Dear Vincent, Now you have three pen pals.

Wednesday, September 6, 2017

Dear Vincent,

So far you have three other pen pals. All of their names are secrets. Except for Sorrowful Simon. His name is not a secret.

“I have never felt enough to be with someone.”

One of your pen pals whose name is not Sorrowful Simon wrote this. So many of my friends have said the same sort of thing. That they will never be enough to find love. I have been known to say this myself. But the truth is, many people who have found love are actually rather obnoxious, or if you look at their lives, at least one or several components are a total disaster.

What does it mean to be good enough?

Dan Savage always says that to enter the dating scene you need to be in “good working order.” I imagine this means a minimum of wailing in alleys, throwing shelves across your bedroom floor, and as you like to say, having to put out all kinds of fires from six in the morning until bedtime. In fact, this past summer, my level of Good Working Order has been highly questionable. Likely, I was Out of Order. Even so, my Meditation Partner still seemed to appreciate the blow jobs, more or less. The Well-Fucked Woman says that Cock Worship and opening your throat to someone else’s genitals is redeeming, both for the cock owner and for whoever is giving the blowjob. You can even have something called a Throatgasm. What a thrill, though, perhaps first you need to be in Good Working Order.

Is peace around the corner? On Friday I moved around the corner to Hutchison street. Friday night, at a restaurant on Bernard, a Chiseled-Cherub-Faced 23-Year-Old Filmmaker asked me about my choice of Asian soup. He ordered chicken, and I had tofu, even though I’ve recently opted to try eating meat, instead of Abilify and Celexa. After our soup, we ate fortune cookies, which always allow for easy poetry. My fortune cookie said that my mind was “sharp, fast and analytical.” His said something about how he would soon meet an auspicious and valuable friend.

I told him I didn’t want babies, and he said, “But you never know. In a decade you might change your mind. You’ll be like a totally different person. I feel like I’m totally different from how I was ten years ago.”

My friend, it killed me not to say, ten years ago, you were having your first wet dreams. These are the pros of hooking up with a 23 year old. Endless earnest, innocent and adorable insight. The cons, I suppose are, what the fuck do I do with my daddy issues?

The next morning, I sent the Chiseled-Cherub-Faced 23-Year-Old Filmmaker my story, The Magical Rock Vagina Cleanse. He texted back gushing that I might be almost be a female counterpart to Charles Bukowski. His text generated unambiguous sensations in my vagina. Even though I am likely far too large him, and far too old.

All weekend I washed all the walls of my new apartment. And all the floors, and I didn’t cry once. Also, my washing machine arrived, and it purrs. Also, last Tuesday I forgot to tell you about this thing that I invented called mood sports. Mood Sports is you against your mood. One fun thing about mood sports is that they only contain one vowel. I always find this sort of thing so soothing.

While I was sleeping on Saturday night, Chiseled-Cherub-Faced 23-Year-Old Filmmaker texted me a peace sign, and asked if I was going nuts. At 5:17 A.M. the next morning, he reported that on his end, nuts weren’t had, but he made a ton of new friends. lol. Happy Face. Haven’t heard from him since.

Ten years ago I felt like a totally different person. I kind of feel the same way about last Tuesday. Everything always arising and passing away.

Happy full moon.

Love, Erica.

You too can write imaginary emails to Vincent. The project is called "Mondays without Vincent" and the secret email address is: ericaschmidt85(at)gmail(dot)com.

Vincent will be delighted to hear from you. He will write back as soon as he can.

Much love, Erica.

Going nuts tonight?
:)


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Dear Vincent, Thank you for responding to my hysterical phone call.
Dear Vincent, Sorrowful Simon has written you a letter.
Chuckie the Horse and the Day Jack Layton Died

All the Lonely People, Rainbows, The Big Black Dog and Sex

Sunday, June 28, 2015

It is wet and dreary here. And Simon’s birthday. I was thinking of sneaking into his building and throwing flowers off the roof. I don’t know if that will help. I am beating this whole thing to death. Or at least trying to. All the lonely people should hang out more often.

Rainbows

Everywhere on Facebook, people are turning their profile pictures into rainbows. Perhaps it is just some silly Facebook trend, but when I see everyone’s face turned into rainbows, I feel happy. Some people have clever and political reasons for not changing their profile pictures.

Like this tweet from Che Gossett:

 

“Gay marriage will be another racist and colonial sign of which nations are civilized.”

Interesting. Okay. But what are we going to do? Revoke women’s right to vote? Another Facebook friend wrote about the oppressiveness of marriage as an institution. How the mythology of exclusive love conquering all perpetuates delusions and violence. Of course she is right to remember that there are still so many people left behind, all over the world. I don't know what to do. I am terrible at politics. And at forming sentences that contain the word “colonial.” Anything I say will make me sound like I’m in kindergarten. Silly white girl with rainbows on her face. I just find we are all so beautiful in rainbows.

All that said, please see my Important Addendum, Added on Friday, July 3, 2015

Eliot, and Sex

Eliot the Big Black Dog always liked to be involved during sex. Whenever he heard us kissing, he would make sure to be close by. If we were upstairs, he’d follow us, putting his nose up over the bed and wagging his tail. We’d tell him to lie down, and he would, but there wasn’t a chance he would leave the room.  After his legs got bad, he could no longer join us upstairs. He hated this. While we were at it in the bedroom, he would lie at the base of the stairs and make sooky noises, overcome by the injustice. The last time he got to take part was at the cottage, where all the rooms were on one floor. We’d started making out and getting busy in the guest room. Suddenly, we heard rhythmic banging against the wall.  Thump, thump, thump, thump. He was right next to us, wagging his tail enthusiastically, so so pleased with himself. We laughed so hard.

Eliot the Big Black Dog. He would have looked marvellous in rainbows

 

Important Addendum, Added on Friday, July 3, 2015: A Facebook friend shared this article in the Washington Post called "Why you should stop waving the rainbow flag on Facebook." The author Peter Moskowitz criticizes the slactivism inherent simply changing your profile picture and calling it a day. It made me consider that perhaps my above points are rather slack, and whether or not my whole rainbow section makes me seem naïve and dumb. But this isn't about me being naïve and dumb. The point is it's not really about me. I want to share a couple of quotes from Peter Moskowitz's article, and I truly hope you will take the time to read the whole thing.

"Gay pride was something I struggled to gain. As a gay man, I worked through years of bullying in school and overcame self-consciousness, loneliness and depression. The rainbow flag became a symbol of acceptance and confidence as I found my place in the LGBT community.

I’ve earned the right to claim pride through years of internal strife over my sexuality. Others have died in the name of gay pride. More still have been jailed, have been disowned by their families, and have sued their state governments for it. Gay pride is not something you can claim by waving a flag.

The rainbow symbol is easy to co-opt, but the experience it represents is not.

That’s why it wasn’t comforting to see hundreds of my Facebook friends’ profile pictures draped in rainbows. It didn’t feel like they were understanding my struggle; it felt like they were cheapening it, celebrating a victory they had no part in winning."

"It’s now easy, popular and politically expedient to raise the rainbow flag for marriage equality, since 60 percent of Americans support it. But being an LGBT person is still difficult. In some states, it’s still legal to be fired or evicted for being gay. And the gay marriage ruling won’t end the crises of homelessness, harassment and suicide suffered by LGBT people. A record number of LGBT people, especially trans women of color, are being killed and HIV rates are still astronomically high among gay and bisexual men.

Covering your profile picture in rainbow colors doesn’t change any of those truths. "

I am grateful to my Facebook friend who is always sharing interesting and important perspectives, and challenging what is often the easiest opinion. Although I have not yet changed my profile picture, I am taking time to consider the whole issue more deeply. In all likelihood, my next profile picture will probably be of me in my Tree Office. My most decisive politics include not owning furniture, drawing my femur bones back as much as possible, candid emotional intimacy, and varying rants about pubic hair and potty training.


Tree Office



Addendum Number Two

Well, I have one more addendum. Another friend of mine wisely pointed out that it's not necessarily fair to assume that everyone who has changed their profile picture doesn't have a story behind it, and that they haven't supported someone or some part of the movement. Not everybody is a lie down in the street activist, but that doesn't mean we don't embody love for all beings within our own lives. This can mean advocating for a friend or loved one amidst conservative relatives, modelling all-inclusive attitudes for our children, or, as is my case, referring everyone in the world to Dan Savage's podcast. I appreciate people with strong views and radical conviction, but I think there is futility and even danger in taking on a "fuck the world," "everything is a disaster" attitude. (Not that Moskowitz and my Facebook friend who posted his article are guilty of this; however, I do see this tendency within some activist movements.) Also, I heard something about Russia starting a profile picture fad that was meant to counteract all the rainbows on people's newsfeed. So maybe our rainbows count for something. And I still think we all look beautiful in rainbows. Okay, that's it.  

The End.

Once again, the link to the Washington Post article: Why You Should Stop Waving the Rainbow Flag on Facebook.

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Why I Am Like Jane Fonda

Passionate about purple leg warmers, grueling butt exercises, and the eradication of oil pipelines, Jane Fonda and I share a great deal in common. Before I had yoga videos, I had Jane Fonda’s advanced cardio workout. It was something upsetting like one hour and forty five minutes. But Jane never seemed to tire and it was thus with great enthusiasm that I followed along with the bouncing, pumping and squeezing of various body parts. My hair was more dishevelled than Jane’s perfect feathered down-do, my sweat, more profuse, and my ten-year-old athletic wear much less spectacular than her belted pink and purple leotard, her grey leggings, and of course, the excellent purple legwarmers. Even so, Jane never made me feel alienated from her supreme and elite fitness endeavours. In fact, as Jane rapidly whipped through ninety-six and a half tricep kickbacks, I felt like she was looking right at me.


Resist. Photo From Here.

“Resist,” she urged me. I did, determined to overthrow the wobble of my underarms. What does Oprah call those? Flags. How ridiculous. Although flags and Oprah have their place. I used to watch Oprah on Wednesday afternoons, my only night off from swim practice. That’s how I learned about Jesus whispers. One day the show was about people who had made some sort of horrible distracted mistake that had ended in someone dying. There was a woman who had backed her car over her grandchild, and another who had fallen asleep at the wheel and driven her car full of her kids over a cliff. A third woman, who had hit and killed a cyclist felt like the whole thing could have been prevented had she listened to the voice inside her head.

“Those are Jesus whispers,” Oprah told her. “And I wanna thank you for coming on the show today because now everybody out there watching will know not to doubt that voice ever again.”

Oh Oprah. Despite listening very intently, I never had much luck with the Jesus Whispers. Fortunately, Jane Fonda’s voice on a podcast called “Death, Sex & Money,” had a similar effect. The podcast transcript came out on June 18, 2014, which happened to be the third-year anniversary of Epic Day, the wonderful day when I met the Boatman on a boat at my friend Fern’s wedding. After that, I moved to Halifax and we lived happily ever after.

On the podcast, Jane (my dear friend) spoke about her divorce with billionaire cable executive Ted Turner, her third husband. Ted was fun and good-looking, and he had a beautiful home on beautiful acreage.  Being married to Ted was easy and “safe.” Then, about ten years in, Jane had the revelation “that if I stayed with him, I could never be a fully realized person” (Jane Fonda in Episode 30 of the Death, Sex & Money podcast, with Anna Sale). This is where the Jesus slash Angel Whispers came into play. Said Jane:

“I felt like Virginia Woolf, only I had two angels in the house. One on one shoulder saying oh come on Fonda lighten up!

The guy’s got two million acres of the most gorgeous land in the world and he’s funny and he keeps you laughing. And on the other shoulder there was an angel with a very soft whisper saying, Jane, you can stay with him and die married, but you’ll die not being whole. And so I opted for the whisper" (from Episode 30 of the podcast Death, Sex & Money: Jane Fonda After Death and Divorce).

The notion of being a fully realized person is rather vague. And probably, everyone is always whole, whether they listen to their angel whispers or not. But I get what Jane meant. Before I moved to Halifax, I had just come to the end of more than a decade-long relationship with eating disorders. My most prevalent symptom was puking in my mouth, over and over again until whatever I had eaten became bitter and acidic and disgusting. While I was in the throws of my eating disorder, I always imagined that the eradication of my symptoms would coincide with the emergence of a new and beautiful Erica. A Whole Erica, who didn’t fret about silly things, who didn’t get overwhelmed and melt down, who didn’t fight with her mother. All this and more would be the prize for not puking in my mouth. It is hard to do things without expecting a prize in return. Fame, Money, Weight Loss, Prizes, Sex. (FMWLPS). I want all of these things, though perhaps finally I can do without the weight loss. One big prize that I felt would surely make me Whole was finding a long-term partner. Until I met the Boatman, success in this area had been minimal. There was Simon the hermit, who I met on a biodegradable yoga mat. In the name of art, we got drunk and fucked around as we attempted to write and publish our groundbreaking epistolary novel, The Little Savage and the Hermit. Despite the creative excitement and exhilarating recklessness, mostly it felt messy and not that whole. One day, after waking up with Simon in a room that reeked of vomit and vodka, it occurred to me that perhaps I needed a year off from relationships. Somehow I would get myself out of Montreal, take my space, and figure myself out, whatever that meant.

Less than a month later, I met the Boatman. We had our Epic Day. Beneath the light and guidance of our friend the Full Moon, the profuse making out began. Of course the Boatman was wonderful. Of course the day and the night were magical. And when the Boatman invited me to come live in his house in Halifax, of course I said yes.

Although I was never particularly enamored with Halifax, like Jane Fonda’s marriage to Ted Turner, living with the Boatman was safe and relatively easy. The Boatman was fun, supportive and loving. Unlike Simon, who mostly considered me to be a fucked up disaster, the Boatman believed in me as a person. I was set up in a house with a hedge and a dog. The Boatman’s mother bought me fancy clothes. For the first year or two, I had lots of time and space to practice and teach yoga, and write. And when I got the job at the Montessori school, the Boatman supported me through my perpetual state of overwhelm.


Me and the Hedge Clippers

On our Epic Day anniversaries, the Boatman and I wrote similar things on our cards. For now, the Boatman’s cards to me are stored in a box in Halifax. I remember the drawings of the moon, and the gist of most of the words.

“I’m so grateful and lucky to have met you.” “Nobody else is as wonderful as you.” “I could never find anybody else but you to talk to about potty training and poops, and the dress-up box." "I'm so glad our friend to moon helped us get together." “I can’t imagine what my life would be like without you.”

Whoever you are with, it can’t be like anyone else. We are all precious and irreplaceable. I couldn’t imagine what my life would be like without the Boatman. Yet when I listened to Jane Fonda speak of her angel whispers, I was sad to realize that deep down, I didn’t believe I was capable of pulling off life on my own. If I hadn’t left Montreal, would my life still be infused with vomit and vodka and Simon, all the way until he jumped off a building?  

Oh well, I thought, the first time I heard Jane on the podcast. There was no way we were going to break up. That September, I went to India for three months.  I missed the Boatman immensely; however, I discovered that in fact, I could maintain some kind of autonomy without him. I lived in four different apartments; I organized day trips, and Butt Club, and even coined the term "Spiritual Pants." Every day, there was someone to eat curry with. The entire thing was so delightful.

Spiritual Pants

But my token fly-to-India-and-have a meaningful-revelation-about-your-life was, “You kind of completely hate Halifax, and you’ve barely been happy for a really long time.” When I melted down to the Boatman over FaceTime, the first thing he said was, “Well, I really can’t move.” There wasn’t much to be done, but fly home and see what happened.

My first day back in Halifax, I obsessively calculated how much money I would have to save if I wanted to get back to India the following November. If I was going to stay in Halifax, every year would need a decisive exit strategy. The financial verdict was about 900 extra bucks a month, tricky in Halifax, the land of Nepotism and Underemployment. Still, I could give it a try and hope for the best. I wasn’t ready to fuck off just yet. The Boatman and I avoided discussing the situation and I went about my days, struggling to breathe.

Finally one day in February, the Boatman replied to my ten thousandth anguished rant about friendlessness and loneliness with the words, “You could leave.” I felt a distinct sense of relief and I paused briefly before deciding that I should mourn and wail, since his words meant my world was collapsing.

I made an appointment with my psychologist, who I called My Expensive Friend. He happened to be one of only a handful of friends that I had made in Halifax, after more than three years. My Expensive Friend didn’t think that I should do anything too drastic in February. He helped me to write down goals on Index Cards. Go to a potluck. Invite your friend Lindsay out for dinner. Organize the Halifax Butt Club.

Halifax Butt Club. Note the Purple Legwarmers
Mysore Butt Club, Et. Al.

Jane Fonda Butt Club. See how we are similar?
Photo taken from this dizzying video.

Although the Halifax Butt Club enjoyed two rousing sessions, it was all too little too late. For Valentine’s Day, the podcast Death, Sex & Money rounded up highlights from the past year of interviews. Sure enough, as I trudged up the hill to the Boatman’s house, Jane told me about her angel whispers once again.

“Jane, you can stay with him and die married, but you’ll die not being whole. And so I opted for the whisper.”

Soon it would be time. I was gone by the end of April.

As Dan Savage says, a relationship isn’t only a success if it ends when somebody dies. Unfortunately, our children’s diapers and underwear are covered with princesses, and our world seems to hold a bias for the Forever After People. The good news is that all of the people - me, you, Jane and everybody else- all of us are whole. 

Some people’s paths may lead them along with one person by their side the whole time. Surely, this can be beautiful. I may have a shot at this later. In the meantime, I get to be a little bit like Jane Fonda. Depending on your Jesus whispers, you might considering joining the club.

Jane Fonda speaks out about Fossil Fuels. Go Jane. Image taken from this page.

Seventy-seven years old, Jane Fonda says that “when a woman is older, sex is better. Partly because she doesn’t give a fuzzy rat’s ass anymore… she knows her body, she knows what she wants, she’s less afraid to ask for it. If it doesn’t work out, so what?” (Jane Fonda, on Death, Sex & Money). I think that’s great. From now on, I will aim to have sex like I’m seventy-seven.

Four years ago today, I met the Boatman on a boat, and he kissed me under the moon.

In fact, the first time we met wasn’t actually on the boat. We met some other time, in Fern’s kitchen. I made the boat part up, for the sake of the Blogging Fairy Tale. I am as terrible as the folks who make princess diapers. Oh well. 

Boatman and Me, Blogging Fairy Tale

Every day can be an Epic Day. The moon is always your friend.
Happy Epic Day, to the world, and to the Boatman.
I’m so grateful and lucky to have met you. We are so lucky for the time we had together.

The End.

All Jane Fonda quotes are from Episode 30 of Death Sex & Money – Jane Fonda: After Death and Divorce

Subscribe to Anna Sale’s Death, Sex and Money on Itunes. New Episodes come out every other Wednesday! And it's free!

Follow Jane Fonda on Twitter: @JaneFonda
Follow Anna Sale on Twitter: @annasale
Follow Death, Sex & Money on Twitter: @deathsexmoney
 

 

 

The Boatman and Me, Again. Well, we made some cute photos for the internet. One More:

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Jane Fonda is a Cuttle Fish. Are you a Cuttle Fish? The Ocean Invertebrate Personality Quiz

Everyone is a Hermaphrodite
Why I Am Different From Margaret Atwood and What I Don’t Gain From Humping Duvets
How I am Violent, by Erica J. Schmidt
Another Break-Up: The Benefits of an Ashtanga Yoga Practice, Part Two

 

 

Rideshare, Sterilization and Doughnuts

I once knew a guy named Benjamin Tracey. In his early 20’s, Benjamin Tracey worked with kids in social services. He felt traumatized by the epidemic of people who used their bodies to make children but didn’t have the skills or resources or kindness to take care of them.

“We need a program to stop cruel and incompetent people from having children. If they agree to get sterilized, they get 35 bucks. Then, after the procedure, we’ll take them to Tim Horton’s and we’ll buy them a doughnut. Any doughnut they want.” According to Benjamin Tracey, this is how eugenics should work in Canada. With doughnuts.  

Doughnuts. Which one would you choose
Doughnut Photo Courtesy of my friend Shayna
She likes to buy doughnuts on Sundays 

The rideshare van from Toronto to Montreal always stops at a Tim Hortons just past Pickering. I don’t know why it stops so early. It is barely an hour out of the city.

On Tuesday, I was lucky enough to get a spot in the ten a.m. ride share van. The  pick-up is at the Pizza Pizza near Sheppard-Young subway station. The van is late. A woman wearing pink jeans and a red jacket seems very anxious that they have left without her.

 

“Where is my ride-share? Can I use your phone?” She is carrying a couple of shopping bags. Underneath her red jacket, she wears a t. shirt with an enormous, glittery can on it.  The cat has terrifying turquoise glitter eyes and fur. Its paw is patterned in red sequins. The woman’s name is Irena.

 

I volunteer to sit in the middle seat, at least for the first half.

 

“Where’s the seatbelt?” I ask. The driver points to the ceiling. I attach the belt across my torso but can’t figure out how to make it hold my waist.

 

“Guess that’s just the middle seatbelt,” says the guy beside me. He is dressed all in blue and looks as though his name might be Michael. On his knee, there’s a brown baseball cap with the word OBEY on the front. Finally, I figure out that you can keep pull seatbelt in a very specific and special way, it will attach on the left and contain my waist. Now I don’t need to white knuckle the whole 401. That said, my driver seems to text quite a bit. It is kind of like driving in India, though because Ontario is much less magical and spiritual, I feel significantly less safe.

 

I open the ziplock bag containing the marijuana macaroon that a childhood friend has given me for the road. For a moment, I wonder if it has an obviously foul smell to it. Then I realize that in fact, the smell comes from the tiny white dog who silently sleeps in its fabric blue cage in the back seat. The owner is significantly larger than her dog, but she too makes no noise.

 

The macaroon is oily. Its effect is not profound. I lean back in my seat. The left half is two inches back from the right. The blue Michael dude curls up on his blue pillow against the window. Irena rotates her torso to the right, impeding on a quarter of my ass space. She breathes heavily as she looks out the window, sipping a Merit Selection peach cocktail that contains 20% pure fruit juices. We pass several trucks filled with concrete.

 

Pickering reminds me of swim meets and Timbits remind me of Monday night band practices. I played the trombone and our music teacher Mr Hurd was nice enough to bribe us with timbits Sometimes we would get timbits on the swim team, but if an important swim meet was coming up, all chocolate and doughnut products were forbidden. Apparently doughnuts take at least three days to digest. Seems a bit risky.

 

At the Tim Hortons, I think about Benjamin Tracey and the sterilization and the doughnuts. I do not buy a timbit. Neither does Irena. She cracks open another peach cocktail juice box and stands beside the drive-through menu, gazing at the red and orange images of fresh fruit smoothies. I nibble a little more of the oily macaroon. I thought that being high would be more fun. Maybe I am too hungover. The dog owner walks the tiny white dog around the parking lot. Blue Michael smokes a cigarette with the driver and complains that he can’t sleep. The driver complains that he’s sick of driving.

Back in the car, Blue Michael gets to work on his computer. Vigorously, he types green letters onto a black screen. On the right side of the screen, windows keep popping up. Janet has a party, the window announces. Janet looks like a 2-dimensional human Barbie. There is a long red rectangular box where you can click, Yes, I am attending, or No thanks. Another window pops up. Angela will be at a golf club cocktail. Will you attend. Won’t you attend.

Although we are barely halfway, we stop again at the Freshmart convenience store and Esso gas station in Kingston. I pee several times, each time taking note that if the washroom cleanliness does not live up to my standards, I will be rewarded with a free container of air freshener. Love from Esso. Our driver leaves to pick up the other driver at the mechanic’s. The white dog is still in the car and his owner seems a bit disappointed. Blue Michael sits on the edge of the curb, his ass crack ever so generously peaking out from his blue jeans. Nobody seems to worry that the driver could very easily keep the dog and the stuff and leave us stranded at the Kingston Esso station. Irena asks to use my phone a whole bunch of times. She calls her son but there is no answer. Afterwards she offers me white chiclets from Israel. I mix them with my Excel Whitening Bubblegum.  






Chiclets, courtesy of redstone foods.





The new driver finally comes back with the car. I remember him from the time I went to Toronto to visit Benjamin Tracey four years ago. His name is Johnny and he wears a hat.

 

“Please make sure you have your seatbelts on,” he tells us. He only texts once or twice. Nobody volunteers to switch with me and take the middle seat.  There is construction on the 401 so we drive along the St. Lawrence. In the front seat, an Indian business man examines his Excel spreadsheets. He has the loudest, most obnoxious ring tone ever and people call him all the time. Irena eats a bag of chips. She offers me some but my mouth is still full of bubble gum and chiclets.

 

I look at the Thousand Islands and turn on Dan Savage’s sex podcast. Dan offers cures for Cunninlingus Lockjaw and says that continuing to sleep with your ex-husband is not a terrible idea.  Having an ex-husband sounds so grown-up. The Boatman and I were never married, and so we never got to have a divorce. I close my eyes and imagine the cells of my knees and my thighs dissolving into the crooked lumpy seat. My neck feels very stiff. I keep thinking about my cells. Soon I feel a pressure building at the base of my nose between my eyebrows. I wonder if I have suddenly become so aware and intuitive that my third eye is awakening. It then occurs to me that the pressure is from my enormous white sunglasses.

 

Irena nudges me and asks if she can use my phone again. I help Irena text her son and tell him that we will be in Montreal at 3:45. She is impressed by how fast I can text.

Valleyfield, Saint-Anne De Bellevue. The van rolls in to Montreal at 4:04. Irena’s son is waiting for her. The small white dog is let out of its blue cage and onto Sainte Catherine Street. All over Montreal, delighted people carry baguettes, eat frozen yogurt and drink beer on patios. There are no doughnuts in sight.

 The End.

This is not fiction. Benjamin Tracey really invented sterilization with doughnuts. I take zero credit for it, though I changed Benjamin Tracey's real name and I think that I did an excellent job.

Once Benjamin Tracey also wrote a play about a tennis game. The backhands and the lobbing and the missed serves reflected some couple’s relationship. Simon used to say that I was like an eight-year old sore loser tennis who cried when she didn’t get her way. Simon isn't alive anymore. 

Very Attractive Photo of Me and My Sister.
You'd be extra lucky to land us in your rideshare van.

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Vipassana Diaries: Bus
Poopy Mango Babywipes, and the First Day of Christmas (almost contains nudity)
Day Trip
Selfies on the Happy Stairs (contains doughnuts)
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Fan Mail

Several weeks ago, I was all set to write a post about my fool-proof plan to sync my menstrual cycle with the new moon. Then I got an email asking me to please moderate some comments on mobtreal.com, a comedy site that I used to occasionally write for. Logging in, I came across a comment from last March that I'd never noticed.

It was from Danny Woodburn, an actor I'd met while I was working as a lifeguard during my last days in Montreal. Danny played Kramer in Seinfeld, and was playing a dwarf in Mirror, Mirror, an adaptation of Snow White. Danny wasn't very happy about my writing. Here's what Danny wrote.

BODHISATTVA:(in Mahayana Buddhism) a person who is able to reach nirvana but delays doing so out of compassion in order to save suffering beings.

And yet your accounting is rife with objectification, mockery and catty derogations, to say nothing of its falseness. You know the word is objectionable yet you still say it–for effect? I remember you saying how you worked with the disabled. This thought has now me horrified, seeing who you are in this story.

Gross.  I forced myself to click on the post he was referring to. There was an image of the seven dwarves surrounding Snow White in Mirror Mirror, and a picture of Kino Macgregor balanced on her hands in a backbends, with her feet hovering over her head. there's a quote from my piece, "soul fucking," which describes me doing a drunken version of the pose at a bar, with the assistance of Ronald Clark, one of the other actors who also played a dwarf in Mirror, Mirror. The post linked to my three-part series called, "Small Regrets." I'd titled the post "The Objectionable-word-beginning-with-M Phase."

I called the Boatman in tears and read him the comment.

"I'm a horrible person, and shitty writer. I should just delete everything. I'm not even famous. This is not worth it. I suck."

The Boatman told me to calm down and read over the posts before rashly deleting my entire online identity. He read them over too.



Snow White and the other stars in "Mirror, Mirror"

 

Snow White and the other stars in "Mirror, Mirror"

In Part One, "Snow White," I describe meeting Danny Woodburn at the tiny hotel swimming pool I worked at the Westin in Old Montreal. We make small talk and I'm highly excited that a celebrity who also happens to be part of a rare population. When the next customer comes into the pool, I can't wait to announce that the little guy from Seinfeld was just here. I untactfully use the m-word. This next customer turns out to be Danny Woodburn's wife.

Part Two is called "Other Dwarves." In it, I ramble away about the other actors playing the dwarves in Snow White. Somehow I can't stop myself from wondering about what a little person's penis looks like and comparing myself to the famous Erica Schmidt who is married to Peter Dinklage. I consider all the penises I have seen in my life and flesh out a very unnecessary scene from elementary school, which I am ashamed to have included.  In scenes from the swimming pool, I sit on the deck, my legs contorted in bizarre positions beneath very short shorts. I chat incessantly with Ronald, another actor from Snow White. He used to be a personal trainer. Now he rescues pitbulls on TV. He asks me for a private yoga class. 

Part Three: Soul Fucking. It was about my last crazy night in montreal and it turned out to be the only decent writing out of the whole thing. The minister who baptized me read the story and gave me a thumbs up on Facebook. He said it kept his attention the whole time.  Maybe I did made too big a deal out of the vague possibility of sleeping with Ronald and the fact that he was a little person.  At the time, it felt like an unusual and intriguing opportunity. But I went a bit overboard and shouldn't have used the m-word.  

I decided to delete Snow White and other dwarves, and the summarizing post the m-phase. As for Soul Fucking, I took out the m-word and tried to change the story so that it became more about the last night I maybe could have fucked someone other than the Boatman but missed out. Also, I tried to take out anything that would objectify Ronald more than I would objectify any other potential source of sexual gratification. Note that the first paragraph of “Soul Fucking” describes the Boatman’s bloody penis, from the first time we ever had sex. Maybe I’m unoriginal and immature, but I love writing about all kinds of sex and all kinds of body parts.

The private yoga class I gave Ronald before going to the bar probably objectified his body, however, I feel like I would have described anybody else's body in this way.  It's not often you get to be in a celebrity's hotel room and watch the celebrity do yoga.  Even so, I've deleted all of my posts on mobtreal.com in a fit of self-consciousness.

I sent a thorough apology to Danny Woodburn which I can understand if he didn't read or open.  For once, I felt relieved that I never became very famous, for the Small Regrets posts or any others.

The whole ordeal left me traumatized. Although it has never been my main objective to be tactful, I hate to be written off like that, especially after years of sincere and dedicated work with people with disabilities.  I'd like to think that if I'd taken a bit more time to consider my material, I would have made better choices. That said, it's interesting that nobody else besides Danny called me on these posts.

A couple of months ago, I wrote a review of Dan Savage's show at the Spatz theatre. To try and make things interesting, I included a couple of anecdotes about a blind woman who attended the show with her German shepherd. We had just lost the big black dog and so I made the awkward comment that I wish I could have my dog with me all the time...  It was sort of like the time I first met Danny Woodburn. Me saying something awkward. I meant to make fun of myself. The woman and her dog sat in the balcony and the woman yelled a bunch of things at Dan Savage which was mildly entertaining. I guess this is making fun of her. The moderator of montreal.com took out everything about the blind lady, but called my m-phase series amazing.

So why are little people okay and blind people aren't?  Is it because if you are already a regular size you'll never be a little person, but any one of us could become blind over the course of our lifetimes?

I recently saw someone post on Facebook that the circus in town was hiring. They were looking for -insert word I will never again type for the rest of my life. 

People don't encounter adults of shorter stature and I don't think that we are all familiar with the politically correct terms 

I read somewhere that the m-word is akin to calling black people the n-word. Wish I'd read that earlier. When I first heard the term, "little person," I thought it was a bit a bit vague and made me think of a child. But children are called children. Perhaps my excuse was lazy. Some of the other actors who I met at the swimming pool said they were comfortable with the word, "dwarf," a medical term referring to atypical shortness with a degree of disproportion. This, however, has perjorative connations for some people and is phasing out of the medical field.  Recently, I discovered that some people use the term "short statured" which to me sounds less ambiguous and more neutral. 

Regardless, being politically correct often remains vague and sometimes even inaccurate, as in the case of Canadian African Americans. I once worked in a group home where you couldn't write in the reports that someone peed on the floor. Instead you had to say they had a void accident. If they were yelling and screaming at night, you had to write they "used loud vocals." If people used too many loud vocals, they got medicated. I found this to be both bizarre and disturbing.

During my years L’Arche, a community for adults with intellectual disabilities, there was not an enormous emphasis on appropriate language choices. It was in Quebec, and many of the highly devoted caregivers I met there used the term, “personnes handicappés” regularly. The people with disabilities themselves said it. And yet, it was a much more respectful and empowering environment than the group home where I wasn’t allowed to say someone was screaming in the night.

Using the appropriate politically correct terms isn’t enough. And writing with the sole intention of not offending anyone is terrible for creativity and honestly pretty boring. A truly “Exuberant Bodhisattva” would be able to write in a way that both entertained and relieved all the suffering of sentient beings. Unfortunately, my online persona, “the Exuberant Bodhisattva” has always been somewhat of an ironic joke.  The title came from this short story I wrote in university. Danny Woodburn is the second person to find it more hypocritical than funny. It may be time for a more fitting screen name.

Please leave your suggestions in the comments below.

The End.

Another thing I learned about the Small Regrets Ordeal is that you should cut down everything you write by at least 66 percent. In this post, I did not apply what I learned. Maybe next time.

 

Mirror Mirror Pool Friends, with Danny Woodburn and Ronald Clark 4th and 5th from the left.

Exuberant Bodhisattva on Facebook
Twitter: @mypelvicfloor
I Let Go, self-help book by Erica J. Schmidt

Soul Fucking
Cardboard Box
Not Separate From All That Is