Hot Chick With Douchebag

Self-portrait inspired, obviously, by this site.

Hey, speaking of sites, the book's website is up. Video, too.

When you look at a guy, what is it about him that makes you picture the two of you fucking or maybe getting married or makes you wonder if he’d hold your hair back when you threw up?

What, instead, makes you cringe at the thought of his hot breath on your skin, his sweaty hands leaving damp trails on your silk dress, a strand of his hair on your pillow, robbing you of sleep as it finds its way into your mouth?

Is it the color of his eyes or his skin? Is it his choice of shirt or tie or shoes? Is it his voice? Is it the way his fingers drum on his laptop, or does that make you want to scream? Is it the newspaper he reads – The Post versus The Wall Street Journal versus The Times? Is it the way he won’t laugh at his friend’s racist joke, that he knows all the words to Willie Nelson’s 2,500 songs or knowing he thanked the counter girl when she handed him his cappuccino?

If he’s wearing a wedding band, does your head fill with images of commitment, love, passion enough to swear ‘til death do you part? Does it restore your faith? Your hope?

Or, instead, do you wonder how quickly you can get him in your bed, twirl that ring on his finger and see if his skin is a paler shade beneath it? Do you imagine doing things to him his wife won’t? Enjoying his moans? Do you believe him when he tells you she doesn’t understand him or, instead, do you think to yourself, no shit, motherfucker, you’re male, no woman understands you?

When he suddenly moves his hand upward and turns it slightly toward the edge of his Tom Clancy novel, do you wonder if he’s intentionally showing you the circle of gold on his left ring finger because he noticed your green eyes tracing figure eights from his crotch to the waistband of his Levi’s to his Adam’s Apple, maybe making a quick forage to his pouty bottom lip as you wonder if he’d like you to bite it?

You look away. You’re not a husband stealer.

The guy across the aisle with the short graying hair and John Lennon frames – the one who keeps eyeing the hemline of your skirt as it creeps up your thigh, roams to your pedicure, wonders if you’d like your toes sucked. He’s married. But he’s looking. Just looking. He’d never cheat. He turns away as soon as your gaze meets his. He won’t actually flirt with you, won’t make eye contact, but takes furtive glances at your nose, your cheekbones, your breasts, your ass when you walk up the aisle to stand by the door because yours is the next stop.

You get off the train.

He closes his eyes and wonders what his wife will make for dinner. He hopes it’s not chicken.

Going Around In Circles

Self-Portrait - Kaleidoscope Series

I am honored to have been interviewed by McCabe for her Warrior Interviews. Thank you, McCabe!

Skotchdopled's website is coming soon. I know, I keep saying that...but really!

Heads up - if you register a domain, but plan to host it somewhere else, you have to wait 60 days to transfer it to your new registrar - and then, after you initiate the transfer, you have to wait many days more for the change to occur. I did not know this until now, hence why the website, though all built and ready to go, is STILL not up.

Although the website is not yet up, you can see a video for the book here.

If you'd like, you can now pre-order my book (autographed and sent to you with a special surprise) in my etsy shop.

Thanks!

Sometimes, I Have Nothing To Say

Sneak peek from the book. Website coming soon!

Progress...

A proof copy of my wee book and my very messy desk because I am a slob!

Hi y'all:

Thank you very, very much for all your supportive and generously kind emails. I am overwhelmed by the response. I so appreciate you!

If you are on Facebook, you can join the fan page to keep up to date on when it's being released. I'm also on Twitter.

Website is coming soon!

Thank you, my pretties!

OXO

Allison

Story Time: Stepping Stones

Self-portrait created for the mermaid known as McCabe, who surprise-gifted me with her hand-painted magic rocks, seen above. Enhanced with brushes from Charfade, Chris10, and Icede. Thanks, y'all!

She had rules and not knowing his name was one of them. Not telling him hers was another. No exchange of phone numbers, email addresses, life histories. When the night was over, it was over.

The heavy hotel curtains should have kept the room weighted in darkness, but they were not fully closed and in the morning a pattern of light on her face woke her before the alarm. He was still sleeping, curled, his knees tucked behind hers, his arm around her. His scent was heavier now. She was steeped in it. She knew she would not shower him away until she arrived home.

She got up to wash her face, brush her teeth. He moaned a little, like her son did when she untangled the blankets from his legs and tucked them neatly beneath him while he slept.

“Don’t get up,” this boy-man whispered.

She laughed. “Stop,” she told him. “You need to get up, too. You need to leave when I do.”

When she returned from the bathroom, he was still in bed. She sat on the low dresser. “What’s up?” she asked.

“Come lay down with me,” his pillow lips purred and she turned cold.

“Get up,” she said and began to pack her suitcase. “Get up, get up, get up.”

He did, then, without looking at her. She heard him in the bathroom, peeing, brushing his teeth; he must have used her toothbrush.

She hated this part, when they became human.

They soon left the hotel.

They hugged goodbye and he pulled her to him tightly, nearly smothering her in the smoky leather of his jacket. She considered taking his email address, his phone number. She considered licking his neck. She considered seeing him again. She considered leaving her husband.

Instead, she breathed him in deep and pushed him away. She hailed a cab to the airport. He helped her and her bag in. She pulled the door closed. The cab drove away and she didn’t look back. She closed her eyes as his smell from her saturated skin filled the cab.

She wished she’d told him her name.

Story Time: Collision

Handy Dandy

She’s in the street and it is hushed.

The dog downstairs,
who doesn’t bark
but moans,
(and when he moans,
she moans,
then laughs),
that dog,
is silent now.

She’s in the street and it is midnight,
or maybe one a.m.,
or three.
The moon is not high,
or picturesque.
There are no stars,
dragon, pirate ship or sand castle clouds.
The sky
just is.

She’s in the street and she is barefoot.
She is not luminescent,
there is no moonlight.
She is not shrouded in pale gauze,
her hair not blown back
in ripples,
like the martyr on a Harlequin.

She’s in the street and she is cold.
Her teeth do not chatter.
She does not rub her arms
to warm them, or
breathe into cupped hands
to comfort.
She cannot be allayed.

She’s lying in the street,
on her back, arms splayed.
She’s playing dead,
or seriously injured,
or passed out,
or something is amiss,
or help! Call an ambulance!

She is luringly deficient,
spread across the pavement,
yearning.

She does not believe in heroes.

Story Time - Half My Heart Lives In Your Body

Self-portrait, using a scan of a heart from my collection of vintage medical illustrations.

We got milk shakes, yours chocolate, mine vanilla, then we walked through the park to our green bench.

You drank yours and most of mine and, like every Saturday, you said, you never finish yours, and I said, it's too much.

You laid down, your head in my lap. I traced your cheekbones with my fingertips, counted your freckles, kissed your eyelids, told you, yet again, that you have three different colors in your scruff...red, black and gray. The grays are my favorite. You're so much more handsome now, I tell you, again, because you no longer look like a little boy.

And you say, but sometimes I feel like your little boy. I think so, too, like when I wash you in the shower and you close your eyes, and your face is so peaceful, I wonder if you've fallen asleep.

So, we were on our bench, singing Paul McCartney lyrics, you one line, me the next, and we laughed so hard, but now I can’t remember which song was making us so silly that the tears leaked from your eyes and I licked them away.

There was a wee squirrel in the tree above us, making a shadow that jumped from your head to your stomach, back up to your head. Follow the bouncing ball. The squirrel was chattering. It made me happy. I love squirrels.

And you said, “I love you so much. You’re so cute. Like a little girl', and you gazed at me with the same expression I’d seen before, when you look at your son....this curious wonder, as if you were thinking, does this little person really belong to me, then answering yourself, yes, this little person DOES really belong to me.

Belong to?

I fight with that. This sense of possession, this sense of ownership, you feel for me.

If I didn’t feel it for you, too, I’d tell you to go away.

Story Time - Underneath It All

Self-portrait

Before I could sit
I’d have to wipe
his dried urine
from the seat
with a wad of dampened tissue.

Did he pee sitting down,
as I’d taught my brother to do,
mirroring me,
since I knew no better?

Did he purposely pee on the seat
to prove he could no longer
take good care of himself?

Was I supposed to think
of him as a handsome old chap,
whose mind and aim
were both a bit wonky?

I sat,
the seat sticky
beneath my thighs,
picked up his vial
of Nitrostat,
(exactly as tall as my
thumb is long
from tip to first joint),
within reach
on the vanity top.

Did he leave them there
for me to see,
to prompt my wonder,
did he need to take these today?
will he be with me much longer?

You’re going to hell, he said.
I don’t believe in hell, I told him.
Just because you don’t believe,
he said,
doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

My wife, he said
would not have come to your
heathen wedding.

Do you even realize, I asked,
how fucked up
the shit that spews from your mouth is?

He does.

My mother, he said,
is a bitch.

Coming from you, I said,
I’d have to believe it.

Here, he said,
handing me another
religious tract.

Let me preface, he said,
with the fact
that I am
not
saying
I advocate beating
your wife,
but if a guy messes up
one time
maybe two,
what’s the big deal?
Jesus would forgive him.

Jesus, I mocked, is bigger than me.

Bigger than all of us,
he said,
eyes down,
so smug, so pious.

When he went to the
kitchen
for more of
Christ’s blood,
I tossed
into the fire
the small white statue
of his so-called
Blessed Mother.

I poked her to the bottom,
smearing her
irenic face,
void of irises,
with ash.

It wasn’t even Wednesday.

When I heard her shatter,
we were eating our supper.

What, he asked, was that.

I don’t know, I said.

Maybe the voice of God?

Saloon

Self-portrait

The dog barked.

Outside our window, two drunks,
Screaming.
Something about fucking a red-head,
And one more shot.
Shot, as in gun?
Or,Shot, as in, 'Nother round, barkeep!

We didn't know.

They stood near our driveway.
The dog kept barking.
Shut the fuck up, dog, they screamed.
He barked more.

I said, Let's go outside
And bust some heads!
He said, Cut it out, tough guy,
And kissed my forehead.

So we watched from the window
Instead.

One drunk fell in the middle of the street.
He didn’t move for a long while.
The other laughed, unzipped his pants and
Reached in.
I do not want to see this, I said,
Turning away from the window.

He laughed.
Don't look, he said.
He told me the one drunk was
Peeing
On the other drunk.

Right in front of our house.

It got very quiet.
Finally, he said they're leaving.
We watched them walk up the street
And turn the corner.

Story Time - It's Very Quiet In Here

Self-portrait

So, Mark used the key he’d told her he’d lost to enter her apartment and the pictures were right there on the side table, of him, this person he’d never seen before and he thought, who is this?

He took the photos into his hand; there were three. He walked down the long hallway to the living room and he put down his things. His backpack, his burgundy shirt, his book on human anatomy, his battered Walkman. He sat in one of her chairs, the one the cats had made stringy at the edges. He held the pictures a long time before looking at them.

It was Mark's scent Catherine didn’t like. It was damp, yet dry. The scent of the bones of long-dead poets in mildewed boxes. The air in his house felt gritty on her teeth and he carried that scent on his skin, in his breath. If she were near him, even if she didn’t touch him (You never put your arms around me, he’d told her more than once), his smell became hers.

There was a woman at her job who had that same smell. She had Broom Hilda hair and walked leaning slightly left and the odor arrived before she did.

Catherine was afraid to smell like that, and she knew if she stayed with Mark any longer, she’d never be able to get the smell off, the way he couldn’t. She told him, once, that she thought his house smelled funny and he’d sniffed thoughtfully and said, “I don’t smell anything. You’re crazy,” and then he’d moved to hug her and she let him but didn’t return his affection. He was a patter. She disliked patters.

So, Mark sat in her chair and finally looked at the pictures of this mystery man with blue/gold eyes and dark, dark hair and skin that suggested he’d spent a lot of time on a mountain top; though the photographs were all taken indoors – one at a bar, a glass of something in his hand; scotch, Mark thought. He didn’t look drunk but he did look foggy. The second showed him with a blond child on his lap, a nephew perhaps, a friend’s child, certainly not his own as he seemed confused about where to hold the child, fearful he might break him. The third photo showed him in bed, on his back, beneath white sheets, head tilted towards the camera, looking content, his right arm bent above his head. He’d never seen white sheets at Catherine’s place, and found it distasteful she’d have this photo of what he assumed must be her new lover, in someone else’s bed looking so…satisfied. He hadn’t considered the man may have been in his own bed and that Catherine’s own camera had captured him.

Catherine never liked how Mark would lay on the bed in clothes he’d worn all day. “Can you get undressed please,” she’d ask. “No,” he’d say. “I’m tired. I’ll get up soon.” But he wouldn’t, and all night he’d sleep in those clothes and she’d scoot over as far as she could to the other side of the bed but he’d find her in the night and throw his arm over her and kiss her forehead and she’d have to talk herself out of getting sick. In the morning he’d go downstairs to feed the dog, still wearing those clothes.

Mark stood and went into the bathroom. The toilet seat was up. He went to the sink and noticed his purple toothbrush was missing and in its place was a black one with various colored bristles poking out all disorganized, one of those plaque fighter brushes he felt were superfluous. There was minty floss in the medicine cabinet and he preferred unflavored.

OK, he thought, so this man has marked his territory and she’s gotten over me right quick. She was his best friend, though. He’d told her this many times. She’d never replied, “You’re my best friend, too,” she’d just say, “Thank you,” and he’d feel flat but it didn’t change what he felt. She really was his best friend.

He held her apartment key so tightly its shape was pressed into his skin. Do Not Duplicate, it now read on his palm. He waited in his best friend’s apartment for her to get home and explain.