Poppy Z. Brite's Blog, page 51

Poem, Sort Of

For Chris, who will not see it

I do not cry or call you drunkenly.
This is the way I miss you:
On the night you come over to visit the cats,
I put clean sheets on the bed,
not so you won't have to sleep in my stink,
but so I will be able to smell you on them tomorrow.

Better

I think I'm getting better at this. I spent last night at home and had to medicate for an incipient panic attack, but after that I slept well with no nightmares. Better, when I would half-wake during the night, I felt glad to be at home -- not away from Grey, but cozied up with my cats, in my house, in the bed that is only mine now.

cappsize asked: I know you want to sell stuff, I get that. But do you have that thing set up where people can help you feed the cats? ... I don't want to think about you digging through your things at this point in your life trying to find treasures to sell to us. Maybe some of us just love cats like you do & want to buy some cat food, dude.

I promise I won't sell any treasures -- well, of course I hope the rare copies of my books will become treasures to their new owners, but to me they're just books. But if you want to donate to the always needy PZB Animal Fund, the page with a button to do so is here (horribly out of date, as is the whole website, but it still works), or you can just use my Paypal address, which is funkyegret (at) yahoo (dot) com. Thanks for asking.

Dianthus & Pansies

There were no petunias. I decided I had to plant something anyway, just to dig in the dirt, just to pass a couple of hours in the sun, so I got some gaudy hot pink dianthus and some parched, half-dead yellow pansies that were on sale. Once I got the bed cleared out (boy, does oregano ever have strong roots), enriched with compost, planted, and mulched, the pansies had perked up and the combination didn't look half bad.

I think I'm going to wait until early next week to put up new eBay auctions. Maybe I'll be able to dig out some rarities over the weekend. Thank you for all the looks and bids. It's what's buying the cat food, mostly.

Petunias

eBay auctions ending this afternoon, and I promise I will NOT take untold ages to ship these.

Have started having nightmares about Chris. Like, situations where I keep looking for him and can't find him, or I find him and he won't talk to me. Sometimes he laughs in my face about what I have lost. These dreams are very hard to take.

Trying to convince myself I should plant a bed of petunias this afternoon. It would pass the time, anyway.

Small Triumphs

BANK ACCOUNT OPENED

ALL OUTSTANDING EBAY PACKAGES SHIPPED

LITTERBOXES CLEAN

"EVERYBODY LOVES YOU NOW" LISTENED TO 643678 TIMES

I RULE

All Your Laundry Baskets...

Like magic, there is money in the joint checking account again. Today, come hell or high water, I will ship those eBay packages. Then I will open a new account just for me.

I've been trying to come up with positive things about living alone. So far I have two:

- All the laundry baskets are mine now. Chris and I are both slobs who hate to put our clean clothes away, so we always had laundry basket issues.

- I can get rid of the hideous and space-consuming birthday present he gave me last year. I still don't know what he was thinking.



Not quite it, but close enough to convey the horror. And it's like three fucking feet tall.

That's about all for now.

Pathetic

I got all emotionally prepared to open the new checking account, but the bank was closed. There is nothing else I can do today because all my other errands, including the acquisition of food, require money. I think I will go back to bed now. I have Saltines and peanut butter. Maybe Grey will buy me dinner tonight.

2011

I've got to go open a new checking account. I still haven't been able to ship those eBay packages -- the money was in the account, all ready to go, and then suddenly the account was $110 in the hole because of a payment Chris had scheduled and hadn't warned me about -- the rent for his new apartment, I think. And he still hasn't put the money back, though he says he will, and some of it was my money from Paypal, and now I'm scared to death about money in general and realizing that the two of us can no longer share a bank account. It's not that he means to rip me off; it's just that we no longer communicate enough to manage it. So if I can get my mom to lend me a hundred bucks or so, I'm going to start a new account no one else can access. And I'm going to ship those packages as soon as humanly possible, but at this point, I'll understand if anyone who hasn't received their item yet wants a refund. Contact me through eBay and I'll get it to you as soon as I can. I'm so sorry about all this.

So I didn't have the heart to do an end-of-year post. When 2011 was good, it was very very good, and when it was bad, it was horrid. I started testosterone, which still feels like the best thing I've ever done for myself. I took a wonderful trip to Amsterdam that changed my entire outlook on life in general and sex in particular. I fell in love with someone who continues to bring me great joy. I explored the raunchy gay bar scene, where I experienced both warm welcomes and bitter prejudice. My health improved a lot. I lost the person I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with. I got my mom moved back to New Orleans, which was good from my point of view, but now she hates it here. I lost a close friend. I became financially devastated. I wrote nothing. That was 2011, and it's hard to know what to make of it, but it definitely wasn't a boring year.

Nailed It

I just read something on this blog that, for me, sums up the problem with pain management in the U.S. The entry discusses a new time-release hydrocodone-based painkiller that some people oppose because "abusers" might crush and snort it:

[I]t is maybe not the coolest thing to render invisible folks who might need or benefit from the medication by focusing instead on people who would not even pretend to take it as prescribed. I get that potential for abuse is a real factor to consider for any medication, but "moderate to severe pain" is also a real thing in the world. Saying, "We just don't need this on the market," is at best ill-informed and at worst dishonest and cruel.

The plain fact is that the powers that be care more about theoretical drug abusers than they do about real people in pain. I've known this for years, but the blog (found via chronic_pain ) made me see a new facet of it, somehow. And I say this as someone who hopes never to use hydrocodone or any of its relatives again.

Do-Bes and Don't-Bes

I'm a Do-Be because I have put up new eBay auctions: the chapbooks Liquor For Christmas and Con Party at Hotel California as well as the very limited (and increasingly rare) hardcover-edition Crown of Thorns chapbook. Also, hardcover first editions of Drawing Blood, Guilty But Insane, and Antediluvian Tales.

I'm a Don't-Be because I handled my funds unwisely, and today, even after a visit to the Ever Popular CoinStar machine, I found that I could not afford to buy cat food and ship the packages I currently owe to auction winners. So I bought the cat food. I'm sorry for the delay, y'all. I'll ship as soon as some of the Paypal cash clears my bank account -- tomorrow, I hope.

CoinStar is always such a letdown. You save your change for four years and end up with, like, $19. I guess it's because I hardly ever put quarters in my change bank.

[ETA: As I was typing this, I heard children giggling outside the window. I peeked out and saw three or four kids daring each other to get a pepper off my barely-hanging-in-there Padron pepper bush, which I am just letting go to seed anyway. Eventually they dashed up to the flowerbed, made their grabs, and went pelting off, shrieking, each with a very hot pepper in hand. I don't mind neighbors picking a bit from my garden, but I confess amusement at the thought of them trying to eat those Padrons. Then again, they are New Orleans kids.]