Lucy's Spleen

Piece of Paper I Found On The Floor At The Coffee Shop The Other Day

On a long narrow slip, list-like. Appearing here exactly as written (incl. quotation marks) and discovered, one corner sticking out from under a chair:

"I don't want to be in Japan"

"I must be Japanese"

"Well-dressed people sitting on the trains"

"I think they hate us"

20' x 20'

-30k/ dog

-somethought the japanese were lucky to have a place to live

Getting in on the Self-Portrait Tip, Wherein I Discover It's Not As Easy As It Looks

Proof that I am actually Elvish; documented on my return home after a walk with Heather and Chuck a while back:

'Cause Man, I Tell My Bitches EVERYTHING

So, it's been around a month now that Date Guy and I have been playing this game, wherein he asks me to be his woman and lays down the moves in all manner of ways to win me over and to charm me, and I like and enjoy and am endeared to him, but still I delay and put him off and mete out our interactions in installments and basically confuse him wholly until he is forced to lay it all on the table and say, "I AM TRYING TO WOO YOU. ARE YOU WOO-ABLE?" And then I say "I don't know if I am," and, "I like you but I'm confused too and geez this is all awfully nice but I'm massively damaged from just getting out of a relationship and getting into a new one was totally not on my radar, see?" But I tell him he may as well keep giving it a shot with the wooing because maybe it's working since I sure do think he's swell, but I often question whether we're compatible and then I feel like he's pushing me and I drag my feet and torment him and what this leads to inevitably is a Big Discussion lasting 12 to 24 hours and featuring major drama, which to me means A Fight. This has happened once a week for the last four weeks and I DESPISE fighting so each time I tell him, "This is over I'm through I don't want to do this anymore." And then we sleep together.   

How's THAT for fun? Can I expound any more on my level of maturity?

Anyway the trouble is that it IS fun. HE is very fun. And he's tender and affectionate and quirky and admiring and smart and thinks I'm spectacular. He has a beautiful, revelatory, heartbreaking way of speaking; and he calls me nicknames, little terms of endearment that I've always wished a boy would call me but no one ever has like, "Sweetie" and "Baby" and, my favorite, "Kid."

The sex is pretty hot, too.

The other trouble is that his coming along and his interest in me and the degree to which he means it are all a TOTAL surprise and I'm frankly not ready to delve in yet. I was expecting to spend several more months getting over Asberger and feeling a little sorry for myself and just accepting not having any orgasms. I was actually really getting into the celibacy thing and enjoying spending more quality time with M' Bitches and I was feeling really productive and doing art projects and UPDATING THIS WEBSITE ALMOST EVERY DAY, REMEMBER THAT? And then wham! I get a second job and start engaging a dude and JUST LOOK WHAT HAPPENED. I'm trying to be willing to give it a go with the guy, but it's like, where did all my time go? You know what I'm saying? It gets kind of hard to prioritize. And when time is such a commodity a girl can really lose perspective; she can feel caught up in a whirlwind and like she's lost control of her life and like the only way for her to stay remotely grounded is to scramble to cram in a couple of extremely reliable twice-weekly Font of Sanity Indispensable Emergency Yak Sessions with her Wimmyn or she becomes likely to fly off the handle! Checking in with my ladies is the single most valuable thing I do for myself, plus I'm contracted to return the favor for them.

The follow-up to yesterday's frustrated post being that if you were trying to date me, and it was time for the Weekly Blowout, and it was (finally) your fault (instead of mine), and out of embarrassment or whatever reason you asked me not to tell my friends about it, and I of course spent ALL DAY trying to call them and every one of them was either not home or had her phone off or it had run out of batteries and I drove around looking for them in all the usual places and still I couldn't find or reach them, and I couldn't talk about it to the Less-Best Friends because I took you at least partially at your word and I began to feel not only that I was alone in the world I couldn't talk to anyone and therefore had no sounding board, but also that you had no idea who I am or how important my Ladies are to me then circumstances may begin to seem very dire and dramatical indeed and I may freak out and become sure I'd never be able to see or speak to you again because you completely didn't get me and had no regard for the very nature of my Soul or you'd have never jeapordized our already tenuous "thing" together by asking such an unthinkable sacrifice of me; and if at last I did manage to hook up with my ladies and we had our LONG (ten hours!) awaited talk and I could theatrically deliver the entire story in excruciating detail and when I got to the climax and related the malevolent way you had obviously wronged me (which, in case you couldn't tell, was really no longer the point, anyway) if their response was to CRACK UP IN HYSTERICAL LAUGHTER, then things may suddenly seem not such a Big Deal after all (Praise Jeebus); and, when I came to you and told you how Girlfriends saved the day and mended my wounds and made it all better (including making YOU look better), if you said why of course they did and that you knew they would and that you were always completely fine with me telling them all along, well then you would be giving the right answer, and it would probably earn you a whole new chance with me, but I would then strongly urge you to REMEMBER THIS FOR NEXT TIME.

This New Guy Must Be Fucking Kidding Me

Dear Asberger,

Thank you. In all the years we've known each other, while dating and in times before that when just hooking up, thank you for never, no matter what incident occurred between us, never being SO FOOLISH as to ask me, "Please don't tell your friends about this."           

Valentine's Amendment

P.S. The party was so fun! There's a new album with pictures from it over there on the side. I'll be adding more over the next few days, so check back again for scanned images of folks handmade Valentines and Polaroids by Shortbus! Titles be's nasty! Hurray!

Happy Valentine's XXX

Here is the invitation I sent out for our Valentine's Day Party last week:

Announcing a Valentine's Day Pink & Brown Party!

POP QUIZ
What do Valentine's Day and Porn have in common?

ANSWER
-- Porn is gross. Valentine's Day is also gross.
-- Couples are supposed to have sex on Valentine's Day. Couples (or trios or very large groups) are supposed to have (a lot of) sex in Porn.
-- Porn is a mega-industry geared toward making many bucks. So is Valentine's Day.

If you guessed any of the above answers, then you are invited to our party! It will be much like last year, when everyone made Valentines for their dear friends, and everyone made boxes for their Valentines to go in, and put Valentines in each others boxes, and then the people who were couples went home and the boys put "Valentines" in their girlfriends boxes, and some girls who were not previously part of couples ended up getting it in their boxes, and the gay boys who don't happen to have boxes rubbed their Valentines together...

I digress. The point is we love each other, and also want to "poke" (get it?) fun at LUV. So please come to our Valentine's Day Pink & Brown Party. Bring a box and some love notes (we will also have a few slips on hand for crafting last-minute odes to people you forgot or didn't know you loved yet), wear pink and/or brown (or red, if you MUST), have a drink, and love your neighbor 'til you're raw.

We love you, and all our heart-shaped hopes will be dashed this holiday if you aren't there to love us back!

!Saturday!
!Nine O' Clock!
!Find us by listening for dance music & the sounds of getting it on!
!We will have decorations and Mood Lighting!
!Bring others that you also love!

AmourAmoreAmorLoveLuuvLooooveLuffLub

(this party is probably more about love than it is about porn, but hey- take your pick)

With all MY love,
-m

Our friends are so stellar, they brought the strangest, most artistic boxes, and an array of beautiful Valentines. I was too busy for art and used my box from last year, the Box Box. I lovingly crafted the Box Box under the watchful eyes of two persons who happen to have turned a watchful eye on my actual box a time or two, but let's don't go so far as to say it represents a scale model. You can see my Valentine from Nina kind of poking out, there:

 

Asberger had the original idea to do a Box Box; I brought it to life. It was our team box last February, and appeared this year in it's new incarnation, with Asberger's name crossed out in black ink and mine scrawled loudly on all four sides:

eM!

Em!

em!

EM!

You know what that spells backwards?   

"Way Wird Celebrities"

"Need action, love, sex?.. whatever it is, thes women giv it-- contact themnow, Warrant Scopic!"

That bitch Paris wasn't nearly as hot as me and my incredible tireless Maman, taking a moment to have the same chin and to not whip out our Inner Hollywood Bitch for eachother at the Queer Lounge closing party, Homos Away From Home.

They Came, They Went, We Ogled. Celebrity Impressions (Not the Kind You Do With Your Voice) By Me.

Here will be the last things I say about Queer Lounge Film Fest O' Rama:

1. In the early moments of the party for David LaChappelle's film Rize, Marzy and I ran outside to check out the line of RAVING FANS begging to gain entrance to OUR VERY FIRST PARTY. I was totally shocked. I had had no idea Rize was such a big deal, no idea David La Chappelle was such a big deal, no idea what Krumping even was, and in no way expected all the press and the fact that PARIS AND NICKY HILTON would be POSING RIGHT OVER THERE in front of us! And Paris had only styled the front of her hair; it looked like shit in the back. Her extensions were poking out at the roots and the whole back of her hair was all rumpled, like she'd been sleeping on it. Now wouldn't you have been even a little excited to see that? Yeah, don't try to act like you wouldn't, sucka.

2. Same party. Dancing on the furniture. Looking like utter hell. But I have to love her now because when my Hilarious Brother JAK! went up to her and said, completely straight-faced, "I just want to thank you for all your hard work," Pamela Anderson laughed.

3. Maggie Gyllenhaal. Supposedly also at the party for Rize. I cannot attest to this because I did not see her, but I believe it because A) my mommy said so, and B) the green wristband she's flashing in this photo? Totally from our party. Paris had one, too.

[I realize now that this entire post will be about just the one night and just the one party, so to draw you further into the experience, I will make a dramatic switch to present tense... Now!]

4. My job this night is that of bar-back, meaning I spend the entire evening negotiating the crowd outside the VIP room trying to get through with cases of vodka and ten-ton bags of ice. I race past Nicky Hilton and Press to pick up more ice from outside and- I admit it- I jostle her in front of the cameras completely on purpose just so I can say "Excuse me, Nicky Hilton!" like SHE is a total bitch for being in MY way. She is sullen, orange-y tan and, inexplicably, wearing a revolting wife-beater tank-top.

5. Same ice-hauling trip. I press and shove and maneuver my way to the front of the "line" outside the VIP lounge. The crowd is six people deep and clenched up like a tight asshole. The ice is heavy, I'm holding it above my head, and now I have to climb over the barricade to get into the room and I am tired and sweaty and a bit drunk and it shows. A charming voice from under a very furry hat asks, "Can I help you?" I gratefully drop my burden into a pair of sweatered arms, push through the last layer of humans, clamber over the stanchion, reach out to take back the ice, look (down, I think) into a pair of the dreamiest eyes ON THE PLANET and say, "Why thank you, Jared Leto."

6. Taking a moment to deliver much needed alcohol to my boys on the front lines, brother JAK! and my adorable protege, Jas, working the perimeter, I am now quite drunk and nearly trample the shockingly tiny Naomi Watts. She appears lovely and fragile. I sort of stumble into her or awkwardly embrace or maybe grope her and, always proud to be at my best, babble, "I'm sorry I don't normally do this and you probably hate it but I just want to say hey you are a celebrity and I like you." I think I may have also added a brilliant, "So there." But I suppose we'll never really be sure.

7. Jenny McCarthy, Tarynn Manning, David La Chappelle (duh) and others! Also at this party! Look it up online!

8. Overcome with exuberance and convinced for some reason that she'll care, I drunk-dial Heather B. Armstrong from the party. The ringing phone startles the young parents from slumber a mere four hours before their squawking infant will, and Heather's voice is rife with fear because WHAT ASSHOLE WOULD CALL AT THIS HOUR UNLESS IT WAS AN EMERGENCY? Such an asshole could, of course, only be ME, and I'd like to take this opportunity to publicly apologize to the Armstrongs and promise I will never NEVER drunk-dial them again, like for example I will not call this weekend from our Valentine's Day party- even if the really hot guy from the coffee shop shows up- I promise.

9. I get back to what matters. Little brother JAK! drives my drunk ass home, because he is not only the funniest person I know, but is also kind and always looking out for his "Sis-Tron" and I adore him. JAK! doesn't give two shits about celebrities because he is cooler than all of them.

At home still reeling from the thrill of it all I wonder who I can call at 4:30 a.m. who will not be sleeping and will not have a sleeping baby and an angry sleeping husband and I realize it's four hours later in Argentina and therefore daylight and not a completely unreasonable hour to be phoning so I ring up Asberger and regale him with the details of my Night O' Fame and WE LAFF. We really laugh together about it all and it's the nicest conversation we've had since the breakup and all that nonsense about celebrities and their fabulousness fades into oblivion because I am loved by Real Live People and this person thank God is still one of them.

My friend on the phone is genuinely proud of the work I've done and excited for my success and tells me so; he tells me, "Good job, woman."

It's the emotional highlight of my week.

Queer Lounge Is Like, So Gay

My dear and beloved Internet,

I am sorry for the long expanse with no postage. The reason for it was how insanely busy I was working up in Park City during the film festivals for the second year of Queer Lounge. This year on top of the grunt work like errands and ice-lugging and bar-backing, I had an actual title, "Utah Project Co-Director," and an array of duties pertaining to sponsorship fulfillment. This meant I got to spend a good deal of time chatting up the lovely reps from our sponsors (hello lovely sponsors!) and feeling like Grace Kelly in the film High Society, flitting about yelling, "How is everybody? Are we all fine? You're looking fine! Are you having a fine time? That's fine!" Fortunately for me, I love to schmooze. Unfortunately, I can never remember anyone's name, so I both THANK GOD for name-tags, and curse Him for giving me such bad vision that it's completely obvious when I'm staring myopically at a name-tag to figure out who I'm dealing with.

If you've ever been there, you know that Film Fest time in Park City is basically just a blizzard of self-promotion. I think it would be more efficient to gather the several thousand people who descend on the town in a couple of lines and have them just lob business cards at each other as fast as they can, but that would eliminate any need for the PARTIES, and then where would we be?

Parties is pretty much what Queer Lounge (and everyone else at Sundance) does for ten days; and what this requires is a great deal of coordination and physical effort. Thank God other people were taking care of the Queer Lounge coordination, mostly, because I was overwhelmed by the physical effort. Each day I somehow dragged myself out of bed, loaded a bunch of shit into my little car, drove it up the canyon as fast as the little car would let me (I'm sorry, little car! I promise I will get to the repair of your now-smoking engine soon!), hauled the shit out of the car, hauled shit around our space all day (that piece of furniture goes in this room, and that box goes in the other room, and all these cases of vodka go in the basement...), made phone calls, chatted people up about their sponsorship involvement, fell all over myself trying to explain why we hadn't yet branded their company appropriately (I'm sorry, your GIANT, WAY TOO BIG banner that we have no space for never arrived- do you have any smaller placement materials we can substitute?), hauled more shit, then had to dress up and try to look fresh for the party where I would (wo)man the VIP list and further chat up our lovely sponsors (I'm serious, I really did love you, lovely sponsors!).

And this, people, THIS is where a certain MAGIC CONCOCTION came into play. I am not typically a great promoter of abusing enhancing substances. Make no mistake- of course I luuuuuv to USE them, but abusing is a very different story. Nonetheless I abused the hell out of vodka and Red Bull those ten days. If it had not been for their respective components of alcohol, caffeine and sugar, I would NEVER have been able to drag myself through night after night of acting charming and alert while teetering on an adrenaline tightrope suspended precariously over an abyss of exhaustion and emotional meltdown the way I did. I'm totally not kidding, or using punctuation properly, so just bite me.

Anyhow each night after the party ended I helped tear down, clean up and haul more shit, then I drove another thirty miles back down the canyon (in killer fog, no less), and crashed out for three or four hours before starting the whole thing again. If I ate at any point during the busiest period, I have no memory of it. Also I squeezed in a few seven hour shifts at the coffee shop, just for good measure.

Anyhow, all you dear folks, there it all was: we had Prep Week, Action Week and Recovery Week, and that brings us up to about now, and now I will be BACK! Thank you for your emails and saying you missed me (I didn't think I'd been around long enough to miss!) and the general good reception for this site. Your support is most appreciated and I mean it.

Tune in next time for notes on cum-soaked Sundance Celebrities! Hooray!

Love,

Em

I Decided to Not Post This Until Way, Waaay After the Fact...

Dear Asberger,

Guess what? YOU don't get to call ME and tell me you don't want to deal with my crying over the phone. YOU don't get to want ANYTHING, actually; since you already had everything. You got to have the relationship. YOU got to be the one to dissolve the relationship, YOU got to be the one to skip merrily off to a foreign land... In other words YOU got to be the one to escape with pride intact, and YOU were able to blithely evade the social discomfort and the disruption of routine and the heartache and all the other shit that comes in hand with a breakup on home turf. I would say you have pretty much gotten everything you COULD want already, except for me being happier about it all, and not weeping. So let me tell you- if you wanted me to be happier, then YOU should have sucked less at it! YOU should have been more gracious and more sensitive! YOU should have been less selfish! You should have been less selfish all along, and you STILL need to learn to be less selfish, and you need to learn that you have NO FUCKING RIGHT to dictate what feelings you can or cannot abide for me to have, and that if you don't want to deal with my crying it should be because you can't handle the GUILT over what an INCREDIBLE ASSHOLE you are, and I WILL CRY AS MUCH AS I FUCKING WELL FEEL LIKE, got it?

Good.