with grannies like this, who needs enemies?

yesterday i went to thanksgiving dinner at my aunt's house. i have a really big family, there were 28 people there and there would have been more but my mom was out of town and also one of my brothers and his wife and kids were sick.

it was a nice day. except that at the end my grandma totally started picking on me! it was bizarre. i was dressed kind of conservatively, for me: fitted flannel top (the kind for ladies, not a mens shirt), dark denim skirt, black tights and black high-heeled lace-up ankle booties. i barely even had any accessories or makeup on. just a little eye makeup and earrings.

when i first arrived at my aunt's, i was giving people hugs and saying hi to everyone and my grandma goes, "don't bend over!" i mean, my skirt was pretty short. but i always wear skirts that short and i've gotten quite good at not flashing people. plus, the skirt was super tight so it was staying in place just fine. i let that comment go as if it was a joke. even though i know my grandma has this way of saying mean things that she 100% means, but shrouding them in flimsy joke costumes. so what she was saying was, "your skirt's too short for thanksgiving." but whatever. moving on.

i love thanksgiving. i made a pumpkin pie and used coconut milk instead of evaporated milk. it was delicious! some people in my family tried polite bites, but pronounced it "not sweet enough." i hadn't put any sugar in it, just a bit of maple syrup, but i thought it was plenty sweet and super tasty. i wish it wasn't tacky to bring home the rest of your pie after going to someone's house for dinner. i mean, nobody will eat that pie. it's all natural and didn't come from safeway: how gross!

i didn't talk to my grandma much at thanksgiving, not because i don't like her but because there were so many other people there who are sweet to me, that i ran out of time for bullshit. it's guaranteed that given the chance, she'll start out normal, and then somehow work in complaints about how skinny i am when the rest of the family is fat. like i won some dirty lottery or something. it's actually just that the women on my father's side are like tiny little bird women and my sister and i happen to take after them. and also i don't eat like the people in my family. and i work out A LOT. the way she brings it up all the time is embarassing, and it's hard to enjoy my food when she's scrutinizing my plate and telling everyone i'm not eating enough. she says things in a way that makes it seem like i'm smugly looking down on my whole big chubby family. it's just not true, and it makes me mad and hurts my feelings.

well then later after all the food and dessert and more food, i was getting ready to leave and i put on my sweater poncho thing, it's really cute. my cousin was freaking out about how cute it was, and my grandma goes, "oh so i suppose THAT'S what you're going to wear tonight, to your gig. just that and nothing else." (i had a gig of sorts in town, don't want to mention what it was since i'm private here.)

i said, "what? no. i'm going to keep my clothes on."

and she kept joking about it for SUCH a long time. it was really really weird. she just WOULD NOT LET IT GO. she kept referencing different outfits i'm wearing in my facebook pictures, like i am just some big skanky ho. "and that yellow dress, i mean can you even call that a DRESS? haha" i tried to laugh along a bit, thinking she'd cut it out so i could give her a hug before leaving. but i ended up just ignoring her and saying goodbye to everyone. even as i was leaving she was just laughing up a storm. it was fucking bizarre. it kind of made me wonder whether my mom had told her something about my job. (my mom knows what i do, which might sound weird but isn't.) or maybe she's just getting weirder and weirder the older she gets. she's certainly not old enough to excuse such crazy behavior: she's only 73!

i'll try it here.

well, i'm still up in my cutsie little hometown. it's not really a town, though, it's a pretty sizable city. but its sleepiness and friendliness make it feel pretty townish.

i spent all the money i brought and i'm not due to go back to the city for a whole 'nother week. so i scanned craigslist a bit looking for massage girls who might want to share their studio with me. i found a few and emailed them, and the only one who got back to me was a lady we'll call lisbet. (her real name is SO GOOD. man i wish i could use it here! it's SO. GOOD. the kind of name that just drips of danielle steele sex, the kind of name someone would choose in order to sound sophisticated and irresistible, worldly).

lisbet invited me to come over and see her space so i paid my housemate five bux to drop me off there. we got a little lost on the way. my housemate, let's call her maya, used that opportunity to ask me tons of questions about my work. as a staunch lesbian who is also chronically broke, she was intrigued that i could touch a bunch of guy's bodies and thereby make quick cash. she seemed to think it was something gross and terrible that needed to be gotten through with as quickly as possible in order for me to come home with my sack of cash. i told her a little bit about how it's usually not very gross, etc., but i didn't feel like going into tons of details with her about it. i felt a bit barraged.

finally we found the place. i loved that lisbet had put a placard on her door that said, "kustom kupcakes." it just felt like such a hilarious and classic diversion. "well, we thought we heard the moans of prostitution taking place in there, but we can clearly see that this is the base of operations for a bakery. so, put your badges away, boys, our work here is done!"

lisbet opened the door and she looked exactly as i had pictured her on the phone. earthy. goddessy. supple. she actually looks A LOT like tony's sister on the sopranos, "janice." like: a lot. and she has the same slightly hippie/dreamy vibe. and also the intense edge.

she gave me a tour of the place and i noticed that there wasn't a shower. BUMMMMMER.

but other than that the place was nice. she has a fancy heated massage table. plenty of organic oil and lotion. towels, etc. the place is in a business complex, so it doesn't look that homey but she's done what she can with the place.

she seemed to like me okay and said i could start working right away. i want to wait till after thanksgiving, though, because i have been feeling under the weather and i don't want to expose myself to a bunch of germs from rubbing my body on strangers.

i'll let you know how it goes.

nice calf mucles = nice ass?

this morning as i was walking home from the grocery store, a lumberjack type guy in a huge truck slowed down to tell me i had "really nice calf muscles." the way he said it, though, lasciviously and with a toothpick dangling from his lip, made it feel more like, "nice ass." i have learned that when guys say this kind of thing to you that's innocuous on the surface but greasy with innuendo, it's best to just say thank you and keep walking. ignoring guys like this just does not work. they will usually just keep repeating themselves louder and louder till you finally give in and say something back.

so. i yelled a quick "thanks" over my shoulder and kept on walking. he kept on following me.

"you must run a lot," he said.

"haha, only when guys like you are following me," i said, half-joking.

"that's funny," he said, without laughing. "do you need a ride?"

"nah, i'm good. thanks, tho!" i said. i was all hopped up on coffee and so my mind was a little wild and he was looking at me so intensely that for a split second it seemed to me that he knew i was a hooker of sorts. like i was marked, somehow. i immediately recognized the ridiculousness of such a line of thought. but weird that i would even think that for a second, right? of course i don't look like a hooker. i mean, i don't think i do. it's not like i was wearing a juicy couture tracksuit and big hoop earrings.

the guy followed me a bit longer to see if maybe i'd change my mind, and then sped off.

lesbian winter. still.

well, it's still winter. and i'm still up north. it's only been a few days but i feel super over it already. i keep having this dreadful feeling of WHAT AM I DOING HERE and HOW MUCH LONGER TILL I GET TO GO HOME?

tomorrow i'm going to really try and have a good time. i'm going to write and sew all day and also i'm going to yoga. i have to at least give it a chance here. complaining and shivering dramatically don't count as honest attempts to make the best of it. i can do better.

lesbian winter

the last week of working is sort of a blur. i just worked pretty much every day because i was leaving to come up here to the town where i'm from. i saw lots of my regular clients and that was nice. but mostly the week was just a blur of constant working. the things i remember:

-one of my regulars came to see me and i decided it would be our last time together. in fact, last time he came to see i decided it was the last time, but then he called the other day and sounded excited to see me, and i thought "maybe he won't be such a bummer this time." but then he was SUCH a bummer. his wife just had a baby and is suffering from post-partum depression, she never wants to put out, etc etc. the way he was complaining about her and talking about her like she was the world's most annoying person made it hard to like him. at all. even when i don't like guys, i try to find something about them that's nice. but this guy just seemed totally bankrupt in terms of likability which, as you can imagine, just made it a total gross bummer to jerk him off.

-i worked one night with rudy. that was cute. she is just such an intensely adorable little tiny wide-eyed person. whenever i talk with her i have to be careful not to use euphamisms or ironical exaggerations because she takes everything VERY literally, and then you have to explain to her what you meant. and it's just kind of confusing and painstaking. but as long as you only say exactly what you mean she's just very delightful. i liked her from the moment i met her, but what really endeared me to her was when i accidentally walked in on her in the bathroom at the exact moment that she held up her pregnancy test wand to find a negative reading. the look of pure elation on her face was so priceless and sweet. i just felt like, "I LIKE YOU!"

what else...

well anyway now i'm up north in my hometown. i went to a party last night, it was a bunch of lesbian separatists. this girl was telling me about a book she'd found, it was all lesbian separatist anthems. she started singing some of the songs and everyone got excited. one of the lyrics i remember was "and let no peeee-nis come betweeeeeen-us." i am, myself, a lesbian. but i was finding it hard to relate. i didn't want to talk to anyone too in-depth or tell them details about what i've been up to. i'm certainly not ashamed of my work, but i find that when i talk to lezzies sometimes there's this implicit manhate that lurks in the corners of our conversations. like they don't ask, but instead kind of assume that i am able to do this work because i hate men so much and love taking their money. the fact is that i don't hate men. i don't want to date them, but i do genuinely like some of the men i see.

oh whatever. it's not like men need me to defend them, or like i even want to. but i am having a hard time relating up here so far. it's only been a day. i'll give it time. i'm gonna be up here all winter. LESBIAN WINTER.

money hungry: everyone.

i'm pretty annoyed with the girl who runs the apartment. it's been SO crowded and SO crazy, and she just hired ANOTHER girl yesterday! there are already TOO DAMN MANY girls working. yesterday i could've booked 5 or 6 appts, but there was only space for me to do ONE! what the fuck, gia? quit getting so greedy.

well, luckily, i'm going out of town for a month starting in one week. i had hoped to work every minute of every day this week so i could bring a bunch of money with me. i'm still going to try and work, but i'm also trying to chill out about it. i don't need to be a stress case. just relax. however much money i bring with me is however much money i bring.

i really need to get my teeth fixed, though!

the good news is that as of this moment, i only owe five hundred more dollars on my credit card, and then i am DONE!!!

nothing interesting happened yesterday at work. well except that i'm beginning to notice that my co-worker stacy is reallllly an alcoholic. i was thinking before that she just drank a lot but was probably ok. but now i think she might be in serious TRUBS. (troubles, duh.)

getting my hair cut today, finally, then gonna park my ass up at the apt and just hope to get TONZ of appts.

boo

i love working saturdays because most of the girls at the house take that day off so it's nice and quiet and i can book my appointments in a tidy little row without working around anyone else's schedule. yesterday i saw 3 clients. the first one was a construction guy i've seen before. he's a little pushy but a nice guy. while massaging him, i did something weird to my neck and shoulder, though. i was on top of him, 69-style, and i had all my weight on one arm because the other arm was busy jerking him off. i think i was holding my head too straight because i didn't want my little cat ears to fall off (it was halloween, after all). when i got down off of him, i had this ouchy pain in my neck. i tried to crack it out a bit, but i dunno... it's still not quite right. 

(a word about 69. it's sort of the best thing ever. it's an especially good escape if you've got one of those clients who likes to make intense eye-contact. putting my pussy in someone's face feels far less intimate than maintaining a lot of eye-contact. you hop up on the table and put your ass in their face, bend down a lot to give them a good view of your lady parts, get that hand a-pumpin, and they come pretty quickly. the trick is positioning yourself near enough to their face that they can see and smell everything, but far enough away that their tongue can't reach you. i've had guys sneak a few licks when i was still getting the kinks worked out, but now i've got this position down. well, i thought i did... but now i've got this ouchy shoulder/neck. i really do think it was the added element of the cat ears that disrupted the delicate balance of this pose, though.)

when my construction guy got out of the shower, i asked him to rub my neck for a minute. he said sure and gave me the roughest, most un-soothing, manhandly massage ever. after like one minute i said, "oh that was great! thanks!" and hopped off the table.

i think my co-worker stacy thinks i'm a total hoe-bag now. when i went in the living room after that i was rubbing my neck a lot and i told her how i had tweaked it doing 69. she was like, "WHAT?" hmmm...

my next client was an older gentleman i see who likes to tell me i make him "feel like a man." interesting how some guys only feel like a man when juxtaposed with a woman. that whole yin yang thing, i guess. lots of girls are like that, too. shania twain, "man! i feel like a woman!" i, personally, feel like a woman ALL the time. it doesn't take the sexy touch of a man or even another woman to make me feel like a woman. and if i could ever forget my gender for even one second, there's always some guy on the street reminding me with his lascivious stare or grabbing hand or menacing swagger. or there's blood gushing out of my vag. or my bank account is empty. when this guy tells me i make him feel like a man, i know he means it as a compliment and also just as a general statement about himself. but it kind of annoys me. the rivers of male entitlement runneth deep. but in spite of it all, i like this guy just fine. i wish he would exfoliate his back, though.

my last client was a hip young british guy. he was really good looking and nice and seemed to thoroughly enjoy himself. "i've been needing this," he kept moaning. nice to get kudos for a job well done in a british accent. (jeez how would YOU structure that sentence? i want the british accent to describe the kudos, not the job well done.)

there's this girl, rudy, who is best friends with gia, the girl who runs the place. she's really young, probably about 23 or 24. she works at a shop downtown and hangs out at the apartment a lot before and after her shifts. sometimes she'll just be laying on the couch all day long listening to her ipod, waiting for the girls to finish working so they can go out. she'll watch us counting our big wads of cash and i can see her wheels turning. i knew it was only a matter of time before she got turned out. anyway, last night after i put my british guy in the shower, i went into the living room and  here's rudy getting all tarted up. i was like, "are you about see a client?" she said, "yeah, it's my second one!" she seemed a little nervous. it was just her and me in the house and it was dark out. i was getting my things together to leave, but i know how nerve-wracking it can be to see a brand new client in a quiet house so i said, "want me to wait till he gets here and you put him in the shower?" she liked that idea. so i let my client out and then showered and painted my nails as slowly as possible while we waited for her client.

then he came and seemed fine so i left and came home. i had planned to go out, but once i got in my apartment there was NO WAY i was going back out into the drunken masses of masked crazies. halloween is almost as bad as new years eve in terms of giant throngs of suburban people with bad outfits and even worse manners crowding into the city to "party." the use of that word as a verb has always annoyed me, by the way. so i stayed home and had a snack attack while watching "interview with the vampire," a movie i hadn't seen since it came out 15 years ago. kind of a perfect halloween movie.

today i'm not working. i'm cleaning and writing and working out. yay!