Title: A Life of Vaginal Heroics Address: http://trickeration.livejournal.com Author: Trickeration From: Paradise Hills Blogging since: 2001 Post Date: September 10, 2007

Post Title: A 99-cent Chicken Sandwich, Justin

Now in an itinerant state of mind, I make overdue trips to Tennessee in the middle of Elvis Week for compulsive bathroom cleaning and a kind of quiet on long dark roads that takes some getting used to. The way back to Oak Ridge from Knoxville demands a choice between skirting a lake or graveyard, both equal in nighttime creepiness. Most people seem to choose the graveyard and its flickering blue-gray "eternity lights" that pay endless, expensive tribute to loved ones' decomposed, fossilized departed. If those loved ones could see the lights at 3 a.m., after a night of Amaretto Sours, shadow puppets, and flashing cops over pancakes at IHOP, they might reconsider. My legs are made of lightning and my eyes are solid gold. Staying alive through the middle of a sultry summer requires man to cleave from his environment for months at a time, huddling in air-conditioned anything, enjoying nouveau Southern cuisine, like red velvet cake gelato and muffuletta panini. Talking golden Baby Jesus over iced sweet tea. Photo albums. Cicadas in every tree. Ambush familial discord... A quick storm partway through one hazy afternoon and it's jarring to realize, so many years in Southern California, that I'd forgotten the feel of rain on my skin, the smell of white-hot pavement slowly cooling. Post Date: June 7, 2007

Post Title: It's a Japanese

Peace Lily

Coworker John rifles through my purse in search of some Orbit Mint Mojito gum, finds my Hello Kitty Band-Aids instead, says, "These are funny maxi pads." "Parakeet genitals," I hiss. "Birdy cooch. It's an affliction, look it up."

He goes back to rooting and I drive us back to a postlunch office parking lot. It's my new kick, this gum. I [go through] at least four to five sticks over the course of a day in miniature fugue states, chewing hypnotically, having now replaced all my emotions with that semisugar smacking. Joy, shock, terror, belligerence, guava, scuba diving -- every feeling I previously had -- are now lost somewhere in delicious and platonic rubbery mastication. It's alright, but I imagine not anywhere near as cool as having a trampoline or laser eyes.

I think I've been visiting Sephora too much lately, even before a jaunt to Bodies: The Exhibition at UTC with Ganchu, swinging my dainty shopping bag past dissected nervous systems, withered smokers' lungs, polymer preserved gonads, and various other sectioned and leathery former people. Everyone there speaks in whispers, shuffling around, murmuring, "Aren't we just the most amazing creatures?" Nodding and bowing, hands clenched around purse straps and brochures, like a creepy social with mood lighting. Meanwhile, giggling and mannerless, I point at still-hairy buttholes and the six plus men gathered around the naked dead lady. I learned: the largest muscles of your body reside in Buttville. We are born with innate preferences for sweet or salty. Babies are creepy even before they're expelled from their mothers. And: chopped up, we look a lot like the selections at Great Khan's Mongolian BBQ.

Post Date: June 27, 2006

Post Title: Guava Fantastico!

I think sometimes about what it'll be like when I die, not fearfully, but I worry that it will hurt and I really hope that it will be fast or spectacular. Mostly, I'm sure that I'll get some freaky brain disease or winter-of-life dementia and shit myself all day long next to a Thomas Kinkade reprint of a lighthouse. "I'd like to keep my dignity," I say. I am squatting in Ganchu's bathroom, slathering passionfruit shaving gel on to my pale hairy leg. The sink is filled with foggy water, miniature clouds, tiny spikes. That's what femininity looks like. Ganchu watches me and her cat sits in the hallway, watching her. Her Venus razor is alien technology and the 20 blades are hard to navigate. I nicked myself once on each leg, right at the ankle. I imagine this is where the process of infection and gangrene will have begun and, shitting myself in dementia next to the Thomas Kinkade lighthouse, rubbing globs of Eucerin into my poor stumps, I'll think, "I knew it!" But only for a moment.

Post Date: January 25, 2006

Post Title: If Lj-Cut, then the Terrorists Will Truly Have Won

My life recently has been episode after episode of grisly tribulation: Car scrape with Baby J, when her eggshell Ford Focus failed to slide past a Chevy Suburban. We were on our way back to the office from lunch, with a bag full of Togo's, and the satiation of my hunger was delayed for nearly five minutes while they exchanged pleasantries like, "Are you hurt?" and "My legs are gone!"

International dining with Ganchu and K-Dawg is sometimes a letdown: Russian-Georgian food (at Pomegranate in North Park) is pretty much just a pile of beets and consonants.

After some Internet research on Artemisia Gentileschi, her Judith painting, and Greek mythology, I found out that Medusa's humble beginnings were actually pretty fly. It wasn't until later that patriarchy made her monstrous, which symbolized the death of Female Knowledge at the hand of menz. To ensure that this mystical knowledge is not lost, I will share it with all of you: We bleach our mustaches! Sensitive nipples! Pantyhose! Clitoris!

Breakfast with my dad, laughing about Rosicrucians. Later, my dad said that "God made the stars, he isn't in them. You won't find your future by looking at cards or the lines in your hand." I showed him my palm, where I'd written "Bees are going to kill you" in Crayola marker. "Where is your God now, Daddy? Will God protect you from the BEES?"