Floyd Elliot's Open Salon Blog

Giving Thanks For Immigration

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 17:11:46 -0500

Immigration to what would one day become the United Ss of A began 17,000 years ago, when a plucky band of Asians, hoping to party in South Beach during Spring Break (talk about being neurotically early), crossed the Bering land bridge, then, like all subsequent waves of immigrants, pulled the bridge up behind them. They found the new land, which would later be called Alaska, welcoming and comfortable, largely because they'd just come from Siberia and it was summer and Sarah Palin wouldn't be governor of it for another 17,000 years. They spread across the new continent, and the one below it (which they, in the haunting way of Native Americans, called, The One Below It), wreaking ecological havoc and exterminating any species that was good to eat (mmmmmmastodon!) or threatening (seriously, I think the saber-tooth tiger was just Nature trying to get all badass, or possibly do caricatures). In all fairness, one theory holds that the extinctions might have been caused not by hunting but by a big fucking meteorite striking North America, an event scientists call The Big Fucking Meteorite Striking North America. (Science is so lyrical, isn't it? Like a poem.) Whatever the cause, these early immigrants, having done as later immigrants would do (i.e., take advantage of and wreak havoc on whatever was already here) had to figure out how not to kill off the remaining flora and fauna, and they did a relatively good job for millennia. Much good it did them once the white people got here.

The next wave of immigration after the Indians took 17,000 years to find the New World, America being like one of those clubs that keep out the riff-raff (that'd be the white folks) by not hanging a sign on the door. The Pilgrims, we hear ad nauseum at this time of year, came to America to escape religious persecution; in fact they came to the Netherlands to escape religious persecution by an overzealous Archbishop of Canterbury (whom I shall think of as Archie, as I do all Archbishops, and who had hoped to be an archnemesis, but got sidetracked into the much-less-cool Archbishop business); Archie was less than pleased that these recusants did not worship at (and tithe to) the official state church, the Church of England. (England being at that time more or less devoid of Jews, Irishmen and black and brown people, the English were reduced to persecuting other white people, a condition they would soon remedy in the Americas, Asia and Africa.) The Pilgrims were quite safe in cosmopolitan Leyden; in fact, they left for America because they couldn't get jobs in urban Holland, most of them being rural Nottinghamshire bumpkins.

Just like Mexican immigrants today, the Pilgrim fathers came to this land with nothing; unlike today's immigrants, they were able to spend their first few months here digging up Indian graves for what they needed, most notably maize that had been buried with the graves' inhabitants. There were also quite a few abandoned Indian houses and villages for them to live in, on account of the fulminating smallpox that Europeans had fortuitously introduced shortly before. (Smallpox just in general sounds like kind of a nasty disease, but fulminating smallpox? Holy shit! That's like exploding herpes.) Half of the settlers died of disease and starvation their first year, and more would have, had it not been for the help of the Indians. (Well, some of the Indians; some were, quite understandably, rather peeved at the white guys, having been abducted and enslaved by them not long before the Pilgrims' arrival.) My daughter's grade-school class shortly before Thanksgiving one year made Pilgrims and Indians (and I believe there might have been a turkey too) out of clothespins, with which, every year at our Thanksgiving dinner, we would enact the following touching scene of interracial harmony and aid:

Pilgrim: Oh, my, whatever shall we do? We are starving!

Indian: My people and I shall teach you how to fish and plant maize.

Pilgrim: Oh, thank you, kind Indians. Won't you dine with us?

Indian: Thank you, we will.

Pilgrim: Not the expensive stuff. And here, have a smallpox-infected blanket.

Indian: Thanks! What's smallpox?

Pilgrim: It doesn't matter. You'll like it.

(Yeah, I know the smallpox-infected blankets are anachronistic. I liked to give my kids a more-vivid picture of history than the mere facts allowed--in other words, to make shit up.) I'm sure the Indians regretted their early help, and probably quite soon; subsequent waves of immigration made the Eastern Seaboard rather crowded, but the original settlers didn't mind, as long as the immigrants were white and from England and Scotland, so to make room for them the U.S. Government politely asked the Indians to leave at gunpoint.

U.S. Government: Hey, you Indians, would you mind moving to Oklahoma?

Indian: Oklahoma? Dude, we live in Florida! We don't even know where Oklahoma is.

U.S. Government: It doesn't matter. You'll like it.

Indian: Well, does it get cold there? Will we need coats? All we have are these primitive 19th-century Speedos.

U.S. Government: Nope. And in 70 or 80 years there'll be something called a Dust Bowl. You'll like that too.

Of course, when the country got more crowded and we needed that land in Oklahoma for white people and to get oil out of, we took it back. Apparently the phrase "Indian giver" was invented around this time too.

Non-English and -Scottish immigrants began immigrating to the newly-formed United States, and after only a couple of centuries and a bloody internecine war, Southerners cheerfully released those African-Americans who had so willingly come to this country in chains, at least the ones who didn't die in the Middle Passage and have their bodies unceremoniously tossed into the ocean; then, just to show there were no hard feelings, the Southerners lynched and persecuted those African-Americans for another century. No fools they, these former slaves got the fuck out of the South and moved to Northern cities, joining the waves of other immigrants who were paid so well in the colorfully-named "sweatshops" of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. (Hi, Gramma! Don't sew too hard! You're going to die at 43 anyway! Hi, Grampa! Don't bake too much; the flour dust is going to rot your lungs out!) The United States, fearing that all of Europe would try to come here to do what its original settlers had (get a job), imposed limitations on "undesirable" immigrants, Jews, Italians, Chinese and the Irish, mostly, none of whom were considered white, but none on the good Northern European white immigrants, like Germans, Swedes and, of course, the English and Scottish. Because, as a seminal Saturday Night Live sketch (yes, there used to be those) pointed out, if it's not (English or) Scottish, it's crap!

Today, the sons and daughters of those last couple of waves of immigrants want to close the United States' borders to people looking to come here for the same reason the Pilgrim Fathers (and mothers; many of them were mothers) did: to get a job. The principled opposition of the right wing to immigration--people coming here, where their, the right wingers', ancestors came to make a buck, to make a buck--stirs in my breast a deep pride at the nobility of the human race; well, I think it's pride; it could just be gas. I'd get it checked out, but I don't have health insurance.

I personally have no objections to anyone immigrating to this great country of ours, be they Mexican or Canadian, Irish or Senegalese, Hindu or Muslim, hobbit or troll, Klingon or Texan. (Well, I might not be happy with a large infusion of Texans into the US.) For one thing, there's a large segment of the population that I really dislike--it's mostly coincidental with the people who stand against immigration--and I figure lots of immigrants will dilute them, not to mention outvote them. (Which is probably what they're afraid of too.) It's not that I'm for a less-white America (though I am), it's that I'm for a less-stupid America. It's not that I hope that with proportionally fewer white assholes to watch Lou Dobbs, he winds up washing dishes in a taqueria somewhere…oh, wait, it totally is. Rhetoric…whoosh! Just ran away with me.

I have a sense that the opposition to immigration, the frenzied calls to police our borders and such, stem from a feeling on the part of these people that they've lost control, that they would agree with that one Birther woman who mooed, "I want my country back"--meaning, presumably, not their country, they being anyone of any color other than beige. (Also, as mentioned above, I suspect most Native Americans would agree with the Birther woman on that, though now that they have casinos, maybe not.) Do they, those white nativists, suspect that those they've oppressed for so long somehow deeply yearn to do the same to them, knowing full well that if they, the white nativists, had been oppressed, they would not hesitate to stick it to their oppressors, given the chance? Or are they more afraid that they're just irrelevant, history's trash? (Instead of, as usual, the trailer park's.) That, in a century or so, being white might be more exotic than being Tiger Woods?

I'd like to tell those people: It doesn't matter. You'll like it. But then I remember that I don't care.

It is the nature of immigration and assimilation (not the Borg kind) (well, okay, that kind too) that those who formerly lived someplace when immigrants came have to compete to keep what they formerly had by right. WASPs ran pretty much every aspect of life in America for several hundred years, and that worked out just fine—for them. It was not such a great deal for blacks or Indians or for Irish, Italian or Jewish immigrants. But people go where they can live better; they migrate, like birds going south for the winter, to where the money is. In a couple of decades, that might well be China, but for now, it's here, and here is where the immigrants are coming, and all the fences and armed guards and patrols in the world won't stop them, and I wouldn't want to. The previous waves of immigrants came here and did the jobs no one else wanted (except for the Indians, because of how they predated capitalism and jobs, and also, sadly for them, cheesecake), and so will the new ones. In the process, those waves of immigrants made a rural backwater into a world power. It's not your country, lady, and it never was. You were just borrowing it from the Indians and, if global warming continues, from the ocean.

Dating Is For Dickheads

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:11:43 -0500

HGG, my girlfriend of the past nine months, released me into the wild a little while ago (it was really quite touching; she was humming "Born Free" as she opened the door of the cage) (and the fact that I employed that particular metaphor should indicate to you why she was so eager to give me the freedom that is my birthright) (not unlike the serial parenthetical; my motto is "Live digressive or--man, Sarah Palin is just fucking whacktastic, isn't she?"), so I will sooner or later be indulging in the soul-killing sport we like to call "dating." (Because that's what it's fucking called. Duh.)

(Just incidentally, taking up that sporting metaphor, HGG did say, in the course of restoring me to my untamed state, "It's not you, it's me," which, oh, newbie, rookie mistake--and she is a rookie, as I am her first boyfriend since her 25-year marriage ended; you just hate to see that kind of thing mar an otherwise perfect performance on the breakup field, court, or rink.)

Some months ago, my friend M (she's a distant relative of Kafka's K and James Bond's Q) and I had dinner. She'd completed her mandatory court-ordered period of not-dating after her divorce and was considering getting out into the dating pool, diamond or ring. (Fine, I'm scraping bottom a little with the sports metaphors.) (And okay, it wasn't court-ordered, unless you consider her other friends and me and her own sense of sanity a court, and I do, my favorite kind: a kangaroo court.) (Seriously, I have a costume for just such occasions, which includes a fur-lined pocket filled with a teensy little joey.) She wanted the advice of someone who had not gone pro in dating, but only because he wanted to compete in the 2012 summer Olympics. (That someone was me. You got that, right?) (And I guess that was another sports metaphor. I might be coming down with something.) I've been dating since my separation from the sucking chest wound that was my marriage, 15 or so years now, and have gotten quite good at it. Mind you, there are lots of other things I'd rather be good at: staying in a relationship longer than a year or two, self-fellating (I'd never leave the house), possibly macramé. (I know: not strictly relevant, but I suffer from a lack of plant holders.) But no, dating it is, and I have learned a few lessons about dating, and, as M asked, I shared them with her.

She, that very night, called a good friend of hers and started dating him. They're very happy. You're welcome, M. Dating, like my soon-to-be-debuted new sport, Deathball!™, is not for the squeamish, though there are fewer charred and eviscerated corpses in dating. Slightly fewer, anyway.

So, what is it that I've learned in my dating career that led M to run screaming from the table? (In reality, the screaming could have been on account of the cockroaches that I released in a--vain--attempt to get out of paying for dinner.) I'm glad you asked. (And by "you" I mean of course the you that lives in my head.) (And how is the little terrarium I set up for you? Getting enough crickets? I have some extra cockroaches if you want.) I learned how dating works, and why, if you do it long enough, it will render you unfit for the company of any form of life more advanced than a corporate CEO. I'm only talking here about hetero dating, which is all I'm actually familiar with. I'm sure there are similar idiotic strictures in gay and lesbian dating, but I have not inquired of my gay and/or lesbian friends, because of how I've got my own problems.

I learned that dating is for dickheads. Especially if you do it right.

So why date? Many people don't. Trekkies. Serial killers. Log Cabin Republicans. (This was a Jeopardy question yesterday.) Well, largely because, Hollywood to one side (and Bollywood!) (I just took a few minutes to stage a production number with sitars and Indian dancing in my head), your perfect darling isn't going to fall into your lap. You will not meet cute. If you didn't meet him or her in high school or college, maybe grad school, bzzzzzt! you lose! I don't care how many dudes Carrie got to choose from in Sex And the City (and even after several years I would like to opine: that show sucked ass that hasn't even been invented yet) just by being her own cute-ass self, you will not. It's like having a job in our era of late-stage capitalism: you don't want to do it, but you also don't want to dine out at Chez Dumpster either. Dating is a means to an end: not ending up alone in the gutter with dogs pissing in your face. (Dogs might be optional.) (Nope: the dogs are in. Sorry.) And so, we plunge in. To dating. Not the dumpster. Although, you know, suit yourself.

As with any dickheads, dating dickheads regard money as a fraught issue, especially on a first date; it connotes far more than it denotes. Like it or hate it, on the first date he pays. M's reaction to this was, "But I make a good living! What if he makes less than I do? That is just wrong!" All good points. So? This is dating, not the EEOC. Here is what he hears when you insist, "I will pay half:" "Please may I never see you again?" You're settling up, paying off your account. (You can certainly offer to pay, as a gesture of good will, and clearly insincerely; if he accepts, he doesn't want to see you again.) Furthermore, since he has determined that you are not interested, he won't call you again, unless he is one desperately needy loser, so if he does call and if you accept another date, you are about to embark on the most thrilling fun-packed ride of your life, except for the thrilling and fun-packed parts.

Now, you, modern empowered woman of the future, could certainly call him. If you're not a dickhead but a schmuck.

Never fucking call him. Gah! Did your mother teach you nothing? Call him and now you are the desperately needy loser, and he is thinking, "Wow, I'm about to embark on the most thrilling fun-packed ride of my life, except for the thrilling and fun-packed parts."

Does this make sense? It does not. Personally, I would love to have the taking-the-initiative part in dating shared. I would also love for my city to have Veuve Cliquot fountains but it does not. Is this a universal? No. There are exceptions, because we're talking about human beings, not atoms in a test tube. Is this by far the likeliest outcome? Well, I'll just answer with one of those snappy quotes I love so well, this one from Damon Runyon: "the race is not to the swift, nor the fight to the strong, but that's the way to bet."

Another dickheaded thing you figure out soon enough about dating is that the first date should always be something quick, cheap and easily exitable. Set a time limit and stick to it, even if you like the person--in which case there will be more dates and you won't have the ever-increasing-with-your-blood-alcohol-level chance to fuck it up-- and especially if you don't. Why? Because it won't get better. Let me tell you about UFO girl…who had formerly been a Jehovah's Witness. I knew some of this when I agreed to a first date at a bar just down the street from me (so why did I go? Well, she was kind of cute), but after 45 minutes with her, during which time she'd explicated her research into aliens who look just like us and live amongst us (Hey, Glenn Beck! Show us your yellow-y cat-eyes!), I had a much clearer picture, and my chief concern at that point was: Would she follow me the short distance to my home? Or perhaps abduct me to her waiting mothership and anal-probe me? I've been anal-probe-free for years now (I have a chip) and would like to remain so.

(She did ask me about a second date before I left. I told her I would be quite busy through, oh, say, my death, or the year 2525, whichever came first.) (She assured me the invading alien fleet would be here by 2016, after which she would be quite busy, and, disappointed but plucky, adjusted her tinfoil hat and rode off into the sunset.)

Also, gentlemen (well, male dickheads), perhaps you, as I do, enjoy fine dining. Perhaps you are thinking, I will impress her with my taste in choosing this restaurant for our first date. Perhaps you can afford to take a first date to a nice restaurant.

Don't.

This is one of those things that you can do, but you should not, not unlike my Pharmaceuticals Of Many Lands membership. I was a late-starter at dating, having spent my 20s married, so I didn't know this in my mid-30s, and I would indeed take first dates to dinner at just those kinds of places--places I actually want to go. (I had not yet achieved dickheadedness.) I like eating out, I like good food and snappy service and linen tablecloths. Little did I know that women perceive this as trying too hard, trying to buy them, showing off. I told one of my foodie friends, who has been married since college, about this recently, and he assured me he would have made the same mistake, so paleo-Floyd (it was before I stood erect--shut up--or tamed fire) (aww, what a cute fire: roll over! fetch!) was not uniquely dumb, but I do cringe a bit at the memory. First dates are a glass of wine or a cup of coffee (though coffee dates are for wimps; plus I'm funnier and more attractive the drunker you are); dinners come later, if there is a later. Go out to eat with your friends. You'll enjoy it more, since there won't be that question of whether or not you'll get laid. Unless you're that kind of friends.

Speaking of which: if you sleep with someone on a first date you will never see them again. Women know this, but it works for men too. (Sometimes it's the only way to get rid of someone.) The mystery's gone, the challenge, the curiosity. If you hope to see them again, stay out of bed. If not, well, hell, pile on. Erm, so to speak.

Just so you know that the dating prospect isn't completely bleak, once you actually start dating someone seriously (e.g., you begin to discuss phenomenology or the future of Canadian agriculture), you can stop being these hideous dickheads and start making your own rules about who pays and when, who can call, and all of that. You can start being yourselves and with any luck, yourselves will get along. (I hear that happens.) But--and unlike mine, it's a big giant but--you're not getting to that point unless you do the dating song-and-dance (and there is an actual dating song-and-dance; it's a combination of the frug and a soft-shoe, and quite moving in a rockabilly/opera kind of way). So, dickheads of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your Friday evenings, which now that Dollhouse has been cancelled, who cares? Well, and your self-respect and possibly your mind, but you weren't using those, were you?

May I Quote You?

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 09:11:19 -0500

The other night I came home and made myself what I like to call my Montague and Capulet dinner (two sandwiches, both alike in dignity...), plopped down in front of the TV and turned on Food Network. Sadly, Guy Fieri was on, so of course I changed the channel because I hate projectile vomiting before I eat (after? it's anybody's game), but before I did (change the channel, not projectile-vomit) I caught the end of a commercial in which a very skinny woman recounts to her friends the menu of her previous evening's dinner, which included something that apparently contained large masses of melted cheese; the friends stare at her in stunned doubt and disbelief until she reveals, "It was Lean Cuisine," at which they make faces of comprehension. Me too; ahhhh, it wasn't masses of melted cheese, it was masses of melted "cheese." I get it.

(By that time I was eating Capulet, prosciutto on peasant French with melted asiago, and Montague, mortadella on challah with piquillo peppers and melted raclette. I do not tell you this to gloat--well, not primarily--but to be able to say: that, Lean Cuisine, is some melted-ass cheese, and please permit me to add, bee-yotch.)

The noble quotation mark has in the last several decades come in for something of a beating. Avant-garde writers stopped using it, which, thanks so fucking much, avant-garde writers, because now I can't fucking tell when someone's talking or you're just spewing shit--actually, it's probably both most of the time. (And no, the little dash before the quote is not a substitute--just use quotation marks, asshole. I'll still think you're way avant-garde, even when I can tell it's one of the characters talking.) Businesses started using it to indicate emphasis, or, at times, just for the fucking hell of it. "Fresh" peaches for sale? So...they're not really fresh? You're being sarcastic about the produce?

Because besides their quotidian duty of demarking things people say, quotation marks have the ironic pleasure of indicating that we don't really mean what's inside them. There are all kinds of things that cry out for ironic quotation marks, as a crime victim cries out for justice, as thirsty guy in the desert cries out for getting the fuck out of the desert, as a Joss Whedon show cries out for ratings. (Fuck you, Fox, again, some more, for cancelling Dollhouse. I look forward to you all getting Ebola of the nuts.) (Even the women.) (No, I don't know how that would work. Do I have to think of everything?) There is, just for example and off the top of my head, television "news." Political "integrity." "Sale" at Whole Foods.

(Please do not assume from this that you are free to make that air-quote gesture in my presence, or even in my sight. I carry a machete for just such occasions.) (Which makes it difficult to get through security at the airport, but it's totally worth it.) (And explains why so many of my friends and acquaintances are nicknamed Lefty.)

Don't even get me started on "cream," the bleach-like shit that its manufacturers call "creamer." No, sir. If you cream, you are a creamer. If you hold cream, you are a creamer. That shit is Soylent "cream;" it's made from people. (I've seen the plant.) Cream once lived inside a cow; I thus reiterate: that shit is "cream." I love cream in my coffee, and I love coffee, but I will give up both before I desecrate coffee with "cream."

(Just kidding, coffee and cream. I would never give you up. I love you, baby.)

Or take stand-up "comedy," for another example. (Yeah, Dane Cook, talking to you, pal.) Because what makes for comedy, as opposed to "comedy," is that comedy is funny. Watching Dane Cook--which I avoid, not just like but actually even more assiduously than the Plague--is like hanging out with your unfunny friend who doesn't know he's not funny, and who keeps making jokes, in that way that indicates you're supposed to laugh now! And you do, because it would be rude not to, but you feel a little...used. I just hunted up two of Cook's YouTube videos so that I could verify my small previous experience with him, so there's ten minutes of my life that I'll never get back, donated in service to you, my loyal readers. (All twelve of you.) (I am nothing if not customer-service-oriented.) Watching Dane Cook is utterly unlike watching Carlin or Izzard or Hicks. The gestures are the same, but with Cook, no comedy actually issues from him. It's comedius interruptus. Set-up, set-up, shouted set-up! Laugh now, my bitches! Um, okay, obligation laugh, heh heh, wow, Dane, you're a fucking "comedy" genius, dude. (Nice name-check of Google there, too, so I know you wrote--well, "wrote"--that joke sometime in the last 12 years.) Dane Cook: king of the lack of punchline. I mean, that shit might be so out there that I just don't fucking get it, whoosh! right over my head, but in truth I'm pretty sure I know comedy and that, my friends, is "comedy." And you, Mr. Cook, are one “funny” guy.

Ironically, one of the things that often needs to be surrounded with ironic quotation marks is the word "irony." The quintessential offender here is of course…oh, quiet down, I know you know this; everyone knows this…you in the front, sit the fuck DOWN!-- Alanis Morissette. Now, I love Alanis Morissette for all kinds of things--her hilariously emo parody of "My Humps," her role on Weeds, the sheer raw anger of her music--but, dayum, did she ever screw the pooch on that one: a whole song called "Isn't It Ironic?" in which not a single situation actually is ironic. (It has been pointed out that that, all by itself, is ironic, on which I must, loudly and vehemently, call bullshit, at least on the suggestion that that irony was intended.) Now, I get that irony is a hard concept, and that much of the time it's like pornography: you just know it when you see it. Unlike porn, though, which is pretty unmistakable (erect penis inserted in vagina/mouth/rectum? check, you got you some porn there), much of the time when you think you see irony, you don't; you are seeing "irony." To take some of Alanis's examples: afraid-to-fly guy takes a flight that crashes? Bad luck. Rain on your wedding day? Also bad luck and lack of planning: have your damn wedding indoors, like, you know, most of them, not to mention watch a fucking weather report, why don't you, bride-tard? Ninety-eight-year-old dies after winning the lottery? Biology. I mean, the fucker's 98, you know? A strong wind could have taken him out. Whooosh: bye-bye, geezer.

What Alanis was trying to get at in that song was situational irony, a reverse that snaps you back. Most people get verbal irony (sarcasm) and dramatic irony (you know something the characters don't) pretty well; it's the situational type that escapes them. It's not just that something happens that's unexpected; there has to be some measure of appropriateness, poetic justice, in the reversal. A cop on the take is not ironic; a cop on the take who goes straight then gets fired because of a trumped-up accusation of corruption is. Ronald Reagan taking a bullet is not ironic; his taking a bullet that bounced off his bulletproof car is. The next time you find yourself saying something like, "Well, ironically, I came late and it was already over..." ask yourself: is this indeed irony? Really? Or is it just rain on your wedding day, i.e., "irony?"

(I'm quite upset, by the way, that the Food Network passed on my reality-show concept, Ironic Chef. Two chefs meet on the field of sarcasm, and only one will emerge victorious.) (Of course, that one won't give a fuck.) (Nor will the other one.)

So, look, join me, won't you? I'm starting the Quotation-Mark Liberation Army. We will take back our language by force. Whether it's Wite-Outing the quotes on a sign for "'Fresh' Strawberries" at gunpoint or adding quotation marks to posters for Dane Cook's "comedy" tour with our MAC-10-mounted Sharpies, abusers of the once-proud quotation mark will feel our wrath. We will not rest until in every city and hamlet across the English-speaking world, the quotation mark again rests secure in its irony and, um, er...quotiness. I will be getting on that immediately. Or as soon as I finish eating Capulet. Mmmmmmelted asiagommmmm.

Actually, you know, I could be a while. You guys start without me; I'll catch up.

Well, you know, "catch up."

Ask Narcissa

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 08:11:38 -0500

Well, before we get started with this week's questions, Narcissa wishes to thank all of you who wrote in to comment on the deep, serious structural problems faced by our country that Narcissa brought up in last week's column. Narcissa's readers know what's really important in this country: for Narcissa to appear well-coiffed, and last week's question--for those of you who might have been in a coma, it was, "Should I go with highlights or not, and, critically, the bangs issue: short, long, nonexistent?"--should not be eclipsed by the world's petty little problems. (The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq rage on, ever deadlier, healthcare legislation has been watered down almost to nothing and doesn't even cover abortion, and Jay Leno continues to show up on our televisions every night. So?) Narcissa also asked several co-workers and a homeless man for their opinions, but found their answers (really, how would one even go about sticking one's hair up one's ass?) unhelpful. Thank god for my Readers, who remain ever-fascinated with Narcissa.

Narcissa,

You're so pretty!

-- a random Reader, not Narcissa herself

An excellent observation, Reader, who is very much not Narcissa pretending to be someone else. (Why would Narcissa pretend to be anyone but who she so gloriously is?) While your question was not strictly speaking a question in any sense of the word, its cogency and urgency--its near-philosophical depth--caught Narcissa's attention. More people--everyone, actually--should point out just how pretty, and also how smart and what a snappy dresser Narcissa is.

No, I mean now. Right fucking now. Stop whatever you're doing and DO IT! DO IT!

Narcissa,

My husband left a month ago and all I do is cry. I've neglected my kids--his kids--because I can't stand how much they remind me of him. I haven't brushed my teeth or looked in the mirror since he walked out, and I'm not even sure I have any teeth left. I have no friends I can confide in, because we just moved to whatever sister-fucking state in the middle of the country this is a few months ago. What can I do to get myself back on track before I lose my kids and my life crumbles even farther?

-- Wrecked In a Rectangular State

Ah, Wrecked, it is truly difficult when a loved one leaves us, either through death or because he has taken up with some tramp from Accounting who wears spandex across her gigantic ass and has had what, like 43 plastic surgeries so her vagina's now just under her collagen-filled chin and slightly above her lopsided fake boobs. You will be tempted to blame yourself, to wonder where you went wrong. Nowhere! is where you went wrong, Rect; you do not go wrong, everyone else goes wrong. "Before you lose his kids?" Ha! Give his kids up for adoption, but not before you extract whatever transplantable organs you think you might be able to sell on Ebay, and find yourself someone who'll buy you new dental work and tell you constantly how awesome you are. Not as awesome as Narcissa, but quite awesome, just because you reflect Narcissa's awesomeness. In your own--not inferior, just slightly-lessferior--way.

Now, tell Narcissa how awesome she is. All of you. And mean it. I'll know if you don't. Now! Do it now!

Dear Narcissa,

Before I start, please just let me tell you how beautiful and almost godlike you are. (That's the most important thing.) (And you didn't rewrite my letter at all to add that first sentence, or the one before this one or this one.) When I started at my job, I thought people would be happy for my achievements, but they're totally NOT! I've been working as hard as I can here, and I'm making a little progress--I even won a big award, which, I have to admit, I don't deserve yet, though I'm trying to earn it, and it's not like I awarded it to myself, for god's sake--but everyone expects me to fix everything that was wrong before I even got here--immediately. Plus they call me names. These people are nuts. And if I screw up, they're like hyenas; they love it, even if my screwing up hurts them too. HELP!

-- Oh, Barry!

Oh, Barry!, Narcissa fails to understand how your letter affects her in any way (and failing to understand makes me feel bad, makes me question how godlike I am--do you see what you've done here, Barry? I hate you), except for the first three sentences, which Narcissa absolutely did not write. (They're the best part of your letter, though.) How does your letter help Narcissa feel better about herself? Narcissa doesn't see it, and Narcissa sees everything about herself. Despite this failing, and how much I hate you for it, Narcissa will help you though this, because I'm just generous like that. My suggestion to you, Oh, Barry! is to try, from now on, being more Narcissa-forward in your work. Ask yourself: would Narcissa approve of this move? Will this help or hurt Narcissa? Have I written Narcissa today to tell her how lovely she is in every way? If you do not, Narcissa will have a giant screaming hissy fit and come down to your work armed with a large handgun and call you a Nazi. Or maybe a socialist. Narcissa has done it before.

Narcissa,

Why do you refer to yourself in the third person?

--Linguistically Curious

The third person is Narcissa's favorite person. When there are three people, that's one more person to worship Narcissa's awesomeness. It's like an awesomeness ménage a trois, with Narcissa's big giant rod of awesomeness pounding your steaming awesomeness-holes in rotation. (Narcissa might have been watching a little porn earlier.) (And might be a little bi-curious.) (Were Narcissa to go gay, she would be dyke-ariffic. Or possibly lesbotastic.) Also, if Narcissa were to say, "I am awesome," well, you might not believe it--as hard as that might be to comprehend--but when Narcissa says, "Narcissa is awesome," you know it to be objectively true. Because Narcissa says so.

Narcissa will have written a whole new column next week, Readers. In the meantime, bear up: Narcissa will try to hurry, as she knows how her column is the highlight of your weeks--indeed, your otherwise meaningless lives--and Narcissa is merciful. Until then, try to simply remain catatonic or perhaps under the influence of alcohol or some strong psychotropic drugs. And let Narcisssa know how wonderful she is; surprisingly, she never tires of your telling her so.

The Empresses Of the Inner Drive

Mon, 9 Nov 2009 23:11:14 -0500

Saturday was gorgeous in Chicago, the temperature in the 70s, sunny, with that kind of limpid blue sky that mocks you with the foreknowledge that soon snowflakes will be blowing horizontally past your window on the wind out of Canada. And as I walked up Inner Lakeshore Drive, I saw that the Empresses were holding court.

Whenever it's nice, and frequently when it's not, the Empresses are out, sitting on folding chairs of some sort, backs straight, chins inclined upwards, hands resting lightly on the tops of their canes as if on scepters. Their faces are heavily made up with spots of bright red at the vertices of their cheeks so that they resemble kachina dolls, or perhaps sacred masks from their native land. One imagines that a heavy wind off the Lake could blow their makeup whole from their faces, leaving them naked, pale and imperious. I can hear their accents when they murmur as I pass, and can tell they are from somewhere in Eastern Europe, but, though I have an ear for accents, I cannot tell from where, or even what region. Their bearing is regal, as if they were deposed Habsburgs or Romanovs, now reduced to ruling over a small stretch of the sidewalk on the Inner Drive. They do not deign to pay attention to the passersby in their small realm, the neighbors and Cubs fans and tourists whom they allow to traverse their territory. They never smile or laugh, for their conversation is of serious matters, matters so serious that a lifetime of conversation cannot get to the heart of them; like Talmudic scholars or quantum physicists, the Empresses are always discussing, always penetrating further to the heart of things, but never getting any further than they had been when they started. If they did, that would become the topic of their conversations.

Their free hands, those not resting upon their canes, flutter about as if blown by breezes, a movement subtle and careless, but, like all they do, freighted with meaning.

They do not pay attention to the passersby, the Empresses, but they do not fail to notice anything. Even the little children hiding behind their seats are not beneath notice, and woe betide anyone who dared to try to harm these the smallest of their subjects; the Empresses know how to bring a man to the gallows with barely a twitch of their grey and perfectly-trimmed brows. They pay no more attention to the children than to any of the others. But nothing escapes their notice.

They are sophisticated, the Empresses. Ours is a neighborhood in which a significant portion of the population is gay. The Empresses might have chosen to rule anywhere: a suburban mall, perhaps a white ethnic neighborhood in the city where no one not of their own nationality would ever set foot except by dreadful mistake and from which all the gay men and women would leave for my neighborhood or someplace equally accepting of their nature. I do not doubt that the Empresses know that boys will do boys (and girls likewise), and I believe it delights them that those boys and girls add color and flair and life to our neighborhood. But they pay them no attention either.

I know that the prostitutes and homeless people in our neighborhood do not delight the Empresses. I am sure they think, If only my realm were wider, I would do something about this. If they ruled a vast nation, there would be care for the men and women mumbling to themselves in their inner hells, there would be places for a person to go so that her choices do not narrow to selling her body or dying. But the Empresses accept the limits of their domain as they accept everything that is, with stoic bearing and serious murmurs. I am guessing at their feelings, of course. The Empresses' makeup does not betray their facial expressions to the passing mob. For a monarch to reveal too much of her inner life would be...unseemly: caviare to the general.

When it grows cold, the Empresses will retire to their winter palace, hidden within the walls of their condominium on the Inner Drive, and the city will sleep in white, dreaming of their return.