A totally true story.

.

This is by far one of the best hoodies I’ve ever owned. Comfy, soft, and geek-infused! And I confess, I judge people by whether or not they know what xkcd is.

hey xkcd!

i ordered your navy blue hoodie a few months ago, and since then have cherished it like a small child…

…until this morning, when i was doing laundry while wearing it — and spilled an open bottle of bleach on it.

believe me, i would’ve been less upset if i’d spilled the bleach on a small child.

i promptly went online to order another, only to find that it’s no longer in stock.

i am crushed.

PLEASE bring back your navy blue hoodie, so i can order one, and possibly two just in case i pull another boneheaded maneuver like this one.

i love this hoodie.

more than small children.

PLEASE.

-Mere Smith

Sorry for the minor crisis, we plan to have them back in stock very, very soon!  If you let me know your shipping address and what size you need I’ll have a placeholder order set up for you .

from:		Mere Smith
to:		xkcd store <orders@xkcd.com>
date:		Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 2:32 PM
subject:		Re: navy blue hoodie
mailed-by:		gmail.com

hi Matthew Smoot, Order Wrangler! (and if that shows up on a TV show any time soon, i’ll deny everything.)

oh good.  i can stop funneling anti-anxiety meds down my gullet.  i would’ve been worried… except for all the anti-anxiety meds.

yes, *please* set me up a placeholder order: TWO extra-large hoodies for me this time.  i’ll be damned if i’m caught without a pristine xkcd hoodie again.  *damned*, i tell you!

my shipping address is:

[redacted]

(though if you need the billing address to match my credit card, i have a bookkeeper [thank ye gods, or i'd be sending you sacks of poorly-counted-out tuppence], whose address is:

[redacted]

) <– i knew i needed to close the parenthesis, but it looks so lonely all by itself…

as for small children, while yes, replacement costs are higher, i think the noise level is pretty standard, with or without bleach.  i’m quite pleased i own none myself.

thanks again!

-mere-

******************************************************************************************************

.

from:		Mere Smith
to:		xkcd store <orders@xkcd.com>
date:		Mon, Mar 25, 2013 at 11:27 AM
subject:		Re: navy blue hoodie
mailed-by:		gmail.com

my dearest Matthew Smoot, Order Wrangler –

THAT. WAS. STUPENDOUS.

when i returned from out of town on Sunday night, i found a little box in our mail and thought, “huh. i haven’t ordered anything recentlyohmygodBOMB!”

but after the SWAT team left — a tad irritably, i must say — i was stunned to see two glorious xkcd hoodies tucked into that box and i positively *swooned*!  well, i mean, if i’d been a 19th century literary heroine squeezed into a whalebone corset, i would’ve swooned.  as it was, i yelled, “HOLY SHIT I CAN’T BELIEVE IT I’M SO FRANGIN’ EXCITED!”

slightly less ladylike, but much more evocative of my inner feelings.

i can not thank you enough — and believe me, i’ve tried.  this is my fourth draft of this email, the initial three having been tossed due to (respectively) grateful but pathetic digital weeping, appalling obsequy, and a rather “The Shining”-esque repetition of the phrase, “All work and no play makes Matthew Smoot MY GOD.”  so in this, the fourth iteration, i hope my appreciation comes through and leaves the outright crazy behind.  except that’s pretty much impossible for me so i’m just going to cut my losses here.

you, Matthew, are amazing, and so is xkcd.  never — *never* — did i expect to see those hoodies so soon.  i was absolutely floored, as well as touched.  please let me know if you’re comfortable with me spreading the Gospel of Matthew Smoot And XKCD with everyone i’ve ever met — though i’d understand if you’d rather keep it on the quiet side, too, lest you’re inundated with a bunch of grabby hands.  it’s completely up to you, and i’ll abide by your wishes, of course.

now please let me know how to throw my money at you.  i can send you my credit card number, or i can go through PayPal, whichever is better for you and xkcd.

and Matthew?

thank you.  thank you SO MUCH.

-mere-

******************************************************************************************************

.

from:		xkcd store <orders@xkcd.com>
to:		Mere Smith
date:		Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 11:37 AM
subject:		Re: navy blue hoodie
signed-by:		xkcd.com

That was by far the best e-mail I’ve gotten ever, of all time!  I want to share it with all the people I know and wish I was up to writing the response it deserves.  Seriously, I was giggling like a pyro in a firework factory for minutes .  I think there is a gospel of Matthew already, but grabby hands might be nice and the gospel of xkcd would be freakin amazing so feel free to spread the crazy word.

As far as throwing money, it’s hard to catch it from here so it might be better to use PayPal rather than try to build a trebuchet that can hit the east coast.  Our address is orders@xkcd.com.

So nice to read e-mails like this, thanks so much for your response!

.

So there’s something wrong with me.

And before the resounding chorus of “DUH!”s creates enough energy to jolt the Earth out of orbit – settle down, folks. For once, I’m being serious.

–ish.

Ask anyone who’s tried to see me in the past few months and they’ll tell you: it was a roll of the dice as to whether or not I could actually show up. (Mr. Benjamin, in particular, I offer apologies to you, after our three – count ‘em, three – cancelled outings.  According to ancient etiquette, I think I now owe you approximately two oxen and a wife.) Normally I’d chalk it up to ye olde hermit-writer social anxiety – because, hell, what can’t I chalk up to ye olde hermit-writer social anxiety? – but to be honest, it just felt like I was extremely sad about feeling pukey all the time, a mixture of sensations that culminated in a very public and appalling clusterfuckorama that finally – finally – slapped me awake. Yet because I had been so deeply asleep (read: “denial la la I can’t hear you”), in order to wake me, said clusterfuckorama was forced to slap the shit out of me. Like, really, really slap me so hard it left me with a faceful of broken blood vessels.  Literally.

But we’ll get to that.

For any of my readers who don’t know – which is, what?, the one guy who stumbled in here after Googling the word “cuntrocket”? – I am bipolar AND completely unashamed of it, the same way one might be unashamed of having cancer – because being bipolar is a physical illness. And feeling ashamed of a physical illness makes about as much sense as feeling ashamed that you aren’t a helicopter. In other words, that’s just fucking crazy.

Now if you wanna get technical about it, I have Bipolar II, or the “milder” form of bipolar disorder – and oh, how I love that adjective, “milder.”  You might as well have a milder form of Buzz-Lightyear-Jammed-Up-The-Ass Disease:

.

It’s like being “slightly” pregnant.

The shrinks only differentiate it from Bipolar I because you tend to err more on the depressive side, and you don’t experience full-blown manic symptoms, i.e., you don’t have psychotic hallucinations about Elvis talking to you through your rice cooker – followed by you running through the streets, naked and shouting, “WOW ISN’T THAT THE COOLEST FUCKING THING BECAUSE I DIDN’T EVEN KNOW ELVIS LIKED RICE HEY LOOK AT MY TATAS!”

Thus, I got off “easy” by having what I like to call “Bipolar Lite,” which basically boils down to, “All the meds, half the nuts!”

And the meds?  Oh, the meds you will take! After several failed experiments immediately following my diagnosis, I’ve been on a steady three-drug cocktail for almost a decade. Except for the occasional “dip” – where some of my depressive symptoms resurface for a couple days, but dissipate on their own – with the meds’ help (AND years of therapy AND exercise AND yoga AND meditation AND getting enough sleep), I’d finally wrested a mostly-normal life back from my rogue neurotransmitters.

Yeah, serotonin and dopamine, you fuckers, I’m lookin’ at you.

However.

If you do any research at all on medicating brain diseases (one more time: it’s a disease, not an attitude problem, assholes)(okay, that last part was attitude), you’ll soon discover this Super Fun Science Fact: in a large number of cases, for reasons unknown – even if you take your medication religiously – eventually the meds can simply… stop working.

Yep.  Easy as that.

One morning you get up and… you’re just re-fucked all over again.

I could pitch a bunch of theories as to why this is – your body acclimatizes to the meds and stops reacting to them; your metabolism changes as you get older so you stop processing the meds the same way; you start taking another drug that interacts weirdly with all your other drugs – but no one, not even the board-certified brain-peelers, has a comprehensive explanation for what I call the Attrition Effect.

It’s just like life, I guess: messy, inexplicable… and sometimes everything up and goes to shit for no reason.

And despite several (fine, several several several) warning signs over the past few months, when it came to the Attrition Effect, I was firmly in the Never Gonna Happen To Me camp.  Nope, not me, I’m different, I’m frangin’ awesome, I have diamond-hard willpower, I have absolutely FORBIDDEN it to occur, thus…

…I’m a wishful-thinking dumbass, just like everyone else.

Not that this is anything to feel ashamed of, either. Face it, if some guy walked up to you and said, “Hey, how ’bout I shove this sharp stick into your brain and stir shit up in there?”, I’m betting your answer would be something along the lines of: “Fuck off, you fucking psycho!”

Which is essentially what I’d been telling my brain for several months when it kept nudging me and whispering, “Hey, um… there’s something… I think there might be something… y’know… kinda… off… from what we’re used to here? I dunno… maybe it’s just me but… hey, only if you have time, now, I don’t want to be a bother but… could you… oh, say… look into that for us?”

To which I kindly replied, “Fuck off, you fucking psycho!”

(And yes, being a woman with a brain disease, I can use the word “psycho,” just like I can use the word “cuntrocket.” Ah, the small perks of marginalization.)

Now, “Fuck off!” isn’t a particularly nice thing to say to your brain, what with its keeping you breathing and getting you into college and preventing you from accidentally stepping off cliffs and providing you a living and putting up with all the chemicals you’ve been feeding it for the last ten years – and its, oh by the way, making life worth living, you ungrateful meatsack!

My brain may be a tad pissed at me.  But I can’t blame it.

After you’ve lived ten years in a mostly blissful state of productivity and personal growth, you get a little cocky.

* * *

Even the ancient Greeks knew “cocky” is a really bad idea.

.

Ask Icarus.

* * *

Yet as I said, I’d been pretty miserable for the last three months. And not just mentally “off,” but physically ill, too, since there isn’t a lot of room in your skull, and your “happy/unhappy” lobe is located relatively close to your “I’m-fine/I’m-vomiting-like-The-Exorcist-chick” lobe. At first I figured (“denial la la I can’t hear you”) I was just catching some virus. A lot. Like, every other week or so. Infinite Stomach Flu. ‘Cause that happens, right? Right?

But then I went to the dentist.

Which turns out to be a stunningly bad idea when A) you use nitrous even for cleanings because you have a pre-existing dental phobia (due to your childhood dentist, Dr. Mengele, D.D.S., breaking teeth off in your jaw when you’re 10 years old) and B) your stomach is already kinda… BLEAAARRRGGHH.

I won’t go into too much detail – largely because I don’t want to make you barf up a pancreas – but I think I definitely saw my pancreas in the dentist’s bathroom, coinciding with the worst panic attack I’ve ever had in my whole life – and let me tell you, for someone who’s had panic attacks for 20 years, that is saying something.

Oh, and all of this took place in front of strangers, which was nothing short of gaggingly awesome. Granted, they were kind strangers, ones who murmured and patted my back comfortingly while my pancreas did laps around the toilet bowl, but nonetheless, strangers who never needed to see my pancreas in the first place.

All of which necessitated The Finance’s actually leaving work to retrieve me… or rather, to retrieve the weeping, pukey, shitting ball curled up on the dentist’s waiting room floor, sobbing under a blanket and trying to hide her face from the normies. After we got home, there was more puking and panicking and shitting and crying – mainly because I didn’t know what the fuck was happening to me – and indeed, I cried so hard I broke almost every blood vessel in my face, which I didn’t even know was possible.  But for 36 hours afterwards I looked like a sunburned cherry tomato. (Just trust me when I say: not a good look for the Whitest White Girl in the Whole White World).

Hence, let this be a lesson to you, kids: Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.  It’s a river made of acid and lava and nuclear sewage filled with cobras and butchers’ knives and dead babies you hacked into pieces with the butchers’ knives. That is to say, it’s your worst fucking nightmare and you, lucky you!, you get to live it out in front of other people!

That’s when I thought maybe there might be a problem with my meds.

Take a moment.  I realize my genius is magnificent to behold.

So I went to the shrink, who gave me new meds that turned me into a zombie.  A zombie too stoned to go out and chase people.  A zombie that slept 14-16 hours a day and fell on the floor whenever it tried to get out of bed.

.

Hand to god, this really happened.

I couldn’t write a text, much less finish the “Elementary” script I’d been working on. I couldn’t talk on the phone because people thought I was drunk. (Hi-lar-ious, since I don’t drink. And when I say “hilarious,” I mean, “fucking irritating as shit.”) After a while I just stopped talking at all because I couldn’t hold a thought in my head long enough for it to exit my mouth coherently. Matter of fact, when I finally told the shrink this new medication wasn’t gonna work, it came out, “I can’t tay thish ‘cush I nee’ mah job for mah brain.”

My shrink answered, “Yeah, I don’t think this is the meds.  I think we should run some blood panels.”

I muttered, “Whaffever,” and promptly fell out of bed again.

So the blessed, saintly Finance drove me to the clinic and I underwent a bunch of tests (you know what’s a great preschool game? My First EKG!) and they poked me with a bunch of needles and sucked out a gallon of blood and – surprise! – what they told me was:

It’s not Infinite Stomach Flu, you moron.

No one catches the flu for three months straight, you idiot.  No one.  Even Keats, in the final throes of his tubercular wasting, was healthier than you are, despite your working out four times a week (prior to Zombieland, anyway).  And no, there’s no mysterious dust you’re inhaling from the treadmill that’ll give you an excuse not to work out. (Fuck.)

Reading their lab numbers like tea leaves, they were pretty sure I had something called Central Hypothyroidism – which, hey, whattaya know, causes nausea and depression! – and is like regular hypothyroidism, except it has nothing to do with your actual thyroid glands. (Gotta love how the medical community names stuff.  Too bad I didn’t have milder Central Hypothyroidism. I would’ve known how to deal with that.) No, this particular condition originates higher up, usually in your pituitary gland, which – say it with me – is also in your brain.  And the main cause for Central Hypothyroidism?

Is a little thing we like to call a brain tumor.

Whoa, whoa, whoa – cheap shot at dramatic effect, y’all.  I’m not gonna leave you hanging past that sentence.  More specifically, the most frequent cause of Central Hypothyroidism is what’s called a pituitary adenoma, which, yes, is a type of tumor, but not, like, a Hell’s Angel kinda tumor. No, 90% of the time these adenomas are just a bunch of cells hanging out where they shouldn’t, making trouble… more like juvenile delinquents.  And these JD’s probably don’t even know they’re causing trouble – like I said, they’re just hanging out ‘cause they’ve got nowhere else to go and nothing better to do; in other words, they’re benign, or non-cancerous – but they’re still leaving their cigarette butts all over the damn place and carving PA ♥’s PA into their desks, all of which in medical parlance adds up to, “Yo, they’re fucking up your hormones, dude.”

And as you may or may not know, fucked-up hormones can lead not only to fucked-up feeling, but fucked-up thinking, too. So those past few months I spent in “denial” about my meds not working anymore? Were probably due to my fucked-up hormones, rather than the Attrition Effect. In fact, to the best of all the doctors’ knowledge, the meds never stopped working, and I’m back on the cocktail I’ve been on for ten years.

So on the one hand, “yay?”

And on the other hand,

“HOLYSHITBRAINTUMORBRAINTUMORFUCK!”

Allow me to share a few words you never want to hear from a doctor:

“We need to schedule you for a brain MRI.”

My stomach, which for the last few months had stubbornly insisted on fighting its way up?  Suddenly plummeted into the parking garage. (And those cheapskates at the clinic don’t even validate.)

The MRI was five days later.

DO.

YOU.

KNOW.

HOW.

LONG.

FIVE.

DAYS.

IS.

WHEN.

YOU.

“MAYBE.”

HAVE.

A.

BRAIN.

TUMOR?

Like, so much longer than it’s taking you to read this blog post.  (Hard to believe, but true.)  During the intervening period, the zombie medication finally cleared my system, and I was back to being my usual charming self… which meant I was eaten alive with anxiety and crying at the drop of a hat.  Only this time I felt okay about it because I knew it was just my fucked-up hormones… well, that, and the whole “possible brain tumor” thing.

Now, do I have a pituitary adenoma?

No.

I found this out a few days ago after getting the results of my MRI. I would’ve said something before then, but who wants to write, “Guys, hey guys! I think maybe I have a brain tumor but I’m not sure so I’m opening this Kickstarter campaign just in case they need to crack my skull and dig around in there and I might need a wig but I want a really COOL wig okay so please donate!”?

That’s the main reason I’ve been off-grid for so long. It’s hard enough to write true or untrue things, in general.  I’ve found it impossible to write about things that may or may not be true but we’re not sure, so let’s do more tests.

So we did more tests.

After the negative result from the MRI, came the thyroid ultrasound, where I found out my right thyroid gland is twice the size of my left one (fucking overachiever – and underachiever at the same time – I can’t win), which means… frankly, I don’t know what the shit that means. But I have an appointment with a fancy-pants endocrinologist next week to explain to me what the hell is going on. I may be put on thyroid replacement medication, I may need even more tests – but I feel infinitely more well-equipped to deal with it now that I’m back on my usual meds, know that they’re still working, and I DON’T have a brain tumor.

It seems odd, to celebrate the non-existence of a thing, sorta like celebrating a tornado that bypasses your house, or a car accident you just missed having — all the while knowing that that tornado hit someone else’s house, and tons of people get in car accidents every day.  But the sense of relief — it’s not me, it’s not me! – is a real thing, a palpable thing, a thing you’re sure exists. And it, too, spawns its own reaction: gratitude.  Gratitude of the highest order, appreciation of what you do have, and hosannas to the Grand Hoo-Ha, even for your mild form of Buzz-Lightyear-Jammed-Up-The-Ass Disease.

So where do I go from here?

To infinity and beyond, my friends!

Infinity and beyond.

spec – noun (in phrase on spec) informal

In the hope of success but without any specific plan or instructions: he built the factory on spec and hoped someone would buy it

* * *

Replace the word “factory” with “script” and now you understand the place of specs in Hollywood.

Kind of.

Because in Hollywood, a “spec” can mean not only a script you want to sell, but – paradoxically – also a script you have no intention of selling.  A script for an episode of TV that you use simply to showcase your skills: a writing sample set in a world Hollyfolks are already familiar with, since (smart) Writers generally choose popular shows to spec.  And yes, here in LaLaLand, “spec” is actually a noun AND a verb.  (Sorry, OED.)

Before they’ve even met you, Suits and Executive Producers can gauge through your spec how interesting your ideas are, how well you break a story, and how you can adapt to writing in someone else’s voice, since it’s likely they’ve seen the show you’re “speccing.”

Of course, what’s popular changes from year to year.  Arrested Development specs used to land on desks by the thousands, and before that, Grey’s Anatomy, and before that, The Shield, and before that, Six Feet Under, and before that, The Sopranos, and before that, The X-Files, and Ozias begat Joatham and Joatham begat Achaz and Achaz begat Ezekias…

So at any given time there’s always a “hot spec” – a show that Hollywood is watching en masse at that particular moment – and if you can hit the sweet spot – that is, if you can write a spec of that show at the exact time it becomes “hot” – well, then you’re already a few steps ahead of the rest of the slavering pack of Writers nipping at your heels for jobs.  Because much as its denizens would love for you to believe in their jaded seen-it-allness, Hollywood has its own (albeit more affectedly subdued) fandoms, and a good spec is like good fanfic.  No true fan can resist more story, OMNOMNOMNOM.

Me, I’ve been using a Sopranos spec.

For ten years.

So you can see how “hot” I am.

My problem was, after writing the Sopranos, I never found another show I wanted to spec.  That might sound crazy, given how much TV I watch (and love), but there were always reasons why I couldn’t/wouldn’t/didn’t spec any of my favorites.

The West Wing?  What I loved about this show were the characters.  The intricacies of political policy never held enough interest to compel me to do the research, and without the research, I would’ve come off like a bloviating twat.  (However, I might have written some Josh and Donna scenes for my own private collection.  Might.)

House?  See above, only with medical stuff.  (But no Josh and Donna.)

Six Feet Under?  Okay, this one I did want to write, except I was employed the entire time the show was on the air, and by the time I needed a job, the show was gone.  Writing a new spec of a show that’s already been cancelled is like sending a thank you note to a dead person.

But now?

NOW IS THE TIME, MY FRIENDS.

I am finally (or as my manager might put it, “finally, finally, finally, finally, finally, fucking finally Jesus fucking Christ finally”) writing a new spec.  But of what, you may ask?

“Elementary,” my dear Watson.

If I can pull it off, I have what I am 99% sure is a fantastic idea for a spec script (you have to leave open that 1% possibility that it sucks – otherwise you catch God’s attention, and She just loves to fuck up what you think you know for certain) – but this idea, too, will require a bit of research, and staffing season starts… well, around now-ly.

Believe me, I would’ve loved to have started this whole process earlier, but the idea only came to me this past weekend as I lay in bed at 4 a.m., unable to sleep.  By 5 a.m., I had the entire story worked out (or rather, the story felt like it had worked itself out, and those are the best kinds), including characters, progression, twists, emotional resonance, etc. – but I knew if I wanted to strike while the iron was “hot” (ugh, I am so sorry, you guys), I’d need some help.

Now, it’s no secret around these parts that I am half in-worship with Amanda Palmer.  Not only do I think she kicks massive ass as a rockstar and artist, but also as a human being, and I believe her personal connection to her listeners-slash-friends is a big part of that.  (After all, we’re talking about a woman who raised over a million bucks for her album and tour on Kickstarter.  Kickstarter, y’all.)  She’s not afraid to trust and rely on other people, to collaborate, to allow room for others’ ideas and others’ art, allowing it to add to and enhance her own – all without losing her original vision.

That sense of openness – of inclusion – was the spark for what follows:

As I said, I’m going to need some research – specifically, knowledge of authors and literature – to make this spec work.  Ordinarily that wouldn’t be a problem (considering this’d be research I’d actually be interested in, unlike the wonkified minutiae required for a West Wing) – except for the time crunch I find myself in.

And so it is, dear friends, that I turn to you.

.

I have seen the power of the hivemind,

and it is awesome.

.

But asking people to help you for free is a tad on the tacky side.

So I decided to structure this process as a challenge to both of us, to see if together, you and I can make it work.  The main goal:

TEN DAYS

ONE SPEC

For those of you who aren’t familiar with script lengths, that’s about 54 pages.  Totally doable if you’re writing a show you’re employed by – but that’s because you’ve already been in a Writers’ room for two weeks discussing every detail of the outline with a group of other Writers.

Trying to break it, outline it, research it, and write it alone, by myself, in 10 days?  You might as well ask me to eat quinoa.  Never gonna happen.

But with your help?

To be perfectly honest, I am scared fucknoodle shitless of trying this, y’all.  I’m terrified of falling on my face, of missing the deadline, of writing a suckass script – and if that weren’t enough, to do all of these things in public.

But having already declared 2013 my Year Of Glorious Mistakes:

I am going to take Mr. Gaiman’s advice:

Whatever it is you are scared of doing, DO IT.

Just because this might not work is a total crap reason for not trying at all.

So here are the rules I’ve set for myself:

• I will be throwing out research questions over Twitter (@EvilGalProds) for the next three days (Feb. 13-15), while at the same time doing my own research and breaking out the script (that is, figuring out the architecture of exactly what goes where, why, and when).  I’ll probably also ask a few questions while I’m actually writing the script, ‘cause shit always changes, no matter how well you’ve planned.  Scripts are kinda like life that way.

If you have/find/know anything you’d like to share, I’ve set up an email account – elementaryspec@gmail.com – for you to send responses to (all email addresses will be held strictly confidential), since A) conveying even a small nugget of information 140 characters at a time is crazymaking, and B) trying to scroll through Twitter will take me forever, and efficiency will be key to this experiment.  (This way I can also keep a permanent record of who’s contributed, and what their particular contribution is.)  Seriously, if you answer over Twitter, I will not see it, and then I will be bummed, and the script will be the poorer for not having had your input.

• I will finish a complete outline of the script by end of day Friday, Feb. 15.

• I will then be off-grid for 7 days, writing from Feb. 16-22, except for the aforementioned possible distress calls on Twitter.

• I will try to sneak an update blog in, but then again, I may be too busy going fetal on the floor and sobbing.  Still, I’ll do my damnedest.

• I will finish the first draft by the end of February 22.  This means midnight, and I have no doubt I’ll be writing right up until Cinderella turns back into a broke-ass white girl.

And if I wind up with a script on the day we’re aiming for?

Here are the rewards (hopefully y’all won’t be like, “She calls these motherfucking rewards?  Cheapo bitch.”):

• After doing a second draft (sorry, but not even my mother sees my first drafts, and she used to wipe poop off me), I will post the entire script on this site.  It will be in .pdf format that you are welcome to download, share, email, print, or set on fire for warmth.

• I’ll highlight any and all contributions made by each of you, and thank you all individually and embarrassingly profusely.

• I’ll write a “journey” blog about this experience and how you influenced the script (it may take me a couple days to recover from writing the script first, but I’ll get off the floor eventually.  I’m pretty sure.  Okay, I’m relatively sure.), a blog which will include…

…the big “reward”:

You’re coming with me to the tattoo parlor.

That’s right.  I’ve been wanting to get two specific tattoos on my wrists for AGES, tattoos that hold a special significance regarding what we’re trying here, and I think I’ve finally found the artist I want to do it.  If we make our goal, I’ll get a videographer (probably not The Finance, as he loathes needles like I loathe vegetables) to accompany me to the shop, and you can watch someone dig sharp things into my delicate flesh while I pretend it doesn’t hurt at all.  Even though it totally will.  A lot.  But out of pain (for instance, the pain of writing a spec in 7 days after only 3 days of research – ah! see what I did there?) can arise beautiful art, and as the Tat Man scars me for life, I will think of each of you, and maybe even mutter your name and, “This is all your fucking fault.”

And lastly:

• PLEASE NOTE: I DO NOT OWN “Elementary”’s interpretation of the Sherlock and Watson characters, and I DO NOT WANT any financial transactions, including charity auctions, attached to this spec.  I support many causes, but making money off another artist’s original ideas is not one of them.  No selling, no buying, no bidding, and – much as I love you all – I will never sign any copies of this script.  Ever.  Of course, people can (and usually do) do what they want – but I DO NOT encourage nor condone these actions.  This spec is meant as a writing sample only, and if you try to make money off it – IN ANY WAY – I will be deeply unhappy (to say the least; and I can’t imagine CBS or Timberman/Beverly would be elated, either: fair warning), and unlikely to try anything like this again.

This whole process is a huge risk, I’m well aware.  The chance that I will fail in some way or another – well, hell, “chance” may be the understatement of the year; it’s pretty much guaranteed I’ll fuck up somehow – but I’m going to try it anyway, because you are what makes me think this insane idea could even be possible.

Over the last 18 months or so, ever since my re-acclimation to the grid, I’ve been amazed (and delighted) to find such a vast number of smart, creative people populating the same tiny corner I hang in.

And now I want to push us – both you and me – and really see what we’re capable of together.

So what do you say?

You in?

As it turned out, going as myself instead of Gaga was a great idea, since:

1) I can’t sing

2) Or dance

3) Or play piano

4) Or the keytar

5) Or fit into any of Gaga’s outfits without a crowbar and a vat of Astroglide

But perhaps the best reason for going as myself was:

6) Everyone ELSE was dressed up as Lady Gaga

And I mean everyone, except maybe the boyfriends reluctantly accompanying their dressed-up girlfriends.  The boyfriends of the boyfriends, on the other hand, were sporting every Gaga iteration from the bikini bottoms in the “Telephone” video…

(Don’t ask me where they tuck their Tootsie Rolls in this thing. Man’s gotta preserve a little mystery, right?)

…to the latex nun costume in the “Alejandro” video…

…to an Asian kid – 15, tops – wearing the cigarette glasses…

…two Latinas in leather jackets and beer-can hair curlers…

…at least a dozen Mary Gagadalenes of every flavor…

Yeah, see that dramatic face-paint? That’s like Amish Quaker Sharia make-up compared to my pre-epiphany eyeliner.

…and more wigs and weaves than you’d find in Beyonce’s closet.

No, I am telling you: it is possible.

But I suppose if I had to comment on the one extraordinary wardrobe item I saw in teeming abundance, it would have to be:

THE SHOES

(“It’s gotta be the shoes.” — Mars Blackmon)

(If you have to click the link to understand that reference,

GET OFF MY BLOG!)

As mentioned in my last entry, I was originally going to wear my combat boots to the concert.  They’re battered, worn, and – hands down (feet down?) – the coolest shoes I own that do not make me want to commit ritual seppuku inside the first five minutes.  Because I do own a few pairs of dress-up-real-nice heels, but frankly, instead of using them to dress-up-real-nice, I’d rather stab puppies to death with them.  And I’m only a little bit kidding.

All the other fans were wearing FOOT-INQUISITION DEATH MACHINES.

It was a bit like watching wee old Chinese women hobble around me on their tiny fucked-up lotus feet, only these old Chinese women were all tall fabulous black men and suburban white teens (who’d obviously shoplifted a pair of hooker shoes from the Galleria, not realizing this meant they would never run again without prosthetics).

Believe me, I understand.  Lady Gaga wears shoes like these:

Not to speak ill of the dead, but… FUCK YOU, ALEXANDER MCQUEEN.

And if you want to emulate your idols, you usually wear some version of what they wear (see ridiculous last post).  But you have to remember that Lady Gaga is at the very least 1/Ω alien, and I’m pretty sure her leg-appendages just liquefy into protoplasm and mold into the shape of whatever shoe she happens to strap on that day.

Human folk, however, have these things called “bones” and “tendons” that don’t really like to be “broken” or “snapped” – even in the name of fashion.  (I know. Assholes, right?)  But that didn’t stop these Little Monsters.  They wore heels I’d use to bludgeon a cougar with, if I ever happened to need to bludgeon a cougar.  And if I didn’t feel short before – they call 5’4″ “average,” though I question whether “average” people need to climb on top of their kitchen counters like chimpanzees in order to reach the highest shelves of their cabinets (wow, cougars AND chimpanzees in the same paragraph; maybe I should ditch my “Big Book O’ Jungle Animal Metaphors”) – which meant I was staring at A LOT of ass during the show.

A. LOT.

OF. ASS.

And not just guy ass (which I’m kinda used to by now) – but shapely girl ass – in fact, it was nearly fucking Amazonian ass, since all these women were now 6’2”.  Don’t believe me?  Take your smallest friend – the shortest, itty-bittiest, fit-in-your-pocketest one you have – and shove her into these:

Now stand behind her.

Hence, here was my viewpoint for much of the night:

This, my friends, is an ass.  No joke. It’s a real photo.  This is what it looked like in my camera when I shot directly in front of me.  Oh, sure, which ass I was staring at varied from time to time with the movement of the crowd — boy ass, girl ass, nongendernominational ass — but the sight was pretty much always the same.  It was only when I stood on my very tippy toes and reached my iPhone as high as my miniature T-Rex arms could stretch that I got shots like this:

And before y’all get all “HA HA HA SHE GOT HER FINGER IN THE SHOT!”, that is not my finger.  That is an arm.  Someone else’s arm.  Arms and asses, asses and arms, all night long.  Arms and asses and the Jumbotron.  That’s how I saw Lady Gaga, except for one brief moment when she walked aaaaalllllll the way to the very front of the stage and stayed there for five minutes while I ducked and crouched and tried to find some nook or cranny or crotch to shoot through, used the zoom on my camera, and finally came away with THIS, my prized photo of the evening:

Clearly this hairy thing on the left is ALSO not my finger, but an arm. My fingers aren’t *nearly* this hairy.  And the guy in front of me seriously needs to back off the gel.

My only saving grace, souvenir-wise, was that The Finance is much taller than me, and so could take kick-ass photos like this:

(FYI: if you’d like to see these photos non-squooshed, just click on one,

wait for the next page, then click on ‘em again.) 

See?  We really weren’t that far back — it was only that I AM SO FUCKING SHORT.  And if you’ve ever gotten to a concert just to find that your seats are disappointing because you’re behind a pole or a pillar, or further off to the side than you thought you’d be — imagine how irritating it is to find out you can’t see the performer simply because you’re a goddamn fucking Smurf.

In the spirit of Lady Gaga’s themes of compassion and tolerance, I didn’t start toppling over the Outrageous Shoe People like giant, unstable dominoes — but ooh, did I want to.

And if you haven’t noticed, karma has a nasty way of biting you in the vagina.

* * *

This is how the Staples Center looked when we showed up.  (If you peer closely, you can see two “Crime Scene” tape headbows in the foreground, one guy in suspenders with no shirt on at the lower left, and one girl in a yellow leotard/tutu combo just above him and to his right — next to the guy carrying cotton candy.  I’m pretty sure the cotton candy guy was just selling cotton candy, though.)  In other words, we got there early, despite my last minute epiphany/entire-wardrobe-renovation.

There was a damn fine DJ (Madeon) playing when we got in, and I danced in public for the first time since… what century is this?  (I’m just saying, if he could make me forget my agoraphobia for five seconds, the guy is that good.  You should check him out.)  Having already stood on line for an hour, and knowing we had at least four more hours of standing in front of us (gotta love General Admission: a dicktruck of money and no seats to sit in), I smugly looked down at my Nikes before glancing at all the Outrageous Shoe People, thinking “Holy shit did I make the right choice.  Even my combat boots wouldn’t have been comfortable for four more hours.  You, Outrageous Shoe People, are FUCKED.”

Well, guess what else isn’t comfortable after standing in them for five hours?

Nikes.

Also?

Feet.

After two and a half hours, I’d lost all feeling below the knees, and the only way I could get my blood recirculating was to jump straight up and down for five solid minutes.  Luckily, this isn’t too difficult to accomplish during a pop concert — except whenever I was about to collapse in agony, and so began my PogoStick CPR®, that’s when Gaga thought it’d be a great time to play a slow, acoustic ballad on the piano.  I must’ve informed The Finance of my impending foot-related demise about a thousand times.  I’m almost positive we’ll never go to another concert again.  (I mean, he probably will, but I doubt he’ll be asking if I’m free.)

By the time Gaga had finished her (third) last encore (and never in my life did I ever think I’d be chanting in my head, “Please leave the stage, Gaga, please oh please oh please just leave the stage and don’t come back”), it seemed my feet had eroded to the point where I was just balancing on the ragged stumps of my tibias.

Fuck the combat boots — if my beloved Nikes couldn’t support me for five straight hours, I felt sure the Outrageous Shoe People would be getting free amputations on the way out, and now I was just pissed that no one was going to chop my feet off.  As people started the usual shove-and-sidle toward the exits, I told The Finance, “If I can’t make it back to the parking lot on my own, you’re going to have to drag me.”

He assured me my hair was long enough for that.

After we’d climbed back in the car and I’d spent the first five minutes moaning, “My feet are dying, no, you don’t understand, they’re actually dying, they’re going to turn black and fall off from footgrene – hey, why do they call it gan’green’ when your parts actually turn black, huh? — oooh, my feet!” The Finance turned to me.

“So, did you have a good time?” he asked.

I didn’t hesitate.  Just grinned.

“The BEST.”

I get it.

Finally, I get it.

And I don’t mean like all those other times when I “got” it intellectually, or emotionally, or intuitively.  Boil those adverbs down and they’re just fragments of true comprehension – kinda the same as my “understanding” of quantum physics.  Which is to say, I grasp the concept, but not the underlying math that makes it possible.

But this time?

No, this time I really get it.  Math-wise.  Down in my brain and marrow and what passes for my shriveled heart and soul.  Sure, it took 38 years and more angst than I’d like to cop to in order to get here, but at long last it’s truly sunk in and…

…I finally fucking get it.

I know you’d be proud.

* * *

Thing is, I have a penchant for female singers whose art mostly revolves around Officially Not Giving A Fuck.

Vis-à-vis rock’n'role models, my life can be timelined thus: Madonna → Tori Amos → Ani DiFranco → Nina Simone → Lady Gaga → Amanda Palmer.

So this Christmas, when The Finance gave me Lady Gaga concert tickets, I was ecstatic.

And at the same time, terrified.

I won’t go into minute detail about my preferred hermiticism, raging agoraphobia, or how the idea of standing in an arena surrounded by 20,000 people makes me want to shred my own face off with a cheese grater – but suffice it to say, I had some “issues” to deal with just to make it to the Staples Center in the first place.

Yet when I saw those tickets – not just e-tickets, abstract tickets – but real, physical tickets I could hold in my hands, I vowed I’d be goddamned before missing my chance to see a woman whose main claim to fame – besides great pop/dance music – involves telling bigots and misogynists and homophobes and bullies to fuck the fuck off.   And actually using those expletives to do it.

In other words, a woman after my own heart.

But here’s the main difference between me and Gaga:

photo by Nick Knight for Vanity Fair

Yeah, that outfit?  I’da tried that on when I was 16.  Maybe.  In a dressing room.  By myself.

I would’ve shimmied into that bodysuit, squeezed my feet into those 8” heel-less boots, and – if you wanna know the horrific truth – probably executed a couple of vaguely titillating Vogue-like dance moves in the mirror before crashing into a wall, no matter how much circulation my toes weren’t getting, or how deep those Swarovski crystals were slicing into my nips.

But as mentioned, all of that would’ve taken place in a dressing room.  By myself.

I never had the – what I imagined at the time was “courage,” though now I think of it a tad differently – let’s say, “wherewithal,” to sport maxi-strange-lithe-and-sexy ensembles out in public.

Don’t get me wrong: sartorially speaking, I could do strange.  Even back in high school, “strange” was my forte.  Using eyeliner every day to draw Egyptian ankhs by my eyes helped. (Fucking little emo thieves – I started that shit, and in rural Florida, no less!  Where you could be bodydumped in the Everglades!  Urban copycat pussies.)

In my early 20’s, I could even do the lithe-and-sexy thing (it helps when you work out two hours a day, six days a week, and your boobs only point forward).   But never – never – could I quite get the nerve to pull off Gaga-levels of sexyweird fashion.  Frankly, I don’t think anyone can come close – or ever has, unless you count Grace Jones in her heyday, or Madonna and Gaultier’s brief fling with the cone-bra in the 90’s.

But that’s why it works for Gaga.  It’s just who she is.  She’s into haute couture, artpop (not the other way ‘round, oldsters), multiple personae.  And because she’s being true to herself, all that sexyweird works.  Even this, while not high on the fuck-me scale (unless you’re a furry) –

photo by Markus Klinko & Indrani

– is just as authentically Gaga as this:

photo released by Lady Gaga

See, when I was younger, the problem with me (as I perceived it), was that I was NONE of these desirable things: sexy, brave, willing to suffer the slings and arrows – and blisters and bruises – for style.  I could fake it for a while, but it was my fault my ovaries weren’t brass enough to carry me through the day in outrageously odd-yet-smokin’ outfits without eventually crumbling under the stares and catty comments and lewd come-ons and thence crawling back into my overlarge hoodies and socks with cartoon owls on them.

In other words, I was giving way too many fucks.  Okay, so maybe less fucks than the average bear, but all the same, more fucks than I wanted to be dishing out.

Which is probably why I’ve always been attracted to female performers who possess ZERO SPARE FUCKS.

And two hours before the Lady Gaga concert, at 38 years old, much to my chagrin and embarrassment, I still had a few fucks to give.

* * *

I wish I could’ve taken a picture of my costume for you.

A long black cocktail dress, combat boots, my studded leather motorcycle jacket, and some extremist Goth make-up that put my high-school ankhs to shame.

No kidding, I’d just spent an hour in the bathroom mirror applying foundation, powder, incredibly detailed and dramatic eyeshadow – and then taking my liquid black eyeliner and drawing flowing lines and curlicues and stars around my eyes until I looked less like an artist who’d created something beautiful, and more like a four year-old who’d gotten into Mommy’s lipstick without knowing it’s called lipstick for a reason.

And as I stared at that girl in the mirror, that four year-old trying so hard to be a grown-up, trying so hard to imitate her idol, trying so desperately to be anything other than what she really was, I had (you guessed it) an epiphany.

Seriously.  Right there in the bathroom.  Naked, barefoot, eyeliner in one hand, vague sense of “What the fuck?” in the other.  I blinked rapidly, scanning my face, trying to figure out what felt wrong.  I was going to a Lady Gaga concert, for Christ’s sake – it’s not like there was a “right” way to look.  Gaga’s run through every physical manifestation on the planet (as well as a few off-world) so it’s not like I would’ve – or could’ve – stuck out in a crowd of Little Monsters.

Then what was it?  Why was I feeling so off?

Was it because, since I can barely play Hangman, my hand just isn’t steady or trained enough to create designs as magnificent as I envisioned them?  Was it because I’m not used to wearing make-up at all anymore, and I was only feeling baseline uncomfortable?  Was it because the look was So Weird – and not just So Weird – but SO BALLS-OUT WEIRD – I was just having trouble adjusting to it?

And that’s when the epiphany punched me right in the mouth:

This is not who I am.

* * *

I hadn’t conjured those words on my own.

That’s the creepy part about epiphanies: they seem to appear out of nowhere, fully formed, at the forefront of your consciousness.  Actually, that’s how you can tell if something’s truly an epiphany: it lands on you without warning, almost like some unknown Whatever is whispering in your ear, and you get the feeling like, Hey, you know what?  It’d be really, really good if I listened to this.

I stood there for a second, still looking in the mirror, and let the words hit me again:

This is not who I am. 

And as usual, that unknown Whatever was right.

Fucking Whatever.

* * *

As I ran the hot water in the sink, I yelled out to the living room, “Honey, how much time do we have before we leave?”

“Thirty minutes!”

“Perfect!”

“Perfect?” his voice rose.  I heard the couch cushions shift.  “Why perfect?”

“Because I’m taking this stupid shit off and not trying so hard and I’m just gonna be me because that’s what Gaga’s really talking about, see?  She doesn’t want us to be these little Gaga clones, she just wants us to be us – whoever we really are and that’s what I want now, too!  I mean, Jesus, look at me: I’m nearly 40, I have a fucking pooch belly!  I’m not this chick – I wasn’t this chick when I was 20!  I’ve never been this chick, with the boots and the dress and the fucking stupid eyeliner!  Even when I was pretending to be that chick, it’s not who I was!  I just had an epiphany!”

“You…” A slight pause.  “Are we going to be late?”

The Finance had seen the Goth face-painting (and said nothing, the doll).  He’d genuinely liked the cocktail dress, wanted to make sure the boots were comfortable – wise veteran of Shondaland – and said something nice about the jacket.  Showcasing one of the many reasons I love him, he said he didn’t care what I wore, so long as I liked what I wore.  (Which is probably why he got me the cartoon owl socks, too.)

As I lathered up my hard-earned Day Of The Dead face, he appeared in the doorway and tried to hide his surprise.

“Wow, so… you’re taking that… and what’s happening again?”

“I had an epiphany.”

“Okay.”

“This is not who I am.”

“Uh-huh.”

“That clrbblbil dress and jackblrtbbrl and fucking makeublrrblp—”

“You wanna wait ‘til you finish?”

“Yeh, gimme a crbbll sec—”

Of course it took more than a couple seconds to scrape off the mortar and paste I’d just spent a careful hour layering on, but when I finally looked up, cheeks and eyelids scrubbed raw, the Finance was still leaning against the doorway, waiting patiently to hear what his psycho Financée was doing completely reversing fashion course a mere half-hour before we were due to leave.

“You all right?” he asked.

“I’m awesome,” I grinned cheerfully, drying my face with a towel.  “This thing with the outfit and boots—”

“Which are comfortable, right?  ‘Cause we’re gonna be standing—”

“Fuck the boots, I’m not wearing the boots.  I’m wearing my Nikes.”

“With the dress?”  He looked confused.

“Fuck the dress, fuck all of it.  I’m wearing my baggy pants.  Because those?  Those are me.”

“Yes…” he trailed off, his voice going, If there’s a right answer here, I am totally missing it.

“I’m telling you, I just had an epiphany.”

“I got that part.”

“And all the clothes, and weird make-up?  I mean, I haven’t worn those combat boots since—” I slathered on some moisturizer.  “When’s the last time I was in fucking combat?  I wear Nikes.  Every day.  Those are me.  Baggy pants are me.  And I’m going to wear one of my Sherlock t-shirts because I’m a fucking nerd and that’s who I am and I’m finally, finally fine with it!”

I may’ve grown a little overly emphatic at that point, as he lifted his hands and said, “Whoa, not fighting you!”

“That’s the thing, though!  The thing I just realized!”

“That you’re a nerd?”

“Yes!  No!  Sort of, but yes!  I mean, Gaga’s always saying be proud of who you are – and with the cocktail dress and fuck-all, who is that?  None of that is me!  I looked like a fucking corpse – a poorly painted corpse – and none of it is really who I am.  I mean really, really who I am!”

“And this is the epiphany.”

“Don’t you get it?  I was trying to dress up like Lady Gaga – but I’m not Lady Gaga!”

The Finance kept staring at me, like, I sure as shit hope she didn’t think she was Lady Gaga, ‘cause then we’d be in a whole new world of crazy.

“And yet here I am trying to look like her, trying to look like some girl that coulda been my daughter if I’d been knocked up in junior high.  Fuck that!  I’m me, and I like this me, and I’m not gonna be afraid to be me, nerdy and all.”

“So no dress.”

“No dress.”

“Baggy pants.”

“Fuckin’ A.”

“Nikes are comfortable.”

“GOD, YES.  And my socks that say, ‘Admit it, psycho is hot.’”

“And a Sherlock shirt.”

“That is my single Gaga concession,” I admitted.  “I’m wearing the one that says, ‘Ordinary people are adorable.’”

As I reached for the powder to tone down the shine on my nose (something that really is me; me and my fucking oily skin), the Finance came in and kissed me on the top of the head.  I’m pretty sure he was just thrilled at the prospect of not having to walk around with a poochy Morticia Addams, but what he said was, “I like you nerdy and all, too.”

* * *

So I get it, Gaga.

I finally get it.

I love the way you look.  I love that you’re a motherfucking rock star who dresses like a motherfucking rock star.  I love your music, and your message, and I love them even more now that I’m starting to love who I am, and have stopped feeling inadequate, like I’ll never be as cool as you.

Because I’m not a motherfucking rock star.

I’m a motherfucking writer.

I’m a motherfucking writer who wears baggy pants because they’re more comfortable for marathon sessions behind my computer.  Who wears nerdy TV show shirts because I’m a giant TV nerd.  Who wears Nikes because high heels cause me such pain they make me Hulk-out angry.

A motherfucking writer who wears cartoon socks because I think they’re hilarious.

And while I love you, I honestly don’t give a shit if you, or anyone else, thinks my socks are funny.  Because after spending my entire life listening to you and other strong women tell me to be myself – and to be happy being myself – I can definitively tell you:

Me and my pooch have ZERO SPARE FUCKS to give.

UP NEXT

Tales from the Actual Concert

With Cool Photos Like This:

Okay, that’s not entirely true.

I’m not technically on it anymore, but I was on January 5.  And ladies, lemme tell ya, what a delightful experience!  Simply a rainbow cornucopia of pleasure!  A veritable fruit salad of Nausea, Fatigue, Dread, and A Longing For Sweet, Sweet Death!

(FYI – Most folks might find this entry contains more than they care to know about me, in which case, seriously, what are you doing here, anyway?  Have you learned nothing?  Go read some Berenstain Bears books and play with your sexless little Kens and Barbies!  Off with you!)

Suffice it to say that on Saturday, the Finance and I were “celebrating” our return home from various family vacations when –

WHOOPS!

He experienced…

…let’s just call it a wardrobe malfunction.

Initially I wasn’t worried.  In fact, given that I’m almost hypervigilant about my cycle (more on “why” later), I already knew I wasn’t in Prime Ovulation Territory.  Not to mention the condoms we use are as thick as kitchen gloves (sorry, hon) and are chock-full of spermicide.  No, as a general rule, we have that thing strapped, tranq’d, and in lockdown, and in the nearly five years we’ve been together, we’ve never had to change the (BLANK) Days Since Our Last Workplace Accident billboard.

But then – shock of all shocks – for the first time in my entire life, I thought, “Well, I’ve already deemed 2013 The Year Of Glorious Mistakes… maybe this is the Universe’s way of doubling-down on my bet!  Calling my bluff!  Ha ha… oh… hrm…”

I reclined there for a few minutes, all warm and vaguely amused, imagining – me!  a mom!  what hath Hell wrought?  but maybe in a good way? – when I turned to the Finance to share all this shit out loud, y’know, have a good chuckle.

Which is when the Finance asked, “Well, but – what about your meds?”

And holy scheisseballs on a Saltine, Brunhilde.

Way to snap me back into reality at Mach 1,000.  My cervical vertebrae are still vibrating.  (Which sounds a lot dirtier than it really is.) (Pity.)

You see, one of the medications I’m on for Bipolar II increases the chances of birth defects.  If I ever decide to actively plan to get pregnant, in order to be on the safe side, I’ll have to stop taking this medication.  So more bipolar crazy, but less birth defects.  It’s a trade-off.

However, as my shrink has reassured me time and again, this medication doesn’t necessarily cause birth defects, it just increases the chances of them.

Now, I don’t know about you, but if someone told me that going to the mall on Tuesdays increased my chances of having my feet chopped off by a psychotic clown, I would definitely find another day to go to the mall.

And thus suddenly that nice warm maybe feeling evaporated like water on the surface of the sun—ffft!  Instantaneous.  And –

“Oh, shit,” I said out loud.

“Oh, fuck,” I said out loud.

“Oh fucking fucking fuck fuck,” I said, and launched myself upright and into the kitchen, still naked, grabbing my journal, where I meticulously keep track of my only-slightly-less-than-clockwork cycle.  Flipping through the pages like an Evelyn Wood valedictorian (look it up, young’uns), I doublechecked my math over and over again.

Seventeen days.  Seventeen days.

If my cycle’s this long, on the seventeenth day, I’m fine.

If my cycle’s this long, on the seventeenth day, I’m fine.

If my cycle’s that long, on the seventeenth day, I’m… should be fine.

Should be.

And that “should be” is what screwed my mental.  So to speak.

See, I can’t abide “should be.”  In my experience, “should be” is the equivalent of  “definitely isn’t.”  Because over a decade ago I took a gamble on “should be”…

…and lost.

Big time.

So big that – to boil it down – “should be” left me sobbing in a corner three weeks later while a man screamed, “You fucking babykiller!” at me.

After that, keeping track of my cycle just felt like self-preservation.

Yet all these years – and SO MUCH THERAPY – later, I realize that this situation is about as far from that situation as you can possibly get while on the same plane of reality.  I can’t even picture the Finance thinking those words, much less screaming them, but all the same that “should be” slammed me right in the fucking gut like a steel-toed boot.  We’re talking flashbacks, projectile tears, pure panic-attack adrenaline.

But never again, I’d said to myself then.  And never again, I said to myself now.

“Should be” is not an option.

So I called the nearest drugstore: they had Plan B.  Check.

Need a prescription?: nope.  Check.  (Thank you, FDA… AS OF ONLY THREE YEARS AGO.)

Check drug interactions with my shrink: and…

You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.

The very same medication I’m on that increases the chances of birth defects?  Makes Plan B less effective.  Apparently it accelerates the rate at which Plan B is metabolized – the bottom line being: you have to take TWO DOSES of the super-potent one-dose version.  That is, take one super-potent pill, wait 12 hours, then take the other super-potent pill.

Twice the side effects with still no guarantee the shit would even work.

But… should be…

“Honestly, you’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” I thought.  And not for the first time, “Why is being crazy so fucking inconvenient?”

(Oh, and I should probably note here that if you wanna get all screamy rageful anti-choice in the comments, I’ll be deleting you.  I mean, please, feel free to express your opinions calmly and respectfully – even if they differ from my own.  But be a dickbag, and I’ll chuck you out on your ass.  My house: them’s the rules.)

So within an hour and a half of the first “Oh, shit,” I was taking the first dose.

And then commenced feeling like shit for the next two days, as I followed up with the second dose 12 hours later.

It was like having a low-grade stomach flu, except you can’t throw up or you’ll have to take the pills All. Over. Again.  Which, at fifty bucks a pop, is some expensive fucking vomiting, so you just lie on the couch and feel barfy and gross and have that oversalivation thing where your mouth fills with spit and you think If I have to swallow one more mouthful of spit… which just makes you feel even more barfy, and your stomach grumbles aggressively — aggressively!  angrily!  like, “Fuck your stupid libido, Smith!” — and it’s like you weigh north of 600 lbs. because you sure as hell can’t get up and why can’t you just pee right here? — upholstery can be cleaned! — since the bathroom is miles away and you’re just… so… damned… tired… but you can’t sleep as you’re nauseous and when you do doze off you have nightmares, and even watching TV is too much effort and dying would just be so much easier, wouldn’t it?, because suddenly there are only three circles of hell: Pregnant, Nauseous, and Dying, and Dying is the least worst one by far…

…all this because I was blasting my body with a tera-fuckton of hormones that I barely survived, much less any random cells lying around in my uterus.

Actually, I’m pretty sure I’m going to be sterile for the next four months or so.

Poor Finance, though.

He’s going to be celibate.

Yeah, no, seriously, this is Eric.

– went to see Neil Gaiman read from his novel, Stardust, at Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures.

Since I am not only a huge Neil Gaiman fan, but also a rabid Amanda Fucking Palmer fan (for those of you residing in underground bunkers: she and Neil are married), I asked W/B if he’d pass on a little something special from me to Neil, before asking Neil to sign my copy of American Gods.

Naturally, this made W/B extremely nervous.

Why?

Probably because he knows me.

Oh, and also because this is what I asked him to give Neil:

(FYI — those three stick figures that look like they’re playing ring-around-the-rosy?  Were intended to be three stick figures making out.  I know.  Mmm, ze art skillz, zey are sexy, no?)

Thus unsurprisingly (for a Disney store Viking), W/B handed off this task to his wife, O She Of The Titanium Balls.

For which I will be forever grateful, as it produced this priceless Neil Gaiman autograph:

And to think, before this I never even knew I was capable of multiple writergasms!

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(In all seriousness, a hearty thank-you-go-round

to Neil, W/B and Titanium.

I’ll treasure this book always.) 

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UPDATE!!! – 11/24/12 – 1:25 p.m. PST

So as I am wont to do, I posted the link to this blog on Twitter yesterday — and when I finally rejoined the grid this morning, lo and behold, look what I found in my Inbox!

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In case anyone’s wondering, I’ll be in my bunk.

Due to the graphic nature of the following topic, this entry will, I’m afraid, be brimming over with profanity-encrusted vitriol.

Granted, that in itself is not especially shocking (right now my regular subscribers are going, “Bitch, you know we can read, right?”), but when I found myself on Saturday morning railing about this story to The Finance for almost a solid hour, I realized if I didn’t exorcise my rage through writing, I was going to contract some kind of soul cancer.

You should know that in all good faith, I tried to approach this post with something that at least approximated sanity, but it seems when it comes to this particular occurrence I have no control over my anger whatsoever.

My anger has emancipated itself, and is thinking of getting a neck tattoo.

So if you’re having a bad day and you just can’t take the ugly, or you – very understandably – don’t want your marshmallow harshed, that’s totally fine.  Duck out now and wait for the next entry, where I’ll try to talk about something funny, like…  uh…

(Yeah, turns out when you sit there and just try to think of “something funny,” it’s really hard.  All I kept seeing was monster trucks and koala bears.  Fucking hilarious.)

Thus fair warning: this post is gnarly.

If you’ve come this far, you can’t say I didn’t warn you.

* * *

On the front page of Saturday’s Los Angeles Times, I was stunned to see an article reporting that a woman had been raped on an LA city bus.

My inner knee-jerk went something like:

“What do you mean ‘on a bus’?  What the fuck?  Was there nobody else on the fucking bus?  No driver?  Was the bus in park?  Was it hidden in a fucking underground tunnel?”

And the answer is no.

The bus was moving.

During rush hour.

In broad daylight.

With a driver.

And with other passengers on it. 

All of whom claimed not to see anything.

* * *

Returning home from her special education classes, an 18 year-old woman – really, a teenager with the intellect of a 10 year-old – was raped in the back of this bus as it trundled along its regular route, making its usual stops, before finally reaching the end of its line, where the rapist at last disembarked.

Taking into account there are about 12 different WRONGS about this situation — and I’m pretty sure we’d all be in agreement as to what those 12 things are — I’m not going to file the standard list of grievances here.  There’s plenty of fingerpointing that can be done, but I’ll tell you one person who is absolutely blame-free:

That 18 year-old girl.

Let me be as clear as I possibly can on that point:

This girl did nothing wrong.

Reading the first few column-inches, I was filled with the same outrage (and outright rage) I’m sure a lot of you are experiencing right now.  Not an unusual response, I’d say.  Frankly, I’d be worried if you didn’t feel a little sick to your stomach.

However, horrifying as the event itself was, that wasn’t what launched me into a ranting cyclone of fury.

No, that happened when I read this quote by sheriff’s Sgt. Dan Scott:

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“Unfortunately [the victim] was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

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* * *

Has your jaw ever dropped so hard it popped?

Well apparently that can happen.

* * *

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“Unfortunately [the victim] was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

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Are you fucking shitting me?

Honestly, be honest now: are you fucking SHITTING ME?

The wrong place?  At the wrong time?

No.

Being in the wrong place at the wrong time is walking under an ACME safe just as it drops.   Wile E. Coyote had a bad case of the wrong place/wrong times.

This girl?

Was ABSOLUTELY NEVER in the wrong place at the wrong time, and it’s repugnant that anyone — anyone — should say that she was.

I want you to look again carefully.

Look closely.

Look at the words:

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 “Unfortunately [the victim] was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

 .

The Victim.

Did something wrong.

Which is why she got raped.

 .

Oh, absolutely not.

The heat of a thousand suns’ worth of Fuck You, Man.

If a city bus – what we literally call public transportation – if being in public is “the wrong place” –

If 5 p.m. – rush hour, the busiest time of day, with the greatest number of people out on the streets – is “the wrong time” –

When the fuck is the “right” time?

 .

 “Unfortunately [the victim] was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

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Can you see it?

It’s subtle.

Insidious.

Sure, you could read it as one of those thoughtless clichés uttered by every “Law & Order: SVU” cop ever written: “Wrong place, wrong time.  Wrong place, wrong time.”

And that’s probably what Sgt. Scott meant by it: a seen-it-all verbal shorthand for “This sicko was bound to go off sometime and it fucking sucks, but he went off on this girl.”

But the very laziness of that verbal shorthand turns an appalling (on multiple levels) crime into something the victim was responsible for.

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Stick with me here.

Because let’s really break down his statement, shall we?

“Unfortunately…”

Nope.  Not a good start.

Sgt. Scott, I know nothing about your experience on the force, but I can tell you there is nothing “unfortunate” about being raped.  “Unfortunate” implies a bad stroke of luck.  Rape derives from intention.  Rape is about anger, and power, and stripping victims of their agency and humanity.

Ding your car door?  That’s unfortunate.

Fight with your spouse?  That’s unfortunate.

A mentally disabled girl sexually assaulted in full view of a public that does nothing to help her?

That’s not “unfortunate.”

That’s a noxious fucking nightmare of physical, mental, and emotional violation that you’ve just reduced to a car ding.

Your word choice?

That was unfortunate.

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“[the victim] was…”

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And since we’re talking about stripping a person of their agency and humanity, let’s remember who’s in charge during a rape.

Here’s a hint: it’s the fucking rapist.

And if the rapist has all the agency – he’s obviously the one dictating what happens – how is it that after the rape, all that agency, all that accountability, gets shoved back onto the victim?

After all, it’s not “the rapist was…”

It’s not “this fucking psycho brought the wrong place and wrong time with him.”

It’s

“[the victim] was…”

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So tell me.  When exactly does she get that agency back, hm?

When does she step up and take responsibility for being “wrong”?

I mean, is it optional?  Can she, at some future date, choose to accept the fact that she picked “the wrong time” to ride a bus?  That she showed up too soon?  Or too late?  Or at any point in linear existence when the rapist happened to catch sight of her?

Or is it not a choice at all?  Does her agency just return automatically, say, as soon as the assault is over?  The moment he pulls out, does it suddenly click in her head, “Oh, it’s my fault I’m here, and not at work/home/anywhere-else-in-the-fucking-world right now.”?

Tell me, at what precise moment does a woman become an accessory to her own rape?

The answer, of course, is fucking never – a rape is always the rapist’s fault, and only the rapist’s fault – and goddammit, I’d really like to hear people speak like they fucking understand that.

* * *

Now, do I think Sgt. Dan Scott is a yay-rape! kind of guy?

Of course not.

Even though we’ve never met, I like to think he’s a protect-the-helpless and catch-the-baddies, white-hat Wyatt Earp type.  I’ve always had a soft spot for sheriffs.

But I would also like him – and all men, and all women – to consciously consider how they think about rape, and moreover, to be aware of how they talk about it.

Language has always reflected the beliefs of a society – and no matter how repellent we may eventually find some of those beliefs – i.e., victim-shaming arises from the archaic belief that women who get raped “deserve it” – only recognition and acknowledgement of our language’s reflective connotations (along with the thought, “Hey, that’s incredibly fucked up.”) will lead to changes in our thinking, our vocabulary, and thence to changes in our society.

But first we have to pay attention.

Really pay attention.

Once we stop even subliminally shaming the victim –

 .

“Unfortunately [the victim] was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

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– perhaps we, and the police, and those passengers on the bus –

– those people who swear they noticed nothing –

– will finally open our eyes and see.

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The sad morning-after dregs.

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Excuse the premature nostalgia, but Halloween is my favorite holiday of the year.  Absolute favorite.  It even beats out Christmas, because at least with Halloween I don’t have to pretend for a whole month that I’m going to send out holiday cards when I know damn well – again! every year! – I’ll never get my shit together enough to actually buy and sign and address and mail a bunch of fucking cards and so consequently every card I get is like another brick being laid in the foundation of the new wing of my guilt complex…

Anyway.

Here are a few more

REASONS WHY HALLOWEEN IS AWESOME!!!

1)   It’s the only day of the year we celebrate what I consider my primary skill: “pretending” to be evil.  (I don’t know.  Maybe you don’t use quotes.)

2)   Enough chocolate to gag a Snuffleupagus.  Though come to think of it, it’s possible Snuffleupagi are like dogs, and even a tiny amount of chocolate kills them.  Which, you gotta admit, would be pretty Halloweeny in and of itself: dead Snuffleupagi strewn up and down suburban sidewalks in costumes, crying out for their moms or Big Bird with their last Snuffleupagian breaths…

3)   I can wear comfy pants and a tank top – standard slovenly writerwear – and get credit for a “yoga instructor” costume.  (Though I do have to strap on a bra instead of tucking my boobs into my pants like normal, so that part kind of sucks.)

4)    Scared two year-olds being shoved in front of strangers and forced to parrot something they don’t understand, like “Happy Hawowee,” with no idea why, all while wearing uncomfortable fake identities.  It prepares them for Life.

5)   Getting to give away candy like I’m the Donald Trump of candy.  Except I actually give it away.

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***

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The Finance and I had 103 kids come to our door last night.

I know.

“103?” you’re thinking.  “C’mon, how could she possibly know it was exactly 103?”

And I’ll tell y’all.

Because I write this shit down.

Seriously.  I am not kidding.  This is my favorite holiday.

I make The Finance help me, too, though at this point I think he’s just found it easier to float along the River of Crazy rather than fight against the current.

I even try to keep a scribbled list of all the costumes the kids wear – y’know, to see if we can spot trends and test our pop culture knowledge (The Finance’s is zero, by the way – he called a kid in a Transformers costume a “robot” last night and I was all, “Uh, hello?  Optimus Prime?” and then felt super-self-satisfied for, like, hours) though when the Front Porch Superhighway gets clogged like a fat man’s arteries, I have been forced to just scrawl something like “MF’ing load of MF’ing princesses.”

But the numbers?  Oh, I get the numbers right.

Because there is nothing worse than buying too little candy.

Nothing worse than having a five year-old girl come to your house dressed in Army fatigues and combat boots and having to tell her, “Sorry, sweetheart, but I’m unable to support your strong and daring anti-Whore-a-ween feminist protest because I was too fucking stoned or lazy to pick up that extra bag of mini-KitKats.”  Oh hell no.

So I count how many kids we have each year, and make sure I get enough candy to cover 150% of them.

How much we needed this year.

Halloween 2012

Things What I Learned*:

How To Get Candy

At The Evil Gal/Finance Household

1) DO… be under 30.  No shit.  If you show up at my door in plain old jeans and a hoodie sporting more tattoos than I have?  You can just fuck right the hell off my porch, dude.  Wait a day, then buy your own goddamned Halloween candy at CVS for 75% off.  This house is not a candy-welfare state.  I paid good money for those Mr. Goodbars, and if you think I’m just going to share them with you for noth–

Oh my god, I totally went Republican there for a second.  It was like my soul flashed before my eyes.

Here, take some of my candy.  I have plenty.

2) DON’T… pretend you’re trick or treating for more than one person.  Last night I opened the door to find a girl – pfft, “girl” – this chick was 17 if she was a day – holding SIX DIFFERENT BAGS on her arms.  And I’m not talking Halloween bags, or plastic jack o’lanterns.  I’m talking three tote bags, a kid’s backpack, a paper sack, and a plastic grocery bag.

She said she was trick or treating for “the ones in strollers.”  Now, I don’t know if that’s some sort of charity I’m unaware of – The Ones In Strollers – but I didn’t see any strollers in the vicinity – nor do I think that if kids are still riding in strollers, they should be trying to choke down anything as small as Gobstoppers – but of course I gave her candy for each of the bags anyway.  Mostly because if she was hungry enough to eat six bags’ worth of candy, she might’ve been hungry enough to eat me.  I’ve seen “The Walking Dead.”  I’m not taking any chances.

3) DO… be under two years old and dressed in a Yo Gabba Gabba costume with a funny headpiece that keeps falling down over your eyes.  You will get a lot of candy from me.  Like, a lot.  I will literally give you all the candy we have.  In fact, I will go down the block and beat up some other kids and give you their candy.  I’m not joking.   I’ll do it.  You want me to?

4) DON’T… come back twice.  You really think I’m that stupid?  Yet sure enough, this swaggering 12 year-old boy dressed in a golf shirt – I’m not sure if he was pretending to be a golfer, or if he just happened to wear a golf shirt to school that day and was like, “Fuck it, I’m a golfer.  Let’s go trick or treat this bitch.” – came back about 30 minutes after his first visit, bold as brass.  He just stuck that bag out and hollered, “Trick or treat!”  And because I really am that stupid, I grinned and hollered “Happy Halloween!” before it even registered that this was the same Golf Shirt who’d swaggered up earlier.

By that time he’d already grabbed some candy and thrown it in his bag – and he knows damn well I’m not gonna reach in there and take the candy back, right?  With all the neighbors watching?  I’ll suddenly become that crazy mean lady whose house mysteriously burns down on Christmas Eve.  Because of arson.

Evil fucking kid.

I may go as him next Halloween.

Just need a golf shirt.