Awaiting Further Instructions

By laurenflax | Published: February 27, 2010

The original plan was to go to a really wonderful sounding yoga thing tonight. I paid for it, and had every intention of going. As I was getting ready to leave, I got this feeling. The feeling. All of the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. My back and shoulders got bumpy. “What IS this?” I said to no one. On the way downtown, the feeling persisted. Back, neck, shoulders, all one big hair standing on end. I thought about going home, and instead called Scott to make sure he was ok. He was fine.

Every so often I get a pang of anxiety before going somewhere – usually on a long car trip, but occasionally for more mundane stuff – and I won’t be sure whether it is anxiety or intuition talking. So, I have a script that I run through with myself, and 99.99% of the time it goes like this:

If you don’t want to go, make the decision. Don’t go.
Ok. I’m not going.
Do you feel relieved?
No. I feel stupid.
Then go.
Ok, I’m going.

I have done this so many times over the years that I shorthand it now in my head:

Decide. Not going. Relieved? Stupid. Go. K.

But, every so often, I have the conversation and I do feel relieved and I skip whatever it is. This was different, though. It was a physical sensation that I didn’t really recognize, then I heard it, clear as day: Lauren, go home. I got off of 83 at Northern Parkway to turn around, and heard it again. “Take Falls Road.” I got out of the lane for 83 and took Falls Road home, feeling like kind of a nutcase. So, what was I supposed to do, I wondered, go home and await further instructions? Is this when the mothership arrives? I expected to come home and find the house on fire or one of the animals dead. Or the mothership waiting. But, I am home, and everything seems ok. I called to check in with my mom and she is fine.

I am not sure if this is a “something’s wrong” ick or some other kind of ick. Actually, I am not certain that it is an ick at all. I am just sitting here, feeling quite a bit weird, and awaiting further instructions, I guess. Maybe it just was not my night for a yoga and meditation experience, or maybe I would have gotten mugged or broken my foot or something if I had gone, or maybe it was the combination of green tea and Fritos for dinner. Or, maybe I am a nutcase… but I don’t think so. I know better; I have learned to trust these things, however strange they may seem.

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T Party

By laurenflax | Published: February 27, 2010

Back in the day, the only place one could get a concert t-shirt in Philly for a band other than Guns and Roses or Def Leppard was at a concert, or at Zipperhead, or that place in New Hope, the name of which I cannot remember. I went to lots of concerts and got lots of t-shirts, and although many of them either fell apart or were lost to ex-boyfriends, there are a few that I just could not let go over the years.

They are in a stack in the bureau in the basement. Most are either large or extra-large, which I am not, so wearing them is not really an option. Also in this category is my biker jacket, purchased during my junior year of high school. It is both leather and too big on me now. I was a little bigger when I wore all of this stuff, but more significantly, my style was a little bigger, too. Anyway:

I am fairly certain that this is one of those “vintage” shirts that is now being mass produced and sold in Hot Topic and Alloy. My high school boyfriend saw the Femmes in the late 80s with his older brother -I am guessing it was the tour for 3- and his older brother bought the shirt. When he outgrew it, he gave it to his little brother and when his little brother outgrew it, he gave it to me. Somewhere in my boxes of cassettes, I have a copy of the bootleg from the show. In it I can hear high school boyfriend -still pre-pubescent at that point- laughing in the background.

The first show I ever went to see without parental supervision was The Mighty Lemon Drops and The Ocean Blue at City Gardens in Trenton in January of 1990, probably around the 25th or so. It was just days before we moved to Cheltenham. I wore this tshirt over a blue long sleeve shirt with purple and blue pajama bottoms and black chuck taylors on the day we moved, and many, many times after that.

The bleach mark has been there forever. I still remember what the stage looked like at this show. During some of the songs, there were crazy, super bright lights behind the band in a kind of white-blue, like sunlight.

This was from the Perspex Island tour, fall of 1991 or maybe spring of 1992. Matthew Sweet opened for Robyn Hitchcock at the Trocadero in Philly. I bought two shirts at this concert. The other one was white and got so pit-stained that I had to throw it out. I loved this shirt and wore it with the aforementioned pajama bottoms, and also with cutoffs over tights and fishnets, with combat boots or chuck taylors.

My friend and I got to the Troc good and early. We were waiting outside the front door when Robyn and band arrived. He looked at us and said, “Well, they keep getting younger, don’t they?” I was in the balcony for this one, looking straight down at the band. During “Uncorrected Personality Traits,” there were two people at each mic for the four-part harmony; in one section they switched off in pairs, syllable by syllable, maintaining the harmony. It was pretty impressive.

I have seen They Might Be Giants so many times now that I cannot remember where this shirt came from. I had one from the Apollo 18 tour in 1992, but I think this was later, maybe John Henry in 1994.

I love this design. If it is, in fact, from the show in 1994, it was a great show. BU sponsored it, but hardly advertised, so there were only a few hundred people there. Bummer for the band, but pretty awesome for those of us who found ourselves in a four hundred person conga line during “No One Knows My Plan,” which might not have worked so well in a more crowded venue. I talked to the drummer for a bit after the show (he’s a libertarian), and nabbed a playlist. On the way out, I saw John and John heading into the Aerosmith bar. I was prepared to use my fake ID and follow them, but my friend didn’t have ID, so we left. Bummer.

This wasn’t from a concert, but it is in the same drawer with the concert t-shirts, and is also an XL. I won it in a silent auction for NARAL in St. Louis, hence the pro-choice business all over it. Where I stood then or now on this particular issue is not the point (actually, at the time I could have cared less, but some one from my office was obligated to go to this event), the point is that I was shocked to be at a stuffy fundraiser in the midwest and see a signed MTX shirt up for auction.

So there it is. The late 80s and 90s in t-shirts.

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Fare’s Fair

By laurenflax | Published: February 25, 2010

Light rail tracks, on that morning the train never arrived.

I started taking light rail downtown to teach back in January, and prior to that I took it into town often for events. And every single time, I felt like a sucker for actually buying a ticket, having never seen anyone check them. Of course, there is the sign on the train that reminds passengers of the $500 fine for riding without paying first. I started doing the math to figure out how often I would have to ride for free for the $500 fine to be worth it. The answer is “a lot” it turns out, so I resumed buying my ticket every day and feeling like a sucker.

On Monday I was running late, and got to the light rail stop just as the train was pulling up. The driver was kind enough to wait as I ran. Of course, I skipped the ticket machine, running like mad with my heavy backpack. When it was time for the return trip home, I thought about buying a one way ticket back. The train was late this time, so I had half an hour to think about it. I also thought about the ticket I bought on the Tuesday between the two snow storms this month, when everything was on schedule according to MTA website, but the train never arrived and I had to find a teacher to fill in for me thirty minutes before the start of class as I was sitting in traffic on 83.

I decided to forgo the ticket. The ticket from that Tuesday, along with half a dozen others were in my pocket, proving that I am a responsible, ticket buying citizen, should anyone really want to know. Finally, the train arrived, and when I got on, the first thing I saw at the top of the steps was a woman with a clipboard, and a patch on her uniform that read “FARE INSPECTOR.”

I avoided eye contact, sat down, and considered my options. Five hundred dollars! Do they really fine people $500? I could get off at the next stop, buy a ticket, and wait for the next train, but I had already waited thirty-five minutes for the one in which I was sitting. I went through my story about the unused ticket and my uprightedness again. I could always lie and say I forgot to buy the ticket for the return trip, but lying is… lying. I opted to remain on the train, not look back to where the fare inspector was standing, and hope she didn’t walk by me. I went over my story again and again.

Two stops before mine, I finally turned around, and she was gone. She could have gone back to the other car, and might get back on at the next stop. I tried not to fidget, and counted every landmark on the way back to my stop. Five hundred dollars!

Finally, the train got to my stop, and I exited quickly. (What if she checked people as they got off the train?)

Today, of course, I bought a ticket, but I still felt kind of foolish. In almost three years back in Baltimore, I have seen a fare inspector exactly once. What are the odds there would be one on the train today, too? Nonetheless, I paid my $3.20 and got on board.

Behold, on the way home, there was a different fare inspector on the train. And this fare inspector had a gun, and other scary looking possible fare-extracting implements. The first person he approached was a man with an open soda. After some argument (“I wasn’t drinking it, just holding it.”), he and two people without tickets were ordered off the train where, from the chatter of people around me who could see them through the window, bad things involving slips of paper occurred.

So, the moral of this story is 1) MTA is not fucking around about that open beverage thing; 2) buy your ticket and 3) it has been a very lucky couple of days.

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Get Lucky

By laurenflax | Published: February 25, 2010

Rainbow at HHI, 8/09.

I got lucky today.

I have always been lucky, not in the raffle winning kind of way, but in a more practical way. I think I may already have written about this, but as a kid, on the rare occasions that I would completely blow off a school project or test (instead of partially, which was more my style), invariably, the teacher would be out that day, or decide arbitrarily to postpone the deadline or exam. This continued into college, and even as an adult, almost every time I overbook myself, some one cancels or reschedules.

I was reminded of this today. I was exhausted this morning, after being in class until 9:30 last night, then coming home and doing some homework, blogging, and at 12:30 having the idea for my SPARK piece kick in. I still had more homework left to do, and a very small window this afternoon in which to complete it before class tonight. And SPARK. And getting Scott’s mom’s stuff on craigslist. And MWA stuff. And and and. As I waited for the train, I was giving myself my usual talk about how I can’t win grad school and not every assignment is going to perfect, when my phone dinged. There it was: a message from the instructor that he had to cancel class tonight.  I marveled at my luck – I am still always surprised when this happens. On the train, I was suddenly overcome with excitement about PERL scripting. At the studio, my luck continued: they’re selling larabars now! And the mat wipes, which had been wrapped in a plastic bag for months were now in much neater dispensers! And I stumbled onto some Rumi poems that I had never seen before, and loved them! All silly little stuff, but it felt magical.

On the train on the way back, an article about luck popped up in my twitter feed. I’ll post it below, but the short version is that people create their own luck; those who are more open to what is around them are luckier than those who are not.

In other words, what the mystics have always knows: the magic, the synergies, the luck, it is all always there if you’re willing to see it.

After a glum December and a January that wasn’t much better, life is starting to feel magical again. Lucky me!

Here’s the article. It’s from the Telegraph, January 9, 2003, reposted not necessarily with permission, but if the Telegraph wants me to take it down, ok.

Be lucky – it’s an easy skill to learn
Those who think they’re unlucky should change their outlook and discover how to generate good fortune, says Richard Wiseman

Richard Wiseman
Published: 12:01AM GMT 09 Jan 2003

A decade ago, I set out to investigate luck. I wanted to examine the impact on people’s lives of chance opportunities, lucky breaks and being in the right place at the right time. After many experiments, I believe that I now understand why some people are luckier than others and that it is possible to become luckier.

To launch my study, I placed advertisements in national newspapers and magazines, asking for people who felt consistently lucky or unlucky to contact me. Over the years, 400 extraordinary men and women volunteered for my research from all walks of life: the youngest is an 18-year-old student, the oldest an 84-year-old retired accountant.

Jessica, a 42-year-old forensic scientist, is typical of the lucky group. As she explained: “I have my dream job, two wonderful children and a great guy whom I love very much. It’s amazing; when I look back at my life, I realise I have been lucky in just about every area.”

In contrast, Carolyn, a 34-year-old care assistant, is typical of the unlucky group. She is accident-prone. In one week, she twisted her ankle in a pothole, injured her back in another fall and reversed her car into a tree during a driving lesson. She was also unlucky in love and felt she was always in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Over the years, I interviewed these volunteers, asked them to complete diaries, questionnaires and intelligence tests, and invited them to participate in experiments. The findings have revealed that although unlucky people have almost no insight into the real causes of their good and bad luck, their thoughts and behaviour are responsible for much of their fortune.

Take the case of chance opportunities. Lucky people consistently encounter such opportunities, whereas unlucky people do not. I carried out a simple experiment to discover whether this was due to differences in their ability to spot such opportunities.

I gave both lucky and unlucky people a newspaper, and asked them to look through it and tell me how many photographs were inside. On average, the unlucky people took about two minutes to count the photographs, whereas the lucky people took just seconds. Why? Because the second page of the newspaper contained the message: “Stop counting. There are 43 photographs in this newspaper.” This message took up half of the page and was written in type that was more than 2in high. It was staring everyone straight in the face, but the unlucky people tended to miss it and the lucky people tended to spot it.

For fun, I placed a second large message halfway through the newspaper: “Stop counting. Tell the experimenter you have seen this and win £250.” Again, the unlucky people missed the opportunity because they were still too busy looking for photographs.

Personality tests revealed that unlucky people are generally much more tense than lucky people, and research has shown that anxiety disrupts people’s ability to notice the unexpected. In one experiment, people were asked to watch a moving dot in the centre of a computer screen. Without warning, large dots would occasionally be flashed at the edges of the screen. Nearly all participants noticed these large dots.

The experiment was then repeated with a second group of people, who were offered a large financial reward for accurately watching the centre dot, creating more anxiety. They became focused on the centre dot and more than a third of them missed the large dots when they appeared on the screen. The harder they looked, the less they saw.

And so it is with luck – unlucky people miss chance opportunities because they are too focused on looking for something else. They go to parties intent on finding their perfect partner and so miss opportunities to make good friends. They look through newspapers determined to find certain types of job advertisements and as a result miss other types of jobs. Lucky people are more relaxed and open, and therefore see what is there rather than just what they are looking for.

My research revealed that lucky people generate good fortune via four basic principles. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations, and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good.

I wondered whether these four principles could be used to increase the amount of good luck that people encounter in their lives. To find out, I created a “luck school” – a simple experiment that examined whether people’s luck can be enhanced by getting them to think and behave like a lucky person.

I asked a group of lucky and unlucky volunteers to spend a month carrying out exercises designed to help them think and behave like a lucky person. These exercises helped them spot chance opportunities, listen to their intuition, expect to be lucky, and be more resilient to bad luck.

One month later, the volunteers returned and described what had happened. The results were dramatic: 80 per cent of people were now happier, more satisfied with their lives and, perhaps most important of all, luckier. While lucky people became luckier, the unlucky had become lucky. Take Carolyn, whom I introduced at the start of this article. After graduating from “luck school”, she has passed her driving test after three years of trying, was no longer accident-prone and became more confident.

In the wake of these studies, I think there are three easy techniques that can help to maximise good fortune:

  • Unlucky people often fail to follow their intuition when making a choice, whereas lucky people tend to respect hunches. Lucky people are interested in how they both think and feel about the various options, rather than simply looking at the rational side of the situation. I think this helps them because gut feelings act as an alarm bell – a reason to consider a decision carefully.
  • Unlucky people tend to be creatures of routine. They tend to take the same route to and from work and talk to the same types of people at parties. In contrast, many lucky people try to introduce variety into their lives. For example, one person described how he thought of a colour before arriving at a party and then introduced himself to people wearing that colour. This kind of behaviour boosts the likelihood of chance opportunities by introducing variety.
  • Lucky people tend to see the positive side of their ill fortune. They imagine how things could have been worse. In one interview, a lucky volunteer arrived with his leg in a plaster cast and described how he had fallen down a flight of stairs. I asked him whether he still felt lucky and he cheerfully explained that he felt luckier than before. As he pointed out, he could have broken his neck.

Richard Wiseman is a psychologist at the University of Hertfordshire. His book, The Luck Factor (Century), is available for £9.99 + £1.99 p&p. To order, please call Telegraph Books Direct on 0870 155 7222.

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Regrets Only

By laurenflax | Published: February 24, 2010

“Have regrets. They are fuel. On the page they flare into desire.”

I read this quote today and it stopped me mid-page. It is the exact opposite of how I have lived my life until now and surprised me with how deeply it resonated.

Benches near the Lyric.

When I was a teenager, I decided that my goal was to live life without regrets, to the extent that is possible. So far, I have been successful. I have only three regrets and they are minor, all instances in which I should have treated people a little better than I did. I have taken plenty of  risks in my life, emotional and otherwise, and above all, I know that harping on the past is pointless. As far as living up to my own noble standard, I have done well.

At the same time, as I turned this quote over in my head all afternoon, it occurred to me that if at thirty-five I have only a few very minor things worth regretting, something is wrong. I took all those risks because I knew that if I did not I would regret it, but they were always calculated risks. Moving across the country by myself for a job: I wasn’t crazy about the job, it was not my career path, and if it sucked, I could always move back. Getting divorced: undeniably painful, but I was young and had a gigantic safety net. Quitting my job and moving across the country (again) with Scott: I did not like my job anyway, and Scott offered me everything in the world, and I could always move back if it didn’t work out. Baring my soul on the internets: what is the worst that could happen – people might think I suck? Heck, that’s life.

People tell me I’m brave, but all of those actions -even the soul baring, to some extent- were really based on fear, fear that I would regret it if I didn’t act. It was all very calculated. Looking back, I understand the subtext. Deciding to live my life without regrets meant taking some risks, on the surface at least, but it also meant that I guaranteed myself never having anything to lose. The universe is funny that way.

So, my new year’s resolution for the year starting February 24, is to fuck up, to have some regrets. No, that’s not quite right, I don’t actually want to have regrets and fuck up (like there really are such things). Rather, my resolution is to do some things worth fucking up and regretting. Living without regret has served me well for the first thirty-five years. Now it is time to let go and just live, let the fuel flare where it will.

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Misbehaving Tuesday: Lingering Edition

By laurenflax | Published: February 23, 2010

Full-on misbehaving is probably off the menu for the next couple of very busy months. Nonetheless, I still engage in willful disregard of responsibilities every Tuesday; at a minimum, I sleep in. That’s right. On a Tuesday. Until 8:30 sometimes.

Unfortunately, even the sleeping in this morning was not quite as satisfying as usual, mostly due to a deeply icky sex dream. The image of doing some one I find unattractive in appearance and odor is tough to shake. (Although, when I was in tenth grade, I had a dream that a boy I liked kissed me and burped in my mouth. Not only did the dream thoroughly cure me of my crush, I still remember it twenty years later and think of it every time he pops up on facebook, whereas the image of this morning’s non-amour probably will be gone by tomorrow.)

I suspect that my day started this way due to the way yesterday ended. I have been on an MTX kick on and off for the past six months or so; I was having a rough day yesterday, and just like when I was younger, Dr. Frank took the edge off. Last night I was looking up something or other about the band, linked to Dr. Frank’s facebook page, and there it was. Frank Portman in glasses: black-rimmed, rectangular glasses.

For the record, I think celebrity crushes are stupid. Even when I was in junior high and other girls had pictures from Tiger Beat taped inside their lockers and on their bedroom walls, I didn’t. Well, maybe a few, just to fit in, but I thought it was kind of silly. There were cute boys all around. Why swoon over a piece of paper?

There are two exceptions to this for me: early 90s John Flansburgh, which is really just a wholesome kind of wanting to hang out on South Street all afternoon and then get a big hug at the Gallery before getting on the R3 to go home kind of crush, and Dr. Frank. I dug MTX in a big way long before I ever saw a picture of him, and then I saw a picture, and yowza. In every possible way, my type to a T, if you’ll pardon the pun.

So, last night I saw the picture and my brain stopped working for few minutes. When it resumed operation, I realized that I have a new problem: now that I have seen a picture of Dr. Frank in rectangular, black-rimmed glasses, there is nowhere else for me to go. I will never see anything hotter than that in my life. I tried to think of something that reasonably, I might see in the course of my lifetime that would be hotter than that, and came  up with nothing. Maybe one or two unreasonable things, but nothing likely. It is the gold medal of hotness in my world.

With nowhere to go but down from that experience, of course an icky sex dream followed. As for the rest of the misbehaving, during my regular errands I lingered in Target longer than necessary and bought some orange underpants to go with my orange pants, and did it all while wearing my misbehaving socks.

Picture is unrelated: Misbehaving of a different sort. At the Smile, Hon reading last Friday.

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Strawberry Freeze

By laurenflax | Published: February 23, 2010

The heat was broken at the usually warm and friendly Cyclops Books tonight, so those of use who went to the MWA Baltimore meeting to do a little writing did so with numb fingers, reading our work with voices thinned from the cold.

Strawberry Freeze is second from the top.

Exercise #1 was to dig into a bag of paint color cards and pick a set of colors that resonated either personally or for a character, then to pick one color on the card and answer a bunch of questions about ourselves or a character, based on the color selected. The questions were the usual sort of thing: what shape is this, what sound, what kind of car does this person drive, etc. Every time I do an exercise like this I am struck by how goofy and how incredibly useful it is. Simply asking to make illogical leaps – what kind of bird this person based on a color would be – opens the door.

As soon as I picked Strawberry Freeze, I knew this color was not just me, nor was it a character I have been working with this week, but some one new. “I am a frozen strawberry, preserved just the way you want me to be, sweet, picked clean of my stem and thorny brush. When you remember me, the hum and rush of the air conditioner is Ave Maria and the wheezing engine of the old silver Ford Escort is a silver flute trilling on a summer night.”

Exercise #2 was writing in celebration of something that isn’t usually celebrated. The workshop leader gave an example of writing a celebration of bare feet in sunlight (safe to say she has missed huge sections of the internet). I wrote a short ode to Google Analytics. By that time I was so cold I could barely write, having gone rapidly from strawberry freeze to Lauren freeze, but it is something I may want to rework. Excerpt:

Oh, Google Analytics
Arbiter of virtual affection
Offers sweetly URLS
That point in my direction

27 visits, 38 page views
Sort by location, host or server
I’m a fool for data, Google
Your capture has my fervor

The last exercise was to make a list of things you need to know to live.
1. Know where to find food and other things that nourish you: the city, woods, a field, the beach, home.
2. Know where to find shelter, and other things that protect you: an apartment, tree, brush, a pier, home.
3. Know where to find clothing, and other ways to announce yourself to the world: a store, fig leaf, laurel garland, shell necklace, home.

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Numb and Number

By laurenflax | Published: February 21, 2010

I just spent an hour and several hundred words all trying to get to this point: I am never surprised when I hear about people divorcing. In the past six months there have been several divorces and separations in the immediate vicinity. None have surprised me, even among the couples who were picture perfect on the outside.

Partly, this is because I know that it is absolutely pointless to guess what goes on behind closed doors. I make no assumptions about the couples I know, nor do I make assumptions about the content of anyone else’s thoughts. It takes discipline; sometimes it is tempting to guess, to analyze, suppose, and figure, but I learned the hard way many times over that I am better off leaving other people’s lives for other people to live.

At the same time, I also wonder if there isn’t some cynicism tucked into my lack of surprise. I wonder whether in an environment in which we have the luxury of dedication to spiritual growth, the expectation that a relationship can be fulfilling in that way after decades and decades of growth is unrealistic. This is not to make any generalizations about the state of marriage. (When it comes to affairs of the heart, the only safe generalization is that there are no safe generalizations.) There are people who make it work, I think.

I remember reading years ago, during a particularly romantic time in my life, that the idea of one soulmate in a lifetime is outmoded, and that one can have many soulmates over the course of a lifetime, depending on what one’s soul is up to at any given time. I remember finding the concept liberating and depressing at the same time. Who wants to unsoulmate someone, or worse yet, to be unsoulmated?

Divorcing is among the shittier of life’s experiences, and it is not that I am unsympathetic. It is the opposite actually. I wasn’t married long, but there is something about ending a marriage that is just different, destabilizing in a unique and awful way. I can hear it in the voices of people going through it and it brings me back to the moments in my life during which the only thing that made any sense was crying.

I don’t have a snappy conclusion to this post. Aside from being curious and possibly a tad glum about my own detachment, I am also concerned that this lavender nail polish just doesn’t work with my skin tone. That this is my greatest worry at the moment is a comfort.

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‘Tis the Season

By laurenflax | Published: February 20, 2010

The pagan calendar recognizes a season between winter and spring with the celebration of Imbolc, which falls halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. Pagans are on to something. Right around this time of year the branches start to look a little thicker, the light starts to change, and I start to feel it in my gut. Even on the coldest days, certain clothing that was comfortable on an equally cold day in December feels confining. My thermostat starts to change. I get restless. I troll eBay for vintage sundresses.

Imbolc is also the festival of plows, the maiden, and lactating sheep, but for me, Imbolc is the festival of the treadmill. It has happened every year for the past six years or so; sometime in February I just want to run, and run, and run, and I do. I run until spring. I usually get to a few miles feeling comfortable and I start thinking about signing up for 5k races, and then my back quits and I go back to walking.

After six years I have figured out that rather than try to turn myself into a runner (which I am NOT – a ten minute mile is super speedy for me), rather than always building toward a 5k, then a 10k and so on, I might as well just enjoy the running for a few months out of the year. Every year I start out a little stronger. The first year, I could barely run for five minutes, the next year wasn’t much better, even though I was in better shape. By last year, when I started I could make it about a mile and half if I did intervals. Tonight was my second time on the treadmill this year, and I ran for a solid half hour, with effort, but it wasn’t bad at all, even with a bruised toe.

Some people go from the couch to a marathon in a matter of months. For me, the progress is over years. I think I like that better. It is one thing to look back and know that I am in better shape than I was a few months ago; it is quite another to see the changes over years and know that I am still getting stronger.

With that, I am off to eBay to look for some vintage dresses to adorn this strong, maiden body of mine. And also sports bras.

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Smile, Hon, You’re Reading a Dirty Story in Front of Several Dozen People

By laurenflax | Published: February 19, 2010

First of all, prior to the Smile, Hon reading at Atomic Books tonight, I hit myself in the head with a door and may have broken a toe, in two mostly unrelated incidents. It makes me wonder if it is my own, non-verbal equivalent of telling my alter ego to “break a leg,” only in the case of reading a saucy story about feet, it is “break a toe.”

The reading itself was fabulous. I am unpracticed as a reader, but still I got great feedback. People laughed in the right places (and a few surprising places), and got quiet in the right places. I heard someone say “this is good.” When I got to the part about a “metafetish” a klatsch of nerd men laughed behind me, and I was very, very happy.

After I read, a man sat down next to me and asked, “So how long did it take you to pick out the shoes you were going to wear to this?”

Another person asked for my autograph, and for a moment between saying yes, and putting pen to paper, I fretted, as it had never occurred to me to come up with a signature for my alter ego. With pen in hand, I discovered that my alter ego’s signature looks a lot like mine, but girlier.

People told me my story was great. The men offered compliments, and some of the women wanted to talk to me about shoes. The most interesting feedback, though, was watching the body language of the audience as I read. I couldn’t see much because I was reading, but the footboys and the gals who love them made themselves known, at least to me.

I can’t wait to read again, smutty or otherwise. Performance me has not gotten out in a long time, and it felt great to be in front of a crowd. My reading was not perfect, heck, the story isn’t perfect, but the experience was right on.

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