On being Belinda and other fantasies of childhood

When I was in the last stages of elementary school (circa 1981), the Go-Go's were my favorite group.

My dad had a huge laser disc player, a precursor to a DVD player, and each disc must have weighed five pounds.  The laser disc came in a huge sleeve about one and a half times the size of a vinyl record.  My dad went to a place in Pomona to rent the discs.  On one such trip, my dad surprised us when he bought the laser disc of the Go-Go's live in concert singing their first album "Beauty and the Beat".  Although I am not a music critic, I think it is undisputed that "Beauty and the Beat" is an album that still holds up today.

The album is pop punk.  The album has a host of great songs including "We Got the Beat" (every school kid's anthem), "This Town" (life in the big city), "Fading Fast" (the consummate bad relationship song) and "Our Lips Are Sealed" which was the theme song of me and my sisters who were constantly mortified in front of the neighbors by my parent's fighting.

"Can you hear them talk about us, telling lies, well that's no surprise. Can you see them, see right through them.  They have no shields, no secrets to reveal.  Doesn't matter what they say, in the jealous games people play."

As if it was a minute ago rather than thirty years, I can picture myself in the living room of our house on Glenn street in Ontario, California.   I am singing into a hairbrush and dancing wearing a long skirt with a loose shirt.  A silver bangled belt is slung over my hips.  My hair is curly just like Belinda Carlisle's (the lead singer).

My twin sister Jackie is playing guitar on a tennis racket mimicking the moves of Jane Wiedlin and Charlotte Caffey and Annie is playing the drums off beat (unlike Gina Schock who was always on beat) on the end table with silverware. No one ever wanted to be Kathy Valentine.

We had a tamborine and I would always use it on the song "Automatic".   I would shake my head like Belinda and shrug my shoulders in time with the music moving the tamborine up and down at my side while I mouthed the words,  "Inside fire burning bright...  Time stop.  Automatic."

Being Belinda was my way of imagining that another life existed.

At age six, I used to read my mom's Harlequin romance novels and dream of being a heiress or a ward.  This scarred me for life romantically and caused my first grade teacher to wonder aloud why I knew the word "ravished".  Later, I daydreamed myself into being Scarlet O' Hara.  Then Belinda.

Everyone wanted to be Belinda.  She was the epitome of coolness.  Of course, as a child I didn't know her dark side: the drugs, the insecurities and the rabble rousing.  Or maybe subconsciously I did.  Aren't all cool kids at least a little bit dark?

When I hear a Go-Go's song it transports me quicker than any time machine could.    I morph from a forty something lawyer to a tween lip syching with a hairbrush in her hand.

It brings back the good memories of my sisters and I rocking out and it brings back the melancholy memories of sitting in the park with a book wondering when my dad was going to get home and if my mom was still screaming.

I think that is why I love the Go-Go's so much.  Their music while up tempo is very bittersweet most of the time.

Just like life.

The Greater Fool

I just finished watching season one of HBO's show "The Newsroom".  The show is about believing in the pursuit of truth.  Will, the anchor, is called a greater fool for doing so.  A greater fool is defined on the show as someone who thinks they will succeed where others have failed.  Think Don Quixote (the ultimate literary fool).  It is about going for your passion and doing what you believe in, no matter the cost.

It made me think, am I a greater fool?

Some would say by being a public defender I am.  Being the voice for the voiceless is one of my passions.  I love and believe in what I do.

Yet, I have to ask myself, is it my greatest passion?

I think not said the cat.

When I was five, I used to dream about being a writer, not a lawyer.

When I was the editor-in-chief of Mt. SAC's newspaper "the Mountaineer", I considered applying for a degree in journalism.  After looking at the average pay I changed my mind.  I could make more money bartending and waitressing.  I applied to UCR and chose English Literature as a major because it seemed more practical.

My newspaper professor Gina, who was a former journalist for the Washington Post, never spoke to me after graduation.  Gina had higher hopes for me than I had for myself.  Gina had entered my story in a national journalism contest and when it won second place, she told me she thought I should be a journalist.  She urged me to apply to the journalism school at Columbia University.

I couldn't visualize it.  New York?  It seemed impossible.

Sometimes we make choices in our lives and it takes us down a different path.  Would I have found my greatest passion earlier if I had went down the scary road rather than the safe one?  Where would I be?

You cannot second guess your life.  I cannot change the past.  But, what I can do is visualize who I want to be and what I want to be.

And, I have realized that I want to be a greater fool, no matter how desperate and foolhardy it may be.

My pen is my only sword.  Wish me luck.

If humilation is good for the soul....

If humiliation is good for the soul I am set for life.  A couple of Fridays ago, I had a hemorrhage at a conference in Irvine.  From my butt.

That's right.  From my bunghole.

The blood poured my asshole as if I had hit a vein.  The truth is, I had.  Hemorrhoids are a type of vein and as I learned later from a kind rectal surgeon, my hemorrhoids were at the stage four thrombosis stage.  Stage four didn't sound too bad until I learned there are only four stages.  Stage four equals surgery.

Earlier, right after lunch, I had to use the bathroom and as I sat down I saw the toilet was filled with blood.  I stood up and blood splattered on the floor in a puddle.  After ten minutes of me trying to staunch the flow of blood, the hotel bathroom looked like a murder scene from a slasher flick.  I am going to pass out and someone is going to see all of this blood and think someone tried to kill me.  Eventually, they will realize it was just my butt bleeding out.  

I was at the Hyatt in Irvine for a Veterans' Court Conference and had tried to ignore my worsening bathroom issues all week.  Every morning, I would wake up and use the bathroom and see blood filling the toilet.  I would grit my teeth through the pain and put pressure and the bleeding would stop.

But this time the bleeding didn't stop and I grabbed paper towel after paper towel and stuffed them in my jeans. 

I called my husband crying and told him I was going to leave the conference and drive home.  "Are you fucking crazy?' he yelled at me.  "You're hemorrhaging, call 911.  It could be internal."

I walked back out to the conference room and sat down with a grimace.

One of my colleagues, a female probation officer, asked, "Are you OK?"

"I am not OK at all", I whispered back.  "Can you go with me to the restroom?"

We had went to the fair the night before and danced our asses off to "No Duh", a "No Doubt" tribute band.  She could never have foreseen what getting friendly would mean the next day.

I walked out of the conference room and ran to the bathroom.  The paper towels were soaked through.  I felt dizzy as I watched more blood splatter from my anus to the bathroom tile.  

My probation officer friend handed me some more paper towels over the bathroom door which I stuffed in my underwear.  Hobbling out of the restroom, I said, "I am going to pass out.  We need to call the paramedics."

The District Attorney on my team was waiting outside the restroom for us.  He said, "Let's go sit down."

I replied, "I can't sit down."  The face he made showed his confusion and I said, "That is where my problem area is," I said.  He nodded.  The hotel staff walked over and told us that the paramedics were on their way.

Within three minutes, a paramedic who looked like a cross between Owen Wilson and Bradley Cooper was taking my vitals.  His partner, a Matt Damon lookalike (I know paramedics are cute, but these Orange County guys were ridiculous looking!) asked me what the issue was.  

I was so exhausted and dizzy that I was blunt.  

"My ass is bleeding out."

The humiliation did not end there.  I was rushed to the hospital where I had to tell multiple nurses, an ER doctor and a rectal surgeon my hemorrhoid issues.

The rectal surgeon stopped the bleeding with table sugar.  My husband said it is the osmosis whatever that means.  

Today, I am on my way to the hospital for a colonoscopy.  The first step to treatment is to make sure that there is nothing else wrong.  I drank two liters of a vile liquid yesterday.  And fasted.  That may account for why I am stupid enough to blog about this.  It is not bravery or a need to share, it is food deprivation.

In the end, what I have learned from this experience, because as all my readers should know, my goal is always to make this blog like an after school special on ABC (cough, not!), humiliation is relative.

It just depends on your threshold and after a month of (finally) dealing with my hemorrhoidal issues, I no longer care what people think.  It is my issue.  We all have them.  And the scary part is, I suffered for ten years because I was too embarrassed to talk about it.    

But, fuck it.  I am a bare ass, sugar on her butt hole (aka sweet ass) girl who has thrown all caution to the wind.  

Go ahead and stick your scope up my butt and look inside.  Just be gentle.   

The absence makes the heart grow fonder conundrum

I am in Irvine all week on a conference for work. And, I am homesick. Very homesick. I am homesick for the sweet smell of my dogs and my husbands thick head of hair lying in our king bed beside me. It may seem odd to focus on his hair, but you haven't seen my husband's thick black head of hair which only grows more shaggy and floppy with age while mine gets thinner and more brittle. Does absence really make the heart grow fonder? I don't know if it is the absence so much as the longing for that person or animal (which are one and the same in my world as my animals are people to me). It is the remembrances of the day to day ordinary rote routine which seems compelling in its absence in a way that is not compelling in reality. I even miss the way my husband hogs the shower in the morning. He is six foot four and taking a shower with him is like taking a shower with a huge tree in the way. His frame blocks all my water stream and I have to wait until he is done. I miss that. I lived by myself for many years and when I was in law school in Los Angeles, Adrian and I only saw each other on weekends. When I moved to Texas after law school, we saw each other once a month for three years (not including a few extended vacations). While in Houston, I was used to sleeping alone, going to the movies alone and being alone. I am not happy alone anymore and that is scary. That is not to say that I don't like some alone time now and then, because I do. As a feminist I think it is important to be happy on your own before you choose to spend your life with someone. It is nice not to need someone, but to want someone. I went to the beach and boogie boarded Monday night. I swam in the ocean and sat on the beach and read my book. No one bothered me, but on the other hand, I had no one to tell how much the face of the water moved me or how much my arms hurt. Well, that's not entirely true, I told Facebook, but that is a sad friend to have. I guess even if I don't want to admit it, I need someone and want someone and have someone. And for that I am happy.

Heartburn Part II

Marriage is hard.  So hard.  I struggle to be a good wife.  Truth be told, I don't even know what the term "a good wife" means.  Does it mean a good housekeeper?  If so, I am fucked.  If it means a good cook, again, I am screwed. 

If being "a good wife" means being independent and self absorbed, I am golden. 

My childhood provided me little to model myself on.  My mom and dad fought loud, hard and often and if you drove by our house in Ontario, you would often see red and blue lights swirling in front of our house to signal our dysfunction to the neighbors.  Plus, on the housekeeping front, my dad cooked and the house was a mess. 

If I compare Adrian and myself to my mom and dad we probably come out well in the wash.  I rarely scream and yell and we try not to let our arguments turn to fights. 

Most days, I am just trying to keep my head afloat.  It is all I can do to deal with Adrian, the two moms, our three dogs, my job as a public defender and my mandatory workout regime.  Lately, I have been selfish I admit.  I have to be.  Being unselfish and giving it all at work and home resulted in me gaining one hundred pounds.  I have lost most of that weight and look fabulous (note: humility has never been my strength). 

If I have the choose between being a happy fat wife or a trim and healthy divorcee, I will choose being the divorcee.  But the questions is, does it really have to come to that?  I think not, but who knows?

Truth be told, there is no one else in the world for me.  But, sometimes, I think Adrian would be happier with someone else.  He says no but there are times when I think yes,  Yet, if  Adrian is masochistic enough to want to put up with me and my crazy family, then who am I to stop him?

It may be a cliche, but it is truth to say that marriage is full of hills and valleys.  The last weeks have been hills if hills are rough and valleys are smooth (I can never quite figure out that analogy) but yesterday Adrian looked at me with tenderness in his eyes as opposed to annoyance and I could see the valley emerging.

Whew.

Leopold the Cat

I first saw Leopold in a Houston high rise.  I was on lunch from my corporate law firm gig at Texas’ largest law firm.  He was small and black and mewing in the corner of a cage. 

There was a mall attached to our law firm’s office, most everything in Houston is enclosed due to the hot humid summers. 

Most days, my colleague Nancy and I would sit at Starbucks and talk about all the bullshit at work.  But on that day Nancy was busy and I walked around the mall deciding on what to eat.  Chic Fil A was a typical choice. 

The mall was sponsoring an adopt a pet day and as I walked by the Humane Society table a young volunteer said, “Wanna get a cat?”

I looked in the cage at the small black cat.  Due to my goth girl leanings  I had always wanted a black cat.   He mewed when I picked him up and I stared into his bright green eyes and it was over.  I had always said that I would name my cat Leopold after Leopold Bloom (the main character in James Joyce’s Ulysses). 

When I brought the cat up to the registration table, the young girl said, “Oh you picked Leopold”.  When I looked at his tag the name Leopold was scrawled in blue ink.

Leopold Bloom Mantz became my confidante.  He weighed in at twenty pounds and was more dog than cat.  Whenever I got home from work at the law firm, I would walk into my house and say, “Leopold where are you?”  Leopold would bound down the stairs two at a time and meow at my feet.    I would pat my bed and Leopold would jump on the bed and snuggle in the covers with me purring in my ear.

When I moved to San Francisco I found out UCSF housing didn’t allow cats so my mom and dad took Leopold in.  “He’s like a big monster Jenny,” my dad would say on the phone.  “He sleeps on my recliner and won’t get off.”  My dad complained about Leopold but I could hear the affection in his voice.

When Adrian and I moved to an apartment in San Francisco that allowed cats, my mom and dad drove from the Inland Empire to bring Leopold to us.  As they drove up Ninth Street in their beat up car, I could see my mom shaking her head.  Leopold sat in the back of the window.   My mom pulled up to our apartment and got out of the car pulling at her hair. 

“That stupid cat, he got out at the rest stop.  Your dad and I had to chase him down.” 

My mom picked up his cat carrier and said in an anxious voice, ”He’s not in there where did he go, god dammit!”

“Mom, he’s in the back window,” I said with a laugh and reached in the car and picked him up with a grunt.  He had gained at least five pounds.    

When my dad was sick and I was down from San Francisco taking care of my dad, he would always ask, “How’s Leopold Jenny?  That cat’s crazy.”

After my dad died, Leopold came home to the Inland Empire with me.  Poor Leopold was forced to stay with my mom in her senior apartment until I bought a house.  Leopold would sit in the front window at night when my mom was asleep.  One day, my mom’s next door neighbor told her, “Un diablo en un casa (a devil is in your house)”.

Soon, Adrian and I bought our house in North Fontana and Leopold moved again.  He loved the new house and roamed the rural neighborhood. 

About a month after we moved in, I went to the LA Fair with my friend Tracy and before I left, I let Leopold outside to prowl.  When I got home from the fair, I couldn’t find Leopold anywhere.  I tried not to panic.
 
I put up flyers in the neighborhood.  I chose my favorite picture, the one of Leopold in his superman Halloween costume.  I offered a five hundred dollar reward.  Adrian drove around the neighborhood for days and looked in all the storm drains. 

Adrian tried to console me, “We’ll find him, don’t worry.”  But I knew.  I could feel it in the pit of my stomach.  He was gone.

One night, about four days after he disappeared, I woke up in the middle of the night and swore I could hear Leopold meowing.  I ran outside in my pajamas and followed the meows next door to the empty for sale house.  But, I knew there were no meows. 

It was just my memory of Leopold’s meows echoing in my head.

It's just a microwave

My microwave is keeping me up.  It broke today.  It seems like everything is breaking.  Our washer broke recently and then the television downstairs (both for the second time).  We haven't fixed the television yet.  We didn't have a choice with the washer and decided to just replace it.

My ten year old Mercedes is in desperate need of repair.  I can't go over sixty on the freeway without the steering wheel shaking.

And now this.  That piece of shit microwave.

The more stuff you have, the more stuff that can break.  And, the nicer your stuff, the more expensive it is to fix.  As my husband said before he went to bed, "that's a thousand dollar microwave." 

Should any microwave cost a thousand dollars?  Maybe my husband's exaggerating.  Maybe not.  It's a pretty nice microwave.  It's built into the cabinet and fancy with all the bells and whistles.

I think back to my first microwave.  I bought it at a garage sale for ten bucks.  On second thought, maybe someone gave it to me for free.  I am speculating here, but it doesn't really matter because the point is, a microwave breaking should not be a calamity.

Except it seems like one right now. 

It's late, I have to work tomorrow and I need to wake up early so I can work out at six a.m. and all I can think of is the microwave.  We need to fix it because we may be moving soon with my mother-in-law to her house in Hesperia and renting out this huge monstrosity we call a house.  Who needs 3700 square feet?  Certainly not I said the cat. 

My husband and I were happy in five hundred square feet when we lived in UCSF's dental school housing on the hill with Sutro Tower.  I could barely fit into the bathroom, but it was enough.   Just barely enough, but enough.  And we popped our popcorn in a small white microwave we bought at Walgreen's.

Fuck, I can't get that damn microwave out of my head.  It just stoppped.  No power.  We tried the breaker, but that wasn't the problem.  I was watching my favorite show "Smash" and I went downstairs to make some popcorn and tried to turn the microwave on.  Nothing.  The microwave died without a cause.

You take a microwave for granted until you don't have one. 

I really want some microwave popcorn.  Actually, what really sounds good is the old fashioned kind of popcorn you make in a big pot with kernels and oil.  The kind my dad used to make when I was little.

My dad would pop the popcorn and throw it into a Stater Bros. brown paper bag.  He would melt margerine on the stovetop and pour it on top and grab the Morton's and shake it all over. 

"Watch this girls," he would say as he shook the bag.  Me and my sisters would fight with one another to grab a handful of the delicious, buttery mess.  It was the perfect combination of salty and sweet.

Maybe that's what I miss.  The simple happiness of popcorn from a brown paper bag.  Nothing fancy, kind of like my dad.  Simple, but sweet.

Unlike my fucking microwave.