I'd Be Pissed Too

According to the cat psychic, Finn is pooping instead of spraying. It's more of a territory thing. Apparently, he can tell that I am nervous about us getting evicted because of him (not supposed to have pets) and those little turds are intended as a message to my landlord: this is Finn's place, keep out or I'll poop on you!

Also, the psychic said he is mad that he can't have sex. She didn't know if he ever had sex, and his past is a total mystery to me, but apparently he really wants to have sex and is mad he can't. Hard to blame him and I could have guessed. Ever since he tried to rape my stuffed snow leopard the first night I brought him home, it's been an uneasy thing between us.

I would have let him hump Cheetah (the leopard's name) except that he jumped on his back and was tearing at his neck with his teeth and I thought my beloved childhood stuffed animal would be ripped apart. So Cheetah lived in the closet for awhile. Now they co-exist with out any sexual aggression and Finn has moved on to pillows and sometimes me, but I guess he's is pretty pissed about the whole dissatisfying situation. Sorry, little guy.

The pet psychic said I should have a talk with him, but she had a psychic talk with him too, so I'm hoping our combined efforts will result in less turds. She said the sex thing was something that he was going to have to learn to accept in this lifetime. I love psychics.

Why?

Note: I have decided to start blogging about my 12 step ruminations. I don't think this is a break of anonymity because I'm not going to talk about any particular program, just the concepts.

The 12 step programs of recovery have many acronyms, slogans and adages, much like Antioch College, the U.N., and the National Lawyers Guild, to name just a few of the other complex systems I have tried to comprehend in my short lifetime. One good one is: come or be dragged. Hell ya. It took me 28 years and the death of my best friend to hit a bottom with drugs, food and alcohol, so I am hoping to come along with less resistance for the rest of my recovery. Only time will tell, one day at a time (another slogan!).

Another one of my favorites is: ceased fighting anyone or anything. Ever see that Simpson's episode where Lisa tries to help Bart calm his mind so he can win a mini golf tournament? She makes him meditate and asks him riddles like "If a tree falls in a forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound?" Upon hearing this mental conundrum, Bart's eyes become huge and his pupils dilate and it seems as if his mind is still for the first time in his life. That's what it was like for me the first time I heard the ceased fighting saying. The idea of not fighting anyone or anything was such a relief, I nearly slithered out of my chair and collapsed into a pile of jelly on the floor.

For a large part of my life I enjoyed fighting. In fact, as a feminist, I prided myself on being comfortable with confrontation and being aggressive. In my early twenties, I even wore a maroon t-shirt that said "Girl Militia" on it and had a picture of a naked woman shaking her fists in rage. However, I had never tried speaking my mind without the safe retreat into my addiction to fall back on. Being able to numb out with my substance of choice turned out to be key in my ability to tell everyone to fuck off (who knew?). Now when my boss is talking crazy talk and I'm feeling annoyed and planning a witty and cruel retort in my head, that slogan comes to mind and I just "detach with love". It's so easy! No, it's not, but it is a lot less aggravation and wasted energy.

My passion for social justice and keen sense of righteousness leads to me to be quite concerned with the state of the world and incessantly come up with ways to fix things. However, as an addict, fighting is not something I can afford to do. My priority for each day must be to abstain from my addiction and spiritual growth. I have been trying to retrain myself to think about my life not as a finite amount of time in which I need to accomplish as much as possible. No, rather, I must now concern myself with living simply, humbly, and growing along spiritual lines.

Wanting to prove that I am as good or better than all the rich jerks I grew up with? Cross that off the list of things to do before I die. Ditto for writing the great American novel (about left wing radical lesbians). Making more money than my parents should no longer factor into my decisions about the future. And I should definitely forget about being more successful than my siblings.

This all leads me to feel sorry for myself that I'm in a 12 step program that forces me to reorganize my life in a sane manner and abandon my superficial goals. The good news is they have a saying for that too: ask your higher power for what you need, not want you want. You know what I thought the first time I heard that one? Fuck you. Did I mention that self-pity and resentment are two of the biggest "character defects" for addicts?

Another saying that annoys the crap out of me is: 'why' is not a spiritual question. What the hell does that mean? I used to turn my head to the sky and shout "Why?" 50 times a day. Now I wonder why and then I think "that's not a spiritual question." I don't fully understand, but I think it has something to do with learning to go with the flow. Something. But, because this is a process, I am going to share some of the things that still make me ask "Why?!?" on a daily basis:

1. My cat leaves little turds around the apartment. All the vet techs I have talked to say they have never heard of such behavior. It's a weird, gross, mystery WHY he does it.

2. My cat was neutered but continues to try to hump things, including me, especially when he is kneading and drooling all over me.

3. My boss makes bad jokes that no one laughs at and causes awkward silences in the office.

4. People leave large piles of poop on my street, that either come from their butts or that of their animals.

5. Another genocide?

6. Why are stupid/greedy/morally bankrupt people in charge of running my country and the world?

When greeted with any of these things, and I realize two involve poo, I ask God: why is this happening? What is the purpose in the larger scheme of things and my life in particular? Why is it necessary for me to experience this unpleasantness right now? And what is the benefit to humanity, if any? I have not gotten any answers, maybe because they are not spiritual questions, but I will let you all know when I do.

P.S. I am making an appointment with a psychic so we can ask Finn why he is pooing all over the house. So perhaps I will get a spiritual answer to my non-spiritual question?

My Mom is Gay

She informed she bought a black leather bomber jacket for her big trip out to San Francisco next week! Now we can be twins. And she wonders how I came out a lesbo?

ICE the INS

Check out this very cool video game oriented towards immigrant rights and against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) practices.

http://www.icedgame.com/

Are You There H.P.?

The grad school rejection letters have started rolling in and I've been thinking about life and my career and where I live and who I love and how far away my family is and how much my chosen gay family means to me and the future and all those things that make me go fucking bonkers.

In the 12 steps, they encourage you to do the footwork and surrender the results. Which means, it's cool for me to want to go to grad school and it's great if I can apply to grad school (without engaging in my addiction), but I shouldn't get too attached to the idea of going to grad school. Or going any particular place. Or feeling like it needs to happen this year. Because that is my self-will and as an addict, I rarely know what is best for me. There are crazy voices inside my head that tell me to do really self-destructive things, like try to distract or kill myself with all sorts of substances and activities. So it's best if I just let God, or whoever my Higher Power (H.P.) is in the moment, run the show. Because although I think I know best, I often don't.

My friend Dana told me that "control is safety to the anxious mind." As someone with an anxiety disorder, those words really hit home. I like to be in control of everything, I definitely think things would be better if I was running the show. As a liberal-arts-college-educated-vegetarian-dyke, my morals are clearly superior to most other people's in America. However, sadly (or maybe luckily) for me, I am not God, I am just one person in the universe and most of the time things don't go the way I think they should.

So what to do? A wise older woman told me that there is always a Plan B. I might really like Plan A and think that is the plan for me but that might not be the plan that the universe has for me. And whether I like it or not, the universe's plan is going to prevail. Since control is an illusion, surrender then just becomes a matter of being willing to be with whatever arises and dealing with my emotions as they come up. Looking back through my life I can say that the plans the universe has had for me are often better than my plans. Damn it. So I am just trying to be ok with whatever happens with this whole grad school thing because attachment leads to suffering, right Buddha?

Weasel's Got a Gun

This weekend my friend Ruthie was in town from NYC, I had cleared my schedule to hang out with her but she was being kind of cagey about plans. It wasn't until I was at brunch with her and our high school friend Zev, that they revealed their true plans for the day: to go to a gun range.

Zev and I go way back...to the winter nights of my youth, when I got high and fell in snow banks and he walked around without a coat saying it was "mind over matter". He was even inspired to make up a song to the tune of Pearl Jam's Evenflow about me:

Laura's stoned
thoughts arrive like butterflies
She don't know
So she chases them away...

and falls in a snow bank.

Zev and I are pretty different now. He served in the Isreali military (I like to refer to him as the "Isreali solider" for Bay Area shock value), tried to join the F.B.I., and was recently recruited by a right wing think tank. It's scary cause he's brilliant. But he also shares a love of travel and hiking and is a really sweet caring person. Also he is probably the best listener of the male persuasion I have ever met. So anyways, sometimes we hang.

Ruthie and Zev both rightly assumed that I would not want to go to the gun range. I am a pacifist, hate guns and violence, and won't even watch scary movies. However, a few weeks before she died, my dear friend Tucker went to a shooting range for her brother's birthday party. She was in a bad mood about it and did not want to go, but once there she discovered a hidden talent: she was a crackerjack shot. No one should ever underestimate the motivational power of competitiveness, even with a dead person, because I decided that I would like to know if I am also a natural. Also, I am a pacifist and it occurred to me that I should know what I am against.

So I went with them. We made lots of jokes along the way, I quoted Wayne's World endlessly: "I don't even own a gun, let alone many guns, which would necissitate a gun rack!" But then we got there and Zev said "Ok, the jokes stop." And I realized that we were up to serious business. So then I had a panic attack.

Teen-age boys worked at the front desk and gave me and Ruthie a lady gun to shoot, so we wouldn't learn bad habits, since neither of us had ever shot before. Zev got a glock and once we were comfortable shooting the lady gun, which didn't have much kick-back, he let us shoot his glock, which was fucking crazy.

Some things that surprised me which probably shouldn't have:

1. It was busy: If you are like me and assume that a very small percentage of people want to spend their Saturday afternoon firing a gun at a large piece of paper in a smoky room with lead warning signs everywhere you are wrong! People love to do this, they drive from far away and wait for 20 minutes for a "lane" cause it's such a popular activity.

2. Couples on dates: nothings says 'I want to get to know you more' than not shooting someone in the foot.

3. IT WAS LOUD: You have to wear goggles and ear protection. You can't hear shit and it's like being underwater, only less fun because you really want to hear what people are saying when they have guns in their hands.

4. It was located near San Quentin Prison: I wish this part wasn't true, but it totally is.

The things I saw that didn't surprised me at all were men using guns to make other men feel stupid and embarrassed for feeling fear. Also, men shooting guns the size of small cannons which made bullet holes the size of golf balls

My lower back was spasming by the time I walked out and I found the whole experience...rather violent. Afterwards, I immediately had to do yoga in the parking lot which made Ruthie and Zev laugh at me. I feel slightly dirty now, like a lost an innocent part of myself, but Zev was a really good teacher. Now if I am ever faced with a gun, I know that that if I shoot it, there is a 15% chance I will hit anything near my target.

Way Better Than Hetero Sex with Matt Damon

Is gay sex with Ben Affleck!