It's not just a one-night stand

Nothing keeps me up at night anymore, save my boyfriend's cat nagging me like an irreverent step-child--and I should know. My mother remarried when I was 21 and too old to be tricked into second-string father-daughter relationships. My father had been wearing dresses for 7 years and 5 days by then, and every wedding anniversary thereafter will be the year + 5 days anniversary of my dad painting his toe nails and secretly wishing I had nicer clothes and prettier hair.

But the point of all this: I no longer write out of desperate need. That's the worst of it. I'm stable.

I stayed up till 2 watching the rerun of Oprah. Mackenzie Phillips was on talking about her memoir and her drug-fueled sexual relationship with her father (John Phillips from the Mamas and the Papas). Her drug-fueled life in general. I hate Oprah as an interviewer.

"At 16 I started shooting coke, and I--"
"Wait, let me just clarify, at 18 you were raped by your father, and after 10 years you were 29 and weren't you old enough to know better?"
"Yes, I was and I knew better. At 16 he taught me how to shoot--"
"So you knew having sex with your father was wrong."
"Yes, and he allowed me to do so many drugs--"
"You knew having sex with your father was wrong and you kept doing it for 10 years."
"Yes, I was on drugs all the time and that ruins your capacity to reason--"
"So it was wrong and you kept doing it?"

Ugh. Anyway, it hit me that I seem to be drawn to women who crumble. Regardless of whether they fall into ruin or rebuild, I admire them. Perhaps it's because in either case they never say they found Jesus or "by the grace of God." In either case they find themselves and proceed accordingly. I'm just enthralled by the awful things that are repressed and that build pressure over years till they explode one way or another. Super volcanoes.

Side note: the women on The View are at least mildly retarded.

I've been having such weird/bad dreams lately. They're super vivid and really ugly. I'm never quite sure what they're about. One I had last night involved some sort of altercation in which AE got shot and died. I didn't see it happen, and I think Biff's boyfriend got shot and died, too. I'm not sure, but there was someone else that also died. The thought of AE dying was enough to make it a nightmare and I kept thinking, this isn't right, and I forced myself awake and had to talk myself out of calling him at 3 or 4 am to make sure he was really still alive.

I found a press last night that caters to writers like me who write poetry, but specifically prose and short-shorts (vignettes). They're called Rose Metal Press and they're having a chapbook contest. I need 25-40 pages of good stuff by Dec. 1st. Fingers crossed. There are a couple books I want to buy from them, so I need to reason with my budget. I'm going through the classified section of P&W magazine and researching different presses to see which contests I'll enter and who I'll submit to. My to-do list today. Let's get movin', kid. Let's get it on.