My Very Own Strip Club

Last weekend, a couple of guy friends and I went to the local strip club to say hi to a cocktail waitress friend who works there. She's one of those hipster girls with dyed black hair and bangs. I think she's rad. I think she thinks I'm a girly priss. Anyhow. On the drive there, Guy Friend #1 asked what I would name a strip club, were I to own and operate one.

I decided on Vagina. Guy Friend #2 improves on the name by adding an exclamation point, so now it's Vagina!, which is just that much better. And we start expounding on the idea, deciding that the girls will, rather than just strip and hold out their g-string straps for dollar bills, do things like splash around in kiddie pools with each other. Maybe just have a quick pillow fight on stage. 'Cause what grosses me out about strip clubs isn't the nudity, the appreciation of that nudity, or the pole dances (which are really pretty hot). It's that it's all the same. Well, that and the old guys that come in alone, get a huge boner and then try and touch the dancers when the bouncers aren't looking. Ew.

If anyone would like to finance our idea, please let me know. Well, I guess someone would have to start reading this blog first. Okay, if anyone is actually reading this blog, let me know. We'll work out the finances later.

I am the Master.

At long last, I have perfected the art of drinking. Back in college I was a mess. A total amature. I had two levels to my binging: sober and throwing up/going straight to bed. It served me well. While all my friends were doing stupid things like making out (perhaps even going home with) with The Lame Guy at the party, I was over calling a cab so that I could go back to my apartment, throw up, maybe eat some toast and go to sleep. It would be about the third drink and I would just turn a corner and be like: Okay, it's time. I am now drunk and have to call a cab, quickly.

Now, at age 26, I'm turning pro. With the exception of last weekend, when a friend's birthday party was an excuse to get hammered (with the presence of the ex and a dance floor adding fuel to the fire -- too bad he doesn't dance, we could have had some Britney/Justin Danceoff thing instead of just strained conversation), I'm getting way better at this. This is not, like, the best achievement in my life (which is teaching myself how to glue holes in my sweaters back together), but it's nice to know I can ride a buzz for a few hours, eat some food and go to bed. No throwing up necessary. No hangovers, either.

The secret is the Model Walk. When you start doing the Model Walk, it is time to stop drinking. This is the best the buzz will get. You're pretty sure that you're the hottest thing in the room, on your way to the bathroom with your bad self, swinging your hips in time to the music, all the guys going, Woah, who's THAT girl? And if you have even one more drink on top of that, your Model Walk will get all stumbly and that will not be hot at all.

I even have a favorite Model Walk bar now. It's a dive, but they have TV on the Radio on the jukebox, and a really long walk to the bathroom. No stairs, no corners, nothing to mess up your stride. Just the pool tables on one side, the bar on the other, and my bad self and my bad self's best friends on our way to the bathroom.

Slow Down, Lady

Twice this week, I've been tailgated pretty ruthlessly. I usually drive about 5 miles over the speed limit, but in a college town it's not that weird to have someone attach themselves to your bumper on a regular basis.

But these two drivers (non-related, though both in Cadillacish vehicles) were OLD. Like that woman with the big hairdo from Ferris Bueller old. They should have been creeping along at 7 MPH in a 45 with everyone cursing them silently from behind, but oh no. Not these two. On my butt the whole way, screeching to a halt behind me at stop signs.

Which was kind of cool, and sort of scary. Is this what we face as a Viagra-induced nation?

And so...

I'm at work right now, quietly picking all the almonds and M&M's out of the office trail mix jar. I would feel worse about it if I didn't know that there's a colleague who takes all the peanuts and raisins. I'm just evening things out.

Last night I went to hear the artist Enrique Martinez Celaya speak on his work, which includes paintings, poetry and photography, all of it quite lovely. He was compared to Paul Celan in the intro, which I thought was interesting, as Celaya spoke a lot having to forgive oneself for being an artist in order to get at the "true art", which is self-contained. Celan basically wrote despite the guilt, and, tortured by the holocaust and perhaps an inability to forgive himself for "beautifying" his experiences through writing on them, committed suicide.

It was great to hear Celaya speak -- he was irreverent, funny, stubborn and very intelligent. I liked his ideas on activism vs. art. I think he was trying to get at the fact that painting and photography will never make that much of an impact with so many other forms of influence (television, movies) around, and so it is the responsibility of the artist to get out in the community and make change happen.

That is, in part, why I want to be an art therapist. Because art really is a selfish process, but in the best way. If other people like what you're doing, if it's well made and aesthetically pleasing and fits nicely into what people expect to pay thousands of dollars for, great. But there's always the artist's responsibility to keep it pure for him or herself, whatever that means. For me it's the self-exploration of the process of art, which I constantly battle with. I would love to have everyone love what I do. But I would also like to let go of that and just see where my art can go as a challenge to myself. That's also why I want to work with kids. I think they'll be way better at this stuff than I am.

For Pops.

When I was about twelve, I became a sullen, bratty know-it-all. Thought my friends and I were just soooo cool, and acted like I hated my parents all the time. It pissed my dad off. He hadn't done anything to deserve it.

One summer evening, a bunch of friends and I were heading to my house after a movie. We had reached the edge of the front walk when a loud barking started from the upstairs window.

There was a moment of quiet before someone commented: "Woah, cool! Ester, you got a dog!"

And I'm thinking, No, we didn't. My parents have at least 6 more months of relentless begging from my brother and I before they'll cave.

And then it struck me.

I hung my head in shame -- morbid, awful, teenage angst-ridden shame -- and turned to meet my friend's curious faces. "No," I said. "It's my dad. Barking."

I stood there in utter humiliation as my friends stared at me in a sort of pity vs. ohmygoddwehavetosleepHEREtonight? kind of way. And then they started cracking up. And somewhere, deep down, my shame kicked into something else. A little belly spark of something that felt sort of good. Woah -- my dad was trying to piss me off back. And in a super-weird way. In a way that would forever put me at the top of the list for Most Mortifying Parents (a very prestigious title.) He cared that I was home late and was letting me know it.

All our fathers at the time were working too much, maybe in the middle of a divorce, mostly ignoring their suddenly obnoxious daughters. Not mine. He cared enough to bark.

I miss you, Dad. I miss you getting me back when I was acting all high & mighty. Thanks for my sense of humor. And all the good stories. My friends still bring that one up. But I bring it up more.

Another anniversary...

September 11th. In this liberal Western city, the anniversary mostly brings up anger or passivity. We're too far from New York to really feel the sting 3 years later. We're too wrapped up in the politics to feel the raw emotion of the event anymore.

But it's a hard day for me. A hard week. A hard month.

My father died in a fishing accident on September 13, 1996. I was 17 then. My brother was twelve. Two days before the 5th anniversary of my father's death, my then boyfriend and I were living in Oakland, California, getting ready to commute to our jobs in San Francisco. He was in the shower, and I flipped on the Today show just after the first plane had hit. I remember the surprise, then the vibrant pain, of watching the tragedy unfold. We sat dumbstruck in front of the television for hours.

The New York Times had an article this morning on the kids whose parents died on September 11th. I wept my way through it. They're growing up, getting through it. But still aware of how different their lives are from their peers.

From the article:

"Leaving home isn't just about leaving home, it's about leaving their mother who was left by their father," said Dr. Cloitre. "Every teenager goes through a difficult period when they first fall in love and lose that love, but what is it going to be like for someone who has lost a parent? They know the worst that can happen when you lose someone."

I don't pretend to understand what these kids went through. Their grief was shared, exploited and then replayed for them a hundred thousand times. I don't have to fear news reports or feel anger that what killed my father has been analyzed, politicized and marketed all over the world.

But I know what it's like to wake up in the middle of the night feeling lost and lonely, and wanting absolutely nothing more than to be held by my father again.

So, to those kids: I'm thinking about you. Hoping that you're okay.

Where I am when it is Now

Okay. Random thoughts and feeling happier than I have in some time.

Some background into my life, for the one lone reader who may stumble across this page:

I am doing my last pre-requisite classes before graduate school; going back for psychology with an emphasis in art therapy. My undergrad was in creative writing. That just led to a crappy high-tech PR job for 3 years.

Today, after a long lecture on the current version of the DSM, I started to wonder whether all this new biopsych research coming out will totally disband creative therapies. I mean, I'm no new-agey type. Windchimes freak me out. But are we moving so fast towards science that we're forgetting how important art, writing, all that stuff, is? Creativity is self-forgiveness, is the unconscious, is so lovely. Drugs are fine. Science is cool. But it's all too generalized, too quickly prescribed. And a biopsych perspective alone can lend to the scary notion that we're powerless to ourselves -- our brains just leading us along a bumpy road of emotion via random synapses firing.

Like we're all our own brain-in-a-vat theory.

I mean, yes, that's exactly what's happening, sort of. But we're still active in our choices. We're still the ones scarfing down McDonalds on our way to work and wondering why we're all depressed. You know?

Anyway. There's grad school on the horizon. There's the current non-profit job in addition to my psych and painting classes. All of this keeps me quite busy.

And then there's the fact that Madonna has chosen the Kaballah name Esther.

Now, I am a little possessive about my name. You have to be, when your childhood is continually tainted by the fact that ALL of your classmates have a grandmother (usually the crabby one who smells like cats) with the same moniker. I learned to accept it, even think it was pretty cool, by about age 14. And now Madonna wants it. Fine. But let me just give my quick opinion on the matter:

Dear Madonna,

Okay, so Kaballah is hip, mostly because of your name being attached to it. And I will say that I'm happier that you, not Demi, adopted Esther. Because I, like most, worshipped you throughout my formative years. Oh, my god. I still love La Isla Bonita. And that was a TERRIBLE song.

But here's the thing. You're not Jewish. You didn't have to go through Hebrew school for, like, 82 years. And even if it was kind of awesome because mostly we just flirted and ate a lot, we still had to recite prayers and learn Hebrew and listen to an archaic Rabbi and feel a lot of guilt and visit distant relatives in New York who talked really loudly about people by their full names in crowded restaurants and were really pissed that we didn't want a Bar Mitzvah because we were twelve years old and didn't even believe in God. We believed in you, Madonna.

And maybe you're way into this Kaballah stuff. Cool. But I still had to endure years of ridicule about being the Jewish kid. So, here's what I propose. You convert, not just to the red bracelet, but to the whole Jew bit, including Hebrew school, the relatives, and the thick hair that will never, ever, be blond enough, straight enough or fine enough to do one of those cute pop-40 haircuts, and you get the name with my blessings. Thanks.

Love,
Ester