Hey. Go to The Golden Key right now and read “The Swan.”
Better yet, make a donation and download the entire issue. As a professional business person and an artist, it’s my duty to tell you that free fiction is neither advisable nor sustainable. Or as my mother would say, “When you don’t pay for media, you’re stealing someone’s livelihood.”
Many thanks to the Golden Key for publishing this story!
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Need free legal counsel, please. My lawyer charges much too much.
Without further ado:
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In 2007 or 2008 I issued a fatwa against Henry Rollins because I really didn’t like his poetry. But now Henry Rollins has written this pretty decent thing, and I take back my fatwa.
James Franco, on the other hand, has written a sort of deeply impoverished man’s “When Lilacs Last..”, so I am not so much rescinding the initial fatwa, as shifting it onto a more deserving party. James Franco, you better watch yourself, because should we meet one day at a party, you will find my glare scathing. I am willing to be impolite!
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I am so totally remiss in not posting about this earlier. I would like to announce that my short story, “Black Habits,” was published by Etopia Press last fall both as a standalone Ebook, and as part of the Touched By Darkness anthology.* One reviewer notes its ”gory, graphic, unexpected horror-on a strong foundation of psychological horror founded in the Id’s conflict with guilt and shame.” I think that’s generous, but I’ll take it. No, but really, this story was a joy to work on, and in terms of sheer delight while writing, I doubt I’ll ever top it.
*Subsequent to its publication, I’ve received two royalty statements, and have earned in total $8. This is very exciting, and I suggest that you add to that amount by purchasing a copy immediately. Proceeds go towards the purchase of a plastic Adirondack chair for the back porch. Or better eyeliner because I keep buying cheap stuff and it really isn’t any good. Also, I ran out of my expensive moisturizer, so obviously I could use the money. Buy this story today. The standalone copy is 99 cents. For that price, you don’t even have to feel bad about not reading it.
I was like stoked when I read somewhere on the internet that someone had seen old school Herbal Essences at Target, and I was even way more excited when I encountered these venerable old shampoos on the shelf IRL in person. Forget that they market the conditioner as sulfate-free, when the shampoo does itself bear sulfates within its listed ingredients, while the shampoo does claim to be silicone-free, even thought its sister conditioner contains dimethicone! Wat. Dimethicone, or polydimethylsiloxane, is a silicone. Wat?! When used in tandem, Herbal Essences will free your hair from neither sulfates, nor silicone, but will instead deposit a goodly amount of each onto your head. Yar.
A long time ago, I used to think that these products smelled like youth itself and the carefree living we enjoyed in pre-9/11 America. Now these shampoos smell like a hangover, but not as much as my Sacha Juan volume powder does. It has been suggested to me that this is mainly an association on my part, having nothing to do with objective qualities of the scents in question. Oh my herbally-perfumed salad days, you are far behind me.
Nostalgia and terrible copy aside, this shampoo is actively the worst. Even while reveling in the sensual fragrance of their rosy shampoo/conditioner, I used to wonder why my hair was always so heavy and flat and greasy. I thought it was my hair’s fault, or that I was fifteen and didn’t know how to groom myself. No. It was Herbal Essences wrecking my shit. My husband has been using these vintage hair products, and his soft brown curls doth suffer their effects. We will get through these bottles, I believe, but only on account of our being too lazy to do otherwise.
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Tagged beauty, consumer capitalism, memory, nostalgia, regrettable purchases, shampoo, smell
So I have all of these perfume samples. Some of them were stocking stuffers and some have accompanied purchases, and oh god there are just so many of them.
So I thought I’d try one: Juicy Couture “Viva La Juicy,” never mind that those words don’t seem to mean anything. I don’t usually wear fragrance. It gives me a headache. I don’t like it when other people wear fragrance. It isn’t necessary. We all have showers and baths now, we don’t stink of pottage or manure. Fragrance is for squalor. If you have nothing to hide, why are you wearing fragrance? Why anoint yourself with the musk of civet cats if you are a clean person?
Juicy Couture “Viva La Juicy” does not smell like delicious wild berries, creamy vanilla, or bright jasmine. It smells like funky sex. It smells like a sex shop. It smells like someone who wants to cover up their transgressions. I can’t get it off of me. This is horrible. If any one can tell me how to get this stink off of me, I would be much obliged.
One time I was asked to write a book review. I was told that I could just send in a draft and we’d talk about it. That I didn’t need to worry. I was new, they’d help me out. But I was naive and I interpreted “draft” literally. Never, under any circumstances, does an individual asking to “see a draft” actually want to see one.
Well so a month later, one sultry night in a Roman laundromat with wifi, I checked my email and found that my draft, my review, my chance at something slightly bigger than what I’d been used to, had been rejected. I was humiliated. I left the laundromat in tears and tried to refuse to eat dinner because I am so petulant. But, the language used in the rejection was only this side of excoriating, and I still get the shakes and the quivers and the extreme nausea whenever it comes to mind, which is more often than I’d like.
I’ve tried writing about all of that to get it out of my head. I’ve tried attributing nefarious motives to the individual who’d solicited the review in the first place. You see, I had written a (not entirely positive) review of his first book on an MFA blog. Maybe I was stupid for thinking he was a bigger person than he really was. Actually, when I think about it now, his book was (to borrow a phrase from the negative review of my review) “shot through” with smallness of mind. It deserved a worse review than the one I had written.
On the other hand, it’s far, far, faaaar more likely that he is a fair and generous person, and I am merely paranoid.
Yea verily, life would be fine if my angst terminated in paranoia, but it doesn’t. Now I think, “God, I just shouldn’t bother with book reviews.” When a book is bad, I take it personally. It galls me to read a bad book, especially a bad “literary” book, of which there are entirely too many. Fine, so I shouldn’t bother with book reviews. If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all, as they say. I should work on my own writing. And I do. But I have this problem now where the thought of writing any nonfiction fills me with dread, and the thought of being solicited for anything ever gives me performance anxiety. How incredibly stupid, right? It’s not like anyone’s asking me to write anything anyway. But someone might one day, and what will I do then?
Really though, the worst thing is that when I think about myself, I like to think I’m so gritty. I don’t need anyone. I don’t need affirmation. I can continue working, keep writing because I’m so self-reliant, strong, and possessed of a grossly inflated estimation of my own abilities and genius. But I am not a genius. See how I have failed! And I obviously can’t be self-reliant or strong either, if I can’t even get over slight misstep from three years ago. How will I ever get back on track. So much is foolishness, and so much is wasted time.
