The Black Book (a veritable what the hell who's who? of people who have held little bits of my heart through the years)

Name: Clem
Me: 2nd grade, confused, ADD, never brushed my hair.
Him: the boy who sat next to me, Cuban, dark, mysterious, effeminate.
What happened: I chased him around the playground and pinned him down, tried to kiss him. Primordial sexual stirrings. My mother wouldn’t let me go to his house to play. Interest waned.

Name: Jenny
Me: I adored her in 2nd-3rd grade
Her: My best friend
Why we kissed: We were best friends, so we had to seal the pact. She had the biggest pucker ever.

Name: Martin
Me: Grade 3, glasses, precocious, lost the spelling bee
Him: Grade 4, older, taller, played the lead role in The Mikado, British
What happened: Huge crush; fantasies of being hospitalized and him holding my hand, consoling me. Not entirely sure he knew I was alive. See how much I loved him in this picture.

Name: My Cool J. Fox
Me: Freshman in high school
Him: Senior, repeating a class he had failed, looked like Alex Keaton
What happened: Huge crush; fantasies of being hospitalized and him holding my hand, consoling me. Not entirely sure he knew I was alive.

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Now come the crush years. Too many to list. Include Markus, whom my cousin also dated. 2 guys named Hillar. Blah blah blah. Hard Puberty, breasts, mortification, adjustment.

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Name: Dennis 1
Me: Senior
Him: Sophomore, but older than most because he stayed back and had started school late. Not too bright. Big eyebrows. Skinny.
What happened: I broke up with him the day before the prom but we went together anyhow. He showed up in a tux that did not match my dress. I ignored him all night.

Name: Hodge
Me: College Freshman
Him: Junior (also in college)
How It Went Down: Storybook romance; I spotted him at a soccer game and said, “I would die for a guy like that.” He spotted me in the bookstore and said, “Do I know you?” then hunted me down in my dorm. We were in love for a few months. He showed up to meet my dad in a rumpled shirt & no shave. He broke up with me. We tried to get together a few times but it didn’t take. I was finally over him 2 years later.

Name: Aryan
Me: Sophomore-Senior in college
Him: Lived in my dorm, dated my friend, drove a beatup Chevy pickup that he still has.
What happened: He broke up with her to date me. She tried to kill herself twice. We camped & burned tires in the woods. Love. He was Russian Orthodox and I wasn’t. I think black folks are a-ok and he doesn’t. His former roommate is now my boss. His brother died in 1999 so we got back in touch. 1-2 emails a year.

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Now comes sort of a blurry haze for a few years in the job world. Including Mike, my vice principal, who was arrested the day after we went out for drinks (for possession of cocaine) & forced to resign; Dennis 2, whose mom I worked with and who (I found out) had been arrested for a domestic violence incident at some point; Dennis 3, whose brother I worked with and who left 25 drunken messages on my answering machine one night; some guy whose name I forget whom I escaped by ducking out through the kitchen of a bakery; some other guy who I left at a restaurant after he got up 8 times to make phone calls. I think I might have been making bad choices.

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Name: Shepherd Boy
Me: 24
Him: 19
What happened: Broke my heart.

Name: The Onion

Me: 27, feisty, adventurous

Him: 28, Dot com millionaire, eccentric, liar, somewhat famous.

What happened: I felt like something wasn't quite right. I let it go. Later, I read about him online and found out what he had been up to, and it was not good. I can't give details, because I don't want you to look him up and embarrass him.

Name: Neighb
Me: I don’t know. Almost 30.
Him: My best friend.
What happened: We were friends for 10 years, then we crossed over & couldn’t cross back when it didn’t work out. We stopped talking when he started dating the woman he later married, and we just never talked again. My boss is good friends with him (he also lived in my dorm) & gives me updates I don’t want to hear.

Name: Stefan
Me: Now
Him: A very dear friend
What's happening: I so wish we were attracted to each other, because I adore him and we are amazingly great friends. We are each other’s Plan B; maybe when we are both 90 and we’ve given up the quest for Mr./Ms. Right.

Name: Sven
Me: 30
Him: 39, Norwegian, possible Asperger’s Syndrome, tall, penilely challenged
What happened: I hated his stupid dog and didn’t love him. He cried for 3 hours when we broke up and wouldn’t leave my house.

Name: Neil
Me: Looking for work with birds of prey, recovering from surgery, feeling a need to reconnect with my womanhood.
Him: Doing a study with birds of prey in Wyoming desert, running dogsleds in the winter, living in a teepee, smoking pot.
What happened: Spent a few weeks banding hawks and reconnecting with my womanhood. Then I came home.

Name: The K-Man
Me: Teacher, 31-34, smitten
Him: Charming, funny, alcoholic, married
What happened: Great pals, worked closely together, went to New Orleans for a conference and he acted like a big asshole; I told him to go to hell and fix his train wreck of a life. Left him in New Orleans. Major impetus for giving up alcohol.

Name: Brad the Clown
Me: 35-36, aloof, bored
Him: 37-38, one testicle, artistic, boring, racist, lazy, sloppy eater, has 1 joke that he repeats over & over.
What happened: I dumped him.

Name: The Handyman a.k.a. Brazil nut
Me: 36, 2 days after breaking up with Brad, I said to my friends; “I need a hot-blooded Latino lover to tell me I am beautiful.”
Him: In my house when I got home that day.
What happened: 1 month fling, with bonus (!) of numerous items fixed & painted around my house. Then he went back to Venezuela.

Name: Freaky Hand Fetish Dude
Me: Agreed to a blind date
Him: Bass player, looked like

this guy from Stargate, freaky, carried pictures of his cats in his wallet.
Why I changed my phone number: When I told him I wasn’t comfortable with him trying to hold my hand this early (we had met 10 minutes ago) he said, peevishly, “Oh, what --- we have rules about things now?!?” He asked me to clap my hands so he could psychoanalyze me according to how I clapped. When I did so, he closed his eyes and smiled and said, “That is the most beautiful sound in the world.” Later, he rested his hand open-palmed on my hand and moaned with his eyes closed as if he had just squirted in his pants. He freaked me out so much I didn’t leave him immediately, I was afraid he would stalk me. Luckily he didn’t know where I live or any of my phone numbers but the one I changed.

Name: Calzone
Me: Horrified ... yet drawn to him.
Him: Abusive, condescending, defiling, objectifying, pampering. Ridicules me, feeds me cheese, dresses me up like a cowgirl.
What happened: It’s still happening and it never ever stops.

Name: Monkey
Me: Nurturing, adoring, anticipating.
Him: Fuzzy, has a giant hoo hah, indignant, flattering, incessantly packing and unpacking.
What happened: He is coming here in 3 days!!! It will be the time of our lives. I am, after all, easy to please.

Blue Rubber Gloves: A mystery in one act

Yesterday I was at a red light and, as usual, I started looking at people in the cars around me. You never know, I might see something interesting, like a fucking 14 year old sucking her thumb and her dad pretending not to see. Why was he not beating her senseless?!? celebrity!

On this day, I watched the woman next to me pull on a pair of blue rubber gloves. The light changed, and she drove away, so I was unable to ask her (which I totally planned on doing) why on earth she would need to drive with rubber gloves. The dishwashing kind, not the rectal exam kind.

I came up with the following scenarios to explain this bizarritude:

• She has some sort of allergy to pleather.
• It's a fetish thing. Hey, I don't judge, I just watch. Ahh-chooo!
• She was on her way to a dishwashing party, and running late.
• She was hosting a one-woman dishwashing party, in her car. The roaster pan was soaking next to her on the passenger seat.
• She had just Armor-Alled her entire dashboard, and was worried about slippage.
• She knew I was hard up for bloggy material, and wanted to help.

Whatever the reason, Ms. Rubber Gloves made my day. Thanks, crazy lady!

Repost: The Baby Bonnet Pandora's Box

So when I wrote about my baby dream, I wanted a picture of a baby with a bonnet, so I could photoshop it and replace its face with a question mark. Cute, right? Because I am the photoshopping MASTER. Little did I know that I had fallen down the rabbit-hole of human strangeness. First, the good. Then the bad & the downright skeevy. Buckle up.

Now this is just plain adorable.

This makes me want to release my eggs

so that I can dress a little girl this cutely.

Of course, if it's a boy ... well, that's OK, right?

It's been done before.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

Not so cute.

I just love dolls so much. Especially dolls with Kleinfeldter Syndrome (apparently) and possible ocular dysplasia. I'm just making up diseases, but whassup with scary big-head dolls?!?

Other dolls that scare me: Chucky, clowns (especially the ones that bounce back up after you hit them), the potato head couple and all their evil brood, white dolls turned Black or Hispanic (hell, Asian too---or Pacific Islander), anatomically correct female dolls (with delicate little folds of plastic labia), uncircumcised boy dolls, dolls that cry, politically correct Barbie (like Barbie, but with fallen arches, tiny tits, & cellulite. I think it's called "Happy to be Me" or some up-with-people shit like that), dolls that urinate, dolls that defecate, dolls that spit up ...

I don't get the whole infantilism thing.

Adults in diapers, sucking pacifiers?

You know I love adults sucking thumbs, right?

The bonnet? Not sexy.

Whatever. Live and let live.

Please just tell me there's not a load of Enfamil Green in that diaper.




Try to read my mind on this one.

Yes, I know it's a shar-pei, but unless it's cuddling David Hasselhoff,

shar-peis are just skinbags with feet.

(Story: I used to shop at a boutique where the owner had a shar-pei named Albert. Every time I went in, Albert would come running with a new toy. She bought him full-sized stuffed animals, which he would eviscerate in a few days, to be replaced. One Thanksgiving, he had a life-sized turkey. The next time I went in, he greeted me while shaking a suitcase-sized Pikachu. Also, who names a dog Albert?!?)

Related stories: The Joy of Teddy Bears Dressed as Other Animals

Now here's something interesting. Costumes for fetishists and cross-dressers. Now, I got nothin' against a fun little fetish; you know that. Who am I to judge human behavior? To each his own. I guess I just didn't realize what I've been missing out on. Now I know, and I wish I didn't. Won't you help me carry this burden? Be sure to check out the Gallery.