1/22/2000, 12:13 a.m.
Well, last Firday night I finally did my big appearance on Reverend Dan's legendary LA radio show, Music for Nimrods. I'd had to cancel two weeks in a row because I was sick, but finally this Friday I was well enough, and NOTHING was gonna keep me from making it to that radio station! I was all psyched-up to do the show in drag, until Dan emailed me & said that it was a really long walk from the parking lot to the station and there's a security guard to deal with & everything. I almost chickened out and just went as my boyself, but then at the last minute I hatched a plan... I wore a big trench coat over my dress, and a pair of sunglasses (at 3 a.m.!) to hide my eyeliner, and a hat to top off my whole vampire/secret agent look. As it happened, the sole security guard I encountered was a complete sweetie, he even gave me a little map and used a hi-lighter pen to mark where the station was.

I thought the show went pretty well. I was really, really spooked before I went on, terrified I'd have nothing to say... but of course, once I got on the air, I couldn't shut up! I blabbered about all of the scadalous details of my life, I talked about K, and our crazy theme cakes, and I got to rant about my former comrades, Zach De la Rocha and Jenna Elfman. We laughed a lot, and I thought the show was pretty funny... hopefully the audience agreed. This one twerpy guy called up and said Dan should go back to playing music, but Dan said that this same guy ALWAYS calls to whine whenever Dan does a "talky" show. Well, phooey on that - I love the talky shows, they're always my favorite ones! A few people called up and said really nice things, so I must not have sucked too bad. I think Dan should make me his regular co-host. I could be his Robin Quivers!

1/24/2000, 1:45 a.m.
God, I'm so spooked. Tomorrow I'm going to drive out to Pasadena to work on a freelance writing job I'm doing for one of my dad's oldest & dearest friends. The whole thing makes me queasy. I mean, what if the guy rips me off, or I mess everything up? It's never a good idea to go into business with friends, relatives, or friends of relatives. It would help if I had some confidence in the business this guy's starting up, but it all sounds rather dicey. On top of everything else, the guy has a seriously retarded adult son, so while we're trying to have this meeting the son is gonna be running around, doing adult retarded stuff and lying on the floor and yowling and all that. I've met the son before, and he's in REALLY bad shape. So, this business meeting should be... memorable.

Oy vey. These are the times when an office job doesn't sound so bad after all.

1/25/2000, 1:30 a.m.
As it happened, the meeting with my Pop's pal ended up going pretty much like I thought - his retarded son really was rolling around on the floor, barking and whooping - but it wasn't so bad. It wasn't a laugh riot or anything, but it didn't kill me.

The guy actually lived in this neighborhood way up in Pasadena, where my ex-girlfriend, D, used to live. It was really strange to be up there again. Nothing had changed at all, all the little stores and movie houses and restaurants were just as they'd been when I last saw D in the early '90s.

Poor D, she was just as dumb as a puppy. She wasn't retarded, she was just... not smart. She had terrible dyslexia, and her spelling was so bad she was lucky if she got the letters the right way up. She used to write me love letters that were works of pure folk art, full of fantastic words of her own devising, words like "razzledazzmatrazz" and "blockular".

D was the only really dumb girl I've ever gone out with, and let me tell you, all that stuff about ignorance being bliss is a lot of hooey. Life wouldn't have been so bad for D if she'd been just a little dumber, dumb enough so she wouldn't know how dumb she was... but D was just smart enough to realize that she was really dumb, and it was agony for her. I used to watch her trying so hard to think things through, but it was no good, the thoughts just wouldn't come. Fortunately, just as the blind are said to develop an extra-strong sense of hearing or touch to compensate for their lack of vision, so was D blessed with qualities that more than made up for her lack of brains. D really felt things, there was nothing jaded or ironic about her. Her emotions were so close to the surface that they often moved her to tears. She cried for despair, but also for joy, for anger, for desire.

We met in high school, when D was a big fat blond blob who couldn't shut up. Most of the people at school avoided her, but I loved to listen to her babble, because it gave me a chance to shut up without having to worry about having something interesting to say all the time. Besides, if you actually stopped and listened to D's torrent of words, she could be fascinating. She had a filthy mind, and no shame whatsoever. She'd tell you all about her sexual fantasies, whether you'd asked about them or not; "Well, I've never actually done it with another girl, but I know I'm bi because girls really turn me on. I love gym, 'cause I get to gawk at the other girls in the showers... " She'd say this stuff to anybody; she'd say it in a classroom full of the same girls who were in her gym class.

I started going out with D because she was an easy lay. I'd been going out with her best friend, F, and F wasn't putting out. F was a trembling virgin geekette with no boobs and onion breath, and, after two months of onion kisses and fumbling with F's empty bra, I had grown weary of the chase. I got to talking with D one afternoon at school, and she made it clear she would put out, so I promptly dumped F and started going out with D. (I make no excuses; I was a particularly loathsome teen.) F was furious of course, and took to scrawling (unsigned) hate literature on my locker with a black laundry marker. You know; I was a TWO-TIMING FUCKER, D was a BACK-STABBING BITCH, that sort of thing. I actually quite liked these bits of graffitti; they were like billboards, advertising my gangster-of-love creds to the entire school. The one drawback was that the principal kept making me stay after school to scrub my locker off, but hey, that was a small price to pay for fame. I was really bummed when F finally gave up defacing my locker, and for a while I even considered carrying on the tradition without her. I could have written ever-more glamorous graffitti about myself, proclaiming that I was a CAD, a DEVILISH SEDUCER, a HEARTBREAKER with an ARMY of LOVE SLAVES. I could have made myself a folk hero.

My high school dalliance with D didn't last long. I thought she was amusing, and sort of sweet, and sexy in a sloppy, panties-on-the-dashboard kind of way, but I was really just seeing her while I waited from somebody "better" to come along. A few weeks later, somebody did, and I dumped D flat. D called me up a couple of times after that, crying for me to take her back, and I couldn't understand why she wouldn't just let it go. It wasn't like we'd had a grand love affair or something. I tried to be nice, at first, but then she started to bore me, and eventually I told her to go away. That's just how I said, too. "D, would you please go away?" (I was a really, really loathsome teen.)

A few years passed, and one lonesome evening I was flipping through my little red book when I came across D's number. Lacking more enticing immediate prospects, I called D and asked her out. She said yes, which both elated and depressed me. OK, I was finally going to end a romantic dry spell that had lasted for several months... but at what cost? I mean, this was D we were talking about! A few years before, I'd felt lucky to be rid of her... and now I was so desperate for sex that I was crawling back to her. Besides, what kind of a girl agreed to a date with somebody who'd treated her like I had treated D? We were both so pathetic, we deserved each other.

That Friday evening, I arrived on D's doorstep at the appointed hour with my head hung low, expecting the worst. I was in for quite a suprise once that door swung open. You see, during our time apart, D had blossomed. Gone was the lumpy girl with the bad sheepdog hairdo, replaced by a zaftig goddess with the glimmering golden tresses of a movie starlet. D probably weighed just as much as she had in high school, but her curves had migrated to wonderful new places. She looked a lot like Drew Barryomore, if you fed Drew Barrymore angelfood cake until the buttons on the front of her dress popped off.

We all have a moment in our lives when we look as lovely as we will ever look, and that night - standing on the porch of that ratty little Pasadena apartment she shared with her folks - I was privilidged to witness D's moment.

Faced with all that knee-wobbling loveliness, I was suddenly wracked with paranoia. Sure, it made sense that the big, lonesome blob that D had once been would have agreed to a date with one such as I... but this girl? It didn't add up... unless, of course, D was going out with me as an act of vengence for my cruelty to her back in high school. Maybe she'd spent the last few years cursing my name and doing bust exercises, and now she was going to get her sick thrills by lording her new beauty over me and watching me twitch all night. Yes, it all made perfect sense! Well, it was too late for me to back out of the date now. D had me in her clutches, & I'd just have to take my punishment.

We left for some schmantzy Pasadena restaurant, and I spent the evening trying not to drool on D's cleavage while simulatenously marvelling at just how much food the girl could pack away. With my mind thus occupied, our  conversation was a little strained... until D livened things up by explaining - without being asked - why she'd been repeatedly running her fingertip around the rim of her wineglass; "I read in some magazine that you should do this on a date if you want to really turn a guy on. It's supposed to make him think of playing with your pussy. Is it working?" 

It was. A few minutes later, we left the restaurant and scampered out to my car, where D hopped on top of me and spent the rest of the evening slapping me in the face with her perfect pink jugs. God, I'd never dreamed that one day I'd be so overjoyed to once again see her panties lying in a little clump on my dashboard.

As I drove her home, she snuggled up against my shoulder, whispering, in a voice like an orphan child I'd just saved from a fire, "I always dreamed you'd come back to me someday..."

I don't think I said anything then. I mean, what would you have said?

We were together for two years, two years of D crying when we made love and writing me beautifully illiterate letters and telling me over and over again how madly she adored me. During all this time, I was never really sure what I felt for her. I desired her, and I liked her, a lot... but I could never completely give myself to this loud, silly, sweet girl. Half the time, when she was professing her devotion to me, I'd be sitting there, embarrassed, waiting for her to stop.

About nine months into our relationship, I got sick. It began with a case of killer mono that left me so nauseated I spent most of the next year lying on the floor of my bathroom, praying for the sweet release of death. After that, things went into a bit of a decline. Something went wrong with every square inch of my body; I got sicker and sicker, contracting exotic new diseases by the day. D stuck with me through the worst of it, months of tests and tears and blood and madness... and then, just as I was finally starting to get better, she left me.

I'd come to think of her devotion as a constantly replenishing, natural resource, and her abrupt departure came as quite a shock. Perhaps she'd stopped loving me a long time before, but had been too kind to leave in the depths of my illness. Perhaps, as the days of dragged on and it looked like I'd never get well, she'd even grown to hate me, to dream of escaping from me.
 

she'd even grown to hate me. That certainly would have explained As astonished as I was by her leaving me, I was even more astonished by just how sorely I missed her. I'd never realized how addicted I'd grown to her soft body and noisy innocence. Somehow, the grudging affection I'd once felt for her had been transformed into hopeless, howl-at-the-moon love.

That was all so long ago, and I scarcely recognize the person I was in those days. I don't think about D much anymore, but sometimes I do wonder whatever happened to her. She was always such a little girl, and I still can't picture her as a grownup lady, getting groceries, driving a car. Even though she dumped me, I still kinda feel like I'm the one who abandoned her to make her way alone in a harsh world. Wherever she is, I hope she's happy, and I hope she's found someone who appreciates her razzledazzmatrazz.