!" with her hand, and started stomping her feet on the car floor and squealing.
And, as it turns out, she really likes Slurpees, and has had six this past week.
"Sounds like a keeper!", my one neighbor from my building who I went to Indiana to campaign for Obama with said.
Besides that even, the next day they went to a more major city in my area, and on the way out of town, the Yooper girl turned to my mom and was like, "[my mom's name], is there a Dunkin' Donuts around here? I'd like to buy you a coffee."
"You know, I actually don't feel like a coffee," my mom said - "Oh," the Yooper girl said right away, and seemed crestfallen -- "But -" my mom continued, "We can go to one anyway, would you like to stop?", and immediately the Yooper girl said "oh!" and was like, "Could we?"
So, they pulled up the Dunkin' Donuts, and my mom waited and waited, and finally the Yooper girl comes out with her coffee and a donut, and as soon as she gets in the car, she was like, "That kid in there was so nice, I tipped him real good. There were so many donuts, I didn't know what to do, and he was real nice and explained them all to me!"
Further thoughts - "The Story of a Soul".
When I was reading through sections from the Council of Trent a few months ago, they had this section against the Reformers, where the Council clearly stated that certainty of salvation is granted to no one -- no one, that is, except the rare circumstance of certain great saints who have been granted knowledge of salvation. I wonder if Ste. Therese of Lisieux is now considered among these, since she knew that the grace given her of all-consuming divine love burned up her sins beyond the degree that even purgatory would.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Feedback -- "The Story of a Soul".
So, yesterday I copied that section of "The Story of a Soul" and today in class gave it to this second-career student in my doctoral program who studies Islamic mysticism and who practically shit herself when for the class we're taking Origen referred to his own personal mystical experiences as an aside to his prologue to his commentary on the Song of Songs, but as soon as she saw it was "The Story of a Soul", she got this weird look on her face, like it took her back to some funny place, and after she read it during break, she seemed more nonplussed that touched, and you could tell her mind was elsewhere.
Anyhow, after class she told me that in going to pre-Vatican II Catholic school, from ages 9-13 she funneled her pre-pubescent sexual energy into reading lives of saints and martyrs and wanted dearly to be a saint, and being a martyr would have been great too, and that she read "The Story of a Soul" at the age of 12 and it brought her back there, and though she admired Ste. Therese of Lisieux for her ecstatic love of God, she just couldn't get her mind around that whole thing in relation to her own experience.
She also said that she can't do martinis tomorrow, but we'll do martinis one night soon, though she's not sure when, and it'll be just one for her.
Anyhow, after class she told me that in going to pre-Vatican II Catholic school, from ages 9-13 she funneled her pre-pubescent sexual energy into reading lives of saints and martyrs and wanted dearly to be a saint, and being a martyr would have been great too, and that she read "The Story of a Soul" at the age of 12 and it brought her back there, and though she admired Ste. Therese of Lisieux for her ecstatic love of God, she just couldn't get her mind around that whole thing in relation to her own experience.
She also said that she can't do martinis tomorrow, but we'll do martinis one night soon, though she's not sure when, and it'll be just one for her.
Monday, May 19, 2008
From "The Story of a Soul".
From the eighth chapter of Ste. Therese of Lisieux's "The Story of a Soul", translated by John Beevers, and written to the superior of Ste. Therese's order:
In 1895 I was enabled to understand more clearly than ever before how Jesus longs to be loved. I was thinking of those souls who offer themselves as victims to the justice of God, so that, drawing it down on themselves, they turn aside the punishment due to sinners. I thought this a noble and generous offer, but I was a long way from feeling that I should make it myself. From the depths of my heart, I cried: "O my divine Master, must it be only Your justice which has its victims? Hasn't your merciful love need of them too? It is everywhere rejected and ignored. Those on whom You long to lavish it seek a wretched, fleeting happiness in other creatures instead of flinging themselves into Your arms and welcoming the flames of Your divine love. Must Your rejected love stay shut up in Your heart? It seems to me that if You found souls offering themselves as sacrificial victims of Your love, You would consume them speedily and would rejoice to unloose those torrents of infinite tenderness You hold within Yourself. If Your justice must spend itself, though it is concerned only with the earth, how much more must Your merciful love long to inflame souls since 'Thy mercy reacheth even to the heavens.' O Jesus, let me be Your eager victim and consume Your little sacrifice in the fire of divine love."
You, Mother, let me make this offering of myself to God, and you know what flames -- or rather what oceans of grace -- flooded my soul immediately after I gave myself on June 9. Ah, since that day I have been soaked and engulfed in love. There is not a second when this merciful love does not renew and cleanse me, sweeping every trace of sin from my heart. It's impossible for me to fear purgatory. I know I do not deserve even to enter that place of expiation, but I know also that the fire of love cleanses me more than the flames of purgatory. I know too that Jesus does not want us to suffer uselessly, and that He would not inspire me with such desires unless he meant to fulfill them...
In 1895 I was enabled to understand more clearly than ever before how Jesus longs to be loved. I was thinking of those souls who offer themselves as victims to the justice of God, so that, drawing it down on themselves, they turn aside the punishment due to sinners. I thought this a noble and generous offer, but I was a long way from feeling that I should make it myself. From the depths of my heart, I cried: "O my divine Master, must it be only Your justice which has its victims? Hasn't your merciful love need of them too? It is everywhere rejected and ignored. Those on whom You long to lavish it seek a wretched, fleeting happiness in other creatures instead of flinging themselves into Your arms and welcoming the flames of Your divine love. Must Your rejected love stay shut up in Your heart? It seems to me that if You found souls offering themselves as sacrificial victims of Your love, You would consume them speedily and would rejoice to unloose those torrents of infinite tenderness You hold within Yourself. If Your justice must spend itself, though it is concerned only with the earth, how much more must Your merciful love long to inflame souls since 'Thy mercy reacheth even to the heavens.' O Jesus, let me be Your eager victim and consume Your little sacrifice in the fire of divine love."
You, Mother, let me make this offering of myself to God, and you know what flames -- or rather what oceans of grace -- flooded my soul immediately after I gave myself on June 9. Ah, since that day I have been soaked and engulfed in love. There is not a second when this merciful love does not renew and cleanse me, sweeping every trace of sin from my heart. It's impossible for me to fear purgatory. I know I do not deserve even to enter that place of expiation, but I know also that the fire of love cleanses me more than the flames of purgatory. I know too that Jesus does not want us to suffer uselessly, and that He would not inspire me with such desires unless he meant to fulfill them...
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Shitty news.
I just saw my friend at the library desk, the older black lady who works Sunday nights, and after we talked a bit about this and that, she turned to me with an upset face and was like, "Know what?", and she went on to show me how she has this small gap in her bottom front teeth since her fill-in tooth -- she called it a "flipper" -- is lost, since when she went to go get it the other day -- she takes it out when she's eating and wraps it in a paper towel and keeps it between her tits, only sometimes she forgets to put it back in afterwards, and she walks around with it between her tits all day -- it wasn't there, and she was looking all over for it, and then she remembered she had gone to help someone put a suitcase in the back of their car, and there it was in the street, crushed to pieces in the paper towel since someone had driven over it while it was sitting out there.
"Can't you just glue it back together and put it back in?", she says her dad asked her.
"Can't you just glue it back together and put it back in?", she says her dad asked her.
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