FAKING IT WHILE MAKING IT

I am a FIRM believer that a woman should NEVER fake an orgasm.  When we are sharing our sexuality with a partner it is only through vulnerability, honesty, courage, and faith that our ultimate sexual and human satisfaction can be achieved.  This isn't necessarily a very easy thing -- especially for a woman, where most of our intense pleasure happens on the inside.

Having made my declarative statement, I admit to betraying my own creed a handful of times in my early years.   Remembering a time I couldn't get "unstuck" in the plateau phase of arousal, I realized I was too self conscious of my body and trying to "perform" for my partner.  The following is an old journal entry of mine answering the question -- why did I just do that?

Dear Passing Lover,

Feeling you between my legs last night was strangely exciting in the most incredible intensity of the word. Under normal unattached and unmedicated circumstances, I would have been able to truly experience the quick and intense orgasm which has come quite naturally to me since the age of thirteen. Last night though, I ultimately felt compelled to fake that part with you. I only faked it because I felt myself at the height of pleasure and vulnerability that I would allow myself to feel with a stranger like you. I may have also been limited due to the cocktail of pharmacology swimming through my own physiology. I was so close and simply wanted to give you credit for a job well done. The fact that I warmed up to you to the point of getting hot enough to carry off a fake orgasm should be a compliment enough, don't you think?

I mean, I eventually brought myself there - after we parted and without anyone else in the room - so the fact I was relying upon my remembrance of our encounter to finish it up should count for something. After you left I could still smell your scent all over my body including that good old fashioned smell of clandestine seamen which somehow soaked into my tucked up bra cups after you came all over my exposed tits. I can still sense it while I write this and I cannot help but smile. The fact that I may not ever feel this again, or at least for a long while, makes it that much more sweet.

So please don't be disappointed with my honesty. Take it as a compliment that I chose not to give up the 20% remaining focus I had which was sucking in my tummy, arching my back, and keeping me in the "perfect porn pose" for your visual pleasure. Were I to let that remaining focus go in order to bring me over the edge - I may not have ever come back. And that would have ruined everything.

Sincerely,

The Faker

WHY I LEFT THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

The real title to this post should be, "Why I Left Saint Thomas for Saint Paul."

As an attempt to get out of the house and do something for myself for the first time since having my two children, I joined the choir at Saint Thomas Catholic Church where I had been married five years earlier and a parishioner for twelve years.  The fact that singing with a group of elderly strangers was my best answer to combating the monotony and boredom of motherhood, proves how intense the desperation and delusion of staying at home all day with a two and four year old was for me. Those who say "mother-shock" and post-partum depression don't last past the first few weeks after giving birth are full of shit.

After about six months of singing mezzo-soprano during Sunday mass, the choir director asked me to step off the risers and take a shot at cantoring the mass parts. Although I was quite nervous in the beginning, after a couple of months of singing solo, I quickly became comfortable singing to the congregation.  Hand in hand with that comfort, went the parishioner's respectful courtesy and tolerance of my inability to really sing on key for more than two measures.  It was something of an unspoken agreement I had with the other church goers -- they would pretend like I could sing well, and I would pretend like they were reverently participating in the Holy Mass instead of plotting their premature departure after Holy Communion.

About a year into my wild and crazy hobby, I realized that I had quite passively lost enough weight to fit back into my smallest sized clothes which had been hanging in the back of my "Closet of Many Sizes."  The I time spent singing and practicing must have replaced the time previously spent napping and eating ice cream.  I was more comfortable with my body shape and excited to wear the crisp, white, French linen blouse with buttons up the middle which I hadn't fit into since my honeymoon.

On a sunny September Sunday morning, I approached the lectern feeling fresh and renewed in my Town & Country inspired attire.  Even though my confidence about my voice was strong, I still despised being made to raise both arms straight up above my head in the "lazy touchdown" sign (and keep them there) as a gesture to the congregation to join in song.  My choir director rejected my instinct to gently and briefly raise one arm halfway, and strictly required uniformity in all the actions of the cantors.

As I began to sing "Holy, holy, holy, Lord.  God of power/God of might..." I scanned the congregation for familiar faces.  Oh wow!  I had no idea the gastroenterologist who performed my colonoscopy last month went to church here, I thought, ...I wonder if he recognizes me from this angle?  And isn't that the guy I dated during my eleven week break-up from Ken who asked me to marry him?  He looks REALLY old now, but at least his wife is pretty.  I am SO GLAD that one didn't work out for me!

As I briefly stepped down from the lectern, a woman sprang up from the end of the third row pew closest to the choir and quickly shuffled straight towards me with her hands forward as if she wanted to grab my boobs.  I guess most girls would step back from this type of approaching stranger, but being a busty broad I get this type of introduction all the time.  So I just stood there.

The conservatively looking middle aged woman came right up to me, pulled together my open blouse and said, "Oh Honey - please button up - they popped as soon as you lifted your arms!"

I looked down to see all but the bottom two buttons of my blouse completely undone.  Raising my arms so high must have brought the fitted pleats of the shirt up to my bust line where the tension forced the closure apart.  The worst part was I had about fifteen seconds for the priest to finish saying whatever three sentences he says before I needed to get back up and sing the Memorial Acclimation.

Fumbling like a panicked teen-ager to button up my blouse before Father's attention came back my way, I reloaded and dashed back up to the lectern in time to start the, "Christ has died, Christ has risen..." intro.  This time singing with my hands tightly gripping the sides of the podium in order to keep my cans confined and myself from passing out of embarrassment.  My reunion with my previously scrutinized audience was humbling to say the least.

After our final hymn that Sunday, I dashed out of arms of Saint Thomas and straight into the anonymous and all accepting love of Saint Paul...Church, that is.  Although my cups runneth over wherever I choose to worship, at least Saint Paul's has given me a chance to strap down tighter and start fresh with a clean slate of respect (for myself AND from others).  Two things I promise myself this time around:  I will never join the choir at my new parish, as well as ever wear a button up blouse again.

HOW I TAUGHT MYSELF TO TALK DIRTY

"...and then I go and spoil it all by sayin' somethin' stupid like, 'I love you'."

                                                            --"Something Stupid" by C. Carson Parks

Have you ever had a talent for something you were completely unaware of until someone else pointed it out?  Well apparently I employ a very unique flair when it comes to my proclivity to talk dirty between the sheets.

This was pointed out to me once when a lover stopped mid-thrust, caught his breath, looked me in the eye and said, "Carrie...I have had a lot of chatty lovers in my life, but none that said quite the things you do."  I was a little confused because I figured everyone said these things during moments of passion and so I asked if I should just stay quite in order to not freak him out.  My lover quickly shook his head and encouraged me to continue on with wild abandon.

During my elementary years as a sexually active woman, every intimate encounter I had was a dysfunctional dance of somehow trying to gain back my inner power.  Having been molested during the dawn of my adolescence, I believed my sexual mystery and power as a woman had been stolen from me.  Sexually acting out was my way of trying to take back what had been done to me.  Being physically vulnerable and passionate with a man while simultaneously never letting myself really lose control was my attempt to replay the childhood abuse and somehow regain all I had lost.

I heard it said once that the one who loves the least controls the relationship.  Operating from such a fearful misunderstanding of what real intimacy was, I believed in order to "win" in the relationship you must always make the other person think you love him more than he loves you, even if it is not true.  Especially if it is not true.  This inflates and bolsters the man's ego giving him a false sense of power, domination, and confidence in the relationship.  That way, he never pays much attention to the fact that you are completely available whenever something better comes along.

Purely for self protective purposes I lived out this mental manipulation during every relationship I ever had. My second rule was to NEVER say, "I love you" first.  The only thing those three words accomplished was ensuring forfeiture of the game and complete surrender to the enemy.

(Is it making more sense as to why I have been in therapy for twenty-five years and that it took me seven years, a team of relationship experts, and A LOT of magic fairy dust for me to meet my husband Ken at the altar as my truly authentic and vulnerable self?)

So it is out of this foundation of scrambled dysfunction that the dirty talker in me was born. It was when I would find myself losing mental and emotional control of myself during sex that I would find myself beginning to moan and groan the words, "I love you!"  Not because I really loved the guy or even cared anything about seeing him again after our encounter, but because this seemed the easiest way to express my feelings of gratitude for someone noticing me.  For pathetic as it sounds, it was only during sexual interaction that I felt truly worthwhile and real.

Because of my issues about not losing control, I would catch myself and stop mid-"YOU" of the "I love you" and verbally slide into "YOUUUURRRRRR COCK FILLING UP MY PUSSY"...or..."I love IT when you...(fill in the blank)."  The "I love (blank)" part always needed to be followed up with further dirty talk expanding on the first outburst so that he didn't catch on to my improv performance and really think I was forfeiting the game and letting him "win."  I would quickly continue describing our current physical act and how "hot/excited/wet/swollen/horny/etc." any or all of my body was reacting to the original "I LOVE - whatever."

Once you start with a sentence like, "I love feeling the way your hard cock feels in my slippery pussy!" words like, "Please just keep fucking me all night long!" and "You are making me so fucking wet - I can't stand it!" easily flow from your tongue.  Throwing in a few moans, gasps, and heavy breathing along the way are great no-brainers while you are mentally composing your next line of "Fuck me like a dirty little whore!" or "Every part of me is wanting you to fill it up!"

Nowadays I share the talents of my past with Ken on somewhat of a regular basis.  It is a completely different experience when being naughty with someone out of love instead of fear.  Sex is much more rewarding both physically and spiritually when both partners can truly be naked with their bodies as well as their souls.  And when that level of intimacy is achieved, the results are fucking phenomenal!

Somethin' Stupid -- Frank Sinatra

LIFE FLASHING BEFORE MY EYES

I should have known it would all come to this.  While sitting on the worn out 7th Heaven futon recovering from a fight with Cosmic Charlie, I heard a car driving up the long and winding gravel driveway.  It was quite unusual for visitors to find their way to Cosmic Charlie's little cabin in the woods - even though it was smack dab in the middle of a major urban area.  In fact, the quaint little home was often times too tucked away for even the U.S Postal service to locate, which made it the perfect oasis for my boyfriend to live off the grid and tend to his flourishing grow house packed with pot plants.

Like all the other fights we had, I can not recall the topic that made Cosmic Charlie yell at me in his gravelish "Denis Leary" voice while I stared at him blankly as though I was watching someone having a seizure in a foreign language.  I didn't grow up around yelling, or around anyone who ever communicated their anger directly with words, so I always found Cosmic Charlie's passionate rants fascinating.  Even when his anger was directed towards me.  After he made is point, he took off on a run with his two dogs into the woods to "sweat it off."

All alone now, I sat back on the futon and stared at the three foot glass bong on the coffee table and began to appreciate what a permanent fixture it was.  Noticing how odd my coordinating Wedgwood china plates looked showcasing various strains of herb, I realized it was the perfect metaphor for my relationship with Charlie - Dead Head meets debutante.

One thing about being Cosmic Charlie's girlfriend was that one had to be ready for anything, at any time.  In one of my first phone conversations with Charlie, I kept hearing a very annoying clicking sound on the land line.  When I asked if he could hear it too, Charlie just said, "Oh, don't worry - it's just the Feds."  In person Charlie convinced me that as long as we didn't talk about his career in front of Ma Bell, that we would stay out of trouble.  We got to the point where the audio disturbance became something of a game for us.  After every click we would break from our conversation and say, "Hello" to whomever was listening, then have one-sided conversations (our side versus the Feds) about various topics relating to political current events.  I never once realized what a dangerous game we were playing.

As I sat alone in Cosmic Charlie's home enjoying the cool spring breeze through the open windows and screen door, the sound of tires slowly rolling over crushed rock approaching broke my meditation and pulled my attention outside.  Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! - I thought - A fucking police car!  This is it.  My life is over.  There is no possible way to hide the bong, the green, the cash, the embarrassing amount of porn, and the endless amounts of shit I was not even privy to because Charlie only told me what he thought I needed to know.  Now he was out running in the woods and as soon as he caught sight of the cop car and the inevitable helicopters flying overhead, he would continue running all the way to Mexico leaving me to rot in some women's prison like the one from "Angels In Chains" -  the most watched Charlie's Angels episode of all time.  A fucking chain-gang!  What a waste of time the years of college prep courses, piano lessons, voice instruction, French tutors, and volunteer humanitarianism had been.  It was all swirling down the drain with not so much as a martial-arts belt to aid me in my future daily priority of prison survival.

So I just froze and tried not to breath, hoping I could make myself invisible as I had unsuccessfully tried to do so many times as a child waiting for my inevitable humiliation and punishment from the surrounding self-appointed authority of the moment.  The approaching officer - all decked out in his crisp polyester paramilitary garb complete with hat, badge, and loaded holster, exuded the most threatening sense of power and authority I had ever encountered despite having been raised in the Catholic Church where nuns in full habit attire were about the scariest human forms ever known.

The tall, muscular officer calmly walked up the front porch stairs and stood staring at me through the screen door.  I figured the SWAT team surrounding the cabin, must have sent in the city cop first strictly for protocol purposes - something to do with due process of sorts.  My only other encounters with law enforcement had been for two speeding tickets and supplying the refreshment table during "Safety Day" in school.

"You must be Carrie," he said with a delightful smile on his face.  I was waiting for him to follow it up with my social security number which would shortly be replaced with my prison number like Jean Valjean from Les Miserables (known by his prison number, 24601).  Of course he knew my name, the piles of transcripts from my tapped phone conversations with Cosmic Charlie had my life story in print and I was a little creeped out thinking that he must also know I was having my period.

"I'm Bill...a friend of Cosmic Charlie," he continued as though we were old friends, "is he around?"

"Ummm...he just took the dogs for a run, do you want to come in?"  What the fuck was I saying?  Inviting the wolf into the hen house was so typical of me.

Just as I opened the door for Bill, Charlie came bolting up the driveway and onto the porch with an outstretched hand for the officer to shake while the other patted him on the back as if to say, "Hello old friend, what a delightful sight for sore eyes you are."  I was really confused.

I quickly found out that Officer Bill was a regular customer of Cosmic Charlie's and had just stopped by during his workday to score a bag.  The three of us sat down together and shared the peace pipe while I struggled to wrap my head around the events of the day.  So I guessed I wasn't going to prison after all - at least not yet. 

Two months later Cosmic Charlie and I attended Officer Bill's wedding where he vowed his love and fidelity to a born-again Christian beauty queen whose platform at the state pageant was entitled, "Meeting America's Challenge:  The War on Drugs."  I didn't even bother to ask my date what our gift to the happy couple was, as I knew it was something the bride would never see.  And like our gift to the couple, shortly thereafter my ties to Cosmic Charlie went up in smoke.

Partly due to the new understanding of possible consequences to my illegal lifestyle and partly due to a desire to live the life I always wanted, I decided to return to an albeit more dangerous emotional lifestyle two-thousand miles away at my parent's home.  At least I knew the long term results of living a life with my family only ended up with me checking myself into a psych ward instead of law enforcement checking me into a correctional facility.  Also all my years of schooling and lessons would be put to much better use during group music therapy than time spent in the yard.

MY BODY: A LOVE STORY

My entire life I have been obsessed with two imaginary numbers - my weight and my credit score.  The former was a number which no matter how low I got it, it was never low enough for me to be satisfied.  Although the latter has always been an incredibly high number, I once lived in daily fear that if I made one false move it would plummet to a value closer to my goal weight.  I believed my financial status would never be recovered and in turn my life would come to an end living under a bridge somewhere.

For now, let me just tell you about how I finally came to love my body regardless of any numerical label assigned to identify it.  At one time, my entire day was pre-determined by the read-out on my bathroom scale in the morning.  When that number was lower than I expected, I spent my day as the most beautiful and intelligent woman in the room.  Conversely, when that number was higher than I expected, I would spend the day being the ugliest and most mentally deficient person on the planet.  I have long since given my scale to my two young children who use it to weigh produce when playing "grocery store."

During most of my adolescence I was obsessed with food and heavily immersed in a destructive cycle of binging and purging.  The more I worked to control my weight - the more out of control my weight became.  It was a baffling wild goose chase which finally came to an end in my mid-20s after much therapy and personal growth.  Although the food obsession was lifted, the body loathing continued until one remarkable day.

My most protected secret throughout my relationship with Ken had nothing to do with the details of my colorful past and everything to do with my real weight.  During my pre-natal visits to my OB/GYN I made it very clear to the nurse never to reveal the steadily rising number on the scale to my husband.  I was about one hour from delivering my first born at a scheduled Cesarean section when the hospital nurse walked into my maternity room to review my stats prior to surgery.  "So let's see here," she said, "you are five feet, eight inches tall and 213 pounds."  Fuck, I thought, the jig is up!!!

Ken just sat there staring at a tile on the floor, with a look on his face that I interpreted to be horror.  Later I learned he hadn't even heard a word the nurse said.  I had gained thirty-five pounds during my pregnancy and currently out-weighed my husband by a good twenty pounds.  The anesthesiologist could not get there soon enough to load me up on narcotics which I was counting on to take me away from my current state of humiliation.

Five days later, Ken and I were back at home with our four pound newborn premie Valerie, wondering - What the Hell we were doing? - and completely lost in new parent confusion.  I stepped on my bathroom scale for the first time in a week which miraculously revealed a readout stating, "187 pounds."  I was astounded.  How does a person lose 25 pounds in six days without having a body part amputated?

As I stood there looking in my full-length mirror at my naked post-partum body, an overwhelming feeling of gratitude and joy came over me.  I suddenly saw the body of a beautiful mother who had: a thick, sagging tummy where life had been created and released, strong arms to embrace and comfort her family with, and rock hard boobs engorged with all the nourishment needed to sustain new life.  Having been on strict bed rest for the eight weeks prior to Valerie's delivery, I had a new fascination and respect for the ability to move freely and without judgment over whether or not I should be making a particular move.

I began to see my freckle's, which I had always despised, with the same eyes my husband has always adored them with.  All of the imperfections of my skin, including my stretch marks, were suddenly badges of honor for a life lived.  A life filled with adventure out in the sun.  I could feel a solid, grounding, sense in my legs and feet which I now knew would provide me with the strength and balance to carry myself and my life forward.  No longer would the defeating judgment of my past body be my guide.

While I was half-dressed, Ken came in our bedroom in response to my summons.  As I stood there in baggy, high-waisted, maternity underwear and an open nursing bra with one Pamela Anderson boob sticking out, I joyfully exclaimed to my husband, "Honey!  Look at how FUCKING HOT I AM!!!  I just loss 25 pounds in six days, dammit!!!  Look at this body, Ken!  I am so fucking beautiful!  I finally understand why you have never been able to keep your hands off of me."

Ken just looked at me with a huge smile, shaking his head from side to side and trying to either hold back laughter or the urge to have me committed - I couldn't tell which.  "YES CARRIE!  You ARE HOT and I love you desperately - I've never understood why you couldn't see all of that for yourself before now."

I finally understood why my personal trainer of a husband never "drilled me" about exercise and weight control.  He really did love me just the way I was and still does today, just the way I am.  Which is why he continues to "drill me" in the bedroom on a daily basis no matter where my body is along the 70 pound spectrum of my weight history. 

Just yesterday, Ken put is arms around my waist in an embrace and said, "I think you are getting a little smaller here."  Knowing I was on the lower end of my approximate ten pound monthly weight fluctuation I replied, "Really Honey...?  Or are you just saying that to get laid?"  Ken just smiled and said, "I don't need to tell you THAT to get laid."  He was right, as he always is.

THE FEMALE "SEX HANGOVER"

After a night away from the kids with my husband Ken, I woke up the other morning far from home with a sex hangover.  For those of you not familiar with this term, let me explain:

Like in the same way one experiences the delayed aftereffects of drinking too much alcohol in a relatively short period of time; a woman can feel the delayed aftereffects of having too much sex in one night.  Most women experience this sex hangover in their early days of "doing it."  Like in college when our male partner's refractory period was more like 5 minutes instead of 5 hours, or even 5 days for some now after marriage.

Instead of feeling her headache and some nausea and dizziness like from alcohol, a woman's sex hangover is felt it in her vagina primarily, while it extends all throughout her body from there.  The feeling of minor swelling and achiness from vaginal excoriation is what can have us feel like we are walking funny the day after.  In layman's terms (no pun intended), too much friction.

There may also be some puffiness throughout the vulva from her and her partner banging into one another over and over and over.  Although this hurts, it hurts in a GOOD WAY compared to the traditional hangover from alcohol.  Every time she feels the soreness throughout her body, she remembers what she was doing then, to make it feel that way now.  GOOD TIMES.  Typically this only takes a day or two to heal, so if left alone (key here), your girl should be better than ever before you know it.

Often, the sex hangover extends to muscle soreness all throughout the body.  A female partner may have whiplash from bobbing her head up and down for extended periods of time, or over-use of upper body strength from hand-standing and back bending.  Bruising may appear on the forehead from too many accidental encounters with the headboard, and rug burns may show up with no memory of how they could have gotten there.  To top it all off, an intense headache can emerge due to dehydration from so much physical effort - and the dehydration is only exacerbated by the too many to count alcoholic beverages it took her to be going this far to begin with.

The cure for the female sex hangover is cranberry juice, rest, and lots of pampering by her partner.  The man must not only give his girl a break from sex - but also from anything else she doesn't want to do for the next day.

So Ken took me to breakfast, then brought me home, and put me to bed - alone.  The rest of the day he played with the kids, folded some laundry, and let me recover in peace.  For the most part anyway.  Of course my husband Ken is something of a freak of nature when it comes to his sexual appetite - so I would be a liar if I tried to completely sell him as the perfect partner.  Out of the three more times he approached me for sex that day, I successfully turned him down without having to unlock the gun-safe.  That was good, because the last thing I would ever want to experience is a sex hangover in prison.

OH JOAN!!!

The other morning I sat at my mother's kitchen table while she applied the same Loreal Performing Preference #5MB hair color to my roots, which she has been doing since I was thirteen years old.  Although my roots weren't gray until I was twenty-eight, I have generally spent my entire life, like most women, trying not to look anything like my real self.  My mother, Joan Crawford, was an early inspiration and avid cheerleader regarding my synthetic metamorphosis.  And the other morning the saga continued.

I have told my mother countless times NEVER to read anything by this alleged imposter "Carrie Valium"- and then when she reads it anyway, not to believe a word of it.  How is my mother even familiar with Carrie Valium to begin with, you say?  Well, once again, I come from a very dysfunctional family and in spite of my heroic efforts to release myself - sometimes I slip a little and find myself tap-dancing backwards in a penguin suit asking my parents, "Do you love me now?  Am I pretty enough?  Am I smart enough?  Am I thin enough?"  I really do know the answers to my questions, so don't even think about trying to fill me in (especially on the last question!).

First of all, I LOVE my mother very much, just like I LOVE my kids, and I LOVE my husband - but why are those closest to us always our biggest pains in our ass?  (And with my husband Ken, I mean that strictly in the good way.)

The moment I am all wrapped in a styling cape (completely at Joan's mercy) while she applies hazardous chemicals very close to my brain, she says, "So...I read some of your blog."

Now out of all of the nineteen blog posts I have written since the New Year, my mother chooses to read the one about basically getting my first rim-job from a bi-sexual co-worker during Girl's Night Out, right after leaving a lesbian bar.  The first thing she said was, "I just didn't think it was very funny!"  I also recall her using this line as we were walking out of the matinee of Schindler's List in 1993.  Apparently she was prepared for a "Speilberg movie" (like The Goonies or Gremlins) instead of the ever so obvious "Holocaust movie" that had been all the buzz for quite some time.

"Aren't you just doing all of this silly stuff to be funny?" she pushed.

"Mom, it wasn't really supposed to be funny - just fun."  I replied while giving up all hope of trying to change the subject. My greatest effort was to desperately stay rooted in my thirty-seven year old self, instead of crumbling into a messy little girl which, up until recently, was so typical for me during this sort of interaction with my parents.  I went on to tell her that my story was a mirrored reflection of what so many women of my generation experienced during our college years, but none of us really started admitting to until recently.

"WELL I NEVER DID ANYTHING LIKE THAT!" my mother exclaimed with so much defensiveness and judgement that I couldn't tell if she was more angry at me for doing it - or at herself for never giving herself the opportunity.

"MOM - YOU ARE NOT MY PEER!!!  YOU ARE MY MOTHER!" I shouted, "WHICH IS WHY YOU SHOULDN'T BE READING THIS SHIT TO BEGIN WITH!!!  GOD FORBID I EVER ATTEMPT TO ASK MY OWN DAUGHTER ABOUT HER SEX LIFE - I PRAY SHE WILL HAVE BEEN RAISED WITH ENOUGH GOOD SENSE NEVER TO ANSWER MY INQUIRY!!!"

"But that didn't really happen...did it?" she continued.  The surprising astonishment and judgement in her voice made me suddenly realize that although my mother has a handful of gay male friends - that she is actually something of a homophobe towards lesbians.  This probably now meant that Meredith Baxter Birney would not agree to play the Lifetime Movie version of my mother.  In the '80s everyone always told me my mom looked just like Elise Keaton, so I never questioned the obvious casting choice before.

"No Mom!  Nothing I ever write about ever really happened.  It is all completely made up and created out of thin air - which is exactly why you shouldn't waste your time reading one more word of it.  Now just let it go."  I calmly replied, with one foot prepared to leap on and carry me all the way out her front door - despite the time sensitive process occurring to my mane.  I figured the worst that could happen is I would have to grab the neighbor's hose and rinse out my hair before getting into my car.  And uneven plaid hair color would be perfect for the upcoming St. Patrick's Day.  My vanity just wasn't going to be worth my sanity for this one.

Luckily, for the first time in my memory of our interactions together she backed off.  Of course she took the conversation back to the same old, "Your life was so much easier than mine!" routine, but that one I am a pro at managing.  I employed the same technique which countless therapists of mine have used on me for twenty-five years:  tilted head, concerned and sympathetic brow, and A LOT of "That must have been very difficult for you..." jargon.

Ultimately, I believe, most people just want to be heard.  Which is why I write, and why my mother always makes everything about herself.  My friend, Lamont Cranston III, once told me that writing is "a way to lance our psychic boils."  We all have them and we all attempt to lance them in different ways.  Some of us choose ways which actually work, while others choose what is most comfortable.  Either way, at the very root of it - just like our hair - if we hang around long enough, we all end up the same.  Bald or gray.

For now, I choose to keep fighting the good fight and keep Loreal's stock price stable.  But one day I will finally quit fighting nature and introduce my authentic life to my authentic person.  Of course this will also be the day after my 100th birthday celebration when I FINALLY let go of it all and:  join the Cheesecake of the Week Club, cease all body hair removal endeavors, throw away all restricting body-garments (including bras...ESPECIALLY bras), and show my 2nd husband (who hasn't been born yet) how beautiful I really am!

The televison version of my mother, Joan.  Thank you Meredith Baxter Birney for finally living your authenitic life.