Dear Vincent, During my month-long hiatus without you, I invented the Shiny Chrome Orgasm. And I basked in my Nun Friend's soothing and maternal bosom of unconditional love, and I got a cleaning buzz. I think I am going to make it. Welcome home

Dear Vincent,

During my month-long hiatus without you, I invented the Shiny Chrome Orgasm. And I basked in my Nun Friend’s soothing and maternal bosom embrace of unconditional love, and I got a cleaning buzz. I think I am going to make it. Welcome home.

Childhood memories equal, the fairy tale, The Princess and The Frog. I remember the frog, crouched on the Princess’s dinner table, and lapping up peas from on the Royal Family’s golden plate.

 Are we able to accept all the ugly things without the promise that deep down the ugly things are actually beautiful and that one day they’ll transform out of being an ugly frog or an ugly toad?

Toads, in my opinion, are a little bit uglier than the frogs.

Can we love the things that are

inherently and likely

ugly forever?

For example, the toads, or else the thick and cakey fungus under certain people’s toenails?

A Shiny Chrome Orgasm is when you polish the chrome of the faucet of your sink to the point that the sight is orgasmic.

Shiny Chrome Orgasm

A friend pointed out that combined with the taps, the whole thing is rather phallic, and isn’t that a little bit exciting?

Childhood memories equal Mrs. Vanden Bosch’s Grade One Halloween Concert. I am dressed up as a beautiful princess, but our song is about a field full of pumpkins. My best friend Ellen gets to be the special pumpkin with the solo. Of this, I am exceedingly jealous. The song is about some special pumpkin who has some special magical way of singing the words, the Boo-Hoo-Hoo. Maybe this turns frogs into handsome princes. Or maybe it burns the whole field down. In any case, I am devastated that I don’t get to sing the Prestigious Pumpkin Boo-hoo-hoo solo. Even before I skipped grade two and was irreparably labelled the Strange and Gifted child, I felt that surely I deserved all the main parts.

And the Princess, she felt like she did not deserve to have to go to bed with the ugly frog. Except the ugly frog had rescued her precious golden ball from the bottom of the pond, and in return he’d convinced the princess to make quite an elaborate promise.

“Promise me,” said the ugly frog. “That you will love me. That you’ll let me be your friend and play with you. Make me a place at your table where I will eat from your plate and drink from your cup. Then, take me to your bed and we can sleep peacefully together.”

Some people might say this qualifies as a little bit of coercion. The Princess was crying very hard when she lost her ball, and the frog sort of pounced upon her vulnerability. And it was in the olden days, and once she’d already said yes, she was not allowed to change her mind about taking the frog to bed.

So first the poor princess was helpless because her golden ball had fallen to the bottom of the pond.

And then she was helpless because her heart’s desire depended upon an overwhelming and impossible promise.

This story does not leave me feeling very equipped.

Place your ugly frog upon a silky and exquisite pillow, and there will emerge your dashing tender-eyed prince.

And

Or

Ever since I went off Prozac, my brain’s been invaded by a voice.

And the voice comes ready with a hand.

And the hand is ready to slap.

The voice really wants to be the main part. Sometimes the voice won’t shut up until the hand wacks me on the face over and over again. The voice wants everyone to hear and know its rage and how excruciatingly disappointed and disgusted and at the end of it rope that it feels with, well,

I guess me.

And the hand keeps slapping because it’s so set on the belief that no one will ever understand me, and this is what I deserve.

Main Special Gifted Pumpkin sings, “The Boo-Hoo-Hoo.”

All the Generic Pumpkins sing, “The Boo-Hoo-Hoo.”

I still cannot remember the line about why the Main Special Gifted Pumpkin was so special and gifted.

All the palaces in the fairy tales look exactly the same.

My nun friend has the softest cheeks and the most soothing bosom. I saw her at a funeral, and she said so many nice things to me. It was like I was at my own funeral.

“Oh, Erica,” she said. “It is so good to see you. You’re so beautiful. Don’t ever change. Stay just the way you are.”

I cannot repeat what my Nun Friend said without weeping, if somewhat delicately. Her words, they shut up the voice and they canned the hand for one whole week. And I got a cleaning buzz, and I invented the Shiny Chrome Orgasm.

I forgot to say that the princess was the youngest of the seven daughters. The youngest and the most beautiful. And she loved to throw her golden ball up in the air and then catch it. Once she got married, I wonder if she kept throwing her golden ball up in the air. Throwing it up in the air, and then catching it.

Main Special Gifted Pumpkin sings, “The Boo-Hoo-Hoo.”

All the Generic Pumpkins sing, “The Boo-Hoo-Hoo.”

Welcome home, Vincent!

There is probably something symbolic about the golden ball falling to the bottom of the pond.

Our golden balls are falling to the bottom of the pond all the time.

Main Special Gifted Pumpkin sings, “The Boo-Hoo-Hoo.”

All the Generic Pumpkins sing, “The Boo-Hoo-Hoo.”

Oh Erica, you’re so beautiful. Don’t ever change. Stay just the way you are.

In therapy, I always get to have the main part, and surely, this is one reason why I like it.

Welcome home, Vincent.

Love, Erica.

P.S. In fact, once she married the prince, the princess kept her golden ball safe and sound on a purple cushion, under a glass dome. Cause what if the ball fell into the pond again and some better frog prince showed up. The End.

Please send your imaginary emails to Vincent to ericaschmidt85(at)gmail(dot)com.



Grade One. Surely I deserved all the main parts.

Exuberant Bodhisattva on Facebook
Twitter: @mypelvicfloor
I Let Go

Bodhisattva Business Ventures:

Deep Cleans by Erica J. Schmidt (@deepcleanswitherica)
Montreal Hippie Threads (@mtlhippiethreads)
Instagram: montrealhippiethreads


Rumplestiltskin


Dear Vincent, It seems no matter who I'm having sex with, I ugly cry every other time.


On Thursday, January 4, 2018, I did not end up flying to the edge of Newfoundland and embarking on a long westward frigid and impossible walk across Canada in my boots that tend to become damp and cold within seven to 98 minutes of putting them on for the benefit of everyone’s mental health which feels like an emergency and also chronically neglected and in memory of Simon Girard who jumped off the roof of Sherbrooke Street’s le Tadoussac on Sunday, January 4, 2015.



My Ego Throws Up When I Won't Believe It

Self-Compassion. Cervical Orgasms.
Which one of these will you master?
My ego throws up when I won’t believe it.
I really wanted to put that sentence somewhere.

There are pancakes that transcend Aunt Jemima.

You put them in the toaster
Just like an Eggo Waffle.

Toaster Ornament, St-Michel Flea Market

As a child I was forbidden from such things.
All the Cheerios came unfrosted.

Push on the toaster. The Eggo pops up.

The Ego,
The Pop-tart,
The Bagel.

Everywhere in Ontario, the bagels sound different.

Today I get to go visit Vincent.
I hope that his weekend was pleasant.

The End.



Ego Wrapped in Cellophane
Exuberant Bodhisattva on Facebook
Twitter: @mypelvicfloor
I Let Go



Bodhisattva Business Ventures
Slash
Free Spirit Dharma:
 
Deep Cleans by Erica J. Schmidt (@deepcleanswitherica)
Montreal Hippie Threads (@mtlhippiethreads)
Instagram: montrealhippiethreads

My name is Erica. I love coffee.
Yours til I'm a Post-Modern Literary Genius
Memoirs of a Brief Affair
 

Darcy

Darcy 
by Erica J. Schmidt

When I was a little girl, my favourite game was dress up.  The dress-up box sat underneath the pine bunk bed that my father had built.  In it was the white clown suit with polka dots that my sister had worn to the hospital two days after I was born.  To go with it was a rainbow wig of curly haired clown hair that my grandmother wore to her chemotherapy 20 years later.  Also stored in the old trunk were my parents’ wedding clothes-my father’s dark beige corduroy suit and my mother’s seemingly patchwork purple, black and yellow baby doll dress. 

“I just loved that dress,” Mom would exclaim when my sister put it on.   “I can’t remember why.”  The material flowed out from my sister’s hips, circling her ankles on the floor.  I had seen pictures of my parents’ city hall wedding.  My sister had been the flower girl and worn a mauve jumper.  I was underneath my mom’s dress, which stopped just above my mother’s knees. 

“I wish you’d worn a pretty white one,” Amy-Louise complained. While Mom was taking her nap, Amy-Louise told me that Mommy hadn’t had a fancy wedding, because she still loved Amy-Louise’s Daddy who was funnier  and didn’t yell.  My sister visited her father every other weekend.  When she returned on Sunday nights, she cried and screamed because her daddy was nicer than mine. 

I liked it when my sister went to her dad’s.  Then I had the whole dress up box to myself.  Otherwise, Amy-Louise made me wear something ugly like Great Grandpa Meier’s gardening overalls or Great Aunt Lotty’s itchy woollen red bathing suit. 

The best costume was the fairy princess dress which was silky, shiny and pink, with bits of material that draped down the skirt, like petals.  Every time I put on the dress, my chest filled with pride and I felt like the most beautiful woman in the world.  There was something extraordinarily special about me and the whole world knew it.  I was barely 4 years old. 

On some Saturdays, my parents made me play with Darcy.  Darcy was four and a half, but I already came up to his nose.  Like me, he had blonde flowing, curly hair that ended at his chin.  Darcy’s father also had long hair which I didn’t understand.  In my parents’ wedding pictures, my Dad had long black hair, but he also had a beard so that everyone that knew he was a man. 

Darcy and I began each of our dress-up sessions in our underwear.  Squatting beside the dress-up box, Darcy cupped his face in his hands and watched me as I slipped the princess dress over my head.  I slid into my mother’s navy blue pumps and took a few clunky steps until I knew with absolute certainty that I was the most beautiful woman in the world.   Digging through the clown suits and wedding clothes, I came upon Darcy’s costume of the day. 

“You wear this,” I ordered, throwing Aunt Lotty’s bathing suit at Darcy.
 
“That’s for girls,” Darcy whined.
 
“ Boys don’t have long hair.”
 
“Some boys do.”

“Not pretty ones.  Now put this on.”  Reluctantly, Darcy slipped into the bathing suit.  The shoulder straps hung loosely and the wool billowed around his crotch and abdomen. 

“We’re going to beach,” I announced, dragging him by the hand across the hallway to the bathroom.  Our house was so old that the bathtub had claws, no shower and individual faucets for the hot and cold water.   I turned both faucets on full blast. 

“Get in,” I told Darcy.
 
“My undies will get wet.” 
 
“Too bad.  You’re a girl.”  I meant that he wasn’t allowed to take his underwear off, because then his penis would show and it would ruin the effect.
 
“So are you.”
 
“But I’m a princess mother.  It’s better.  Get in.”  Darcy stepped onto the wooden bench that my father had made us and climbed over the edge of the bathtub. 

“Sit,” I ordered.  He sat and as predicted, his underwear got wet and Aunt Lotty’s bathing suit grew soggy and even loser around his pelvis and middle.  Darcy whimpered and began to kick his legs as though he we pinned to the bottom to the bathtub and was trying to wriggle himself free.  I looked down at him with disdain and mimicked my father when he was speaking to my mother.

“Christ, Darcy what are you doing?”  Darcy whimpered like a dead cat.  “Crying won’t help.”  Bubbles formed behind Darcy’s buttocks.  It smelled wet and foul like diarrhea.  “You better not pooh,”  I warned.  

Next time, stand up.”

“You said sit,” he said.
 
“What are you, a dog?”  I dragged the bench to the sink so that I could reach above the sink to the medicine cabinet.  Inside was an open package of my mother’s pink disposable razors.  I removed one from the package, removed the plastic cover and clicked back to the bathtub.  I wanted to slide the razor along Darcy’s skinny legs like I’d seen my mom do.  Clutching Darcy’s handles, I pulled his leg straight and brought the razor to his skin.
 
“Hold still,”  I said.  Darcy ay on his back and kicked the razor out of my hand.  It fell into the water next to Darcy’s thigh.  Seizing the handle, Darcy stood up and lashed the blade at my face, pushing it down hard so it broke the skin on my left cheek.  I screamed and rushed out of the bathroom.  As I ran downstairs barefoot, blood dripped on the puffed sleeves of the princess dress and I wet my pants. 
 
We wore our regular clothes to the emergency but Darcy refused to borrow my underwear so he didn’t wear any.  In the emergency room, we sat on orange chairs and I  held a washcloth on my bleeding face.   At the end of our row of clothes, an old bald man was wheezing heavily.  His right pant leg was rolled up and his purply veiny leg was draped along the chairs beside him  Across from us, a tall, pale, emaciated lady with stringy blonde hair was shaking her hands, neck and feet as she spoke to the fluorescent lights on the ceiling. 
 
“How are you, Sheila?  Are you having a good day.  No I’m not.  My colon is bleeding.  Bloody colon.  Bloody colon.  Not a good day.”  She stood over, pulled down her pants to her thighs and bent over, mooning the lights on the ceiling. “Bloody colon!”  Now she was yelling.  She place one hand on either ass cheek and spread them apart.  “Bad day.  Bad day.  A security guard came up behind her, pulled up her pants and led her away.  My mother stared, fascinated.
 
“Every time I come to a hospital, I just wish I’d finished my nursing degree.  I just wish I’d finished it.”  She was a piano teacher.
 
On the way home, my mother decided to raise her voice briefly.  “I’m really mad at you guys,” she declared.  Darcy started to cry but I remained silent and solemn.   The doctor had said that the cut wasn’t deep enough to need stitches and taped it together with a fancy band-aid.  My mother washed the princess dress by hand, but I could still see the blood stains.  Just the same, a few days later, I slipped it on with my mother’s blue pumps and waited for the beautiful, extraordinary I’m so special feeling.  I crossed the hallway to examine myself in the mirror in my parent’s bedroom  Suddenly, the magic dress appeared too shiny and too pink.  Plus it was way too big for me.  I knew that the special and extraordinary feeling that I used to have didn’t match my face, which was round, fleshy and of course, punctuated by the band-aid on my left cheek.  My unruly curly blonde hair hadn’t been combed or groomed and its knotted frizz stuck out in a different directions.  The image was so devastating compared to the way I had imagined myself.  Everything I had thought had been a lie. 
 
I didn’t stop playing dress up, but I never wore the Prince dress ever again.  Also, I decided it was a bad idea to look in the mirror if there was any hope in rekindling the spectacular sense of unique beauty that had once arose so easily. 
 
Then one summer afternoon, I found myself in front of a mirror in an elevated chair in a hair salon.  My hairdresser’s name was Terry which I thought was confusing.  With her broad shoulders, fat chest and thick legs, she could have been a man or a woman.  She dug her nails into my skull and ran her fingers through my curls which almost came to my shoulders.
 
“Curly hair’s so cute when it’s short,” Terry said. 
 
“And it will be so much easier to take care of, sweetie,”  my mother gushed.  “Your first haircut at a real hairdresser!  How exciting!”
 
I did not feel excited.  I looked down at the floor so that I would not see my round, sad, unspectacular face with the scar on my left cheek.
 
“Hurry up,”  I said.  “I want to go swimming.  Twenty minutes later, I looked in the mirror again and saw a bowl of tight curls jutting out from my head.
 
“So  sweet,” my mother exclaimed.  “Thank you Terry.
 
I refused to go swimming that day.  I couldn’t wear my blue and red bathing suit with the dolphin on the tummy.  Everyone would look at me funny because my hair made me look like a boy.  I announced to my parents that I was a boy now and I needed new clothes.  They bought me a pair of blue shorts and green swimming trunks with sharks on them.
 
In August, my cousin got married in Manitoba.  My aunt wanted me to wear a frilly blue dress with flowers on it.  I couldn’t because it wouldn’t match my hair.  They tried to convince me that it was just like playing dress up, but I remained adamant.  Finally, we agreed upon blue trousers, a white dress shirt and suspenders. When Darcy came over to play we played doctor, cars and cops and robbers.  When I went over to his house, we played with his guns, even though my mother didn’t want us to.
 
Darcy and I went to different kindergartens since Darcy’s parents believed that children should be educated according to a theory made up by a man named Mr. Walnut.  My teacher’s name was Ms.  Strotman.  On my first day, I wore my blue trousers from the wedding and a red t. shirt with a yellow praying mantis and the words “Party Animal” on it.  My sneakers were navy blue with light blue Velcro.  My hair had grown out a little bit, but my mother had taken me to Terry for a trim on the weekend.  Now it fell a few millimetres above the tips of my ears.
 
“You’re so pretty,”  Terry had cooed from behind the chair.  I disagreed.  I looked like a boy.
 
All the other little girls had to sit on their heels or pull down their frilly flowering dresses so that the little boys couldn’t see their underwear.  I sat in a comfortable cross-legged position next to Ms. Stroman’s rocking chair.  Ms.  Strotman had long shiny wavy brown hair that went down past her shoulder blades.  She was wearing light beige Capri pants and a dark purple 3 quarter length shirt with sparking designs on it  I thought that she was very beautiful but I was shocked that she didn’t have to wear a dress on the first day of school. 
 
“Good morning girls and boys,”  Ms. Strotman greeted us.  I wondered if I had to wait for my hair to grow back before I could be a girl again.  I wanted to be a girl, like Ms. Strotman. 
 
We stood up and pretended to sing along as Ms. Strotman played Oh Canada on the piano.  Afterwards, she gave each of us strips of construction paper with our names on it.  My strips were red and orange.  The first one was for writing practice and the second was to put in the Helper of the Day box.  Ms. Strotman reached in the box and pulled out a long green strip of construction paper.  Consequently, the Helper of the Day was Ben.  Ben stood up.  He was tanned with rosy cheeks, blue eyes and wavy brown hair that was just a little shorter than mine.  Ben got to turn the weather wheel and determine whether it was snowy, rainy, cloudy and or sunny.  He selected the day of the week out of seven rectangles of Bristol board with bold, illegible letters printed on them.  Ben knew that it was Tuesday.  Ms.  Strotman had to help him with the month and date.  Still, I admired his choices.
 
At playtime, I saw Ben in the Kitchen Corner where there was a Fisher Price kitchen set, as well as a box full of dress up clothes.  I gazed longingly as Ben rummaged through the costumes and pulled out a police hat and blazer.  Tentatively I approached the kitchen set.  I removed the plastic egg from the frying pan and replaced it with the piece of plastic French toast. 
 
“Hi,” Ben said.  I’m the police.  I say you wear a tutu.”  From the box, he procured a tutu with a light blue silk body suit and a dark blue lacy skirt.  It was beautiful, perhaps more beautiful than the princess dress ever was. 
 
I stared at Ben in shock.  Didn’t he know that I was an ugly boy and that I couldn’t possibly  belong in a tutu.
 
“I’m the police,”  Ben repeated.  Too stunned to be delighted, I slipped the tutu over my trousers and party animal shirt.  Ben took my hand, opened the dishwasher and found a plate.  He removed the French toast from the frying pan and we ate it together.
 
Playing with Ben was the closest I ever got to retrieving the sensation of being extraordinarily beautiful, that I’d lost when Darcy cut me in the bathtub.  Every day at playtime, Ben at I met in the house corner.  He was the policeman and I was the blue ballerina, with trousers for leotards.  By December, most of my hair had grow back again.  Ben and I were partners in the Christmas pageant.  Ben wore the policeman uniform and I wore the tutu.  At the end, Ben bowed and I curtsied.  Backstage we kissed on the lips.  . 
 
My parents finally split up when I was twenty.  While I was helping my mother move I found a framed picture of Ben and I.  We are holding hands under a tree.  There are pink flowers at out feet.  I am wearing a long white dress with tiny burgundy blossoms on it.  I have bangs and pigtails.  After kindgarten, Ben and his family moved to Australia.  His mother helped him write me a postcard.
 
“Ben says he loves you and misses you and wishes you were here.”  LOVE BEN was scrawled in enormous angular underneath Ben’s mother’s writing.  That was the last I heard of him.
 
Our family moved to Perth in grade one, so we didn’t hear much of Darcy either.  I always kept the scar from when I made him wear Aunt Lotty’s bathing suit.  My Dad said that Darcy had a hard life.  He took a lot of drugs and didn’t get along with his parents.  My mom said that that was because he was a test tube baby.
 
I wear dresses all the time now.  And my hair is never cut shorter than my shoulders.  People tell me I am beautiful, but when I look in the mirror, my reflection never comes close to the image of beauty, I believed I’d exuded as a child.  If I take of my dresses and sit down, admirers would see my thighs spread out into what they really are.  Mammoth.  Grotesque.  Inside, I feel fragile, like a broken, ruined delicateness.  The part of me that matches that is Darcy’s scar.  It will live as long as I do.  Last weekend, my dad called me to say that during his sleep, Darcy had asphyxiated on his own vomit and died in his girlfriend’s arms.  He was 22. 
 
I just got a job modelling luscious wedding gowns next to handsome grooms who look like the kind of men that Ben must have grown up to be.  At each makeup call I close my eyes as the assistant tweezes my eyebrows, and covers my face with powders and blushes and skin coloured face paint.  Maybe, if she does a good enough job, when I stand beside the groom, the dead wonder of the princess dress will come back.  When I open my eyes, I can’t see Darcy’s scar in the mirror anymore.  I get up and walk out to meet the groom.  But before I even get through the door, I know that the wonder won’t come back.  It is too late.   It has been too late for a very long time. 

The End.

Exuberant Bodhisattva on Facebook

Twitter: @mypelvicfloor

$2.99 Self-Help Book: I Let Go

What a Beautiful Face

Ecstatic Adventures of the Exuberant Bodhisattva 

What the fuck should I do with my life, Part Two