Thursday, August 26, 2010

Granddaddy's goin' to the football game.

I've been trying to write about my Granddaddy for a while now but I get very upset and just hit 'delete' and go get some more coffee.  I'm not good at sickness and death.  Not good at all.

They thought my Momma had cancer in 2001 and it was the worst few weeks of my life.  My father called me and told me I needed to come to the hospital right away.  I started breathing all heavy and he said, "Dresden...we have to be strong for your mother.  Do your best NOT TO CRY."  My father hates it when women cry.  It's a deep rooted...thing.  Too deep for a blog post.  Anyway, I lasted for about 2 minutes before I turned into a giant blubbering snotty mess.  I was no one's rock; I was hysterically crying looking at my small pale mommy in the hospital bed, in pain and scared.  My whole world was being ripped in half and it hurt more than anything I'd ever experienced.

When I saw Steph for the last time, I held her hand and we watched Casablanca.  When I left her room, I knew I would never see her again and I couldn't breathe.  I managed to walk out of the room but the minute I was out of view and earshot, I fell apart.  Like gasping for air, legs giving out, Florida on Good Times falling to her knees after James died yelling "Damn, damn, DAMN!" fell apart.  I was on the hospice ward and I guess they are used to that because, without a word, a nurse grabbed my elbow, kept me steady on my feet and walked me to the elevator.

I also hate hospitals and nursing homes.  I used to work with people who had HIV and AIDS and some of them were too sick to live on their own.  I found nursing homes to be careless waste lands of the forgotten.  The staff was usually playing cards or watching Judge Mathis while residents lay in their own filth.  The only time I went to a nice nursing home was when my rich ex-boyfriend took me to visit his rich grandmother in what I can only assume was a country club for the elderly.  If you don't have money, nobody cares.

I hate staying in hospitals, mostly because it's boring and all dignity goes out the window.  BUT.  The drugs are amazing.  What I hate more is going to visit people in the hospital.  It's like walking into a mall you've never been to.  You don't know where anything is.  Also, everyone is sick and it smells like cleanser and just a touch of urine.  When they did my mother's hysterectomy it was just after the cancer scare and I went to the hospital and I couldn't find her.  I couldn't find her or anyone else in my family and the staff was like, "Um...she's in surgery."  I fucking know that, but WHERE IS SHE?!  I finally just sat down and cried for like an hour.  When I went to see Steph at Mayo, I went to the information desk and said, "I'm looking for a patient, her name is Stephanie Perry."  The woman typed on her computer and said, "I found a Stephanie Johnson."  I was anxious and terrified and I lost my mind.  "Perry.  STEPHANIE PERRY.  She has cancer.  WHERE IS SHE?"

I'd like to pretend that I can handle death and illness but I simply cannot.  And right now, my Granddaddy is very ill.  He was near death, started getting better and now, he's doing weird, confusing shit.  I'm not going to lie to you and say my grandfather and I were very close all my life and he gave me Werther's original butterscotch candies and told me stories of his youth.  Mostly, he asked me why I wasn't interested in religion, commented on my weight and made it clear that women were not his equals.  But he also took me to see The Empire Strikes Back and let me have candy and popcorn.  And often when he talked to me about religion, he held my hands and spoke to me in that gentle grandfather kind of way.  He's always been confusing to me but I also know that he has seen and been through more things in his life than I will ever, ever understand.  And because he endured, I am here and I went to college and have a job and can support myself.  All of that is because of what he went through.  I recognize and respect that.

The other day, my father was talking to his father on the phone.  Granddaddy said, "I'm going to the football game.  I'm just pulling into the parking lot now."  This, of course, is not true.  He was sitting in his nursing home bed in South Carolina.  Then there was silence and my grandmother came on the line and said, "Well Sonny...he just put the covers over his head."

While I am worried that something is wrong in his brain--a stroke or something equally alarming--I take comfort in thinking that maybe he's just in his Happy Place right now in response to all the trauma he's gone through in the past few months.  I hope he is going to the football game.  I can't help but smile picturing it: my big, 80 year old Granddaddy throwing the covers over his head, saying he's going to the football game.  No, it's not funny.  But if he needs to feel something other than helpless and sick, let him go to the goddamned football game.

Monday, August 23, 2010

Whatever Happened To....

So the end of the movie isn't necessarily the end of the story. Remember all those John Hughes and Cameron Crowe movies we watched when we were ten and twelve years old, convinced that high school was going to be just like that? How did all those awesome relationships we were totally waiting for really turn out?



Whatever Happened To...Diane Court and Lloyd Dobbler
After a painful visit to the jail to see her father and a long, bumpy flight to England, Diane and Lloyd rented a flat in a terrible neighborhood in London because it was all they could afford. They spent the first few weeks strolling through the streets, hand-in-hand, looking into each others eyes for hours and making sweet love on the futon mattress they planned to get a frame for soon. Once Diane started school, Lloyd found himself alone, bored and missing the Malibu, which he'd sold for $700 to buy his plane ticket. Diane was tense and swamped with school work. Lloyd's sweet gestures--always having dinner ready when she came home, picking her flowers and making her mixed tape after mixed tape--began to feel like a facade for his lack of motivation and refusal to get a job. Lloyd explained (until he was blue in the damn face) that England's kick boxing circuit was much harder to break into than Seattle's. Lloyd also became increasing jealous of Simon, Diane's rich and overly educated classmate. He also felt Diane emasculated him by constantly nagging and using words she knew he didn't understand, like "rectitude" and "mordant." Sex grew more and more infrequent. After an unfortunate incident at a Fellowship dinner party where Lloyd called Simon a "douchebag", Diane tearfully told Lloyd that she just didn't think this was working anymore. Lloyd reminded her that she's dumped him before and as soon as the shit hit the fan, she'd come running back. Diane said she just didn't love him anymore. Stunned, Lloyd left the flat, wandering the streets of London in his trenchcoat. A friendly old Englishman invited him inside his pub to dry off and have a beer on the house. Lloyd sat, downing free beer, telling Oscar, the kind old barkeep about Diane and all they'd been through. Oscar listened politely, nodding appropriately and when Lloyd finished his story, Oscar looked him in the eyes and said, "Wow. She sounds like a real bitch if you ask me." Lloyd had to agree with Oscar, mostly because he was totally wasted. Filled with false confidence, Lloyd staggered back to the flat and declared that Diane was an uptight bitch. Then he ransacked the flat, looking for all his mixed tapes. Diane stood watching, rolling her eyes. With his 16 mixed tapes, his duffel bag of underwear and socks and his $55 cash in hand, Lloyd left the flat. He woke up the next morning on a park bench. Realizing what he'd done, he ran back to the flat, pounding on the door, yelling how sorry he was for everything. Diane said it really was for the best and told him she and Simon were planning to study the Romantic era in Scotland for a semester. For the next hour, Lloyd alternated between crying and begging for forgiveness and reminding Diane that he father was in jail and she better really think about what she was giving up. Finally, Diane gave Lloyd enough money to buy a plane ticket back to Seattle, saying, "Hey, at least I didn't give you a pen this time, right?" For several weeks, Lloyd hung out in the Gas 'n Sip parking lot with some old friends, drinking and plotting to get her back. Eventually, he picked himself up and started managing a record store. According to sources, he is still there, dealing with a string of failed relationships, although he does stop occasionally to analyze why this keeps happening.

Fat Camp--Part DEUCE

I really ought to thank Fat Camp because, without it, I wouldn't have the flair for dramatic writing that I have now. My parents still laugh recalling the letters I sent them begging to come home. I'm sure they didn't keep them. My mother still has her taxes from 1979 but the letters that her little fat daughter sent from camp? Gone.

My mother gets particularly hilarious when she quotes the last, painful line of many of my heartfelt notes:

"I am crying as I write this."

My mother is a small woman, with tiny alligator arms and short, short legs. When she thinks something is really funny, she'll sometimes kick her legs up in the air and roll backwards, balling her fists and scrunching her abnormally stumpy arms against her chest as she howls with delight. Even now, at 34, I'll pout, watching her revel in my tween anguish. I'll fold my arms across my chest and stomp away, at which point my minuscule, ghostly white mother will say, "Oh DRESDEN. It was HILARIOUS."

This is the same woman who still cries laughing at the memory of me slipping on ice and sliding under the car when I was in kindergarten. What a HORRIBLE mother.

(Relax, my Mom is awesome and can totally kick your Mom's ass. Remember what I said about being dramatic? Right. But yes, she is a short pale white woman. With alligator arms.)

I digress.

The first thing Fat Camp taught me: NOTHING IS AS IT SEEMS.

When the Fat Camp menu says "Danish", what it really means is whole wheat toast with cottage cheese and blueberries on it. I'm no sous chef but that ain't danish. When the Fat Camp lunch lady handed me that shit, I inquired (with some alarm), "That's danish?"

If you think about it, whoever made that ballsy move was really putting their life at risk. Who wants to put themselves in a situation where 200 fat kids are growing more and more agitated by the second, saying, "I was told there'd be DANISH." The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that there was an interrogation-style room where the Fat Camp Puppet Masters could watch our pudgy devastation and piss themselves laughing.

It was my first breakfast at Fat Camp and the whole danish thing really got to me. And FYI, blueberries don't stay on toast well, even with a 1/4 cup of fat free cottage cheese attempting to cradle them. Most of my blueberries rolled off my toast and on to the floor, where they were squashed and splattered. Much like my dreams.

Also: "camp" implies actual camping, which, as an adult, I know to be horrible (even when there's beer)but as a child, I was curious enough about to actually go to camp. There was no camping. There was an old military barracks with bunk beds. Bunk beds are the most horrible invention ever in the whole wide world. ESPECIALLY AT FAT CAMP. Unfortunately, my roommate (we'll get to her later....) had arrived first and claimed the coveted lower bunk. Which meant I had to climb my unathletic fat ass up a ladder and dream about falling and crashing to my death every night. I was also worried that I was so enormously fat that I might crash the whole structure down on my roommate. For about 5 minutes. Later, I kind of wanted that to happen.

When you're actually camping, you have to worry about bears and shit, which is scary. But in the abandoned military barracks where I'm pretty sure they filmed the opening sequence to the original Prom Night, there are horrible, horrible centipedes that crawl on your face and eat your eyeballs out of your sockets. No one should have to deal with this. No one.

So many lessons learned at Fat Camp...so little sympathy.

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

How Fat Camp Changed My Life, Part 1

Did I ever tell you that I went to fat camp? I did. Three separate times. Two summers--1985 and 1986--at The Body Shop (no, not a car repair joint)and one summer at Weight Watchers Camp in Wisconsin (1988). The first two summers were more about my parents deciding I needed to "get in shape" and "learn healthy eating habits" since, apparently, they couldn't teach me themselves. The third summer was all about me wanting to get the hell away from my parents. Fat camp was a familiar option.

I don't fully remember the first two visits to fat camp; I was young (and fat) and kind of a shy kid. I recall clearly that no one knew how to pronounce my name. It's really not difficult, so I can only assume that they were all starving and therefore unable to take on simple tasks, like pronunciation. I also remember that The Body Shop camp was all girls, which was fine because I was too young to understand that benefits of a co-ed summer camp (that came later). The Body Shop is where I learned weird camp songs like the one about old friends being gold and not-old friends being silver (cuz that makes sense) and some ancient tune about begging for "pence" on the street. I also recall being screamed at at 6am because I wasn't doing aerobics with quite enough enthusiasm.

But Weight Watchers Camp...that's where the action took place. You see, I was 12 and therefore a woman. Ok not really but I was 5'10" sporting a full C cup and when I look back at pictures of 12 year old Dresden from that summer, I have to admit, I was a little bit smokin'.

I doubt that my parents drove me to Wherever, Wisconsin in the summer of '88 fully understanding the ramifications of sending their daughter to a co-ed camp but I'd like to take this opportunity to thank them. because it changed my life. Wanna know how? Stay tuned, bitches....

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

It would be cool if you could call me and just say hi.

I don't think they have phones where you are.

Do you remember when we watched Casablanca? I do.

But the thing that I remember the most is the day we had some stupid fight about nothing. Some trivial, doesn't-even-matter argument and I walked away from you. I just turned and walked away and left you standing there. I was mad, probably crying because I tend to do that even if I'm not sad, just frustrated. I remember looking over my shoulder at one point and you were following me. Just a tiny, small little figure walking slowly after me, shoulders slumped forward, wearing that blueish-gray knit cap you wore for practically the whole year. You didn't look mad. You looked sad. And so, so small. I wish I had stopped, waited for you to catch up and squashed whatever crap had wedged itself between us. We could have sat on the lawn and drank Olympia beer and complained about how much it tasted like pee.

I remember the time you hooked up with the guy I told you I liked. So I went back to our dorm room and locked the door, knowing I had your keys in my backpack. I remember you sat on the other side of the door and knocked and cried and said you were sorry. I remember I forgave you pretty quickly and never thought of it as an actual betrayal. Because it wasn't; it was just girl drama and that shit don't matter. But those few minutes that I knowingly locked you out of our room were cruel, self-centered and incredibly immature. I wish I could have those minutes back. I wouldn't even think about closing the door on you.

I miss you every day. But today, I miss you a lot. A lot a lot a lot.

Thursday, August 5, 2010

Please Stop Trying to Sell My Vagina Things

Dear EVERYBODY:

Please stop trying to entice my vagina with your bullshit products.

I think most women would agree: our vaginas are doing JUST FINE. Once it's vagina time, rest assured, we will make our purchase quietly and based entirely on our personal needs.

That said, please stop trying to convince me that the following products are awesome:

1. Summer's Eve. First of all, soap is fine, thanks. I do not need to spend an extra $5 on a "gentle vaginal cleanser." My vagina is not fragile. Also, "Summer's Eve"? Really? Yes, because when I think about the level of cleanliness my vagina possesses, I think of a warm summer evening. Who the fuck came up with that?

2. "Cool" tampons. Tampons are inherently not cool. Some things are just not able to achieve hip and trendy status, like PowerPoint presentations, taxes and yes, tampons. I would like to add here that packaging your allegedly cool tampons in NEON COLORS does not inspire confidence. Rather, my vagina is wary of anything that glows in the dark entering its space.

3. Douche. Really? I mean, people still buy that? There's a reason assholes are referred to as "douchebags." I'm just sayin....

4. KY jellies and creams, as well as any condom, that markets itself as "for her pleasure." Listen...by now, we all know how this works. No amount of artificial lubricant or odd shaped condoms is going to do your job for you, dude. Any woman who buys these products in the hopes of "getting back that spark" is really just spending way too much dough on a short night of disappointment.

5. Vaginal odor blockers. I wish I had been in the room where the meeting took place where the ad executives decided that the best way to artistically capture a particularly stanky day was to show a woman seeing a reflection of herself wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt, looking like her dog just got hit by a car right in front of her. Or the woman hanging out with her friends who suddenly gets an unexpected whiff of her own vagina and turns away, embarrassed. Have you ever been out with the girls having cosmos when suddenly Carol looks horrified, gathers her purse and says, "You guys, I'm sorry, I have to go, my vagina reeks"? NEITHER HAVE I. And furthermore, if it's that bad, might I suggest a trip to the gyno rather than a trip to Walgreens.

6. Any menstruation product that markets itself using women wearing white pants. And I promise I'm almost done. But any woman who has a brain does not wear white pants or skirts when she is on the rag. It's just a fundamental no no. And while I appreciate that she is out dancing with her boyfriend in her white pants with that devil-may-care attitude, we all know that the day before, she was holed up in her room with cramps, diarrhea and a copy of The Notebook.

In conclusion, while I enjoy your hilarious commercials, you will never own me.

And today's WFT award goes to.....

While testifying against former Liberian president Charles Taylor, supermodel Naomi Campbell stated that until she met Taylor 13 years ago, she had never heard of him...OR HIS COUNTRY LIBERIA.

Ok, I admit there are mostly likely some countries I have never heard of but LIBERIA???? Probably the country in Africa with the most interesting history, in my opinion. So I guess this is proof that UK elementary schools are no better than American schools. Which is sad for the UK. Cuz, I mean, seriously. Take a minute and think about the applicable shit you learned in public school. IN CLASS, not in the hallways or the cafeteria.

Or maybe we can blame this all on Naomi Campbell. I say we do that and stay in the shallow end of the pool. I'm too tired to tread water in the deep end today.

Monday, August 2, 2010

God I Hope My Kid Does Real Drugs

No, I don't want my child to do any drugs. I want them to play the clarinet, join the math club and graduate from high school a pristine virgin.

But if they must, oh let them do real drugs. Mommy doesn't want people to stare and whisper when she walks into the PTA meeting:
"Her son Carl...he huffs gas."
"I heard her daughter Linda is blind from too much Duster. You know, that stuff in a can that you spray on your keyboard at work to get all the Taco Bell crumbs out? Such a shame."

Yeah, don't do that to me Carl and Linda. Haven't I given you everything?? You lived inside me, for Christ's sake, like I was a goddamned studio apartment and this is the thanks I get?

Go to your room. Mommy can't look at you right now.

Crazy Girls Get All the Ass

It has come to my attention that I've been lied to since puberty. See, what you don't know, fellas, is that in addition to being told e can still go swimming when we have our period, we are also told that we must work hard not to be crazy. It's not blatant, you know. It's disguised as medical jargon.
"You're going to experience a lot of hormones during that time of the month."

What the fuck is a hormone? Oooooh it's something unseen that insights rage and terror to all those in my path. Right.
"Just remember...it's hormones and this is all perfectly natural."

Translation: Stop acting like a fucking maniac or no one will take you to prom.

This was ALL a lie. Crazy girls get so much ass. How many times have you thought to yourself, "That girl is fucking crazy" as she's walking down the aisle in a (laughable) white dress? I was at a wedding reception once and the bride danced over to me. She just danced over, didn't have anything to say. So I said what you're supposed to say at all weddings: "The ceremony was beautiful. You look gorgeous. Congratulations!" Lindsay Lohan smiled like she was on acid and said, "I've had 6 glasses of wine, 8 vicodin and 4 adderall. I'm surprised my heart is still beating." This was not her first marriage.

Think about it. Think about all the crazy, crazy chicks you know who always have a man. It's stunning. For now, I'm going to work on being much, much crazier in an effort to get laid.

A non Haiku Haiku for Kyle Waterman, my first college boyfriend

Oh, Kyle Waterman,
Did someone finally shank you,
or did you start buying your own cigarettes?