the fast American novel

Get Paid To Fuck, Black Heart Magazine, July, 2008
My editor Laura Roberts holds nothing sacred. She asked in an e-mail why so many women wanted to be porn stars when so few had seen or truly enjoyed porn. She enjoyed my rambling reply so much, it became fodder for the magazine. Here it is, the truth: I wanted to be a porn star once. Even more fabulous than getting paid to fuck, the idea of responding to the totally banal dinner party query, "What do you do?" with, "Porn!" was irresistible. [cache]

The Heart Blitzkrieg, Black Heart Magazine, February 14, 2008
It wasn’t the middle of January when I received my first Valentine’s Day spam message. Despite my annoyance with my spam filters, this was a welcome intrusion—after all, I seldom remember Valentine’s on time, which makes for some haphazard crafting of sexy cards the morning of the 14th. Assuming I have an object of interest, of course. Otherwise, the heart blitzkrieg all around only serves to remind me how lucky I am to be free of the obligation. An obligation is exactly what Valentine’s Day has become to a lot of us. And it’s not just an obligation to give a gift. For some of us who’re single, it’s a clear reminder that we’ve failed in our obligation to couple up. [cache]

The Roadkill Wife (And How To Correctly Place The Toilet Paper In The Holder), Black Heart Magazine, Summer 2007
Katie Martindale and James Olwine got married in Las Vegas. Driving home from the City of Sin, they fought and when the bride stormed out of the car, her new husband ran her over! To love and to hold! To hit and to run! I couldn’t help thinking about an article in the New York Times years ago about how the divorce rate was not as high as it was often reported and was, in fact, in decline. Is this because couples last such a short time that they can simply annul their unions? Or is it that they just run each other over? [cache]

The Sideways Vagina: exploring some of the world's most absurd and offensive Asian stereotypes, Black Heart Magazine, Summer 2007
A guy once dumped me because I wasn’t Asian enough. I’m not kidding, that’s what he said. He took a drag from his cigarette and, without really looking at me, said, “it’s nothing personal. It’s just... you’re not... Asian enough.” I hadn’t been aware Asian was a prereq for riding that ride—I may be a fourth Japanese, but I look nothing like it. Just what was he expecting? Did he think my inner geisha was going to pop up at some point and take over? If I hadn’t thrown my saketini in his face, I might have had a chance to ask him. You don’t blame me, though, do you? [cache]

Miss Universe... Reads?, Black Heart Magazine, Summer 2007
If you could read anyone’s diary, whose diary would you read? That’s the only question that really matters as I watch the Miss Universe 2007 contestants’ interviews. That question makes them or breaks them for me. It started with Jimena Elias of Peru. I picked her as a favorite because I’m Peruvian and Peruvians stick together. Then Jimena said she wanted to read Anne Frank’s diary. “Anne Frank was a girl who fought for what she wanted,” she said, “and that stands as a model for youth today.” I began to doubt. Had she actually read Diary of a Young Girl or was she blowing smoke up my ass? [cache]

Grading Notes, August 7, 2006
Intrigued by what Stylephile called the purse-friendly solution for the socialite fashionista on the go, what TimesOnline associated with the new age in magazines and fashion entrepreneur Natalie Massenet hailed as a woman's personal shopper, the glitterati brat child of the literati decided to try Net-A-Porter Notes on for size.

Music of a Proto-Suicide, March 30, 2004
With the work of Catherynne Valente, the risks are great: her country is not a vacation package, it is the very heart of a deep, verdant landscape. Like a tropical jungle, her Music of a Proto-Suicide, is wet, dark, lush, and almost entirely uncharted.

Cock-tease snippets from my (still unfinished) novel for National Novel Writing Month, 2006 entitled "Hunting Thompson." Friends only. This is their correct order. I'll let you know when more parts of the bizarre tale become available--if I decide to make them available, that is.



The Marrieds
Singles read those surveys in Cosmopolitan about couples that have sex once or twice a week and think it’s pathetic. We used to joke about how tragic it all was. Then we got married. You cease to be the center of the universe at some point. To some this point’s marriage, to some it isn’t, but it happens, and you find yourself looking forward to Fridays when you’ll have a few hours together, alone, to commemorate the memory of the 24-hour boinkfest.

Barbie World
See, prostitution is legal in Nevada, but not all Nevada. According to Nevada Revised Statute 244-345, the license board in a county with a population of 400,000 or higher may not license any houses of ill fame or any person for the purpose of engaging in prostitution. Clark County, where Las Vegas is located, is the only county in Nevada at present with a population exceeding the limit imposed by this regulation.

Meet Miriam
Miriam has long, straight auburn hair and bangs. It makes me think a bit of Winnie Cooper off The Wonder Years, only with reddish hair and hazel eyes, a too-short skirt, knee-high stiletto boots and a cropped white top. She has no tits and isn’t wearing a bra, so I can see her nipples through the t-shirt.

Five to Desperation
I think about her sitting on that stool in the casino bar, in those cheap-looking boots, that little translucent top. I think about her nipples that I could just barely see through it.
“How would you fuck me, Joan?” she asks me, running her tongue over her lips. They’re coated in strawberry champagne lipgloss, or some other disgusting combination and her breath is smoky, like the bar.

The Bathroom
“I want you to write about me,” she says.
“Is this what this is about?” I ask her indignantly. “Miriam, I’m not a writer. I just drink coffee and smoke cigarettes.”
“And fuck,” she adds, pushing me against the cool stall wall and bringing her lips to my ear, “don’t forget you fuck.”
She licks my ear lobe and traces my jaw line with her lips.
“You never answered me, Joan,” she whispers, “how would you fuck me?”

Serpent Bride
I think about Miriam sitting on the bed the night she came, wearing those ugly black boots and tacky miniskirt. I wonder what she looks like in normal clothes. The thong was real—that was her. But not the clothes over it. That was armor. Hooker clothes, like any other costume, are a shield—they conceal your essence. Designers understand how much clothes reveal about people; they’ve made an industry of definitions for us to choose from.

On to Valhalla
“My hand had to be reconstructed. If you look close you can see the little white lines from the stitches. Every time I look, I see a different word spelled out across my palm.”
“What do you read when you look at it now?” I ask him.
“Hell.”
“According to Norse mythology, our scars are the key to Valhalla.”
“Well, then, I’m well on my way,” he says.

The Metamorphosis
I click the clippers on and begin. I try not to touch him with anything other than the clippers but I have to steady myself on his back. With my hand against it, it looks even wider; in the light of the bathroom, I can see the scars better. So many scars, so many stories.

The Stray
There were all these tourists at the airport just staring up at the big glossy ads on the walls, you know, all the ones that scream, ‘this is Las Vegas, baby!’ with the pictures of lights and the Strip and beautiful women with feathers sticking out of their asses. I wanted to say to all of them that no, it’s them that’s Vegas. This, what they see, the lights, the magicians, the big party, is nothing but us perpetuating the construct they’ve created of us. Las Vegas doesn’t really exist anymore. It hasn’t existed for years.

Rude Awakening
In the light, I can see the welts on her back, different tones of red over bronze. Her hips look tiny under the fingers that grip her, guiding her up and down, up and down over his gargantuan, veiny cock. He wasn’t posturing with that box of magnums.

Lilith and Jezebel, Slurve Magazine, Issue 4
“I READ HER BLOG!” I screamed. Then I picked up the cheap folding chair, swung it over my head and flung it at him.

Isabella had found me first. That’s how she knew. That’s why she booked the ticket. But Hunter had gotten down on hands and knees at the eleventh hour and promised her he would leave me.

Small town, big hell, the saying goes, and the Internet is no exception. [cache]

Laughlin, Black Heart Magazine, Winter 2007, Issue #4, pp. 40-41
At climax, he opens the door, takes hold of my hair and comes on my sunglasses. A second later, I hear a click as he lights the cigarette still perched on my lips. I push my sunglasses up and he kisses my forehead before tossing the lighter on a side table and sliding the door shut again. [cache]

Bullhead City, Black Heart Magazine, Fall 2006
I'm amazed they have shoes and socks and just about everything in one store--it's so American. Everything you could need or want, standardized and shoved into this box-like establishment. I've decided that I'm a Wal-Mart: a dilettante specializing in cheapening genius and beauty to the point of democracy. [cache]

Barstow, Black Heart Magazine, Fall 2006
When I blow my boyfriend, I use cities as landmarks; Barstow to Needles, estimated hour and forty-five minutes. Ready, set, go. Some people suck dick because they like to, because it turns them on. Some people do it because they have to. Most are a combination of enjoyment and compromise. I’m in it for the science when I’m on the road. Technique and endurance. The signs dotting the roads and interstates are meters. [cache]

The Dream Girls, Black Heart Magazine, Fall 2006
We're not looking for a bar or a crazy good time. We're looking for girls. Sounds like a simple proposition, but it's worse than needing drink. I'm an alcoholic: when I need drink, I'll get drink and it won't matter what it is, because anything will suit the purpose. With girls it's different. I need beauty. Beauty is not always easy to find; beauty won't hand herself over at the flash of ID and the twenty on the bar. [cache]

Gentle, Black Heart Magazine, Summer 2004, Issue #1
I understand lust, I understand pain. I do not understand this. Somehow, this is not right, I do not know how to feel about it and it bites me, the way I bite my lower lip when he asks me questions and listens to me speak--the way he said we were forbidden to speak when we met, about who I am, what I do, what I desire from life. [cache]

See her profile at Black Heart Magazine.

On Wanting to Be a Porn Star

I wanted to be a porn star once. Even more fabulous than getting paid to fuck (one of my favorite activities), the idea of responding to the totally banal dinner party query, "What do you do?" with, "Porn!" was irresistible.

I have watched an incredible amount of porn in my life. I've been watching porn, in fact, since I found the channel on the TV as a child. It rarely is about the porn, it's the fantasy of watching other people having sex.

The most memorable porn I ever watched was one I caught channel surfing at seven, maybe eight. I never found out what it was--sometimes our memory of a thing is better than the thing itself. In the scene I caught, there appeared a woman, a gorgeous blonde in a white dress, the sort you imagine when you think of Ancient Greece and its pantheon of gods. The woman was wearing a white mask, shaped like the face of a bird, with a small golden beak. She came upon a man and straddled him. As he devoured her, she called out, like an eagle.

It was all the introduction I needed to fall desperately for aesthetically pleasing, well-orchestrated, reality suspending renditions of sex. It only followed that later in life I would gravitate toward big-budget productions that focused on such matters. In fantasy, there is no space for the reality of stretch marks and badly shaved cunts. I wanted gorgeous, impossibly perfect Barbies riding cock then and I still want it now.

It's all visual. Despite being a writer, I don't necessarily care for storyline in porn. I don't need the whole story. I don't care about character development. Give me a slice of the moment, the rawness of seriously fucking someone with every aspect of your body.

One day it occurred to me I could be a porn star. It was a short-lived desire. See, I'm a writer; I can't help it any more than I can help breathing. Sometimes, I sell my words. Nothing can make me loathe writing more than writing something I'm not into. What made me think it would be different with sex?

It's no different.

The task of creating fantasy is daunting. I've modeled: it's not play, it's work. And mind you, that's just posing. The kind of porn I'm talking about is a dance, an orchestration of two or more bodies trying to maintain their balance on the axis of illusion.

Forget it. I'd much rather sit in front of my 72" television and watch Jenna Jameson fuck Briana Banks.

***

Published as Get Paid To Fuck in Black Heart Magazine, Summer 2008

I met Hunter at a bar on a night of martinis and panty-pullers. He told me he’d seen me stripping at the sort of dive where I was under the delusion I had a sort of automatic anonymity. He said he’d read my column. He said I was a cunt. Basically, he said all the right things.

Then he said he had a girlfriend.

And then we were on a cliff overlooking the beach, fucking on top of the hood of his car.

“I should go before the sun rises,” he said to me as we lay on the hood afterward, sticky with sex and the heat of the tropics.

“What’s her name?”

“Isabella.”

I lit a cigarette.

“Don’t feel bad,” he said. “We haven’t been working for a while.”

“You should feel bad. You’re the one who’s cheating.”

“I have nothing to offer you,” he said turning to look at me.

“I don’t want anything,” I said. “Just you.”

It might not have been working between him and Isabella, but he was in no rush to end things. We whiled away the days stealing as many moments as we could. In the morning, for breakfast; over the course of a three hour lunch; in the afternoon, over coffee; in the evening, at parties and places on the wrong side of town.

“Fuck me,” I whispered to him, pulling him into the alley between the café and the brewery.

“Now?”

I kissed him, pushing him against the dirty alley wall.

“Yes, right now,” I said. “Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me! Fuck me until you know where my words come from.”

He turned us around, pulling up my skirt and reaching between my legs.

“Fuck me, Hunter,” I moaned as he fingered me, dripping wet, desperate, possessed. “Fuck me until you know where the voices begin their whispers in the night.”

I felt his breath against my neck as he unbuttoned his pants. I pulled his face to mine.

“Fuck me until you know what these hands have gripped. Fuck me until you know where this heart has traveled. Fuck me until you know where the body breaks. Fuck me!”

And he did.

There comes a time when stolen moments are not enough.

“She left me,” he told me one afternoon. “It’s over.”

I pulled him into bed.

“I love being inside you.”

“What’s it like?”

What is it like to be taken hostage in my body? To taste your cock on my tongue?

“I feel powerful—I’m inside you,” he told me. But it’s humbling because I’m engulfed by you. What’s it like to feel me inside you?”

“With you inside me, we experience a four-dimensional change in constant velocity. Shh, let me feel your weight on me.”

When I reached for a cigarette on his bedside table—or had it been hers?—I noticed the unmistakable sea foam blue box. Tiffany’s.

I looked around the room. Most traces of her were gone, but through a half open closet door, I could see items that I knew were not his.

“Why are you angry?” he asked me a couple of weeks later, as we sat at one of our favorite dives, a sad hole-in-the-wall decorated in tinsel and Christmas lights called Angel Wings.

I polished my martini and got up.

“Darling, I want to sing,” I told the proprietor, a fat queen whose name I’d been told a million times and could never remember.

“What you want sing, darling?” he asked me. “You like ‘My Heart Go On,’ darling, or maybe you sing ‘You’re Still The One’ or ‘Harden My Heart’?”

“How about ‘Vindicated’?” I could feel Hunter staring at me.

“Ooh, Dashboard is so fabulous!” Darling exclaimed, handing me the mic.
He disappeared in the direction of the music booth.

“I thought you didn’t sing.” Hunter said flatly from where he sat.

“I don’t.” I said, and was suddenly greeted by a shock of feedback from the speakers.

“Why are you doing this?” The music began to play.

“Catharsis.”

“Anastasia…”

I turned to him, as the words flashed across the screens on the adjacent walls.

“Yes?”

He didn’t say anything, so I turned back to the lyrics and began to sing. By the time I got to the chorus, I was screaming at the top of my lungs.

“I am vindicated! I am selfish, I am wrong, I am right, I swear I’m right, swear I knew it all along and I am flawed, but I am cleaning up so well, I am seeing in me now the things you swore you saw yourself—”

“What is this about?” I could hear Hunter ask over the music.

“So clear, like the diamond in that ring, cut to mirror your intention, oversized and overwhelmed, the shine of which has caught my eye and rendered me so isolated…”

“Anastasia!”

I stopped singing.

“You said she left you, you fucking liar!”

If screaming is catharsis, screaming into a microphone is redemption.

“When people leave you, darling, usually they take everything with them. They don’t leave half their wardrobe in the closet.” I added, “It’s not over, is it?”

He didn’t answer.

“Goddamn you!” I put down the mic and walked to the table.

“Anastasia, calm down, you’re embarrassing me.”

“I HOPE SO!” I screamed. “I FUCKING HOPE SO HUNTER, I HOPE YOU FEEL EMBARRASSED. I HOPE YOU FEEL A FRACTION OF WHAT I FEEL! OR WHAT SHE FEELS.”

“And how do you know what she feels?”

I gripped the back of the chair, so tightly, my knuckles were white.

“I READ HER BLOG!” I screamed. Then I picked up the cheap folding chair, swung it over my head and flung it at him.

Isabella had found me first. That’s how she knew. That’s why she booked the ticket. But Hunter had gotten down on hands and knees at the eleventh hour and promised her he would leave me.

Small town, big hell, the saying goes, and the Internet is no exception. A regular reader of my blog happened to be a long-time reader of Isabella’s blog. While he didn’t personally know either one of us, he’d been able to connect the dots when I started writing about my affair with Hunter.

Through him, I discovered her blog and saw how between escapades Hunter had been planning their wedding.

“They were looking at chapels. She has pictures of chapels on her blog. Chapels!” I’d screamed at my best friend Cassandra. “She’s wonderful. She’s funny, she’s perfect, she’s pretty. Cassandra, they’re getting married.”

I continued to yell at Hunter after they threw us out of Angel Wings. We screamed at each other all the way to the door of Godfather’s, another bar in the area, where we bumped into Cassandra.

“Let’s go home,” she said, pushing Hunter aside.

“I’m all right,” I assured her.

“No,” she whispered to me. “She’s in there.”

Before she or Hunter could stop me, I had located her table and taken a seat beside her. A look of shock flickered before turning to fury.

“I don’t want to speak to you,” she said to me in a strained tone.

“Isabella, I made a terrible mistake,” I said. “I’m so sorry. I should have had an affair with you instead.”

For some reason, she didn’t slap me. She asked me about myself. Not about me and Hunter—about me.

By the time Hunter found us, we were laughing.

“He called you Jezebel,” Isabella said giggling.

“Really? He called you Lilith.” I looked at Hunter laughing, “What’s with the Bible references?”

“And how come I’m Lilith and she gets to be Jezebel?”

Hunter put his head in his hands.

Later, I wrote Isabella a story where I broke the narrative and made it so she and I ran away together and left Hunter behind. Nothing happened between us, though she did leave Hunter.

A few years later, I bumped into Hunter in Honolulu.

“So you’re married,” he said walking out of Du Vin, where he’d asked me to join him for drinks.

“And you’re not.” I answered.

“It’s not for me,” he replied, lighting his cigarette.

Karma works in mysterious ways. Isabella is happy. Hunter is lonely. And I got hit by a cab on the intersection of Bethel and King just moments after leaving Du Vin.

But that’s a story for another time.

***

Published as Lilith and Jezebel in Slurve Magazine, Summer 2008

And How To Correctly Place The Toilet Paper In The Holder

“Oh, thank god, I was afraid you were dead!” my friend Annabella screamed into my ear when I finally picked up my mobile phone.
“Mmmwhat?” I cracked an eye open. The clock read 4:42AM. Almost noon-ish London time. Don’t you love people with no understanding of time zones whatsoever?
Annabella wasn’t fazed by my grogginess; she jabbered right on, “I read that this guy got arrested when he ran over his new wife in Las Vegas, and I was like, oh mg god! I know her! I am SO glad you’re OK.”

When I was conscious, I found out the details of Katie Martindale and James Olwine’s honeymoon gone so, so wrong: they got into a huge fight on their trip home from their Vegas wedding getaway and when the bride stormed out of the car, her husband ran her over!

To love and to hold! To hit and to run!

Annabella wasn’t the only one concerned. My new father-in-law called my husband because he “just wanted to make sure you haven’t run her over, son!”

“I’m sure it’s not that people think he’s a psycho or you guys have a crazy relationship,” Mother assured when I called her that afternoon from the Bellagio lobby, where I sat staring at the ceiling, enamored of Dale Chihuly’s massive Fiori di Como. “You just inspire very strong actions and reactions!”

I couldn’t help thinking about an article in the New York Times years ago about how the divorce rate was not as high as it was often reported and was, in fact, in decline. Is this because couples last such a short time that they can simply annul their unions? Or is it that they just run each other over?

I didn’t care whether it was 50 percent of marriages that end in divorce or 41. I felt like I do whenever I catch one of those really hot shows on the TV, like 24 or Lost: ugh, can’t handle the suspense, must know what happens next, must wait ‘til the whole show comes out on DVD.

I wanted to know our odds.

So I did what I always do when I have a question: I hit up Google.

Guess what! According to Jeffry H. Larson, professor and chairman of the Family and Marriage Therapy Program at Brigham Young University and author of the book Should We Stay Together?, the odds are slim at best!

There are several factors that predict marital dissatisfaction and marital success according to his Marriage Triangle theory, which compares individual traits, couple traits and context. The success stuff is pretty typical: communication, common ground, understanding, blah, blah, blah.

The dissatisfaction indicators though? It’s so us: high neurotic traits, impulsiveness, vulnerability to stress, anger, dysfunctional beliefs, dissimilarity, short acquaintanceship, premarital sex and promiscuity, cohabitation (if sporadic due to jet-setting), younger age, parental divorce and chronic marital conflict (his), family disapproval (well, at first, anyway).

“We’re an equation for disaster!” I said giggling the next morning, as we sailed toward Hoover Dam on Lake Mead.
“I think we cancel each other out,” my shiny new husband said, pulling me close and kissing my forehead, oh-so-sweet.

But before I could get too smug about escaping the Marriage Triangle doom and gloom with our brand of creative mathematics, we had A Fight. On the way back to California from our Las Vegas wedding getaway, no less. How ironic!

I can’t say how many statistics and surveys I’ve seen that say the number one reason couples fight is finances. The number’s in the hundreds, at least. Generic as it sounds, that’s exactly what the bicker-fest was about.

The husband had suggested I close my account with my bank now that we had an account at his bank. It was the word “we”: suddenly I realized my husband was going to be able to see ALL my financial shenanigans.

It’s not that I have anything to be ashamed about. I consider myself a very financially responsible person. It’s the fact that if he wants to, he can totally see everything I’m doing. It’s not that I’m doing anything that’s wrong or suspect, either. It’s just that… hello, I’m a SCORPIO. I’m a walking information management department.

Plus, I don’t need my husband knowing I spend this much on nails or that much on facial things or teeth bleaching things or waxes or microdermabrasions. What happens when I get Botox? Or collagen in my lips? Or whatever tucked and pulled and plucked? He’ll know then, too! What’s the charm in a woman who looks fabulous if you know it’s a push-up bra or silicone and injections of diluted chemical weapons and fat? That’s DISGUSTING! Who would knowingly fuck that?!

I was beside myself. In my mind, I’d already been exposed as a mere mortal with access to a good dermatologist, a mortal who needed brow waxes and whose vagina wasn’t just naturally devoid of coarse shrubbery—just like everyone else.

“STOP THE CAR!” I screamed at my groom, crying hysterically, my voice as red and puffy as my eyes.
“WHY? DO YOU WANT ME TO RUN YOU OVER?” he yelled back.

After a brief silence then we burst out laughing. Which enabled us to peacefully conclude that we would maintain individual accounts and have this joint one for household and couple expenses. You know, kind of like paying club dues.

It’s all very reasonable now. But at the time, I really could have run him over. And I’m sure the feeling was mutual.

So when my friend Simone called me to hang out tonight and chirped, “So! How is married life?” I wanted to reach over the line and strangle her.

Those newlyweds who constantly gush, “OMG! I LOVE MY SPOUSE!!!ONE11! EVERYTHING IS SO FABULOUS!!!!” are on some seriously great mood-altering meds.

Because it’s not fabulous. It’s weird. It’s weird getting used to having someone in my space 24/7. It’s weird having to check with someone when making plans. It’s weird having to explain some simple life choices and even weirder to have to combine your future plans with those of someone else. It’s weird defining even the simplest tasks and delegating responsibilities to ensure a household works as close to the way both parties would like as possible. It’s deep stuff and menial stuff, but it’s foundation stuff, which means you have to address it.

Disagreements about how towels are to be folded CAN be a marriage’s undoing. Or how the toilet paper is to be placed in the dispenser. Or how the bed is to be made.

I know this because the husband and I have already had Discussions about these issues. Except the toilet paper one—I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t agree that the roll should be installed with the edge overhand. Even the info architects at Clearwired have an article about the obvious superiority of overhand installation.

I mean, you can’t have it origamied if it’s hanging off the back end against the wall unless you have the origami at the top and then you’d have to tuck it through every time you needed to use it.

Oh! Maybe that’s what happened to Sheryl Crow! TOTALLY explains why she’s so hell bent against using toilet paper!

Am I seriously talking about TOILET PAPER?! Ugh! I can’t stand myself right now!

“The facts of life are very grinding, so the reality of marriage is grinding,” says Natalie Low, Ph.D., a psychologist and Harvard instructor who counsels couples from fairy tale endings into the real world. “There is no obvious course to follow, so couples just have to keep working.”

Yes. WORKING.

“How is married life?” I repeated in reply to Simone. “Married life’s hard work. Like, worse than manual labor. Very weird manual labor.”

***

Published as The Roadkill Wife in Black Heart Magazine, Summer 2007

Miss Peru: Jimena Elias

If you could read anyone’s diary, whose diary would you read? That’s the only question that really matters as I watch the Miss Universe 2007 contestants’ interviews. That question makes them or breaks them for me.

It started with Jimena Elias of Peru. I picked her as a favorite because I’m Peruvian and Peruvians stick together. Then Jimena said she wanted to read Anne Frank’s diary. “Anne Frank was a girl who fought for what she wanted,” she said, “and that stands as a model for youth today.” I began to doubt. Had she actually read Diary of a Young Girl or was she blowing smoke up my ass?

The gimmicks only got worse: Argentina’s Saniela Stucan, Poland’s Dorota Gawron, and Norway’s Kirby Ann Basken all said they’d read their moms’ diaries. Which could be interesting if it wasn’t such an obvious ploy to appear sweet and loving.


Miss Poland: "I love my mom!"

And they’re not the only Brady Bunchers: Lugina Cabezas from Ecuador sited her grandmother as the diary-writer she’d love to read, Switzerland’s Christa Rigozzi wanted to read her dad’s diary and Laural Barrett of New Zealand wanted to read her grandfather’s. While their answers were a little more sincere, somehow they still reeked of fake.

Maybe I’m cynical.

I’ll tell you this, though, when France’s Rachel Legrain-Trapani said she would read her brother’s diary, I totally believed her. She said it in a way that added a mischievous element to her already unbearable cuteness.


Miss France: unbearably cute

Agni Pratistha Kuswardono of Indonesia said she’d read Hellen Keller’s diary because she’s been through so many obstacles. I hear people talking about her so much recently in the present tense—there must be a movie out or something. Could someone clue everyone in that Hellen Keller’s been dead for over 30 years? Thanks.

Carolina Raven of Aruba, Renata Christian of the US Virgin Islands, Yoanna Henry of St. Lucia and Canada’s Inga Skaya would read Oprah’s diary, which is boring and generic, but at least it’s honest.

Jessica Jordan Burton of Bolivia wants to read Princess Di’s diary because she is such a model citizen, etc, despite being a bulimic headcase. No, she didn't actually say that, and neither did Natalia Guimaraes of Brazil, or Ana Giorgelashvili of Georgia, or Sorangel Matos Arce of Panama, or Adelaine Chin Ai Nee of Malaysia, or Ly Jonaitis of Venezuela, who also picked her as choice reading.


Miss Bolivia: "I [heart] bulimic headcases!"

Jewel Garner, Miss Barbados, is more fun—she would read Queen Elizabeth’s diary, mostly to get all the catty comments that run through her royal head when her family acts up! Rosa Maria Ojeda Cuen, Miss Mexico, wants to get a glimpse of Jackie O’s secrets, because she was so strong and persevering.

Jelena Marcos, Miss Croatia, would read Mother Theresa’s diary because she’s traveled a lot. That’s like saying you want to read Jessica Cutler’s diary because she worked for Senator Mike DeWine. Please. Puja Gupta of India and Massiel Taveras of Dominican Republic, would also read Mother Theresa’s diary, because, according to Massiel, “she’s a woman who gave her life to the poor and those who had nothing and that's what makes her unique and I want to know what drove her to do this.” That makes more sense. Points for making sense. No points for picking Mother Theresa, though, gimme a break.


(L to R) Miss Croatia, Miss India, Miss Dominican Republic: suck-ups

Naemi Monte from Curacao wants to read God’s diary to see how he lives. She couldn’t say she wanted the diary to see how the universe was created or something—she wants to read what God had for breakfast and stuff. Weirder yet is Maria Jose Maldonado Gomez of Paraguay, who says she doesn’t admire anyone like she admires the Lord and she wouldn’t be interested in anyone’s diary but His. Hardcore. Sandra Faro of Mauritius, who also wants God’s diary, is more on the ball when she points to her head and says, “it’s complicated, I want to know what He has in here.” Did Valentina Massi of Italy say she wanted to read the diary of John Paul II, or am I just tripping on God now?

Annelien Coorevits, Miss Belgium, wants to read George W. Bush's diary—she makes that little face all Europeans make when they mention him, but she won’t say why! Say it or keep your mouth shut, you pussy! Rachel Smith of USA, Nadine Njeim of Lebanon, Rosemary Chileshe of Zambia and Megan Coleman of South Africa want to read Nelson Mandela’s diary. Only Rosemary says she’s actually read anything of his—she’s started to, anyway.


Miss Belgium: pussy

Sharn Kenett, Miss Israel, would read the diary of Golda Meir, Israel’s first woman prime minister. The best one for political figures is Singapore’s Jessica Tan, who wants to read Margaret Thatcher’s diary because she’s one of the few female political leaders of our time and she helped England’s economy when she in privatized industry, “and Ronald Reagan is one of her fans, so we have to admire her,” Tan concluded with a smile.

Gergana Kochanova, Miss Bulgaria, says screw diaries! She prefers to read tabloids, specifically about Brangelina. Now that’s FABULOUS. Greece’s Doukissa Nomikou, and Slovak Republic’s Lucia Senasiova would also love to get their hands on Angelina Jolie’s secrets.

Polyvia Achilleos from Cyprus would read J-Lo’s diary. Saneita Been from Turks and Caicos wants to read Whitney Houston’s diary because she’s a strong woman. Trinere Lynes, Miss Bahamas, is the gutsiest of them all! She wants to read Michael Jackson's diary—to get into his head! Yikes! Maria Jeffery, Miss Belize, wants a peek at Bob Marley’s diary to see what he was feeling when he crafted his lyrics. Someone please just get the poor thing stoned!

Miss Philippines, Anna Theresa Licardos, would read Bobbi Brown’s diary because Bobbi Brown once said that make-up should be a part of your face and not stick out and Theresa is dying to know how the makeup artist had this great epiphany.

Xiomara Blandino from Nicaragua and Lisette Rodriguez from El Salvador want to go more profoundly into Frida Kahlo and explore her mysteries. I don't know what that means, but it sounds hot and I wanna watch.


Miss El Salvador: kinky

In a class all her own, Korea’s Honey Lee doesn’t monkey around—she wants to read primatologist Jane Goodall’s diary.

Riyo Mori from Japan, Wendy Salgado from Honduras, and Meleesea Payne from Guyana all want a piece of Donald Trump’s diary—Meleesea says she digs him because he has an eye for business and for beauty! Go get him, girlfriend! Give us something to read about!

Slovenia’s Tjasa Kokalj declined to pick anyone because there are so many interesting people in the world. Miss Ukraine, Lyudmila Bikmullina, doesn’t want to read anyone’s diary period—“it’s hard enough to get me to read what people want me to read,” she said when asked. Hungary’s beautiful Ildiko Bona doesn’t care whose diary she reads, as long as it’s a “historical person.”

Stephanie Winter of Antigua and Barbuda, Natalia Zabala Arroyo of Spain, and Viktoria Azovskaja of Estonia say they wouldn't read ANYONE’s diary because diaries are supposed to be private! What's worse, being a liar or a bore? Zaklina Sojic from Denmark has it down: she’d read all her ex-boyfriends' diaries to see what they were really up to! Now this is what we can expect from the MySpace generation! Thanks for keeping it real, Zaklina!


Miss Denmark: keeping it real

Another child of MySpace is Uruguay’s Giannina Silva, who’d like to read her own diary. I read my own blog ALL the time, too. I TOTALLY think it’s a sign that we are introspective and ever in touch with our cores.

By the time I got to the end of the interviews, I’d seen a ton of eye candy and heard nothing of interest. I’ve been approached to do Miss Universe but I always said no... but maybe I should so we can actually watch something interesting on the TV. I mean, wouldn’t we all rather read an autobiographical account of Mata Hari’s exploits in sex and espionage?! Who’s going to stand up and announce, “I wanted to be a stripper when I was a little girl, but I sold out and became a journalist who takes off her clothes on the job,” if not me?

***

Published as Miss Universe... Reads? in Black Heart Magazine, Summer 2007

exploring some of the world's most absurd and offensive Asian stereotypes

A guy once dumped me because I wasn’t Asian enough. I’m not kidding, that’s what he said. He took a drag from his cigarette and, without really looking at me, said, “it’s nothing personal. It’s just... you’re not... Asian enough.” I hadn’t been aware Asian was a prereq for riding that ride—I may be a fourth Japanese, but I look nothing like it. Just what was he expecting? Did he think my inner geisha was going to pop up at some point and take over?

If I hadn’t thrown my saketini in his face, I might have had a chance to ask him. You don’t blame me, though, do you?

Asian chicks and the pseudonymous dudes who love them

“When was the first time you were with an Asian girl, uh, wait, what are we calling you tonight?” I asked a journalist friend who asked me to keep his name to myself.
“Maurice,” he replied.
“Right. Maurice. When was the first time?”
“Eleventh grade, and this is pre-internet. My dad worked for a computer company, so you did kinda meet people like you do on the internet. I took a bus to her suburbs; she got a blanket, we went to the bushes and went to third base and we never spoke again.”
“Did you know she was Asian?”
“It had nothing to do with her being Asian,” he assured me. “I would do Latin Americans as quickly as I would do Asians.”
“As someone open to a variety of women, you must have noticed—what’s the difference? Is there one?”
“Like most stereotypes it’s bullshit, but then, my last real girlfriend was Caucasian and she wasn’t very spicy, she just kind of lay there and didn’t inspire me to act with ferocity and vulgarity. And the melatonin tone around her vaginal area wasn’t to my liking. It’s either hot or not—”
“What? Her pussy?”
“It’s not like you don’t notice. The first time we got naked it was like, oh! I wasn’t happy to see her... situation. It was a sorry-looking vagina as opposed to—you know sometimes you see a vagina and it’s just... well, why do you like a person’s face? It’s the same.”

It was interesting he’d brought up vaginas. Earlier that week I’d run across a piece by Kenny Tanemura for Asian Week about the e-book “How To Date An Asian Woman” from Love Of Asian Women.com.

The e-book draws information from a study by the University of Western Ontario about the characteristics of different races’ vaginal structures. The e-book paraphrases: “the female genitals of Asians were placed very ‘front and high’ compared to other races. It was also noted that because they are anatomically smaller in general the vaginas of Asian women tend to be much smaller than those of Caucasian and African women. This front and high placement along with what would be a naturally tighter vagina might account for why sex with Asian women is rumored to be so pleasant.”

I couldn’t help but wonder: was it my vagina? Had the Peruvian and European genes ganged up against my Japanese ancestry and ruined the exalted experience of the Asian Pussy?

I needed more information, so I sat down a columnist friend, who was also paranoid about being associated with an article of this nature and begged me to keep his name classified.

“What is my name going to be?” he asked me right off the bat, like demanding a password before granting me top secret info.
“What would you like?”
“Cicero.”
“Jesus, what’s up with you guys and your weird-ass names?”

He didn’t say anything.

“Whatev,” I said, sipping my coffee. “Have you ever dated, been involved with or had a thing for or with an Asian or Asian-American girl?”
“Yeah,” he said, “in college. I used to be very into Asian women.”
“What was it about Asian women that was so enticing?”
“Not sure. Demure, hairless, less chatty—stereotypically speaking, of course.”
“Do you have this thing now? Your fiancée is not Asian.”
“I stopped finding women attractive in accordance with ethnicity after college.”
“What made you change your mind?”
“Maturity. I stopped having types.”
“Maturity, huh?”
“Or desperation. Or both. Unclear.”
“What about vaginas? Are they different?”
“Well, we all grew up being told that they had sideways vaginal openings.”
“The vaginas what? You thought Asian girls had sideways vaginas?”
“Yes. That’s what we were told. It seemed to make sense... aesthetically.”
“Who told you that?”
“I don’t remember. Many people—schoolyard stuff and then it was a joke in college but I was never sure until I found out.”
“You’re serious about this? Jesus. When did you find out?”
“After I lost my virginity I slept with an Asian girl. I thought about the sideways slit then. A little part of me thought it could be a possibility. I wasn’t disappointed when I found out it was like other vaginas. I don’t think I was disappointed, anyway.”
“Why would you be? You were getting laid.”
“Right.”

Myths perpetuated by morons

I’d never heard of it, or anything like it, so I called “Maurice” back afterward to get more information.

“Sure I’ve heard that. But this was bullshit locker room talk, college or post-college. It was presented as joking bullshit. I don’t think anyone actually believed it.”
“Huh.”

In 0.12 seconds, Google came up with 51,100 results when I searched “Asian”, “sideways”, and “vagina”. While everyone had something to share about it, no one seemed to be able to pinpoint when the little legend was born.

Urban Dictionary did, however, present the logic behind the concept—or, rather, the lack thereof; under “sideways pussy”, it reads: “The vagina of an Asian female. The slant of the eyes is like the slant of the vagina.”

But surely the “yellow fever” epidemic that rocked my adolescence wasn’t based on a stupid myth. There had to be more to this. I turned to the expert, contributing editor at Fortune magazine and Asia specialist Sheridan Prasso. In her 2005 book The Asian Mystique: Dragon Ladies, Geisha Girls and Other Fantasies of the Exotic Orient, Prasso hypothesizes that our ideas of Asian women originate in the fancy of European imperialism and the pity of Christian evangelism.

To imperialist Europe, the Orient was a place of adventure, riches and danger. The women of this world were described as decadent and exotic and, very often, sexually depraved. This notion stuck despite the passage of time and the new experiences of life in Asia by Western missionaries. They saw the ugly side of the famous Orient and the treatment of women as second-class citizens. This idea of the Asian woman as a vulnerable creature without rights was attached to the vision of the Asian woman as a sex kitten and voila!, a cultural obsession was born.

Roll of dimes: myth-busted!

But what about Asian guys? Not one of the items I read about the "Asian fetish" phenomenon discussed men. I asked my girlfriends if any of them had been with Asian guys and was surprised to find only two had been.

“They just don’t seem manly,” another friend told me.

This was idea was confirmed via AOL Instant Messeger by a gay friend of mine in Hawaii.

“I felt inappropriate when I first began exploring the desire,” he wrote, after I asked him when his Asian fetish began. “There are tons of old gay queens here who only want young smooth Asian boys. I did not want to be perceived as that kind of rice queen.”
“Oh my god, rice queen! That’s brilliant. Explain.”
“A rice queen’s a homosexual non-Asian male who is predominantly attracted to Asian males. The professed rice queen does not necessarily project a racist ideal of the submissive Asian onto his desired partner, though cases of this kind of projection do exist. I, for one, never believed Asians were submissive even before I started having sex with them.”
“You’ve had a lot of Asian dick. Is it true their penises are smaller than non-Asians?”
“Nooooooooo.”
“No? Really?”
“I don’t know why people think that. My Vietnamese lover was like the biggest I’ve ever had.”
“Vietnamese dick is big?”
“His certainly was! He was my height and skinny, maybe 120 or 130 pounds and he had this huge fucking cock. He ripped me apart! I hadn’t bottomed in years! I was like, ‘OMFGGETOUT!’ I think the smallest I’ve had has been six or something. But that was just one guy. I don’t know where the stereotype comes from, it’s dumb.”

Just like the sideways vagina thing.

Gender politics and other theories

As soon as I read that about the Asian dick stereotype, I dialed “Cicero”.

“Do you remember that column you wrote about how changes in gender politics in previous generations have almost emasculated men in contemporary American society?” I demanded, in place of a greeting.
He was silent for a few seconds; I don’t know whether he was taken aback or I’d caught him in the middle of a press meeting or what.
Finally, he replied, “Mine? Uh, yeah.”
“Do you think that the boom of the ‘Asian fetish’ phenomenon of recent decades is partly being fueled by an attempt by men to ‘re-masculate’ themselves based on erroneous stereotypes of Asian women as helpless sex kittens and Asian men as easy rivals with little dicks?”
“Very interesting,” he said. “Maybe.”

I’d asked everyone a million questions, but I was still nowhere near an answer. Riding a deadline and with no conclusion in sight, it occurred to me to ask the man sleeping next to me.

“Re-masculation?” he mumbled, cracking an eye open. “You women complicate everything. Why is it so hard to believe that we’re just fascinated with the idea of a sideways vagina?”

***

Published as The Sideways Vagina in Black Heart Magazine, Summer 2007

It wasn’t the middle of January when I received my first Valentine’s Day spam message. Despite my annoyance with my spam filters, this was a welcome intrusion—after all, I seldom remember Valentine’s on time, which makes for some haphazard crafting of sexy cards the morning of the 14th. Assuming I have an object of interest, of course. Otherwise, the heart blitzkrieg all around only serves to remind me how lucky I am to be free of the obligation.

An obligation is exactly what Valentine’s Day has become to a lot of us. And it’s not just an obligation to give a gift. For some of us who’re single, it’s a clear reminder that we’ve failed in our obligation to couple up.

“Valentine’s Day is a psychological aggression,” says my friend, psychologist de rigueur Madison Braune, 47. “One: it’s a torture to singles. Two: it creates the illusion that relationships must always have the intensity of romances. Let me tell you something—when you’ve been married twenty years, you’re not going to be as excited about showing up at your wife’s office with a bouquet of flowers and a poem the way you were excited about it when you were first dating. You have a life together and celebrate your union in different ways. It’s not the death of romance—it’s evolution into something else that’s wonderful and wholly yours. Sadly, many couples today feel forced to do something that isn’t genuine simply because it’s demanded by growing consumerist trends.

“Worse still, people rarely give gifts privately. Candies show up in lockers and flowers in offices, reinforcing the notion that these gestures must be made. It’s damaging: one day’s effort should not be the barometer of the strength of a relationship.”

It’s a no-brainer. Yet if it’s so logical, why do we still feel that the holiday says something about our relationships, or, if we’re single, about us? How did we get into this mess?

V-Day: A Brief History

According to Funk & Wagnalls, it’s likely the holiday originated with Lupercalis, a Roman feast to ensure the fertility of cattle that developed into a celebration involving public exposure and playful whipping and swinger party-style hook-ups.

Pope Gelasius I eventually put an end to the nonsense, declaring February 14 the feast of St. Valentine and abolishing Lupercalis. Unfortunately for him, its correlation with successful couplings reared its head again in the Middle Ages: St. Valentine, according to legend, was martyred for aiding Roman soldiers get married when this was strictly forbidden!

The Catholic Church no longer considers St. Valentine’s an official holiday. I’m tempted to say Lupercalis won and close with kinky well-wishes, but then I remember that, ugh, I still have no gift for my fiancé. Who am I kidding? Neither side’s won. History’s been buried under so many marketing campaigns, no one even remembers who St. Valentine was. Then again, this holiday changed in time to suit different interests—who’s to say we can’t change it again and liberate ourselves of this martyrdom?

***

Written for Black Heart Magazine in 2007 and published in February, 2008 as The Heart Blitzkrieg.

Intrigued by what Stylephile called the purse-friendly solution for the socialite fashionista on the go, what TimesOnline associated with the new age in magazines and fashion entrepreneur Natalie Massenet hailed as a woman's personal shopper, the glitterati brat child of the literati decided to try Net-A-Porter Notes on for size. This is her story:




I got a mailer from Net-A-Porter about the newest must-have, a magazine-day-planner überhybrid called Notes that would not only organize my life, but also keep me in the know in regard to teh Fashion. So, £25 later, I’d placed my order—I’m about the impulse like that, so long as it stays below my self-imposed impulse-buy limit of US$300 (it really helps when it’s foreign currency, though, because I really, really suck at math).

“It is our policy at NET-A-PORTER.COM to process your order as quickly as possible so that you receive your purchase in a timely manner,” Net-A-Porter told me in my order confirmation. “When your order has been shipped we will email you a confirmation of your shipping details and an Airwaybill number. Using this number you can track your package on our site.”

But a month later, I had no e-mail. I chalked it up to holiday traffic and called Net-A-Porter to check up on my order. They told me the response had been huge, hence the delay, but promised it was being sent right away. Cool.

Weeks came and went and it became obvious that the reason my social life was suffering was because I could never find the napkins and journal pages where I was jotting my many lunch and dinner dates. Annoyed about forgetting my grand-uncle's birthday, I checked the site. My order was still “processing”. Livid, shot Net-A-Porter an e-mail rehashing the situation. The closing was the best part:

“I am fresh out of patience; I expect immediate clarification in regard to the status of my order. Furthermore, I'm absolutely open to attempts to kiss my ass through courtesy gifts. I’m certain we can come up with something to dispel the rather unpleasant taste this situation has left in my mouth.”

The scathing tirade got me a call from them right away assuring me they’d sent a copy but would send another immediately. I was forced to get a planner in Spanish in the meantime—a terrible affair as apparently South America starts their week with Monday instead of Sunday. Totally confusing, ugh.

Finally some time in March, Notes arrived. No attempt was made by customer service to follow-up that I’d received the item. Still, I was nice, and I e-mailed them letting them know that the thing had arrived and I thanked them for their attention to my order regardless of the inconvenience it caused me. They didn’t go out of their way to apologize. No gift certificates were granted for the wait and resulting pseudo-social suicide. They didn’t even send a reply to the e-mail or call me!

But Notes was nice. I mean, not just nice. It was, like, supah-kawaii. All-black cover, glossy pages with pictures of teh Fashion and neat little articles throughout featuring the fashion's world’s biggest icons. The only problem with Volume I (the Spring-Summer issue) was that there was zero room to write down appointments. I mean, maybe it’s fashionable to know short-hand now, I don’t know, I’ve been in South America. Somehow, though, I doubt it. I was always running out of room and mind you, I was a workaholic and spent most of my day holed up at the office in early 2006, so it’s not like it was more than lunch and dinner.

In mid-July I got an e-mail from Net-A-Porter telling me Volume II was on its way to me (Volume I ends in June, that’s two weeks I’d spent in a social black-out already before this e-mail). Interestingly, it didn’t seem that I was the only one fed up with the service—it looked like even Net-A-Porter was over it: “In order to continue bringing you the best service, NET-A-PORTER now has a specialist subscription company handling all NOTES subscriptions.”



Today, Monday, August 07, 2006, I got my Fall-Winter issue. A month and a week late, of course, because even with a special subscription company one has to be fashionably late. Picture me not happy. And this time, I was not placated by the product: the quality of the paper is awful. Don’t get me wrong, Volume II has a lot of neat things going on: it’s much thicker than Volume I, allotting more room to write appointments and featuring more fashion than ever. But eww, it’s printed on totally yucky paper.

That’s a big issue. Bigger than lateness, even. I mean, lateness is a big issue to the instant gratification generation, but we’re so ADD, we don’t remember an order five minutes after placing it, so that’s not a huge sin, as long as we get spoiled by costumer service if we do complain about it. It doesn’t even have to be met with a gift certificate, really, all we want is acknowledgement even if it’s just a teeny tiny £25 order, someone to call us and make sure we got it and like it, someone to send an e-mail following up, whatever, something. Cover that and lateness is not an issue, social turmoil and all.

What you can’t ever do, though, ever is sacrifice a product to cut cost. I’m not saying matte is not chicer than glossy, I’m saying the paper used in Volume II does not look or feel like chic matte paper. Appearances are important to the fashionista. We don't mind paying an extra £25, either, so long as our planners keep from looking like they’re made out of construction paper.

All this aside, I have faith in Notes. I know there is potential beyond these growing pains and I believe it can be tapped—Natalie Massenet, after all, is a fashion and business genius in her own right. I’m into watching a good metamorphosis. But should you get one? Tell you what, when Notes finally reaches the must-have status it was prematurely granted, I’ll let you know. Until then, hold on to your Moleskines.

Though poetry begins in the literal--often with me, on coffee-stained pages with curling corners and ashes scattered over writhing stanza bodies--it is only a matter of seconds before readers are transported to a formidable new world.

Collections of poetry, in particular, are like visiting another country. We enter excited, but at once tentative. We desire to understand, but we fear this understanding, for nothing says more about our selves than the manner in which we perceive foreign things.

And there is no real way to experience and learn about ourselves and this new thing than to completely become immersed, to allow it to swallow us and to allow ourselves to lose our conscious processes in it entirely.

With the work of Catherynne Valente, the risks are great: her country is not a vacation package, it is the very heart of a deep, verdant landscape. Like a tropical jungle, her Music of a Proto-Suicide, is wet, dark, lush, and almost entirely uncharted.

The journey begins at the edge of the water in California, and though the collection is sown together with state landmarks we all recognize, the landscape is foreign and dream-like, full of oracles, witches, splintering moons, and recurring deaths.

The collection is reminiscent of Blake's Urizen and his journey through the cycle of life, in fact, but where Blake sought a rebirth, it seems Valente almost craves to be undone, to dissolve completely.

"'Proto' means primitive," Valente says, "it's the beginning of a thing, an incomplete version. A proto-suicide would be someone who had the seeds of suicide in them, buried... which, I suppose, is all of us."

Like most of her recent work, this collection deals with Valente on a very personal level, centering hungrily around the quintessential question of loneliness and purpose.

"I am a body of rice fields and paint thinner," proclaims the poem from which the title for the collection was taken. "My womb lies open like a book on loan,/due in 90 days,/blank ovarian pages stuck together,/coffee spilled on the cover,/yellow highlights on veins and/arterial footnotes--/placenta seeps into wood pulp."

The magic of this collection is that it respects no Cartesian boundaries. What begins in the intellect is quickly absorbed into the body. This is a visceral work that cuts through thought, skin, marrow, and soul and settles in the womb.

"The interior of the body fascinates me, and the womb is part of that," says Valente. "Male poets have been glorifying their cocks for ages. For me, the womb is a symbol of both emptiness and of a core, a heart."

There is a very strong sense of the poet in the collection that sears through the readers and opens them up like a near-death experience. It is a book to read in one hour or over and over again throughout a lifetime.

These paths will never be fully mapped and the words will never cease to cut right through the heart.

Buy a copy (J*A*M Pie Press, $7.00 US).

***

Published as Music of a Proto-Suicide for Still Life Reviews, Spring 2004