Easy Virtue... A word about my teeth: Vanity. Weight fluctuates, hands and feet show the care and wear of the years, eyes and hair look bright and dull in equal measure, but my little pearlies have never failed me. This is an easy vanity, as I have merely cleaned and flossed regularly and been blessed with very good enamel. My teeth have never been completely straight, but their slightly askew stance against the world suits my own disposition. Dentists and orthodontists have told me that I need to have braces, and even that I need my jaw broken and re-positioned surgically and I have never taken this advice seriously because my teeth are something I've thought of as wonderful about my face. I have always had about a 1.5mm gap between my eye teeth, and I rather like being a gap-toothed woman. In the middle ages, women with this dental phenomenon were thought of as loose and wild, and though my life rather resembles that of June Cleaver more than I would prefer, somewhere buried in all these folds of tedium and propriety lurks my inner Hellion, pawing the earth like a randy bull and ready to upend the china shop at any moment. Whether I feel like hot shit or not, I don't spend a lot of time looking in the mirror, and one day a few months back I suddenly noticed the gap between my teeth had widened considerably. Now I like a little gap, but I don't aspire to eat corn off the cob through a picket fence, so I asked last time I went to have my teeth cleaned. My dentist recommended a superb orthodontist who seemed more competent and knowledgeable than others I'd seen. I went to him on Wednesday, and he diagnosed my need for braces, etc., but he is the first among them to say the surgery may not be necessary. He did say that my teeth have arrayed themselves according to the bone structure of my face, and that because my bite is so uneven I may have cracked molars soon because they have borne the brunt of biting/chewing/tearing all these years without the help of my canines or incisors, which don't meet. The threat of losing my teeth is something not so easily shrugged off--to suddenly have a lot of tooth-related pain is not something I'm going to be able to abide, I fear. He also said the corners of my mouth turn down because of this. I was shocked when he said that. I said "I didn't know the corners of my mouth turn down--I thought I looked cute." I was kind of reeling from this, actually. It made me wonder if I look like I smell something unpleasant all the time. [If you've read much of my blog, you know I have a nose which is easily outraged, but I don't want to look like I'm outraged all the time!] I feel like a hideous little puppy that doesn't know it's ugly. This has all made me think about how I'm perceived by others rather more than I would prefer. It's too easy to be self-obsessed and constantly rearranging oneself to meet with the approval of people who (should) have no bearing on one's existence. I curdle at the idea of tugging and snipping away nature to reveal the inner plasticene goddess because it is so fucking false. Look at Courtney Love's original face in the film Sid & Nancy, and look today at the latter-day punk priestess-cum-Gloria Swanson blinking like the Bride of Frankenstein in an unflatteringly lit courtroom near you. We're so pretty, oh so pretty vacant. Oh, yes, I'm getting the braces, but if you ever find me running off to shrink myself in cling-film in attempts to meet some standard of beauty that is in opposition to my physiology, please do me a favor and slip me some hemlock.

I had just drunk the Last of the Mojitos, and communication skills were at an ebb, when...

Wow. Last night all the neighbors and a few visitors were hanging out on the deck at my apartments, and two idiots started trying to out-do each other with gross-out/taboo jokes. What is UP with that? Where is the sport in that? They were all groaners anyway, none of them laugh-out-loud. It was ugly and unkind , until one of them told a joke about black people, and then half the group laughed heartily, and the oxygen was sucked out of the room (which was the great outdoors) for the rest of us. *gasp* It was very uncomfortable because it was so unkind and uncalled for, whether or not there was a black person present, which there was. He sat like a statue, not dignifying the idiocy with a response. And the joke had come from a woman I would never in a million years have expected to hear that from. To make matters worse, her visiting friend brought it back up minutes later saying "that black guy joke was so fucking funny!" A blunt, clever neighbor retorted loudly "I don't know why you say it that way - why don't you just say 'nigger?' That's what you mean, and yeah, nigger jokes are really fucking funny." The black man high-fived the blunt woman, and I think they will probably be friends for life, now. I don't know if the drunk joke-tellers will remember the rebuke, but I wonder how you recover from that. I suppose we'll all learn something from it. I wish I had been bold and clever enough to front her at the time it happened, but I had not all my faculties. Disappointing, but satisfying that someone could at least point out the insult eventually.

um. OK. I'll prolly come back and edit this post later, but for now I've got to get this down: Two films are slated to be made by competing studios depicting the life of Janis Joplin. Think of who in Hollywood has the looks and chops to carry it off (begging the question will they be providing prosthetic natural looking teeth for the role? Sick of unnatural looking teeth in film. Sick to death of it. Like fake tits, people in general seem to have lost touch with what looks right on humans - It'll be unsurprising when people start buying veneers for their dogs and cats--what nature endowed couldn't possibly be adequate for optimal attractiveness.) OK. Janis was an earthy looking woman and wouldn't have been described as a natural beauty. I'm thinking for sheer acting chops alone the obvious choice would be Kate Winslet, who no doubt could throw herself into that role believeably, even though she's never bordered on less than ravishing. Even as the dowdy Iris, she was ineffably lovely. Perhaps a touching tribute would be a ruggedly beautiful portrayal by such an actress. OK. Scale it down a bit. Think Pink. Think Renee Zellweger. Yep. WTF??? I swear I'm not making it up. Um. [shudder mode "on"]

New wave of fleas is afoot. bastards. My one-woman show is up in a gallery this weekend, and I'm nervous. I feel so unprepared. Note to self: must change my lazy ways.

Someone tried to steal my truck a couple nights ago. About 1am a drunk homeless guy came to the gate and started telling my neighbor Jason he ditched his truck in the parking lot when he was running from the cops, and now he needed to get back in so he could get it. He was holding a giant key ring with dozens of keys on it. Jason said "which truck is yours" and he pointed to mine. Jason said "really? You have the key to that truck? Let me see." So the guy put his arm through the gate and Jason deftly took the big key ring and called 9-1-1. Of course, the guy took off, and it was all kind of funny, but a little creepy... A new development in our neighborhood is the man who is pimpin' on the front of our building. I saw a very dark-skinned lass with him Wednesday in a baby blue get-up that was not at all flattering, though it was the perfect complement to the white platform sandals she was obviously suffering from. Now this chick was not a tiny girl and the ensemble was some knit material and extremely tight. If you put a razor blade near that, there would have been hind-end all over the place. The high price of keeping it real.

Last night was karaoke madness. My dearest friend and I made a delicious hash of "Tainted Love" (it would have been much better if it were just her singing without me) and her fiance has sworn that next time he'll do "Genie in a Bottle." I can't wait. I love to sing, but I hate singing into microphones--it's annoying.

A close friend has gone over the edge, apparently. Sadly. Being home in the daytime I see a lot of the comings and goings in the building. Don't start thinking I'm like Mrs. Kravitz on Bewitched - meddlesome neighbor. It's just that my huge window is right by the stair, and a crackhead neighbor who used to live above me would come home on his lunch break for about five minutes every day, and I began to realize he wasn't coming home to whip up a tunafish sandwich. In fact, he lost a lot of weight and began acting a bit jumpy and less personable - much out of character. Finally, he moved to another loft in the area, and when he did, a much more beloved neighbor began hanging out at the guy's new pad. I can be a bit blunt, on occasion, and today I was bringing up the subject of gossip with another brutally frank neighbor, and she said "oh, were you going to tell me that jameson is on crack?" Having no intention of the kind, I was floored by this statement. Jameson is a lovely person who grapples with demons, but I've always held out hope he would get a grip and just be himself and learn how to be happy. I think he wants to have a different life, but is pinioned by the fear of wounding his backwoods Baptist minister father with his lifestyle choices. I asked her what she meant - if she was serious, and she said that she smelled some burning chemical wafting from his open window a few days ago, and that besides he has a smell like crackheads get - she knew this because a friend's mother and another friend had been addicted and she recognized the odor, which seems to ooze from his pores 24/7 lately. (and here I thought it was just the beer and chain-smoking that made him reek) I wish Jameson would just embrace his gayness and pinch off the downward spiral. I'm the last person to judge someone for choosing their own poisons, but dammit-- he's not even having a good time! He drinks the shittiest beer imaginable to a state of stupefaction nightly. He obviously is self-medicating and needs to deal with the real problems in his life and get on with it before he pisses it all away. I realized in December he had gone to the dark side of stupid when he made a crap comment to me, and I honestly believe he intended the comment to be helpful. I must have had a look on my face like I was about to give birth to a litter of yaks, because after flattening me with his unwanted advice, he began to cry and beg me to please not be mad at him because he just wanted to be helpful. Jameson has been a dear friend for five years and I found myself looking into his eyes and thinking "who is this motherfucker?" Anyway, I was too flummoxed at the time of the revelation today to remember that I had predicted Jameson would also become a crackhead when he began spending a lot of time at the crackhead's loft. Husband reminded me of my prediction later. I wonder what the future holds, but it's hard to imagine anything good coming of this. I wish I were wrong, because this feels like watching a fatal car crash in slow motion.

I've always heard that men are visually oriented as opposed to women, who feel their way through life. If this is true and women and competitors are sized up by men visually, then is it possible for a man blind from birth to be sexist? How do men blind from birth know if they are gay or straight? Do they have to taste test both to determine? OK, taste may be a poor choice of words, but...

Two guys lived in a loft in my building and they built a half-pipe in their space. They had two ill-cared-for large dogs who always seemed demented. Now we know why. They were recently evicted after various violations of property rules. The space was left open Sunday, denuded of half-pipe and all their worldly goods, and the neighbors were all sitting around on the deck drinking beer as usual when Jules came over with her boxer, Noodles. Jules lived in that same loft before the skater boys and said "I wanna see what the old place looks like" and she went in and Noodles followed. She came out thirty seconds later saying how bad it smelled and the boxer came out onto the deck and started bucking like a wild bronco with its nuts in a vise. One of the neighbors said she was covered in ants, but on closer inspection they realized that the wretched beast was covered in fleas from that apartment. Now the entire property is infested and my little white dog is starting to chew and groan constantly. I bathed her as soon as I heard the story, but to no avail: she suffers the torments of the damned. We are going to the vet tomorrow, and in the meantime I am dismayed by her discomfort. I should have known something intense was going on with the fleas when I saw one leaping in and out of her coat like a dolphin. I grabbed the little bugger and dropped it into the liquid wax of a burning candle I happened to have handy. [Here's a tip for fun with ticks if you don't just enjoy keeping a mason jar of alcohol around to collect their carcasses like my grandpa in Arkansas has always done-- stick the tip of a straight pin into the wet wax of the candle and then quickly tap the back of the tick with the pin, and the wax will glue him to the pin. Then put the tick near the flame, and the tick will puff up and explode like a mini piece of popcorn. Of course, it is sick and rather cruel, but I conveniently choose to believe that ticks don't have feelings anyway, so why not enjoy ourselves on their dime?] I have been searching flea remedies online, and I looked up diatomaceous earth and here is a description that made my seat wet: Diatomaceous Earth is a natural, non-chemical product. It appears to be a powder, but it is actually razor-sharp crystals to fleas. It blocks and cuts the fleas' gills, and they die. I'm all aquiver. Fucking fleas.

The office I'm working in has glass windows on three sides, and yesterday it rained so hard that it looked like the office was traveling through a carwash. People who move away from Texas say they miss the torrential rains and intense electrical storms. I can understand missing that - there's no better weather for sleeping late or vegetating and staring out the window. It's crap to drive in, though.

Reunions in my family are always worth attending simply for the novelty of being around apocalyptic white trash (thank you Sandra Bernhard). Once the family rented a pavilion at a state park in Arkansas for the annual gathering. As it happened, Arkansas didn't shut down the entire park to the public, and many unfortunate souls came by along the path wending between the gigantic springs of the park and the pavilion. I wonder if the woman in the wheelchair thought she would be communing with nature that day, breathing the fresh air and escaping the cruelties of life, if only momentarily? She made her way slowly, laboring to scale the gradual incline of the path. Her legs were both removed above the knee. In a just world, she could have made her way unhindered through the glories of nature, but then again--in a just world, my family and all its tangled strands of DNA would never have existed. It would have been a mercy, too, if the woman could have glided by unmolested by Colton and Austin, my cousin's two young sons. Colton and Austin have the developmental level of a three-year old baboon, with equal communication skills. Austin ran up to the woman shouting "Hay Colton! Come look! This lady ain't got no laigs! Hay lady! What happened to yer laigs, lady?" Uncle Billy (the proud grandfather) said "them kids are gonna end up dead or in prison." Quite.

It's one of those divinely nasty days I'm always telling you I love. Running an office errand, I cut across downtown Dallas in my pickup truck and headed down Fort Worth Avenue. It's great driving a truck--the only vehicle in which one's earrings and boobage can swing comfortably. Flipped on the radio as the darkening slickness of the streets mirrored head and tail lamps of people hurrying home from a hard days'. Normally, I'd flip to another station, but the skating rink organ of "Dirty Laundry" by Don Henley just seemed so right with the weather. Funny how I hated that song when I was a girl--it seemed so dark, ugly and pessimistic. Now it seems so true that it's banal. I chuckled about that. I could have saved myself some hard lessons if I'd just cut to the chase in 1984 and became a bitter hardened cynic right out of the box.

It's been sitting for absolute ages, neglected for weeks at a time, so I asked my sister today if she would like my piano for my niece and nephew to begin lessons. She was ecstatic, as was my 7 year old niece, so just like that it is finished. Even though I barely used it, as long as it sat here I could think of it as potential energy stored in a battery, all coiled up and ready to spring alive with vibrant tone, but to let it go spells the end of my favorite chapter of my own unremarkable story. A kindly neighbor helped husband move the piano into the truck for transport, and we leave in mere moments. Letting the piano go is me saying firmly that the dream I labored over so many hours and years of my life--aspirations of an opera career--is utterly finished. I can barely breathe. I can't see evidence of the metal bands that have strapped around my rib cage, but I can feel them forcing the breath and water up out of my mouth and eyes. This is the feeling of my heart breaking.

Back from another whirlwind trip out to Arizona to visit me gran.