Elizabeth Alexander’s poem, Race, makes me think of my (great-great?) Aunt Marie Ragin, who passed away long before I was born. She was born and raised in or around Florence, SC. During a family gathering on Mothers’ Day, we looked up a page on Facebook that has become a digital family tree of sorts, curated by relatives far and wide. My grandfather, on seeing Marie’s photograph:

“That’s Marie! That’s mama’s sister. You know she moved to Florida and turned white for 20 years? She passed for white. I used to love when she’d come to visit, but hate for her to get close to me. She used to bite my cheeks. Lord, she used to tear my cheeks up! But whenever she came she would take me downtown with her, and you know, it was total segregation then. But they thought I was one of her maids’ children or something. So she could go inside Kress and all the stores. Go inside and sit right at the lunch counter and order food. And I would go with her. Sit right up at the counter!”

At some point later, after a bus accident that caused injury, she was institutionalized in Columbia, SC. My mother remembers visiting her there on occasion. She apparently kept her free spirit. I would have liked to know her.

I read this article earlier today, about the father of a slain soldier who is (irrationally) pissed at the governor of New Jersey for lowering state flags in commemoration of Whitney Houston’s passing. I know full well that comment sections on the internet are reserved for the worst human beings on earth to be able to speak the pieces that no one will listen to in real life, but I read anyway. Of course, there were gems like

Yeah and you’re so right that “she was definitely an icon”–she was an icon for pitiful, self-destructive and abusive behavior. I don’t care that she had a great voice and sold a sh-tload of records, she was a pathetically horrible public figure and role model. No flag lowering for such people, clearly. Christie is an absolute idiot for sticking his neck out this way!

It is great to see that some politicians think it admirable to idolize a burned-out drug-sucker.

and

it doesn’t matter what her problems were. Turning to drugs is the coward’s way out. She had enough money to buy anything she wanted, fame, a career, family, etc., but she ended up just another drug-addled celebrity, no better than any bum on the street whom you cross the street to avoid. How does that justify the honor of flags flying at half mast?

among the similarly-styled 17 pages. I know that this amount of vitriolic hate isn’t just because of people’s holier-than-thou attitudes about addiction and drug abuse (yes, I’m getting at what you think I’m getting at, but that’s not what this post is about) but it reminded me of a fleeting thought I wrote down a couple years ago after the death of Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett:
…both of them were strung out on drugs when they died. But for her it was acceptable because she had an illness people could see, name and identify with. But palliative care is somehow unacceptable when there’s something terrible going on inside, even when it’s just as debilitating.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about mental and emotional illness in all their forms, and I keep coming back to the question: if we accept that there are some disorders that modern science and the human body cannot cure or heal, could it follow that some mental/emotional disorders carry the same limitations? It’s been proven to some extent that a lot of sexual-based mental illnesses can’t be “cured,” but does it go a step further? Are there some traumas that some minds just can’t deal with? Are there some illnesses that a person is never going to recover from or work through? Can mental conditions be as terminal as physical ones?

And no, I didn’t add a comment to the article asking if it would be acceptable to lower the flag for any of the (upwards of) 30% of veterans dealing with alcohol and drug abuse issues, most as a result of PTSD. The cognitive dissonance might blow minds.

Back in the mid-nineties, when the Kardashian girls were only struggling to be relevant to their father, the E! network used to basically only play entertainment trials, Talk Soup and reruns of old TV shows. My favorite of the bunch was the David Letterman show. I watched it during it’s normal time at night because my grandfather enjoyed the nightly Top 10 Countdown, and even though I wasn’t getting half the jokes in retrospect, I always thought it was hilarious. Operating on a child’s skewed concept of time, it never occurred to me that the reruns I watched during the day had originally aired before I was born.

One afternoon, Dave’s guest was a guy with a chicken who was apparently unbeatable at tic-tac-toe. Several games were played. Each ended in a chicken win or a draw. I was transfixed. The chicken’s home was said to be a video arcade in Chinatown. I promptly informed my mother of my new life goal: to travel to New York and beat that chicken. She murmured something about that show being filmed in 1978 and that chicken being kung pao’ed a long time ago, but I wouldn’t listen. That chicken and I were going to meet. The idea consumed me for like 3 days. Then I mostly forgot about it.

Some time later, my 6th grade gifted and talented class went on a field trip to NYC.  Yes, I was gifted. And talented. As we meandered Canal street only half-supervised, spending all the souvenir money our parents had sent on fake Tommy Hilfiger watches and X-rated fortune cookies, I spotted something vaguely familiar in a video arcade across the road.

It was the cotdamn tic-tac-toe chicken.

I lost my shit. I try not to curse a lot, but no other phrase can begin to accurately capture my excitement. I approached in slackjawed awe. I looked at the chicken. It looked at me. It did a little dance. I inserted a quarter. The game began.

The chicken won.

I refused to let this critical moment of my life go unwitnessed. I ran across the street and gathered my friends. Yallgottaseethisitsachickenthatplaystictactoe AND THE CHICKEN ALWAYS WINS!  We approached the garishly bright glass booth ready for a fight. We examined the animal as best we could, searching for signs that it was not in fact a robot or muppet. I noticed some red lights and circuitry flashing periodically near the chicken’s feet but wrote it off as the type of computer controls a genius chicken would require to play tic-tac-toe with a group of gifted AND talented schoolchildren. Our minds had been opened to the streets of New York City. We’d seen a dead guy in the subway. We were grown. Surely no chicken could beat us… in such a simple game, at that. I went in for the figurative, non-edible kill. I don’t know how long we were there, but I spent 8 dollars in quarters. All the spending money I had left.

After 16 grueling rounds of defeat, I gave up. Turn by turn, my friends also failed to best her. I just realized the chicken was a her. I’ve been calling it a he all these years. Anyway, as I turned away dejected and noted that my new designer watch appeared to already be showing wear in the leather, I was oddly without bitterness. Yes, I had been bested by that chicken, but I had met that chicken face to face.   My sadness gave way to respect. I had no embarrassment. I’d simply met an animal with mental capacities I couldn’t explain. I felt like a better person for having taken the challenge. Cue the Rocky theme. End scene.

Of course, this was the first, if not the only, story I had for my family upon returning home the next day… after showing off my new watch, which by then had completely stopped keeping time. I remember repeating “I just don’t understand how the chicken got to be so smart! How did they teach it??” My mother, ever the pragmatist, always with a bucket full of rain for even the spazziest parade, put me out of my misery. If you feel about this chicken the way I feel about that one scene in The Muppet Movie, I suggest you stop reading now. (As you can see, she only suffered the “magic” explanation when she didn’t know the answer.)

The chicken, she explained, was shown what moves to play by a computer inside the fowl’s habitat. Those were the red lights I’d noticed. Just like our unbeatable Tandy TRS-80, the computer simply could not be outthought by the human mind. Therefore, neither could the chicken. She also reiterated that this was probably one of dozens, if not hundreds, of chickens that had been placed into these cruel conditions day after day since at least the mid seventies for the amusement of children like me. And now I, with my roll of quarters, had become part of the vicious cycle. The chicken had never donned a graduation hat or tiny glasses. It had never been to training in a lab. It was just a chicken. Just like the one I would be eating that night. There was no magic. Only exploitation of a tasty friend before frying.

She did make me feel kinda bad. But not that bad. Because in the back of my mind, I knew there was a key element that her fancy explanation didn’t address. The computer may have shown the chicken what button to push, but how did the chicken learn to push buttons?

Then, a few months ago. I found .

My mom can, figuratively speaking, go to hell. I don’t care about her advanced science and common sense. All I know is that for fifteen years, she could not extinguish the fiery joy that David Letterman placed into my childlike heart and mind. And that says something.

Thank you, Dave.

A couple of conversations I’ve had over the past couple months, plus the current Susan G. Komen / Planned Parenthood situation has me thinking a lot. I don’t really know where I’m going with this; just follow me.

My mom has been telling me this story since I was about 10 or 11 years old.

Sometime in the mid-80s, a 19 year old girl returned home from her freshman year of college pregnant.  The father of said wee one was not a viable option for providing financial or moral support. The girl’s mother refused to even speak to her.  Scared and feeling completely alone, she made an appointment at Planned Parenthood for an abortion. While she waited in the living room for a taxi to take her there, her mother broke down and begged her father to talk her out of it. He did — promising that though they were disappointed in her, they weren’t THAT disappointed, and any child of a child of theirs was a child of theirs. The mother called a quorum of friends to intervene and offer to adopt the unborn tot. The point was to get it through her head that there were plenty of options for her to get rid of this baby without getting rid of it’s whole life, and both she and her spawn could easily have the opportunity to fulfill their full lives’ potentials.

Of course, the 19-year-old tart was Big Edie herself, and the tiny embryo clinging precariously to the walls of her uterus was me. (The story was supposed to illustrate how much and how deeply I was wanted, even before I was anything to anyone — a concept I’ve struggled with for most of my life.) My hope is that by the time I’m 60, this tale will have evolved and become increasingly dramatic — my grandmother threw herself over the hood of the taxicab as it left the driveway. After a tearful argument, they followed my mom to the clinic where my grandfather wrestled the speculum from the doctor’s hands. Something involving my grandma punching a nurse in the face. I can totally animate this.

At any rate, I shared bits of it (the true parts) with a small group recently and was immediately asked to share my “survivor testimony” for some pro-life initiative. I have no intentions of doing anything of the sort. I never thought of it as a “testimony” as much as a funny/heartwarming(?)/somewhat-inappropriate-for-a-small-child family story. My fallopian-tube journey is my own, and I think mothers considering that decision have enough inner turmoil and self-doubt to worry about without a beautiful chocolate nymph in their faces trying to make them feel bad. I am sure my cherubic face evokes the same visceral reaction as an ultrasound image. I’m sure. And even though I am a very real, very direct benefactor of one person making the decision to not abort, I know that her circumstances are not everyone’s, and what worked for her may not work for every woman in a similar situation. I am glad beyond measure that her choice was pro-(my)life, and I am also glad that it was a choice.

Twenty-seven years later, I am a part-time worker with no health insurance, but I at least know that Planned Parenthood will help me manage my ladyparts at prices I can afford until I have coverage again. Now that my birth control stockpile has run out, I can get assistance there if sex ever becomes a feasible possibility in my life again. And I recently learned that PP can help me locate counseling services. I’ve been to their location on behalf of someone else (and lamented that it’s so circuitously hard to get to… with the sad realization that this is probably by design to protect employees’ safety.) I’ve donated to them and referred others to their services. Planned Parenthood never saved my life. In fact, it almost took it before I had the chance to know who I was. But I am still glad it exists. For everybody. Regardless of how they choose to use it.

In solidarity with Internet Blackout Day, I’m not posting anything tomorrow. There’s no reason to bring up the fact that I haven’t posted anything yet this year, anyway. Work has been a bear. Design/repurposing hiatus until Feb. 1. I’ve got cooking to do.

While the rest of y’all are bullshitting, I follow through on my New Year’s resolutions. My life cycles kinda follow the calendar year anyway, but I think that’s just my SAD at work.

• “Be 50% less emotionally available.” – check
• “Be over this bullshit.” – check, unchecked, checked again
• “Fly somewhere fly.” – I cheated because I already had a trip booked, but unexpectedly checked 3 times
• “Have a better job lined up” – check, overaccomplished, tabled for rechecking in 32 days.

And I gained a little sister, which is pretty unbelievable to me still. I spent the majority of 2011 pretty miserable, but I think the past week has kinda made up for it.

Moving forward is hella bumpy, but I think it’s going to be worth it once it all shakes out.  That’s today’s Kwanzaa principle, ain’t it?

I have been duped — multiple times over — by Amazon Prime. I signed up for a 30-day free trial so I could get expedited shipping on some stuff I needed for a trip I was taking this summer, but forgot to cancel before they charged the $80 annual fee. (And no, I didn’t realize until tonight that I could have just cancelled it if I’d never used it.) That’s dupe 1. Dupe 2 is that I’ve been buying a lot more on Amazon since, just to take advantage of the “free” Prime shipping. Hair supplies, gifts, most of Kristin’s reading list for the school year. I did catch a come up on three Kinect games for $50… that saved me $100 plus shipping by itself. I’m sure the Prime has paid for itself by now, but at the cost of my increased purchasing… which is just what they wanted!

Books are what got me onto Amazon in the first place, since it made purchasing textbooks and required reading for college so much cheaper. I’ve also been ordering a lot more casual reading… since the shipping is free, why not spend $5 on something that looks interesting? Since I like to read, and I like other people to read what I’m reading (so I can have someone to nerd out with), I’m selfishly unselfishly opening up my Prime shipping to the masses… or just the masses who bother to read my stuff.

So anyone who’s a fan of KinkyThought on the Facespace as of January 3rd gets added to my benevolent reading list, meaning I just might randomly send you something you’d find interesting via Amazon Prime between now and my re-up date in July.  Not on Facebook? I find that kind of weird, but whatever. Follow me on Twitter instead, I guess? Reply to the post? I don’t know. Network in whatever bizarre ways people who aren’t on FB do.

And remember… you MIGHT NOT get anything out of me between here and June but newfangled fuckery and darn good writing. Or you might get this. It’s only 7 dollars.

My Gramma and I bond through cooking. When I travel, I always bring her crazy spices, which she never uses, but I impress her by making stuff with of them when I come home to visit. Since I ditched her for Nassau last Christmas, I treated her (and the family) to a Bahamian spiced roast and an islandy mango-peach-apricot-orange ham this year. ^_^

Bahamian Roast
I left my slow cooker at home, so I did this on the stove, but you can go either way.

1. Wash and pat dry a decent size beef roast.  I live by Dangold Inc. spice blends so sprinkle both sides with the equivalent of a bit of Garlic/Onion and a bit of Garlic Bread mix. Douse generously with Salt N’ Pepper Big Sour (a mix from a shop called Beth’s Kitchen, Nassau Bahamas. I have no idea what’s in it, and I’m going to cry when I run out.)
2. Add about 2 cups of Mojo Criollo and marinade for a few hours or overnight. If you’re slow cooking it doesn’t need to be too long. Remember to flip your meat in the middle so the marinade is evenly absorbed.
3. Slice 1 large onion and saute in a large pan until tender with a hint of brown. Make a bed in the bottom of your slow cooker with 1/2 your slices. Set the other half aside.
4. Mix about 3-4 tbsp olive oil, more Big Sour mix, and 1 tbsp sugar to make a sugary spice oil paste. Slather the entire roast in it. Brown on all sides in the same pan you did the onions in until you get nice brown carmelization all around. you’re not trying to cook the meat through, just get it pretty on the outside. It should look like it’s ready to eat on the edges but still be raw in the middle.
5. Move your roast to your slow cooker and top/surround with the rest of the sauteed onions. Add the leftover marinade and enough beef broth to just cover the meat.
6. Cook according to your slow cooker’s directions… mine takes 4-6 hours, just check every so often after the first 3. You’ll know its ready when it’s just tender enough that trying to lift it out with a knife makes it fall apart.

Obviously if you don’t have the same mix of spices that I do, try your own. That’s what makes it fun! The Dangold mixes are mostly garlic and onion powders and a bit each of parsley, oregano, turmeric, cumin, sage, pepper, bell pepper and carrot. I can’t begin to tell you what’s in the Big Sour, but there’s some bay leaves, parsley, allspice, and it’s a little citrusy… so I think there’s dried “Big Sour”/Uglifruit in there? I don’t even know. Have fun with it! It never comes out the same way twice anyway.

Island Ham

I don’t want to give out the secret of this recipe because it’s so good, but it’s not really that big of a secret…

1. Bake a precooked spiral ham as usual, 15 mins. per pound at 350, but add a cup and a half of Coke or Cherry Coke to the bottom of your pan surrounding the ham and tent well with aluminum foil. Baste every 30 min. with pan drippings.
2. In the last 20, 30 minutes, mix brown sugar and assorted fruit jams in a 2:1 ratio. Bring to boil, then remove from heat and allow to cool and thicken. I used mango preserves, apricot jelly, peach syrup/juice, a dash of orange juice to cut the sweetness and a heaping teaspoon of ground mustard. As it cools it should get thick and syrupy.
3. Once the ham has been heated through, crank the oven to 450 and slather the whole ham in your fruit syrup. Let it broil just long enough to get a good crackly, syrupy carmelization on the outside. No more than 10 minutes.

Voila! You should have a tender, sweet and delicious ham! Again, make your fruit blend to your liking. I just used what I had around… I dropped my jar of peach-pineapple glaze so I didn’t have that, I had mango preserves the Bahamas that I wanted to use, I was out of canned pineapples, I had a tiny jar of apricot preserves I stole from breakfast in Paris, my grandma was making peach cobbler and had leftover juice… you could just as easily use rasp/straw/blue/blackberry or grape jellies. I haven’t experimented with other flavor sodas, but I’ve heard Dr. Pepper is interesting.

I don’t feel like writing, but I feel guilty that I skipped out on the holiday jams again. This is old, but heartwarming.
Originally posted 10/5/06

Am I the only person alive under the age of 40 who knows what Fletcher’s Castoria tastes like? If you don’t know, it’s a derivative of castor oil (I think?) that tastes like Cheerwine. I knew enough about drinking verboten liquids (from my ink and beer experiences) to never just drink it straight, but I used to pretend to have tummy aches just so my Gramma would grab the little brown bottle from the medicine cabinet above her toilet and give me a couple of spoonfulls.

The company that makes it is now owned by the same company that makes Menthlatum. Unless your primary caregivers were born prior to 1945, you have probably never seen a bottle of Mentholatum, but I believe my grandparents have been using the same one since my mom was a little kid. It’s an antiseptic apparently; I used to think rubbing alcohol was just for rubbing sore muscles down (another thing that only old people do).

Rose Ann and Fred are the reason I’m so damn quirky (and alone). I love them for it.

Most of my close friends know that I haven’t talked to my father in about 8 years. There’s a story, but no major life-crushing reason. My therapist at the time suggested that in order to have a relationship with him at all, I needed to have no expectations of him whatsoever. I don’t voluntarily keep people like that in my life. Our relationship was always (and I mean this in a COMPLETELY non-creepy way) more similar to what you’d have with a charming but narcissistic boyfriend than your standard father-daughter one, so I feel comfortable saying I dumped him, and haven’t had much desire to acknowledge him since. That’s pretty much how I roll.

At some point in the past five years, he had a daughter. I found out about her around the way and ignored the information. A couple years ago my stepmother called and wanted me to meet her. I wanted to– really– but at the time I couldn’t do it. I have a lot of shit with my dad. A lot of resentment, a lot of unanswered questions, and a lot of pent-up… well, hate, to be totally honest.  I know all too well what it’s like to be a child burdened with a relative who should be there but just won’t, and I couldn’t risk  being that way to someone else. I knew that I needed to work through my issues with him, and with her, before I could take that step. If I was going to enter her life, I was going to be IN her life, for permanent for real. I wouldn’t be to her what our father was to me.

And yes, I resented her. Not her, but her existence. It took a lot for me to come to a point of not crying every day over John, to get over the urge to drive to Columbia and throw bricks through his windows. To be able to mention his name. My solace was and continues to be that he is a broken person. He can’t love anybody. He couldn’t be a father because he doesn’t have it in him. He’s narcissistic and worthless.  But now he’s driving another little girl to soccer practice? Going to PTA meetings? Is he showing her how to write her name upside down? That was our thing! Why couldn’t he be superdad for me?

I sound like a crazy ex, right?

But honestly, breaking up with the guy I was seeing last year helped me come to some resolutions about my relationship with my dad. A lot of them, more than I care to admit. I knew early on that that relationship was a total rehash of daddy issues — trying desperately to win someone’s affection who was hell bent on blowing hot and cold, on and off, entirely at his discretion. I don’t know why I let it play out, but I think I needed it to. I needed to fail and hurt over not succeeding. I needed to feel stupid and awful that I’d let someone make me feel shitty and unwanted AGAIN. I think it was my mom who noticed during one of my “that n*%$@ ain’t shit” rants that I was using the exact same words I’ve used about my dad in the past. That was pretty deep. It wasn’t deliberate but while working all that out, I suddenly realized I didn’t really hate my dad so much anymore. Of course, I might be simply transferring all my ill feelings to a different target, but at any rate, I feel better now. Less resentful. More like I could hold a conversation with the old man without wanting to shank him first.

So I’m going to meet this new chick. I know she looks just like me. I know she’s been sleeping in my old room, probably in the same bed. I’m gonna sit her down and school her on game — perhaps Chutes and Ladders. We will have an uncivilized chat over hot chocolate and sugar cookies that involves a lot of giggling and loud talking and “we have the same nose!” and “your hair is so pretty!” and maybe we won’t have to talk about the lame dude we have in common at all.  And honestly, I hope he’s not a lame dude anymore, because I don’t want her to have a crappy father in her life any more than I wanted him crappy and half in mine. I’m too old to be jealous of a first grader. I just wanna love that kid. For permanent. For real.