Here We Go Again...

I have a hard time doing these end of year recap things because I have the worst memory but I kind of feel compelled to do them because maybe it’s nice to have a point in life in which you stop and take a look back at what has happened for you over a certain period of time. Reflect and whatnot. 

Like I said, I have a terrible memory and I’m not about to go back through the months of my blog to figure out what I did and didn’t do. I think in 2012 I will keep a list somewhere.  A list of milestone things or the books I read, new music I fell in love with or discovered, etc.  I kind of like reading everyone’s lists and it sucks that I can’t remember past last Tuesday.  Ugh, and I KNOW I will forget something after I hit publish. Argh.

Anyway, here goes.

---I made a pretty monumental trip this year to AWP and met internet people and did a reading and got drunk and danced and met internet people and felt awkward and met internet people.  It was the most surreal experience I’ve ever had.  People were treating me like…I don’t know…like I was a special person.  Important.  I’m not used to feeling that way. 

I finally met my internet bro and good buddy, Mel Bosworth.  That was a heart fulfilling thing.  He was exactly what I expected and awesomer than I expected.  It was the greatest.

I also met my longtime internet friend, Robb Todd, in a surprise moment I will remember forever.  Drunken hand holding never felt so good.  A tremendous human being.

But the best thing about that trip was finally meeting Roxane and sharing a hotel room and every day with her.  Sometimes you make ‘best friends’ online and wonder if IRL it will be the same way it is through this little box.  What if the vibe is not there? What if your best connection you will ever have with that person is only fortified through distance and separation?  Reasonable fears.  Luckily, there was none of that for Roxane and me.  We hit it off like peas and carrots.  And then we hit it off more.  Like strippers and poles or something.  Words cannot express the feelings I have of our time spent together at AWP.  All I will say is I ripped off a piece of her frayed jeans, something of something she had worn a lot that I felt was a part of her, and kept it in my purse just so I could have something that came from something that was close to her.  It’s still in my purse. Right now it’s in my purse.  I take it out and feel it with my fingers every so often.  It’s like a touchstone.  I can say so much more but I think that might say it all.   

---Early this year I ran a really long race.  I am not a runner.  I am a walker. It was hard.  I spent months training and when the day came, I ran that race.  I ran that whole race without stopping or walking. It was the furthest I had ever run in my life. Eight miles. When I began training, I couldn’t run for even one minute.   It was a huge thing for me.  It made me change the script I had always written about myself.  It made me believe that things you thought were impossible for yourself can be made possible through lots of hard work and determination.  I will always be proud of myself for this and use the knowledge of this when I run into the next thing I feel is impossible which is

---Writing a book.  This year I haven’t been writing as many short stories because I spent a large amount of my time trudging through what, hopefully, will become a novel.  Not a collection of stories, but ONE story.  It’s fucking hard as hell.  I’ve been drawing from my race experience and applying it to writing this novel.  One foot in front of the other type of shit.  Don’t give up type of shit.  Look, you’re doing it, you’re really doing it type of shit.  I am on a break from it now, but I will pick it up after the new year.  It would be so easy to give up on it.  So damn easy.  Like how it would’ve been easy to just stop training for that race.  But then I never would’ve run that race or finished it like I did.  I know I can do the same thing with this book.  I know it will be long and painful and shin splints and rain and cold and sweat but I also know there will be joy and elation and pride and happiness and that, in the end, I will have a fucking ribbon and medal and giant cardboard check made out for $333,333,333 dollars in my real name because, folks, this book is not for xTx, it’s for the girl that hides behind her.

---There was a pretty huge thing that happened in my private life this year.  A life changer.  That’s all I will say about that. 

---An incredible human being in my real life died earlier this year.  It was unexpected. He was a joy to many people and I will miss him.  His death reminded me…reminds me…that life is short and you only have RIGHT NOW so don’t waste it.

Miss you, man… 

---Back to the writing, I probably published half of what I published the year before.  That’s okay.  I didn’t submit as much.  I got solicited a lot and the places I submitted to and AM submitting to now are the bigger journals which are more of a challenge. Lots of fucking rejection. But if you don’t push yourself to aim higher, reach further, where is the challenge?  I can’t keep submitting to the places that have already published me that already ‘like’ me.  I think that’s like a kid showing her artwork to her parents and grandparents all the time and getting the same praise over and over again.  Some people probably find comfort in that.  But, for me, it’s too easy.  Take that fingerpainting out on the street, get some real opinions.  Ouch—yes. But there could be praise waiting as well.  Might make you work a bit harder on those paintings though…  Might end up with a fucking masterpiece. 

I want to make masterpieces.

Segue.

I guess the biggest thing for me this year is I had my first book published.  I’ve received primarily positive reviews and feedback on the book.  It currently has a Goodreads rating of 4.48 if that means anything. I’ve sold a fair amount of them and none to any friends or family members because none of them know the book exists. (sadface)  This means hundreds of people I don’t even know are buying my book. HUNDREDS.  I think those are all great things.  I am proud of this book and it was a great experience…having a book.  It’s a nice little book.  If I could write a letter to my book, I would write the following letter:

Dear Normally Special,

Thank you for being my first book.  I know one day I may look back at you and think different or new things about you, but right now, I am proud of you and what you’ve accomplished.  You are not the best book that is out in the world, but you are a good book and you can hold your own with your little head held high.  Feel good about this.  I know I do.

I’m sorry I maybe put some ugly things inside you, but Norm, we all have ugly things inside of us.  The ones I put inside of you are just there for everyone to see.  So, I hope you aren’t upset over that.  I think maybe it’s the ugly things that helps endear you to readers.  Watch their eyes.  I bet they do not look away and if they do, it’s only for a moment to catch their breath.

It’s been a great first year and in the years to come I hope that more people find you and find things inside of you that find things inside of them.  That’s really all I’ve ever wanted for you.  For us.

I love you. 

Regards,

Mom

Lastly, but never least, thank you to all the awesome people who read and liked my writing this year and any year.  Thanks to all the people who read my blog.  Thanks to everyone who linked my shit, pimped my shit and commented on my shit and tweeted my shit.  It all matters to me.  It all means a lot.  You mean a lot. Special thanks to my new friend, Casey Hannan, who was the nicest surprise for me this year, Team 369–GFYMB, Mel Bosworth, Frank Hinton and Roxane Gay who I couldn’t have made it through this year without. 

Have a great holiday.  Have a great new year.  Let’s all make things that count next year.  Let’s all be better than we have ever been and help each other in that endeavor.  Let’s all try to rival the stars.

xoxox

OMG's

OMG Dennis Cooper, said he liked my story at EverydayGenius.

OMG a nice book review of Normally Special!!!

Book Review

A handsome bum, street scum scrubbed off in a claw foot tub, the head of his huge erection submarining above the suds.  We share a glass of wine while he soaks.  I have a terrycloth robe rolling around in the dryer readying itself for him.  I shave the bum in between his talking.  He went to college.  He loves his mom.  He is funny in a Steve Martin meets Mel Brooks way.  He hates dogs, loves cats, etc.  When I talk he really listens, stroking himself in an absentminded fashion. I like watching him as he does it.

bob

bob

bob

Later, after the bath, after he kisses his thanks for the robe all over my cheeks, we sit on the couch and I get a fire going.  He tells me of the three men he’s murdered.  I’m scared, but only because of what happened with the second man, but I’m only scared a little, more fascinated.  I hold his hands. Really look at them.  He asks me to tell him about all the dark things I’ve done but then says, “Wait…let me eat your pussy first.”  It’s the best head I’ve ever gotten.  It’s not hard to confess after that. 


When the house catches on fire, we don't even leave.

This sort of sums up how I feel about reading New YorkTyrant Volume 3, Number 3. 

If you haven’t gotten it yet you are missing the fuck out.  

First, Let's All Agree That xTx Is a Stupid "Name"

i dont think you've noticed, but I've sort of fallen into a 'thing' for chubby girls.

lately, all i can do is click through tumblrs of sexy curvy chicks with my eyes full of their skin.

i like them in black lingerie the best.

Things

There is a review of my chapbook, “He Is Talking to the FatLady” over at Rumble.  It is reviewed by JA Tyler.  JA Tyler says some nice things.

Remember when this chapbook sold out in less than two days and you couldn’t snag a copy?  Well, that problem might be able to be solved for you shortly. (that is a hint of things to come!)

Today, I am finally published in Everyday Genius.  I love Everyday Genius.  But until this final attempt, it seemed Everyday Genius didn’t love me.  Now they love me. Or at least this little story.  It’s called, “Things You Find on a Train” and you should read it here.

Lastly, Ani Smith has been posting some beautiful things about Very Beautiful Women over at We Who Are About To Die.  Ani Smith was one of those beautiful women and this is what EYE have to say about her piece in Very Beautiful Women:

"There is so much here. So much. A bouquet of images. 

I am here.  Have been here. Have been there inside of these words, busting them out.  Myself.  A yearning to communicate by touch minus skin.  Many times I could’ve fallen, cracked my head on the pavement and out would’ve spilled this poem.  But instead, I lick it off the shoes of this American girl in London.  Tell her I like it.  Look up at her like, believe me.  A plead in my eye. She looks back, holding my eyes with hers, communicating nothing. Holding me there.

The same way she does with this.

Read those words again.  How she knows what she wants.  Can tell it to us.  Draws it for us on our screens, on our souls.  Makes us live it.  This is what these types of words are supposed to do and she does. 

I let her crumple me up in her fist.”

That is all i have to say about that

It's All Me

My face is peeling away.  Someone asked me what I left all over my chin.  I said, it’s just me. 

I have to go to the grocery store today but I want to wear a ski mask.  But that would be weird, right?  If I were dressed all regular but had on a ski mask?   People might think I was there to rob them.  I would probably try to smile at them reassuringly through the ski mask and that would probably freak them out more.  Ski masks are unsettling in non-ski situations.

Seriously though.  I want to wear one to the grocery store.  I feel very elephant man.  You know, because my face peeling away and all.  I know if I wore a ski mask I would bring more attention to myself than if I didn’t wear one.  Sigh.  I will just have to keep everyone at a five foot distance from my face.  I guess the checker who will ring up my groceries and possibly the bagger will be the only two people to be disgusted with my face today.  I wonder who they are.  Lucky them.

Favorite Time Saving Meals

Okay, maybe I wrote some pervy poems, but UP is the one who published them so don’t blame ME.

Stop looking at me that way.

Tonight I could’ve got murdered in a blackdark stretch of walking.  I saw the black. I walked into the black and I said, very quietly, I could get murdered here.  Then I just walked and held my keys like come get me.

Rusted lockers.

My dinner was a fried egg eaten while standing up in the kitchen.  I ate that egg all hot and ouchy in my mouth because super hungry people cannot be bothered to wait for things to cool off.  Why I didn’t eat it straight out of the skillet gives me hope for my humanity. 

Yolk totally dripped onto my shirt.   My thought was, “chicken come.”  Which makes no sense, I know.

I hear the dryer going in the other room. Intermittent clanging on top of the hum.  I washed a bunch of dishes. I am wearing socks. Later, I will take out my contacts and wash my face.  I have a “face regimen” now.  Some sort of burning lotion I apply to my skin where I don’t want to be old anymore.  The lotion doesn’t actually burn because I was lied to.  I wanted it to burn. Expected it.  Figured that would mean it was really working.  Now I just have to put it on, feel nothing, and hope it’s taking the old away

.

Sal Pane recommends me to his students.  This makes me feel like I am maybe important, or at least my writing is.  In all my life, I never thought I would ever feel that way.  I want to cry.  

Do you know the whirlwind feeling after the hospital?  After the nurse stands you up and recites care information that you cannot write down?  You look into their blonde American face and their blue eyes triple in size over their smiling mouth while they say things with their voice like it’s nothing special. 

I stood there nodding, like I understood. Like I was taking it all in.  They forget how this happens every day for them and only just now, for me.  I walked away with a handful of paper full of instructions, some pill bottles and fear; my head spinning.

I stood in my kitchen for a while knowing I needed wine.

Then I got the wine.

I sat on the floor for six minutes with an ice pack a white towel, some blankets.  I felt like I was doing something good.  I sort of sunk into the moment of not doing anything but what I was supposed to be doing and I felt like one of those good mothers.  How I think that they are.

I thought, this is what it is supposed to feel like.  And then I kind of understood the mothers who make their children sick just so they can make them well again.  There’s something to being needed, to giving. 

  

I can feel like a mother once in a while.  If I want to.  Just once in a while.  Because nobody wants to feel like that.  It’s a hard, hard way to feel.

I was just watching a show and saw a woman with the skinniest legs ever.  Her thigh was calf-sized.  I was all, “How do those things hold her up?”  Now, my thighs, they are calf-sized.  But like, cow calf sized.  Like, my thighs cause small villages to quake when I walk by.  I have to always tip toe past small villages or I’m just saying sorry a lot to the villagers and feeling bad about their houses.  Like, if you cut off all my thigh meat, you could make a reasonably-sized pair of new thighs.  If there is some sort of thigh transplant place, someone please hook a brother up with that info.  I would like to save some thighs with my thighs.  If you ever need to get between my legs, you’d better bring along some ropes and pulleys. Hoisting devices.  It’s a bit of work, but once you get the path cleared the rest seems to go pretty easily.

I don’t know, you know, about like, you know, like people who wear blinking Xmas ornament necklaces to Christmas parties.  I’m not sure how I feel about that.  I look at the blinking Xmas ornament necklace and the person wearing the necklace and I wait to see if I start hating them.  I did this last night.  Nothing really happened.  The jury was out.  Maybe this means I am ambivalent.  What I know I don’t like is people who wear Christmas sweaters to Christmas parties un-ironically.  People who wear them on the serious.  People who wear them on the serious who are NOT over 60.  Like, my mom is over 60 but if she wore a Christmas sweater on Christmas I would probably have to push her down some stairs and shit.  BASEMENT stairs cuz you know there’s no soft landing down a set of basement stairs.  My poor dead murdered mom.  Matricide, right?  Dead in a fucking Christmas sweater.  Who does that? I mean, seriously?  I would stand there, in her very own kitchen, eating her fucking sausage stuffed mushrooms while the paramedics try and figure out how to get the gurney down the basement stairs.  Hopefully there would be a hot paramedic who wasn’t really that committed to his job and I could offer him some xmas egg nog and we could party maybe.  I’d be all like, “Yeah, it’s sad, but did you see that fucking sweater?”  

Did you guys know it’s December? For like 9 days it’s been December.

I have a little thing in The Fiddleback but don’t bother to read it, go straight to this piece by Robb Todd that had my heart in a way for about an hour after I read it. 

Tick tock Ocean Vuong won’t stop.

Casey Hannan is the boss of my book, Normally Special, over at The Lit Pub.

what else? nothing. go away. 

I GOT YELLED AT. I WANT THAI FOOD.  I THINK SPICY GIRLS ARE DREAMY.  BEING YELLED AT IS NO FUN.  ANYTHING IN A THAI RESTAURANT HAS POTENTIAL FOR GREATNESS. IT IS AN EXPERIMENT IN DECORATIVE MOUTH SPLATTER.  THE YELLING DIDN’T FEEL LIKE ANYTHING AT FIRST.  SPICY GIRLS HAVE SKIN LIKE FETUS FEET.  THE YELLING FEELS LIKE A LOT NOW.  YOU KNOW HOW WHEN YOU FALL DOWN AND YOU SAY THAT’S GONNA LEAVE A MARK?  THE YELLING HAS LEFT A MARK ON ME.  LIKE PAD THAI AND THE TUREENS AND THE CHOPPED UP NUTS AND LITTLE STICKS OF VEGETABLES.  HOW ONE BITE CAN HAVE TWELVE DIFFERENT FLAVORS? THE DOLL-LIKE WAITRESSES.  PURPLE WALLS.  TATTOOS IN THE PERFECT SPOTS.  I COULD NEVER BE THAT.  WHERE CAN I WASH THIS OFF?  

Don’t you have some friends you want to sequester? Like in your pocket or glove?  I have a few.  They are like these cool shirts I want to be the only one to wear.  I am selfish.  I think if they change their facial hair that I should be the one that is their supervising, ready to catch any blood should it fall.  That I should be the first one to see them in the new face,  that I am part of every significant moment they will create.  I want to be the only number in their phone.  When Tinkerbell tells them to gather their happy thoughts, I want to be every single one of them.  I think I am a secret obsessive.  I think if it showed on my skin they would run away.  These words are my skin, this screen, this page.  YOU are a friend I want to protect.  I want to flamethrower your enemies.  If that is okay with you, nod your head.  I am shitting in the sink of your life.  Look away.

The only apron I’ve ever willingly owned I won at a church bazaar. I forget how I won it.  All I remember was that it was homemade and hideous and I knew it had to be mine at any cost.  I imprinted with that fucking apron Twilight style.   It had so many bright flowers.  So many it became a super power.  I wore the fuck out of that apron. Everybody loved it.  That apron.  I never wore it when I cooked though.  Didn’t want to get it dirty.  It got holes in it because of all the wearing—big hexagon holes, but floppy.  Also, it started to stretch down from the hook I kept it on; this black, rubber hook on the side of the cellar door.  There must’ve been more gravity in that spot because it seemed like the apron just kept getting longer and longer like an old man’s balls.  Eventually it pulled the hook down.  Eventually it became too heavy to wear and the holes did not stretch anymore, they just stayed open and frozen like some sort of weird playground equipment.  I was scared to wear my apron then.  It didn’t conform to my body like it used to.  It felt like a dead thing’s shell, like I was wearing some morbid Halloween costume while not waiting for any candy.  It started to get scary, standing up in the corner of my kitchen with its back to the wall, quiet but expectant like my mother.  No apron does that.  I ended up burying it behind this one Costco in Victorville.  It was the only one I could find that had soft enough dirt.

I am so old, the only naked photos of me are Polaroids.

There are themes in our work.  I think if you make enough work you begin to notice them.  I am noticing mine and I think I ignored them for a long time. “Nawww…those aren’t my themes!”  It’s hard to ignore them when you sit down to write and they come out from behind larger things, take your hand and pull you towards them.  Nagging children.  I am tired of them.  Lately, I have been trying to pull away my hand.  “What do you write about?”  I told you I told them “sad stuff.”  Lately, during the hand pulling away trying, I suggest to myself to try to write happy.  I sit. I think about it.  Try to settle myself into that space.  Wait for something to show itself.  But all I see are my themes, peeking their heads out from behind the larger things, waving their hands to suggest, “We’re still here. Reliable and ready.”  And I just keep going over and taking their hands.  Letting them take mine.  It’s so fucking comfortable. 

Unfair that it’s so comfortable.

Speaking of themes, I have a new story in Pank’s just released 50 Word Story issue edited by JA Tyler.  It’s pretty amazing what people can do in 50 words or less.  It’s a quick and beautiful read.  Go.

Thanksgiving is gone now.  I’ve been through more Thanksgivings than most of you.  I’ve been through decades of Thanksgivings and most of those decades with the exact same people.  People that once seemed very big and painted a picture in my mind—once upon a time—that they were so charismatic, so powerful and handsome.  But time eventually erodes people. Time makes some people that were small, bigger and makes people that were once so very big, small. 

Now that I’m big, I sometimes look at those people and think about things.   Then I usually write about them.

 

Themes.