Dear Vincent, If Oprah does not invite you to sit in her decadent plushy green chairs in the middle of the Oprah Forest to discuss your beautiful soul's beautiful hero's journey, it's possible this might be a blessing. It's possible you might just be spared. Love, Erica.

Dear Vincent,

If Oprah does not invite you to sit in her decadent plushy green chairs in the middle of the Oprah Forest to discuss your beautiful soul’s beautiful hero’s journey, it’s possible this might be a blessing. It’s possible you might just be spared.

Love, Erica.

Dear Oprah,

My beautiful soul’s beautiful hero’s journey is I broke up with the star of my life’s most beautiful blogging fairy tale and after six months of weeping indelicately in public, I ran away to India and this was fun for approximately five and a half weeks and then I got extensive shits and I got to be an emaciated and hysterical bone rack and when I finally made it back to Canada, I was so washed out that I had to go on Prozac and then I met my therapist who I fell deeply and madly in love with and this really messed me up as did accidentally doubling my Prozac dose in the winter of 2017 and then going off of it and then breaking my roommate’s delicate and precious teapot, and meanwhile, to fulfill my enormous potential and to live my best life, I clean other people’s bathtubs and sometimes I weep over the ledges of these bathtubs, or else the dusty baseboards, or else the refrigerator drawers filled with mouldy vegetable chunks, and approximately 100% of the time, nobody notices.

Love, Erica.

Dear Vincent,
When I call the crisis center they tell me to call back because I am crying too hard.
They should bring back the role of the Village Wailer, and this should be my job.

Erica Schmidt, Mile End Wailer.

On Wednesday, May 30, 2018, as I wailed below the Saint Laurent underpass, two people, asked me if I was okay, and I blubbered ‘I’m fine, this is just me, a walking disaster,’ and then next to the railroad tracks, a woman on her bike who said she worked with addicts insisted on an extended conversation, and she asked me what I liked to do, and said, ‘I can see you like to walk,’ in fact, she was right, and in fact, she was quite kind, and in fact, I sincerely hope our encounter was good for her Mother Teresa complex. 

Addict Mother Teresa Friend said there isn't some magic formula, you just keep trying different things to see what works. I guess this is not terrible advice.
On the way home, underneath the underpass, some dude walked by me and handed me an apple. He had an apple too, and I was too lonely to go home and so I followed him to Clark Park and watched him wash the apple in the water fountain.  

His t. shirt was white and on the right breast corner it said something about the Xavier school of gifted youngsters.

“Were you a gifted youngster?” I asked.

“Oh, this is from X-men,” he said. “And it’s a rare shirt. Kind of my superpower.”

“Oh,” I said. I know very little about x-men, due to being a philistine.

“What about you? What is your superpower?”

I did not want my superpower to be mopping, although I am quite good at this.

The star of my life’s most beautiful blogging fairy tale used to say, my emotions could maybe be a superpower.

The star of my life’s most beautiful blogging fairy tale had never seen anything like my emotions.

“Maybe my emotions could be my superpower. But mostly they just give me a really hard time.”

My emotions, they

are very astonishing.

On Wednesday, May 30, 2018, I found a dead mouse, stuck to a sticky mouse trap under a kitchen sink, and the sink belonged to a family who has an enormous baby, and I always say that the enormous baby’s face is very astonishing.

Every 12 minutes to 36 hours, I feel totally astonished.
The guy with the gifted youngsters t. shirt said, “I bet people give you all kinds of suggestions on what you should do. Meditation, working out, yoga, journals.”
“Yes,” I said. “And I have been doing all of it since I was seven years old.”

He went to drink beer with his friends, and I went home to do the dishes.
The apple was macintosh. It tasted small and generic. Then I fell asleep on the couch.
In the morning, I finished a translation about houseplants. Apparently, there is no reason to resist growing houseplants. None of my houseplants have grown since I got them, and the basil seems doomed. And I have a lovely succulent plant that Dexter brought.
Succulent plants are very trendy.

I am not happy with my Village Wailer performance though some might say it was rather impressive.

Best wishes for an unoppressive and/or invigorating day.
Love,
Erica. 

Dear Vincent,

I can appreciate professional boundaries but just to let you know where I am coming from, last Friday afternoon, I gave my client Linda a free haircut and henna streaks at my house, partly because being a hairdresser is my dream job and partly because on Friday, May 27, 2018 I knocked over Linda’s precious and delicate miniature horse ornament and the front left leg came off and considering how suicidal I became after breaking my roommate’s teapot on Friday, May 26, 2017, and considering how the horse’s leg can probably be glued back on, the incident was not all that traumatic; however, it did instil a self-imposed obligation to buy another horse and to say yes to the next seventeen things Linda asks me for, and this began with the henna streaks and the haircut.

Last night I dreamed about cleaning big chunks behind someone’s stove, and the chunks belonged to my client Genevieve who barely needs a cleaning lady and who is about to move across the country and I’m a bit sad because we get along great and Genevieve signs off all her texts with three emphatic thumbs up, and I sure as hell could use three emphatic thumbs up every other Monday or Wednesday. In my dream, I cleaned up all the chunks behind the stove, and then I went to Genevieve’s wedding, and I was deeply embarrassed by how disgustingly dirty my feet were, and the groom was Tim Ferris, and Genevieve and Tim vowed to manifest the spectacular hell out of their lives, and when they kissed, it was passionate and convincing.

I woke up at 4:14 and all the stoves and the bathtubs and the whole week seem impossible.
I really wish you could save me and that you loved me back but you can't and you don't, not even if I offer to give you a free haircut and even though you probably like some version of my face when I am not sobbing it off, and maybe also my legs and all this, along with at least 37 easily listable details of life leave me feeling breathtakingly disappointed.

The other thing I want to say is, I packed a sandwich for lunch.
Love, Erica. 

Dear Erica,

Where is your nervous system?

Thinking about your nun friends.

Love, Erica.

Dear Oprah and Vincent,

Linda’s haircut went great.

Love, Erica.

Dear Vincent,

On a podcast I learned that to relieve trauma you can lie on the floor and cradle the back of your head and then gaze your eyes from one side of the world to the other. Maybe I will try that the next time I am hysterical.

Love, Erica.

Dear Vincent,

I still love you, and I still love Oprah.

Love, Erica.

*Names and crucial identifying details have been altered due to excellent professional boundaries. Send your letters to me, or to Vincent or to Oprah. The top-secret email address is ericaschmidt85(at)gmail(dot)com.

p.s. Vincent is my therapist and I have that thing where you love your therapist and I get to see Vincent every other Wednesday.

I still love you, and I still love Oprah.

Follow Erica J. Schmidt on Facebook

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Dear Vincent, It used to be that the last time I felt home was in a tiny blue penthouse apartment in Mysore, India on the 10th avenue of the 3rd stage of a neighbourhood called Gokulam in November of 2014.

Dear Vincent, Now you know I have that thing where you love your therapist.

Performative Crying in Alleys

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.

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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.



The Magical Rock Vagina Cleanse, by Erica J. Schmidt

SNAG, S-N-A-G stands for Sensitive New Age Guy. At Café Olimpico I always see this SNAG and he’s one of those people who’s ultra-busy running his micro-nation the MacBook Pro. And so, he never has any time to talk to me. But one day he decided he could spare a moment to grace my life with his secret to success.

“Erica,” he said. “You have to Name Your Wounds.”

As fate would have it, I am average to mediocre at naming my wounds; however; I am just about phenomenal at naming the dudes whose legs I hump and whose dicks end up inside of me.

For example, there was: the Vegan Life Coach, the Tall Cute Cauliflower, Rob One, Rob Two, and one of my favourites, the star of my life’s beautiful blogging fairy tale, The Boatman. As his name suggests, I met the Boatman on a boat. We happened to be at a wedding. Lucky for me, the full moon whispered in the Boatman’s ear and told him to kiss me. In about twenty minutes, we fell in love, and in his beautiful delusion, the Boatman invited me to leave Montreal and go live with him in Halifax in his Big Blue House with his Big Black Dog, and in my beautiful delusion, and also because I had seven and a half part-time jobs and maybe five dollars, I said yes.

As the blogging fairy tale goes, we lived happily ever after for three and a half years, except I had no friends and refused to go on Prozac.

I would highly recommend that everybody move for love at least once, it’s just that sometimes you have to move back. So, two Aprils ago, I had to move back and within a few months, I met the man who would one day inspire, the Magical Rock Vagina Cleanse.

This man I named, the Generic Married Man (GMM).

For me, the best is when dudes are ultra-unavailable, and when they have deep and beautiful and impossible wounds. As fate would have it, the Generic Married Man was all over this criteria. Like I imagine most philandering husbands are, he was ultra-busy running his micro-nation with his kids, a really important job, in theory his wife, as well as the highly time-consuming task of mourning and wailing over all his dead and broken dreams.

But Generic was clear and relatively considerate right from the start.

“Erica,” he said. “I just want you to know, I am never going to leave my family. Like never. That is not who I am.”

And I responded, “Yes! Definitely! Do not leave your family for me. Of course not!”

The other thing he said was, “I’m also not going to be all that available for the next 18 to 25 years.”

For me, this was no problem since I was not the kind of person who would move eighteen hours and give up my whole life for some silly love story.

"That's perfect," I said. "You are exactly what I am looking for!”

So we were off to this erotic, steamy passionate affair, and we met on the monkey bars every three to seven to seventeen and a half weeks.

On the monkey bars, Generic would tell me about all his deep and beautiful and impossible wounds, and I’d sit there shivering, and I’d wish that he did not have a wife. And then, we’d make out.

But not all of Generic’s wounds were deep and beautiful and impossible. Some of them were pretty Generic, and unsurprising.

For example,

“I haven’t had sex since 2010, or like maybe once, but that was to make a kid.”

Or like,

“All my wife ever thinks about is the kids and then I go to spoon her and she recoils onto the other side of the bed, and I’m all lonely and tired and horny.”

Or,

“My life is so ridiculously crazy busy! I don’t know who I am anymore.”

Now, I love parents and I love children and I love babies. Some of my favourite friends are parents and I love their kids. As one of my current seven and a half semi-retirement projects, I tie-dye onesies for babies I will never have. But families, I love them. Having said that, one of my favourite things to do is to complain about parents complaining about having children. As though the inherently fulfilling biological task of ejaculating inside of someone you kind of like (like that must be a little bit fun), and then you combine your own special DNA to make this extra unique and exceptional child that comes out of a vagina which is really interesting, and the child is so tiny and adorable – and you find it extra adorable, because it reminds you of you – and then it starts to talk, and everything it says is extra brilliant and extraordinary because it reminds you of you, like as though this whole process is so tragic and selfless and heroic – and also compulsory. Because it’s not compulsory. You know, I always want to tell people, you could have pulled out.

But poor Generic hadn’t pulled out and now he had a couple of kids and a wife who ostensibly recoiled whenever he went anywhere near her. Poor guy was stuck using condoms with me. Although it is not charitable to publish details of one's sexual experience on the Internet, I will say that Generic gave indisputably excellent and redemptive head. Also, he let me hump his leg which, as fate would have it, happens to be my favourite.

Unfortunately, since he was so ridiculously crazy busy, I did not get the chance to hump the Generic Married Man’s leg quite as often as would have been ideal. But that was okay, since besides complaining about parents complaining about having children, and besides leg humping, one of my other favourite things to do is to be a pen pal. I am a remarkable pen pal. While I may be a little intense and self-obsessed and one-sided about it, I would say that in general, I write delightful emails, letters, haikus, postcards, and text messages, and I would say that for the most part, it makes the world a better place.

For the most part, I made Generic’s world a better place. I filled his days with heartfelt and extraordinary emails and haikus and text messages, and every night I’d sign off, not just with the regular and generic x-o. Oh no! I wrote out my x’s and o’s. It was like the opposite of abbreviations. I spelled them out, “E-x, o-h, e-x, o-h,” and I added the innovative and provocative emoticon, the eggplant.

E-x, o-h, eggplant

Generic absolutely relished my stunning and enchanting creativity. He somehow believed that I was spectacular. This was a dream come true, and the best part was, since we barely ever saw each other, he never had a chance to change his mind.

So the whole thing was mostly magnificent apart from the fact that one of my main objectives in life is to be relatively to thoroughly well fucked. This is hard to pull off every three to seven to seventeen and a half weeks. The other issue was that I experienced a degree of conflict in my heart about the fact that Generic had a wife and children. As penance, I would force myself to stalk his beautiful wife on Facebook. Like most people, she had horrendous privacy settings which allowed me to peruse her happy mom photos. I would scroll through all the birthdays and milestones and the millions of ways her precious little children filled her heart with more love and joy and surprise than she ever could have imagined before the little creatures had come out of her vagina.

This made me feel very gross.  

But otherwise, I was relatively happy with how things were going. Having said that, I had accumulated a few other problems in my life. My heart was sort of broken from my last ex-boyfriend and I kept refusing to go on Prozaac. I decided my best option was to fuck off and pull a geographic, and I decided the best place to do this was in India.

Thus, in November, off I flew to Delhi, and I proceeded to bop around India for four and a half months. I spent a great deal of these four and a half months squatting over small holes and shitting buckets of liquid diarrhea. Then, when I got out of the bathroom, slews of horny and sex-deprived men would come up to me and ask, “Oh, Madam, you are very big awesome. Have you made the sex? Would you like to make the sex with me?” To which I would reply, “No.” So India was super interesting, a little hard, but lucky for me, I had my loyal and supportive pen pal Generic to get me through it.

Half Dead in Bangalore
Photo by the Stunning and Exceptional Photographer, Maansi Jain

Generic especially nailed his pen pal duties this one time when I was in Bangalore. I had gone to the latest movie Star Wars with some friends from the youth hostel. After about eleven minutes, I had to leave and projectile vomit into a garbage can. Twice.

I remember nauseously Ubering back to the hostel all by myself. By some miracle, Generic was available. I messaged him on Facebook chat, mourning and wailing that I might be dying and wanted to go home except I didn't really have one. .

Generic’s response was so perfect and comforting.

“Oh Erica,” he said. “Take heart. I’m waving my virtual Erica Flag for you.”

And you would think that this would not be so helpful. Generic’s in Montreal, waving not-a-flag for me, as I puke across the world in a garbage can in Bangalore. But astonishingly, it was a little bit helpful.

Even so, I decided that when I came back to Montreal, the whole thing needed to end. I mean, we hadn’t had sex in four and half months, he had a wife and kids, most of the love was probably in my imagination and I was convinced that once I saw him in person, it would be over. So we arranged to meet on the monkey bars, and I was all ready to can it.

And then, we made out.

And despite thirteen and half more attempts to can it, the ex’s and oh’s, and the emails and the haikus and even the occasional leg hump went on and on and on. Until suddenly it’s the end of the summer and I really don’t like myself that much.

I came to the decision that I needed to resort to drastic measures. The drastic measures were, The Magical Rock Vagina Cleanse.

Pretty much nobody knows what that is, so let me explain.

The Magical Rock is black, it’s called an Onyx, and you can buy it for about three bucks. I bought mine at the Mont-Royal sidewalk sale. What you do is while you are menstruating, you put the rock in your underwear – not your vagina, that’s where the diva cup goes. And as you menstruate, the magical rock is supposed to absorb and dispel all of your vagina’s trauma and disappointment and wounds (and/or ingrown hair issues and yeast infections, etc…). I was hoping the rock would also absolve and relieve my tendency to make pretty inappropriate and inconvenient sexual choices. And then there was one other thing I wanted, which the SNAGS are always going on and on about. It’s called Radical Self-Reliance. Immensely inspiring, Radically Self-Reliant people wake up in the morning, they have a shower, perhaps they even go to work or something like this, and somehow, they don’t need a Vegan Life Coach or a Generic Married Man or a Boatman or whoever to send them encouraging produce emoticons to affirm what they had for lunch.

I was thirty years old and I wanted Radical Self-Reliance.

My first step was, I put the rock into a jar of salt water. This was supposed to purify things.

Next, I composed my last brilliant epistle to the Generic Married Man. The subject line read, “Attachment Wounds.”

Poor Generic wrote back mourning and wailing about some terrifying dream he kept having where his wife and his children are up in a skyscraper, and the skyscraper is burning down, and Generic is stuck on the sidewalk and his legs are so tired and heavy and weak because he has no time to work out since he’s so ridiculously crazy busy, and he tries to climb and he can’t, but even if he could, the building is burning down way too fast, and no matter what he does everything is going to disintegrate and perish. And then Generic wakes up and he’s all alone sweating and screaming silently on his own side of the bed.

With mild sympathy I offered Generic a virtual flag, mentioned that he could maybe text me some eggplants on my birthday, but right now I really needed to focus on me and my rock and my vagina.

Very spiritually, as though my vagina knew what needed to happen, I started to menstruate, right in sync with the New Moon.  And thus began Day One of the Magical Rock Vagina Cleanse.

On Day Two, I got in the car with my tiny mother and my darling grandparents who were both around ninety years old, and the very best people of life. We drove to Algonquin Park where my beautiful and perfect and exquisite cousin, a medical doctor, was getting married at a summer camp.

I sat in the backseat next to my grandmother. I shoved black licorice in my mouth, as the black rock sat beneath my crotch absorbing trauma and disappointment. To enhance our minds, my grandmother read us a National Geographic article called, “When Sex is Shocking.” It was about a bug.

We got to the summer camp where my cousin introduced me to her beautiful and perfect fiancé. They had about a hundred perfect twenty-eight-year old friends who all had magnificent careers and had been in beautiful and perfect relationships since kindergarten or at least high school. I made some small talk about tie-dyed onesies, bug sex, and cleaning out other people’s refrigerators.

The next day, to prepare everyone for the wedding, I was scheduled to teach a yoga class to all these beautiful people who were also rather athletic. And I realized that, I absolutely did not want the magical black rock to fall out of my underwear. Like this just couldn’t happen.

The other thing was that all the trauma and disappointment was starting to make the rock smell crotchy.

So I came to the conclusion that you know what, the hell with this. The hell with Radical Self Reliance. The hell with Magical Rock Vagina Cleanses. I was canning it. For once, I was able to can something relatively promptly. I took the rock out of my underwear, rinsed off the trauma and disappointment and stuck the onyx in my purse.

The yoga class turned out to be brilliant, the wedding was spectacular and before we knew it, we were all sitting at the dinner table and suddenly I was little bit drunk.

There was one of those fun and exciting happy wedding games where you have to do something to get the bride and groom to make out. At this wedding, every table was supposed to write a limerick. In my drunken charm, I decided that limericks were dumb and generic and that we should write a haiku about the magical rock in my purse. To my great fortune, no one at my table objected and I wrote my first haiku since canning my “relationship” with the Generic Married Man. I presented the haiku to my stunning cousin and her new husband. As a bonus, I handed over the magical black rock. Whether or not they decided to keep it remains a mystery, but my best guess is that the Magical Black Rock is now somewhere in Vancouver.

After the wedding I went to go hang out in Toronto. And I thought, you know, yah I bailed on the Magical Black Rock Cleanse, but maybe I have managed to acquire a little bit of Radical Self- Reliance. You never know.

As fate would have it, Toronto is an excellent place for resetting your vagina. You don’t need a magical black rock, and you don’t need radical self-reliance. The hell with it. In twelve hours, I got to hump two people’s legs. This was more action than I got from the Generic Married Man in like six months. It was spectacular. Loved it.

The most persistent temporary source of sexual gratification was this sad, successful and horny actor – he was a little bit older than me, pretty cute, funny, also super depressed. The sad, successful and horny actor was struggling with a whole slew of physical, emotional and psychological problems. He definitely had the deep and beautiful and impossible wounds going on, not to mention an extremely weird dog. Weirdest dog I’ve ever seen. I called the sad, successful, horny actor, Dead Inside Man. D-I-M. Dim. 

DIM's weird dog

Dim has been going to therapy twice a week for twenty-seven and half years. He just discovered his inner child and so he spends a great deal of time lying on the couch and soothing his inner child. And every once in a while he lets me hump his leg which is very fun. After the leg hump, I ask him how he’s doing

Mostly Dim says, “I feel so sad and tired and broken.”

“There, there,” I reply, patting his head. And I offer consolation with a special imaginary flag. Eventually, Dim lets me hump his leg again, and it’s wonderful. One time after a nice leg hump, Dim gives me a nice speech.

“You know, Erica,” he says. “You’re lovely. You’re amazing. But… I just really don’t want to get too attached to you. You know?”

“Oh you too? How interesting! But that’s okay,” I say quickly. “That’s perfect. You are exactly what I'm looking for.”

Dead Inside Man is so neurotic that for him to drive four and half hours to see me would be this massive ordeal, and mostly unrealistic. Plus he has that really weird dog. So pretty much we’re confined to being pen pals. But Dim does think I’m spectacular and this brings me great comfort.

Every night, I’ve trained Dim to text me, “E-x, o-h, e-x, o-h.”

For now, Dim is a little too dead inside for eggplants, but maybe we can work on it.

The End.

Ex, Oh.
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Soul Fucking
Not That Kind of Girl
Mythological Unconditional Love

 

We have no idea if the squirrels are happy. Or / if anyone is.

Human supremacy is
assuming the squirrels are happy.

We have no idea

if the squirrels are

having a good time,

or

if anyone is.

Sometimes I struggle

to find an outfit

that matches  the day.

So far

my best option

smells like the thrift store.

Now that I’m going off Prozac,

I think someone else

might have to

take out
the recycling.

Hormone curation,

myoclonic jerks.

These seem fewer,

but I feel more inclined

to be grumpy.

When I get old,

I hope there is time

to watch the squirrels

carry bagels

across telephone wires.

 

Telephone wires,

and clotheslines,

though by then all the telephone wires

will be buried underground.  

Who knows what will happen to the clotheslines.

 

Time for the squirrels,

and a window.

And jigsaw puzzles.

 

I will not die of loneliness,

but this may seem surprising.

We have no idea

if the squirrels are happy.

Or

if anyone is.

The End.

This outfit matches the day
better than the others.
It does not smell
like the thrift store.


Exuberant Bodhisattva on Facebook
Twitter: @mypelvicfloor
I Let Go

Bodhisattva Business Ventures:

Deep Cleans by Erica J. Schmidt (@deepcleanswitherica)
Montreal Hippie Threads (@mtlhippiethreads)
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First no boundaries on the Internet. Then Psychotic Break.
This was my calling on the corner of Rue Boucher and Rue Drolet just around yesterday's sunset on Friday, March 17
Rumplestiltskin


Five Days of Creative Recovery