I Was Homeless For a Day Too!!

I was talking to a bartender from Croatia. His personality has a warm and genuine quality to it, like he knows what he's about.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw the guy next to me start looking over and doing the "I want in the conversation" nod. I ignored him until it was too awkward and then grudgingly turned my head. I had just mentioned my job. "Hey I work there," he tells me. Wonderful.

Of course he has superstar status there and I do not.

"I was just in Croatia," he adds, now slurring. He was sent there by his job. He told me how he was around people who were shooting real guns.

"Yeah I fought in the war there," interrupts my bartender. It was mandatory service.

Silence ... Crickets.

Reminds me of those activists that sleep on park benches for a day.

My Excuse for This Glass of Wine

... and the tear.

My fish, Lono, has passed away.

I expected to be upset. You can get attached to an inanimate object if you've had it for long enough, even more so for a fish. And a damn good one.

I'm relieved too. He was a fighter until the end, but today it just hurt to watch him.

He was my first grown-up pet. He was with me when I met my last boyfriend, with me when I dumped the asshole, with me when I moved to Queens into a sweltering closet of a room, when I moved a week later, when I was unemployed (and maybe talked to him a little too much, though he never judged) and when -- recently-- the possibility of the Big Easy finally presented itself as more than a dream.

A toilet burial would be sacrilegious.

Here's to my fish. I will deliver him into the East River by my house tomorrow morning.

Nudity Isn't Cool- But Could It Be For Kids?

Burlesque is my dirty hobby. I want to keep it that way.

It pleases me to watch the bridge and tunnel audience at the Slipper Room, (whose most naughty experience with nudity until this point was seeing the sex scene in Brokeback Mountain), watch agape, blush even, when I pull rosary beads out of my ... use your imagination.

That's why I hated the first time I performed in Brooklyn. The cool people there try so hard, but it isn't cute.

They try to be chill and relaxed about nudity- psh, as if they've seen the rosary thing before. Shock and shrill screams would expose them for the naive midwesterners they are.

When every one's cool with it, there's just nothing in it for me. And scaring people with my private parts is why I started this hobby in the first place.


Now kids get it right.

I performed for an audience of yuppies in Woodstock last weekend. The birthday woman was turning 40 and she had a lot of friends that were okay with letting their 5 year olds watch me get naked in their backyard. Maybe it was because the jazz band backing me added some culture, or is this the horrible thing that happens when hipsters grow into parents?

After my initial shock at twirling my pasties for a row of enthralled children, I can admit that they were one of the most responsive, and shocked, audiences I have ever performed for.

The hi-light: A little boy yelling, "That's gross but kind of cool!"

There's the spirit.

What You Think About When Going Blind

Surprisingly shallow things.

I was running through the "how can this happen to me dailouge, was yelling that it might be stroke, and was afriad I'd never again get to strip in stage to the Rolling Stones or try to throw a hook in the boxing ring.

I made a feeble attempt to take everything in for the last time, all the while hoping for a passing fire truck.

Then I looped back to the fears of stroke. I began praying for the blindness option, because a world without hot firemen and computer screens is better than no world at all.

Jose told me to smile. I didn't want to, but I did. Both corners of my mouth raising into a weird grimmace -- stroke threat is gone.

I wonder if pre-death thoughts are similarly inane. It's not like you have time to prepare some profound thoughts. ... I wonder how many people died thinking about how the green hospital wall doesn't go with the tiles or whether their favorite American Idol star will get a record deal.

I went to the eye doctor two days later. Just your run-o-the-mill occular migraine. Just to be sure, I'll ease up on the self-love the next few days- causes blindness you know.

In Heaven There Is No Beer

My mother told me about a funeral she attended yesterday. My father's colleague died of cancer.

"It was strange," she said. "So cold, sad." Well, what did she expect? It's a funeral.

The family, she told me, wasn't even religious and it was strange to see them going through the motions. The funeral directors where disturbingly friendly.

It's funny how people deal with death. Some like cold ceremony, maybe to quiet their own turmoil or grief. A minority, at least in the U.S., like a lot of wailing, crying, etc. And an even smaller minority use the opportunity to throw a party celebrating -- depending on how religious -- the person going to "a better place" or being a crazy bastard/ alcoholic.

The funeral of my friend was cold and Lutheran with a touch of wailing which I found refreshing. But we had an after party with booze and dancing because in life, he was a crazy bastard.

I Don't Know If It Felt Constructive

Criticism. We all say we can take it, but none of us really can.