Elegant, Anxious Mornings

Ingredients for this My Time: Trader Joe's organic LIGHT whipped cream cheese, frozen bagels, 2 mg Xanax, iced kombucha tea.

Oh, Honey, I love the mornings. I am such a morning person.

It's like, I wake up with so much on my mind, so much to do, so much to see in the world! I get so excited that it's hard to tell what I'm feeling, so I simply have to settle on either 1. incredible depression, or 2. incredible hangover. And every morning lately it's been a toss up. Who knows, I think excitedly! What is it today?!?!

As I prepare my morning banquet of HALF a bagel with LIGHT whipped cream cheese or nothing till 2 pm, hands shaky with--what is it exactly? Vim? Vigor? Nervousness? Debilitating anxiety? Heartbreak? Mistrust of the world? Anticipation?--I think of all the things on my full social schedule for the day.

There's always a few hours of work on my project that needs to be done,

there's the WORKING OUT UNTIL I'M LESS UGLY of the day

and there's the ability to avoid it all with a glass of champs and 2mg of Xanax until all my EXCITEMENT FOR LIFE is calmed down to a reasonable, dignified level. Ah, the mornings. It's when you crawl out of bed while casually considering suicide, and stumble toward your television and find out that there's a show called "Love Handles: Couples in Crisis." Hahaha you think, distracted from your own demise. But wait, Darling, you only have one part of that equation, and not the other. BOOM, thinks your television back to you: BOOM.

Honey, being a rich, rich woman in the Midwestern country is a complicated thing and one can, if one must--and she must sometimes--indulge too much in order to sublimate the confusion that comes along with this culture, and with being a living creature in general, and with being grossed out by being alive with this body and these orifices. Being a woman in this DAY AND AGE means having SO MUCH to do, and finishing something 5-years in the making, like the charity project I'm working on, is just so taxing on the soul. I mean, I don't have a soul or feelings or morality, but you know, it's so taxing on the prescription pad. It's almost like you think, wait a minute, is that a feeling? Am I feeling TOO MUCH? AM I FREAKING OUT? As you turn to your elegant social group to remark on what you might be FEELING and you watch them politely shudder away into a "Hi how are you? Fine? I'm fine. We're all fine forever" part of the charity ball, you are reminded that, indeed, people of our social class do not feel.

You drink alcohol. Sometimes you freak out and eyes are adverted, and other times, everyone is perfectly, richly, JUST FINE. I mean, of course, Honey, we know we're all not. How can we be? We've been working for years on artistic projects and academic degrees that come without love, affirmation, a future, or even collegiality. For those of us in PRE-DIVORCES who are settled into a lovely exchange of legalize, silence, and affairs, I wonder--what keeps us in? What moves our mornings? One might hope that it is, indeed, love

and not the crippling, cliche silence that not communicating about the depression our silencing relationships have wrought has landed us in. And for those of us IN-BETWEEN marriages, well, we vacillate, especially in the mornings, about how lovely it is to finally see oneself looking back, how you didn't seek your desires out with the fervent passion that leads to such drunken exhaustion of getting a PhD, and how sleeping with this knife, with this selenite orb, with this body that you can fuck up how ever you want, well there's something settling about that. I mean, in the upper echelons of society, Honey, I can't tell you how many times someone is willing to fucking kill themselves to finish work with an uncertain future, yet how incapable the same person is of asking someone on a date, or for affirmation, or to speak to their spouse about the incredible sadness that led to so many transgressions. But that degree or tenure line or charity planning--that could get the weight of one's heart. Simple, easier to fulfill, beautiful, sessy desires, not so much.

On the other hand, those of us IN-BETWEEN marriages think, a marriage presumes love, commitment, later alimony, and empathy, doesn't it? And isn't that something to be jealous of? How do we get there? Will once again, one day, we too see a naked body? And ALIMONY? Will it be like our previous times or will we be able to get there through a frank accounting of our desires, needs, and a willingness to communicate openly despite fear of rejection, thus landing us with a more suitable, and courageous, mate? That is what we hope, Honey, 'tis. Until then, there are these hard mornings where no matter the heat, the familiar cold moves through your shaking insides.

But like my favorite "gay husband "from The Real Housewives series (this one: Vancouver) reminds us, "Maybe you've had a hard life. But you don't need to show it here. No one needs to see that on your face."

So the best thing about being IN-BETWEEN marriages is that your mornings are yours. And later, when you go out to prepare for another tragic morning, your freedom is knowing that when you contemplate suicide, it's yours. When you have your HEALTHY morning kombucha tea with a Xanax floater, no one needs to know how it smooths the sadness away from your pursed lips, and really, Darling, bouncing back and forth from the complete bottom to the very top of SOCIETY has made you incredibly stable. You can contemplate suicide and communication and your own shaky hands, but you have been and will be strong enough to live day-to-day with your testimony. Which is to say, Honey, Dagmar always asks out the gorgeous men, even when she knows they'll say "no," and feels fabulous more than anxious about doing so. Which is to say, Honey, there is no ladder we can't climb if we are our desire, and we speak frankly about what we want, and what we're never willing to put up with again. Everyone presumes you're too intense, crazy, and own a trampy mouth anyway if you speak your mind without reserve for gentile politeness, so why not??

"I was married to 2 very irritating men. I deserve the money."

And that is what makes it possible for me to lounge through the morning until the later possibilities of the day. Of course, Sundays are the worst, so double everything in the My Time recipe to taste.

Champs on me, later, Honey, and maybe I'll propose, too:
Dagmar Ottenham

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday

Ingredients for this My Time: natural phenomena, wistful thinking, scheduled drinking.

Hola, Lovers. It seems like the farther along I get with my project, the less I am able to connect with my "fans." It is atrocious of me, I know. And if I had a human heart enough to care, I wouldn't be using this sentence to pretend that I care. But hear me out.

My pure bred, feral linx got sick, and I was with her in the exotic animal vet. Then, I drove across the country to one of my summer homes in Malibu-Lite, then all these boys visited. Boys! They came from the muscular farm sun of Missouri and the mysterious clouds of Washington, with Iphones and tight jeans, with proper shaving and nice white shirts, with lisps and foul mouths, with cocktails and appetites. It really brought me back.

After being so long in my project that I was sure I would not gaze upon such greased up gorgeousness again, I was just dumbstruck. I drank margaritas, I smelled their hair when they weren't looking, I thought about all the things they could say to boss me around, I ate their hand towels, I worshiped at the altar of the patriarchy, and loved every minute of it. While they watched other women, I lasciviously watched them. I devoured their desires through breath and, as if exhaling is having, I made them my own. I imprinted them on my body, and like that, it was if their desires for the women around us were desires already writing on my skin.

That reminds me, I need to cash another alimony check...if I won't ever be able to fall in love again--ha ha, I kid--I've never loved anyone except God and Mr Grey Goose--ha ha I kid again--my heart is so fragile that it breaks like each marriage egg and fucking fries, Lovers, fries like a bad simile--

then I will spend their fucking money. Which reminds me. You know how I really knew my marriage was over with the fucking classy man? Well, beside the fact that he played Everything But The Girl at dinner parties? Well, and beside the fact that he was already married, thus leaving me with no alimony after it all went kaput? When we started going Dutch. I mean, who are these Dutch people with their awful rules for women? How dare they think I'm dignified enough to pay for my own lobby and champers. As we all know, I have no dignity. I want no dignity.

So, I'm in Miami-Lite, soon to leave to Oaxaca for one of seven weddings this year of the rich, fabulous people of the world that I'll grit my teeth through. I kid. I love a good wedding. So much free al-co-hol. And what woman, whose womb is as dried as a dead batch of corn, and who doesn't trust men as far as she can fuck 'em, doesn't love attending wedding after wedding and seeing something in this world work out? I strap on a bra, throw on a dress and a sun hat, etch lipstick on my face, and voila, I'm in another country at another wedding with less money and more opportunities for scandal. My life is fabulous.

But today, the wretched day of the week, Sunday, the day when it seems that all hope with fail, a solar eclipse awaits us. I, of course, will be with fabulous (and some foreign!) people on the roof of a Los Angeles LOFT, staring directly into what keeps me alive and might blind me. I don't buy the whole don't look directly bull--my strength and my problem is that I always, always, look directly into it and walk away with less sight but more vision. Of course, while others are looking I plan to stand behind them and suck their energy in through their ears, keeping my gorgeous, youthful skin that much more so. And cocktails, cocktails, cocktails, Honey.

The world can't keep a loveless wench--I mean a tender, romantic soul--it's so hard to tell sometimes when one's spirit is a pendulumm and one's life seems to follow--like me down if it can't keep its own sun.

Talk soon, Honies, champers on me! Ha ha I kid--on every ex who paid for breaking my heart.

The Truths About Elegant Women

Ingredients for this My Time: Innuendo, listing, a Puglian red.

Honey, you know it's true. A lady on the verge of summer, and experiencing the hours of lights down there, likes a few choice things:

1. Ladies like innuendo. Give them some. Then deliver.

2. They also like gifts that express YOUR FEELINGS. But, they don't like it when you present such gifts then try to be like "cool, whatever, I have a penis, doh-duh-doh" about them.

3. Halter dresses with boob support, botch.

4. A summer of spankings!

5. Ladies like when you order food for the table with the word "stuffed" in it. Ladies do not like you not knowing they do not like to point these food items out and/or order them themselves.

6. A lady always starts a meal with a cocktail before she can bare to look at the dinner menu. AND SNACKS.

7. Ladies like foreign travel, and foreign intrigue.

8. Ladies do not like your ironic pants.

9. An elegant lady always has a strand of real pearls, and can wear a "pearl necklace."

10. No, don't do that. Whatever you're thinking of doing for some "effect" you've identified, just stop.

11. No, seriously. Stop.

12. Drinking before 5 pm is the new black.

13. An educated swarthy man always orders the lady an moderately priced bottle of champers ($100-$60) to not be a show off and to also presume that a lady has had fine things, but might come from less fine things, OKAY?

14. We want to join your stupid band and harmonize up the yin yang.

15. A man told me once "You think differently from anyone I've met, and I love it." Let's examine how this is the right move. 1. He didn't say the typical, "wow, I think you might be smarter than me..." and he didn't compare me to other women, but other people. Re-examine number 9.

16. We want to have sex, like anyone else. But an elegant woman has no problem packing it in at the dinner table. So plan to have an hour ahead of time where you get it on. We'll thank you for it later, before we pass out after a bottle of reasonably priced champers and creme brulee.

17. I once had 3 creme brulees in one week. An elegant woman will present this fact to you without comment.

18. We've seen men, once they get comfortable, jump up and down to show how their items down there can flop up and down. So you don't need to show us again.

19. An elegant woman loses her shit. This is a sign that she has a ferocious heart. It's terrifying. It's crazy. It's hard. It's not fun. It's arousing. It's a woman who can speak her needs. It's right.

20. An elegant lady celebrates the anniversaries of the men she has lost. An elegant woman embraces ritual and magic and love and loss. 

he was Will Oldham before Will Oldham, and DUH, so much more

The best you can do is proceed, willingly and gracefully. Grace is something the elegant woman still might be learning.

My Time: Rules for the Heart, or "getting your tube top back ON THE INSIDE"

Ingredients for this My Time:

Selenite sword under a pillow. A true lady never knows when she'll need to combat the dreams that plague her modern existence of high heels, online dating where one unsuccessfully tries to weed out the night janitors, full moons (I've read in recent novels that there are 2 moons coming; of course these novels are written by men who don't have cycles, unless they're sensitive men who like to claim they too have cycles just to take one more thing away from us), and the past. A lady always has a past and selenite has a magical gift to suck from the heart the pasts that plague. I prefer my selenite under alternative organic down, because I'm classy. I prefer it in a wand or sword shape so that my magical totem may also be a weapon of violence if someone breaks into my house in the middle of the night. I keep other items around my pillows that double as magic/violence such as my friend Mr. Knife (men generally don't like to meet him, and isn't it just like them to want to be the ONLY man in a lady's room at once) and a selenite orb whom I haven't named yet. I hold it in my left hand when I sleep, THE MARRIAGE FINGER HAND, but it also seems like a nice hard thing to throw in someone's eye who breaks in my home to steal my wine. I'm sure there's a metaphor about an object of the marriage hand being good for assault, but the metaphor seems lost on me for the literal sense it makes for such an item to be both things. So here's our sword, ladies:

An alternative down comforter, preferably by Hotel Collection

A bag of organic LOWER CALORIE Cheeto-like product and chopsticks to eat with, as to avoid getting your delicate lady's hands dirty

A red wine spritzer in a spill-proof cup

A cell phone with which to call people between 2-7 am when you naturally consider that you're never having sex again and feel anxious about which one of your married couple friends will allow you to live with your cat(s) in a yurt in their backyard as you age into cronedom

And finally, a knowledge that time is not linear, that something you had years ago is something you have now, even though it came before digital cameras so you can't show anyone what you mean, so when people talk about the importance of the change of perception during the invention of film, they can't know that you are only thinking about the change of the 21st century with memorial pictures you keep in a box as they grow mold and no one knows that these memories of yours are put in one physical location, the artifacts of being always already lost to that physical landscape tucked away. With chopsticks in hand, sippy cup propped between your breasts, and Law And Order reruns on your computer, you put your tube top on ON THE INSIDE and cheers to the morning light coming up which you've seen all over the world, by yourself, safe by yourself, because you can and will continue to wear your soul's tube top, ladies. My Time is about knowing that your time is yours, that is, that your life is yours, and what a simple thing we often forget that can be brought back by eating and drinking in bed AGAIN as the light comes up and our tops come down. There are two opportunities for perception here, ladies. And we can have them both (although one looks kind of painful...certainly more painful than any heartbreak could be...yikes).