smoking is rude

it took two years but eventually my side won. I complained about smoking neighbors in my old apartment and at the time there was little I could do. It became a major issue. Now, smoking is no longer legally protected. I have this problem everywhere I go, smoking neighbors. I quit, anyone can. It killed my father. Quit! Smoking is lazy and rude. There's no excuse.

pet peeves

Maybe it's a difference in upbringing or culture, but the way I was raised, you're not supposed to talk in libraries. There are signs everywhere saying to turn off cell phones and talk quietly. Talking in libraries is RUDE behavior. So is direct, intense eye contact. I know some people mean well by it, but I hate it. Also, not observing another's personal space, like bumping into someone on the street, or anywhere. It's just disrespectful.

Walking home, I see these schoolchildren and I can see also the bullies, and I think, some things never change. Someone I know told me how this kid who had been a sociopath at school became a cop, he found out, and he said, "Someone actually gave him a gun?" He found out he was later kicked out for police brutality.

I don't really sentimentalize children. Call me mean. I just don't like them, that much. I believe to a degree people are born with good or bad personalities. Considering what I went through as a kid, I think a bad seed is evident, well, almost from the beginning. I do want my own children some day, and some kids are cute. But there are so many who are "troubled." There's little likelihood of changing them. Best thing to do is avoid them.

I guess

I was harsh in my last post but what I'm reading is shocking. Among the different classes of whores, life is very different. The call girls and independents live the best, with relative freedom, although it's not all a day at the beach. But what I was reading about streetwalkers and massage parlor workers is one devastating story after another. Arrest, police brutality, rape, well, the list goes on, over and over. These are just regular people trying to live, maybe they have kids, pets. That humanity can be so brutal, evil really, is a rude awakening. I never loved the police, but I thought we had something of a justice system. It's an uphill battle, but you have to win your freedom.

Also I got upset. I feel bad, I flaked out on Garrett and missed the time I was supposed to meet him. He was really mad at me, I guess for good reason, but it's still so awful to be screamed at, and I remember why I vowed never to be in another relationship again. It's one damnation to slavery after another. I have been in relationships since my teens and I know the story; it is pretty much always that way, that is what it turns into. Even my ex said, most men don't respect women. He would talk about how men he knew would interrupt, talk over or dismiss what their wives and girlfriends were saying. We always would blame ourselves, consider ourselves failures. If only I hadn't gone out after midnight, worn that skirt, said what I said, ect ect.

Women should be able to walk around any time day or night, dressed any way, and not fear assault or harassment. It is that way in countries like Germany and Egypt, and these aren't feminist-oriented societies. In Egypt religion makes women second class, and those horrid tales of female genital mutilation.....do happen (though not to everyone), and women are often forced into marriage....yet there's far less rape and sexual harassment there and women are virtually never raped or attacked by strangers and can walk around at any time of day or night. So.....if it's like that there it should be that way here. In Germany prostitution is legal and it's also basically safe.

I've been feeling really sad. February is a gruesome month, it's been hell. Someone told me February is the month of evil spirits. Not that it's all bad. But getting yelled at, the disastrous audition a few weeks ago, illness, taxes and feeling always like this horrible human being, a deviant, and living in fear....in my women's group they talked about how fear is a method of control; keeping people in a state of constant uncertainty. Garrett would get angry at me for my lateness (never admitting that he's also been late) but Simone de Beauvoir wrote something about how women are late as a form of revenge; that it's making up for the long wait that's her life.

So I know, there are many advocacy groups out there for sex workers, but this women in my group said how all these "exploited" women were not the ones who started the revolution. If one is worn out just trying to survive on the most fundamental level, there's hardly any energy left over to fight for change. Is this true? Most women activists I know do work, at shitty jobs often. But the constant demands of work impede real progress; and energy is spent on getting the basic necessities like food and shelter. Still, I've known women who do have freedom and leisure and don't become activists.

reading

a book on sex work, and one article discusses police violence against street prostitutes, which included rape. What I don't understand is where is the fight? the fight back, the outrage? I know, there are people everywhere who think prostitution needs to be decriminalized, and some good activists. But it's not enough. There's so much confusion, and even these well-meaning feminist groups which are struggling for women's full reproductive freedom (but shouldn't decrininalization be part of that; a woman's decision to do what she wants with her body? I KNOW, they've been linked before, but in every day dealings it's always an extra effort on my part to remind people, other activists, of this) and Indymedia, to their credit, did publish articles somewhat on the subject.....but it seems such a struggle to achieve real unity to stop this. Why aren't these cops going to jail for arrest or assault, and to arrest someone who has no power, really, in the world, who is herself a victim of real violence out there....I had been brought up to believe we have at least some justice system. But I have never witnessed worse injustice than that against prostitutes, and it's downright sex discrimination ( I know there are male prostitutes but since overwhelmingly women enter this profession and it's always been that way, I see this as gender-related still. That of course doesn't negate what the male ones go through). THey, the cops, should be sued. I'm mad. I'm outraged. Why aren't these feminist groups, like the ones working for increased health care, child care, abortion rights, jumping on this issue? Why are the ones I encounter, who consider themselves on the far left, ignoring this issue?

Fiat justitia, ruat coelum

"Let justice be done, though the heavens fall." I always loved that quote.

Right now I'm sick, my apartment is never warm enough even though I have two space heaters, the oven, stove and thermostat going at full temperature. I get runny nose and allegies, I'm swollen and dizzy, but I have to work, ect. ect. I am ready for warm weather. I don't know how people live in cold climates.

Sexy Sadie?

I've always found her fascinating, since I read my dad's copy of a book about the Manson Murders when I was sixteen. When I read that Trent Reznor moved into the "Tate" house in Rolling Stone I thought, that has to be bullshit, but I guess it isn't. But I can see people's obsession: this was a one-of-a-kind thing, like ritualistic. Now Susan Atkins is saying she didn't stab Sharon Tate, but who knows..... After reading her biography, I can see there's more to her life and story than what is commonly known. She really is gorgeous, with a unique face and intense eyes.

So where this current interest? Garrett managed to transfer one movie to my ipod: about cults, and the Manson family was one of the featured ones. There are so many layers to this story: one on top of another on top of another on top of another. Atkins is now a born-again Christian.

update---long time no write

So I'm so busy with work and auditions and performing everything is so chaotic, so hard. My "love" life is non-existent, yet I found a much better alternative. Relationships for women are a form of slavery, hell. I didn't get much out of any of mine. I still love them, I love one person still, more than one, but I refuse to be a carpet to walk all over.

But anyway....what else? I'm trying to get organized and stay on top of stuff but it's hard, you know. I'm wearing lots of layers cause it's winter and I'm here, I'm dealing with it, it isn't so bad. I still plan to go to South Africa but it's not the right time. It WILL happen, though. But it turns out I may be able to go...somewhere. That's the hard part: where? Colombia, maybe? I don't know if it's safe enough; I hear different reports. Mexico, ....well so many options. The winter sucks, but it's not THAT cold folks. This is NYC and it's much colder in other parts of the world. I am very sensitive to cold, but I wear a hat, gloves, warm coat, and move a lot; then I'm fine. Speaking of which, I met a girl from Siberia once, who said the coldest day in NYC is the warmest day there. Whew! Makes you think.


Here's a funny about a (secretly gay) guy, "He's so far in the closet he's in Narnia."

maybe it's the wine I drank at lunch

but I've been feeling dizzy and the scene here is demoralizing. This is after coming from a feminist meeting that was so uplifting, but I left that and went into the hell death trap that is lower Manhattan, now. It's all suburban or private school kids and these big beefy guys that storm through the streets, on foot, bike or cars, push people out of the way, leer at women in a way that makes it uncomfortable to go down the street, and these women that may be the second generation Stepford wives, or Stepford daughters? It's as if we've regressed a whole century. Is it a bunch of coincidences or is there poison in the air? I was feeling sick, tired, dizzy and miserable. I'm trying to stay upbeat, but it's like the energy was sucked out of me. I can't live without creativity and I know it's around, it's everywhere, but it's such a constant struggle to keep it in my life. Why is that? Why is there so much more noise and confusion everywhere? Every hour, it seems, I'm battling something. What is it?

dreams and ipods

I keep having 9/11-related dreams. In one, I'm watching Austin Powers and Dr. Evil is flying in a chopper over NYC and heading for the Empire State Building, I think. I'm thinking, they think this is funny well this film was made before 9/11, then the heli crashes into the building.

In another, I'm on a bridge, up high with no way of getting down, having to jump, or go down a slide sometimes, and a voice is saying, "Where do want to be when it falls?" Over and over it's the building on fire, about to come down.

My ipod, which I just got, froze on the Nine Inch Nails song "Piggy."

On another somewhat lighter note, I was walking down the street listening to Hall and Oates and the lyrics said, "If you're in it for love, you ain't gonna get too far..." and I looked up and saw the name David Z on someone's bag....

I hate smoking

I used to smoke and thank heaven I quit. I'm trying to live a healthier lifestyle and just walking down the street and smelling people's smoke, especially in the morning, makes me nauseous. I think people can always help it. I quit. It was hard but I did it finally. It's rude and lazy to smoke, and I don't know how anyone can do it in the morning. I am not trying to be mean but it's true. Quit quit!

I'm trying so hard to stay on top of everything but it's not easy. I'm making slow progress. But I believe in my career, and I know somehow I am doing the right thing by being a performer instead of getting a full time job. Or am I? Stability. The American way of doing things. I can't work 9 to 5. I don't have it in me. I have to work harder but it's the right thing; this is what I'm good at. It's what I'm meant for. I wasted too much time, too many years, listened to bad advice, worked pointless jobs, and I was young, pretty, smart, talented; fuck it; I was meant for better things. That's the truth as well.

Money talks

Put a high price on yourself, and suddenly you're treated very differently. As a random stranger on the street, interchangeable with thousands of others, you get no respect. But asking for money, a lot, raises your value, and lowers the aggression against you. It's all about power, but there you are: women don't make the world, they never did. They don't invent, really. Most men I talk to don't seem to have a lot of the bitterness I've seen in women, the edge, the meanness. Not that there aren't a legion of jerkoff guys out there, but I'm talking about the ones I know. It's because they're free, and they're in power, and they're not condemned to drudgery most of the time, they're not sexually harassed the minute they step outside, they're not turned into objects in public and they're free, somehow, to create. Even their work....I don't know. There are talented female artists....so....

a day in Laura's life

alarm goes off, I think to myself, No, no, I want to sleep. No, no

cats start meowing for me to open the door or feed them. This has been going on every hour just about, while I was sleeping

I open the door and let the cat out, saying, come on, don't bother me

I tell myself, get out of bed, don't be lazy. My whole body, entire being is fighting me. Get out of bed, get up, get up.

I sit up and think, hard part's over.

I go to the stove in the kitchen, put on some water to boil for coffee, because I'm addicted and can't wake up sans it.

I stumble to the bed and say, I'll sleep til the water is boiling.

five minutes later I hear it boiling, and get up again.

I go to the fridge, open it for milk (skim, cause I'm dieting now), and, GOD damn it, there is no milk. Argh! Life can't be this cruel.

I get some cat food out of the cupboard, open it and give it to the cats in the room next to my bedroom. I close my bedroom door cause I don't want the cats in my room messing up my new sheets. I fumble through my clothes looking for something to wear. I put on sweats, sneakers, socks, and a change of clothes in my back pack. I go into the bathroom, open the cabinet to find sunscreen, and put some on my face. I run first before everything, and plan to change later. I've slept maybe four hours.

I make the journey up dekalb, or wait for the bus. My head is throbbing and I desperately need coffee.

But first I have to get coffee. The stuff where I am is terrible, cheap stuff, so I head a few blocks up Myrtle to Conneticut Muffin, where they make the best stuff and have the best muffins in the city. I try to control my hunger as much as possible, and order latte, large, with skim milk. I go out of my way to go to this place but I'm damned if I'm not going to have good coffee in the morning. I sit down to drink it, look at my book or magazine, whatever is nearby. I finish, finally feel energetic, and head for the gym.

I get there, and want to go back to bed, I dread exercise. But I force myself to do it even though my ipod is broken and I need music, so I watch the videos on the tv there. This is how I discovered all these bands.

Finally that's over, and I'm starving. The shower room is too cold at this gym, so I get out of my sweat-soaked clothes and change into dry ones. I take my stuff to the gym on 8th avenue to shower there because they have a sauna. One of the trainers approaches me, telling me she saw me practicing my monologue in the bicycle room (and I was). That in itself is freaky.

I am barely able to move I'm so hungry, but I shower, dry in the sauna because I'm cold getting out of the water. I need a hot room to shower in. I dress, comb my hair after conditioning it, put on jewelry, realize I look like a wreck and have no makeup on, so I try to groom myself a little.

I go out to this Thai place in the neighborhood, and order the same dish I always order: panang tofu and Thai salad. This place makes it the best. I've been to several other Thai places that don't measure up to this.

Then I have a ton of emails to answer, class to go to, work, plays to find, movies to watch, books to read, and before I know it the day is over. Then friends call and want advice on this or that. I go home, feed the cats again, pick up laundry and groceries. I watch a movie, go back to work some more in manhattan, take a cab home, clean up a little, feed the cats again, have a drink and head for bed. Sleep, wake up, ect ect....


I dream a lot about cathedrals, yellow walls, priests speaking from their pews, or sometimes violent stuff, like I'm held hostage or in jail, or about water, water slides, trains running up and down, like a roller coaster, above the rivers.

pix effing around

Sometimes I worry

and think, oh my God, what if my mother finds this blog. But what can I say? I have a sex life, and I want to write about it.

So, I still want to travel, and plan to, but I'm here for now, in the cold, but I'm dealing well. I have warm coats and boots; I'm far better off now than I was last year. I have bills, taxes, all kinds of stupid stuff to deal with, but I am not giving up: I will travel. LA is a place I'm thinking of. I have to polish up my driving and I'm listening to some California bands to gear myself up. But for now, it is nice being in Fort Greene in the winter cause the park is here and it reminds me of Michigan, from my childhood, outside. They sell apples at the farmers market Sunday and Michigan apples were a big part of all those trips then.

As for now, I'm trying to stay afloat with my dance classes, auditions, mailings, work, cats, friends....I hardly have any time to myself, to read or watch a movie. I need that. I'm working on it.

ready to travel?

I am. I'm missing Egypt all the time. Every time I put on sunscreen in the morning it reminds of me of mornings in Cairo, the smell, and the coffee. Is this cheesy? I guess, but it always hits me like clockwork. I haven't been out of the US in two years, yikes! I need to renew my passport....but I'm itching to go. I want to go back to London, Paris, then to South Africa. Or LA, another option. That's the problem with traveling: it's time to plan the trip and suddenly you feel like you're choosing between your children, and if you choose one you neglect the others, it's torturous. There's something to be said for every place. But I do think about Egypt. A lot. I want my family to visit me there, I want my mother to see it. I didn't spend enough time there, but the short stay was LONG. It was exhausting financially and emotionally, but I've learned from the past. If I go this time around, I hope it's for the long haul. Though to gear up for LA, I need to polish up my driving. I have my license, but I'll start lessons again cause I remember so little. But I'm ready! Well, you're never really completely ready but the time is coming. And my friends like G and A, they need to go places as well. I know work is important but so is this. There's a solution to this somewhere.

decriminalize prostitution

I will go back to this because I've been reading up on it again. The more I read the madder I get, that in this day and age this blatant discrimination still occurs under the guise of "morality" or "family values." Police arrest people for having sex, consenting adults, and meanwhile....incidents like Imette St Guillen and others are allowed to occur. I've heard stories of cops who told people they were "on their donut break" when they were approached about a guy beating his girlfriend on the street. Now this has been twisted into some kind of...I don't know what....even a lot of feminists won't look at this situation realistically because they believe that prostitution degrades women or that legalization will encourage sex slavery. I don't know if "sex slavery" even exists and I used to be on the front lines of those working to stop it. I thought sex work was degradation but that was a different time in my life and now I see the other side, though I was never blind to it. This is life or death, and I'm frustrated by the failure of many people I work with to get on this case, feminist or not. Like when I went to the NOW conference over the summer, this one young woman was very dismissive and derogatory to these sex worker rights activists and talked about how ideal the "Swedish model" of arresting customers is. I wanted to say, one of these days that will be you working as a hooker....you think it won't happen to you? But I'm saying it is hard to believe in this day and age these out of date and fascist, really, morality laws are terrorizing women, and gay men as well. We could be assaulted or raped, even by a police officer, and what will be done about it? Because they are government employees they're holy? No, my vision is turned now. If this sex slavery is that rampant, it should be stopped, but WHERE is it? Where are these people?

staring and checking out

You hear all the time how men can't help it and they're predestined to try to get with any woman they can who's at all good looking. But in fact, we're complex and live in a complex world and have free will. I can't go out in public, unless it's on a deserted street, without this feeling of visibility, like I'm being sexualized, rated, and every woman. It's, I think, though I haven't done any measurements-- it feels worse than ever. Worse than it was ten or twenty years ago. This did happen back when I was in high school but I think it's increased. I just feel like it has. I feel it in legion amounts where I didn't in high school, that much. Men (and quite a few women also) push women and practically knock them over to get by, get "impatient" with them while standing in line (as happened to me), and....bottom line, this attention, unwanted, drops down on me every time I go into Manhattan. I don't think it's a coincidence. It is probably part of some massive scale backlash, like Simone de Beauvoir talked about. She said that since the publication of The Second Sex in France, French men began harrassing women more in public like when they were in coffee shops or on trains, which hadn't happened as much before. Honestly I don't know the cause. Only that this era is super conservative, dare I say fascist, and all that protesting we did a few years ago.....well, I don't know where those people are anymore. All I see on the street are kind of the "frat boy/sorority girl" types or the "yuppies" and don't get me started on them. But still, having lived in Bed Stuy, I can be thankful to live in a neighborhood where I feel somewhat safe walking around, at night, which I do a lot. I'm a night person. If I'm in an area where I can't go out and feel relatively safe after midnight I get very on edge....I NEED to have those late night walks. I liked living across the street from the convent because I like dark, quiet places to live in. I do my partying outside. But midtown Manhattan is "safe" sort of, supposed to be, but it's not peaceful and there've been more than a few incidents of violence against women. But women are sexist against women, too. That's another story, for another entry.

no relationship

Been there, done that. I've experienced it all. For twenty years. They'll cheat, they all fucking cheat.

"Be careful, very careful. He's driven girls to suicide...."

from Choses Secretes

finally I could log in again

because I switched email addresses and haven't had the time/energy to maneuver my way around these new requirements, I couldn't log into my blog. But I'm in now.

So...I'm listening to Hall and Oates. I used to be madly in love/lust with Daryl Hall when I was a little kid during a horrid time in my life. I lived in Evanston and would get attacked by these local kids til I was forced to fight back. It was a nasty retaliation back and forth. Yuck. But the town itself is beautiful. So ironic that my sister chose to go to school there when I couldn't get out of there fast enough. People say to me, you must have been so traumatized moving from Chicago to NYC at age thirteen, people like my ex shrink, and on top of that having divorced parents; which apparently has damaged me. They don't believe me when I say that transition was one of the best things that happened to me, and no, I wasn't hurt, but the opposite. It was my wish. We moved into the West Village, and I'd read Daryl Hall lived there. No regrets. I never looked back.


Some recent dreams: that a baby was born. I have that dream a lot. I do want a kid of my own some day. I don't have forever. I just don't want to get fat and I DON'T want a relationship or to be tied or dependent on a man. We don't have a support system in the US like those that exist in other countries. And it's wrong. If you're a conservative, this is your fault.

But anyway I'm digressing: another recent dream is that I was having sex with Jude Law. I was thinking, is he going to pay me or does he just think the fact that I'm with him is enough. Then afterward he got up and said, I'm a man with a wife and baby, you know, I have to move on. And I'm thinking, you bastard.....so for some reason we were in Detroit in a hotel. He asked me how to get to an auto plant, as he wanted to walk, and I said, you're in Detroit you have to drive it'll otherwise be a long walk. Then he left.

She fell in love with a man who sent her pictures of his dick to her cell phone.....


one on one ooh oooh

oh, I forgot. This is kind of cheesy, but my dad took me to see Hall and Oates when I was around eleven. The song "Back on the Chain Gang" was on the radio, as we were driving through Chicago, which I must say is a gorgeous city, gorgeous city with an ugly name. But the skyline is stunning. I heard DH is gay, I don't know....

so....what happened?

to these people.....from high and junior high school. I was on the Web and for the hell of it started looking up names of people I was once friends with but haven't seen in years. And years.....like this girl Jen from high school, who was very pretty but troubled, but through no fault of her own. She was beaten, by her father. She left our school to go to her local one but hated it there. I miss her, and it saddens me to think back on those days which are way over, the past now. But thinking back I can feel it like it's happening now.

Or another ex friend who just stopped talking to me....although I didn't try to repair things, either. But I can track her, because her name registers when I look it up. Jen...I only found someone with her name living in Brooklyn. I really truly hope she is not living with those same parents.

Do I really want to see these people? I almost don't want to know where they are now, or to see their faces older. But thinking of her brought those days back so strongly and I'd almost forgotten....