Poison

When I leave work traveling north on Highway 50 over the bridge I see the same billboard each day. “Heaven or Hell: Where Are You Going?”  It’s a ridicules question. Hell is eighth grade. Or if you’re a writer, it’s having no time to write.  

Jean-Paul Sartre said, “Hell is other people.”  

I don’t sleep. Have I ever mentioned that? Someone I know recently suggested I treat my insomnia by lying in bed at night and imagining I’d won the lottery. Apparently this conjures feelings of joy opposed to panic. So I thought I’d try it. I took some hardcore sleep medication and then imagined I’d won the lottery. Furthermore I asked myself, what would I do with all that money? The obvious and most honest answer is buy myself time to write. I’d keep Stephen King’s schedule. Write every day but Christmas and my birthday. Of course, I know writers who don’t have to go to jobs Monday-Friday and stay home and write all day and still complain about it. Like their lives suck. We’re human beings. We’re never satisfied.

I used to play this game when I’d ask writers if they could attend a cocktail party with twenty other writers, living or dead, who would those twenty other writers be? I love that game. But I think the majority of writers I’d invite would be dead. That’s weird. I also worry some of the writers I’d invite wouldn’t like me. That’s troublesome. Like high school when I loved that boy Shawn who didn’t love me back. One night I ran straight into traffic screaming, “Shawn, why don’t you love me?” I could have been hit by a car, a near melodramatic teenage tragedy. Some days, I’m still that girl.

I’ve got a new writer crush. Her name is Antonia Crane. I’ve many reasons to love her, one being her subject matter. I relate to Antonia. She feels like a sister. Does that make sense? She discusses topics like sex and death honestly. Everything about her, stunning. I also have a crush on that actor, Bradley Cooper. New development. I really didn’t think much of him until I began to dream about him. Now I dream about him all the time. Why him? I mean what is about him? I read somewhere when we dream about celebrities we’re in fact dreaming about someone we know. In other words, Bradley Cooper represents someone I know in real life, and I must really like this person, because all these dreams about Bradley Cooper involve having sex with him. 

Of course, I’ve read sex dreams have nothing to do with sex. So why do I orgasm? Weird. I also suffer moments in which I want nothing more than to do a shot of Southern Comfort  and then blow Scott Weiland. I can’t help it.  

Kerry Cohen asked the other day if she could interview me for an essay she’s writing for Salon that’s about parents who write erotica. She’s wrestling with the question, “Is it irresponsible of parents to write about sex?” Yes. It’s also irresponsible of us to have sex dreams and masturbate. What the hell? Kerry is one of the smartest women I know. And she’s a parent who writes about sex. I understand there are people in the world who think erotica is a terrible thing and people who write it should go to Hell.  We’re poison. I don’t even use a pen name. I’m crazy. What depresses me most is the majority of folks who’ve taken shots at me for writing erotica haven’t even bothered to read my stories. People love to feel offended for no reason. So popular these days. Anyway, it’s a mistake to think I write about sex. I don’t. I write about people. They have sex. Big difference.