And still the nightmares come...

Okay, I just poured myself a second cup of tea. An extra infusion of caffeine that I need because I spent most of last night falling in and out of the same nightmare. I woke up gasping trying to claw my way out at least twice. Once I woke up enough (I think) to try and move the cat off my feet but I still fell right back in when I fell back asleep.

This week has been a vivid dream week. I've had strange dreams all week (they tend to come in clusters) and Sunday I had several different nightmares. But last night was by far the worst.
Because last night the nightmare was about my mother. Again.

Now that I'm truly awake and have had tea and some time has passed the details are fuzzy but I remember the gist, and it was that I had done something to upset my mother and she had lost her mind to the point of being scary and I was trying to get out of the house, with my cat (not John's cat, but my dead cat Putters making a rather sweet cameo in what was otherwise straight up misery) and enough clothes, shoes etc to live. There was lots of running, hiding, being shrieked at and pure terror that I wasn't going to be able to get away and save my cat too.

In one of the dreams I had help and this person was trying to get me out of the house and I was hysterical that we had to get the cat now or she might hurt the cat, I might not be able to get her back, I had to go back for the cat.

In another one I was hiding in a teeny trailer (it was maybe ten by 20 feet) that I had tried to make homey with the few things I had grabbed and a friend had come over and I was feeling safe, and petting Putters and saying I didn't think she could find me. The trailer was parked in the middle of a huge trailer park and I was huddled inside hoping that from the outside it was just one more trailer.

All horror aside, it was really nice to see my cat again, I really miss her.

In a few months it will have been 3 years since my mother died and it makes me sad that in every single appearance she has made in my sleep has been as the root of a nightmare. Twice before I've had mom nightmare clusters where over a few weeks I've had several nightmares about her. In them she is always crazy and scary and I am always terrified of her.

I wonder what she would think of that? That her legacy for me is one of fear. That even dead some part of me is scared of her. That sometimes she scares me so much I wake up with a scream in my throat?

A letter to my uterus

Dear Uterus,

My trainer asked me to write a letter to you. I repressed all but the slightest eye-roll. I made snarky comments. He pointed out that I have an "adversarial" relationship with my body. I agree. I tend to ignore it when it works and get angry with it when it doesn't perform properly or becomes injured. Yep. I'm a bad owner. I think this was supposed to open up some kind of metaphorical dialogue between us. He seems to think YOU have been abused by years of my heartless application of birth control pills and painkillers. That your cramps have been a plea to be heard. That what is going on now, this fun, month long crampfest (with bonus bloating and hormonal crying fits) you've embarked on, means I really need to listen to you and try to understand what you need. That it is a cry for help.

Unfortunately, I don't care. If you had plans to lovingly gestate children and the week I turned forty you finally realized that was never going to happen and are throwing a tantrum, grow the hell up. Sorry, but you landed in the wrong girl. Never wanted kids. Never. I knew that at age ten. So you've had thirty years to get used to that idea. If you filled yourself with fibroids as some kind of revenge I have bad news for you. You are SO expendable.
Don't get me wrong. I'm really hoping we can work this out. And by work this out, I mean "you will go back to quietly sitting there making a period once a month and otherwise leave me the hell alone."

And really, I feel like I have made more than enough concessions. In the last year and a half I lost 30 pounds. I started eating healthy. I exercise regularly. You are currently lodged in a much better environment than you ever had probably hoped for.  And how did you repay this effort? By starting a riot in my abdomen. And the fact that I haven't been able to have sex since you started this whole kerfluffle REALLY isn't earning you any points. I am just that much MORE cranky.

In an effort to appease you, I stopped taking birth control pills (which I really liked, by the way. Aside from that whole "not getting pregnant" thing, there was also knowing almost to the HOUR when my period was going to start and knowing it was going to be short) AND for the last month I have been letting a Chinese doctor poke needles into my ears, toes and other random places in an effort to get things "flowing" again. I have used the word CHI in a conversation with a straight face. Hell, even as I write this, I am choking down a mug of "herbs" mixed specifically to create and nurture a happy and functional reproductive system. And, as I mentioned before, I don't even want to reproduce!. And as if that weren't enough (which it obviously isn't), as of last week, in a last ditch effort to make some  kind of peace with you, I gave up alcohol, caffeine, sugar and flour. Do you know what that LEAVES? About 3% of the grocery store.  I gave up WINE. All this to placate you .

And not to be petty but YOU were the one that started it. From my very first period you have unleashed brutal cramps upon me. I can remember having to go home in JUNIOR HIGH because my cramps were so bad I couldn't function in class. If you'd wanted me to care a little more about your feelings, perhaps you shouldn't have created a situation in which my feeling were, "ow ow oh god ow I need advil oh ow where is the heating pad?" I put up with TWENTY EIGHT years of that crap.

Well guess what? I'm over it. It is ultimatum time.  If you refuse to desist in this behavior I will have you surgically escorted from the body. Do not even think I am bluffing, I'll do it. I have several friends who have had hysterectomies and, while the surgery itself was painful and unpleasant, they are all doing JUST FINE now. And guess what? Not ONE of them misses their uterus. Not one little, teeny bit.

So here's my offer. You knock this crap off and you get to live. Otherwise in a month or two you will be just that much more medical waste.

I am so not bluffing.

Signed,

    The bitch who owns you

Happy Penis!

So I’ve done a lot of ranting and whining about hating living in the city, and I do, for the most part.

BUT

There is one part of living in San Francisco that I really TRULY love and that is that anytime I want I can drive down the hill, find parking (which never takes that long, I have really good parking karma as long as John isn’t with me) and be in the Castro. I LOVE the Castro. I love the shops (unbeknownst to his ignorant coworkers all John’s cool shirts all come from a shop practically on the corner of Market and Castro called, I kid you not, In-jean-ous) and I love the people in them. I love the guy in the clothing store trying to convince me I need to buy John matching underwear to go with the shirt I’m buying him. I love the guy in the Body Shop who despairs of my refusal to wear eye makeup and attacks me with eyeliner ever time I go in. I love buying lube surrounded by walls of dildos of every description. I really don’t want to be, well, Kathy Griffin or one of those other biddies in my age bracket joyfully proclaiming “I love the gays” because: obnoxious but, well, I do.

I always have. I was a fag hag before I knew what those words meant. Little gay boys always loved me. My friend Tommy (the most adorable gay man to ever live who I loved almost as much as John) used to joke that I was a part of the coming out process: you date girls, then Laurel, then boys.

Luckily around my senior year of high school I’d learned enough to spot most of them (even when they weren’t sure themselves) and though they might be pretty I no longer tried to date them. I went shopping and clubbing with them instead. Much more fun.

Fast forward 20 years and now I finally live in San Francisco. Yeah, fog and homeless people and noxious smells blah blah hate blah but today was a lovely sunny day and I walked all over the Castro doing errands, had several fun exchanges, saw MANY cute asses (I do love to window shop) and, as a special bonus, saw my trainer’s face every 30 feet or so.

My trainer is, of course, an adorable gay man almost exactly my height with fabulous ink and abs that would make you cry. He looks a bit like an evil elf which I like tremendously. He kicks my ass. He is darn cute.

Which is probably why his friend who works for some AIDS awareness/HIV prevention group asked him to pose for pictures for a new ad campaign that just went up. BIG bus stop posters all over the Castro

The ads have text across the top that reads, “I’m HIV Negative and…” and below that there are pictures of four guys in front of different colored backgrounds holding up hand lettered signs that say things like “…I haven’t been tested in a couple years” “I think you’re hot” “I always play safe” etc. Then below that it reads, “There is more to tell him than just HIV status”

I actually saw a few of these posters a couple of days ago when I was rushing to my massage but since I wasn’t expecting my trainer’s face to be staring back at me (plus he’s shaved the goatee since the pictures were taken) I totally didn’t see HIM.

So this morning (while I was gasping for breath during a “rest for 60 seconds”) he told me about them and I was like, “Oh my GOD I looked right at it and didn’t see you.”

So then he started showing me texts from his brother who was calling him a ho (actually a nose icon in front  of the word ho and Shane was like “what is that?” and his brother was like “Smelly ho” and then I had to do more lunges while laughing which is not easy.

The next time we paused so I could catch my breath I was like, "oh man... you were my ex and I hated you I would be neatly printing your phone number and e-mail in permanent marker on each poster" and he was like, "WOW you're evil!" and I was like, “Isn't that what ANYONE would do when presented with an opportunity like that?” OR you could cover the cards he’s holding with fake cards that said things like “I also enjoy Golden Showers” and “I like my meat dark and uncut” The possibilities are endless! I think Shane thinks all women are this evil and I see no reason to point out that I’m probably much more evil than your average girl.

After my workout I saw seven posters featuring Shane just driving home down Market. It made me quite happy, I have to say.

So this afternoon when I had several errands to walk in the Castro I got to play the game:
find the best sluttiest picture of Shane, “I don’t always use condoms” and take a picture of it to send to my friends. I decided after much wandering around and poking my head around bus stops that his brother was indeed fucking with him when he said there was one that said “I sometimes turn tricks online.”

The BEST part happened when I was standing on the corner of Market and Castro waiting for the light to change staring across the street at one of the signs with Shane on it trying to decide if I wanted to go photograph that one or look for a better one and as I was standing there a BUS went by and blocked my view and ON the side of the bus there were THREE cartoon penises of varying ethinic origin wearing little cartoon outfits and in big happy letters it said “GET TESTED FOR SYPHILLIS!” And then I swear to god underneath that it said “Happy Penis!”

I have to admit, on days like this, I love this fucking town.