Or: Henry’s son Blake and my friend Sarah are good sports.

Blake wore a Chiodos shirt and I was happy.

At least I didn’t have to worry about their stilettos getting slurped into the mud.

Blake was atop a train for this and I was so nervous that a) he was going to fall; b) someone was going to see and call the cops. But then I was like, well, if he falls, maybe he’ll be knocked out long enough for me  to steal his Chiodos shirt.

"Sarah, I only see you once a year, but I’d love to take your picture." And she didn’t think it was weird at all, which is why we’re friends in the first place.

More Photos Here.

Kara was in town over the weekend and invited me to lunch at Zenith. It was really her friend Valerie’s idea, whom I was excited to finally get to meet after knowing her on LiveJournal for a few years. However, Kara made the mistake of telling me that her fiancé Chris commented that Valerie and I have really different personalities and he wondered how well we would get along. This of course turned into the Telephone Game and by the time I told Henry what Chris had said, it went something like, "Chris said Valerie is a crazy asshole and she’s secretly hated me for twenty years and is going to be waiting for me in an alley with barbed wire, a chainsaw and a turkey baster and OHMYGOD!"

Turns out, Valerie was really nice and I didn’t hate her and she didn’t seem to hate me either. People usually like me for the first three months, so we’ll check back with her over the summer.

Zenith is half vegetarian restaurant with an amazing tea menu and half antique shop with a mother lode of religious icons and musty racks of polyester muumuus; I saw at least eight dresses that I desperately want to purchase for the animal mask photo shoot, Kara found a new wedding dress, and Valerie found a very Blanche Deveroux bathing suit. It’s a good thing she didn’t buy it, because she totally wouldn’t have looked right in it unless she built a lanai off the back of her house and furnished it with white wicker, which she should actually do and then invite me over every weekend so I can lay out and read some Danielle Steele. Maybe also she can brew up some mint tea and serve me some of that shit.

And even though Zenith has quite possibly the best collection of wall-mounted owl tsotchkes to ogle while taking a piss, my favorite part was our server, Keith. (I’m pretty sure he was Kara and Valerie’s favorite part, too, but I could be wrong. No, wait, I’m always right.) Even in his sleepy state, he was personable and helpful and super cute; he would make lazy laps around the empty restaurant, butting into our conversation now and then. When I asked to take his picture, he initially declined, maybe in fear that I would Photoshop it and he’d find himself on some raunchy, nude waitstaff website — I have that shady, no-good look to me, I guess.  I eventually talked him into it and for someone who, minutes earlier, was so opposed to the prospect of being photographed, he began busting out an arsonal of GQ poses with no hesitation.

This picture does no justice to his awesomeness! I keep wanting to call him Ben, though. He really looks like a Ben to me.

Keith brought us out our side salads, the largest salads I’ve ever seen stuffed into really small bowls; it was like the vegetation version of clown cars. As soon as he set the bowls down in front of us, leaves of lettuce the size of elephant ears began unfolding and springing forth. It was the most difficult, not to mention aggressive, salad my fork tines have ever speared.

After feeling like I had just slashed my way through a jungle in ‘Nam, Keith delivered my black bean burger which was capped with another lettuce leaf the size of a yarmulke. "Oh good, more lettuce," I said before casting it to the side.

Meanwhile, Valerie and Kara talked about cheese and condom-wrapped plunger sticks, but I was too busy trying to keep my mind from detonating over all the photographical ideas that place was feeding me. I want to go back there every day until I exhaust every vision I have, or drink every tea on their menu, whichever comes first.

(More photos here.)

Like anyone else, Christina enjoys lingering underneath a welding mask before going to see a show.

(View set here.)

My brother Corey is about as weird as me, so when I’m like, "Hey, put this giraffe mask on and sit in the tub with a worn copy of Sleeping with the Enemy,"  he asks no questions.

We were having a lot of fun with this at my grandma’s house until my aunt Sharon got all agitated and kicked us out. I think she thinks I’m stealing heirlooms to support my heroin addiction and all the bastards I’ve birthed that I keep locked in a closet in the basement. She kept slamming doors and pacing around, jabbing the imaginary watch on her wrist. Later, she called to apologize, saying that she just wanted us to leave so my grandma would eat her lunch, that my grandma didn’t want to be rude and eat in front of us. My grandma always eats her lunch in front of us, so that was the dumbest excuse ever. She’s so  so bizarre, she should be made into a movie. Oh wait, I think that idea was already used.

It’s nice to know that I’m 28-years-old now and still not to be trusted.

When I was in high school, I filmed every video project I was assigned in my grandparent’s basement, projects about Longfellow, Canterbury Tales, and a short film I had to make for a writing class. Nothing that involved taking sledgehammers to walls or defecating in corners, we promise Sharon. It was too hard to do it at my own house, with two younger brothers acting like rejects and flipping off the camera every chance they got. My grandparents would always be fine with this, my group and I weren’t exactly scripting "Keggers on Film" and we would always clean up after ourselves. We were teenagers, not hoodlums, after all. But Sharon, who lived there back then too, would get so nervous. She would stand at the top of the steps and yell things like, "ARE YOU ALMOST DONE???" so that we would have to rewind the tape and re-shoot the scene, not wanting to include the unsavory banshee shrill in the background.

Her possession of that house is really insane, and I always feel unwelcome there. I shouldn’t, though; it’s my grandma’s house. Even before my Pappap died, Sharon was so controlling. He would let my friends and I hang out in the game room but she would pace around upstairs, huffing and sighing throatily by the open basement door.

Maybe she’s afraid her extensive porn collection will be unearthed. If she’s worried we’ll stumble upon the mafia-esque arsenal of fire arms they have stashed around the house, already did that.

I texted my mom after Corey and I conceded to the not-so-subtle attempts to evict us and said, "Sharon ruins everything," to which my mom was all, "No shit." We’re going back another day, when it’s guaranteed she won’t be there. That’s when we’ll break out the hookers and cocaine.

A few more from yesterday can be seen here.

I visited my friend Jess today. For years, she had the distinction of being my friend’s step-daughter, but now that friend is no longer a part of either of our lives, and Jess now has the distinction of simply being my friend.

She’s nearly 21-years-old now, a far cry from the 11-year-old I drugged with Nyquil while baby-sitting. She’s also seven months pregnant, and unhappily so.

Today I told her she needed to have photos taken. "You’ll end up regretting it later if you don’t," I offered sagely. "I know I did." (But for what it’s worth, I also had about three and a half more chins than she does.) She was reluctant at first, but when she realized I probably wasn’t going to stop asking, she sighed and let me have at it.

I wish she knew how beautiful she really is!

Read more

Two weekends ago, I was at the Quaker Cemetery. Outside of the meeting house, there was this moat made of broken glass shards. Clear glass, amber glass, green glass — it all looked so sparkly and I had an "Ooooh, pretty colorssss" moment, forgetting all about the demons camping out behind me in the decrepit stone meeting house.

For awhile, constructing my own pretty jagged glass moat around the front of my own house seemed like a really brilliant idea. But then I remembered that glass can sometimes be dangerous.

I guess this picture will have to suffice, until the day I live in a house without a small child. Then I’ll have my moat and you all can come wade in it.

One of my favorite cemeteries, the Homewood Cemetery. Henry and I used to go for walks here together regularly, but then as he continued to age, his endurance slackened and I would end up going alone. This is the only cemetery I walk in that has never, on some occasion, made my body shake with that biting sensation that someone’s behind me, something’s watching me, bodies are rising from the earth. Maybe because there’re always people at this one, groundsmen and mourners and visitors fulfilling obligations.

The mausoleum is terrifying though, I take it back. I’ve peed in the bathroom a few times and sometimes the idea of running out with urine streaming down my thighs seems like the better alternative to taking the extra step to wipe. I just get caught up with that Go! Go! Go! Run for your life! subconscious warning, like I’m watching myself in a horror movie. Never go in the mausoleum to piss,  you idiot!

This photo makes me think of spring, like I want to put on a floppy hat and lay out on one of the graves. But then I remember that when I took this photo, it was below twenty degrees and I forgot to bring gloves; within ten minutes of exiting the car, my fingers were so cold that it looked like ten hot dogs were dripping from my hands, so I guess instead of picnics and floppy hats, I was probably thinking about parkas and bonfires, as in roasting my fingers in one.

Now just envision someone crouching next to a tombstone, face all hidden behind a giraffe mask. April 12 and 13, baby.

This inspires me to start my own squad¹. A squad that pillages neighborhoods, tagging our squad name on smooth potato-looking stones. It’ll be the Oh Honestly Squad. There might even be pins someday. No one will fuck with us. Bars worldwide will be naming drinks after us.

If you want in, sign up below. Then start tagging rocks with vulgarities and nuclear threats² and then send me the pictures³. It’ll be the best fun you’ve never had.

[1]: This was after I realized that stone didn’t actually say "squid." Previously, I was all about getting a pet squid but now I see the ridiculousness of that and have moved on to the squad thing. Maybe our tag should have "squid" in it?

[2]: Make sure it can’t be traced back to me. I’m not going to jail for you.

[3]: I’m not funnin’. I really want enough pictures to warrant its own set on flickr.

[x]: This post translates into "I have nothing better to look forward to, save me."

The first time I was there was the summer of 2000.

“There’s this Quaker cemetery out in Perryopolis. Supposed to be haunted or some shit. We should go.” It was one of those glimmering moments of spontaneity that, on a boring summer’s night, sounded a lot more interesting that the usual routine of getting drunk on my porch. I was a little wary that the person hatching this plan was my friend Justin, who had a bad track record of insisting he knew the exact coordinates of various haunted hot spots, and then like a bad repeating record, we’d inevitably wind up lost  with the gas tank on E and a few empty bags of Corn Nuts.

Our friend Keri wanted to accompany us, so I felt a little better because she was always the responsible one. If you were going to get lost, break down, get a condom lodged inside of you, Keri was the girl you’d want with you. She also didn’t scare easily, so I quietly planned to wedge myself between the two of them once (if) we arrived.

Perryopolis is around 30 miles south of Pittsburgh, but the trip didn’t take long in my Eagle Talon, considering my propensity for driving it like a dragster. As we approached the town of Perryopolis, I silently hoped that we would be unable to find the cemetery in the dark, of that it didn’t exist, or that the Earth opened up to engulf it every night after midnight. Maybe there would be a fence too dangerous to scale, Hounds of Hell snarling and tied to posts at the entrance, an after hours admission fee implemented by Satan.

The area was rural. We coasted past a few farms and even fewer houses. The uneven asphalt was littered with loose pebbles and sticks, which  clinked and snapped under the tires. The streetlights did little to alleviate my uneasiness. Unfortunately, Justin must have polished his navigational bearings, because after having me make a few turns, he told me to pull over.

“This is it,” he said, leaning in between the front seats and looking out my window. We kind of just sat there, real still, not speaking, until Keri finally went for the door handle. We all filed out and crossed the dark, quiet street. It was too dark to see the cemetery from where we stood, and after hesitating to see who would step up to lead us, we finally took the plunge in tandem and began climbing the slight hill before us.

Halfway up, we could make out a wrought iron fence, the kind you would expect to wreathe an old, small town cemetery. My eyes searched for the tombstones, the meat of the graveyard. That’s when I saw it, my first glimpse of the old stone house in the middle of the small plot of land. Suddenly, it wasn’t what lay beneath the ground that frightened me.

“I don’t like the looks of that place,” I whispered hoarsely to Keri and Justin.

“What the fuck is it, a church?” Justin asked no one in particular, squinting his eyes to adjust to the darkness.

“I’m not climbing no fucking fence,” Keri spat, arms crossed. She was always the kill joy of the group. Me, I’d go along with just about anything, no matter how terrified I was, mainly because my adrenaline would overtake my common sense every single time. But Keri, she’d get so far and then stop. Or conveniently conjure up a head ache. That girl has headaches more often than Seattle has rain.

Just then, the dull roar of an engine resounded from further down the road. We all turned to look. Headlights eventually appeared over the crest in the curving road, and the car began to decelerate. We continued to watch as it approached the base of the hill and slowed to a complete stop several yards away from my car, parked along the shoulder.

“Is it a cop?” Keri whispered.

The driver flashed the head lights. We were stapled to the soft ground under our feet. The driver blew the horn. We jumped. The driver laid on the horn, sending an atmosphere-rippling siren through the once-quiet night. All three of us screamed and turned to run back to my car. We shoved each other ruthlessly, none of us daring to be in the back.

My car was parked directly across the base of the hill. The rogue car still idled in the same position a few yards away on the opposite side of the road, continuing to blare the chilling horn. We made it to my car, slamming into the side of it. I fumbled for my keys. I dropped them on the road as I tried frantically to sort through the menagerie of plush over-sized key chains. Keri and Justin were swearing and screaming at me. I was crying.

The bully car continued to intimidate us with the horn-blaring while I unlocked my door and reached across the inside to unlock the passenger door. Keri and Justin both tried to get in my uterus-sized two-door Talon at once, prolonging their success. Once they were in, I gunned it, not even bothering to steal a look at the driver of the opposing car as we squealed past it.

We drove in silence until the poorly-lit country roads spilled us out onto the highway where we took refuge among the traffic.

Only then did anyone dare speak.

“I don’t know what you guys were so scared for. It was probably just some teenager having some fun, trying to scare us,” Justin said, leaning back with his fingers laced behind his head.

*****

The weather was unseasonably spring-like on Sunday, so Henry, Chooch and I piled into the car and drove south to take some pictures and enjoy the rare opportunity to drive with the windows down. Our plan was to go out to Uniontown, a small town at the base of the mountains, and get some nice country photographs.

We took Rt. 51, which leads straight from Pittsburgh to Uniontown. It also passes through Perryopolis on the way.

“Hey, there’s this old Quaker Cemetery out here. We should try to find it,” I casually suggested, recognizing that the right hand turn into farm country was coming up. What better way to spend a beautiful Sunday with the kid and manservant? Field trip  the haunted cemetery! C’mon boy, let’s get our desecratin’ on, I should have hollered to Chooch.

Henry found it without mishap (evidently the road it’s on is called Quaker Cemetery Road, so Henry figured it was a safe bet we were on the right road). When I reached the crest of the small hill, I spotted the stone house with it’s corrugated tin roof, ominously gaping front door and windows that stared out like empty eye sockets.

I wasn’t scared this time, finding bravery in the sunlight, and I marched right through the archway and started taking pictures. Probably, if I was someone other than myself, the first thing I’d do, I’d go straight inside that stone shack and start poking around. But I was cautious. I let Henry go inside first while I admired the various hues of beer bottle shards as they sparkled in the sun. The shards wrapped around the front of the house, like a moat in front of an alcoholic’s castle. I was sad that no one ever invites me to party in creepy cemetery houses.

Henry went inside first, getting some digital shots of the interior. I asked him if he felt scared when he was in there and he gave me that “don’t be an asshole” sneer. Still, I lingered near the door while Henry and Chooch retreated somewhere in the back, behind the house. I thought I heard shuffling coming from inside the house, but I shook the idea out of my mind and went in.

The inside was sheltered by a roof made up of thin wooden slats. It looked unstable, like I could be buried under it at any given moment. The walls were mostly blue and covered in graffiti. I tried to read it all, as much as I could before my bravery reserve was drained, but there was nothing very interesting. No Hail Satans or Human Sacrifice FTW!s to be found; just an abundance of generic “_____ was here”s and ambiguous initials.

Each end of the room had a fireplace. Henry said later that he had wanted to get all up in it and see what was going on in the chimney’s guts, but he never said why he didn’t follow through. Because he was scared, that’s why. I can only imagine how much clenching he had to do to keep from shitting his pants when he was in there alone.

Still afraid of the being impaled by a collapsing slat of wood, I started to walk out. Henry completely doesn’t believe me, and probably no one else will either, but as I started to step through the doorway, I heard a chorus of whispering coming from \the left corner of the room. I SWEAR TO GOD. I swore to God when I was telling Henry about it too and he was like, “You can’t swear to something you don’t believe in” so I changed my pledge of honesty to Satan instead and Henry started in on that bullshit about how you can’t believe in one and not the other and I was like, “Shut up, stop acting like you’re religious” and he said if there was no God and just Satan, then the world would be way worse than it is now and I said, “No, Satan’s just lazy is all” and that’s about as deep as the two of us get into theological debates. Our next one is scheduled for 2030. As if Henry will still be living then.

After the whole whispering episode, I was pretty much in a huge hurry to leave. If you buy into legends and ghost stories, it’s said that the meeting house was where witches were taken to be killed. I really hope the whispering I heard belonged to Glinda.

Later that day, I was reading a website about the cemetery and it says, “There are also stories of certain graves being cursed, meaning that if you stand at them, or read the writing on the head stone, you could have bad luck or die.”

Awesome. Nice knowing you, Chooch.

Rhonda and Paul loved the regal spires of the church, with medieval-like spikes jutting out along the sides. They loved the Gothic arches and the way the stained glass of the large front window so beautifully depicted "The Ascension." They loved the street lights, with the large bulbous covers, that lined the street in front of the church.

But they didn’t like the pubic hairs they found lacing the toilet seats. Rhonda and Paul couldn’t fathom making the sacrament of marriage in a church that boasted dirtier restrooms than those in a,Mexican whore house. A thick red line was drawn through St. Mary’s and they moved to the next church on their list.

Happy Valentine’s Day! So far, Henry hasn’t made me want to kill myself. I finally got to present him with the Vietnam Veteran belt buckle I bought him from etsy. It’s flooding with gold-plated hokeyness. When it fell out of the bag and into his palms, he kind of stared at it with that amazing brand of disbelief that you hope every gift recipient is addled with, and then he looked at me, his mustache creeping into a confused smile, and he said, "But I wasn’t in Vietnam….?"

"But you were in THE SERVICE! Same thing." I was still standing there, waiting for him to attach it to his belt.

"No, if this said Air Force, that would make sense. Then it would be the Service…" He flipped it over to look at the lavishly coated back.

"Well, just wear it. No one will know you’re not a Vietnam Vet." I was getting annoyed, and I really wanted MY present.

"Yes they will! I’m like, twenty years too young!" And then I couldn’t stop laughing, imagining Henry being "too young" for something.

"Like I said," I repeated, "no one will notice!"

And then he realized he doesn’t have the right kind of belt for a buckle, but I think he was trying to just get out of wearing it. I knew I should have bought the rainbow one that had "JESUS" emblazoned on it.

Then UPS hurled my present against the front door. Henry, further enabling my wanton lust for living in the past, gifted me with a bottle of Versace Red Jeans, one of my favorite scents as a young slut. The gift box was adorned with an elastic red ribbon, which is now being worn as a headband, so I’m pretty content right now.

And we’re going to Columbus next weekend! This sure beats the time he bought me a Fossil watch for Valentine’s Day, using a gift card my mom got me for Christmas.

"What are you going to do for me for Valentine’s Day?" Lady Brown Pants asked her skinny long-legged partner. "Will you drape beautiful icees around my turkey neck like you did in 1986?"

Skinny Long-Legs considered climbing over the railing for a second or two before answering. "No, I think I’ll torture you with some nipple clamps and bang your sister. She’s not dead yet, is she?"

"I want an egg cream," offered Feeble Cane User.

——————————————————————————————

This is Henry’s final year to do something amazing for Valentine’s Day. I don’t care much for expensive gifts and French dinners, but I’d like something more than, oh I don’t know, nothing. I feel like he gave me a Hershey’s bar last year which was kind of insulting, but the fact that I can’t remember probably means he didn’t get me anything at all. Maybe if he had stopped by Walgreens and picked up some foo-foo old lady perfume to go with the imaginary chocolate bar, it would have been a different story.

Since I work nights, I think we’re going to try and get someone to babysit for us this weekend and I swear to god if he takes me to fucking Denny’s, he’s a dead man.

I want to do something wild and erotic, like hide in a trench with aborigine blow darts (the solution to everything) and shoot city cops in the neck as retribution for all the times they violate traffic laws.

Henry said he’ll care more when I finally grow up, whatever that means.

 This was my absolute favorite dress when I was a kid. It represented a golden age in my life: collecting My Little Ponies, lazy Sunday afternoons in my Pappap’s pool, watching The Smurfs while eating Sharon’s Saturday morning French toast, Disney World, Shirley Temples and lobster dinners, my last year as an only child.

I still really love the green/pink color combination because it reminds me of candy and this dress.

I do not handle "sick" well. At all. Chooch does this super sweet thing where he wakes up once an hour during the night. It’s a new trend, I guess. So that does wonders for my recovery time. Wish I had shotgun. (For me, not Chooch! God.)

Chooch saw me blow my nose once and now he’s taken to dramatic reenactments of my plight.

Now I barely have a voice, which is probably a development that could inspire cheers in some parts.

Please tell me good things. I  might be sick, but I’m still just as bored as always.

This is how desolate I feel. Wah, right?

Henry found his old Pentax camera in the attic so we took it out on Sunday to see what kind of photos it would produce. I am now in love with this camera, and not just because imagining Henry using it to take pictures of his SERVICE buddies makes me laugh.

I like how the only bursts of color in the photo come from garbage, so even while it’s gross and full of litter, it’s still kind of pretty, like flowers in its own right.

This is also a good portrait of how I’ve been feeling for the past two days. I had to call off work yesterday because I felt real crappy, like my allergies were acting up. But today, my face feels like its being chiseled in a thousand pieces and my muscles feel petrified. I can never really pinpoint what my symptoms are, which makes it a real treat for Henry when he’s trying to buy me medicine. I’m sick, isn’t that specific enough? I called off work for tonight too and I feel guilty but oh well.