We're in Wikipedia!!!!!

It's hard sometimes to look at myself in pix, especially performing, but this demonstration was a super positive event where I went down to D.C. to cheer with the rad rad Radicatz. I think this is one of my cheering highlights; there was such amazing energy here....to use a cliche but for want of a better word.....but anyway, now it's history!!!! But NOT OVER.

BTW that's me in the pink shirt, skirt and pigtails.

I love waterfalls

New York City is not known for nature sites.....Central Park is man-made. I really do miss the country sometimes. I just couldn't live there.

Don't tell me to stay indoors

Just a few words about this post: I got some very nasty comments on this. I don't detest all men and I am close to many men. But the truth is, there are many men who DO behave this way in public and it's done a great deal of harm in my life and that of others. I can't pretend it isn't happening. What I'm saying is really misunderstood, and that incident I wrote about was a complicated relationship and life often contradicts itself, life can be offensive, can't it? White can be black and vice versa, you know what I mean? I just don't feel completely "safe" anymore expressing my feelings because I think it's taken wrong. But anyway.......



I went to this horrid place on 23rd street called the Comfort Diner. There used to be a much nicer one on East 86th street. These waiters kept making eyes at me and staring very intensely at me as they walked by, and then some of the patrons. The way men look at women is so disgusting......even if they're good looking, they do it in a way that's intimidating, invasive, and it's a subtle way of them to express their power in the world, their dominance. And in turn, we're supposed to feel grateful that they think we're pretty, if that's the point. Truthfully, it's a worse experience if the guy is scuzzy but even if not.....I walked out of that place really, really mad and with a terrible headache. Yet, rather than tell these men to change their behavior or punishing them, women are told not to go to certain places, stay indoors, or not to go into a place alone because then they're allegedly putting themselves in danger. Some behavior, I know, is plain stupid in a dangerous world, but why aren't these men told to stay indoors?

ok so the latest is

Saturday was the day from hell, though at least it ended better. It started out OK with me cheering at V Day in Williamsburg, which I managed to get to in 15 minutes on my cheap bike that G made me. I was tentatively supposed to work but that was up in the air too, and it fell through. Then, I was supposed to meet someone who ended up flaking out on me. Then, I rode up to Hunter to use the library wearing my short short cheering skirt dodging cabs and SUVs, and I heard this girl's voice saying, "You need bicycle pants!" I finally got towards Hunter and locked up my bike, and while I was walking to Hunter I heard a guy's voice saying, "Oooh, do fries come with that shake?" I mean, when I read that on a street harassment blog I thought it was a cliche and no one really said that. Then, I got to Hunter and the library was closed. So I headed back to Brooklyn....really exhausted by now. Then I heard a girl's voice again saying, "Put some pants on!" I stopped at this Indian place I go to. So after eating (I was absolutely famished) I got back on the bike to go to Brooklyn, and then the pedal came off my bike. I pulled it over and sat on the curb trying to get the pedal back on. By then I was covered in sweat and my hands were black from grease. Finally, this very nice cab driver pulled over, after I had called Garrett who said to turn it clockwise, which I did for about 30 minutes with it going nowhere, and THEN told me after I need a bike wrench, got out some tools and fixed the pedal. So, I rode home, this being my third trip that day over the bridge. Riding up the bridge is exhausting work.
So I got back, showered and fell asleep, then, thank God, someone I work for called and needed some emergency help so I then used that money to go to Crobar.

John Digweed was DJing, and I expected this kind of music would attract a totally different crowd than was there. It was almost all guys, all about 300 lbs each, and they routinely jammed into me, one of them hitting my nose with his chest. It really hurt and I was worried my nose was broken. I kept thinking, I will kill this guy if I see him, and I was checking in my little mirror to see if my nose was deformed. Finally, after about an hour, the pain went away, but then another guy brushed against my shoulder which I could tell was sprained from that. Moving my arm was slightly painful.

Finally I was sick of getting hurt. I have been in slam pits right in the center surrounded by skinheads, and this stuff didn't happen to me. The only other thing I remember like this was several years ago at a Red Hot Chili Peppers concert where I got bruised from leaning against the stage. I really wanted to hear Digweed but gravity was catching up with me and I needed sleep. So on the way out, this guy was like, hi, and stuck out his hand. I thought, ok, and shook it, and he squeezed it really hard. I jerked my hand away and said, what the fuck? And ran off. He started yelling at me, "Come here bitch!" I ran out and got a cab home.

That said, I guess I'm not sorry I went. I wanted to hear this music badly......

But the other night I dreamt I was on an international flight and ended up in South Africa. It was a transfer, not permanent, but I decided to get out and look around. I was near the water and I was thinking, the air is just like that in North America. The water was wavy and beautiful. But I was thinking of someone I knew back home, a Chinese man, and I was somehow supposed to pick up his van, so I'm walking to a big garage. I go into the garage and look but there are too many cars, and I'm thinking, I have to call him and tell him I can't find his car, and suddenly water starts gushing down the garage driveway, which turns into like a curving slide (I dream about this all the time). And I realized I had read the night before about the Chinese woman who killed herself and nearly her kid when her husband had an affair. So the water was massive, I don't know how I wasn't afraid.

Girl meets boy

Boy disses girl, spurns her, leads her on, tries to pick her up in a club and she's flattered that he picked her out of a crowd of about 5,000 people but she stood out anyway; not sure if that's a good thing or not. Girl falls head over heels with boy madly crazily wildly in lust and love to the point where it's painful physically and then boy disappears. Then he comes back, then he disappears again. Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind said, "During the war, I'd go away and try to forget you, but I always had to come back." Finally, girl finds out that boy got married to someone else. Girl goes downstairs at her boyfriend's apartment and sobs hysterically wanting to kill herself and can't believe he did this to her, she gets drunk and nearly has a disastrous run-in with a bouncer and this is just before the Imette incident.......but downstairs is a magazine with the word THIRTEEN written in big letters before her.

But the girl lives, it's winter, the cold stabs into her back shoulders face ears and she gets caught in a blizzard in high heeled boots after a party, just after Madonna's latest single comes out. The girl thinks, wait, maybe he made a mistake and will get divorced.

But.........in the meantime, she's seeing different men and one of them she saw a few months back suddenly gets back in touch with her. This was a "rough" incident......long story short, a very unique one. Suddenly, over a period of a few months, his emails get more and more explicit. One rainy night in March, on the anniversary of the Spain bombings, she goes to his apartment and has a wild, wild wild night in which he pulls her hair practically out of her scalp, slaps her face to the point where it's red, pins her hard on the floor, and scares her, really. But.........but she's also kind of thrilled.....??????????? hmm.....why is that? He's a young law student from Michigan and suddenly she's in love, in a way, with him......and he gradually begins to come into her life more and more. He sends her emails saying he'll "slap the hell out of your ass and vagina" and how he wants to force sex on her and now that I think about it, is forced sex the same as rape? I never thought about it. I know, it's sick, I know....but it was so so so so so amazing!!!!!!! I mean, I guess it wasn't REALLY rape but it was hot, I'm telling you. It's making me crazy just thinking about it!!!

ok, let me re-phrase that

Sometimes little kids can be a joy. Having cats made me appreciate them more because personality-wise they're not that different. Cats throw tantrums too and you love them but they drive you crazy. But most often other people's kids in general get on my nerves. Like in movies they are annoying; but? I guess someone has to play those parts right?

I don't love kids

At times I hate them. I want to stay on the positive side. Yes, I do want my own kids but in general, other people's children get on my nerves to the point where I can't take it, I can't be around them. Like the other day, I was going to the nail salon and there was this kid, like maybe three or four, standing in the doorway screaming his head off and blocking customers from going in and out and the mother was like, "Oh isn't he adorable? I'm not going to stifle his emotional expression." It just scares me how anyone can breed, you know? You don't need a PhD to have a kid, but you should; so I think, sometimes. But what can I do?


When I was myself a kid I was in the car once with my mother, when she took me to NYC for the first time. We had been in Cape Cod and she had gotten into a fight with her then husband, and left with me to go to the city for the weekend. Somewhere on the highway one of the songs came on the radio and I turned it up; my mother said, Laura I can't listen to that. But I bought the record and played it over and over at my dad's place.

Kill Bill

This doesn't happen often, but sometimes a film comes along that just grabs you, and you fall madly in love, in lust, so much that your heart starts racing and you want to run out and tell everyone "Go see this! You HAVE to see this!" Amazing! You think. And this is one of those films. Especially the second. I'm obsessed with the Kill Bills. It was a radical feminist who recommended these movies, one who was badly spurned by some people in the "left" but anyway, I'm drugged, I'm hooked! I believe in this movie I really do. Way back in the early 90s I felt the same way about another film which turned out to be enormously controversial, but also hugely successful. Much ugliness came about as a result, though. But, well? I believe sometimes controversy can be important. Some people just do it for publicity, but even so, how else can you get a point across?

Evanston, Illinois, where I grew up

And interestingly, where my sister is now in college (she's NYC born and raised). Beautiful town, but I don't have great memories. The lake, though, is gorgeous. My friend, Aeysha, always wanted to hang out in the cemetery (she was a Scorpio and, yes, we were, especially she, a little wierd). We'd hang out on these rocks a lot as well.Aeysha and I remained friends until, one day about 10 years ago, she suddenly decided she wanted nothing to do with me. Whatever!

Yes, it gets horribly cold here in the winter; the kind of cold that feels like tiny knives stabbing you everywhere, with the wind hitting your face and neck mercilessly. And there's a lot of....well.....

My sister recently got busted here for drinking beer at a party, with a $500 fine; although, I must say, it wasn't too smart of her to walk right out in front of a bunch of cop cars holding a beer when she's only 19. Still, they're being really vicious about it and it may show up on her school record. I was thinking, this place hasn't changed....to be honest. But there are some positive qualities as well. My mother raised me here because she grew up in small towns in Michigan, mostly, and figured this was a more cosmopolitan atmosphere, and it is. I was lucky in a way. But there is an other side.

We'd pass this statue a lot, of the boy. I have nightmares about this cemetery still to this day, that I'm inside some kind of mortuary with a corpse and passing by the gates, either in or out.....but while trying to get somewhere. I mean, this cemetery seems particularly evil to me in a way. Some cemeteries are cool but this one gets to me. Plus, when we were living near it some bad things happened. Coincidence maybe.....???????

Then while living on Bergen Street

a couple years later, in my new life, out of the hardcore scene (was just never really that into it) and obsessed with "trance" and the KLF, I met Al, my future boyfriend, on October 4, the anniversary of Anne Sexton's suicide. I had just entered Hunter where I had little social life but then for some reason Al and I clicked. Five years later, we had a nasty breakup......and then on February 11, the anniversary of Sylvia Plath's suicide, I met my next boyfriend at a club, and it was his birthday. By then, I was in Astoria.

But four years later, I'd end up in Fort Greene which I'd never heard of and prior to around this time had been practically uninhabitable.

I can't upload these pictures otherwise I'd illustrate this but anyway.....ok I'm trying....

Fort Greene

Oh! I found this.....of gorgeous Fort Greene in the blizzard: some time around 2003 winter/spring it would NOT stop snowing. This was right around the time I moved into the hood, but at the time I was "between apartments" and staying at G's.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Greene

And in 2003, Laura moved there after meeting Garrett and has been there, except for brief stints in Harlem, Greenpoint and the Upper West Side. Laura lived on the corner of Clermont and notorious Myrtle Ave in a shithole basement that, despite her best efforts, she couldn't save.

Laura now lives on Skillman Street.



When Laura was 20 Greenpoint or Williamsburg would have maybe been ideal. At that time, Laura was obsessed with this bass player and while looking for an apartment, got one in Brooklyn because "Billy" lived there. But she didn't know how huge Brooklyn really is because she didn't know geography and probably wouldn't be able to find Brooklyn on a map. So......thinking she'd be closer to Billy she actually ended up on the other side of town very far away from him, in what is now called Sunset Park but was then pretty much a barrio. Billy lived....????? I think in Greenpoint. Or somewhere. So she never lived in the "cool" areas and....finally ended up in Fort Greene. Brooklyn, particularly Fort Greene, fell on "hard times" in the 70s and 80s but....that's sort of in the past. Now the area is a mixture of really everything.


Go here to find more pix of where I spent my life for three years.......


http://www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com/bigmap/brooklyn/fortgreene/walk/partthree

So tired, and sick of activism

I'm fried right now and with a picket plus two marches plus a counter harassment party coming up, and the constant bickering between all these groups, I'm fed up. I'm pissed. I have to make posters, go over cheers, find a meeting place, get markers (? yikes) and I have absolutely no talent for drawing, and I have to make these cheesy slogans like Sen Clinton You Can Do It! And ....... I'm just so sick of this. I'm sick of these people. I want to go to bed, with my cats and cry.

anniversary of June 2 death of sorts

My grandmother, for one, Marilyn Monroe's birthday, and the day my ex threw me out of his place. It's the 2nd day for me in this new place, and I'm ready to split. There's nowhere near enough privacy, the street is ugly, I have PMS and a headache, it's rainy and cruddy, and people are getting to me. I'm ready to tip over the edge right now.


But I suppose I'll be ok. It's just that bleeding really hampers me in many ways, and I have so many of these situational problems it's just hard to be creative in this atmosphere.

OK I'm done complaining, sort of.

unemployed, summer 2000

I had just moved out, if you want to call it that, of my relationship with this guy who took me to raves and was obsessed with porn, flat broke, working temp jobs, still smoking. I'd go the the World Trade Center for a cigarette break, poor, frustrated, and not knowing where I was going. And he was furious at me for not having a job; we fought pretty uglily. Finally, I reclaimed my strength and fought him back. He accused me of being "psycho" that being pretty much what I was called when I decided not to be a doormat.

I got out of this living situation in Washington Heights, although that place was a refuge. Then I wandered into Virgin Megastore where Sasha and Digweed were signing a new CD, ran into an acquaintance from a temp job who was talking to his friend about the recent assaults in Central Park. Some time around June 11? According to the Magi Astrologers, there was a Super Sexual Aspect in the air.

Then I started a job at Thomson, moved in with a friend on Chambers Street, and after a month and a half of waiting to get paid, barely able to pay rent, I got a decent chunk of cash. I actually had money in the bank.

Then I moved to Jersey City (ugh, ugh ugh) and about a year later the World Trade Center.....well, we know what happened. I was at my job which had moved to 32nd St (so weird how I could have been down there but for a series of last minute changes) and.....

So now, five years later, when I go to my mother's house, we are constantly approached by people asking in broken English "where is the Ground Zero." She lives down there.....

The Hamptons, one year later

Last year, I took the Jitney to Southhampton to see my mother and sister. There were these kids on the bus, about 18 years old or so, and this girl in a sweatshirt said in this really loud voice, "Oh, God, you know what's hilarious? [So-and-so] was telling us how he was going to take the bar test, and [so-and-so] thought it was a bartending test!"

At the time, I was annoyed and thought that was a rude thing to say in public: I mean, what's wrong with being a bartender.....but anyway, it's sort of ironic or else foreshadowing or something, that I'm involved with some people now getting ready to take the bar test. Some people, I think, are academically gifted.

radical cheerleaders in their day???? or the predecessors

"I really believe that sound reaches infinity, do you know what I mean. I think it goes on and on forever, and if that’s true and it was linked to the spiritual side of your lives, well, then sounds could
be alive. can you imagine the possibilities for the future ? linking the soul and the sound and then being able to make a giant spiritual musical machine, actually a part of us and not just
Thing you hear - it’s fantastic - it’s just fantastic "

----Written by ricky & marty wilde

more cheering pix

I found this on the Web too I just want to make this blog more colorful.





And one of my favorites; a radical feminist poster from the 70s.

And another:



See, who says I am not colorful?

BTW, I'm the cheerleader in a pink skirt. My technique has since improved.

back in the early 90s

Grunge was the thing in NYC and.....ugh. I couldn't stand it. So someone gave me a tape of the KLF and I must have listened to it thousands of times.

Yeah, there's only one place I'm living, man...I'm going into trancentral where I can,You understand, liberate and free the psyche.You know, banish my mind and my body'cause this way I don't know whether I'm in the future or the present...Is this the beginning or the ending? Although I know that things are incidentalThe landscape may have to be accidentalI'm still in a carriageOn the fast train,of the last train, to trancentralOver an out


I realized I kind of hate rock and roll, or most of it. Or any variations. "hard core" was the thing where I was but I couldn't tell you any of it except Corrosion of Conformity whom I met, and a few others. Oh, and SFA. There were many good bands. My friend was married to the lead singer of Warzone in a very bizarre and twisted setting.....we all lived up in Harlem that was when I first left the nest....on the West side. OK, I don't hate all of it, but I'm just not into.....I don't know, 85 percent of it. But still, so much of what was downtown was inspiring and there was such a strong energy to the whole scene. I feel like I work all the time and I need artistic input, or something.

vegetarianism?

It's fairly easy to give up meat in this town except for late at night when there's nothing open except bodegas and diners. Usually I settle for a cheese sandwich but that isn't healthy besides it's fattening. If you're lucky they'll have pea soup but usually not. When I was in Florida I ended up eating meat because it was just too difficult otherwise, because the only place open after 10PM was this Spanish bodega but they did have lots of wine, thank Heaven...... and in Indianapolis I think this menu I looked at did not have one meatless dish. I've been craving meat lately, though I try to avoid it. I love Greek food which is very meaty, but I ended up getting a falafel plate. Still, I love their fried bread and yogurt/cucumber sauce. I've been going to Curry in a Hurry every day and they all know me in there: and I get the same thing every time so they automatically give it to me now. Yesterday a bunch of them came up to me and said, "You know, you look like Chelsea." There's a picture of Bill Clinton on their wall and he allegedly went to eat at this place.

But anyway, it's becoming a struggle to avoid meat because I am somone who enjoys food. That's why I have flesh on me. At this place I was at today, this tall, very attractive woman got a sandwich for lunch and water. I saw someone else a while back getting sushi (ugh) from a deli and bottled water. I don't know how people can live on just that. Maybe it's that I have a constant hunger that I had read about.....the only solution is lots of coffee, but I hate skim milk, so at least 1 percent. My mother drinks only skim, but it makes me ill. When I was a kid my mother weighed about 107 pounds, and we never had candy in the house. Our dinner would be broiled chicken and steamed broccoli, but I was still chubby. Even this doctor I went to told me I was fat, in so many words. Then, some years later I lost weight and people were telling me I was too thin.

fuck security deposits

I don't believe in them. I know, people are going to be horror-struck. But I've already gone though the process of getting a place, paying a fee, and signing my life away to the Devil. The way I see it, I'm not responsible for someone else's property or financial obligations. I've had prospective people tell me, "Well I need a deposit because the last person ran off with my TV set" or "If someone ditches out on me I'm fucked because this place is expensive." I mean, it's not my fault that shady people exist nor that you signed this lease fully aware of the responsibility you're taking on. A deposit is only an added burden and stress to me and your lease is your problem, not mine. My only obligation is to pay for my stay, you know? I bought into the "system" of renting three years ago and it is one of the worst mistakes I ever made: being rented a place that is off the books and, in the eyes of the law, frauded out of thousands of dollars.

This is a rant and it sounds like I'm asking the world to pity me: I'm not. Maybe it's just frustration, that all my hard-earned money will be going to rent when a place to live should be guaranteed everyone. I also don't think all my money should go to rent just to live in a "good neighborhood...." i.e. one where I don't feel freaked out coming home at night. Where I can take the subway at any hour and not have to be accompanied by someone (preferably a guy), pay extra for a cab, or not go out at all.