Tag Archives: childhood

A Roasted Chicken Kinda Day

Some days — grey-sky, nothin’-doin’ kinda Sundays (or stat Mondays) — are made for puttering around the home, listening to some podcasts, cleaning, cooking. And those are the days made for roasting chicken. Thank you, cosmos.
Got me a fatty of a bird I’m gonna roast up soon. Tuck some sundried tomato & basil butter under the skin, roast it on a bed of celery, carrots, leek, and all kinda onions. Puree most of ‘em after for the most veggie-licious gravy ever. That, a little stock, some pretentious jelly for flavour. Boom. So good.
I will miss days like this when I’m abroad, but I know I’ll also do an amazing job of making a “new version” of this. I picture myself on a rainstormy day finding a way to make comfort food that smacks of home. I’m bringing maple syrup with me, bitches. The Quebec stuff. Real deal. Oh, yeah.
Food is an emotional thing. Just like roasted chicken, things like Yorkshire pudding evoke my childhood. Pouding chomeur takes me right back to being 8 and standing on a chair to look in the oven at the carmelly-mapley Quebecois version of a sticky toffee pudding baking on Sunday nights.
I can’t buy that memory anywhere else. Same thing with the roasted chickens, stews, breads, all those smells I remember from my childhood kitchen. My mom and dad weren’t the BEST cooks, but they sure put their effort into it and we ate pretty well. And all the muffins you could dream of.
Here’s a story for you. Best.
We went away for a day when we were kids, only to come home and find a ladder against the left-open living room window. The grand theft item? Muffins my mom had made. A couple of the neighbour kids came in, helped themselves. Couple glasses used for milk left on the counter was the big evidence. AHA! My first Sherlockian encounter.
It was the neighbours in the kitchen with a butter knife!

Chicken with all the fats.

Chicken with all the fats.


T & D, trouble-making brothers up the block, were sent over to meekly apologize. I wouldn’t be surprised if they went home with muffins in-hand post-apology too. It was that kind of a neighbourhood.
I’m hoping I luck into reasonably well-stocked kitchens. I’m tempted to bring a silicone muffin tin with me on my travels. (I already have the meat thermometer I’m bringing!) I mean, muffins are serious and there ain’t a storebought muffin in the world I think holds up to a solid home-baked one. Emotional food, indeed.
That will be one of the great aspects to my travels, for me anyhow, is that I want to learn how to do all the cookin’ of what I’m eatin’. I want to be pushy and friendly and get myself invited to family get-togethers. How cool would that be? Politely elbow my way into the kitchen. Watch how it gets done.
And I will just die if I get to go to those big meat-a-paloozas. Grill pits, underground fire pits, brick ovens, over an open flame. Whatever, man. If it involves primal meat cooking in the great outdoors, I will find a way to get there. I will need to connect with serious foodies in every town and not take no for an answer.
I can do this!
But for now, I’m capping this grey day with a roasted bird. It’ll be nice salads and other treats, all week. I’m enjoying cooking these days.
Enjoy the home pleasures while I can, right?
By the way, I’ve got the domain reserved for what will be my travel blog. You can go ahead and bookmark it, and it’ll take you here in the maintime. It’s called The Full Nomad.
“Going full nomad” is gonna be a “thing.” Mark my words!

RANT: They've banned ICE CREAM TRUCK music?

STOP THE PRESSES.
A town here in BC has banned ice cream trucks. Lumped in with all the douchebags who create “Mobile Noise” via blaring music, commercial inducements, and other stupidities, the age-old rite of childhood, The Noble Ice Cream Truck, has been banned from this town of uptight fucks who don’t remember what it was like as an 8-year-old to hear those tinny strains in the distance and go running like a fiend with emptied piggy bank funds jingling in their short pockets, all in a quest to score a Creamsicle.
Sure, there are asshat hot dog vendors and other food trucks trying to whore out their wares with voluminous music, but the ICE CREAM TRUCK?
The ice cream truck is a part of the fabric of my childhood. I remember those moments, profoundly.
Did I get ice cream every time it passed? No, probably one out of 10 times, if that. But when I did, it was blissful. And when I didn’t, it was comforting to know I lived in a world that still had ice cream.
Music has been used for selling ice cream for nearly 90 years. It began, some say, in Britain, where ice cream bikes outfitted with little freezers would have a variety of tinny tunes to attract those around them.
Not hot dog trucks, not popcorn carts, no one else used music for all those years. Not industry-wide, anyhow.
For most of us, there’s something natural about a hot, hot blue sky day with sap dripping off trees, sweat pouring off your face, and heat shimmering on blacktop roads, as the tinny tinkling music of an ice cream truck begins to be heard in the distance. It conjures visions of lemonade in tall glasses, children laughing, and good times had by all. “Don’t sweat it! The ice cream truck is coming! Sweet relief!”
If it makes the residents of (West) Kelowna feel better, I too dislike loud noises, annoying trucks, businesses piping music onto their sidewalks, and more.
But don’t fuck with the ice cream truck. Don’t mess with my nostalgia.
If there’s any one business that deserves to have their music rights grandfathered in, it’s the ice cream truck.
I’m allergic to ice cream these days, and it’s a once-or-twice-a-year thing, and I’ll probably never even eat at an ice cream truck again, but I hope I never, ever stop hearing them.
In fact, last week, when I heard my first one tinkling down the streets of my new city and new neighbourhood, I giggled and turned off the TV just to enjoy the music.
That’s not noise pollution. That’s a Band-aid for my jaded soul.
I’ll never be moving to West Kelowna, I guess. A world without ice cream trucks is a world that’s just a little too cold for me.

Remembering Funny

I’m catching my breath after the two-part Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour episode with Tallulah Bankhead. I laughed and laughed and laughed.
It was the 100th anniversary of Lucille Ball’s birth this weekend, teaching me something I previously didn’t know — my mother died on Lucille Ball’s birthday. Kind of weird. Mom loved Lucy.
The top three shows for my mother — I Love Lucy, Columbo, and the Carol Burnett Show. All three were funny as hell, I thought. Peter Falk really had great comedic timing in a subtle way.
So, Saturday was the 12th anniversary of Mom’s death. People tell you that loss never really stops. Well, it doesn’t. The hurt kind of even hurts more now, sometimes, because I realize now how long forever really seems to be. It was a different kind of hurt this weekend, since I’ve been down with a cold and stuck watching re-runs half a century old on a hot August weekend.
I don’t remember if my mother was very funny. I don’t think she was. Just the average kind of funny. She sure knew what funny was, though. I grew up with I Love Lucy, Carol Burnett, the Apple Dumpling Gang, and classic slapstick kind of humour like that. Dad introduced us to Porky’s and Porky’s Revenge, so, you know, we got a little balance there. Both Dad and Mom were fans of MASH and Three’s Company, too.
All the other little kids at Catholic school were shocked we were watching that sin-filled Three’s Company. “They live together! There’s s-e-x!”
Still, I don’t think we were a particularly funny household. There weren’t miles and miles of laughs, ever. We weren’t unfunny, either. I think we laughed enough, that’s for sure.
I remember being distinctly unfunny, myself. I couldn’t tell a joke to save my life before the age of 10. I was funny just “being myself,” since I’ve always been an odd one.
My brother, he was a laugh riot sometimes. He’s still very funny but we have differing opinions on some of his methods, since I can find him really irritating… which is fitting, since he’s my big brother.
As a kid, though, I thought he was hysterical. If he wanted a laugh, he got it. He seldom blew the joke’s punchline.
Unfortunately, I didn’t make people laugh much until I got older, into my mid-to-late teens. As a kid, most of my jokes involved me flubbing the timing, blowing the punchline, and receiving a split-second blank stares then confused guffaws. Or, just a swat from my brother, since siblings are allowed to be jerks.
Being funny, that was important to me. It was a life goal. I couldn’t imagine living life without being FUNNY.
Then… I introduced my brother to Saturday Night Live. I was 11.
I remember it being fall of 1984, I’d just turned 11, and I was sleeping on the sofa, sick, while my parents entertained friends. I woke up after a few hours sleep, turned on the television, and am surprised now that I didn’t hear a choir of angels harmonizing as I discovered something that just blew my mind: Saturday Night Live.
As Billy Crystal would have said, it loohked mahvellous. Eddie Murphy was Buckwheat, wookin’ pa nub.
In the next couple years, I’d be getting into SNL and Second City TV and Johnny Carson. And, oh, The Blues Brothers. It was a crash course in Funny. by 14 I was getting my comedic cues from John Hughes movies, too.
Throughout it all Lucille Ball was a constant, so was Carol Burnett. I knew I’d never be slapstick kind of funny the redhead queens mastered, but I wanted to make people laugh.
These days, it’s still something I love to do. If I make a stranger laugh during the day, it’s great. If someone can’t breathe because my timing’s so good when telling a funny story and they’re laughin’ so hard, I’m on top of the world. I don’t look like I’m elated about it, I always have that sorta-surly Irish-girl look, but I’m secretly on top of the world when I get a good laugh.
Once upon a time, I had a nightmare. It was when I was 19, and I was becoming “in with the out crowd” and getting lots of friends, not a lot of whom I could call “close,” but who typically wanted to invite me to parties ‘cos I’d be interesting. So, the nightmare hit one day and I had it a couple times. It went like this:

I’m driving down a treacherous seaside highway in my hatchback, a bunch of friends in different cars behind me, as I lead the pack and our caravan weaves down the coast.
Suddenly, my car careens and I shoot through the embankment, off the road, over the cliff, plunging hundreds of feet to the rocky coast below — my car exploding into a fiery inferno, and me most certainly as dead as can be.
Smash-cut to the top of the cliff where a dozen or more “friends” all stand peering down in not-so-much-abject-horror as “dude, what a bummer” kind of faces.
One friend goes, “Wow. That really sucks.”
Another goes, “Yeah. She was funny.”

It was one of those moments of clarity when I realized I should be careful what I’m wishing for, because “being funny” is a pretty short list of what one should offer. I tried to be more, and began to collect friends who wanted me to be more than just funny, who didn’t see me as interesting filler for the guest list, who saw me as insightful or as having something more to say in life than just the next gag.
So, this weekend, I’d sort of spent time remembering my comedic roots and sometimes thinking of Mom too. No, she wasn’t “funny,” but she was well-rounded and certainly enjoyed laughing. I think she and my dad must have laughed a lot in the early days, to spawn such amusing kids.
I’m glad I was raised with a mix of genres around me — comedy, film, music, theatre, and big fun parties thrown at home. I’m glad I had parents who entertained a lot, because once in a blue moon I did manage to say something amusing, and having a whole room of adults laughing was a gift. Look at me, I’m a funny kid. Don’t you wish your kid was this funny?
In the middle of all these remembrances is a big gaping hole. My mother died at a time I was really seeing her as human — flawed and all — and when I was beginning to teach HER a lot about living life. I wish there could have been more of a full-circle event between us, but that’s cancer for you. It doesn’t tend to take rainchecks. I’m glad she found me funny and enjoyed that about me when she got sick. I’m glad we found the same things funny then, too.
I may be motherless now, but I’ve got some 30+ episodes of I Love Lucy on my PVR, and somehow it’s like I’m back in my childhood. Pretty awash in memories these days.
I’ll worry about Being Funny tomorrow.

A Christmas Candy Story, by Steff

This Christmas, people in my life are getting simple gifts. I’m making candy for most people. Fiscal Frugality is probably wise in my world — and in most worlds.
Look around, right? The economy’s fucked. I could overspend, but I’d rather use my time and efforts and put ME into my gifts than injecting concern into my life. Makes sense.
It’s probably why I’m having so much more fun this Christmas. I can afford what I’m doing. I’m having to do it from my heart, too, because I want the candy to be awesome, not just some phoned-in treat.

Candymaking is all about the temperatures, that controls texture.


Friday, I got to play Santa Steff as I took my first batch of candy around to people. Tonight, I’ll be making another 11-12 pounds of the convection, with a good chunk of it being used for charitable purposes–my small way of giving back to a valued member of Vancouver’s social media community. I figure elbow grease turns into a donation from someone else. The circle of good.
But this isn’t just any candy.
This is the kind of candy that comes with a story.
Isn’t that the BEST kind?
As a kid, my mom always made us this homemade brown sugar candy. She called it “fudge,” so we did, too. Supposedly it’s “brown sugar pralines,” but there ain’t never been a batch that had pecans in it at my house, man.
She died in 1999, and that’s when I learned that it’s not the big posthumous regrets that weigh down your soul — it’s the little shit. Like childhood recipes.
When I realised her death came and I’d never gotten the recipe for brown sugar candy from her, it broke my heart. No one in the family could find it, either. She’d kept it secret.
But then, 10 years later, a friend of mine, ZoeyJane, helped me “purge” my home. I was made to go through all the old papers, sort all my boxes.
Another friend came over and we were goofing off, and I showed him my big purge-find of the day: My 1983 Girl Guides & Brownies Cookbook.
My friend starting flipping through the pages–thwap-thwap-thwap– “CRANBERRY JELL-O MOLD? This is totally 1983! Oh, hey, here’s yours–Brown sugar pralines.”
WHATWHATWHAT? LEMMESEETHATLEMMESEETHAT.
I snatched the flimsy recipe book from him, and lo and behold, there it was. Mom’s candy.
My eyes watered and my heart pounded. There was a piece of my childhood, RIGHT THERE. It DIDN’T die with her.
I was elated. Over the damn moon. I planned to make it soon. I’d need a candy thermometer. Duly NOTED.
A couple days later, I’m walking to work. Looking down on the sidewalk in Yaletown, there’s a candy thermometer in its package–$2.49. A fissure crack made it useless trash, but I picked it up and fell deep into thought as I found a bin to toss it in.
Later that day, I bought one myself.
That Friday, I took a deep breath and set about rekindling a part of my childhood. It was time to make some candy.
Immediately after I pour my first batch into trays to cool, the phone rings. It’s my brother. He’s with my dad. They wanna pop by.
I’d lived here 10 years, then. It was the first time ever they just “popped” by.
So, they came over, happy to know the “fudge” awaited. The candy was made of fail. I didn’t hit the right temperatures. It’s not cooking, it’s alchemy–and I had much to learn. My candy that day turned into a taffy-like chewtoy one could spend hours nom-nom-nomming but never melting down.
But it took us all back to a place that spoke of Monopoly nights with candy and a fire in the hearth, pizza delivery, pajamas and goofing off.
When my folks’ marriage started truly failing, the candy stopped making appearances. It became increasingly rare. Mother always made a double batch and put half away, hording it for herself. She had false teeth. (Obviously.)
In the 16 months since I found that recipe, I’ve really made it my own. I never make it plain as Mom did. Now it’s a vehicle for great flavours. I’ve made it with bacon and whiskey–a small circuit of the American deep-South barbecue circuit speaks of it like a barbecue urban legend, thanks to a friend who bragged about my work in competitions down there. But it’s the peanut butter-vanilla one that’s really popular with friends and family.
This Christmas is a new version and is my favourite. I think Mom would have loved it: Browned butter, toasted walnuts, and Butter Ripple Schnapps. It’s toasted and carmelized goodness that’ll make you understand the value of a good dental plan.
There were a few things I could’ve made to gift this year, with much less work, but my brown sugar candy is closer to my heart than any of ’em.
Don’t ask for the recipe. The Next Generation Cameron will carry it on: Nephew knows now what’s involved in making it. One day, Nephew too will be a Candymaking Ninja. But, for now, the alchemy eludes my little grasshopper.
Mother would be pleased. She’d love knowing her candy made Christmas special in two provinces last year, since I sent it to other family too, but she’d be more thrilled to know she played a part in candy-for-kindness and other Christmas goodness this year. She liked it simple-but-generous, life.
My folks went the extra mile to make Christmas memorable when I was little. One day, I grew up and the season became shrouded in the cynicism that makes stories like A Christmas Carol resonate 170 years on.
This year, being frugal, using my time and energy to make old-fashioned candy, is the first time I’ve really felt seasonal “joy” in a good 15-plus years. There’s something about returning to the simplicity of the traditions.
Being single and childless, that’s more easily accomplished than it’d be for others, but what a fantastic choice I made. I’m so glad.
Well, then… girl’s got some candy to make. Today’s most-epic-batch-ever requires a 20″ whisk, 24-quart stockpot, and a 24×18″ bun roll sheet with 1.5″ high walls. And, you know, 90 minutes of whisking.
Pray for me.
Ho, ho, ho.
If you can’t attend the fundraiser here in Vancouver tomorrow and you’d like to do a random act of kindness to support a couple good folks financially-felled by health crises for months in the past year, here’s a great place to drop five bucks and do just that.

Existential Excavating: What Made Me What I Was

The hardest part of losing weight, I’m finding, is the challenge of identity.
Being fat isn’t just something that happens over the course of a month. Being fat, becoming as fat as I ever got, took me 25 years exactly. 25 years of daily contributing to an obviously ever-growing problem.
From an eight-year-old spending a summer with an unlimited flow of Mountain Dew and Pepsi at my aunt’s for the first time, I began the journey of Becoming Fat. Continue reading →

When We Were Kids: Thoughts on BDSM

Experts will tell you that who we are in life is defined by the age of seven. Our ethics, our play, our work habits, it’s all laid out as part of who we are, and will continue to be, by seven.
There are those who’ve taken this a step further and will tell you also that who you are sexually is defined, as well, by seven. But we often spend our lifetimes trying to make sense of that definition.
Take me, for instance. I’ve been out of the getting-laid world now for a couple of years. After not having had sex for 26 months (but have since) thanks to a totally disappearing libido because of meds I was on, and experiencing the incredible rush of libido-arising all of a sudden after such a long dormancy, I’ve found myself in some very, very new and different headspace.
After not having wanted sex at all, barely ever masturbating for months on end, I’ve suddenly found myself craving a different brand of sex. Something rougher, more primal. Perhaps even a little less democratic. Power plays. Teasing. Even a little pain. Certainly with discipline.
Not that I’ve ever sat around fantasizing about rose petals on the bed, silk sheets, and soft, feathery kisses and all. That’s never been my kind of imagery anyhow. I fantasize about sex on floors, against walls, in public places, getting rugburn, and always have. But this takes things to another level.
And with that comes the reckoning of how much of that is just “Fuck, I need me some” versus evolution of a new kind of desire. Continue reading →

Get to Know Yer Blogger

I feel like telling you random things about me, mostly because I’m too fucking tired to string coherent thoughts together, so “abstract” works spiff for me. And I’m not writing about sex today, so, y’know. Mental break. 🙂
So, in no particular order, some of the things you probably don’t know about me and my life.
• When I was six years old, my family and I were in Tijuana, Mexico, for a day of shopping away from Disneyland. Somehow, I wandered off. My folks thought I’d been kidnapped and sold into slavery or something horrid, because I was gone for a whole three hours.
Then they found me. Much to their surprise, I’d managed to barter with a street vendor for a cowhide cowgirl’s vest, then also a watch, with some of my candy money, and had bought candies and was hanging out with a bunch of Mexican kids on the street, sharing my goods. Me, I had a great time. My folks, though, got robbed of $500 in cash while waiting to talk to the cops in the police station, so they were pretty mad at me. Impressed with my loot, though, and my shrewd six-year-old negotiation skillz, and hugely relieved, they let it go pretty quickly.
I still remember the smile the vendor had, being so amused at me bartering for my cowhide vest, that I loved for the next two years.
• I moved to the Yukon when I was 21 for a year. Because I was a Northern Exposure fan, and because “seeing the Northern lights” was high on my to-do list for life. The first time I ever saw ’em? Blew. My. Mind. Still do, when I luck out and catch ’em every few years.
• I ran the election campaign for a guy in my college who was running for the position of Women’s Issues Liaison. He won. How’s that for being a feminist? (Favourite conversation with him ever: Reaching the conclusion that the old looped “holy shit handles” hanging from the ceiling of his ’71 VW Beetle were “fuck straps”. Good for feet or hands, depending what part of you should be suspended, he figured.)
• I was the youngest person in my college class, 17 years old, journalism. 18 when I ran Mike’s campaign. We made the BC evening news.
• I won a car once. It was a 1979 Chevy Monza. Covered in doghair. Broke down on a bridge. But that’s just the beginning of the long winding story that you’ll find here.
• I have officially ridden so long, and so far on my scooter… (Yamaha Vino 49cc, pictured here, but now has camouflage-duct tape for a seat cover. Heh. I’m a pragmatist.) …that my 41,000+ kilometres is the equivalent of riding around the world at the Equator. Cool! Let’s do it again!
• I’ve fallen down a flight of stairs, have been thrown off a horse mid-jump over a fence, have had a scooter accident… (that hurled me off my bike, destroying mine and my friend’s, and sent me sprawling into an intersection. My friends all thought I was dead. The story is here, on my “journal” blog, The Last Ditch.) …have had three cars totalled with me in them… and I have only one scar on my body, it’s on my right nostril but I got it in grade 2, not in any of those incidents. And I’ve never, ever broken a bone. My body alignment, though, heh, is a whole ‘nother story. But I’m tough!
• I’m a decent public speaker, dare I say even good? And it doesn’t terrify me. Dentists, however, do.
• When I plan my roadtrips, I take special care to figure out where I can be for a great sunrise. I don’t know what it is, but something about driving somewhere new, great music on the radio, and a sunrise looming in an exotic new spot, why, that’s one of the best things in life.
• When I was nine and mad at a boy in my neighbourhood, I took my cowgirl boot off (loooved my cowgirl boots!) and hurled it across the yard at him, and hit him smack in the head. I was so proud. My mother heard me screaming that he was an “ASSHOLE!” and came running out as the boot met head. That went over well.
• The sex fantasy I’ve had since 16 is that of shagging in an anti-gravity chamber (think NASA). I have that filed under “unlikely”. But it’s probably my biggest sex-geek factoid. “Ooh, sex at NASA! Lift off!”
• My dream vacation I want to take when I get some more weight off and really adopt the physical lifestyle I want? Learning to surf in Morocco. Can’t help it, love the idea of a feminist sex-writing chick from Canada learning to surf in an Islamic country. And, Morocco? Ohhh. Oh!
• In keeping with the cowgirl boots and cowhide vest, as I type, to the left above my bed is the caricature/cartoon drawing of me done in Disneyland that summer of my misadventure in Tijuana — me as a six-year-old cowgirl, rodeoing on an electric riding horse.
• I sold Michael Hutchence of INXS a bunch of wooden toys for his kid when I worked on Granville Island. Three weeks later he was found dead of auto-erotic asphyxiation. (Other celebrities I’ve “served” in the retail industry are a pretty insane list, since this is MovieTown — David Duchovny, Tim Robbins, Malcolm McDowell, and way many more. But I’ve never been starstruck, so. Whatever. Malcolm McDowell though? COOL as can be.)
• I had the uncanny luck of totalling one of my cars on a snow day, on a mountain — and was caught on camera by a news cameraman. The story’s probably one of the best things I’ve ever written, about 5,000 words, in two parts, on my journal blog. Part one here, part two here.
• I’m fabulous at throwing dinner parties. But I never throw them anymore. Hmm. Oh, right, got tired of being broke off my ass after feeding everyone all the time. Broke sucks. But if I had the money? I’d be doing it weekly. Love that. Love, love, love. Bistro Chez Steff.
• I kinda always wrote a bit now and then as a kid, but it was because I wanted to be friends with a particular chick in Grade 11 that I joined my first creative writing class. My teacher, upon reading my journals I’d write while working nights in a laundromat, describing the paradoxical characters on a quest for cleanliness, and she encouraged me to start writing, and suggested I look into journalism for school. I blame this blog on her. Ms. Phelan rocks my world, even now, almost 20 years later.

"Mommy, what's a blowjob?"

One of the all-time fave sex conversations I had with my mother transpired when I was about eight years old.
We were watching a video of Steve Martin’s “The Jerk” one day, and there was a joke about a blowjob. Mom howled with laughter, wiping tears from her eyes. She was a sucker for Steve. I didn’t get the joke. I furrowed my little blond brows and turned to scrutinize her.
“Mom, what’s a blowjob?”
“Hmm?”
“A blowjob, what is it?”
“Oh, that’s when a woman sucks on a man’s penis, dear.”
“Ew! Why would she want to do that?”
She shrugged and said, “Ah, you got me, sweetie. You got me.”
This casual dismissal of blowjobs made me think they were insane. “She sucks on his pee-pee?” was the thought running through my head. “How icky. EW.”
She rewound the segment, played the joke again, and this time I giggled, too, with a hint of revulsion.
I was more of a Fudgsicle girl way back when.

I Blame It All On George Michael

Creativity’s an organic process; I know what I want to write for y’all, but I can’t help it if something flicks the switch and something else comes out. This morning, I was sweeping the kitchen, dancing around, listening to cheesy ’80s music, when this posting occurred to me. Remembering some of this fodder made me laugh out loud, and I’ve still got a grin on my face. So, hopefully you find the diversion fun. I’ll deliver on the Vixen thing.
When I was in Grade 4/5, Wham! took the world by storm. As always, I was a latebloomer, and I fell for them in Grade 7. George Michael made me swoon. Those lips, those eyes, and oh, my god, that ass.
I would dance around my pink bedroom with Freedom playing on full blast. I dreamed of nothing more than somehow encountering my idol and having an affair. Surely he liked 13-year-old girls, I thought. I mean, eight more months and I, too, would be 13. We would kiss. Madly. Sex wasn’t something I’d be considering much for at least another four or five years, but kissing…
A year or two after that, I saw him walking down the street in Vancouver with this Asian woman on his arms. A few months down the road, she’d come to fame as his lover from the video I Want Your Sex, the famed torso upon which the pop star would write, in lipstick, “Explore monogamy.” I clued in pretty fast, guys like exotic chicks, not 13 year olds, and they liked sex, not kissing, and they liked flat little torsos, it seemed.
But that didn’t faze me. I still loved my George. When I discovered masturbation, George was there with me, that sexy bare chest in those little shorts he used to wear. I didn’t even have to imagine George doing anything to me. The fantasy was an album signing. He looked up. Our eyes locked. I creamed my pants. One glance from George, it seemed, was enough to do me in. Oh, George! (gush) Naturally, masturbation then consisted of dry-humping an interesting pile of teddy bears and pillows contoured in, frankly, very strange places, while holding a little teen magazine with the latest male hottie with a perfect smile on the cover. (Oh, GEORGE!)
Honestly, when I was young, I missed the bus to Hipville. It took me a while to grow out of dorkness. My mom was a bit of a hippy, and my clothes were often homemade and things like that, or just badly chosen. It wasn’t until I left private school (Catholic… think kilts and knee-highs, boys… ooh, tartan) and did public school that I finally found a clue.
George kept me company in those dark years. Corey Hart kinda helped, too, and Michael J. Fox. If it makes you feel any better, I’ve been a Johnny Depp girl since 1991.
The best thing I ever did for my sex life in my teens, though, was to buy a pair of Doc Martens. My first weekend in them, Josh. Oh, Joshie, Joshie, Joshie. German and Japanese. What a fucking studmuffin. (I always remember my friend having to explain what a studmuffin was to her confused father. “Why, Daddy, it’s a stud you can really sink your teeth into.”) Josh was built for lovin’ – he was 6’4, broad shoulders, and lips that made for smothering, baby.
Yep. One kiss from Josh and I figured, huh, these boots are something. See, he spots me at a party with all our mutual friends, me and my 13-hole docs, and beelines over, commenting that cherry was always the sexiest colour for him. “Oxblood,” I corrected him. Our lips locked shortly after that for the ultimate in gropefests on the back steps. It was the first time a boy ever grabbed my boobs and squeezed and groped, the first time I knew what it felt like for a boy to fumble as to tried to get under the bra and over the breast, and the first time I ever had the distinct feeling of being moist in public.
Naturally, Josh told the world that it had been us who was making the camper a-rockin’, and a classic teen “But I’m not a slut, that was SUZY!” drama unfolded. But I learned something important then. Image was everything, and George wasn’t doing me no favours. I started experimenting with music and quickly found U2 and Front 242, and learned that bad was good, and haven’t looked back since. These days, I’m a punk rock poser-girl some of the time, but usually just a nitty-gritty indie rock kinda gal. No, no Docs these days, but my Skechers are kinda cute.
Funny thing, though. A while back, I had this guy I was sorta wooin’ after dinner. We were interacting, on the cusp of sex, but the nerves were in the way, so instead we were standing too far apart, with that invisible awkwardness barrier repelling us. My iPOD developed a mind of its own and suddenly Wham! spun on.

“Wake me up, before you go-go
Don’t leave me hangin’ on like a yo-yo”

Next thing you know, the boy and I were bouncing around the kitchen, laughing and singing, washing dishes, cleaning up, and naturally, a spot of water on the floor yielded a well-placed slip, and we collided into each other, against the counter, collectively gasped, locked lips, fumbled about, and the rest unfolded exactly as it should, upon my bed.
I guess our liabilities aren’t always what they seem, and the past is never as far away as we’d like to think. But is that so bad? That night, it wasn’t.
PS: Incidentally, of all my teen idols, GM’s the only one I still find sexy. Not my type per se anymore, but still has “it”.

Thinking Too Much, Too Late

This isn’t really off topic… it’s masturbation of a sort. Literary masturbation.
Tonight, I can’t stop thinking of how I got from point “A” to this point of my life. I don’t know when this mood struck me. I made a comment in response to one of my readers earlier today, “It’s amazing, the footprints left when people walk out of our lives.”
It got me reflecting on some people I’ve known, experiences I’ve had – all that profound shit that shakes down from the tree of life.
I get a lot of emails from this site, people wanting to connect, forge something, interact, I don’t know. Sometimes it seems they want to know more about me, I get questions. They divulge deeply personal things to me, profound problems, fears, experiences. It can be daunting, but it’s very rewarding. I try to respond to everyone, to share a bit of who I am in trade for their confessions.
Another reason I’ve been thinking about myself is that I had this email sent to me about “Stop Internet Censorship,” a new-ish blog formed with a mission, that has a number of esteemed contributors. I was asked to join it, and have, because I think censorship’s bullshit. But it has had me thinking. How does this concern me?
Really, I’m not sure it does. Not yet. It probably will. But I’m pretty open about who I am, thus why I get really personal things sent to me, I guess. I leave myself vulnerable here, only because I feel invulnerable.
Everyone in my life knows I write this. They all know I do everything from sex advice and tips to ponderous deliberations. From my father and family to my employers to my friends, they all know. They accept that this is just who I am, and I’m not ever judged for it. I couldn’t much care if I’m outted tomorrow. It would impact my life little, I suspect. I’d flinch and grit my teeth because I’m a control freak and would rather decide on my terms when to let my identity be known, though.
A reader commented (on this posting) last week, and for all I know, hasn’t been back, that I was, essentially, a hypocrite. It pissed me off. It really, really pissed me the fuck off. So, let’s go with that for a moment. You know what you know about me because of my grace, generosity, and openness. It’s my gift to you, this intimacy with this stranger you may never know. I’m not being arrogant, I’m being honest. That is, in its essence, what blogging is. Allowed voyeurism, by we, the brave provocateurs.
Those of us who do this, who put ourselves out here in the raw – with the hurts, with the reality, with the insights – we do so for our own reasons. We have gracefully allowed you, the world, to be players in our mix. You’re the voyeurs we’re humouring by leaving our blinds up. You owe each of us the very simple respect of acknowledging we all have our stopping points. There are things that, for whatever stupid reasons we have, we do not wish to share. That is our right. When it comes to what it is we divulge, you have no say.
Those are the facts.
It doesn’t change much for me. I still plan to tell you a little more about who I am and how I got here. But just keep in mind that I have a line in my sand, and if you cross it, I’ll mince no words in telling you so. What I choose to tell is always going to be my choice. Fortunately for us all, I love to take requests. It’s just so spiffy and interactive, like a game. I do so enjoy games, after all.
Anyhow, most people treat me wonderfully around here, and I love it, and love those of you who it applies to. I do love to please a crowd. There’s just the occasional twit, and I wanted to say something this time.
But I do digress.
I think it’s safe to say we all know I’m a pretty introspective individual. My life has made me that way, through a variety of experiences. I’ve had a lot of strange encounters with death, a lot of struggle, a lot of experience, in all ways, shapes, and forms.
I guess it’s part of why I’ve been riding the masturbation topic this week. I’ve spent a lot of time alone in my life – I’d have to, to write as much as I do these days. But I love being alone. I can be the life of any party, and my personality, when I turn it on, can win over just about any person, any time. And though I love people, I’m protective of my space. That space is precisely what has seen me through all the struggles and hardships I’ve had. It’s also what makes me an engaging person to befriend and know.
Over the next week or two, I’ll be wanting to spend a little time taking a look at myself, and I hope to have an interesting post of how a girl like me gets formed. Not necessarily because it’s been a request, but because it’s my blog and I’ll do what I wanna. (Oh, I’m just playing. It’s actually something I do every spring… a stop-and-smell-the-self or something.)
I said earlier about the footprints left in our lives when people walk on out, and there’s been no bigger tread than that of the one left by my mother. Six-plus years have passed since her death and the loss still finds me from time to time, and this week has been no exception. Some sad topics came up when talking to my father the other night, and I’ll be expounding on that another time, but tonight it’s too much for me to think on.
I will tell one story, though, of one day spent with her that has profoundly affected the way in which I live my life today, something I hope the parents out there can learn from.
My mother wasn’t well educated, and I remember her getting her GED (high school equivalency) when I was in Grade 3, but she had the most common sense of anyone I’ve ever met. My father made me flush with pride the other night when he said that, then told me I got mine from hers, and took it further than she had managed. I’m proud I had her as a role model.
Something she forgot how to do as she got older, sick, and tired of the struggle in her life (the result of a bad menopause), was how to stop and smell the proverbial roses. But she taught us how to do it in our youth. I remember being in Grade 2 at a Catholic elementary school. We’d take the bus all the way from White Rock, out into the valley, and the whole thing would be a 45-minute ride, up and down the streets in the valley, before ending at that small school by the church.
I remember this morning in particular – a spellbinding onslaught of spring. One of those days after a warm rainy spell, when the April sky explodes in blue and light, and the world just comes alive. The birds sang, flowers bloomed big, the air was rich and aromatic. We couldn’t have been in class for more than a half-hour, when what should happen?
My mother arrives, tells the principal we have doctor’s appointments, picks us both up from class, and makes a beeline to Vancouver’s famous Stanley Park, which was carpeted with baby daisies and little purple flowers I’ve never learned the names of.
She took our shoes off, bought us ice cream before it was even lunch, and told us to play nearby after she hugged us both and told us it was a day made by God.
She then sat down on the grass with a sketch book, and began sketching as we ran wild all over the grass. I remember nothing of that day except the happiness and freedom I felt.
I learned then that life comes with a pause button. To this day, I never let things get too hectic without remembering I can say fuck it and stop it all. I did that again today, the second time in a week. I went for a long bike ride in the rain and just felt incredible.
That day, my mother just sat there, watching us. She looked so damned beautiful, but then, she always did.
Never underestimate the power of spontanaeity – not in life, not in love, not in sex. There’s nothing more spell-binding than a well-chosen change in plans. My life is richer today as the result of a seemingly innocuous little day at the park, spent at the whim of a woman who loved to hear birds chirping, and who’d been overwhelmed by a shitty streak of rain.
And never, ever underestimate the impact it might have on those along for the ride.
In the next couple of weeks, I’ll choose a couple more things that have profoundly shaped who I am, and maybe share with you the lessons I’ve come to learn as a result. Self-indulgent, but perhaps a couple people might find it interesting.
It’s fitting I end this post in the middle of the rousing chorus of Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here.”