Chapter 43: In Which I Confess I May Have X-men Mutant Powers

Yes, folks, you heard it here first. I may be an X-man mutant with superhuman powers. I recently made this shocking discovery recently and I feel perhaps like Superman must have felt as a boy growing up in rural America. I am, quite frankly, astonished. I still don’t know quite how to apply my special power to save the world, but I’m convinced I’ll find a way, because it really is quite, quite, quite extraordinary. In short, I have discovered that I Can Fall Asleep In The Dentist’s Chair While He Is Drilling My Teeth.

And, let me stress that this is with NO gas, NO happy pill, NO nothing other than a small local anesthetic. It’s not a fluke, since I did it not once, not twice, but three times in my last two hour session with the Dr Steven Travis, prosthodontist, Sweeny Todd impersonator, and financial extortionist non pareil (means, for those of you who care, without equal.) Yes, I fell asleep three times sound of that methamphetamine-
crazed-mosquito drill and the smell of burning enamel while the dental assistant tried to forcibly extract my tonsils with her vacuum suction tube. Opinions on why I am able to fall asleep so soundly in the dentist’s chair but require a horse tranquilizer to sleep in the comfort of my own bed are very welcome. Leave a comment if you have an insight that can help me.

Of course, the other good thing about the dentist, aside from discovering that I am an X-man, is that I now have a lovely gold tooth, a molar to be precise. It’s muy cool, as they say in Spain. If you care to stick your face really deep into my mouth, you will see that my gold tooth is almost luminescent with a certain zippy rapper-style street cred. And of course it may come in very useful if ever I find myself in a POW camp, having to negotiate for food, or a clean set of underwear from the camp commandant.

Some of you may have noticed the quick reference to Spain, dropped into the paragraph above. It’s not random; that’s where I am right now, with my flatmate Phil, on our way to Gay Pride in Madrid. Right now I’m on the high speed train from Sevilla to Madrid. Sevilla was wonderful; crooked little streets that you just can’t help but get lost on, a wonderful flamenco performance – I love flamenco; so much feeling and passion right in your face – as many different types of pork sausages and salami as you could ever desire, heavenly manchego cheese, the world’s third largest cathedral, (behind the Vatican and St Paul’s) and the largest Gothic building in the world. Speaking of Gothic, why is it that the crueler the society the more ornate and OTT the ornamentation? Anyone got an idea?

Prior to sere dry sleepy Spain, Phil and I spent a lovely two days in lush green bustling Hong Kong visiting my friends Francis and Jackie. They have two lovely children, and a most gorgeous penthouse apartment on the 52nd floor looking over the harbour, with it’s myriad scattered green islands and array of boats. The weather was flawless blue and I have to say it again, for the record: Hong Kong is a most beautiful, exciting, thrilling city. People who don’t like it, don’t know it.

Anyway, on my last blog, Francis commented that I’d have to sign a Non Disclosure Agreement before they’d let me join them in Hong Kong, but I didn’t, ha ha ha ha, and in a shocking error of judgment (or perhaps it was just a fit of laxity) they let me and Phil come to stay with them anyway, so now I feel entirely free to make a full and uncensored report. Before I say anything, though, let me say first that I love these people, whom I’ve known since university, when they had matching raised hairstyles that stood up so high off their skulls that my boyfriend and I used to have them around just to ensure we didn’t develop dust problems on our ceilings. Those were the Images-In-Vogue days. I died my hair black back then, once. I looked exactly like Bella Lugosi, in the Night of the Undead or something like that.

Francis races cars. And Jackie likes to argue. In fact, she’s quite extraordinary, truly – the only person in the world who can maneuver me into an argument where, out of some weird reflexive desire to be fair and considered, I end up arguing in favour of a position that I really don’t believe in. At the China Club, a lovely old colonial style restaurant where we all went for a good bye dinner, which included most fabulous Peking Duck, I found myself supporting the US in the whole Iraq issue. This is extraordinary because only a few weeks earlier I was on the other side of the exact same argument with my Sydney friend Chris from Texas, who is lovely and smart but truly a right wing nutter on the war issue. (He also loves George Bush. The only thing I can think of to excuse him on this account is that he is originally from Texas, and maybe there is something in the water or the air there that has rotted his political mind.)

Anyway, back to the China Club… What happened with Jackie disturbed me so much – the realization that I am, truly, Entirely Inconsistent In Most Aspects of my Life and that I May Be Nothing More Than a Collection of Vacuous Opinions Trotted Out as the Situation Demands – that I had to drink a lot more, and consequently I dropped my wallet under the table. I was so pissed when we left the club (in the English, not American, sense) that even though the waiter rushed after us (down 32 floors in an elevator and across 3 city blocks), I remained clueless as to why he followed us, and accosted us in the street. His poor English and my general witlessness prevented a concurrence of understanding, and so we waved him away, and it wasn’t until I went to board the train for the airport that I realized I didn’t have my wallet and Francis and I worked up a nice lather of sweat running back through the sweltering Hong Kong heat and humidity to retrieve it.

Of course, even though Jackie is exceedingly argumentative, I can’t really blame her for this incident, though I couldn’t really tell you even if I did. You see, they have an awful leverage over me in the form of a picture of me on one of their shelves, taken at their wedding party, about five gazillion years ago. When I saw this horrid reminder of how utterly gormless I was once upon a time, I felt a violent bolt of horror mixed with nausea shoot me through my very core. No picture such as this exists anywhere else, except perhaps in my mother’s archives and I have reasonable hopes of eliminating those at least. Francis and Jackie’s, however, is there, on their shelves, for public viewing, and let me tell you: it ain’t pretty. As Phil said when he saw it, “God! Oh My God! Whooeee! What a geek you were!”

With that I leave you. Except to say that I've also updated my How I Gave Birth To a Novel Blog, in which I posted three short stories, a thriller, a comedy and a fantasy that I wrote recently. You can access them by the link at the side.

Big kiss to you all.

Chaper 42: More on the Magic Boots, and the Consequences of Rotten Soy Milk

OK, I can happily report that the consequences of drinking soy milk 9 days past its good-before date is not death, as I had feared. Or at least not my death. But it may well have meant death for a few people unfortunate enough to have been close to me at the wrong moment over the following 3-4 days, because I can tell you that it gave me the worst gas ever, in terms of both volume and potentency. Dogs started to bark at me in parks.

Honestly, if you should ever find yourself in an emergency situation where you absolutely have to imbibe soy milk that's 9 days past its good-before date, I fully recommend that you then go and find yourself a cave in an uninhabited continent to hang out in for a fortnight or so. Until you're fit for renewed contact with other members of humanity. For the sake of your fellow man, hide yourself.

Now, onto finer things. Because I believe in sharing the magic, here is the pic of The Boots that so many of you have asked for. They are made in Italy and the brand name is Brando (doncha just think coooooool?) They cost $800 from Fifth Avenue in Aukland, but are available in Australia. They are crocodile, a deep, deep navy, nearly black.


I have to warn you though: the power of these boots is freakish, and more than a little hard to control. If I wear them, I get sexually excited without fail. And let me be clear: I do NOT have a shoe fetish. Also, at parties, fashion editors prostrate themselves in front of you. In the street, random people stop you and beg you to ravish them. Or marry them. It's hard to know how to behave in such circumstances. I cannot even begin to imagine what would happen were I to click the heels of these magic boots together three times!

Errata from my last entry. I am reliably informed that fahklempt is probably Yiddish, not German. (Thanks Chip). Unfortunately, Babelfish web translation doesn't support Yiddish. So we can't check what it means. Any Yiddish speakers out there? Or anyone with a Yiddish-English dictionary? My friend Teva lost his and so, as he says, the exact spelling and meaning of fahkelmpt remain "a matter of conjecture".

And from my friends the Coulters, I get the following correction about lacy white dresses worn by the bearded men in my Victorian mass-suicide dream. "I think you'll find that the dress on the girl in the picture is representative of the attire worn by girls aged between 7-9 to celebrate the sacrament of Communion. White dresses are not worn for Confirmation which is conferred on adolescents between the ages of 13-16, representing an initiation into the Church as an adult." I was quite worried for a moment, but then came relief from the Coulters. "As a non catholic you can be forgiven for mixing up the two ceremonies." Whew. Thank God for forgiveness.

Chapter 41: Right of Reply to Ms Ruth Slieker

The response to my last missive - during which I confessed a disturbing dream about having sex with my best friend Ruth Slieker, and in which she sported a monstrous, huge, grey pubic bush - was overwhelming. Many readers emailed me to say that I mistakenly wrote public instead of pubic several times in the piece.

I have been wondering whether perhaps this was a Freudian slip, highlighting a hidden unease at deciding to make public my dream about Ruth's pubis? Who can say? Simone de Beauvoir said that to write about one's life is "exceedingly rash", and I may be starting to agree. Lucky I'm not telling you everything. (At the Sydney Literary Festival which I attended recently, Maya Angelou said the trick to memoirs was to "tell the truth, but don't tell everything". Good advice. If you're interested in the Literary Festival, where I also met Edmund White, check out my other blog, How I Gave Birth to a Novel (link at right).

Anyway, after the deluge of emails, I deem it only fair to offer Ruth - who is in all likelihood the most utterly divine person who ever lived - right of reply. This is what she emailed back:

I TRIM RELIGIOUSLY! You fucking bastard, you told that Barr Gilmore about your dream. That man can't be trusted to be discreet. I ran into him last night in a movie lineup and he says, "Oh, my God, I just finished reading about your pubic hair in an email!" You can imagine my horror as heads swung my way.

So I trim AND there's no grey. As for your near wet dream, you should go see a witchdoctor about that one. Just a shot in the dark but is it possible that you're becoming more aware we're getting old, or should I say, that I'm getting old?

Love you too much Ruthie; you'll never be old to me!

Two readers (thank you Teva and Sigs) proffered suggestions for the German word to accurately describe the emotion I felt at having dreamt so horrendously of Ruth's grey pussy: fahklempt and schwankung. The former means, basically, fucked up, I think. (I'm not 100% sure since I'm not sure if this spelling is right and my best attempts to look it up in an online dictionary have been futile. If you think you can do better, try TU Chemnitz online German-English dictionary.) And schwankung means oscillation between two poles of a duality. (Sigs, I'm still not clear how the latter word properly describes my emotion, but it has a nice ring to it, I agree. If I ever have a child I'll name it schwankung.)

Anyway, my strange dreams have not stopped. Some have been just downright disturbing and sick. However, if you're not Catholic, last night's dream-episode might amuse, so I'll tell. I, and the rest of the world, were divided up into these strange little Catholic cults of 20-30 people, with each little cult having it's own peculiar dress code and it's own room in a big Victorian mansion. (I know, I know, the numbers don't quite add up with a global population of 7 billion, but it was a dream after all.) Anyway, my particular little cult had all thin bearded men in lacey confirmation dresses. It's hard to describe these dresses, but I've searched the web, and I've found the exact picture of what I mean (see left). It's spooky, it's almost like this picture came directly from my dream!

All the other men, including me I hasten to add (I may be bearded, but not in that pasty thin Jesusy way that betokened a lacey white confirmation dress), wore these tight fitting black Victorian dinner jackets with excessively high black top hats. The women wore dark stuff, lots of jet jewelry, and furs. All very Victorian. And finally, these giant-fat-people- cum-balloon-robots (kind of like the navigators in Dune) floated in the beautiful spring air outside the mansion windows to distribute Koolaid poison to all of eager cult people inside, for we were all embarked on a mass suicide. SOMEBODY PLEASE COME AND HELP ME!

What else can I tell you? My very antiquated laptop is driving me crazy. I installed a webcam and a mouse and ever since then it sometimes types V E R Y V E R Y S L O W.... sometimes missing letters, until such time as it crashes, which curiously seems to fix it. Rebooting does not fix the problem, however. Too weird, too annoying, too arghghghghgghghg. So this afternoon, off I went with my friend Duncan, my who-to-go-to man in Sydney, to Bondi Junction to buy a new laptop. And printer. And software. And carrying case. And external hard drive. Coming so soon after the $2200 I spent at the dentist on Wednesday, just on the first of 5 planned visits, my credit cards are starting to acquire a slightly melted look. (But at least I will have a spanking new laptop with a fingerprint reader - very Mission Impossible 3 - and a gold crown on a back molar that will make me look like a gangsta rapper if you stick your head well into my mouth.)

And my other recent big purchases have gone swimmingly well. Remember those boots I paid $800 for in New Zealand? Well, they are more amazing than Dorothy's red shoes. They are MAGIC. When I wear them, people fall at my feet, and begin tearing off their clothes in preparation for sex. Although maybe I should stop wearing them so much. There is a rumour going around Sydney that I am an escort. Hilarious.

What else? Oh, the weather, yes, I must tell you about the weather. Yesterday in Sydney was a typical mild spring day in London or Vancouver, i.e. wet, grey, windy and about 10 degrees. But Sydneysiders were absolutely hysterical, afraid to leave their houses. You would have thought that The Apocalypse itself had arrived (see right).

I have to confess that I too got caught up in the hysteria; a year of chasing the sun has left me somewhat effete as regards the weather, a Real Big Weather Wus. I looked outside and saw the driving rain, heard the wind shaking the windows of our appartment high on the 21st floor and thought There Is No Way That I Am Going Outside, Not Even For Fresh Food. So this morning I used soy milk on my cereal that was about 8 days past its best-by date. Now I'm worried I will die.

Well, that's all. I suppose someone will contact you if the soy milk does me in. My will is with my Mom.