Patricia Volonakis Davis's Blog

25 Clues the Man of Your Dreams Will Become the Man Your Children Only See on Weekends

Are you engaged to be married, but none of your friends or family seem as rapturous about it as you are? Perhaps they see something to which love has made you blind? The following are two dozen and one indicators that guarantee you and your perfect love will end up in divorce court. (And please don’t ask me how I know):

1.    If he has a neck tattoo he got in prison
2.    If he always calls your private parts by a four-letter word
3.    If he’s already complaining about your mother
4.    If he lies to his friends about the fact that you are a year older than he is
5.    If his family’s religious rituals are too complex for you to understand
6.    If he owns both Gucci socks and Gucci ties in seven shades of blue, and insists they must absolutely match  before going off to work
7.    If, even when just out for a casual car ride, he swears at other drivers
8.    If he reports to you that his mother is upset about something you said or did
9.    If he cheated on someone to go out with you
10.   If he forgets the name of your child from your previous marriage
11.    If he asks you to sign a prenup
12.    If his first sexual experience was with a prostitute that an older male family member ‘treated’ him to on his fourteenth birthday
13.    If he laughs when someone compliments your outfit
14.    If he thinks homosexuality is “learned.”
15.    If he refuses to run out and buy you emergency tampons
16.    If female airline pilots make him “nervous”
17.    If he tells your sister he wonders what would have happened if he had met her first
18.    If you find a stash of fetish magazines he’s kept hidden from you
19.    If he consistently goes into another room to take phone calls
20.    If he snorts when you voice your political views
21.    If you cook his favorite dish as a surprise, and his response is that it’s not the way his mother makes it
22.    If he complains it takes you too long to reach orgasm
23.    If he knows the difference between your salary and his to the penny, and he makes a lot more or a lot less than you do.
24.    If he mentions that if he were gay, he’d sleep with your best friend’s husband
25.    If he has a neck tattoo he got in prison

Summer is upon us, and though many of us see this season as our opportunity to get frisky in the sun, it’s also the season for bug bites and… other nature-induced itches. The handy guide below will help you decide when, or even if you should “scratch”:

Poison Oak

If you’ve got a poison oak rash, it means you’ve been crawling around in a wild place you shouldn’t have, with your naked limbs exposed, and shame on you. Poison oak rash is oozy and scaly, just like that bloke you almost let pick you up at that sleazy bar your friends dragged you to last week. It’s a contamination that will spread over your entire being the more you touch it. Definitely, definitely do not scratch that tickle. Even if you have had too many shots of watered-down Jack.

Flea Bites

A flea bite is a prickling, burning bite that hurts longer than a lover’s betrayal. And just like a Cheater, fleas are hard to spot, so you really can’t do much to avoid getting bit. Do not scratch this tickle either, once it happens; you’ll only exacerbate the intensity. The only thing to do is let that flea bite burn, until the toxins dissipate and you no longer feel the pain. But it will always leave a little red mark on you which remains pretty much forever.

Mosquitoes

Any woman who believes “size matters” has never had a mosquito in her bed. These little guys have egos bigger than Rod Blagojevich, and they make even more noise than he does, too. Their incessant drone is the only foreplay that you get before they finally settle down for a nibble. And when they do, they catch you by surprise. Yet, their prick doesn’t sting much, nor last long. It can be fun to scratch their itch once or twice, but not too hard, or you’ll swell up with infection. By the time that happens, the mosquito responsible is long gone.

Prickly Heat

Prickly heat is a little red rash that shows up on your skin when you get too hot. It’s suddenly just there, like that new man you find so intriguing. Where did it come from? Will it last long? And most important, will it harm you if you rub? It’s usually pretty safe to scratch this tickle...for as long as the heat rash lasts.

Now that you have your newly-edited manuscript down to 143,122 words, (not including the 36,310 words of the ‘Back Section’ which includes recipes, a guide to additional reading, a history lesson, a wine list, and other information you deemed pertinent to your readers as addendums to your manuscript), you start looking for a book publisher. The only problem there is that you have no idea how to find a book publisher. Someone wiser than you, or maybe someone who just overheard someone else talking to another someone about this, suggests you get a “literary agent”. But you’ve no idea how to find one of those, either.  So:

1)     You go into your husband’s office and ask him, “Have you any thoughts on how I can get an agent for my women’s empowerment memoir?”

 

Your husband, a stockbroker who reads the financial pages, baseball biographies, and P.G. Wodehouse, and is at that very moment trying to make an important stock trade, replies (quite flippantly, you think), “None whatsoever.”

 

2)     Unreasonably irritated, you leave his office, go back into your own, and type, “How to Get A Literary Agent” into the search engine on your computer. This is when you discover that Google has approximately 818,000 articles on how to find a literary agent, and amazon.com sells more than 50 books on the subject.

 

Surely you don’t need to read a whole book and all those articles? After all, how hard can it be to get an agent? Aren’t they like realtors? Don’t they want to sell your work? That’s how they make their money, after all, isn’t it?  

 

Thus, assuming that selling a work of literature is like selling a house, you choose to follow the directives in a concise, one-page article you find on ehow.com.

 

3)     The ehow.com article says that you need to first write a ‘query letter’ to an agent. Again, you are clueless. So again, you rely on Google, typing in, ‘what is a query letter?’ to find out on Wikipedia, another of your ‘unfailing’ information sources, that “a query letter is a formal letter sent to magazine editors, literary agents, to propose writing ideas.” 

 

This seems simple enough, so you sit down and write your first ‘formal’ query letter, which goes something like this:

 

Dear ____________:

 

My name is Patricia Volonakis Davis, and I have written a women’s empowerment memoir called, “Amerikanaki”, which is my story about being raised first generation Italian-American, marrying a Greek national, and moving to Greece with him.

 

I hope you will be interested in reading my manuscript. I look forward to hearing from you.

 

Sincerely yours,

 

Patricia Volonakis Davis

 

Address

telephone number

email

 

4. After formulating your concise query letter to match the concise instructions which you followed to write it, you make a list of the top ten agents in the United States, finding their names through Google, too, of course.

 

You go to the agents’ individual websites and discover the particularized instructions on each. Some want you to post your query letter, along with a stamped, self-addressed envelope. Others will only accept queries submitted by email. Some ask you send the first 30 pages of your manuscript, to also be included in email, pasted, not attached, in “WORD format only”, or “RTF format” (a format you assume is an anachronism for RUT the F*ck?!). Some want you to include any three random chapters, to be sent along with your SAE. And yet others ask that along with your query letter, you send the x-rays of your teeth your dentist took during your last exam.

 

Following all these instructions diligently (you were a teacher, after all) you send out your ten query letters/emails to your ten top choices of agents, and expect to hear from them all within a week or two at the most.

 

5. Three months later, you’ve written and emailed over fifty literary agents and received two replies detailing further instructions, and after having complied with those, you never hear from those two again. You now have six of those fifty available books sitting on your desk, with one more on order from amazon.com, and have taken five writing courses. One of those includes a three-day class given by a literary agent, (who shows no interest in your manuscript at all, by the way), simple titled, “How to Write a Query Letter”.

 

It was during this class that you learned how pathetically inadequate your first query letter was,  and you rewrote it so many times that it actually took longer to complete than the manuscript itself.  You also learn that apart from your manuscript and your query letter, you need to write something called a “book proposal”, and you have a new list of books written down and ready to order on how to write one of those.

 

You’ve spent hundreds of dollars on postage, photocopies, books, and classes. Additionally, you suspect your husband is seriously considering moving his office from home, so that you can’t barge in every day to cry over the latest rejection or out-and-out disregard from literary agents. You know these suspicions are well-founded when he suggests that you go to a writers’ conference where you can meet agents in person.

 

“But, writers’ conferences are very expensive,” you point out to your beleaguered husband.

“True, but a lot less expensive than my having to move my office,” he replies.

 

(You see? You were right.)

 

6. And so, you register for BEA (Book Expo America) in New York. You need to pay the conference fees, flight, hotel, meals, and transport to and from BEA, so that once there, you, along with hundreds of other hopeful writers, will have two hours to meet with as many agents as you can, who will give you three minutes each to pitch your manuscript to them. You have no idea who any of these agents are, you only read a short blurb description of them, and of whether they are looking for ‘fiction’ or ‘non-fiction,’ ‘children’s’ or ‘adults.’ You can also clearly see, as you stand on a queue waiting to speak to them, that all of the ones you’ve chosen are already annoyed at and/or bored with the writer who’s talking to them at the moment. And you’re up next.

 

7. You’ve spent thousands of dollars and another three months up to now, but guess what? ─ you walk away from the conference with seven business cards from agents who have told you to send them your manuscript! A month later, of the seven, two actually offer you a contract! Once again, you have no clue which of the two you should choose, so you go with the one who shows the most enthusiasm for your work. She turns out to be the less experienced of the two; as a matter of fact, you learn that you are her very first client, but no matter. You have an agent! You’ve done it!

 

8. You run into your husband’s office again, this time with excitement, kiss him and thank him for his brilliant suggestion.  You then ring your best friend joyously, informing her that you finally have a literary agent! You will be published within weeks!

 

Or so you think.

 

                                               (To be Continued.)

 

Note: Please remember that comments and replies are now at http://patriciavolonakisdavis.wordpress.com.  I am really sorry for this inconvenience. I hope VOX fixes the bug on my blog someday.

 

     

Hello VOX neighbours:

Today, I'm looking for your creative opinions. A friend of mine produced a short 'book trailer' for my book, including the music. I was very pleased with the gift. 

For those who don't know, a 'book trailer' is like a movie trailer, except for books, not movies, obviously. I'd love to hear your critiques and comments.

You can still reach me at my email address patricia@patriciavdavis.com
even just to say "hello", (which would be very nice, indeed) and I'm also on Facebook now. I hope I get to see some more of you there.

Harlot's Sauce the book also has a FACE BOOK FAN PAGE, and we just ran a contest where one VOX neighbour won a $100 dollar American Express Card, a Harlots' Sauce Radio t-shirt, and an autographed copy of the book. There willbe more contests, so if you are on Facebook, and happen to like contests, come join the fan page. (It would probably also help if you actually liked the book, but I don't think they make you sign an affidavit to that effect! ; D )

Okay, so here is the video. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts! You can post them, if you wish, at http://patriciavolonakisdavis.wordpress.com

(By the way, I can't believe how far I've come with my tech skills. Though still a newbie, I remember how Foxsy Dee and Paxton had to give me lessons on even the simplest things. Now I can actually post a vid!

  

May 2009 marks two years since I wrote my first blog , which was on VOX.com. These two years have been an extraordinary writing journey for me.

I started ‘blogging’ because my literary agent recommended it as a way to build my writer’s platform , but discovered that it offered me much more than that. Blogging helped me make friends from parts of the world I’ve not yet even had the opportunity to visit, taught me how much more alike across the globe we all are than I’d even suspected, and made me think about my perspectives on so many social and political issues. All because of comments left for me on my written posts by other bloggers, and comments left on the posts of others whose blogs I loved to read.  Blogging even introduced me to some extraordinary writers who add so much quality work and enthusiasm to my online magazine.

And then, my dream came true and my first full-length work was finally published.  And ─  boy, oh boy ─ did life change. Yes, “getting a book deal” is the golden ring all writers are trying to grab on the merry-go-round of the publishing world.  

So, for those who dream of it, or for those who know someone who dreams of it, let me tell you what it’s really like once you’ve obtained that objective. Sit back, as I go through it all, step-by-agonizing-step. I promise you every word following is true:

1)     You decide to write a book. You write every day for two years; some days you actually put some words down in a document. You then put manuscript away for one year, because:

a)  you move

or

 b)  your children move

or

c)  one of your children moves back in.

2)     You pick your manuscript up again, and write for two more years. You’ve now finished your first draft. That’s right ─ your first draft.

3)     You give it to your husband and your best friend to read. You wait impatiently, feeling unloved and neglected, as for unfathomable reasons, they do not drop everything to read your manuscript, which is over 400 pages, single-spaced.

4)     After finally reading, your husband and best friend both gently suggest that you might want to get a professional editor. You thank your friend sweetly, but argue with your husband bitterly for that heartbreaking and insulting insinuation, and then you put your manuscript away for another three months, because you have no idea where and how to find a good editor.

5)     A man whom you’ve never seen before is on the treadmill next to you at your gym. You blurt out to him that you are a writer, and are looking for an editor. It turns out that he is a writer also, and he recommends an editor he knows. This is not the sign from God you think it is. The man on the treadmill next to you is a writer because you live in Marin County, California, where everyone, including George Lucas, thinks, for better or worse, that he or she is a writer.

6)     You phone the editor and she quotes you an eyebrow-raising hourly rate. You say you will ring her back. You walk into your husband’s home office, and tell him the fee the editor wants to work on your manuscript. Your husband asks, “Is she a good editor?” You say, “Yes, of course.” Your husband tells you to hire the editor.

7)     Your new editor takes two months to edit 80 pages of your 400-plus page manuscript. Then she goes on vacation and returns after two weeks to tell you she won’t be able to work on your manuscript for another four months. You spend three sleepless nights trying to decide what to do about your new editor, whom you like as a person, but are very impatient with as an editor. On the fourth morning, you go into your husband’s home office, exhausted, and tell him your problems with the editor.

 He says, “I thought you said she was a good editor.”  You leave your husband’s office, annoyed with him once again, go in your office and sit down at your computer to write an email to your editor, terminating your working relationship as professionally as possible, your stomach churning the entire time. She sends you a polite acknowledgment back, returns your manuscript, and with it, her invoice. You sigh with relief, and send her the money, a hefty sum. You are depressed and sleepless for three more days.

8)     You go back to your gym, where the man who recommended your former editor is never to be seen again, but another man, whom you know a bit better, recommends his wife to edit your manuscript. You grab her email address and send her an email.

9)     Man-at-the-Gym-Whom-You-Know-Better’s wife meets you in person appropriately at the local bookshop to discuss your needs and her credentials. She sounds qualified to you, but then, what do you know? The price she quotes you is even more eyebrow- raising than the price the previous editor quoted, so you excuse yourself to use the Ladies’, where you ring your husband on your cell phone, interrupting his work once again, to ask his opinion again. Your husband again asks, “Is she a good editor?” And again, you say, “Of course,” to which he replies again, “Then hire her.” You go back to the table where your now cold coffee and your new editor are waiting patiently, and hand over your manuscript, and Mrs. ‘M-A-T-G-W-Y-K-B’ promises to have your work back to you in one month, edited.

10)  Your new editor returns your manuscript in one month, as promised. On it she has penciled in the margins dozens upon dozens of questions and comments. She also encloses a three-page document of her own that offers more suggestions, her invoice, and her doctor’s bill for the carpel tunnel surgery she needed to have after editing your manuscript.

11)  You quickly glance through some of the notes your so-called editor has smeared across your manuscript, outraged and upset by every one of them. You walk into your husband’s office again, crying this time. This time, he wisely says nothing, and just keeps working. Disgusted with him, your editor, your work, and yourself, you walk out of his office, and phone your best friend for sympathy. She says she’s glad you found an editor that finished the job she promised to finish. Really disgusted now, you make an excuse to get off the phone. You leave your edited manuscript untouched for two weeks.

12)  After two weeks, you look at your manuscript again, and decide you might as well try making some of the edits suggested, since you paid so much for them. You realize as you work that most, if not all, are not nearly as brainless as you’d first supposed. You type diligently and fruitfully for two solid months. Your manuscript is down to 337 pages and is much, much better. You run into your husband’s home office and tell him how exuberant you are over your brilliant editor. You run to your gym, hoping to meet up with her husband there, so you can congratulate him profusely for his choice of life partner. You now love him and her both equally, as a couple, as though they were old, dear friends.  You ring your best friend joyously, informing her that your manuscript is now ready to be presented to literary agents. You will be published within weeks. 

Or so you think.

                                               (To be Continued.)

Note: Please remember that I cannot answer comments here. If you would like to do me the honor of leaving a comment please go to: http://patriciavolonakisdavis.wordpress.com

For at least the third time in the past two months, I’ve had trouble not only posting on VOX, but replying to my friends and neighbours’ comments on my blog,  and even with posting comments on some others’ blogs, as well. It’s become a tedious process to write here, and since I’ve contacted VOX several times with no response from them, I’ve had it. With the help of my two friends/webdesigners I am moving my blog to: patriciavolonakisdavis.wordpress.com.

I know I will not see some of you again, and I’ll miss you very much. But I plan to pop back in here and visit my neighbours’ blogs often. And when I do post at wordpress, in case anyone might want to see what I’m up to over there, I’ll try to make that easier by posting the link here. (If VOX glitches don’t stop me for doing that, that is.)

I’d like to say it was more than wonderful meeting you all, and I had a marvelous time. I learned more than I could have guessed about different countries, different points of view, and different people. But all that exposure only reaffirmed what I’ve always held to be true -  the more people seem different from me, be it their nationality, their skin coloring, their sex, viewpoints, religion, or location - the more I see we are the same, once we really get to know each other.  

Also, because in the United States we’re still in “Black History Month”, (a separation from plain old “American history” that I think is ridiculous, but that’s a subject for another post), I want to leave you with this one civilization-altering photo taken from Life magazine in 1968:

 

During the Olympic Games in Mexico City, U.S. athlete Tommie Smith won the 200 metre race in a then-world-record time, with Australia's Peter Norman second, and U.S.’s John Carlos in third place. After the race was completed, the three went to collect their medals at the podium, where during the U.S. National Anthem, Smith and Carlos raised their fists in a “Black Power” salute to protest the human rights violations in their country, the United States of America.

 
This took place in October of 1968, just a little over forty years ago. They did this because, in their country, the United States of America, just a little over forty years ago, Americans whose ancestors came from Africa, or the West Indies, or anywhere else in the world nearer the equator where the Creator covered people with darker skin to protect them from the extra sunrays they’d be exposed to, were, by virtue of having that darker skin, judged as “lesser” by other Americans.
 
So the “inalienable rights” of their Constitution were not extended to them. They couldn’t even drink from the same public water fountains as their lighter-skinned American counterparts, because who knew whether or not dark skin might be catching?  (Leaving the ludicrousness of that, as well as Coppertone and tanning salons aside for another post, too.)

The backlash for Mr. Carlos and Mr. Smith, their sports careers, their families, and even to Mr. Norman, the Australian up there with them, who supported them by wearing an Olympic Project for Human Rights badge, was staggering. I won’t detail what repercussions they all suffered – you can read many of them here

But now Smith and Carlos are in their sixties, and when asked recently if they would make the same sign again, in the same place and time, both answered, “Absolutely.”
 
Mr. Smith and Mr. Carlos  realise what they did for the Civil Rights Movement, clearly.

But I wonder if they realise that their one gesture in Mexico City led to the first Black American President, who will shortly begin withdrawal of United States troops from a country which, (in my opinion) we should never have invaded in the first place?

Maybe, at this time, a white Democrat president would do the same, but that’s the not the point, really. The point is that forty years ago, when Smith and Carlos made their decision to stand up and stand out, non-violently,for civil rights, and when they then bravely bore the personal fall-out of that decision, they in essence became the salvation of thousands of young American men and women who will not be deployed to Iraq to fight and die there, and thousands of Iraqi civilians who, as a result, will not die at American hands. 

When viewed in that light, the ramifications of Carlos and Smith holding their fists high and still in the air that day, are much more far-reaching than they would ever have imagined standing on that podium in their youth. Something done by two men in Mexico City forty years ago, engendered thousands of lives rescued today in a country where neither have ever been. It makes one wonder how differently history would have turned out if they decided against making their statement, had just taken their gold and bronze medals and gone home.

Everything we do in life, and everything we don’t, has a corollary effect far greater than we can possibly imagine on the entire planet, even if we are not Olympic champions. For example, thanks to some reconnections I’ve made on Facebook recently, I learned that what I said or didn’t say as a teacher in my classroom thirty years ago, still affects some of my former pupils today.

So, what about you? What gestures have you made or not made, what life-transforming thing have you done, said, or written, or not done, not said, not written, that can have had either miraculous or catastrophic results?

For better or worse, all that is done or not done by each of us, reaches far more of us than we could ever dream.

And with that last thought, I say, "Good bye and all good wishes to all of you."

Patricia Volonakis Davis

February 2009

 

“By the way, if anyone here is in advertising or marketing, kill yourself. …No really, there's no rationalization for what you do, and you are Satan's little helpers, OK? Kill yourselves, seriously.”
----Bill Hicks

I’m going to admit something here that is probably going to disappoint a lot of men and surprise a number of more sensible women:

I love Valentine’s Day.

 
I love the schmaltzy cards, the cakes that are shaped like hearts and covered in pink icing, I love wearing the colour red to commemorate. Even though I know it’s all a marketing plot to terrify men and stage-manage women into spending money most of us can ill-afford these days, I still love it. I love it, even though I know very well that every man in a relationship, including my husband, probably hates it.

 
Because men cannot win on Valentine’s Day. They can never think like females, and so, no matter what they come up with ─ what gift, what card, what outing, they’ll never be able to live up to the icon of Prince Charming that both sexes have been deluded by since babyhood.

 
Prince Charming harms all monogamous romantic relationships, and is one of the main reasons why couples come to believe that, “the thrill is gone” after a number of years together. It’s not that the couple’s expectations of ‘romance’ are too ‘high,’ it’s that those expectations have always been a dysfunctional mess. And for that we can thank fairytales.

 
Let’s examine the Prince and women as they are portrayed in fairytales, which were one of the first literary selling tools of imbalance between the sexes, right after the Bible:

 
In Cinderella, there are five women. Three are greedy and malicious, and one is brutalized and downtrodden. The only one of the five (the fairy godmother) with any power that did not become hers by hooking a man, has been desexualized into an old, physically unattractive woman. Little boys and girls reading this fairytale are taught that a true man is a rescuer, and that the most desirable woman is the one who is meekest and has the smallest feet. (Standards of popularity that sure leave me out.) 

 
In Snow White, what attracts the Prince is not only a ‘beautiful’ woman, but the ‘most beautiful’, according to a spiteful mirror, whose exacting qualifications mimic Mr. Blackwell’s.

 
But, it’s in Sleepy Beauty that PC’s choice for female partner is most disturbing. It borders on pedophilia. What the hell kind of marriage will he have with a sixteen-year-old virgin whose done nothing more than live with three maiden aunties, and then fall asleep?

 
No woman with any real spine, spirit, depth, or passion, truly wants to be any of these three gals. And yet, her image of ‘the perfect man, the perfect marriage,’ is equally skewered by these stories.

 
Fact:  Even a loving, responsible husband or lover isn’t always going to be able to get his woman out of the sh*t of her own making. Nope ─ there will be times when he’s just as clueless about what to do to fix things as his woman is.

 
Nor is any heterosexual male, unless he’s narcissistic, self-absorbed, and totally shallow, always going to wear the perfect ‘Prince Charming’ ensemble. (Except if he’s from Rome, of course.)  Instead, he will almost always pick his favourite, though far less glamourous ‘suit of mail’ when he and his princess go out on Valentine’s Day ─ and that will always be the one that doesn’t pinch around the crotch.

 
Fact:  No self-respecting, modern female wants to get married before she does anything else, just so she can be “safe”. Nope ─ she’s going to want to get out there in the world and try stuff out, including other men, so she can learn who she is, and therefore which Prince she wants, before she settles down with him.

  
Nor is she going to wait with infinite patience while her lover tries to figure out on his own the best way to get inside the castle.  Instead, she’s going to shout directions to him, whether he wants to hear them or doesn’t. And that goes for any ‘castle’ he’s trying to storm, including hers, by the way.

 
Any couple that adheres to the quaintly toxic notions fed to us in fairytales is going to be unhappy with their relationship, and unhappy with themselves. This stuff is cute once in a while, but it shouldn’t last forever, unless you live in a polygamist religious sect, and want to blend in.

 
So, for this Valentine’s Day, I say let’s see if we can, like in any good fairytale, transform the Prince and Princesses and release them from the parameters of their bond. Genuine, healthy romance can always be found, even in a long term relationship, if one knows where to look.

  
For example, does your husband:

• warm your side of the bed with his body, while you are still brushing your teeth?

• say, “Cellulite? That’s not cellulite, that’s just an adorable, little dimple?”

• ignore the endless opportunities he has to point out to you how horrifically bi-polar and boorish almost every member of your family is?

• love your biological children (his stepchildren) as his own, even when they are being so obnoxious you can’t bear them, yourself?

• consider making love to you one of the finest things in life, and commit to memory every little thing that turns you on?

• escort you someplace you know he really doesn’t want to go, and then tell you graciously that he enjoyed himself?

• believe in and support your dream, whatever it is, as much as you do?

Or, does your wife:

• do all the birthday/holiday shopping for the entire, extended family, because she knows that just the thought of doing it yourself, makes your stomach turn with anxiety?

• say, “You’re absolutely right, dear; I completely agree with you,” in a calm, believable tone, because she knows you’re upset, and can’t help that what you’re saying is completely asinine?

• try to make sure that all your favourite foods are in the house, even when you forget you’re running low on them yourself?

• leave you alone when you simply “don’t want to talk about it,” even when it’s killing her to know what “it” is?

• appreciate every gift you give her, even the ones you worry are not ‘perfect’?

• consider making love to you one of the finest things in life, and commit to memory every little thing that turns you on?

• believe in and support your dream, whatever it is, as much as you do?

 

If this list looks familiar to you, or you can make a list similar to it of your own, then you are part of a very romantic affair. Prince Charming and his Princesses cannot compete with what you and your partner have.

 
                       Enjoy your Valentine’s Day.

 

 

 

 

Chicago, 1976

The 15-year-old boy was tall for his age, very dark, and rather skinny. Wearing a cheap, ill-fitting suit that only emphasized his gangly frame, he stood in the courtroom facing Judge Joseph Gary’s  bench. His court-appointed public defender, Robert Klein,  of the law firm Fielden, Neebe and Scwab, stood beside him.

The judge spoke, “Mr. Klein, your client is accused of armed robbery at Giordano’s Pizzeria downtown. How do you plead?”

“Guilty, your honor,” replied Mr. Klein, “but with a request for a commuted sentence.”

“On what grounds?” demanded Judge Gary. “He shot Leo Spizzirri right in the leg. Leo dropped a five gallon container of tomato sauce. It splashed all over the red checkered tablecloths. They were cleaning that stuff up for weeks. Leo’s still walking with a limp.”

“Your honor, this is my client’s first offense. And he’s had some mitigating circumstances,” continued Mr. Klein, smoothly.

The judge sighed, “Let’s hear ‘em.”

 
Clearing his throat, Klein began his impassioned defense. “Just look at this kid’s skin, your honor. It’s black, but not really black. His mother was white and his father was a foreigner, born somewhere in Africa. Not only that, his father left him. And then his mother married some Indian guy or something, and dragged this poor kid to another godforsaken foreign country. And he suffered there, your honor. He was poor. To top it all off, his mother left him to live with his white grandparents. What must that have been like, for a black kid to live with two old, white people? He could never belong. What kind of a mother would do that?”

 
Mr. Klein looked at Judge Gary pleadingly and continued, “Your honor, my client didn’t have his mother’s love, and hardly knew his father. He’s a half-breed. A mutt, really. He doesn’t know where he fits in society.  He has low self-esteem because his parents abandoned him. No wonder he committed a crime. It was a cry for help. This kid needs our assistance, not our prisons.”

 
After Klein’s defense, Judge Gary had tears in his eyes. Even Leo Spizzirri, despite himself, was moved. He sat in his courtroom seat, shifting his bad leg uncomfortably.

 
The judge looked at the defendant silently for a moment, thinking.

 
Finally he spoke directly to him, “Okay, kid, I’m gonna give you a break, because I see something in you. You get a second chance and I hope you use it wisely.”

 
He banged his gavel down. “Sentence for Barack Hussein Obama commuted. Court adjourned.” 
----------------------

Obama was smiling his megawatt smile as he left the courtroom. He couldn’t believe his paid-for-by-the city attorney had managed to pull this off. He thought he was a goner, for sure. But that ‘victim' act had worked great. Though that bothered him on some levels he couldn’t figure out, he’d remember that in future. Just in case.

Since he was just shy of his 16th birthday, he was still a minor, so the court set him up to live as a foster child.  They found a family for him in Marin City, California, which was one of the most exclusive areas on the west coast of the country. He got an upscale education at Tamalpais High School, taking many poetry and literature classes. He had teachers who cared about him and nurtured his talents, which he discovered, were in the area of writing lyrics and performing. His musical abilities eventually led to him being signed with an up-and-coming rap group.

 
Despite this success, he still felt like an ‘outsider,’ still felt cheated. Instead of reveling in his talents and his good fortune at being placed with the Shakur family, he resented everything about himself and his upbringing. He changed his name from Barack to Tupac, and performed onstage as Tupac Shakur. He made his first album, the lyrics of which were aimed at the problems facing young black males, but it was publicly criticized for its graphic language and images of violence by and against law enforcement.

Though he’d never actually lived the ‘ghetto life,’ he embraced the lifestyle of the real underprivileged and uneducated. He had himself tattooed with street gang symbols. He got in trouble with the law, sometimes severely, but always managed, as he had that first time back in Chicago, to find a white, liberal lawyer who felt sorry for him, and pleaded his case in court as “a victim of society.” 

 
In fact, Tupac glamorized victimhood to the point that many of his worshipful, young male fans, who’d been truly forced by circumstances of birth to grow up in the ghettoes, began to believe poverty, violence, and criminality was the preferred existence to which they should aspire. Not only that, but since Tupac had moved from Chicago to the west, it’s believed that he may well have been one of the defining forces in the so-called “East Coast –West Coast” rivalry that still exists in the hip-hop industry today.

(Fans insist that it wasn’t that Tupac didn’t like the extra sunshine and healthier lifestyle that he was able to enjoy in his new home in California, it was just that he never got over the fact that he had to leave behind that really fabulous Chicago pizza.)

 
Shakur made album after album, with names like Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z. and Thug Life: Volume I. He became enormously popular, so much the dangerous, yet dashing face of the outlaw, that he dated Madonna, as every man who is famous in this sort of fashion eventually does.  She is reported to have wanted to bear his child. (And that part’s not a joke.)

 
Not even 25 years old, Tupac sank deeper and deeper into a life of too much fast money, too many drugs, and crime after crime. He was surrounded and encouraged by an entourage of men and women who wanted that same exclusivity that he did, and were willing to sell their souls as hangers-on or sex-objects to be near it.

 
And always, always, he maintained that his race and his circumstances of birth should excuse him for his desires and activities. He went to prison several times on charges from sexual assault to manslaughter, always insisting on his innocence, always managing to get through, and always remaining the most successful rap artist of all time. Shakur is the only artist ever to have an album at number one on Billboard 200 while serving a prison sentence. The album stayed at the top of the charts for five weeks, selling 240,000 copies in its first week, setting a record for highest first week sales for a solo male rap artist at the time.

His bad habits eventually caught up with him, however.

 
On the night of September 7, 1996, Shakur attended the Mike Tyson - Bruce Seldon boxing match at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. After leaving the match, one of his associates spotted 21- year-old  Orlando “Baby Lane” Nelson, a member of the Southside Crips in the MGM Grand lobby, and informed Shakur. Shakur then attacked Anderson, with his entourage assisting. The fight was captured on the hotel's video camera. A few weeks earlier, Anderson and a group of Crips had robbed a member of Shakur’s entourage in a shoe store, precipitating Shakur's attack.

After the brawl, Shakur went to meet up with some friends, riding as a passenger in a black sedan.  At approximately 11:15 p.m., a white, four-door, late-model Cadillac, with an unknown number of occupants pulled up to the sedan's right side, rolled down one of the windows, and rapidly fired  at Shakur. He was struck by four rounds, with bullets hitting him in the chest, the pelvis, and his right hand and thigh. One of the rounds apparently ricocheted into Shakur's right lung.

While in Critical Care Unit on the afternoon of September 13, 1996, Shakur died of internal bleeding; doctors attempted to revive him but could not impede his hemorrhaging. The official cause of death was noted as respiratory failure and cardiopulmonary arrest in connection with multiple gunshot wounds.

Shakur's body was cremated. Some of his ashes were later mixed with marijuana and smoked by members of his band.

Throughout all his misspent life, not anyone could deny that Shakur was full of talent and intelligence. He remains one of the best-loved artists, and sales of his records continue posthumously. We will all always wonder, especially his lawyers who defended him, and others who emulated him, what his life achievements could have been.

If only he hadn’t had the misfortune to be born Black.

 

 

...and I have wrinkles, receding gums, and a higher income tax bracket. But there are some benefits to aging, believe it or not. If you were paying attention at all, by the time you’re over fifty like me, you’ll have learned something about life.

The following are some things I now know for sure to be true:

1) Being ‘sexy’ doesn’t necessarily come from having youthful, physical flawlessness. No matter how old we get, women (and men) can still exude sensuousness by their enthusiasm for people and new experiences. You’ll be surprised at how many young people appreciate that in an older person. (I guess it makes them feel that they’re not falling head first into the grave as soon as they reach forty.)

2) The Rolling Stones will always be cool. They’ll never stop giving terrific performances. In fact, they might even be immortal, sort of like vampires.

3) Doing what’s right, what makes you feel happy and productive, are sometimes mentally and physically exhausting, especially when you have to do them alone. But in the long run, it’s much harder on the spirit and body to pretend that there was nothing you could do to live a more fulfilling life, or nothing you could do to make a positive change in the world.

4) If you own one good black outfit that fits you well and flatters your figure, and you add the right casual or dressy accessories, you’re pretty much ready to go anywhere. This might also be true for men, especially The Rolling Stones.

5) Almost everyone in The United States of America (and probably other countries, too) has thought about writing a book, if they could “just find the time.”

6) If you want to be unforgettable, treat people with respect, warmth, and interest, no matter what their age, background, or station. This goes for everyone, including your neighbor’s five-year-old, your deaf uncle, and the woman who cleans the communal stairs in your apartment complex.

7) In the same vein, you can learn something new and beneficial from everyone, including your neighbor’s five-year-old, your deaf uncle, and the woman who cleans the communal stairs in your apartment complex.

8) There is nothing more valuable than a true friend, and nothing more despicable than one who betrays you. A rotten friend does more damage to your psyche than a rotten lover. So pick your friends even more carefully than you pick your lovers.

9) Always keep your toenails freshly-pedicured. You never know when you’ll have to take off your shoes.

10) You can make a man want you just by laughing at his jokes.

11) There are some people you just have to walk away from, and never look back. These can be anyone from a pushy salesperson to your own parents.

12) Your true love does not have to come with the perfect face. He or she only has to come with the perfect soul. And you won’t believe what a perfect soul will do for one’s perception of a face.

13) If you have children, remember that they’re not your clones. They have their own dreams, opinions, and goals. To maintain a loving, mutually-rewarding relationship with them, let them know you appreciate and accept that.

14) Also when it comes to your kids, you might as well do what you think is right, because you’re going to get blamed anyway, for getting it wrong.

15) To paraphrase another saying, whether you think you’re too old, or not too old to try something new, you’re right.

16) Not everyone appreciates a hug from a stranger, but a kind word is always welcome.

17) Unless you pay them, nobody really wants to hear about your rotten childhood, because they’re still trying to work through their own.

18) Flossing is very important, just as your dentist tells you. I’m not joking. Do it.

19) World peace will not be achieved in my lifetime. I honestly thought it would, because it seems so easy to me. But it isn’t for too many others, so I accept it now that I won’t live to see it.

20) No matter how rich, worldly, or old a man gets, he still loves to talk about Spider-man.

21) And last, if you work to leave whatever place you’re in a little bit better than it was before you got to it, whether it’s a job, a relationship or a situation, you’ll die a happy person.

_____________________________________________

 

Note:  The post above was first published in the January 2009 Issue of Harlots' Sauce Radio e-magazine, newly designed by Amber Fire Sanity Design Studios, a team of fabulous ladies who also have two great blog sites of their own:  

http://sanityfound.wordpress.com/
http://ambermoon.wordpress.com/

Please pay these blog spots a visit for two really good reads, and if you're in need of a new website, I know that the entire staff at Harlots Sauce Radio agrees that they are the tops!